Mimi was smartly quick to take her leave once Risque emerged from that store with her new modified outfit as if she could sense bad news all over the vampire woman. The perky blonde was not wrong.... The woman already trying her very last patience that Risque possessed. How lucky she was that her blood did not possess that desired flavor she so desired in that very moment. Blood.. even though it looked similar was hardly equal by any means. Darcy's appreciation didn't go unnoticed and yet how he found this outfit more appealing than the one before she would not understand... She paid little attention to the fleeing sales person save for but a fleeting glance... as she scurried off back to the supposed safety of that store. Like those flimsy walls could keep her safe. Perhaps she would allow her that illusion for now. The bells faded into the night, devoured by the song of cicada's that filled the night. Those eerie abandoned streets lacked any sign of life.. So very different from their western home, Sacrosanct was hardly a city that truly slept, chaos raging well into the night. It was almost serene.. the way that darkness of night seemed to encase them.

It was then that her calculating stare focused upon that imposing truck... the only vehicle except for the old ruins of an ancient ford 150 that belonged to none other than Mimi. In comparison, this truck, still possessed some of those attributes of her preferred cars.. Did it have to be so... clunky? At the very least it was in black.... Those monstrous tires looked ready to take on any terrain. Was it really necessary? They were going to a ranch.... Not the very ends of the earth... were they? Once inside the vehicle... Now that is when her views started to shift. How tall she felt... like she sat upon an ascended throne. That vehicle was pleasingly spacious... considering how much miles they travelled tonight it felt... belatedly nice to be allowed the space. But the true question was... could it keep up with that lithe smaller counterpart.

It wasn't long before the that thunderous roar of the powerful engine seemed answer that very question... It did not purr like a kitten.. but roared! Perhaps this vehicle wasn't... horrible, just like those very boots she wore. At least for now. It was then that Darcy responded to that very inquiry. The only compliment to escape her to indicate her tolerance of it.. was.. "I do like its... height." She seemed to shift, settling back within the plush comfort of that premium leather chair. Her mind honed upon those selling points her cowboy mentioned. He certainly knew how to appeal to her. Although... a truck was a difficult sell to begin with. Perhaps that sweet peach scented air was getting to her head. "No, we can't have that..." She seemed almost apprehensive and yet how displeased she would be if that truck failed to handle that jarring journey.

Just as she anticipated them to move along... finally, toward that ranch they had so arduously prepared for. She toyed with the buttery fabric with the tip of her talons of those jeans that clung to her legs, perhaps she could dress the part.. but those nails would forever seem to give her away.. along with that predatory stare. However, that anticipation was not met. They didn't move in the slightest, she can sense something burning within his mind. His gaze seemed to fall heavily upon her while she seemed distracted with just how high up they were, wondering if this vehicle could crush smaller cars beneath those impressive tires. The thought seemed pleasing to her.. until it was her name that saw to her gaze to slice toward him. Nervous.. he seemed almost hesitant to go on. That request caused that ever growing silence in that vehicle. Those hypnotic pale eyes seemed void of indication of how she felt to that bold request. The first of its kind. That request seemed foreign and she could hardly fathom that he would enjoy her in this costume. After all, that's what this felt like, despite its usefulness for the unpleasant southern landscape that was hardly worth fighting with at the cost of the casualty of her outfit.

Yet despite that blank canvas of her face she seemed almost seemed surprise.. it would seem her lover was full of those on this very trip. What other secrets had he been keeping from her? She found herself considering that very request, wondering if this had anything to do with that newfound status they found themselves in, or the fact that she shared her bed with him on a far more permanent basis she had offered anyone before. Or did he think himself to be at a higher standing in these foreign lands? "Mmm." That satin softness sound, a mere reverberation formed at the back of her throat.

Of all the thing the man could have asked for, could have desired of her. She would have not guessed it would be having her in these boots of all things! She had known his interests, after all, he so often chose to wear those boots and even that hat whenever the desire arise within him. It suited him.. enough that she allowed it.. But the french woman? When was the last time anyone requested anything of her.. Especially her attire... but during intercourse.. this was entirely new! He always wished to please her. That's how it had been and always been. After all, he was submissive to her. Even though she fed that far more dominant side to him, relishing it watching him dominate those below them. He was a natural. He was strong. He was everything she made him into. But he had always wanted what she wanted. Or so he had been trained to be. Was this a... shift of what it meant to be mates? Had he been planning this all along? Risque seemed to sit with those thoughts.. She had been a more than generous lover! Right? She even permitted him the use of his hands when she desired him to..

Darcy seemed fixed on it, he was sure. Was this the first of many requests? How that thought seemed to sit on a precarious ledge as though she couldn't quite decide if this one more step to try and take a more dominant role, that he wished to alter that already wavering balance. What next? That question was uttered like some sort of a figurative trap. Like Darcy would somehow become ensnared in her web in an instant. But they were so far from home and that request certainly didn't seem that far-fetched considering she enjoyed wearing those boots, at least in that very moment.. but that mention of having her in this truck... Why a truck? What about this brute of a vehicle seemed to do it for him? She was sure... it could have been worse.. she supposed. In that moment that request.. had been brave and yet what was this in comparison to the elaborate lingerie she enjoyed wearing. After all, it was so long off in the future.. it was likely he would forget all together. Oh that sweet country air must have been getting to them both. She agreed... on her terms.. that response almost flippant.


Another question seemed to bloom within her mind.. cutting off her very cowboy and his sudden delight in her acceptance of that request. Her gaze slid to that massive smile that spread across his own lips, exposing the sharp points of those glinting monstrous teeth. What a rare sight to see such a genuine gleam... it was disturbing... Of course, the one thing to get the man to smile was the promise of sex how he pleased... Well the last part seemed a little precarious in her mind. The thought of relinquishing control for a moment seemed to riot against every last fiber of her very makeup. The vampire woman did not get to this very pinnacle because she compromised. She eyed his unwavering features. At least she could satisfy her own curiousity of what... that would even be like. Perhaps she could give him that extra rope this time... one he could hang himself with. Yet.. that hardly... was what she seemed focused upon.. What else had her Darcy been keeping from her, stashed away inside that cunning mind of his.

It was like she could see his own thoughts sprawl right across his face within that hesitation. Funny how that smile faltered... Oh so there.. there was more.. But was it not her right to know? It was now her turn for her lips to curl into the barest hint of what resembled a smile, reveling in that unrest for but a moment. She did not let up, that pale hypnotic gaze watching him with that clear expectation. She had asked him a question, of course she desired that answer. Or did she really? Part of her almost expecting that trained response, however, it was curious... that previous request having loosened his lips.. it would seem. How quiet that vehicle was with the exception of the steady rumble of that engine.. How that answer was hardly one she anticipated. While his love of her was of no surprise to her... never once had she spoke that word. Love. Perhaps one of the biggest lies she had ever known had been tied to that very word love. Family love.. friendship love.. Romantic love... perhaps the biggest sham of them all. The way he worshiped the very ground her walked on.

Was it not enough she had accepted him saying it that she... agreed to be his mate.. that it was he who she took on this very trip and no other. Wasn't it enough that she shared a bed with him.. could fuck him like no other.. and offer him status in her ranks. Was that not enough? Did he not understand what love was.. to her? Of course not. It wasn't like she was ever candid with foolish emotions long since dead and wilted from the past.

Love.

She went agonizingly silent then. How she would much rather him list more sexual requests. Suddenly having him choose how he took her.. hardly seemed like a problem at all.. but what he asked of her seemed to unsettle her far more than any impromptu request he could have asked in that moment. She had given him so much more than that lacklustre... one dimensional love. Did she not? It was so much more than she had given any other being. How she denied so many. Did he not see that? Of all the things she had ever been asked over those centuries. Never had anyone asked love of her. How her gaze darkened.. Love.. that weak emotion that she had used against so many of a man.. Love made one so desperately easy to manipulate. Love... was weakness... shackles... a noose around your throat. How quick was someone to be bested because of that they would do for love. What had it ever done to serve her? Nothing more than disappointment. How she had thought to have killed off that part of her... amputate that weakness from herself.. and yet.. did she not... like hearing him declare those words... those praises... in her own way?

"I have publicly called you my mate.. Does that not show to everyone that we are lovers? I prefer you... I... I will talk of this no more." That's what mate was? Right? Lovers? She had stopped receiving propositions from other male vampires since then. It was a nuisance anyways. One that had been remedied the moment word had gotten out. It spread like wildfire. Why anyone would care who she took on a mate seemed... perplexing. Vexing even. Regardless.. How her mood seemed to shift.. She had hardly noticed they drove far away from that strange but wonderful.. Boot Barn.

They drove into the dead of night, void of those overhead lights within the deep south. The homes became far more sparse.. the ground far less kind. The truck took those battered roads far better than the car they drove prior. How in that darkness the stars grew more vivid within that midnight hued eyes that seemed to match the very hue of her hair. How she barely noticed such things.... her mind growing into a sadistic cesspool. Why would he request of all things for her to say that word? It was just a word.. and yet why was it so impossible to say? Her lip curled then in clear warning. "What is... love anyways?" How she said she would speak no more of it and here she was violating that statement all the same.

Surely this was no indication of where they were headed and yet there was proof of nothing else... no electrical poles.. just infinite space. How sure that maybe... Darcy had taken a wrong turn, her gaze stealing a sidelong glance but his face fixed upon the road ahead. His mood shifting beneath that mask. It was then that they met the end of that very road, coming up to a narrow entranceway. The sprawling driveway leading into that ocean of darkness.

Risque peered out at the road ahead... silent and unreadable as she judged her surroundings. When that small little log cabin came into view, lit up by the high beams of the truck, like spotlights finding what had remained all but hidden before. It was when that house.. if one could call it that.. came into view that Darcy's teeth began to grind, that horrid sound like marbles grating against one another. She said nothing, but that unstable energy was clear and vivid as those overhead stars. Her eyes gazed out to the distant house, standing out only because of that light flooding from the small windowpane, bleeding out into the night. Everything else seemed abandoned.. void of life for the most part and yet... nothing was overgrown and taken over.. the earth had a funny way of taking back what once belonged to it. Ah, the caretakers doing she assumed. Darcy immediately stepped easily from that vehicle and then to her side... even with that sullied mood, he left no detail abandoned even in the suffocating wake of those memories that surely assaulted him. Surely, he had not forgotten his roots... as she did. How she suspected that contributed to his foul mood. She peeled out of the vehicle, not used to the distance it took for her feet to meet the floor and yet with that unrivalled grace she managed regardless.

Darcy shattered that stillness...Risque focused on that building and all that stood.. as if she expected something more. The buildings were incredibly small while everything else was so open. She scanned all around and saw nothing but more of the same for miles to come. Not even the sound of traffic touched her enhanced sense of hearing. This is it.. that seemed to echo within her mind as she tasted that very thought over and over again. Darcy seemed to fill the silence once more. The mention of an outhouse.... She swore she had heard that calling before.. But she had lived in cities for more that she could even remember. "What do you mean... outhouse? Its just a building, non? A very.... Small one.. Why make a building so small?" An idle breeze pressed against her exposed flesh, it painted a far more detailed image of how forsaken this place was. It was just them on this lone desolate ranch.. minus that being who inhabited that house. An irritation... a detail.... Curious how someone would choose to live here? There was nothing here...

"Show it to me.. all of it.." She seemed insatiable then. She said nothing else, giving no indication of what thought of this. But.... there had to be more.. That couldn't be the only thing despite Darcy saying that was all.

She refused to look at him..

The sound of toads bellowing and the music of cicadas consumed them like a wild dirge of nightfall.. of the south. She took a step forward and then another upon the gravelled and dirt ground, far less manicured than even Mary-Beth's drive! Darcy led her to that solitary home he once called his own.. how sad it looked, a piece of history preserved from time. But why this secluded wasteland. It wasn't even a castle.

They took those steps to climb onto the porch.. the aged wood creaking loudly as if shattering the illusion of piece. Just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, they stepped inside that loud squeaking wooden door that Darcy opened. She was the first inside the building, followed by her lover.

Out of habit she looked for that light switch. No electricity, not even now? How she had come to rely on such creature comforts.. Not like she needed light in order to see, those honed predatory enhanced eyes could cut through the darkest shadows. Darcy seemed to move near fluidly.. to light that fireplace with ease. It was clear that this was not the first time to light this very fireplace. The familiar scent of fire met her nose.

"Where do the servants live? The barn?" Complete and utter bafflement settled upon the vampire as she peered around that fire illuminated room, that fire seemed enough to light enough. Cozy didn't seem to quite cut how petite this flimsy house was.. Although it had everything one needed to survive, save for a washroom. She fell quiet once more, walking about that tiny space. It was too small to be called a house. The wide plank wooden floors seemed to creak and protest as she walked, those steps sounding near hollow as she moved around that very dwelling. Those walls decidedly thin and lacking.. It hardly took any time for the warmth of the crackling fire to flood that home. A singular slender finger seemed to slide over the restored furniture.. yet she could still see the.. character within that very wood, the chips that could not be filled.. the imperfections that still lingered upon that table. She distinctly took her time as she meandered wordlessly. How could anyone live here? Not even her servants quarters were so tiny... Her own bedroom when human was at least 10 times this if not more.... With lavish decorations. This was.. plain.. perhaps more so.. no embellishments within the wood.. no paint.. Something uneasy seemed to settle within the vampire.. something she couldn't quite place a manicured finger upon.. She hesitated by the beds.. then wound up back to where she saw that portrait. Almost instantly she recognized her undead cowboy in the photograph. Hers. And yet there he was in a time and place where he didn't dwell within her orbit.. How young he looked in that image... How.. alive.... She had never seen him alive before and even though it was black and white... she could still tell.

She narrowed her eyes honing carefully upon that face she knew all too well.. At least she thought she knew.. This place he had come from. How careful he was to avoid the very topic. Something akin to pity... seemed to surprisingly tickle near gallingly at the inside of her chest.. She allowed herself to look at the others in that old photograph. Did they all live in here? This tiny cramped home? There were four uneven, rickety old chairs one for each of the people in this picture. She gave one more fleeting look to the people in that worn black and white photograph. She turned her lithe, alluring frame to face him. She studied him closely.. as if she hardly recognized the man she had spent over a century with.

That nagging feeling in her chest hardly dissipated.. He had truly come from nothing. How much he had changed since that newly turned vampire she plucked from the blood laden battleground and did not free since. She heard the wood crackle and pop... the sizzle of a barely dried log.... The quietness of that room almost unbearable. "How does one... survive this?" Her words were perhaps.... Sincere... as much as they possibly could be. Was that pity in her voice? Perhaps judging by the way his family was no longer, the answer was in fact clear and yet she voiced the words all the same. Such vastly different worlds in which they had come from.

How she hated that feeling... the way it clawed at her. Just as much as that hunger had.. a hunger that once again reminded her.. that had not yet been sated. It seemed to shift her thoughts to the lone man living upon that property... in that small place up on the hill.. Just sitting there.. intruding.... Was this not.. his land?

"I can smell... him.. the man who squats on your ranch... He is everywhere.. That... intruder.." It might have seemed like casual conversation, despite that ominous tone she took. That thought mingling with that.. strange vulnerability.... Seemed to prompt... an unforeseeable thought she hadn't thought about... since... she was human. Why now.. she would never understand. Her features grew taut... a growl escaping her.

"When... I was but a girl..." The fire seemed to illuminate her feminine features, dancing within that cabin like a devilish glow... her expression near unreadable. "My father..." How she hated even saying the word... loathed it because it meant nothing to her now. It felt like ash in her mouth all the same and yet... she continued. "Saw a man sneak in out in the yard where I was playing.. I thought him funny... he smelled awful like alcohol and caked sweat. He fell upon his hands and knees before me.. begging me for food. He begged... and wept like a man possessed.. and he grabbed at the fabric of my dress... clutching desperately so I couldn't escape, smearing his dirt and filth all over the clean fabric, not even my favoured servant could get out those stains.. I will never forget the look of true despair of a man forced to do desperate things. I told him I would return.. with bread... I thought he was a funny man.. a sad funny man... I never saw someone look quite like that before... None the less, I returned with the biggest loaf of bread I could find... I returned to one of the servants tasked to watch over me who had grown distracted with a stable hand... she returned to find this scrawny man instead of me. She screamed like a chicken about to be slaughtered... He pulled a knife from his rags and stabbed her countless times staining her dress red. It was enough to cause a terrible scene. I saw my angry father there... redder than a ripe tomato... peering over this sad funny man with blood on his hands.. When I got close enough... I saw that he had blood on his hands... It wasn't long after... that in a fit of rage he had chopped off both hands before sending him to be tortured and then later killed. He did get a meal though, however... undeserving as it was.. the guards laughed while he tried to eat with nubs for hands. I learned a valuable lesson that day." What that lesson... was she did not say.. in fact.. she simply turned to face the fire, watching the wicked tendrils dance before her very eyes finding a sense of welcoming in that chaos. Her eyes seemed to grow predatory... that silence shattered.. when suddenly the footsteps of an impending could be heard over the crackling of that fire. How alert she had become.. like a predator caught on to a whiff.. of prey.

"Well... well.. well.. if it isn't the interloper.. Are you not the least bit curious of what he knows... about you?" Oh but that was only... such a fraction of what she wanted from him.