Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire

Chapter 578: If you think... *

The thought had just formed in Zaila’s mind when Caius’s trailing lips moved across her arm, the thrill-inducing touch ever so feather-light until he lifted his lips and looked into her eyes for the first time since this all began.

Zaila stared into his red eyes and her brows furrowed as her gaze intensified like there was something to find in there. His eyes so enraptured her, her attention captured by what she wished to see in them that she didn’t notice Caius’s face had drawn closer to hers— didn’t notice his lips were inches from hers.

When she realized and her eyes dropped to those lips, she found they were gone because Caius had leaned his face into the crook of her neck. Zaila’s pulse quickened, and she tightened the one hand she still had on the armrest, as if trying to anchor herself, which was warranted because her body felt particularly light at the moment.

But all that was fluff, she insisted to herself. It was all tricks that his actions, and the mood he had set in place were forcing into her head to distract her from what this was about: Proving his pompous claims to be wrong.

’Here it comes. Took him long enough,’ Zaila said with her best attempt at inducing a nonchalant flavor to her thoughts.

Zaila was very aware of Caius’s hand on her side. For a second, she expected that he would go for her breasts. With the sexual way he was going about this, she thought that would be typical. She even scoffed and allowed her mind to wonder how long she would let that continue before she put a stop to it.

Sure, she had agreed not to interrupt his process but she had only been humoring him. The moment it became clear he was only out to take advantage of her, this would stop.

But Caius didn’t go for her breasts. His hand continued to trail downward until he was at her waist and then, he gripped a bit hard. Or at least, his grip was ’hard’ to his Magic Circle while to her, it just felt firm. She liked it. And while she would never admit it, her pulse and the way her heart beat betrayed her.

From his firm grip on her waist, Caius moved on to Zaila’s back. While she had settled very comfortably in her chair, there was space Caius could exploit between her lower back and the chair so he placed his hand on her lower back and spread his fingers apart like he wanted to cover as much of the surface area as possible. As though he was looking for the firmest grip he could get.

He succeeded as far as Zaila was concerned.

With one hand on her arm and his other hand on her back, Caius finally placed his fangs to Zaila’s neck and bit down just enough to make needle-tip-sized holes in her neck. The kind that would close the moment his fangs pulled free because her blood would quickly clot to stop the bleeding.

And from there, Caius tasted Zaila’s blood. The taste hit his tongue in an explosion of delicious flavor with a pinewood scent that he actually got heady with. But he made sure not to get carried away and instead focused on what he needed to know;

Had his antics so far spiked his Evolutionary Charge in her blood?

With a smile, Caius confirmed it had and in that, he saw a chance;

He didn’t have time to go all in on seduction. He didn’t have time to build momentum or use some of his tried-and-true methods such as letting her miss his presence. He needed a speed run and only allowed himself one chance at it. If all he had done so far didn’t at all spike arousal in Zaila’s blood, he would have simply stopped and called it quits.

Caius hadn’t been very confident starting because he believed that with a mask on, an already difficult task of a seduction speed run was made all the more difficult. But by that spike he tasted in Zaila’s blood, he saw a path forward. He also allowed himself an amusing thought that the mask might actually be what was doing it for the Captain. Take it off and his face might just turn her off.

Caius only took tiny drops of Zaila’s blood before he pulled away. It took a second for Zaila to notice his retreat and she blinked her eyes open, spending a second being bashful that she had been so carried away, before she smirked.

"That’s it?" She asked, calming her heart, "That’s what all the fuss was about? All those theatrics for a disappointing finish?"

"Was it really disappointing?" Caius smiled and his emphasis on the word ’really’ made Zaila pause.

But she recovered very quickly.

"If that was it, absolutely!" She said.

"But that was not ’it’," Caius said then, looking very amused.

"What?" Zaila asked in a slightly distracted manner as she wondered if it was possible to find barely half of a person’s face attractive. The way the vampire’s lips curved into a smile just looked... interesting.

"I never said I was done," Caius said, "You think a few drops count as feeding?"

"But you stopped—" Zaila still sounded distracted.

"You wanted to know the truth of my feeding habits," Caius said with a cocky shrug and a general air of smugness he hadn’t had when he started, "This is all part of the process."

And then, he leaned away, pulling Zaila’s arm at the same time. Zaila’s instincts acted quickly and the process of the arm pull played slowly to her insanely fast reflexes and yet, she found she couldn’t muster her Mana or her superior physical strength to resist.

For a split second, she wondered if her strength had been tampered with. Maybe the vampire had slipped her something while she had been so distracted by his antics. Maybe he was an exception to normal vampires and actually had some kind of paralyzing venom.

The thought didn’t last long enough to even be fully formed because Zaila soon sensed her magic still well in her body. Nothing was stopping her from reaching out to it and using it as she should/could.

In fact, it seemed the only reason she didn’t utilize her strength was that... she didn’t want to.

’Ridiculous!’ Zaila refuted and yet, she knew it was true. Somehow, she was choosing not to utilize her strength and was allowing the vampire to use his pathetic Fifth Circle Magic to pull her to her feet.

’He did this to me!’ Zaila realized but despite knowing that to be true, she had no actual word for how he had accomplished this besides... charm?

Had this vampire disarmed her with his charm?

Was she so weak that she could get carried away by the wiles of an inferior?

Caius’s smile was knowing. After all, this wasn’t his first time having this effect on women. Looking into his masked face, into that smile of his, Zaila remembered an earlier dispute she had with Caius where he claimed he led his pack with charm and she had disagreed, saying that could not be enough considering his weaker Magic Circle.

’Well, what do you know? Charm really might be enough,’ Zaila admitted reluctantly.

Caius raised Zaila’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it while keeping his eyes on hers. He dropped her hand and Zaila unconsciously dropped it to grab his side.

Caius took Zaila’s chin with his now free hand, his red eyes holding her icy blue orbs while he stroked her lower lip with his thumb.

"I hope you were paying attention to my explanation earlier,"

He said like a teacher inquiring something of their underachieving student.

"Which part?" Zaila asked and she managed a hard tone that didn’t betray the thoughts running through her mind as that thumb stroked her lip.

Caius sighed and shook his head like a disappointed adult.

"I was describing my feeding and the connection that makes it different from what you know of other vampires. And then, you compared it to something," Caius said slowly.

That jogged Zaila’s memory which was needed considering how her mind was currently in a bit of disarray.

"I said it was like sex. The way you talked about it anyway," she said.

"And I said...?" Camus prompted.

"You said it was similar," Zaila answered and as she did, she felt Caius’s hand drop from the small of her back to the arch of her ass.

"Correct," Caius said with the air of a teacher glad that his student might actually be an unexpected genius.

And then, his voice became as smooth as velvet.

"It makes it interesting then, how you still insisted that I show you what I meant," he said, "Surely you considered what something described as ’similar’ to sex would entail."

Zaila frowned and laughed.

"If you think something like that—"

"Something like what?" Caius cut in with an inquisitive tone. His hand was now fully on her ass and feeling out the incredibly appealing shape of it.

Zaila scoffed.

"If you think you’re going to get to fuck me, you’ve got another thing coming," she said.

"Then it seems I’ve got another thing coming," Caius said with an enrapturing smile that Zaila didn’t get to fully absorb because his lips smashed into hers the very next second.