A Time Apart: Book One of The Macauley Series Read online

  Tonight Olivia had given him one of his first real moments of abandon and ecstasy over the course of his many lifetimes.

  Her tongue lapping at his neck while her hands roamed his body was enough to drag William from his musings and back to the present.

  He had forever to explore her, his woman, roughly and with abandon, or gentle and with tenderness.

  He gradually pulled away from Olivia and rolled to her side so that they were facing one another, blood from both of their bodies staining the sheets. She licked her crimson-stained lips and smiled at him.

  William had never been happier or more alive.

  If you can’t get enough Olivia and William and are desperate to know how their story continues, turn the page for a sneak peek of Blood of My Blood: Book Two of The Macauley Series.

  BLOOD OF MY BLOOD: BOOK TWO OF THE MACAULEY SERIES

  CHAPTER 1

  William and Olivia lay together for hours after her transformation, their bodies almost always connected. More often than not, this touching was made up of Olivia exploring William’s body from head to toe as she adapted to the heightened levels of awareness that were the result of her new preternatural senses. Whether running her hands through his hair, or dragging her nails down the hard ridges of his abdomen, each action elicited small exclamations of wonder from her.

  William’s first concern following their earth-shattering coupling was to make sure that Olivia fed. He wasn’t yet ready to take her on a hunt given the extreme displeasure she’d voiced quite vociferously on previous occasions about how he sometimes fed. Still, she would need human blood – not just more of his, much as he had quite surprisingly delighted in the exchange.

  As he stood to leave the bed, Olivia reached out, fast as a striking snake. She grabbed his wrist and held it in a vice-like grip. The look of astonishment on her face told him that he wasn’t the only one who had been caught off guard by not only her speed, but also her strength.

  “I didn’t mean to grab you like that,” she said, deliberately loosening her fingers. “I mean, it wasn’t a conscious decision. I felt you move, and the next thing I knew, I was holding you in place.”

  William had loved Olivia’s voice before, but its new honeyed timbre did things to him that they didn’t have time to investigate at the moment. He had to focus on Olivia’s needs first.

  “It’s perfectly alright. You’re still getting used to what your body can do, and you’ll find that many of your reactions are dictated now more by instinct and desire than by conscious thought.”

  William could see confusion beginning to cloud her jeweled eyes.

  “Now that you’re a vampire, you won’t need to consciously think about moving. Your body will just do it. If you want to be across the room, you won’t need to tell your legs to carry you there. You’ll find that your body simply … goes. Other vampires will of course be able to see your movement, but to the human eye, it will seem as if you have disappeared from one spot, and reappeared in another.”

  “I assume that’s where some of the legends about vampires come from, the whole speed thing?” she asked.

  “Right. That’s why when you’re among humans you’ll need to be very judicious with your movements, and really consider what you’re doing. You don’t want to give yourself away. Some of the legends about our kind are based – if not wholly – then at least partially in reality. That said, a good many of those legends are also complete fabrications. Some of the myths were created and disseminated by vampires themselves to keep humans from becoming too interested in us as a species, while others were created merely for entertainment.”

  “So you – we – don’t sparkle?”

  William almost answered – incredulously – but one look at Olivia told him that she was teasing him. Her face was alight with mischief. He’d have to teach her about masking her features before they ventured out among the human population.

  “Very funny, you.”

  He leaned down to kiss the tip of her nose, and was once again startled to find that she no longer felt scorching to his touch. Her body simply … was.

  “One of the legends that is absolutely based in fact has to do with our overwhelming strength. As my wrist can attest, that is not fabrication.” William rubbed the spot where her fingers had only moments before unknowingly, and unintentionally, nearly crushed his bones.

  She judiciously grabbed his hand and brought it to her mouth, placing a kiss on the inside of his wrist where his pulse would have been, had he one.

  “Sorry,” Olivia said, sheepishly. “I’ll have to learn to control myself better.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for. You’re still learning what your body can do – how it has changed, how it now moves, and what it wants.”

  “Speaking of … ” She raised her hand to her neck and then winced. William knew that she was parched, her throat on fire. “Will you bring me a glass of water?”

  “Olivia, water isn’t going to quench your thirst. You need blood.”

  Best to lay it all out there, he thought, as her hand dropped from her throat.

  “Right … blood. I made my decision and now I’ll have to deal with its less-than-lovely consequences.”

  She looked around the room rapidly, eyes just a little bit frenzied.

  “Do I have to kill them though? Isn’t there a way for me to feed without … that? I haven’t quite come to terms with the whole harbinger of death thing.”

  “It’s okay mo ghrá.” William clasped her hands in his, and urged her to look at him. “We won’t hunt tonight. I have a stash of blood here.”

  She physically relaxed, and the storm raging in her eyes immediately calmed.

  “But Olivia, you will have to hunt. How you choose to do so is entirely up to you. You might not have to kill, but there are other tradeoffs.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is excellent news, William! Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because you can’t just drink from anyone you stumble across and then let them go. How would they explain the wound on their neck? Anyone you fed from unwillingly would go straight to the Garda to report the attack, and then Interpol would eventually be after you … and me. Not only would that be most inconvenient, but it would also raise the notice of other vampires, and we can’t have that. I won’t have you in danger.”

  “Okay … what then?”

  “You’ll need to find a willing donor.”

  “You mean, someone that knows what I am and gives me their blood?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. But, in your case you’ll need more than one donor. As a newborn, you will need a vast quantity of blood. For the next several months you’ll be plagued by a constant, overwhelming thirst. If you were to drink from just one person, you’d exhaust their body’s resources and they’d die anyway.”

  Olivia blanched at the notion of killing someone who was only trying to help her.

  “No, it’d be better if you were to have a couple of willing donors so that they remain healthy and able to serve you.”

  Olivia swallowed, and then winced again. All this talk of blood had caused the venom in her fangs to trickle down into her mouth, adding to her discomfort.

  “I can see you’re in pain. We can talk more later but for now you need to feed. I’ll be right back with some something that will hold you over until we go hunting tomorrow night.”

  Not stopping to dress, William made his way from the room and up the stairs to the kitchen. Deeply absorbed in his thoughts, he hadn’t sensed Seamus’s presence until he nearly barreled into the man. This near-collision was most troubling to William as he could count on one hand the number of times someone had caught him physically by surprise in the last 100 years.

  Worse still was the fact that he had forgotten that he was roaming the castle thoroughly naked. Not only was he nude, but also to make matters infinitely worse, in the desperation of making love to Olivia, turning her into a vampire, and then their frantic coupling after
ward, William found himself splattered in both of their blood.

  To his credit, he wasn’t too startled by the tableau in front of him. William saw Seamus take in William’s blood-dappled body, and then his eyes looked around for any evidence as to where – or rather, who– the blood had come from, before coming back to settle on William’s face.

  “Hello William. Can I help you with something?”

  That was one of the things William loved most about Seamus; he was completely unflappable in even the most startling of situations, and regardless of the situation in front of him, he always displayed impeccable manners.

  “I need four … no, make it five … bags of blood,” William said, walking over to the large, steel gray door of a hermetically sealed chamber that was tucked away in the far right corner of the room. To anyone else it would look like an industrial sized walk-in freezer, but to those in the know it was where William kept his stash of blood. As he opened the door, Seamus’s question stopped him cold.

  “Should I be worried about Olivia?”

  Such a question would have resulted in a swift and bloody death for anyone else. Coming from Seamus, however, he knew that he was concerned for both the state of William’s emotional well being, as well as the state of Olivia’s physical welfare.

  “Olivia is …” William began, and then cleared his throat, reticent to speak the words, even to a man who knew full well what he was and still accepted him. “Olivia is fine. She will be fine.”

  That he had to ask his next question said volumes about how unsettled William had been for the past many weeks, and how out of sorts he must have seemed to those around him despite his best effort to maintain his composure.

  Tentatively, fearfully, Seamus asked, “Do you need me to ring for a medic?”

  William slammed the door shut, re-sealed it, and then smashed his fist into the ancient stone wall. Particles of crushed mortar fell at his feet. When he turned around, Seamus had the grace to look abashed, then frightened, as he took two steps back.

  William could feel the tell tale signs that his vampiric senses were pushing their way to the forefront, overwhelming this little humanity he still possessed. He closed his eyes, knowing that his irises had been glowing a luminescent cerulean blue. He then counted to ten before opening them, expecting to find the room empty. Instead, Seamus was still there, his hands braced on the massive marble-topped island in front of him.

  William wouldn’t normally deign to answer such an offensive question, but he had long relied on Seamus to run his life when he was otherwise unable to, and he valued him as both a friend and as one of the few people in his life that he could trust implicitly. And he had once promised Seamus that he’d never lie to him, provided he could offer the same. William knew he couldn’t very well avoid the conversation, as the truth of this new, altered circumstance would soon make itself apparent.

  He blew out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding and ran his hand through his blood-matted hair.

  “I may as well tell you what’s going on, as you’re bound to find out for yourself in short order.”

  He walked over to the island, dropped the bags of blood on the marble, and sat down at a stool across the counter from where Seamus – who still hadn’t moved – stood in wait.

  “Olivia is …” William began, not quite knowing how to compile three simple words into one statement of fact. One preposterous, gruesome statement of fact. Resolutely, he squared his shoulders, looked Seamus in the eyes, and figuratively spilled his guts.

  “Olivia is turned. I have turned her.”

  Outwardly he merely lifted an eyebrow at this confession, but William heard the tattoo of his heart as Seamus’s body unconsciously evinced the shock that his voice would not.

  “And you are okay?” Seamus asked.

  Ah, Seamus, always loyal, even when faced head on with the reality of my monstrosity.

  “I am more than okay, Seamus, my friend. I am perfect. She is all that I could have ever wanted in a mate. She surpasses even my fondest memories of Ceara.”

  Seamus was surprised to hear the admission.

  “No, scratch that. I am not perfect,” William continued, as Seamus thought that his friend must have realized that he had overstated his feelings. Much to his surprise, however, that was not the case at all. “I am more than perfect. She is my everything.”

  William realized that he truly meant every word.

  Olivia might have, at some point hundreds of years before, been Ceara but that was just one part to her. She was brilliant, she was strong, she was witty, and she was the bravest woman he had ever known. While William had initially wanted her for Ceara’s sake, he had kept her because of who she was on her own.

  “So, she is not just turned, but you are also mated?”

  Seamus had always possessed an uncanny ability to read between the lines of what William would say.

  “Yes, it has been done. I shared my vow with her.”

  “I know I should dare not ask, but all of this …” Seamus moved his arm in William’s direction, indicating the dried and flaking blood on his face, chest, and arms, and the five pints of blood on the counter in front of him. “… it was …” He fidgeted, and William could feel the agitation coming off him in waves. William saved him from having to voice his fears.

  “Yes Seamus, it was done at her request. I did not take from her that which she was unwilling to give.”

  Seamus’s relief was palpable.

  So much of what he had said should have made William livid – daring to question first what he had done, and then his motive for doing so – but he couldn’t bring himself to be angry.

  He was willing to admit – to himself, if not to anyone else – that there had been a very good chance that even if Olivia had not asked that barbarous act of him that he might have gone ahead and done it in the future regardless of whether or not she wanted it. It would have pained him greatly to take away her ability to make the decision for herself – to give him permission to take her life – but William wanted, needed, her by his side that badly.

  He recognized that it was like Ceara all over again, but this time he had known what he was doing – how to give ever-lasting life instead of delivering death and destruction.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, my mate awaits.”

  “Of course, by all means,” Seamus said. “Will you need anything else tonight?”

  “Yes, I almost forgot. I had meant to speak with you about all of this … later. You must know this isn’t the way I wanted this conversation to go, but I am glad to have told you and for it to be out in the open.”

  William clasped his hand to Seamus’s shoulder, the universal sign for male friendship.

  “Can you see to it that Olivia has space of her own in my sanctuary?”

  “Absolutely,” he responded. “And … congratulations.”

  William knew that Seamus meant his felicitations and wished for his happiness, but he could also tell that he was still unsettled by this sudden news.

  No matter. He’ll get used to it soon enough.

  William left the room, a smile on his face, and hope for the future that had been long absent in his heart.

  * * * *

  As William entered his bedroom, an uncharacteristic bounce in his step, Olivia immediately smelled the fresh, coppery tang of the blood he carried, and her fangs broke free of her aching gums. She was at his side in less than a second, reaching for the bags in his hands.

  “Give me the blood. I can smell it. I need it,” she growled.

  Growled?! Dear lord, I’ve never growled any thing at any time in the course of my lifetime. Shouted, yes. Harangued? Certainly. But this? What is this?!

  The sound that came out of her mouth as she demanded that William give her blood was like nothing she’d ever heard before.

  “You can’t just snarl at me and expect to get your way,” he cautioned, as if speaking to a young child in the midst of a rather loud temper tantrum. “
If I give you one of these bags, you’re just going to tear into it like a rabid dog. I mean to have you start as you will go on, and that is in a civilized, dignified manner.”

  William shooed Olivia away and then walked over to a sideboard on the other side of the room where he then cut the bag open and poured its contents into a crystal goblet. It took every ounce of willpower that Olivia possessed not to rush at him and throw the liquid down her parched, burning throat. Before she had any bright ideas along those lines, William turned around to face her, clearly anticipating that’s what she wanted to do.

  “Now, you will walk over here and then you will calmly take the goblet in your hand and drink. You will not gulp, you will not slurp, and you will not chug this blood like some drunkard. You will savor the flavor as it coats your mouth, you will revel in its gloriousness as it travels down your throat, and when it reaches the core of your body, you will exalt in its ability to sustain your life.”

  As much as Olivia wanted to do things her own messy, gluttonous way, William’s words lent her a calmness that she didn’t know she possessed.

  “Right. Dignified, classy, and elegant,” she said as she walked across the room, venom pooling in her mouth.

  Olivia felt that needed the blood like a dry, scorched land needed a strong, torrential rain. She felt that she would surely expire on the spot if William didn’t give her that damn goblet right this second. Her body refused to accept what her mind was telling it to do, and so against her will she made her way to William in a decorous manner.

  “Very nice,” he smirked, while handing her that sole object of her desire.

  In that moment, Olivia wanted that blood more than she had ever wanted him, and that gave her pause. Not enough, of course, to stop her hand from reaching for it, but she’d certainly have to think about what that meant in the future.

  Right now, she felt as if getting her hand on that goblet was the most glorious thing that had ever happened to her. She wanted to weep with joy, but instead she raised the glass in salute to his dictates, and then brought it to her mouth and drank.