just_muse_me | 34.2. Difficult decisions
34.2. Write about one of the most difficult decisions you've made in your life
Co-written with histhornedrose
[Follows THIS]
When Blaise came home from his business dinner in the city and promptly and hungrily seduced Juliette, he didn't miss the momentary surprise in her eyes as he pounced on her. It rapidly gave way to her own hunger, though, and just like old times, they were soon wrapped up in a passionate embrace between his red silk sheets where they spent a good portion of the night away in a sexual and feeding frenzy. There was no doubt Blaise was back to full strength. It had been a long few weeks as he had more and more ailed before Juliette's eyes, to the point he all but stopped feeding save for a very little amount to just keep him alive. He knew that although she was favouring other theories, she was scared that he had come to the end of his time, just like he had thought.
But it was almost in the blink of an eye that his strength returned. He had called for his Personal Assistant to bring him records of his latest business dealings, and she had no protests when he had taken a little more of her personal assisting than just taking minutes or sending faxes. He literally had to force himself to stop draining her when the hunger came washing back. In fact, he had to move on to Juliette's driver, who had been waiting to take her to a private function in the city. This had been the juncture Juliette discovered Blaise's strength had returned. She had been merely amused when she found him indulging on her driver in the hall outside her bedroom, but questions hadn't been asked at that point. He had a dinner appointment in the city, so they simply shared a kiss with Blaise smirking at her as he disappeared into his limousine.
Now, in a haze of post-coital and satiated pheromones, Blaise traced his tongue over the perfect trail of blood at Juliette's throat, up to the bite marks at her jugular and healed them over with a soft kiss. Then he pulled out of her to roll onto his back, brushing his palm over his chest before he relaxed back on the pillows. Even the sheer exertion of their encounter had him sweating, a poignant sign he indeed was back to full strength to exhibit human qualities he had honed over the years such as sweating and breathing. In fact, there was a heavy sigh that followed and he realised, in deep frustration, that he wasn't as satiated as he had anticipated at all. "Fils de pute," he cursed just as he heard Juliette huff out her own annoyance. He turned his head and looked at her with a smirk. "Not good enough for you either, mon trésor?" he asked.
Juliette pouted as her gaze met his. She couldn't even explain why there was still a little ball of dissatisfaction in the pit of her stomach. She had every right to be satisfied right at that moment. It had felt like an age since Blaise had taken her the way that he just had, and since she was unable to feed on Rory, it had been even more explosive than with the Scotsman. She'd been pleasured in every possible way, and yet... Something was missing. "Merde," she hissed out and was tempted to jump on top of Blaise to try and get it right a fourth time. But she stayed still and just frowned. "Non, c'est castrophe. I do not understand."
Blaise scrunched up his face and went back to staring at the ceiling, his hand resting on his chest. There was no way he could stop the image of walking into that restaurant and finding Buffy intimately dining with Finn. It had felt like someone tipped cold water down his back. It was hard to even decipher exactly how it all made him feel, and inevitably a stoic yet controlled anger had set in. He hadn't even known where Buffy had gone. Apparently back into Paris with the Scot, and they were staying at a hotel, despite Blaise stupidly assuming they would stay at his home. He was starting to realise it was more than time to take a hint. Especially considering he could smell both the Scot and Finn all over her, a scent that wouldn't linger that strong from a mere welcome hug. It wasn't even a distinct jealously he was feeling. He would be a lot more vengeful towards Finn and Buchanan if it was that. It was just... hurt. He shifted restlessly at the thought. It had been a long time since he left himself open for anyone to hurt him, and he didn't like it. "Merely need to make up for lost time," he suggested.
Juliette rolled onto her side to look at Blaise, her naked body not obscured by any of the red silk bed sheets. She wasn't cold enough to need them, and she was hardly ashamed of her figure. Thoughts of Rory were dancing through her head though, and she did have to admit at least to herself that she missed him. She had made the same assumption as Blaise when it came to thinking that Rory and Buffy would stay with them. Apparently that hadn't been part of the agreement to a visit though. They weren't here. They had chosen to stay elsewhere and as much as she could understand it on Rory's side, there was still a part of her that was disappointed. Empty. Lonely. "Am I enough for you?" she asked him quietly.
Blaise looked at her and ran the backs of his fingers down over her cheek. "Mon amour... you know the answer to that," he told her quietly with a small shake of his head. "I want to be in love again. The whole untouchable feeling that comes with it. It has been... a hundred and twenty years, give or take. Since the last time. You are magnifique. You are always there for me, you give me everything I need. But I am still lonely. More so than ever lately. I know what you are thinking. I do know..." He paused and looked away. "But she does not want me."
"And he does not want me," she murmured as she slipped her arm over Blaise's waist and moved closer to him. "So where does that leave us? It's been even longer for me since I last fell in love. I haven't really let myself. Now we've managed to open ourselves up, and what has it got us? Tomber amoureaux... It just causes pain, non? Pain before it even happens, pain after it happens... The only time there is no pain is while it is happening."
Blaise was back to staring at the ceiling. "And what has he said for you to conclude that opinion, belle? You were intimate with him. Again. It leaves us where we always have been. How has anything changed? It has not. It has remained the same, as it will continue to do so. For me, her heart is elsewhere. All she would be feeling in regards to me are the after effects of the claim. That will fade, the longer she is absent from my presence. Bien amicalement, to her... of course. I do not wish her ill will." He let his eyes close and put his arm up behind his head. "I just wish she thought more of me to afford me some honesty."
"And how did you reach that conclusion regarding her feelings? She seemed taken enough with you when I left you two alone. Until Rory made an exit." Juliette felt her jaw clench as something akin to distaste bubbled up inside her. She couldn't help it. There was something that made her bristle when she considered the joint exit. "I do not think he is completely at ease with my nature. He wants a chance to be a father again. I cannot give him that. I cannot even guarantee that I would be able to cope with a child. But being a father is part of his nature, part of his appeal. His heart lies elsewhere."
Blaise was quiet for a long time as he tried to separate the thoughts in his mind. He held so much in there lately, from all different aspects of his life. Physically, he might have regained his strength, but mentally it would perhaps take a little longer. "Our Sergeant Finn. The head of the Nuit Noire Taskforce. The American who demanded I drink his blood to prove I was different to other vampires?" He knew she would remember. Blaise had come home one hundred percent bewildered after that little military interrogation. The new blood had been like a dog with a bone, despite having done extensive research on Kindred. It was new knowledge, though, and Blaise had been subject to suspicious enquiries. Understandably, though. The guy had been brought in from America to head the operation to protect Blaise's kind from a military stand-point. He had a right to demand the necessary knowledge. "Buffy's ex romantic interest. They were... together, at a restaurant in the city. She had been intimate with him. I could sense him on her..."
Juliette stayed quiet as she absorbed the information, her gaze on Blaise's face as she watched his reactions "Oui, of course I remember him. I was always sad I missed witnessing the feeding. I'm sure it would have been quite interesting. Exes can be... troublesome. There is no doubt about that. Especially when there are unresolved feelings, but you said yourself that she has never been in true love. You cannot absorb her blood, so whatever passed between them cannot be love."
This pushed all of Blaise's wrong buttons and he growled at her in frustration, eyes flashing as he pushed the covers back to get up out of the bed. "How can you be so indifferent and idealistic about bullshit like this? And naive. Merde!" He grabbed up his bathrobe and pulled it on roughly. "Just because they were not in love back then, does not mean they cannot be in love now or in the future. It also does not mean that he did not love her." He turned and locked her gaze, his eyes now that intense silvery blue to indicate he was far from content with the conversation. "He was not the only one I sensed on her."
Juliette sat up, her own eyes flashing as she bared her teeth in a predatory response. She did not ever take kindly to Blaise's anger being taken out on her. Especially not when she didn't think she'd said anything wrong. "Naive? I am not being naive, mon loup. I am merely engaged in a conversation, making suggestions about what might be the truth. I am not indifferent, either. I just know that after this long at witnessing others in love, witnessing you in love that there are many possibilities. How can you be so ready to assume the worst? Did you suddenly feel as if her blood could satiate you? Did you sense the love on her? I do not know if they could be in love! What do you mean not the only one?"
"I did not sense anything on her but the strong scent of two men," Blaise said bitterly and went to his dresser to pour some wine from the decanter there. He took a sip and then went over to look over the window into the night... or the early morning. Not that he particularly cared, so long as the sun wasn't streaming through the window. "I do not even know why she is in Paris. All I know is I am not the favours she is interested in. She keeps walking away, I can understand actions like that without needing to make a fool of myself. I do not even understand why she came to my home, but there will not be a second time. I am not going to wait to discuss any of this with her until she deigns it appropriate to pull herself out of their beds and graces me with her presence. We had talked. I thought she was understanding. I was wrong."
Juliette sat back on the bed and watched him. Something unpleasant trickled down her back and she could guess who the second scent was without Blaise even revealing the name. How was she even supposed to start to process that? She knew that Rory was confused about her and about being in her bed, but she hadn't assumed he would sleep with Buffy. Again. Especially not while in Paris. She turned her head away as she started to feel an urge to cry. It was always messy and it was always something she hated. She would have rather flown into a fit of anger than sat there crying, blood staining her porcelain cheeks. "I do not know why either of them came if all they want is each other," she spat out.
Blaise spun around, gesturing to her with the wine glass. "That. That right there. Stop. Feel it. Now double it. That is how I feel, and that is without thinking about the confusion or the anger I cannot control at wondering why she has left my home to be intimate with two men in as many days," he told her with another soft growl as he put the glass to his lips for a long drink.
Juliette got up off the bed, and searched for her own silk robe as she pulled it on and tied the sash at the side of her hip. "Were you really that ready to open yourself up to her?" she asked quietly.
Blaise looked at her over the top of the glass and as he took it away from his lips, it smashed in his grip. He just let the glass drop to the floor, not taking his eyes off her. "Do you think we just sat up here and played Monopoly for hours on end?" he asked her calmly. "If you are going to stand there and tell me you expected me to give her my whole life story in one evening, then I suggest you leave, and rapidly, before I do and say something I will regret."
Juliette held her hands up as she kept her distance from Blaise. "That is not what I meant, and you know it. So stop before we both say things we regret. You can still trickle information to her without opening yourself up. But you've opened yourself up. You were willing to let her in. That is all I meant. Not that you would let her in in one night."
"She was in my home. They both were. You do not need me to tell you what that means. I would have thought after all these years you would be well aware." Blaise merely stepped over the mess to go back to the window. He spent many hours looking out it in thought, over his ornate gardens. This time, however, he was looking down at his palm, at the slice across his and the blood dripping down his wrist at a lethargic pace. "I set her free. That freedom was to walk away. Sergeant Finn is... I want to hurt him, yet I cannot. He has done nothing to deserve it."
"Other than love what you covet?" Juliette asked in a soft whisper as she slowly made her way towards him, waiting to see if Blaise would push her away. When he did not she took his hand in hers and started to lap at the wound and his blood. "Maybe by setting her free you created confusion. If she's been under the hold, or the delusion of the hold of a particular vampire, and now all of a sudden she realises there is choice... Well, perhaps she got carried away. And I am not saying that to hurt you, to be naive. I say that because what was the first thing you did when you realised you were well? You took your assistant, you took my driver... You took me. You had a world of choice to feed on."
It took all of Blaise's effort not to bang his head against the window in frustration. "To feed. To regain strength. I had not fed properly in almost two weeks. Do not compare this. Do not. I forbid you," he told her sharply. "She was not incapable of having sex with other men due to any vampire hold. It is ridiculous to even suggest that. Finn is a prime example of such a fact. Nor is she anymore in love with the Scot just because she had sex with him. By your reasoning, you should not be pissed off that he was anywhere near her either. So hush. It is not to placate me. If she did not wish to be a part of my life in any way, then she should not have come here. She should have stayed away."
Juliette remained quiet as she healed the wound and the moment the skin closed up she stepped back from Blaise to put distance between them again. She sat in the arm chair near the window but did not look at Blaise. Nothing she would say would make him feel any better about the situation, so why should she even try. Even after centuries they were still capable of rubbing each other the wrong way, of pushing each other's buttons. And even if it had been her own reasoning, she did not have to agree with it. Of course she was pissed off. She was more than pissed off, and yet she had just slept with Blaise without a second thought. How could they condemn someone for not being monogamous when they would not be faithful themselves? "Mon dieu, what a mess."
Blaise lowered his eyes and looked down at his ring, the jewel passed down through every Kindred Prince who served Paris. It felt heavy on his finger, and it matched the heaviness settling into his body again. Perhaps it was indication he was premature in deducing he had regained his strength. It would still be reckless to assume he wasn't nearing his end. There were slight indications there, and he needed to be cautious. Yet it felt like even more reason to offer his heart one last time. Juliette was his mate, but she was not his true love. The lingering soul of his heart of late when he thought about the loneliness he felt. It wasn't a true physical loneliness, because he was forever surrounded by people. It was deeper than that... like his soul was lonely for another mate. His last love, he had buried in 1887 after being with her for close to fifty years. He had near gone underground for about ten years after that, mourning deeply for her loss. It was still not enough to ever swear he wouldn't want it again. For a Kindred who could only feed on the blood of someone who had experienced true love, of course it was something he yearned for deeply himself. That was when it dawned on him what was wrong with him. He wasn't dying... he just wasn't complete. To fully regain strength, he needed love... not just to feed off it.
He felt the dampness on his cheek before he even realised it was coming, and he put his hand up to catch the drop of blood on his fingertip. "Non," he finally murmured with a shake of his head. "It is perfectly simple. They stay in their world, we stay in ours. It is over. Finite. I do not see that as being a mess at all. But a minor blip in our judgment. Tomorrow, I am to go to Sergeant Finn and request increased security from Slayers. She has given me absolutely no reason to believe her army is not a threat to our kind. His private life with Buffy will be his issue, and his alone."
"Mon loup," Juliette said softly as she held her hand out for him. She knew there was no helping him. She was hardly going to be able to force him to fall in love with her. She knew that was the one thing she could never give Blaise. She also wanted to go and rip that Slayer to shreds for doing this to her mate. For sleeping with Rory. For doing nothing but make a mess of their lives. At the same time she wanted to ask Buffy what the hell she was thinking to let someone like the Kindred Prince of Paris pass her by. Why she could not give him the time he'd needed? "I wish it could have been different."
Blaise took her hand, holding it quietly for a few moments before he pulled her into a hug, resting his head on her shoulder. He needed to switch off, to sleep before the weakness took too much of a hold on him again. "Moi aussi, mon amour," he murmured. "Moi aussi..."
Word Count | 3,555
Co-written with histhornedrose
[Follows THIS]
When Blaise came home from his business dinner in the city and promptly and hungrily seduced Juliette, he didn't miss the momentary surprise in her eyes as he pounced on her. It rapidly gave way to her own hunger, though, and just like old times, they were soon wrapped up in a passionate embrace between his red silk sheets where they spent a good portion of the night away in a sexual and feeding frenzy. There was no doubt Blaise was back to full strength. It had been a long few weeks as he had more and more ailed before Juliette's eyes, to the point he all but stopped feeding save for a very little amount to just keep him alive. He knew that although she was favouring other theories, she was scared that he had come to the end of his time, just like he had thought.
But it was almost in the blink of an eye that his strength returned. He had called for his Personal Assistant to bring him records of his latest business dealings, and she had no protests when he had taken a little more of her personal assisting than just taking minutes or sending faxes. He literally had to force himself to stop draining her when the hunger came washing back. In fact, he had to move on to Juliette's driver, who had been waiting to take her to a private function in the city. This had been the juncture Juliette discovered Blaise's strength had returned. She had been merely amused when she found him indulging on her driver in the hall outside her bedroom, but questions hadn't been asked at that point. He had a dinner appointment in the city, so they simply shared a kiss with Blaise smirking at her as he disappeared into his limousine.
Now, in a haze of post-coital and satiated pheromones, Blaise traced his tongue over the perfect trail of blood at Juliette's throat, up to the bite marks at her jugular and healed them over with a soft kiss. Then he pulled out of her to roll onto his back, brushing his palm over his chest before he relaxed back on the pillows. Even the sheer exertion of their encounter had him sweating, a poignant sign he indeed was back to full strength to exhibit human qualities he had honed over the years such as sweating and breathing. In fact, there was a heavy sigh that followed and he realised, in deep frustration, that he wasn't as satiated as he had anticipated at all. "Fils de pute," he cursed just as he heard Juliette huff out her own annoyance. He turned his head and looked at her with a smirk. "Not good enough for you either, mon trésor?" he asked.
Juliette pouted as her gaze met his. She couldn't even explain why there was still a little ball of dissatisfaction in the pit of her stomach. She had every right to be satisfied right at that moment. It had felt like an age since Blaise had taken her the way that he just had, and since she was unable to feed on Rory, it had been even more explosive than with the Scotsman. She'd been pleasured in every possible way, and yet... Something was missing. "Merde," she hissed out and was tempted to jump on top of Blaise to try and get it right a fourth time. But she stayed still and just frowned. "Non, c'est castrophe. I do not understand."
Blaise scrunched up his face and went back to staring at the ceiling, his hand resting on his chest. There was no way he could stop the image of walking into that restaurant and finding Buffy intimately dining with Finn. It had felt like someone tipped cold water down his back. It was hard to even decipher exactly how it all made him feel, and inevitably a stoic yet controlled anger had set in. He hadn't even known where Buffy had gone. Apparently back into Paris with the Scot, and they were staying at a hotel, despite Blaise stupidly assuming they would stay at his home. He was starting to realise it was more than time to take a hint. Especially considering he could smell both the Scot and Finn all over her, a scent that wouldn't linger that strong from a mere welcome hug. It wasn't even a distinct jealously he was feeling. He would be a lot more vengeful towards Finn and Buchanan if it was that. It was just... hurt. He shifted restlessly at the thought. It had been a long time since he left himself open for anyone to hurt him, and he didn't like it. "Merely need to make up for lost time," he suggested.
Juliette rolled onto her side to look at Blaise, her naked body not obscured by any of the red silk bed sheets. She wasn't cold enough to need them, and she was hardly ashamed of her figure. Thoughts of Rory were dancing through her head though, and she did have to admit at least to herself that she missed him. She had made the same assumption as Blaise when it came to thinking that Rory and Buffy would stay with them. Apparently that hadn't been part of the agreement to a visit though. They weren't here. They had chosen to stay elsewhere and as much as she could understand it on Rory's side, there was still a part of her that was disappointed. Empty. Lonely. "Am I enough for you?" she asked him quietly.
Blaise looked at her and ran the backs of his fingers down over her cheek. "Mon amour... you know the answer to that," he told her quietly with a small shake of his head. "I want to be in love again. The whole untouchable feeling that comes with it. It has been... a hundred and twenty years, give or take. Since the last time. You are magnifique. You are always there for me, you give me everything I need. But I am still lonely. More so than ever lately. I know what you are thinking. I do know..." He paused and looked away. "But she does not want me."
"And he does not want me," she murmured as she slipped her arm over Blaise's waist and moved closer to him. "So where does that leave us? It's been even longer for me since I last fell in love. I haven't really let myself. Now we've managed to open ourselves up, and what has it got us? Tomber amoureaux... It just causes pain, non? Pain before it even happens, pain after it happens... The only time there is no pain is while it is happening."
Blaise was back to staring at the ceiling. "And what has he said for you to conclude that opinion, belle? You were intimate with him. Again. It leaves us where we always have been. How has anything changed? It has not. It has remained the same, as it will continue to do so. For me, her heart is elsewhere. All she would be feeling in regards to me are the after effects of the claim. That will fade, the longer she is absent from my presence. Bien amicalement, to her... of course. I do not wish her ill will." He let his eyes close and put his arm up behind his head. "I just wish she thought more of me to afford me some honesty."
"And how did you reach that conclusion regarding her feelings? She seemed taken enough with you when I left you two alone. Until Rory made an exit." Juliette felt her jaw clench as something akin to distaste bubbled up inside her. She couldn't help it. There was something that made her bristle when she considered the joint exit. "I do not think he is completely at ease with my nature. He wants a chance to be a father again. I cannot give him that. I cannot even guarantee that I would be able to cope with a child. But being a father is part of his nature, part of his appeal. His heart lies elsewhere."
Blaise was quiet for a long time as he tried to separate the thoughts in his mind. He held so much in there lately, from all different aspects of his life. Physically, he might have regained his strength, but mentally it would perhaps take a little longer. "Our Sergeant Finn. The head of the Nuit Noire Taskforce. The American who demanded I drink his blood to prove I was different to other vampires?" He knew she would remember. Blaise had come home one hundred percent bewildered after that little military interrogation. The new blood had been like a dog with a bone, despite having done extensive research on Kindred. It was new knowledge, though, and Blaise had been subject to suspicious enquiries. Understandably, though. The guy had been brought in from America to head the operation to protect Blaise's kind from a military stand-point. He had a right to demand the necessary knowledge. "Buffy's ex romantic interest. They were... together, at a restaurant in the city. She had been intimate with him. I could sense him on her..."
Juliette stayed quiet as she absorbed the information, her gaze on Blaise's face as she watched his reactions "Oui, of course I remember him. I was always sad I missed witnessing the feeding. I'm sure it would have been quite interesting. Exes can be... troublesome. There is no doubt about that. Especially when there are unresolved feelings, but you said yourself that she has never been in true love. You cannot absorb her blood, so whatever passed between them cannot be love."
This pushed all of Blaise's wrong buttons and he growled at her in frustration, eyes flashing as he pushed the covers back to get up out of the bed. "How can you be so indifferent and idealistic about bullshit like this? And naive. Merde!" He grabbed up his bathrobe and pulled it on roughly. "Just because they were not in love back then, does not mean they cannot be in love now or in the future. It also does not mean that he did not love her." He turned and locked her gaze, his eyes now that intense silvery blue to indicate he was far from content with the conversation. "He was not the only one I sensed on her."
Juliette sat up, her own eyes flashing as she bared her teeth in a predatory response. She did not ever take kindly to Blaise's anger being taken out on her. Especially not when she didn't think she'd said anything wrong. "Naive? I am not being naive, mon loup. I am merely engaged in a conversation, making suggestions about what might be the truth. I am not indifferent, either. I just know that after this long at witnessing others in love, witnessing you in love that there are many possibilities. How can you be so ready to assume the worst? Did you suddenly feel as if her blood could satiate you? Did you sense the love on her? I do not know if they could be in love! What do you mean not the only one?"
"I did not sense anything on her but the strong scent of two men," Blaise said bitterly and went to his dresser to pour some wine from the decanter there. He took a sip and then went over to look over the window into the night... or the early morning. Not that he particularly cared, so long as the sun wasn't streaming through the window. "I do not even know why she is in Paris. All I know is I am not the favours she is interested in. She keeps walking away, I can understand actions like that without needing to make a fool of myself. I do not even understand why she came to my home, but there will not be a second time. I am not going to wait to discuss any of this with her until she deigns it appropriate to pull herself out of their beds and graces me with her presence. We had talked. I thought she was understanding. I was wrong."
Juliette sat back on the bed and watched him. Something unpleasant trickled down her back and she could guess who the second scent was without Blaise even revealing the name. How was she even supposed to start to process that? She knew that Rory was confused about her and about being in her bed, but she hadn't assumed he would sleep with Buffy. Again. Especially not while in Paris. She turned her head away as she started to feel an urge to cry. It was always messy and it was always something she hated. She would have rather flown into a fit of anger than sat there crying, blood staining her porcelain cheeks. "I do not know why either of them came if all they want is each other," she spat out.
Blaise spun around, gesturing to her with the wine glass. "That. That right there. Stop. Feel it. Now double it. That is how I feel, and that is without thinking about the confusion or the anger I cannot control at wondering why she has left my home to be intimate with two men in as many days," he told her with another soft growl as he put the glass to his lips for a long drink.
Juliette got up off the bed, and searched for her own silk robe as she pulled it on and tied the sash at the side of her hip. "Were you really that ready to open yourself up to her?" she asked quietly.
Blaise looked at her over the top of the glass and as he took it away from his lips, it smashed in his grip. He just let the glass drop to the floor, not taking his eyes off her. "Do you think we just sat up here and played Monopoly for hours on end?" he asked her calmly. "If you are going to stand there and tell me you expected me to give her my whole life story in one evening, then I suggest you leave, and rapidly, before I do and say something I will regret."
Juliette held her hands up as she kept her distance from Blaise. "That is not what I meant, and you know it. So stop before we both say things we regret. You can still trickle information to her without opening yourself up. But you've opened yourself up. You were willing to let her in. That is all I meant. Not that you would let her in in one night."
"She was in my home. They both were. You do not need me to tell you what that means. I would have thought after all these years you would be well aware." Blaise merely stepped over the mess to go back to the window. He spent many hours looking out it in thought, over his ornate gardens. This time, however, he was looking down at his palm, at the slice across his and the blood dripping down his wrist at a lethargic pace. "I set her free. That freedom was to walk away. Sergeant Finn is... I want to hurt him, yet I cannot. He has done nothing to deserve it."
"Other than love what you covet?" Juliette asked in a soft whisper as she slowly made her way towards him, waiting to see if Blaise would push her away. When he did not she took his hand in hers and started to lap at the wound and his blood. "Maybe by setting her free you created confusion. If she's been under the hold, or the delusion of the hold of a particular vampire, and now all of a sudden she realises there is choice... Well, perhaps she got carried away. And I am not saying that to hurt you, to be naive. I say that because what was the first thing you did when you realised you were well? You took your assistant, you took my driver... You took me. You had a world of choice to feed on."
It took all of Blaise's effort not to bang his head against the window in frustration. "To feed. To regain strength. I had not fed properly in almost two weeks. Do not compare this. Do not. I forbid you," he told her sharply. "She was not incapable of having sex with other men due to any vampire hold. It is ridiculous to even suggest that. Finn is a prime example of such a fact. Nor is she anymore in love with the Scot just because she had sex with him. By your reasoning, you should not be pissed off that he was anywhere near her either. So hush. It is not to placate me. If she did not wish to be a part of my life in any way, then she should not have come here. She should have stayed away."
Juliette remained quiet as she healed the wound and the moment the skin closed up she stepped back from Blaise to put distance between them again. She sat in the arm chair near the window but did not look at Blaise. Nothing she would say would make him feel any better about the situation, so why should she even try. Even after centuries they were still capable of rubbing each other the wrong way, of pushing each other's buttons. And even if it had been her own reasoning, she did not have to agree with it. Of course she was pissed off. She was more than pissed off, and yet she had just slept with Blaise without a second thought. How could they condemn someone for not being monogamous when they would not be faithful themselves? "Mon dieu, what a mess."
Blaise lowered his eyes and looked down at his ring, the jewel passed down through every Kindred Prince who served Paris. It felt heavy on his finger, and it matched the heaviness settling into his body again. Perhaps it was indication he was premature in deducing he had regained his strength. It would still be reckless to assume he wasn't nearing his end. There were slight indications there, and he needed to be cautious. Yet it felt like even more reason to offer his heart one last time. Juliette was his mate, but she was not his true love. The lingering soul of his heart of late when he thought about the loneliness he felt. It wasn't a true physical loneliness, because he was forever surrounded by people. It was deeper than that... like his soul was lonely for another mate. His last love, he had buried in 1887 after being with her for close to fifty years. He had near gone underground for about ten years after that, mourning deeply for her loss. It was still not enough to ever swear he wouldn't want it again. For a Kindred who could only feed on the blood of someone who had experienced true love, of course it was something he yearned for deeply himself. That was when it dawned on him what was wrong with him. He wasn't dying... he just wasn't complete. To fully regain strength, he needed love... not just to feed off it.
He felt the dampness on his cheek before he even realised it was coming, and he put his hand up to catch the drop of blood on his fingertip. "Non," he finally murmured with a shake of his head. "It is perfectly simple. They stay in their world, we stay in ours. It is over. Finite. I do not see that as being a mess at all. But a minor blip in our judgment. Tomorrow, I am to go to Sergeant Finn and request increased security from Slayers. She has given me absolutely no reason to believe her army is not a threat to our kind. His private life with Buffy will be his issue, and his alone."
"Mon loup," Juliette said softly as she held her hand out for him. She knew there was no helping him. She was hardly going to be able to force him to fall in love with her. She knew that was the one thing she could never give Blaise. She also wanted to go and rip that Slayer to shreds for doing this to her mate. For sleeping with Rory. For doing nothing but make a mess of their lives. At the same time she wanted to ask Buffy what the hell she was thinking to let someone like the Kindred Prince of Paris pass her by. Why she could not give him the time he'd needed? "I wish it could have been different."
Blaise took her hand, holding it quietly for a few moments before he pulled her into a hug, resting his head on her shoulder. He needed to switch off, to sleep before the weakness took too much of a hold on him again. "Moi aussi, mon amour," he murmured. "Moi aussi..."
Word Count | 3,555