A Few Sips Ch. 08

"Samir." Mr. Hughes said his name as they stopped in front of him, and Domino could sense the tone of caution in the single word.

"Samir, is it? It's good to see you again." Thorontur stepped forward to stand beside Domino, which apparently pissed the colossus off, and he grabbed Domino around the waist and pulled her to his left side, away from the elves entirely.

"It shouldn't be. Last time we saw each other I ripped your Goddamned arm off." Samir growled, making Domino drop her mouth open and she looked up at him, then over at the elf who looked to have two arms now.

"Samir, take Domino downstairs. Stay with her." Mr. Hughes told his employee firmly and Samir looked like he didn't have any intention of obeying.

"Do it." Mr. Hughes spoke again, and Domino watched as he ever so slightly lifted his outspread hand in the giant's direction.

Samir seemed to tense a little and his eyes went to his employer's, somewhat shocked in appearance before he finally nodded and putting a hand on Domino's shoulder, he led her into the mansion and they walked through the dining room and down the hall towards the staircase that would lead to the basement.

"What did he just do to you?" Domino asked quietly, Samir still seemed very pissed off about the situation.

"He compelled me."

"How did he do that?" She gasped, looking at him as he yanked open the door to the stairs.

"He's an angel, Domino. He can compel any creature of the light to bend to his will." Samir frowned and allowed her to walk down in front of him, he held the pole behind her as they went.

"Not the darkness?" She asked.

He shook his head at the base of the stairs, "No. It's about the only thing that makes me envious of them at this moment. I'd like nothing more than to have another go at that stupid fucking wood elf."

"Why? Who are they?"

"You know how I told you that there were other places like this around the world?" Samir walked with her into the room with the couch and they sat down together.

"Yes, you said this was the best one."

"It is, well, Thorontur and his brother, own the oldest known spa. It wasn't really a 'spa' in the sense of the word a long time ago. They held non-humans captive back then, we were forced to do what they told us, not with compulsion, but with the threat of torture and pain, and death. There are no creatures of the darkness who seem to be able to compel, except sires compelling their vampire progeny."

"You said 'we.'" Domino whispered, her voice pained.

He nodded, "Yes, for a time, I was one of their number of spectacles."

"But you're a colossus, how could they have stopped you from getting out? From freeing the others?" Domino put a hand on his forearm, he was hot, tense, the elves had definitely set him on edge.

"They didn't have to threaten my life to get me to behave, Domino, they had found another way to threaten me, by threatening my wife." He said low, his voice filled with pain, and she gasped, squeezing his arm a little bit.

"Samir, that's horrible."

"There was no way I could get to her before they would have had a chance to kill her. It was, it was a bad time."

"They finally let you go? What happened?"

"I was becoming more and more frustrated, but I was too scared to do anything about it. It was miserable there, Domino, being forced to be put on display like I was. I wasn't there to fuck, you see, I was there as a sideshow act, really. 'see the great and powerful giant!' It was disgusting."

"Dicks."

"Truly not even vulgar enough for those two."

"Your wife, was she a human?" Something told Domino she was, and she watched him nod.

"Yes. They kept her in a cell across from mine, a guard with her at all times. We had been married for almost twenty years, and they liked to joke about how, in my human form, I looked young enough to be her son. They would call her all kinds of things and they would touch her from time to time, to remind me that she was so easy for them to get to. They were very anti-human back then, very. One night, they came to my cell and told me that they had had a request from a visitor to pleasure her. I was livid. I would do no such thing, I wasn't a whore."

"Oh, man, Samir."

"I told them no, and they had one of the guards, a man who was one of the ones who liked to paw at my wife, go to her. He held her down and was about to rape her. I shifted, tore out of the cell and before I could reach her, Thorontur was there, and she had a knife in her heart."

"Oh, my God." Domino choked out, she saw tears fall from his blue eyes as he looked at her anguished and she moved forward and wrapped her arms around him, she was crying, too.

"I ripped his arm off. Broke several more bones on my way out, but eventually I got away with her body. I buried her in the mountains. I never married again after that, it was too hard." He held her in his arms as they sat together silently for a while after that.

"I am so sorry, Samir." She finally said, one hand moving up to rest on his chest as they finally got their tears under control.

"Elves have a regenerative property that lets them heal unless their neck is severed. I should have ripped his head off instead of his arm." Samir chuckled softly as he ran a hand over her hair.

"I agree. You should have. Do they still hold non-humans hostage?" Domino sat up again.

He shook his head. "No. I met Mr. Hughes for the first time a while after that, and I told him about them. Even then, before he had opened Vorhees, he was very involved with the non-humans. We have always looked at him as some sort of a president for those of us who are light. He is the 'lightest' of us, you know. He took care of it, they changed their ways somewhat after that."

"So they're more like Vorhees now, but still under shitty management?" She watched him chuckle and was glad that the mood was lightening just a little bit, this was the price of immortality, it seemed, moments of happiness frosted with some extreme bits of pain and sadness.

"Right. And Mr. Hughes generally doesn't give them the time of day, so we shall have to wait and see what happens." Samir looked towards the stairs.

"Why didn't he want to talk to them about me?"

"They asked about you?"

She nodded, "It could have just been because they're not used to seeing a woman walk around in the woods hooked up to a bag of blood, but yes. Faeron, especially."

"I don't know, really. I haven't seen them in a long, long time. They're very nosy, though, all of the elves are. They like to know everything because they like to act like they know everything about everyone."

"Hmm," Domino looked towards the kitchenette, "Well, you know what. I can't cook very well myself, but I make a mean batch of popcorn. We're gonna sit and watch a movie that I love, and you are going to tell me if it's as good as I say."

"Popcorn and a movie?"

"Extra butter, extra salt, twice the heart block." Domino grinned stupidly at him and her body warmed up as he laughed openly, his arm going to the couch to rest along the back of it.

"What movie, do I need to rent it?"

She nodded, "Yup, it's called Labyrinth. Have you seen it?"

He shook his head, "No."

"Great, you're gonna love it. Especially Bluto. I'll go make the popcorn." Domino jumped up and walked into the kitchenette and pulled out a saucepan.

She was pulling out the popcorn kernels from the cabinet when she heard Samir chuckle in the sitting room. Looking over, she could see that he had the movie up and there was a picture of some of the characters on the front. Smiling, she knew he would tease her about watching non-human movies when she went back in, but it would take his mind off of his past and the elves upstairs in the spa while they waited for Alexandru to wake up. He still had another few hours before the sun set. She sort of hoped that the elves would be gone by then.

"Goblins, really, Domino?" Apparently, he didn't plan on waiting to tease her.

"Oh, shut it, Samir. Just wait. Jareth is a sexy sexy sexy man, when I was young, I wanted to be Sarah, only not so stupid, and I wanted to kiss that goblin king and be his forever and have my own little army of chubby cheeked goblins."

"You really thought that through, didn't you." He barked in laughter.

"I did. It's what you do when you don't have a family of your own, you make one up any way you can." Domino said, more serious this time as she set the heat on the sauce pan.

She heard him get up and walk into the kitchenette and lean on the counter as he looked at her, "Is that why you've been so quick to adopt all of us as family here?"

Domino looked up at his eyes and saw the question burn within them, and she shrugged her shoulders, "Maybe."

"Can I be the favored cousin? I'd rather not be the uncle that everyone invites to the party just because they have to invite him."

"Oh, Samir, you're the brother, the good one."

"When you smile at me like that, I don't feel very brotherly." He growled as he turned and pulled out a couple glasses.

"Well, considering that this is my family, and Arc is the patriarchal part, and he's touched my bare...ladybits...we're already a bit incestuous, I suppose."

He chuckled, "Poor Samir, he's just the boyfriend."

"Bloodmate."

"What did you say?" Samir looked at her with a frown.

"Bloodmate? It's what Mr. Hughes called me when he introduced the elves to me. Why?"

"Nothing, he probably called you that to get them to find you uninteresting, but it's not something you should refer to yourself as, Domino." He shook his head and reached into the refrigerator for the bottle of ginger ale.

"What does it mean, Samir?"

"There's not really a good English translation to it, Dom, and it's not true, anyways. It refers to a woman who is owned by a vampire and used by him for sex and food, until he drains her and she dies. It's a brutal term, Domino, and vampires don't do that anymore. Times are different now."

"Why would he call me that, couldn't he just have said that I was a client who got pregnant on accident?"

He shook his head, "They know that Mr. Hughes prevents pregnancy. A blood mate was just a quick explanation that he hoped would appease them. They never saw the problem with such a thing."

She shivered, the thought of being slowly drained and fucked without her consent by a vampire was not something that she would have ever welcomed, and Samir was right, Alexandru loved her, he would never have treated her that way.

"Can we not, can we not tell Alex that he said that? I don't think he would like it."

Samir barked with laughter, "I think he would try to hurt our dear angel. He's very possessive of you."

"I'm very possessive of him." Domino looked towards the closed door that her lover was sleeping behind.

"Ok, it's popping, what do we do?"

~*~*~*~

Several hours later, Samir and Domino were still on the couch. They had finished the popcorn, which Samir had enjoyed, and the movie, which he agreed with her that Sarah should have ended up with the sexy goblin king. Afterwards, they'd heated up some manicotti that Alexandru had put in the fridge for her, and they had shoveled that in while she'd convinced him to watch Twilight with her. You would have thought it was a comedy with how much Samir was laughing at it. They were seated on the couch, the only light in the room the one coming in from the partially opened bathroom door in the corner of the room. Samir was sitting with his right leg stretched out against the back of the couch, and Domino was lying on the couch on her left side, the pole behind the arm that Samir's back was propped up against, and she had her head resting on his chest and her right hand rested on his jean covered left thigh.

"I want to slap that girl, and I have never slapped a girl in my life. She and Sarah should get together and go bowling, for the completely opposite reasons." He groaned as he rubbed her head with his right hand absently.

"They could get matching shirts."

"And balls."

"And shoes."

"They could call themselves 'The Nitwits.'"

"Or 'The Twin Idiots.'"

"The Twiniots."

"Oh, that one's good. Gold star." Domino chuckled as she heard a door open and Alexandru came out into the hallway, a frown on his face.

"It's a good thing I was just getting up, you two could wake the dead." He grumbled as he rubbed his eyes. He wore only pants, as he usually did when leaving the room." His red eyes peered in at the two of him and he gave her a look.

Domino gazed up at him with a wide smile and waved him over with a hand, shifting as he moved towards them, and she found herself shoved onto her back, her head resting on Samir's thigh as Alexandru climbed on top of her, his lower legs and feet hanging over the edge of the couch as he wrapped his hands under her back and kissed her.

"I've never kissed a woman with some other guy's crotch inches from my face." Alexandru growled huskily as he tilted his head back to look down at her.

"Hello, Alex. Did you sleep well?" Domino giggled as she wrapped her arms around her lover.

"How the fuck are you so warm?" Samir asked, his right arm had risen a bit to grab the left wing of the vampire, to keep it from accidentally smacking him in the face.

"Why are the two of you so cold?" Alexandra countered as Domino turned her face to the left and looked at the television screen.

"Ooooh, look Samir, watch this part. This is where they they fight James, the bad vampire." Domino pointed to the television and Alexandru turned his head and rested his cheek against hers as he looked at the screen as well.

"What the fuck are you watching?" He grumbled, squinting at the picture on the screen.

"She's making me watch Twilight." Samir nodded, "It's horrific."

"Vampires do not sparkle." He frowned.

"No shit." Domino chuckled as she watched the vampires start to fight.

"James would totally win. He's the only one who drinks human blood. The others would all be dead."

"That is not how you change a human into a vampire. Amateurs."

"She is such a sissy. But I like Alice. She's kind of pretty."

"I don't even know what to say about the three of you." A deep voice said with a little bit of shock and curiosity from the doorway of the room and three sets of eyes looked away from the television screen to see Mr. Hughes standing just within the room, his hands clasped behind his back and one brow was raised at the visual of them sitting all together on the couch.

"Arc." Domino gasped, pushing on Alexandru until he got up, slapping Samir in the face a few times as he did so, making the giant frown and bat them away from him.

Mr. Hughes waited as Alexandru sat up and Domino sat on his knee, pulled there when he rose, as Samir shifted both legs to the floor beneath him. Domino wondered anxiously as to what the meeting had been about with the wood elves. Had he ripped them apart? Kicked them out? Chopped them into pieces? She would be fine with any and all of those options.

"Are they gone?" Samir asked, his voice calm, but stress had crept back into his voice as he switched the television off and Mr. Hughes flicked the light switch on.

"Is who gone?" Alexandru frowned, it was the one thing that really annoyed him about being on the opposite schedule of everyone else.

"Thorontur and Faeron came to visit with me today. They had a request that they wished to discuss."

"I hope you told them to go to hell." Domino said, and felt Alexandru wrap his arm around her waist.

"I couldn't have said it better myself." Samir nodded slightly.

"They are hoping to transition Farwathain into a spa like ours. Our rules, our conditions, with the pay scale we use and the treatment we give our employees." He knew this was going to be hard for the nonhumans in the room to understand, after centuries of bad feelings and memories, he'd had a difficult time listening as well. He had constantly been waiting for something, anything, in their conversation to tell him that they weren't sincere.

"What a crock of shit." That was Alexandru, Domino figured he knew a little about the wood elves super crappy past, as well.

"I thought that, too, but Thorontur never changed his story, they want to change, and they want our help to do it."

"That is the catch. He wants some of us to go there. Fuck no. I will not let that happen. Not ever." Samir stood up, his voice was booming.

"They did not request that I send any of my staff to Farwathain. They actually requested that I allow one of their people to work here for a year, to learn how we do things, and to do things our way. The non-human population is beginning to turn on them, this is the only thing that they can do to stay in business. And Eruraina, she is apparently adamant that they stop what they are doing." Mr. Hughes knew the men were still skeptical, he was, but when Thorontur had appeared desperate, something he had never once seen from the wood elf, he figured it wouldn't hurt to hear him out.

"Who is that?"

"Their older sister. She is the oldest of the wood elves on earth. The older generation left for the other seas a long time ago."

"The other seas?" Domino raised a brow and Alexandru frowned and shook his head.

"Now is not the time for a lesson on elvish lore, Domino. You told him to fuck off, right?" Alexandru stood up, running his hands through his hair.

"I did not." Mr. Hughes shook his head as he looked down at Domino, she was the only one not looking at him with anger in their eyes.

"They're lying." Samir hissed.

"He's never told the truth in his life."

"But Arc risks nothing by letting one of his employees come here for a year, does he? Even if it doesn't happen, it's no skin off Arc's back. At least he knows that HE tried. Even if they continue to be douchecanoes."

"What the hell is a douchecanoe?" Alex looked at her frowning and she chuckled.

"You are so old, my love. You should really bone up on your modern day slang."

"Who is staying?" Samir sighed, looking at Mr. Hughes with a little disappointment on his face.

"Faeron."

"Not Thorontur?"

Mr. Hughes shook his head, "No, not him. He has already left the property, Samir. I told him that I could never allow him here, I respect you to much for that. Faeron wasn't there back then, I believe."

Samir shook his head, "He was not."

"I don't expect any of you to associate with him, he will be given a room in the third floor, south wing, away from my other employees and the guests. He will be monitored at all times. When he is with a client, he will be under close supervision. The moment he looks to be breaking our rules, I will let you, personally, get rid of him."

"You do realize that my getting rid of him would involve ripping his head off." Samir stated, and Domino shivered, sensing the danger Samir presented.

Mr. Hughes nodded, "I already have a statement from Thorontur that he would not seek retribution if that very thing were to happen."

"Good."

A few minutes later, Domino watched Mr. Hughes and Samir leave the room after they'd said goodnight to her and Alexandru. When they were alone in the room, Alexandru turned to her and wrapped her up tightly in his arms, hugging her close as he brought her to sit on his lap with her legs on either side of his.

"You know why he hates the wood elves?" He grunted as he made quick work of getting her clothes off.

Domino nodded, "I hate the wood elves for what they did to him."

"You're a lot like a mamma bear. Protecting Mr. Hughes and Samir from those that would hurt them. Which is funny because they're stronger in their smallest finger than you are in your whole body."

Domino smiled, chuckling at him as he slipped a finger against her now exposed fold, finding it wet and warm.

"I don't know, I do a pretty good job of disarming you." She whimpered as he pushed a finger inside.