Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire Chapter 545: Swirling Tower *

"You sure have good timing," Caius said sarcastically as she had intruded on his alone, thinking time.

Meline grinned, flashing her fangs. The sarcasm in Caius’s words wasn’t lost on her, but she played along.

"I know, right," she said, "And such a choice location too."

As she spoke, Meline gestured at the Forest with a chuckle.

"Ah, the location, I actually have less of an issue with," Caius said and held a finger up.

"Oh, really?" Meline said with some surprise.

Caius nodded.

"Yes, I’m familiar with Forest terrains," he said, and his mind went to Lea and her love of nature.

He returned his mind to the present soon enough and wrapped an arm around Meline to pull her flush against his body. She was right about him brooding leading up to their stay at the Inn. But, as he had worked through that and considered himself to be in a better state of mind, he was not at all resistant to pleasure as he had been a week ago when Roxanne came to his room.

He matched Meline’s enthusiasm as his lips met hers. It wasn’t the first time they had kissed, so Caius was familiar with the feel and taste of Meline’s lips, but that didn’t stop him from groaning as pleasure thrummed through him.

His thrum of desire was nothing compared to the tremble that overcame Meline’s body as she pressed herself even harder against his, raising one leg against his side and inadvertently against the tree trunk as well.

As they kissed, Caius felt Meline’s hand between their chests and her fingers began to fiddle with the buttons of his shirt. He smiled against her lips and let her continue while his hand stroked up and down her back at first before he touched and lifted the hem of her shirt, exposing a bit more of her skin to press his hand against.

As he reveled in the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips, Caius’s touch wandered until he reached and pulled at the waistband of Meline’s pants. He pulled as far as it could go away from her body and then released it with a soft sound of impact that was crisp in his sharp ears.

Meline mewled into their kiss and trembled harder at Caius’s antics. He liked that, and after enjoying a round of alternating between her upper and lower lips, he parted them as he thrust his tongue inside her mouth.

Meline acted quickly and seized Caius’s tongue the moment it entered her mouth. She sucked on it with an intense fervor while her fingers finally undid one of the buttons of Caius’s shirt. She undid another right after, and then her hand glided down his front, undoing even more until the two sides of the shirt could be separated to reveal as much of Caius’s chest as possible.

Caius groaned at the feeling of her enthusiastic hand on his chest, and when Meline went further down until she grabbed the waistband of his pants and pulled at it, he grunted.

Now, Caius and Meline alternated among themselves over who got to suck on the other’s tongue. No conscious thoughts were guiding their actions, and they had no actual knowledge of any period in time when they agreed on what to do. They just shared a kind of instinctive connection that put them in sync.

The longer they swapped spittle, the deeper Meline’s moans became until a growl sounded deep in her throat. It was such a primal sound, and besides the way her chest vibrated against him, the very sound caused a thrill to travel down Caius’s spine.

While one of Meline’s hands pulled at his waistband, pulling his lower half against hers, her other hand reached up to Caius’s head and into his hair so she could work her fingers across his scalp. Caius liked the feeling, and his eyes, even behind his eyelids—because he had shut his eyes—seemed to glaze over in delight.

And then, Meline pulled her lips away from his, and despite the feeling of loss and a desire to reclaim her lips, Caius clenched his teeth hard like he was trying to ground himself to not be swept away by the torrent of desire. The task became a tad bit more difficult when Meline ran her tongue across the side of his face.

The move was slow and sensual, teeming with meaning as though the pink taste organ extending from the vampire woman’s mouth was capable of instilling thoughts and emotions.

It wasn’t just a tickling feeling that Caius gleaned from Meline’s tongue licking him, but as though the side of his face had become an erogenous zone, his blood pumped hard in his veins, and he clenched his hand against the small of Meline’s back.

To lick him as she did, Meline pulled away from Caius by a few inches, and that was enough space for Caius to move his hand between their chests. Meline was wearing a jacket over a simpler shirt, and Caius hooked his claw at the collar of the shirt and dragged it down, ripping it in that single move.

As the two ripped halves of Meline’s shirt fell away, neither of her ample tits reacted. Unfettered by any underwear—because Meline hadn’t bothered to wear any—and perky globes of perfection that they were, the tits stayed in place. At least at first. Once Meline moved even slightly, her tits trembled, a ripple traveling over the otherwise smooth assets before they promptly returned to their perfect state once she was still again.

But Meline never stayed still for long— or at all, really. Even if it was just a minute movement, she was always doing something. Caius’s face was angled upward so he couldn’t actually properly observe his handiwork with Meline’s shirt, but he made do by grabbing one of the globes.

Meline shivered at his touch as though the cold—that she was practically immune to—was finally getting to her. She wrapped her fingers in the locks of his dark hair and pulled hard enough to cause discomfort, but Caius just groaned with pleasure.

Caius moved the hand he had been clenching into the small of Meline’s back to the rise of her ass, stroking across the thigh she had against the side, and clenching her flesh through the material of her pants.

Meline went from licking the side of Caius’s face to sucking on his earlobe before lightly raking her fangs across his flesh where only the slightest of pressure would be needed for her to draw his blood.

And then she began to kiss all over his face with a flavor of reverence. She seemed to want to take in as much of him as she possibly could.

It dawned on Caius that while he and Meline had been intimate before, this was the first time it was without anyone else, the first time it was just them two. He couldn’t help but feel that fact was not lost on Meline and also influenced a lot of her fervor.

But still, Caius couldn’t help but wonder: Were they really alone?

He had moved far from the Carriage, but at the Eighth Circle and with senses as keen as theirs were, the others wouldn’t even need to come close to know all that was happening here. Also, the tree Caius’s back was pressed against wasn’t the largest or the most concealing. And that was without Meline’s leg pressed against the side of the tree, giving away the position of their bodies.

What would happen when the others eventually stretched their senses over to ensure he was safe?

Caius assumed Kyre and Hugo would have the decency to pull back their senses to not intrude, but Roxanne probably wouldn’t. Nadine, he wasn’t sure.

Meline paused suddenly when her lips were on Caius’s shoulder, and her eyes happened to be peering past the side of the tree.

"We’re very exposed, aren’t we?" She said and sounded a bit sheepish that Caius wondered what she had seen behind them. Were the rest of the Leopolds all looking over?

"Yeah, the Forest can be lacking in privacy at times," Caius said with a smile in his voice.

Meline snorted then.

"Well, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed," she said and began to mutter a stream of Arcane chants.

As she chanted, Arcane symbols appeared in the air, coalescing into spell circles. Calus actually stared, transfixed and amazed. Spell casting can be done with spell words, so that part of Meline’s actions wasn’t too surprising— The surprise came in the way the Arcane symbols were appearing independently and forming the circles at her behest as though she was only now just creating the spell she needed.

It was such a fine control and understanding of the Arcane that Caius was both impressed and amused, considering the situation Meline happened to be doing this in.

The spell symbols formed and connected into an Eighth Circle spell that released a torrent of dark smoke in a cylindrical barrier that rose over ten feet up in a swirling tower of shrouding darkness.