Blue eyes, glittering with flashes of emerald, the same color of the depths of the Mediterranean, stared back at me. High cheekbones flushed with pink spoke of her anger and frustration at being caught and brought before me. Pouty, rosy lips fell open just a little in wonder as she stared back at me. My eyes raked down her body, appreciating the way her taut, firm muscles did little to hide her curves, instead serving only to enhance them.
The dress she was wearing was downright sinful. Blue satin wrapped around her body, like it was molded just for her. The neckline was a modest plunge that showed just enough of her cleavage and it had a deep back, falling above the cusp of her round, curvy ass. Her stomach was flat, her hips flaring out in a delightful manner that made me want to throw her on the floor and fuck her senseless. Her breasts were full, large enough to fit in the palm of my hands. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I could see her nipples pebbling straight through it. There was a hint of a panty line though. Interesting choice.
Bold, but not too bold.
She furrowed her brow and then a hint of recognition passed over her features. She’d figured out who I was.
“Markos Valera,” she said, her voice like music to my ears.
It had been a long time since I’d seen one of her particular ancestry. I expected an attack, but she did nothing. Instead, she just stood there, staring at me with a thinly disguised look of disdain.
“What’s your name?” I asked, leaning back in my leather chair.
“Kassandra,” she answered quietly, probably realizing that she was, quite literally, fucked.
I studied her face. Her kind had always been pulled to me. A result of fate.
The two of us were enemies, her mortal, me immortal. It was her role as the Warrior of Light to vanquish me. In the past, many of her bloodline had come close, but I was exceedingly difficult to kill. I was true evil, a darkness that threatened to consume the world. I was the devil and her kind lived to conquer me.
A vein in her throat pulsed and I could hear the sound of her blood rushing through her body, like a quiet river flowing amongst the rocks. Perfection. A delightful symphony that promised the most delicious of tastes. I licked my lips, watching as she pulled
her shoulders back and tried to keep her nerve in the face of the most dangerous man she had ever met.
“Why were you in my archive, Kassandra?” I continued, trying to gauge how much she knew based on the positioning of her body, by the way she licked her lips nervously, or the way her panicked eyes looked around the room for an escape. She was strong, I knew that, and I had to be cautious. I’d made mistakes in the past and I wasn’t willing to repeat them. I’ve had thousands of lifetimes to learn and she only had one.
“I got lost,” she answered quietly.
“Behind a locked door?” I pressed, my disbelief obvious.
“My mistake. I thought it was the bathroom. I heard someone behind it and when they hadn’t come out, I assumed they locked the door and passed out. I was just trying to help,” she lied blatantly to my face. I sighed, almost disappointed at the fact that she hadn’t been more creative.
I’d seen the footage. I’d seen her searching through my vast collection of documents mentioning her ancestry. Looking for answers. Of what, I wasn’t yet sure.
Her body language was distrustful, but not downright hostile. Nothing about her suggested she was going to go on the offensive. I narrowed my eyes, studying her more closely. She’d been caught and looked guilty, but so far, she’d done nothing more than that.
Could it be that she didn’t recognize the pull? Hadn’t realized how fate had brought us together like it always did? Did she not recognize who I truly was? It wasn’t possible, was it?
She was the Warrior of Light; of that, I had zero doubt.
Her bloodline was ancient. It had been around as long as I had been, the balance of good to my evil. I’d studied her ancestors over the years. In every generation, the firstborn of her bloodline would feel the pull of fate and become the Warrior of Light. She’d be stronger, faster, and cleverer than a normal human and driven by destiny to kill me. Over the last several thousands of years, I and her bloodline had run into each other numerous times. Sometimes I escaped unscathed, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I killed them, but they had never killed me. My greatest triumph had been slaying a number of them in a row. I had won, and the result had been written down in history as the Dark Ages.
That was me.
But it hadn’t lasted. Eventually, one of them had succeeded in hurting me once again and then the world had begun to change, to grow and expand both economically and intellectually. At that point, I was no longer in power and the world had prospered.
I’d hated that.
The last encounter I’d had with a woman from her bloodline had been devastating. Even though it was hundreds of years ago, I still remembered it with vivid detail, as if it happened only yesterday.
Her name had been Althea.
It was the height of the Renaissance and I’d been on the run for a while, hiding in the undergrounds of Europe in order to avoid her. I’d finally come back home to my castle in Mykonos, under the assumption that I’d outrun her and she’d lost my trail.
Kassandra stared at me and I saw Althea’s features in hers. Strong, steady, and unafraid.
The night Althea had found me, I’d been deep in the cellar, working on filling the last barrels of what I was sure was going to be one of my best batches of wine. Althea had trained hard, embraced her destiny, and was more tenacious than any of the others. I had been unprepared. I didn’t even have a weapon. We’d fought for a long time. She was strong and eventually, her spear had flown forward, sinking deep into my flesh and piercing deep into my heart. I’d fallen before her and Althea had risen in victory.
She left me to die, but I was hard to kill. After the battle, I’d crawled deep into the depths of my castle and hid. For several hundred years, I’d gone into a deep state of slumber, an inactive state that allowed me to rest and recover until I was ready to venture into the world once again.