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Dark Curiosity	By : PsionRat Category: A through F > Dark Series Views: 2861 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dark series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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AN: Okay, for one I don't own anything in the world/s of Christine Feehan and don't presume to. I've kept naming other Carpathians to a minimum and the only one I name is one I made up so.. uh.. roll with it. The 'Dark' series is the only Romance I've ever cared to read, but I loves me some M/M romance to so I'm tweaking it for my own fun and the reading fun of others. Also found on FF.net, but I thought here I could go a little crazier without potentially getting in trouble. Please enjoy.
Dark Curiosity
Pain, overwhelming pain, and fire, never forget the fire. Plus screaming voices followed by a terrible, heart wrenching shriek of someone's pain other than his own.
What was going on again?
He couldn't remember and the cold was seeping in as something hot gushed out of the gaping hole in his neck.
“Drink it!”
The words hit him hard, a vicious jolt fed by soul breaking concern.
An open wrist came to his mouth along with a begging mantra in his mind. Drink it, take the blood, it will help, let me heal you.. please don't die.. don't leave me, I just found you. Please don't die..
His eyes snapped open and for a moment he still had the last flashing image of another's face before it all vanished before his eyes. He sat up, gasping and sweating, hand reaching frantically for his neck. It pulled back as if burned, feeling only smooth skin and damp with only sweat, not blood.
Three days.. or more accurately, three nights had passed since the nightmare that had seemed to drag on for hours. The nightmare that had started with him walking home in the dark after a long session at the museum, setting up his artwork for the show. He'd been approached, a mugger? No, something else. Something with a greasy voice and lewd eyes that dragged over him in a way shuddered just remembering. A figure that disgusted him too much to think about much longer.
Then the images became a blur, the thing at his neck, ripping him open, for a dream it had sure hurt a hell of a lot. And then other voices, stern and controlled, showing no mercy at all for the attacker. He'd been flung, maybe, and left bleeding on the ground only to be picked up by strong hands. Hands that shook as much as the only voice he could remember properly. The one begging him to live.
Cole rubbed his face and tried to shake away the chills. Then groaned as he realized he'd slept all day again. Not that he had anywhere particular to be during the daylight hours, but he should have been to the museum. It was no real obligation but still, it was important to him. He didn't understand why he was sleeping so much when only that terrifying.. moment.. was all that came to him in sleep.
He sighed and threw back the covers, noting the dying light outside his window. Another night to spend at home, he just didn't feel motivated to leave his studio apartment, though now that he thought about it, he might need to go shopping for food. Cole just sighed and ran his fingers through his short, gold-blond hair in an idle gesture.
As he paced his way to the bathroom in nothing but his boxers he passed a work in process, the same painting he'd been fixated on for the last few days. At least since the nightmare.
Dark eyes stared out from the canvas from a face that revealed itself as a feral thing. It was the only concrete image he had from the twisted dream. Just as the.. well.. vampire he supposed, flung itself at his neck he had seen this man rushing around the corner full tilt with murder in his eyes. In the painting though that murder was gone, replaced by a sure confidence and what was sure to be a bit of dark amusement.
It made him shiver for quite a different reason even though it wasn't quite finished yet and the left side of the man's face was still dull and unfinished.
He rubbed his arms to chase away the sudden and not at all unpleasant shudder then closed himself up in the bathroom for a nice hot shower to make himself feel better.
Out beyond the window, black eyes watched unblinkingly.
Leodan rested comfortably in the crook of a tree outside Cole's window. He knew it well, having spent nearly three nights there, watching and worrying.
Cole's nightmare was nothing but a brutal reality to him, but he was glad he'd been able to soften the blow for the other man as much as he had. And the strong barriers he'd built between them allowed him a reprieve from the link that had forged between them at that critical moment. But that didn't mean he could just walk away. Not when the heat had returned to his heart and colors still blossomed before him.
The vampire that had attacked the smaller man was dead, reduced to ash under the blasting rage of him and two other hunters. But the unexpected had occurred. As they had neared their prey and the innocent blood in his hands, a burning had crept up in his heart, something other than the passionless drive to commit his duty and keep his fallen brothers from killing with abandon. And soon after colors had erupted around him and he had known.. known too well.. what it was.
His Lifemate.
The Carpathian shifted, not in physical discomfort, the prospect of such a thing was now daunting where before it had seemed easy. With the vampire reduced to bitter ashes his soul had cried out at the sight of that beautiful neck, torn and gushing precious blood. He couldn't remember reaching out for him, nor did he remember ripping open his wrist. The blood, his blood, potent as it was had barely been enough, he was somewhat aware that another form of healing had come into play but his attention had not been controlled. He wasn't sure.
All he remembered after that was gathering the body jealously into his arms and fleeing, even with the protests of his comrades behind him. A few hours before dawn he'd managed to delicately pry the location of 'home' from the man he now guarded and took him there, leaving him in his bed and fleeing again though he desperately wanted to join him. He had simply been too shocked at the sudden realization that his Lifemate, his Light that was quickly redeeming his graying soul, was male.
Leodan had only been contacted once since then by Jenelle, his brother's Lifemate. He'd told her not to worry and not to seek him. He'd always been good at hiding, too good at times. And he was only thankful that she had relayed his wishes, probably with the liberal application of thrown cast iron at any male that made the attempt. She had that sort of habit..
And so for the last several nights he had watched, and waited, and contemplated just how to absolve this confusion in his mind. He, like all other Carpathian males, had assumed his Lifemate would be a woman. Possibly a Carpathian woman, more likely though a human woman with a psychic ability or two.
But this was something he'd never even heard of. His kind were dying out, they needed women to have children. So how was it that fate would send him a Lifemate he had not possibility to give such a gift to his people with? Was fate mocking him? All of them? Perhaps it was finally forsaking the Carpathians by saving their souls just to end their blood for good.
He sighed heavily and settled back in the branches again, brushing shoulder-length black hair from his face.
Then Cole came back into view, wrapped only a towel and still quite wet. Leodan's attention was quickly arrested and he leaned forward, shocked that he nearly fell out of the tree.
In righting himself he lost track of the man, forcing him to move from his place to another a window to the side. The studio apartment wasn't exactly big, but it was rather long, taking up a bank of four windows. One at the bedroom to the far East side, then two across the combined kitchen and living room and the last revealed only a wide open space filled with paints and canvas, both in varying stages of use. The bathroom was off on the opposite side fo the windows, leading off the kitchen just before the bedroom.
By the time he relocated Cole from the branches of another tree he was dressed. And despite himself, Leodan felt a bit of disappointment at this. The other man had a body he found rather attractive, lean, but not too thin, with just the hint of curves and delicate lines. Truth be told he'd never really pictured women the way most other males did, with their voluptuous curves and soft appearances.
Now that he thought of it, he'd never really considered women except in passing. True he'd expected to find a Lifemate and that it would be female as his thoughts had revealed before. But had he ever really thought much of women? Even the women of others? Ones most males were warded away from by jealous mates.
He couldn't recall more than a superficial moment in his entire three-century-long life.
Somehow this only made things worse for him.
But Cole was on the move again, traipsing out of his bedroom shirtless in a pair of pain-crusted jeans. Leodan had watched him these last few nights and found himself shifting easily among the branches again for the best vantage point he could find.
Inside Cole felt refreshed and ready to finish his latest painting before making the attempt at contacting the outside world. He set to work and mixed his paints, but just before he touched brush to canvas he paused and glanced over his shoulder out the blackened windows behind him. It was a strange sort of feeling, like someone was watching him, it wasn't a bad feeling. But it was getting to him a little.
He eventually turned back and shook off the feeling and buried himself in his work.
Cole loved paint. He had been the breath of his life since he was fourteen and he'd been removed from his parents seeing as how if father was beating him near to death and his mother had tried to commit suicide, with his assistance no less, about seven times. The foster situation he'd been put in had sucked, but someone had donated a ton of paint supplies and he'd managed to keep himself sane that way.
And with that salvaged sanity he'd built himself a nice little career, selling prints and having small shows now and again. Even though his work was mostly in realism and wasn't really 'edgy', it was considered 'insightful' and 'emotionally superb' by his critics so he ran with it.
He sighed, finding himself doing that a little too much lately and stepped back, realizing he was hours deep in paint and the image was all but complete. He could probably spend a little more time, smoothing out a few places. But even so, that would just be him stalling.
The blond crossed his arms, barely caring that he'd smudged paint on his arms and a bit on his chest in the process. He was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. It was simply too bad he was a figment of his imagination. He took a moment to wash off his brushes and his hand, scratching a bit at the paint he found elsewhere. But then he returned, unable to stay away from the work of art for very long.
A hard loneliness settled in his chest as he regarded the unblinking face. He'd never really dated, only been vaguely aware that he preferred men to women, but the idea of intimacy had never been exactly appealing. Until now anyway. Which was truly absurd, getting hot and bothered over a man in a dream.. a dream where he was dying even.
But still, wasn't that how it was supposed to work sometimes? The man or woman of ones' dreams, encroaching on the subconscious to send the body into a whirlwind of desire? He'd never really had a wet dream, at least not one he well remembered, and while he was certain the suddenly reoccurring nightmare wasn't one, his daydreams certainly were becoming just that.
His hand smoothed over his chest as he continued to regard the face with it's wicked eyes and black hair down near the shoulders. And that expression, one that promised much and threatened to deliver it all with a dark passion.
Cole shivered visibly and his hand led down as he bit his lip. Then he paused and glanced again at the windows. Like hell was he going to give a free show if someone really was watching him. He went to each of the windows and closed the blinds one by one. Then with a giddy skip to his step went back to his painting and back to his budding fantasy..
Leodan's face fell as the blinds blocked his view. This would simply not do. Despite what his mind was logically telling him, that this match would not work well for either of them. His heart was quickly arguing back that it shouldn't matter, a Lifemate was a Lifemate. Were they not always told from the moment they could understand speech that they shouldn't actually expect the Light of their life to come in any specific shape?
He paused. Perhaps.. perhaps he should just give in.. take down the walls and finish what his heart ached for. It was only through his strict training as a hunter who had centuries before lost color and passion that he'd resisted so long. Should he instead just.. give in.. and let the future decide what was best?
Black eyes fell on the vague shadow of a body past the sheltering blinds.
His heart leaped.
Right along with him, out of the tree and towards the wall, scaling up to the bedroom window that he eased open silently. The noisy blinds proved no difficulty for him, as he dispersed his form, solidifying again in a crouch on the floor.
For a moment he was lost in the scent of the room. It reeked of his Lifemate and, thankfully, no other scent. He inhaled deeply and stood, closing the window just as quietly and prowling around the obscuring screen that pretended to be a wall between him and his new beloved.
His eyes focused only on Cole, he'd learned his name while watching over him in the last few days and tonight, he was intent on introducing the two of them properly.
Leodan's eyes traveled down the other's form which swayed slightly. The soft half-moan from that beautiful throat told him why and he almost lost his nerve. To reach out now was to accept this twist in his fate, to step forward and at least make the effort to understand why he was to feel complete in the arms of another man and not a woman.
A few breathy sounds from the blond gave him back courage in the form of pure need. But he had to remember to be gentle..
At first Cole didn't notice the hand sliding around his belly. He'd been rather distracted after all, with both of his own hands wrapped around such a delicate part of himself. But then he'd frozen, hit hard with fear as another slid around the other side to stroke his neck. And all at once a hard body was behind him, warm and firm, in more ways than one.
“Shhh.. do not fear..”
The voice behind him was like silk and had an accent he didn't recognize but still he trembled. Horrible images of being thrown down and raped came to mind but they were swept aside by something else and followed by a deep chuckle.
“Never, my Heart.. only if you want me.”
Cole's breath caught in his throat as kisses came down delicately at his neck and those hands smoothed away tension. He gave a shuddering breath, keenly aware that he was still hot and hard in his own hands and that there was a complete stranger behind him, quietly molesting him.
Again came the subtle laugh. “I am not a stranger to you.. you know me. I have not yet tasted you, but you have tasted of me. And that is more than enough.” The kisses came back in full, a little more insistent as both of the other man's hands strayed down to join Cole's. “Let me..”
The blond whimpered and tipped his head to side. Maybe it was a dream, he could give in to dreams.. right? He gasped as strong hands wrapped around him and the body behind him pressed against him a little more.
His hands went to the other's wrists and his whole body shook, hips jerking forward as he was stroked by the man behind him. All at once his breath let go in a shuddering moan and he could have simply passed out but something forced him to stay alert and drown in the sudden pleasures.
That's it my heart, the words filtered into his mind though he didn't know how. I am not sure of much yet, but give me time.
“Who are you?” he managed to ask, squirming while being so well taken care of. His voice sounded weak to his own ears.
“I am Leodan. For whatever reason, I am your Lifemate. And I mean to commit to all that entails.” The Carpathian let his mouth trail back to Cole's neck, preparing for what would best come after Cole himself..
It only took a few moments and despite his confusion at the reply Cole was gasping for air very quickly. The pleasure soared and he could barely remain still until finally those skilled fingers and gracious support sent him flying over the edge with a barely restrained scream.
The fangs sinking into his neck sparked off another set of sensations, not at all unpleasant ones either. And all at once he felt his mind open up.
Leodan removed the last of the barriers and welcomed Cole completely into him as he held the smaller man upright and licked at the small wound he'd made. The ache in his heart was gone, filled only with a sense of completion. This had to be the right decision.
He could never regret it..
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Dark Curiosity