Eternal Lovers by Zenobia Renquist

Peace was within Darius’s reach for the first time in nearly a millennium. All his patience would finally pay off. In a few days, maybe even hours, he would no longer have to hide himself or his wife from the public. They could walk around in the open and enjoy the world the way they truly wanted.

True, a simple masking spell could have allowed them the same freedom, but Darius was sick of hiding. The majority of the world thought him a myth because only the mage elite ever saw him, the Mage King, the most powerful mage in all existence.

Ego didn’t cause him to make that boast. A mage’s power and magical prowess grew with practice and age and was only limited by personal potential. Potential was not a state of mind but a limitation placed on the mage by nature. Darius had reached his potential a hundred years ago. He’d had over a thousand years to hone his craft until his powers were unmatched. Not wanting others to reach his level, he’d cast a self-perpetuating spell that sought out those with the potential to reach his level and capped them at prime status. Few of them ever made it that far.

The reason his younger self had been catapulted back in time was because Darius had removed the cap under the guise of trying to stop his escape, giving his younger self access to all his potential at once. With that kind of power at his disposal, Darius could enact world peace in the only way it would actually last — kill every last person on earth.

But that wasn’t the type of peace he wanted. Nor would he ever dream of angering his wife in such a way. It had taken almost a hundred years for her to truly forgive him for massacring hundreds of thousands of vampires and starting the mage-vampire war. He didn’t plan to give her another reason to be pissed with him, and he hadn’t started the war on a whim.

The original vampires had been out of control. Their bite was contagious and changed their prey in a matter of minutes, which was vastly different from the vampires Darius knew. The vampires he knew, of which his wife was one, had fifty-fifty odds of transforming a human into a vampire. If the change didn’t take, the human died. And the change wasn’t effected through a bite. The vampire had to share blood. And not just any blood. It had to be the black blood that flowed through a special vein in their left arm.

Culling the vampire masses of old had sparked off a bloody war that raged through time with the humans siding with the mages. Not because the humans felt the mages were right, but because the vampires had attacked everyone who wasn’t a vampire. The humans had retaliated, becoming a formidable opponent to the vampires. Darius regretted the lives lost, but knew it to be a necessity that would facilitate the proclamation of peace he was about to make.

In a few short minutes, he would address the world, showing himself to the public for the first time in centuries. He planned to offer the vampires a truce, the terms of which would be hashed out once the vampire leader met with him. Darius was sure the leader would see it as some form of trap. Only a fool would see it otherwise and Theron was no fool.

Theron had catapulted himself to the ruling position of the vampires by eliminating the vampire elders, vampires who had lived almost as long as Darius. But vampire power wasn’t like mage power. Theron, a vampire half Darius’s age, held more influence and strength than all the vampire elders put together. It had been inevitable that Theron would one day find the motivation to stand up and claim his rightful place. That motivation came in the form of a threat to his wife.

Darius sympathized. He too would kill anyone who dared to harm Medusa. She would laugh in his face if she heard his threat. Medusa could take care of herself and had proven it many times over. She was a warrior, formerly under Theron’s command. Anyone who dared to stand up to her would find themselves under the assault of twenty metal-link-covered whips, which Medusa wielded with deadly precision.

His beautiful warrior was restless and ready to be out in the world once more. Their circumstances had led them both to live lives of seclusion. Not only was the mage king married to a vampire — something his followers would see as the ultimate betrayal — but he and his wife were an anomaly. They were both born in the eighteen hundreds, but a spell had thrown them back in time. In order not to accidentally meet up with their younger selves or anyone who knew those younger selves, Darius and Medusa had opted to stay hidden.

Darius could just imagine the surprised expressions of those who knew him from the mage academy when they beheld him sitting on the throne of the king. In the days of the academy, Darius had dreamed of reaching the proficiency level of the mage king.

Now he had to use that power so he and his wife could finally have a decent honeymoon. He planned to take her on a global tour and make love to her on top of every single wonder and monument in existence. And the best part about the trip would be the absence of Benji, Medusa’s pet bear.

She treated the creature like a cross between a pet and child, babying and spoiling him. He was a monumental pain in the ass. Darius and the bear had a centuries-long feud going over Medusa’s affections, and Darius had won this round since the honeymoon would be blissfully bear-free.

Darius had spent long nights devising a special binding spell for their trip to the Eiffel Tower. The spell had to be perfect and impossible for his wife to break. Since she was almost on par with his magical ability, that was a tall order, but he had managed it.

He could see it now. Her long, lithe body bound magically to the steel beams directly below the observation deck. A location that would allow them to be heard but not seen, at least not by anyone on the tower. And Darius had no plans to muffle their voices with magic.

The night lights would cast shadows over Medusa’s dark brown skin and twinkle in the slick liquid of pleasure and anticipation that would trail from her body to drip to the beams below. It wouldn’t touch her soft thighs. No. Darius planned to have her thighs open to him, her knees level with her slender waist, and spread so he could watch her hole wink at him.

Medusa’s anger at being trussed up with her hands over her head would have her small, pert breasts jiggling with her rapid breathing. Her threats to make him pay would fall on deaf ears as Darius tried to decide if he wanted to taste her nipples or her pussy first.

Of course, her nipples would receive his attention first. Using a trick he had perfected over the centuries, he would take one of her nipples into his mouth and tease it with his tongue while using his magic to mirror the sensations on her other nipple. Medusa’s words would become jumbled as she fought to continue coherent speech through her growing passion. A battle Darius knew she would lose.

The same way she would lose her will to deny him when he passed his fingers over her clit. She would cry out long and loud, probably startling the people walking around above them. But she wouldn’t climax from such a simple touch. No, her vocalization would be from the pleasure of Darius finally touching her where she truly wanted to feel him.

He would stroke her clit, enjoying the way Medusa would move her body in her struggles to get free so she could take control of the encounter. Darius planned to pause right before she came so he could check the binding spell and make sure it held. The short break would also allow Medusa to come back to her senses enough to start threatening him again, her dark brown eyes shining with the threat of death, if he didn’t release her.

Darius loved riling his wife. His beautiful vampire would flash her fangs at him, as though that was some kind of threat. Medusa’s bite gave Darius pleasure. Not everyone felt pleasure from a vampire’s bite, but even if it hurt he would still welcome the intimate contact. He would even place his neck closer to her mouth so she could bite him and heighten his enjoyment of the encounter. She would refuse just to be spiteful.

For her stubbornness, Darius would trail two fingers around the edge of her drenched hole, coating his fingers in her juices. Not touching her inside. Not yet. He wanted her to ask for it, to admit she was enjoying herself despite being pissed about the situation. And she would ask, almost beg, for the release only Darius could give her.

She would have to be specific in what she asked for. Darius loved hearing her speak such raw and carnal needs for everyone to hear. And he would make her speak loudly before he obeyed. Medusa was a cool personality, almost frigid. She only melted when they were alone behind closed doors. Shattering the icy façade she presented to the world while in public would be the whole point of their little Eiffel Tower rendezvous.

Just imagining the scene had him licking his lips as though he would find the taste of her there. His dick strained against his button fly. Medusa would be an exquisite mixture of aroused and pissed, an effect Darius could only achieve when he bound her. She hated it — or said she hated it — but her orgasms eclipsed all others when he dared to tie her up.

In all the centuries, she had never once admitted it. Darius didn’t get to bind her that often. He had to catch her unawares, hence the reason he had been preparing this particular spell and planning this trip for so long.

“No.”

Darius snapped out of his daydream and focused his odd, blue-and-brown-eyed gaze on the woman before him. A woman who wasn’t his wife thus he didn’t feel like seeing her. “No what, Iryna?”

“No to whatever you’re thinking.”

“You don’t have the ability to divine my thoughts.”

“I don’t need it. That stupid grin on your face gives you away.”

Darius was grinning. He couldn’t help it. He’d been waiting long centuries for the Eiffel Tower to be built and then decades for the time when he would use it as a prop to screw his wife. What about that wouldn’t make a man grin?

Iryna said, “You’re thinking about her and you need to stop it.”

“Watch yourself, Iryna.”

“I can’t. I’m too busy watching you and making sure you don’t do something that will embarrass yourself. You can’t go before the world grinning like an idiot. Stop thinking about her and focus on important matters.”

“I’m focused,” Darius said, sitting straighter in his seat. He pushed one hand through his brown hair and wished Medusa were there doing it instead. She loved petting him, calling his hair kitten-soft like that was some kind of compliment.

She wasn’t there, couldn’t be there, and bemoaning that fact wouldn’t change it. He adjusted his heavy robes and rolled his neck. He hated wearing the symbols of his station — thick robes, several multi-colored sashes that denoted his magical disciplines, gold chains with medallions hanging from them, and other frivolous things to make him look ornate and imposing. It weighed a ton. If not for a cooling spell he’d enacted, he would be sweating buckets.

Iryna moved away from the throne so she could stand next to the other primes. Their powers spread over the room and then outward. Darius could feel the power traveling to encompass the world. Every man, woman, and child would see and hear the broadcast Darius was about to make. The world would behold the mage king and heed his words… he hoped.

Medusa would have smacked him for doubting his power and position. Just thinking that steeled his nerves and made him sit straighter as he combined his power with that of his primes.

He spoke in his normal voice, rather than the booming, godhead voice he usually used for addressing the public. It was time to be himself.

“Greetings to the people of the world. I am the mage king. Many of you think me a myth, but I am very real. I have come before you today because this world has suffered greatly over the centuries due to the warring between mages and vampires. It is time to put aside our differences, put an end to this constant bickering, and embrace peace.”