Sleep is often a peaceful occurrence, and waking up from a deep sleep is always a pain in the neck. This is a true statement for you. You almost always slept like a baby, but when you woke from a good sleep, you were a bear to deal with. Especially if you woke up with a rip-roaring headache, much like right now. You moved your hands up to your head and began to rub circles on your temples to try and ease the throbbing pain. You kept rubbing in hopes of the headache going away, but to no avail. Eventually you moved to try and find a cool spot on the pillow you were using, hoping that that would help with your aching head. As you moved, you felt friction along your waist, skin on skin contact if you wanted to be specific.
You groaned, knowing very well who the skin on the arm slung around your waist belonged to. You knew that you had clothes on since you could feel the fabric of what felt like a tank top and shorts clinging to your body. It was just that the hem of your shirt had been pushed up. You looked to where the arm lead, sure enough finding Luciano laying there on his stomach facing you. His eyes were slightly open as he looked at you, blinking every so often. His magenta orbs glowed in the darkness of the room, the curtains not having been drawn back yet due to the last rays of the sun still shining outside while the sun drifted off into the distance.
"What happened last night," you asked groggily.
"Hell if I fucking know amore mio. All I remember is having too much to drink," he replied just as groggily.
Luciano pulled you closer to his bare chest so he could cuddle you. You groaned once more, but snuggled into him regardless. His skin cold to the touch, but held a hidden warmth beneath it. It felt wonderful against your still throbbing temples. You honestly didn't care an ounce at the moment that he was invading your personal space. You only cared about getting your headache to go away, which his cold skin seemed to be helping with ever so slightly.
"I thought vampires couldn't drink alcohol," you said quietly, more so to yourself than him, but he responded anyway.
"We can't drink it straight up principessa. We can get the same sensation of being drunk by drinking the blood from those who are intoxicated, which happened to be what was being served last night at the ball. It is custom for it to be served at a large event like that, but why anyone let me drink that fucking much is a mystery. I should have been cut off after the tenth glass..."
"Why did anyone let me drink at all is what I want to know, and where did you get actual wine from?"
"Shh, not so loud bella, my head hurts just as much as yours does, if not more..."
"Sorry," you mumbled.
"It's fine. To answer your first question, we don't have the same age restrictions as your human society does on alcohol consumption. Like I said, we can't drink it straight up, but we can if it's mixed with blood. We don't see it as a necessity to have restrictions because vampire fledglings aren't as idiotic as human children. They know the difference between healthy blood and blood traced with alcohol from the moment they are born, whereas human children don't and think nothing of the difference in the scent of juice and alcohol. So, here, in my kingdom, a human can drink from any age if they so like. Henceforth, you were allowed to drink even though you are not "of legal age" in humanity's eyes. As for your second question, there is a small human population living within my kingdom. I let them keep their freedom so long as they obey my commands and supply my events with food and drinks for the human servants or random humans that may show up for the festivities. Within this population is a winemaker. He supplies me with what I need."
"I see... Was I drunk first or were you?"
"I believe you were."
"Tell me about how I acted while I was drunk and how you found me like that. It doesn't have to be too descriptive."
"As you wish."
~Flashback - Mid-ball - Luciano's P.O.V.~
This engagement ball is going much better than I anticipated it to go. (Y/n) is actually playing along and staying true to her word. It's very surprising given what I already know about her. It's strange though, I had her under my influence for a brief moment before I walked into here, but she broke it easily. Either she is mentally stronger than I thought, or I am losing my touch. It's probably the preceding one, but the possibly that I'm losing my touch still exists. What if I'm going soft?! Pull yourself together Luciano. You are a lean, mean, ruthless ruling machine. But I am so kind to her... She could make my heart beat if it was possible... Stop it Luciano! You're losing it! You are not turning soft, your just in love... Or maybe it's my hormones. That is a possibility. I am getting to the age of full bodily maturity, and it could just be that I'm being a horny hormonal adolescent, but father told me about this. What was that one cliché that he always used? "Love will make you do stupid things" was it? Yeah, that's the line. He wasn't wrong.
I should probably find (y/n). I haven't seen her in over two hours. She couldn't have gotten herself into trouble in that amount of time, right? Right. Why did I invite the whole kingdom again? At this rate I'll never find her. Ah, there's Lauren. She'll know where she is. She looks slightly nervous. Now she's running towards me. This can't be good.
"Your Majesty! You need to come take a look at lady (y/n)!"
"Is she alright? She's not hurt is she?"
"No, no. Just come quickly!"
This has me nervous now too, and I'm fairly sure it's showing though my friendly facade. I followed Lauren, having to run to keep up with the energetic girl. The scene before me was not what I was expecting. (Y/n) has the stupidest grin plastered onto her face, but it's absolutely adorable. Her pupils are much larger than usual. There is only one explanation for this: She's drunk. Her eyes seem to light up as they land on me. She got up and ran up to me, throwing her arms around my neck before giving me a small kiss on the lips. Yeah, she's definitely drunk. She wouldn't have done that if she was sober.
"Let's dance!"
I'm not going to pass her up on her offer to dance. Well, it's more like she's commanding me too, but I have no problem with this. I just hope that this won't effect our dancing. I don't wish to be made a fool of in front of my subjects.
~End of Flashback - Normal P.O.V.~
"That's all I can really tell you. The rest is a blur of scattered events."
"I'm really going to have to burn my lips off now."
"Is kissing me really that bad?"
"Yes."
"Well then. Screw you too."
"Not even in your dreams."
"It was a figure of speech..."
"I know..."
The two of you stayed curled up next to each other before Luciano's headache became unbearable. He rolled over so that his back was against the red satin fitted sheet of his king size bed. Since he still had his arm wrapped around you waist, you ended up rolling over with him. Your head rested against his chest along with one of your arms. The other was curled around his back. He showed no sign of discomfort and neither did you, so you both left well enough alone.
The vampire prince placed his free hand over his eyes and forehead, obviously trying to soothe the pounding in his head. He scrunched up his face in pain ever so slightly. Not a moment later the doors to his room then opened quietly, allowing Anna and Lauren to step into the darkened room.
"You called Your Majesty?" Anna questioned in a quiet voice.
"You know why I called you here," Luciano replied irritably, the pounding only seeming to become stronger.
"Ah, yes. Lauren and I will go fetch the items you require."
The two females left but were back in the room within a few minutes. They closed the doors behind them with their free hands and walked over to where Luciano and you lay still and silent. Luciano whispered into your ear, telling you to sit up. You elected to ignore him since he didn't give you a valid reason as to why you should.
"Bella, you need to sit up. Lauren has a medication and a glass of water to help with your headache," he whispered.
You shot up at the mention of medication and water, but quickly dropped back down to the pillow as a dizzy spell washed over you from your quick movements. Lauren helped you sit up, which in turn allowed Luciano to sit up as well. She handed you the pills, which you figured was some form of ibuprofen, but you didn't take them. Luciano looked at you as if you were stupid as he took hold of a cup full of a dark red liquid from Anna with a shaky hand.
"What? Don't you want your headache to go away?" he asked irritated.
"I do, but I remembered that taking medication for a hangover isn't such a good idea."
Luciano scoffed but soon regretted his action has he felt a great twinge of pain in his temples. He started to chug the liquid in his cup without a second thought. You watched him in awe as he finished the cup within seconds. He handed it back to Anna before licking his upper lip, ridding it of the red mustache he had acquired from the drink. He fell back onto the bed with a sigh as he felt some of the pressure in his head being relieved. You looked down, wishing that you wouldn't have drank last night.
"My lady," Lauren said quietly. "This isn't like the medication you have where you're from. These are simple sugar pills, a placebo. The real pain killer is mixed in the water. It's a blend of strong herbal remedies that have been perfected by vampires. It's almost like a clear tea of sorts."
You nodded your head and finally took the glass from her, discarding the sugar pills in the process. Your lips brushed the rim of the cup as you took your first sip. The drink was sweet tasting and refreshing. Just as Luciano had done, you polished off the drink in no time and handed the cup to Lauren. She took it while you laid yourself back down, curling up next to Luciano. He put his arm around your shoulders and gave a small squeeze. You could feel all the built up pressure leaving slowly, but it was a great relief to you nonetheless. Anna and Lauren bowed to the two of you before turning to leave.
"Lauren? Anna?" you questioned without looking at them.
"Yes my lady?" Anna responded.
"Do you think you could bring me a lighter? Or a box of matches?
"Why would you need those?" Lauren inquired.
"I need one of them to burn my lips off because I've been kissed by an old man."
Luciano hissed at you for your comment about him, which earned a chuckle from the two maids.
"I am not old."
"We've had this argument before, and I'm saying if a person is over eighty-five, they are old. You're like 3,679, so you're old."
"I'm only 2,099! I'm practically pubescent!"
"Oh, so you're a whiny little kid then."
"No!" His voice cracked as spoke. He cleared his throat. "I mean, no, that's not what I meant. I'm a man," he said, trying to make his voice deeper than it was.
"Yeah, a whiny one."
He hissed again causing you to internally chuckle. There went one thing off of the list of vampire stereotypes: Vampires do indeed hiss. Anna and Lauren giggled again from how childish their future king was acting. They knew better than to tell anyone about what happened in this room, so they were going to keep this between the two of them, you and Luciano. The duo bowed once more and left the room, giving the two of you privacy.
"By the way," you said, catching the prince's attention. "You still have to hold up your end of the deal."
"Yeah, yeah. It'll start tomorrow, now shut up and go back to sleep."
"Wow, someone's irritable."
"I said to shut up."
You smiled, knowing that you had won this little battle, and drifted back off to sleep.
~Author's Note~
DreamsForDays here! I decided to try to change to point of view, just for a little bit. Tell me what you guys thought of that so that I know if I should do it again or not at some point. Also, Reader-chan got a little too tipsy at the ball. I wonder what kind of embarrassing things she did? We may never know. Time for translations!
Translations: Italian
Amore mio - My love
Principessa - Princess
Bella - Beautiful
That's all of the translations! This chapter is a little shorter compared to the other chapters and the last one was quite a bit longer. The next chapter starts Reader-chan's adventures without Luciano constantly watching her. What can a girl do in three days? You'll just have to wait and see! Thanks for reading! Feedback in the comments in always appreciated! Until next time!