"With these hungry eyes..."

[bloodstainedheart]

Who: Xavier Carlisle and Jenna Greene
What: Caught in the act
Where: Carlisle Manor
When: Late Thursday evening

Lately, Xavier's usually structured life had been flipped upside. It had been a domino effect of terrible things happening and because he was connected a lot of it, he had needed to keep his fingers in multiple different pies. He was Toreador Primogen, and therefore, he had to be on-hand as advisor to those in his Clan in their City that needed guidance. That meant cockblocking bullshit to avert crisis and stepping in as psuedo-Sire for Asher Rose, who was only just beginning to allow Logan and Eric close to him. On top of that, he had Seamus finding his soul mate, who was a badly messed up young man and to keep a check on Seasmus' vulnerability to frenzy around Luka and the fact Luka had tried to overdose, Xavier had brought Luka to stay here at the manor... if only to alleviate the strain on Xavier's own sanity. If he could at least contain some of the issues under his own roof, he could keep a better hold on it all.

He had just forgotten to remind the humans residing with him to not answer the door and let his hired staff do it. His staff knew to screen until Xavier or Greg gave the go-ahead on who to let in. Luka and Brodie didn't. It was an oversight on Xavier's part, which indicated the tension he was facing lately. He was usually so on the ball that very little could get around him. It was evening, on a full moon that had the estate lit up on the clear night. He was out in his stables in the wake of a long ride around the grounds on his prized purebred horse.

And he was ravenous. His eyes were already silver as he strode purposefully back up to the main building, succinctly removing his leather riding gloves. It was around the time he had handed his horse over to his stablehand that Luka had been up at the manor letting Jenna in at the front door because he had been passing through the ornate foyer just as she had approached the door. She never needed to ring the bell, he was opening it up seeing her silhouette through the glass and thought it might have been Seamus coming home. Jenna had come to see Xavier after their chat online where he had completely stonewalled her in regards to Blaise. She was headstrong, thinking she might be able to wrangle at least a few more details out of him in person now he had revealed he knew many things about Blaise.

Even though Greg was on the road to recovery, Xavier wasn't feeding on him as a source of replenishment, merely as affection between them. Since Greg had been attacked, Xavier had been using Vessels on his staff. He missed Skye, but all that was yet another mess he had no clear insight to yet. The Vessel that night was a stunning redhead by the name of Louella who was an international Equestrian champion who Xavier had trained. She thoroughly admired Xavier and had known about what he was for awhile now, happily offering her services. She was in a long designer evening gown, waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs with a knowing smirk.

Xavier flashed her a smile as he approached, taking both her hands into his. "You look stunning tonight, darling," he told her. "Asher never fails you, does he? That colour is divine, like it was simply made for you." He brushed a fleeting kiss to her lips and lead her into the nearby sitting room. Once they were in there, Xavier's silver eyes flashed with hunger and he pressed her up against wall, grabbing her hands with his fingers laced around hers and holding her arms up above her head for that little bit more domination over her. To anyone without the knowledge of what was happening here, it would very much look like Xavier was outright cheating on Greg. The funny thing was, Louella was someone they had both shared simultaneously from time to time. All this was completely normal to them. There was a soft but chaste trail of kisses from her lips to her throat, and he viced her against the wall with his body with his fangs bared and sunk them into the smooth flesh of her throat to feed hungrily.

Comments

[darkgreene]

If there was one thing that could be said for Jenna, it was that she was decidedly stubborn when she got her mind and heart set on something. And knowing that Xavier knew a great deal about Blaise meant that Jenna was bound and determined to get to him and figure out just what the fuck he knew and who Blaise truly was. He'd been decidedly tightlipped about Blaise, other than to say that Jenna shouldn't pursue him, because it wasn't a good idea. He never said it was a bad idea... just not a good one, which she still wasn't sure she understood, and she had every intention of finding out exactly why.

Luka had let her into the house, unaware of what was going on in the other room, and when he realized it wasn't Seamus, he'd gone on to check in on Greg, who was recovering, but still weak. Jenna had, as planned, headed straight for the sitting room where she could usually find Xavier, frustrated, but still not at the point of being pissed at Xavier. He usually did have good reasons for things, he just tended to explain them more than he would explain this one. She wasn't frustrated with his opinion nearly so much as with his lack of explanation of it. And when she rounded the corner, she was more than prepared to tell him so... until she found him locked in a heated embrace with someone who definitely wasn't Greg, and her jaw dropped with a squeak of surprise. "What the... Are you... WHAT?"

[bloodstainedheart]

When Xavier pushed himself this far into hunger (and he could push a lot longer due to his age and power), by the time he was feeding, it usually took over his entire sensory perception. Where he normally would have sensed Jenna's presence, he was feeding hard and fast, because Louella actually like it rough. She liked it when Xavier dominated her, and even though many people assumed humans were scared and horrified about what vampires did, with Kindred, it was a pleasured and aroused rush that hit a human when fed on and there were many humans, like Louella and like Skye, who loved it. So, he kept feeding and, all in all, it was a pretty quick event because Xavier did feed in a rush and took in a lot of blood at rapid pace. He had the years to hone it.

It was when he stopped feeding that he realised they weren't alone. His senses weren't engulfed by Louella, and he turned his head quickly to look over his shoulder at Jenna, eyes still bright silver, fangs yet to be retracted. It was animalistic reflex to turn in the direction of the new scent he was picking up on, because like this, he was an animal. And by then, it was too late. Jenna had seen. The cat was out of the bag. The couple of moments he stared at Jenna probably seemed a lot longer to her than they did to him. Then he turned back to Louella and kissed her lips with a chaste intensity in gratitude, and released his hold on her. The wounds on her throat were already closed, the first thing he would always do so a Vessel didn't lose more blood by bleeding out. By the time he turned back to Jenna his eyes were their normal green-blue and the fangs gone. Not a single drop of blood was shed. Louella was already discreetly exiting the room and Xavier was rolling the sleeves of his red silk shirt back down and refastening his diamond cufflinks at his wrist. "Five hundred and one," he finally said as he crossed the room to pull open the ornate blinds to invite the moonlight to flood into the room through the large windows. He then moved to an antique liquor cabinet and in a crystal glass some dark red liquid was poured from a hipflask, which he picked up, nursing it lightly in his hand. "You were about one hundred years off when questioning my manner of speech earlier."

[darkgreene]

There were two warring factions of Jenna's brain right now... One was the piece that knew how much Xavier loved Greg, and that he would never, in a million years, cheat on his husband. The other part of her mind saw right in front of her what could literally be nothing else... A gorgeous redhead pressed up against the wall by Xavier's solid body, his head tucked in at her throat. But then when he turned to look at her it all became abundantly clear, and there was a part of Jenna that just wanted to throw her hands up in the air and shake her head in disbelief at the whole thing. Was seriously everyone fucking Kindred and she just didn't know it. Her mind went back to Spencer's words about her never knowing for sure how many of their kind were surrounding her.

Jenna felt like a deer caught in headlights when Xavier was staring at her, his eyes the glinting silver that she'd seen Asher's change to that night at Knightshead when he'd fed from her. And then he told her the truth that he was over five hundred years old, and Jenna's mouth dropped open. It all made sense, though. He was the English guy Brodie was talking about. The one who'd lived in the times of Henry VIII, and... Jesus Christ, Jenna's mind wasn't prepared for any of this right now. "Is Greg Kindred, too?" she asked, eyebrows raised in question. "Fuck, who else do I know that's one of you?" She paused, giving Xavier a very stern look and crossed her arms over her chest. "And I know you guys can erase my memory so I won't even remember this happened, but please don't."

[bloodstainedheart]

"He is." The answer was short and to the point. If there was one thing everyone who knew him knew about Xavier it was that he could maintain extremely classy and poised composure in just about any given situation. The only time that differed was when he was extremely pissed off and could border on frenzy, like when Jett had fed from Skye and Trystan hurt Greg. Luckily, both times he had managed to stop himself frenzying so no one got hurt... because if he did frenzy, he would kill. It was inevitable, because if what happened got him that pissed off, death was usually warranted. The part he wasn't going to immediately reveal to Jenna was that not only was Greg also Kindred, but he was Blaise's childer.

There was a small smirk when she began to piece the information she already had into the bigger picture. He made a slight sweeping gesture of indifference with his glass in lieu of a shrug. "I do not erase memory of a reveal. If you chose to either handle the knowledge with great risk to you or other humans, I would. Or if you did not want a bar of walking among us, then that may be the case also. Alas, I know you are attempting to understand with Asher, and that is admirable. However, I also know it is a vast amount of knowledge to process. My first and foremost obligation is to protect my kind, but it is also to protect you from them. Neither obligation do I take lightly. Greg is Kindred, as is his brother Trystan. Then you have Seamus and your school friends, Saxon and Valerie. Luka and Skye both remain human. From there on begins an intricate web of connections."