VAMPROTICA 2006 A Lady Aibell Press/Chippewa Publishing publication October 2006 Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729 Available Formats: Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF) ISBN 1-933400-25-0 Other available formats: Palm Doc (PDB), Rocket/REB1100 (RB), Pocket PC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB), hiebook (KML), iSilo (PDB), Mobipocket (PRC), OEBFF Format (IMP), Microsoft Reader (LIT), (HTML). VAMPROTICA 2006 Copyright © 2006 Edited by Jana J. Hanson Cover Art by Marianne La Croix
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole, or in part, by any means, without the written consent of the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination, or are fictitiously used. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Any trademarks referred to within this publication are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Chippewa Publishing, LLC., our products, or our website. WARNING: The contents of this book are intended for mature audiences 18 years of age and older only. Language, violence, and sexual situations may apply. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
VAMPROTICA 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Becky’s Dream-J. L. Day…………………………………1 Fang Shui-Anna J. Evans………………………………..21 Fisher of Men-Emily Veinglory…………………………43 Johan’s Possessions-Adrianna Dane……………………65 Phantom Desires-Bianca D’Arc…………………………89 Positive Encounters-H. A. Fowler……………………..113 Visions of The Night-Kay Derwydd…………………...138
BECKY’S DREAM By J. L. Day
J. L. Day
BECKY’S DREAM
BECKY’S DREAMS
Becky sat up quickly in bed. She rubbed her sleepy eyes to clear them, her ears tuning to the silence of the night, straining to hear what awakened her. There was nothing but stillness and absolute silence. Not even the tiniest chirp from a cricket. The nightly ritual was all too familiar. Every night for the past week she had been startled awake, only to find peace and silence surrounding her. Always the same, time after time, night after night. She slipped from bed as silent as she could, tiptoeing from the bedroom and down the hall to check on her son. He was lost in the carefree sleep of youth and innocence. Continuing down the hall, she stepped out of the house into the back yard. A warm and sultry summer night stirred with a slight southern breeze, and her flimsy T-shirt flapped in the wind. She tuned her ears again to the sound of the night, but was rewarded with no more to answer her questions than she found inside of the house. The grass felt cool beneath her feet and the water in the pool made a gentle rippling sound in the breeze. It slowly dawned on her that not only was the night still and quiet, it was totally and completely dark. No security lights, no lights on the inside of nearby homes, nothing. The night was black, as if there were an eerie curtain blocking out the outside world. Thinking there must have been a power outage, she peered around into the gloom of the pitch-black night, feeling alone and vulnerable. Fright won out in the battle of emotions echoing in her mind and a quick spin turned her around to nervously walk back toward the house. As the security of the back door loomed closer, a calm overcame her, creating the desire to stay outside and enjoy the night. It overpowered the other thoughts tormenting her worried mind. Where seconds before she had felt insecure and wished for the sanctity of the house, now all was peaceful and her only wish was to dwell awhile longer in the serenity of the
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unusual night. Mystical and magical, she heard her name floating upon the breeze in a drawn out and hoarse whisper. “Beccckkkyyyyy.” Mind reeling, her thoughts raced to rationalize between imagination and reality. An odd realization crept into her mind making the hair on her neck stand up. That whisper was not being spoken out loud. It seemed more like an echo in her mind. It also sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before? There was something unsettling about it, some quality that she couldn’t quite grasp, and it unnerved her. Oddly though, the voice comforted her and made her feel as if she were wrapped in a blanket of absolute safety. Becky gave into a sudden uncontrollable urge and removed her T-shirt, letting it slide from her hand onto the ground. She stood nude and exposed to the world, the gentle caress of the breeze coursing over her body. Air blew seductively over her breasts and she felt her nipples perk up, tightening slowly to stand erect and firm. There was an uncanny sexual intensity in the air and the breeze awakened desires deep within her tummy. Feeling mesmerized by unseen forces, she sensed a mystical power floating upon the night air. She found herself enjoying the security of the darkness engulfing her. She faced into the breeze, her hair whipping softly about her face. Wisps of bangs floated over her eyes and tendrils stuck to the corners of her mouth. The breeze caressed her tummy and tickled between her thighs. Her nipples stood firm and pierced into the night. An echo of unknown feelings stirred deep within her femininity. “Beccckkkyyyyy,” the low whispering voice called again. She did not even bother to look around; she knew that no one was there. The voice spoke to her mind, not her ears. Feeling slightly ludicrous and insane, she whispered softly in to the night. “Are you what has been pulling me from my sleep?” “Yeeeeeees,” came the answer, again in the long, drawn out whisper. “It is I, little one,” the same low and throaty voice continued aloud, half rumble and half sigh. An odd feeling washed over her. She was completely naked, alone and vulnerable in dark shadows, yet she felt safer than imaginable. Whatever it was, whomever it may have been, she knew that she was safe and protected not only from them but by them. “Where are you?” she asked into the night. “I am in the beyond, little one. I can not come to you, unless you ask.” Her mind grappled with what she heard and silently she wondered if the unseen voice was trustworthy. 2
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“You may trust me.” “But, I didn’t say anything,” she murmered, her voice trembling. “One need not speak for me to hear, little one.” With weakened knees and trembling body, her mind raced to find answers to questions rattling around inside her head. Her breasts heaved, rising and falling in rapid succession as she gasped for breath and tried to compose herself. She forced herself to inhale deeply and calm down. She slowed her breathing, telling herself to think this through. Though she was terrified, there was an overwhelming sense of the familiar about the man, the creature, or whatever he may be. Her common sense told her to fear; yet her instincts told her she was in no danger. Perhaps it was because she had been having the dreams so often, she felt she knew, at least in some small way, the manner of the creature speaking to her from the darkness. “Come to me that I may see you and know to whom I speak,” she requested of the unseen voice in the night, her voice trembling with panic mixed with excitement. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, yes, little dove,” echoed the answer. In the corner of the yard near the edge of the fence, a mist materialized. An outline slowly took shape and began to loom silhouetted against the darkened sky. Her breathing stopped for a moment as she took in the sheer enormity of the mystical man. He slowly strode closer, as the muscles in her belly tightened and a wild pulse pounded in her throat. Looming before her, he was both magnificent and fearsome. He was very tall and broad shouldered. His size was awe-inspiring. In the shadows of darkness, she could tell very little about how he looked, only that he had ominous yellow eyes that seemed to see right through her. “Calm yourself, Becky. It is I, and you have nothing to fear.” His real voice split the silence of the night. Turning his palm up, he extended his arm to her. His eyes told her to take it and obediently, she did so. He led her to a dark corner near the house then released her hand. He faced her and said, “Come into the light that I might better see you.” Just as she was about to ask what light he was referring to, he snapped his wrist and fire leapt from his fingers, igniting a small pile of sticks that appeared from nowhere. The night now danced with soft firelight and stepping nearer, she complied with his request, but in doing so got a better look at him as well. As her eyes slowly drank him in, she could not help but feel a thrill of excitement shiver through her naked body. She could not see him that well. But, she could see the burning light of admiration smoldering in his eyes. She could tell by his breathing and the intent look on his face, he was not only admiring her naked body, he was worshiping it.
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“My, my, my,” rumbled his powerful voice. “You are quite the sight to behold. I am breathless.” An odd sort of warmth spread through her as a tremor in his voice signaled his appreciation for the beauty and grace he found before him. He stepped closer to her and she felt as if her heart would stop. A reassuring smile spread over his face and he made a slight bow of his head. She understood that he was telling her not to fear him. Now that he was closer, the dancing flames illuminated his features. She was startled to realize that his eyes were not yellow but clear. Somewhere between gray and blue, though they really had no color at all. When he stepped from the fire and immersed himself once again into the night, they returned to their yellow glow of incandescence. His eyes were one most the most intriguing things about him; it was as if they reacted and changed at his whim. His skin was light and unblemished, not dark and tan as she had somehow had imagined. His hair was long and dark, like a shimmering black veil that hung from his head and nearly enshrouded his face. Looking up at him, she again felt the shock of his enormous size. He must stand nearly seven feet tall! His long and elegant limbs sprouted from an athletic and well-toned body. Her eyes trailed down his legs, noting the size of his feet. Big feet, she noticed and then a blush spread over her face from the thoughts that danced through her mind. The light of the fire faded into darkness. Again, she stood before the looming shape outlined so magnificently against the sky. With his hands on her shoulders, she gazed thoughtfully into the yellow orbs that peered intently down at her. “Who are you?” she asked in a quivering voice. “All in good time, sweet Becky,” came his throaty reply. He leaned toward her and lowered his face closer. Shock overwhelmed her as she realized that if kissing her was his intent, she would not stop him. Instead, she anticipated his lips with eagerness. A feeling of disappointment washed over her as he passed her lips and leaned lower. The disappointment slipped away as his lips pressed softly against the side of her throat. He lightly kissed her neck, lips parting to suckle the tender flesh and stroke it with his talented tongue. His arms wrapped firmly around her waist and he pulled her tightly against his powerful body. Though she willingly accepted his advances, she felt trapped. She was helpless, but eager. Frightened, yet curious. He kissed down her neck and nuzzled gingerly. His lips on her shoulder, he bit ever so gently at the collarbone. His lips moved back up her throat, and she felt a shiver course through his body. She felt him tremble, the heat of his breath flowing down her chest, making her nipples strain against him. His hands reached down to cup her ass and he 4
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pulled her firmly up to him as she was carried away with a feeling of peaceful relaxation. Somehow, this magical being was intoxicating and anesthetizing her. His lips parted and deep in her soul she knew what was coming next. She was not sure if she was victim or prey—perhaps just an object of his desire—she simply did not care. First, she heard a slight popping sound then a piercing sensation, but oddly, no pain whatsoever. The popping sound was his teeth tearing through my throat, she realized in an oddly comforted mind. She felt a small trickle of blood dribbling down her throat as he suckled tenderly. She felt the beat of her heart and then another sensation. It was his heartbeat echoing hers. The beats mixed and became one. A wave of euphoria overtook her. A soul-wrenching orgasm shuddered through her body as he slowly and gently lowered her to the ground. Lying on her back, seeing the night slowly fade into a gray mist, she mumbled a question: “Am I going to die?” His teeth slipped from her throat and a sad sigh escaped from her chest. He gazed lovingly into her eyes and caressed the sides of her face as he spoke in a soft whisper. “No, little one, you will not die.” He kissed her forehead and each one of her cheeks. Then he was gone, leaving her to lie there, aching and yearning for him. She awakened the next morning in her own bed, sleepy and spent, but none the worse for wear. She felt as if half of her was missing. Strange how you can miss someone you just met. Her mind turned to him, eagerly awaiting his return. She knew he would return. **** The office was fast-paced and hectic. Becky worked with vigor, though it was exhausting, more so mentally than physically. Yet, she felt oddly energized and alive. People at the office even commented on it, saying she must have caught her second wind and was whizzing around the office like a teenager. She even felt like a teenager. Her body did not feel the stress this time of year usually piled on. Her mind was acute and detail-oriented to a degree long lost. Answers to questions came before they were asked. She second-guessed what each person needed and her mind whirred with startling clarity. She did not question this newfound rejuvenation. She did not waste a precious moment with idle thoughts or curiosity as to its origin. She knew from whence the gift came. In some dark corner of her mind, she knew full well that her unearthly
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visitor from a few nights ago had granted her some small piece of his power, a tiny speck of the smoldering fire that illuminated his night eyes. “It was him,” she muttered to herself. “He gave me this.” Silently making a wish, she said, I only hope it lasts. She glanced around the room and took in the spectacle of day-to-day office life and felt more like an observer than a participant. Everything around her seemed to be in slow motion. Sounds were startlingly loud. When deep in thought and more or less hypnotized by the rhythm of life, a gentle and hushed voice whispered to the recesses of her mind. “Becckkkyyy.” Startled, she looked quickly around the room, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Shhhhhhhh,” whispered the voice again. “Do not be frightened. It is I.” Surveying the room, her eyes found no glimpse of what they sought; her newfound friend was not there. She struggled with the thought of calling him friend, part of her thinking she should refer to him as Master. There was no one even vaguely resembling the figure that had loomed in the haze outside of her home. Deciding to be brave and being very cautions not to make a sound with her lips, she forced her mind to utter; “Greetings, Master.” Holding her breath, she waited nervously and prayed her answer was the correct one. Finally, at long last, the reply echoed in the silence of her mind. “Well done, little one. Your salutation pleases me.” She had been standing, looking around the room and watching the activity around her. Feeling a bit queasy and possibly even faint, she sank slowly into her chair and felt secure in the sanctity of her desk. Becky forced herself to breathe, struggling to calm and center her mind. She waited impatiently for his voice to speak again, each tick of the clock seeming to take days. Nothing, not a single sound, came to her mind. A sinking feeling deep in the tummy made her feel nauseous. Trying to stand, Becky discovered her knees were wobbly and she decided to wait another minute before getting out of her chair. She began to feel her composure coming back to her then stood slowly like a colt on newborn legs, and walked quickly to the restroom. The restroom felt like a sanctuary. Peaceful solitude washed slowly over her. She reached for the door and the lock clicked into place with a metallic clink. Alone, she slowly began gathering her thoughts. She stood in front of the sink and ran lukewarm water over her hands, splashing it delicately onto her face. Staring into the mirror, she noticed little beads of water running along her chin, dripping down her throat, and she lost herself in the reflection. 6
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“Such a beautiful face,” the invasive whisper once again crept its way into her mind. “Stand very still, little dove,” the voice rumbled. She froze like a stone statue, allowing only her eyes to move. Heart racing, she felt magically transfixed, terrified of what was coming but euphoric with blissful anticipation at the same time. Believing she was slipping away from reality, she considered that perhaps the surreal moment she was now experiencing might possibly be something from a dream and surely could not be real. Completely alone in the restroom, the mirror right in front of her verified there was no one else in the room. Somehow—Oh GOD, how—she felt warm breath on the side of her neck. She peered closely into the mirror and in total amazement realized that she could see the strands of hair near her throat flicker as the breath flowed across her neck. Terror, joy, fear, ecstasy, reckless abandon and nightmarish anxiety all collided, a jumble of chaotic emotions wreaking havoc in her mind. Oh, GOD, she screamed inwardly. I can feel his hands on my hips! Another glance into the mirror once again reaffirmed her thoughts. Subtle impressions of hands made dents in the fabric of her blouse. The breath flowed a little firmer and a gentle laugh echoed from his mind to hers. “Shhhh, you are safe. I can not harm you anymore than I can harm myself.” His raspy voice calmed and soothed her. His hot breath moved over her neck. She felt the heat and dampness of it flowing down her blouse, tickling the curves of her breasts as it drifted down the cleavage and fluttered over her tummy. The heat, along with the excitement, made her entire body feel warm, and an indescribable, cozy feeling overtook her. She felt the rest of her body awaken as a familiar dampness between moist thighs reminded her she was a woman. Invisible hands strengthened their grip on her voluptuous hips. She felt a kiss from warm and wet lips pressing softly into the delicate side of her throat. Mesmerized and entranced, she watched her reflection in the mirror. She could see the imprint his sensuous lips left on her skin. His unseen hands slipped around her hips and slid up under the bottom of her blouse. Gentle strokes on her smooth tummy awakened fires in her womanly core that made it difficult to breathe. Time came to a complete stop; there was only herself, the mirror and his magical hands. Breathless with anticipation, she watched, hypnotized as the clear outline of hands stretched through her blouse. The imprints crept higher and then mercifully, they cupped her anxious breasts, caressing them through the lacy bra. In the mirror, it looked like a small animal had wiggled up her blouse and was trying to get out. The sight was almost comical, but the intensity of the moment drove away any desire to laugh. She could scarcely take in enough breath to keep from feeling 7
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lightheaded; expending precious air on laughter was out of the question. The outline was so clear she could even see fingers as they closed over the nipples straining against the confining bra, tugging gently on each one. Serious heat and moisture percolated in the clean-shaven mound softly nestled between her thighs. Tiny droplets of moisture trickled along swollen lips and her panties soon felt moist. A tightening of her tummy made her aware of her state of arousal and her entire body shivered with delight. His hands descended slowly down her torso, and his lips closed against the softness of her throat. Down came the magical hands. They traced along her curvaceous form and followed the lines of her hips, working down her thighs. They ran along the waistline of her skirt then lifted it slowly. Watching in the mirror, all she saw was her skirt rising magically into the air. Then at long last his hands slid up her thighs, along the outer sides of her hips. The mouth that suckled her throat opened and teeth raked gently over her delicate skin. Ohhhh GOD, her mind once again cried out. Yeeeeesssssss! She waited in delirium for the slight prick as his teeth popped through the skin, a sharp but short-lived pain. Ecstasy washed over her and flooded away all conscience thought or awareness. Fingers crept and crawled slower and slower towards heaven, she felt the suction as he closed his mouth to bring her the bite she longed for and craved so desperately. She felt his teeth drag over her sensitive skin and pull back. She tensed knowing that next would come his angelic bite. Bracing herself, she felt a flood of moisture cascade down her thighs as a spectacular orgasm racked her body. Closer, closer, here it comes. His teeth pressed into her. Tap, tap, tap, a knock echoed on the door. “Becky, are you all right in there?” A worried voice violently disrupted the moment. She looked into the mirror, but there was nothing, not even the outline of hands. Her skirt had floated back down to her knees. “Yes, I am okay,” she said with a disappointed feeling washing over her. She smiled softly and gazed at her flushed face in the mirror. Leaning slightly forward, she blew a kiss and walked to exit the door. **** Lying in her hotel room alone and bored, Becky draped herself across the bed to take a nap. Away for some work-related training, she enjoyed the quiet solitude and time for herself. Even with the peace and tranquility of not being subject to the 8
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constant beck and call of endless streams of people, she could not quite seem to relax enough to take the luxurious nap she had been yearning for. She was having trouble identifying the cause for the restlessness and then it dawned on her—she could feel him coming for her. There were a couple of very important parts in that last thought that bothered her. Things so subtle as to be ignored by many, her subconscious seemed inclined to enlighten her. First was the very fact that she could somehow sense him coming for her, moving closer and closer as he made his way. Second is that she could feel him coming at all. In the pit of her stomach, she felt him closing in long before she had the slightest sound to validate the feeling. The third thing that troubled her is that the inner voice quite clearly said coming for her and not coming to her. Something so simple as replacing to with for, yet it made an entirely different change to the context of the thought. A unique and heady feeling built to a crescendo in her mind. She realized that the emotion so completely overtaking her was a mixture of horror and pure, unadulterated wantonness. Sensing his nearness, her breath sped to a pant, her tongue flicked along anxious lips, her breasts heaved as if she has just finished a marathon. A plethora of emotions swarmed through her mind and ignited a fire throughout her body. He was close enough that she could hear his boots as he stalked down the concrete hallway, a hollow and echoing click as each heel impacted the floor. She knew he was making so much noise in an effort to torture and to entice her mind to wander. Closer and closer he came. Finally, there was an incredibly soft and gentle tapping at the door. As she walked to the door, her mind wrestled with what might come next. She knew she should run, that locking the door and calling the police was the only logical thing to do. But that was not what she wanted to do. As the door swung open, she instinctually lowered her head, staring down at the floor. From somewhere deep within her soul, she heard a voice saying meekly, “Please come inside, Master.” She stepped back and away from the door, feeling him as he swept past her into the room. The door slowly swung shut and the locks clicked into place with a thunk. Startled, she realized neither one of them had touched the door or taken the action of closing it. It miraculously shut, of its own volition, but her heart knew whose powers closed the door. Tears welled in her eyes. Her body trembled and the fire in her already nervous tummy roared into an eternal flame. Her eyes lifted to stare into his. He raised his hand, palm out to her and she came to the realization that she was completely paralyzed. Somehow, with the 9
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gesture of raising his arm, he had cast a spell or hypnotized her in some mystical way. He walked to her—tantalizingly slow—and placed a hand upon her heaving chest, pushing her onto the bed. She fell onto her back, eyes staring at the ceiling and felt his knees sink into the mattress beside her. She observed for the first time that his index finger had transformed into what could only be described as a talon. It slid along the bottom of her jaw and scraped at the edge of her chin. Then it flicked downward and the buttons of her blouse were gone. With the same nonchalant movement, he separated her bra in the middle. It slowly slithered off of her breasts and fell limply to each side. His hands slid under her shoulders and he lifted her up, drawing her to his chest as the other hand pulled the remnants of clothing from her shuddering body. A quick flick of the sharp talon and her blue jeans were button-less. A tug and the zipper gave way. The jeans made a sort of vibration as the talon sliced through the cotton threads. A whisk of his hand and her panties joined the pile of shredded material that once was clothing. Straining to raise her head to look at him, she felt his gaze seep into her soul as his burning eyes locked onto hers. There was an almost rhythmic pulse as his eyes throbbed with color. Not color as most people have in their eyes. A smoldering fire lay in his eyes; a pitch black darkness that sucked her in. Two large orbs of darkness became one and then all was black as reality first blurred and then fell completely away. She saw him purse his lips and blow, as if to whistle at a pretty girl. As he did so, the lights popped out one by one. Pop, pop, pop. When the last bit of illumination disappeared in concert with the final popping sound, she realized her eyes had already adjusted and could see everything around her in perfect detail. He had vanished into thin air, not a trace of him to be seen. She lay there for a while, occasionally trying to move, but unable to because his grip on her had not loosened in the least. At long last, she heard his boots again. This time, there was the scrape and unmistakable dragging sounds accompanying the hollow click of his boot heels. The door swung open and she saw his shadow in the door. He stepped into the room and she saw what was making the dragging sounds outside. The door slammed shut behind him. A whimpering young woman struggled at his side, his hand entwined in her long flowing hair as he dragged her by it. Becky wondered what he had in mind. Part of her logically thought this was some act of perversion and he was bringing a third party into the night’s frolic in classic ménage a trois. Even as she thought it, she felt her eyes drawn to his and watched as he bent to place the shivering girl on the bed beside her. Breathless, she watched as his head lowered to the quivering girl’s throat. She stifled a scream as she heard his needle-like teeth pop into tender flesh. She saw it 10
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all in slow motion— how the girl’s legs stiffened and jerked; how her body convulsed. She watched in amazement as the terrified girl calmed and melted into him. Becky noticed he had stopped. He was watching her intently, his eyes seeming to bore into her very soul. There was dampness between her thighs and a confusing chaos of emotions boiling in her head. An odd mixture of abject horror and extreme sexual intensity raged for supremacy in her mind. She had no thoughts for the circumstances, no guilt and no sense of responsibility to her child. She knew she should not be having the thoughts she was experiencing. She was aware that she should have been considering the effects this adventure would have on her family; on her child. But, her mind was focused with absolute tunnel vision on the drama unfolding before her and on the unmentionable emotions wracking her mind. The sensations melded into one and what had felt like a smoldering coal blossomed into a raging inferno. She vaguely recognized the feeling. It was hunger, but it was more than that—much more. It was an insatiable yearning for nourishment; an unquenchable thirst so powerful as to consume her mind. She watched in awe as he drew her closer and then offered the young girl’s throat like the tantric spoils of war. “Drink, little one,” rumbled his voice, echoing inside of her head. She lowered her mouth to cover the gaping wound in the girl’s delicate neck. Without the slightest revulsion, she began to suckle the blood as it streamed from punctured veins. As she lapped eagerly at the bloody feast, her mind recalled suckling her baby at her breast and she felt her nipples tighten. It was the same sensation, the same peace. It was an eerie semblance to a suckling child and the bond between mother and infant. The bond was different, the emotion unique, but the underlying chemistry felt vaguely the same. After a moment, she realized she could feel the heartbeat of her conquest. She felt it drumming in her temples, throbbing in her femininity. She felt very nearly as if her hungry mouth would inhale the girl’s soul. Watching the girls body grow limp, she sensed the life slipping from her prize, like the girl was sliding out of a cloak and stepping toward freedom and release. There was none of the sadness one would expect, none of the guilt or stomach wrenching horror at what she had just done. It was as if she had done the girl an incredible honor, or perhaps as if she had given her a great gift. As the life ebbed from the girl’s body, Becky sensed the soul pass through her as it re-entered the universe. This was an awakening. She realized that there is no death. There is only a continuation of life. A soul merely takes a step from one world into another; the mixing of day into night.
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She kissed the girl’s cooling forehead, thanking her for the gift, then turned her eyes to meet her Master’s. She saw the obvious pleasure in his eyes, but behind the twinkle of happiness, she saw a roaring furnace of desire building towards release. Again feeling paralyzed by some magical spell, she watched as he leaned toward her face. Thinking he was about to kiss her, or possibly rip out her throat, she could not help but feel slightly nervous as his lips reached for her soft skin. She felt the stroke of his tongue and the plumpness of his lips pressing into her and realized he was cleaning the blood from her. “Mmmmmm, a fine vintage, was she not?” she heard his voice echo in the recesses of her mind. His lips traveled downward to her chest and covered each breast, smothering them in affectionate kisses. His tongue trailed along and slithered to and fro intermittently between kisses. He circled the erect and swollen nipples, kissing and sucking the soft underbelly of each breast. His tongue danced upward and spiraled teasingly around each nipple, first one and then the other. He moved back and forth, sensuously smothering each breast in attention as he lavished affection upon her. His hands reached down, parting her willing thighs as he suckled her breasts and his knowing fingers danced erratically over her skin. Dancing and hopping from location to location, his fingers somehow deepened her enchantment. Lifting his face from Becky’s breasts, he began kissing down the middle of her tummy, slowly and sensually. His tongue glided over her clean-shaven pubic mound, and he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Maybe later, little one,” he murmured softly and then moved back down to lie beside her. A low moan escaped her, the anticipation and sexual excitement that had built within her body cried out for release, but she knew it must wait for later. He seemed to have other plans. Taking her by the hand, he gently pulled her to a standing position and guided her across the room. They stepped out onto the balcony and before she realized what was happening, he pulled her with him. For a brief moment, the night air rushed by her face and caused a lump of terror to rise in her throat. They were falling. The dropping sensation lasted for but a brief moment then they begin to soar as if on magic wings. Holding hands, they glided across the night sky and the lights of the city dim below. Somehow, she knew if he were to let go of her hand she would plummet to a gruesome death. Air rushed over her nude body; she felt as light as a feather as they continued their ascent into the night. The wind coursed over them and its caress on her bare skin reminded her of skinny-dipping on a warm summer night. It flowed over her body, tickling and soothing every nook and cranny, as well as the more delightfully exposed portions 12
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of her anatomy. Climbing closer and closer to the moon, she experienced exhilaration impossible to describe. They flew higher and higher, until finally her lungs felt as if they would implode, then they begin a gradual descent to the waiting earth. Ever so slowly, the lights began to glow brighter, the city came back to life and the world became animated again. **** Once more, Becky awoke in confusion. Her stomach heaved and cramped. She rushed into the restroom to vomit and torrents of what could only be blood gushed from her mouth. Kneeling in front of the toilet, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, staring at the smear of near black blood. Once the cramping ceased, she rose to her feet and staggered to the sink to wash her face and gargle. Looking into the mirror, she found herself re-living the previous night and wondered how much was real and what might have been nightmarish dreams. Mom, a voice called out to her from somewhere deep in her subconscious. This voice was not mysterious or awe inspiring; it was the sweet and angelic voice of her son. His voice rang in her head, echoing in her ears. The voice of her son brought reality sharply into focus and she felt turmoil, chaotic emotions battling for supremacy in her heart. As she brushed her teeth, images of her son flashed through her mind. She could not help but wonder why he was on her mind. She traveled to schools and seminars often enough and was not usually plagued with homesickness. Yet, there he was, in her every thought. She gazed into the mirror, a quizzical face staring back at her and she felt haunted by something she could not quite seem to grasp. Then it dawned on her. Last night’s adventures—where were they taking her? Where was this wonderful and exciting new Master leading her? As she replayed the night’s activities, she felt no shame or remorse. It was oddly beautiful, the taking of the girl’s life. In reality, she herself had not punctured the delicate throat nor had she stolen the girl away. She relived the euphoric moment when the girl’s soul slipped free from her body, the pure glow of happiness in the youth’s eyes and the whispered thanks as her soul left this life and entered the next. When she had seen the gorgeous soul floating upwards to the brilliant white light miraculously appearing in the night sky, all she remembered feeling was joy and celebration. She knew the Master had not taken life from someone with a desire to live, but instead had assisted an unhappy soul in gaining its freedom. She knew the death had been merciful and liberating. She recalled her surprise at 13
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discovering that life was so fragile, so beautiful and that there was no real death. Passing away meant just that—passing from one life into the next. No terror, nothing to fear, just moving from one point into another. What was it that bothered her? Mom, the voice again pleaded in her mind. Then it came to her. To live the life of her beloved Master would mean abandoning her child. She knew what her Master was and what it meant. He was a vampire, an immortal, and to devote herself to him would mean leaving her child. The mere thought of this brought pangs of remorse. In her heart, she knew she could never abandon her child. But, what about him, his feelings, his pain? Does it even matter? Would he even let me leave? Her mind played through countless scenarios as she gathered her thoughts. She saw him; her imagination holding a perfect picture of his face. There was something sad and forlorn about him. Though he never mentioned it, she knew his was a lonely soul and that eternity had taken its toll. Part of the smoldering blackness of his eyes was a haunting, empty loneliness. It lay there, unheeded by most. Yet, it was there and she could see it. “Master, come to me if you can,” she spoke aloud, her voice sounding hollow in the empty room. His voice startled her, he replied so quickly and so very closely. “Yes, little one.” Her shocked eyes looked up, seeing him standing in the corner immersed in the shadows of the dimly lit hotel room. His warm smile filled her with joy, her body feeling as if it might float happily into the air. So many gifts this man had given her. There was so much more to discover, places to go, things to experience and unspoken promises yet to be fulfilled. “Master, where is this going, this thing between us? What is it exactly that you offer me? What sacrifices must I make? What changes? Do I have choices? Am I already past the point of no return?” She could see the pain in his eyes, as he realized she had been thinking about the consequences of a life by his side. She knew he could see into her very soul, and that he could see the image of her son so firmly emblazoned there. “There are no changes, no choices to make, little one. I will not take you away from your son.” His voice sounded sad and weary. “I offer you the joy of friendship. The bliss of ecstasy unleashed and the freedom to escape from your world now and then. That is all. I will not and would not take you away from a son that needs you more than I. Never would I dream of hurting you or your son. “I brought you the girl last night because I wished for you to see with your own eyes, experience through your soul that what I do isn’t always so horrible or 14
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murderous. There can be a beauty to it. Not all lives need to be lived. Some are more horrendous in living than dying. I did not wish you to think of me as a monster. “I will not lie to you. There are times when it is not so glorious, nor so honorable. Not all souls are so happy to leave. But, for the most part, I try to feed on melancholy souls wishing for the chance to leave this life. “Mine is a lonely life. I have lived through countless years and have watched generation after generation of friends, loved ones, and acquaintances pass from this life into the next. My life is an endless cycle and often it seems I am just reliving the same night. “Hunger gnaws mercilessly at the hollow pit of my stomach. Ravenous and wild, it churns inside of me with cataclysmic fervor. It is more than mere hunger, more than wanton desire. The need to feed on not only sustenance but on the very essence of life causes within my tormented soul an upheaval beyond human comprehension. Raging like an inferno, inside of my pain-wracked body a storm engulfs me. “Every hotel I hide in, be it an inn from the old days or a cheap motel beside an asphalt highway, they are all the same. Only the food the humans eat and the clothing they wear changes. The night itself is as repetitive as one of the television shows I watch when boredom overcomes me. It is always the same. “I can hear the heartbeat of the man in the next room. It thumps not unlike a distant wind-up alarm clock. I am surrounded by smells and sounds that sicken yet tantalize me. Sweat and body odor permeate the air. Try as I might, I can’t seem to shut out the loud and boisterous bumping and crashing in the rooms around me. A crew of workers from some oilfield company blowing off steam or teenagers having a wild and reckless party, their noise invades my mind and disrupts my thoughts. Now and then, a beer bottle falls and crashes against the ground outside of my room. Prostitutes climb the stairs to the jeering catcalls of men lost in the moment and oblivious to those around them. “I can feel the raw and chaotic energy being pumped into the night by testosterone-driven partiers. I feel their excitement, the animal desire and their reckless abandon. The energy they emit combines with my own and the furnace within me rages even hotter. I smell fear from the shifty-eyed salesman cowering in the room next to me. I smell the stale cigarettes and whiskey of the man passed out in alcoholic stupor in the room on the other side of me. I stand in my doorway and try to breathe in the night air and allow my mind time to settle and as I do so, a young girl walks by and smiles at me in a somewhat brazen manner. “She glances up at me, eyes bleary, dim and blurred. ‘Wan some cumpny darlin?’ She could almost be the same girl, one century to the next. Her voice is raspy and rattles. I can’t help but wonder if she is aware of the cancer slowly 15
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devouring her throat and lungs. I don’t speak to her, but look at her in a way that causes her to avert her eyes and shuffle quickly away. Not for long, though. Soon another girl just like her will make the same proposition. “I re-live this endless cycle time and time again. Though it is tempting, I won’t feed on any of these imbeciles I speak of. Their alcohol-laden blood gives me a headache the next morning and the drugs that flow through them so freely make my mind swirl and loose control. Loosing control for one gifted with my powers is not a good thing. It isn’t good for me and it certainly isn’t good for the humans that I shelter myself amongst. “There is an odd stewardship, a sort of responsibility between an immortal such as I and the humans he dwells among. It sounds cruel and unjust, but in many ways they are a crop to be tended and cared for. Yes, crops are harvested, but great care must be taken not to destroy the seed upon which my survival depends in the long run. To put it in human terms, a hunter can’t go out into the woods and murder every deer in the forest. He must exercise control and cultivate certain ones, leaving the breeding population to grow and prosper. A prosperous herd is well worth the extra care and restraint that goes in being a good steward. It also insures your own survival and maximizes the benefits you reap. “Stewardship. That is the reason I cannot simply give in to every urge I have and pillage everything around me. It is what keeps me from going out and causing mayhem and destruction, much as the idea appeals to me. I must be honest, though. It is more than just self-control and restraint. The sickness that runs rampant in the people I find myself surrounded by turns my stomach. Just as a human would shy away from rancid meat or soured milk, I avoid feeding on the dregs of human society as much as possible. A pity, in all actuality. Were I to feed more on the lower life forms and forgotten souls, I might provide a better service to the crop. I do tend the herd and cull undesirables, but that is another matter. I perform that service for the good of all, for the welfare of my crop, and largely because they simply piss me off. “Nothing tastes sweeter in my throat than the torrential gush of blood pouring from the ragged gash ripped into the neck of a pedophile or a rapist. I am not particularly fond of most humans, but there are those among them that are not even worthy of being referred to as a person. They are subhuman. Even their blood is tainted. I don’t drink it, but spit it back upon the ground after draining it from them. There is no sweetness in their blood. Rather it is the sweetness of righting a wrong, avenging the innocent and stopping the horror from happening again. That sweetness is intoxicating and I indulge in it, time to time. “For the most part, I am much like any other hunter. I seek the perfect prey. I seek the perfect setting. I am after not only fulfillment, but am also mindful of my immediate and long term welfare. When I feed, I must admit I prefer to dine on the 16
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fine and delicate bouquet of a woman. Men will do and I suppose I take that route most of the time, but for a truly tasty treat, I hunt the streets in search of a woman. There is food and then there are delicacies. Drinking the blood from some dockworker or truck driver will keep me alive and most times I am satisfied with them, but there are times, oh, there are times when I crave something a bit more exotic. “Sometimes, it is the joy of toying with my meal that pleases me more than the sustenance itself. Sometimes it is the rarity of it.” Becky looked at him and could see the pain and anguish in his eyes as he recounted the days of his life. It is always the same, he said “Throughout the centuries only the clothing and surroundings changed, never the people. “I walk through life alone, as I have for ages. Mortals think that immortality would be divine, but I assure you it is not always such a thing to be envied. The saying sounds foolish, but it is hauntingly true—forever is a long time. “It is a long time to be alone, to stand on the fringes of the living and watch without truly being able to become a participant and to watch unobserved as life passes you by. It’s a long time to stand outside a window, looking in.” **** What a sad and lonely life, Becky thought to herself. She gazed up at her Master. Though he had promised not to take her away from her son, she will forever feel that he had claimed her as his own and that she—in some strange way—belonged to him. Her arms ached to wrap around him, to pull him to her. She longed to give him comfort. She was sad to know he would awaken in the same world tomorrow as he went to sleep in today and that it would go on that way for him, every day a repeat of the one before. As she considered her own life—seemingly mundane and boring before—she considered herself blessed. Immortality may be okay in a dream world, but the reality of it is not so glorious as one assumes. Thinking of watching her son grow into a man, of seeing and participating in his life and even the scary prospects of growing old, she realized wasn’t such a horrible prospect. Life really wasn’t all that bad. “Will you just leave without ever seeing me again?” she asked her Master. “Have the past weeks been frolic and nothing more?” “No, little one,” he answered in a hoarse and emotional whisper. “I will be here. I will watch as you and your son age. I will watch the joy of your life as an outsider peeking in through a window, until such a time as you wish me to go 17
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away. When you no longer desire to have me having lurking around, you have but to ask it and I will vanish into your memories. “I will be here as your friend and your confidant until such time as you no longer need me and trust me. There will be a time when you no longer have room for me in your life. For you to truly live your life, you will need to pursue things in which I can not be a part of, dreams that I would only be a stumbling block for. When such a time comes, I will leave, taking nothing but joyous memories with me.” With those words, he vanished into thin air. She knew the pain had been too much for him to bear, but she also knew she would see him again someday. She found tears welling in her eyes and spilling down each cheek. The sheer sadness of what he said overwhelmed her. The image of him going on his way, shoulders hunched against the torments of immortality, was almost too much to bear. She could not help but imagine countless years without love and without being a part of anything, always being an outsider. I will love you, Master, forever and always. As long as I breathe, I will give what I can of myself to you. I will live my life, cherish my son and watch him grow. Then someday, who knows? Maybe, just maybe, I will join my Master and walk beside you. Maybe I can illuminate the shadows that engulf you and bring you joy and happiness and most of all, love. THE END
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About The Author
J. L. Day J.L. Day is the pen name of Jeff Day. A lifelong inveterate reader, books presented the allure of places untraveled, people not yet met, and adventures only dreamed of. His professional work in computers opened the call to writing, sparking his odyssey as a writer. Happy to have found a way to share his soul, he spends countless hours at the keyboard creating gifts of himself to present to his readers. Jeff was raised in rural west Texas near Abilene. Loving the region and its rich heritage, he resides there still. Visit Jeff online at www.jlday.net or www.myspace.com/masterbodie
Our authors love to hear from their readers! You can write to J. L. here: J. L. Day c/o Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729
FANG SHUI By Anna J. Evans
FANG SHUI
“Step away from my butler,” Leo seethed, resisting the urge to rip Eve’s fangs from his household help and beat both within an inch of their lives. Things like this didn’t happen under his roof, or at least they hadn’t until a certain houseguest descended and turned his peaceful, ordered home into a place where dark angels feared to tread. “Eeyaks,” Eve said, raising her deep blue eyes to his, but keeping her fangs where they were. She smiled at him around the mouthful of Ernst presently trapped between her pouting pink lips. “Did you tell me to relax?” “Yeysh.” She laughed, wrinkling her slightly upturned nose in his direction. She was cute, dangerously cute, but she was in for a rude awakening if she thought he actually gave a shit. He’d outgrown cute pains in the ass before she was born, especially newly undead pains in the ass. If he had his way, all young vampires would be locked in an underground tomb for their first fifty years of death. At least. They were far too obnoxious to be tolerated aboveground any sooner than that. “Eve, I’ll give you two seconds to take your mouth off of Ernst,” Leo said, his tone one that encouraged no argument. He’d literally scared people to death with that tone, but he still breathed a sigh of relief when Eve’s fangs slid cleanly from Ernst’s throat. No matter how irritating the girl might be, he didn’t want to use force against her. He didn’t want to throw away three hundred years of selfdiscipline just to show a bratty little vamp he meant business. Besides, for some strange reason, he felt insanely jealous of his butler. “Listen, I can explain—” “Silence. I don’t want to hear it.” “That’s mature.” “If I were you, I would shut my mouth before I made this situation worse,” Leo seethed. 21
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“Well, if I were you, I would just relax for a second and let me explain.” “Enough! Up the stairs!” “Aren’t you at least going to count to ten before you send me to my room, Dad?” Eve asked as she licked the blood from the edges of her lips and flipped her blonde and purple streaked hair back over her shoulder in a gesture of defiance that irritated him almost as much as the ridiculous color of her hair. She was a natural blonde with a classically beautiful face; why did she have to ruin what would have been an almost stunning beauty with ‘Barney Number Five’ or whatever the hell color she applied on a weekly basis? “I am not your dad, thank God. And that is not your room, at least not for very much longer,” Leo said, crossing the floor to grab Eve by her defiant little elbow and lead her forcibly up the winding staircase. Ernst was still slack-jawed from the effects of Eve’s vampire’s kiss and would remain so for at least the next half-hour. That left plenty of time for Leo to get Eve out of his life before he had to dispense an appropriate punishment for a disobedient servant or examine why he wanted to beat the look of lust from Ernst’s face. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t packed anyone’s bags in over a century, he would figure out how to bundle up the annoying little package who struggled lightly in his grip. Hell, he’d cart her trunks to the train station on his own back if it were the only way to finally get her to leave him in peace. “There’s no reason to get so upset.” “Silence.” “Quit saying ‘silence’ and let go of me,” Eve said, obviously displeased at being forced to scamper beside him since he was making no allowances for her shorter legs. Amazing how someone barely five foot two could create such a giant sized disturbance in his daily life. “You’re not giving the orders.” “I’m sorry I broke the rules, but—” “Too little, too late. You’ve abused my hospitality and deliberately disobeyed the rules of this house. I want you out of here by tomorrow morning,” he said, throwing open the door to her quarters and immediately freezing where he stood. “Dear God in heaven, what have you done?” he gasped, fighting the urge to fall to his knees and sink his head into his hands. Just when he’d thought it couldn’t get any worse. **** “Listen, Leo, I’ll clean it up. There’s nothing I’ve done that can’t be undone,” Eve said in her best nothing to be stressed about voice. 22
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Leo had been sitting in the desk chair in the corner of the room for a good ten minutes, not saying a word, shushing her with a trembling hand every time she dared to break the silence. But this time, she would not be shushed. She had to make him see that she didn’t mean to entirely freak him out. She just wanted to finally get a reaction from her undeniably delicious host, to break past that calm, collected shell to the passionate man she sensed underneath. This wasn’t at all the response she had hoped for, however, when she overhauled her prim and proper little guestroom into a gothic lair with all the trimmings. She had hoped that Leo might find the black satin sheets a tempting place to throw her down and ravish her or, at the very least, enrage him enough to make use of the restraints on the wall. Submission usually wasn’t her bag, but Eve couldn’t imagine anything more erotic than having Leo strap her hands and legs to the wall and spank her soundly. Something low in her body tightened every time she fantasized about the flat of Leo’s hand landing on her bare skin with enough force to sting, to redden her sensitive flesh. Alone in her bed at night, she’d played out the scenario more times than she could count. He’d spank her hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to dull the throbbing between her legs. In her fantasies, she’d been squirming, moaning, arching her ass into each measured slap, hungry for his domination, his sensual punishment. He’d driven her mad, made her wild with need, wild enough to beg for it before he pressed his nude length against her back, letting her ass cradle his cock in its crevice. Every night, she’d moaned aloud into her room as the dream Leo lifted and separated her stinging buttocks and pressed the head of his thick shaft into her dripping channel, beginning to fuck her into a bliss only previously imagined. “Leo? Please say something,” Eve pleaded, forcing her thoughts away from her sweet fantasy punishment and back to the sad reality at hand. The poor man looked like she’d killed his best friend rather than redecorated the least desirable guest room in the entire castle. When she first made plans to visit her maker’s maker in Romania, she had been thrilled to the tips of her fangs with the chance to meet a three hundred year old vamp who lived in an actual castle. Her disappointment had been profound when she arrived to find the ancient keep anything but dark and brooding, and her host a neat freak with a Feng Shui fetish. A fairy tale princess castle nestled in picturesque autumn woods was the last place she wanted to spend her vacation. The fact that Leo had put her in the worst room in the castle—a cramped, windowless chamber where she sweated during the day and froze at night—only added insult to injury. Still, she extended her stay not once but twice, and there was only one reason for that. She was completely obsessed, had a major lust jones for a stuffy old 23
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vampire who had spent three hours lecturing her about closing the bathroom door so vital energy didn’t flow down the toilet. It was crazy, but she couldn’t seem to help herself, couldn’t quit fantasizing about his full lips pressed against hers as she ran her hands over his body, doing her best to rumple his usually scrupulously ordered person. “You have violated my home, completely destroyed the flow of energy I have worked on for decades,” Leo said, his tone as cold as his ice blue eyes. Still, even the sound of his I’m really pissed at you now voice was enough to make her nipples pebble against her black sweater, make her pussy throb inside her black leather pants. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, all masculine angles and firm muscle stretched over six feet of pure studly vampire. His eyes were the exact color of a wolf they had seen during one of their daily walks in the woods and the dark brown of his hair made them shine with even more cold brilliance. From the second she set eyes on the man, she’d wanted him, but it was only after hearing his voice that she really lost her mind with lust. His voice was a thing of such velvety deepness that Eve was certain she would be able to feel it on her skin if he were to rumble sweet nothings against her flesh as he kissed his way down her body. She had wanted to roll in that voice, rub herself against it like a cat since the second he asked her if she had “really brought this much baggage for a two week stay.” Sigh. But it seemed they were never to be. He wanted to kick her to the curb for snacking on the butler after he’d denied her any real food since the day she had arrived. She was only ten years dead, for god’s sakes, and had never tried to survive on animal blood alone for more than three days at a time. The fact that she’d lasted nearly a month before trying to sneak a little something to help assuage the viscous hunger driving her mad, almost as mad as her lust for Leo, was unbelievable. She should be getting a medal, or at least a cookie, or maybe a kiss or two. Certainly not the old heave ho. “Not the flow of energy stuff again, Leo. I’m telling you, that’s all new age mumbo jumbo,” Eve said, slowly walking across the room, approaching her host as carefully as she would any angered predator. He was a nice vampire, a very nice vampire for his age, but he was still an ancient bloodsucker and her maker had warned her to treat him with respect. Oh god, how I wish he’d force me to treat him with respect. “I don’t need to be advised by someone still in their first half century,” Leo snapped, his eyes still locked on the room before him, even when she stood only inches from his chair.
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A strange energy sizzled between them, an electricity undeniably sexual in nature, and Eve wondered if Leo felt it too. Is that why he had held himself apart from her since the day she arrived? Is that why he wouldn’t join her on any nighttime outings beyond the castle walls or even allow her to open a bottle of wine for their dinner? Did he need to work to keep from touching her, tasting her? She had tried to make it clear that Stephen, her maker, wasn’t interested in her as a potential mate. They had agreed to be friends and nothing more, and she was free to look elsewhere for companionship. But sometimes older vampires didn’t understand the free agent concept. In the past, all the vampires changed by a master vampire were their property, their people for the rest of their undead existence unless they themselves gained enough power to become a master. Could Leo be pushing her away simply because he thought she belonged to someone else? There was only one way to find out. “You’re right,” Eve said, trying to keep her breath from speeding as she gathered all her courage and stepped even closer to Leo’s chair, close enough that his thigh touched her knee and her skin cried out with pleasure from being allowed just that small contact. “I know your master has taught you better. To touch another vampire or their human servants without consent is a challengeable act. Do not challenge me, Eve, or you will force me to teach you a lesson that I would rather avoid.” “But I want you to teach me a lesson,” Eve whispered, refusing to listen to the fear that beat at the back of her throat as she slowly lifted her leg and let it slide down the outside of Leo’s thigh until she ever so gently, ever so slowly, lowered herself down to his lap. Her heart immediately beat faster as she felt his sharp exhalation against her lips and her body grew accustomed to the feel of his strong thighs beneath her buttocks, his hips between her spread thighs, and his sex only inches away from her own. She forced herself to hold still, to refrain from looping her arms around his neck and her ankles around the back of the chair to pull him close, no matter how desperately she wanted to mash every inch of him against every inch of her. She knew Leo well enough by now to realize he was not the type of man that would fold in the face of a sexually aggressive female. She would have to be a little subtler, make an offering of herself that he couldn’t refuse. “I’m not interested in your games,” Leo said, his eyes still cold but the jump of his pulse against his throat told a different story. Eve longed to rock her hips forward and see what tale his cock had to tell, but managed to keep her control and her eye contact. “I’m not playing games,” Eve said, willing her eyes to tell the truth, to show him how much she longed for him, “I want you. Any way you’ll have me.” 25
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“I don’t engage in that sort of activity with children.” “I’m not a child. I’ve lived thirty-two years, ten of them undead.” “You’re a brat,” Leo said with a vehemence that would have been funny if Eve wasn’t beginning to worry that maybe he really didn’t like her after all. “I was only pulling your pigtails,” Eve said. “Excuse me?” “Being bratty because I like you.” “That’s ridiculous.” “Sometimes I’m ridiculous,” Eve smiled. “So I’ve noticed.” “But I can be good, Leo,” she whispered, leaning closer until the tips of their noses were about to touch. “Let me show you how good I can be.” “I’m…” he began, the words trailing away as she ran the tip of her tongue across her lips and he held his indrawn breath. “You’re what?” “I’m not interested.” “Are you sure about that?” Eve asked, sliding her cheek softly against his in an intimate little caress, until her neck was perfectly positioned, completely vulnerable to him. She shivered as she imagined what it would feel like to finally have his mouth on her throat, his teeth piercing her skin as his strong hands gripped her hips, pulling her into the intimate contact she craved. “You’re offering yourself to me?” Leo asked, his husky voice genuinely surprised as well as more than a little interested. “Yes.” Eve moaned lightly as his breath puffed against her exposed neck and then the tip of his tongue traced a gentle trail over the place where her racing heart beat closest to the surface of her skin. He was touching her, finally touching her, and the pleasure of even that small caress was almost more than she could take. “You know what that means, don’t you?” he asked, opening his mouth and raking the tips of his teeth over the sensitive flesh of her throat hard enough to draw a gasp from her parted lips, but soft enough to leave the skin completely intact. “Oh yes, Leo, yes,” Eve whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and arching forward until her breasts flattened against the strong muscles of his chest. Her breath came faster now, her pulse thundering in her ears, her pussy throbbing, aching for him to fill her, taste her, take her, to ease this need that had been building between them since the day she arrived. “It means I could rip out your throat, bleed you until death, and no one, not even your master, would have any reason to fault me. You’ve done a very stupid thing, Eve. If I were any other three hundred year old vampire, it would mean your death,” he said, his teeth pressing just a little harder into her neck as his hands 26
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finally came to her hips. Too bad she was a little too nervous to fully enjoy the sensation at this point. “You wouldn’t hurt me, Leo,” she said, trying to sound confident, but knowing he could smell her fear, taste the second her arousal had been soured by the hint of something different All vampires shared a thirst for blood, but some were more bloodthirsty than others. She had never seen that taste for violence in Leo. However, she had never dreamed he would take the offering of her throat so literally, but maybe he was more old-fashioned than she realized. She suddenly wished she had paid closer attention to the pre-industrial age vampire etiquette lecture Stephen had insisted on giving her before she made the trip to Romania. “You just bet your life on that assumption,” Leo said, his teeth pressing even harder into her skin, almost hard enough to bruise, making her breath catch and her eyes close as she prayed that she hadn’t been wrong about this man, hadn’t overestimated his gentleness or underestimated her ability to make him deathly angry. Time slowed to a crawl, the air completely quiet except for the pounding of her pulse inside Leo’s mouth until, finally, his jaws loosened and his hands smoothed down over her buttocks. Immediately a rush of wet heat flowed between her legs. She’d never imagined having a man’s hands on her ass could feel so violently erotic, but it was as if that hint of fear made the bliss of the much longed for sexual contact that much sweeter. Eve barely had time to catch her breath before Leo dipped one hand even lower, sliding down under her body, brushing past her aching center until he found her clit through her leather pants. The seam of the pants, combined with the rough pressure he began to apply was almost enough to hurt if she hadn’t been as turned on as she had ever been in her life. If she hadn’t been distracted by that moment of uncertainty, his demanding fingers between her thighs would have been enough to make her come, without fucking, without feeding, with all of her clothes still on and not so much as a kiss exchanged between them. He was magnificent, as magnificent as she’d imagined, and she couldn’t believe she was finally going to have him, that he wanted her despite all the mixed signals. “Leo,” she sighed, her entire body trembling against him though she couldn’t really move, not with what felt like the death grip of his fangs on her throat. “Never bet your life on another vampire’s kindness.” “Quit trying to scare me.” “I’m not trying, I’m succeeding. I can taste it, and it tastes wonderful. If I were a different sort of man, it might be enough to convince me to end this tedious acquaintance.” 27
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“You’re the tedious one,” Eve said, finding that her hips had begun to roll against his hand, a part of her loving arguing with him while his fingers worked her so expertly toward climax. “You don’t even know what tedious means,” he said, his own voice more breathy than she’d ever heard it and the fingers of his free hand digging into the flesh of her hip. “Boring. Long and boring.” “I’m impressed.” “What’s impressive is that you can talk so clearly with your mouth filled with my neck.” “Shut up.” But he didn’t sound mad; he sounded amused. She had heard him laugh only a few times, but it certainly sounded like his irritation was giving way to something more playful, or as playful as a grouchy three hundred-year-old vampire could get. “What else can you do?” she teased, tightening her arms around his neck and pushing her breasts into even closer contact with his chest. She locked her legs around his back and squeezed, driving her hips forward and trapping Leo’s hand in between her body and his own obvious arousal. Damn. He was rock hard, long and thick and aching—for her. The realization was almost enough to make her dizzy.“ Well, well. That’s impressive too.” “Flattery doesn’t do it for me,” he groaned as she began to roll her hips up and down his length. “What does do it for you, Leo? How about if you felt how wet you make me, would that do it? If you knew how much I want you to fuck me? What if I got down on my knees right now, took your cock in my mouth, and showed you how hot it would make me for you to lose control down my throat?” Eve increased her rhythm until she was seconds from release, driven to the edge by his fingers digging into her hips, his breath hot and fast against her throat, and the throbbing thickness between her legs. “Enough,” he said, shoving her away so fast she slid off the end of his knees and landed tail bone first on the floor. “Ow!” “Have your bags packed within the half hour. I’ll find someone to drive you to the train station,” he said as he quickly stood and walked toward the door. “Leo—” “I don’t have time for this. I have my home and my life arranged as I like them and you have violated the order of both.” “Listen, I’m sorry I messed up your house and munched on your butler,” Eve called after him, feeling tears prick at the backs of her eyes that she quickly willed away. 28
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She wouldn’t cry over this cranky old asshole. Who cared what he thought anyway? It was only her feminine pride that was hurt; her libido frustrated to the point of tears simply from being denied satisfaction. She didn’t really fancy she was falling for the most annoying man she’d ever met in her life, human or vampire, did she? “You now have twenty-eight minutes,” Leo said with horrible finality before slamming the door to her room with more force than was absolutely necessary. “That went well,” Eve whispered to herself, the damned tears threatening once again. God she hated that man, on so many levels. He was the worst host, the finickiest vampire, and the most obnoxious, pompous know-it-all in the entire world. Even the way he played card games was irritating, always making those precise little tallies of figures and sipping at his coffee long after she knew for a fact it had grown cold. People who drank cold coffee were creepy and any man who would treat her like an unappetizing piece of ass was downright evil. “Evil creep,” Eve muttered, picking up the delicate little whip she had fantasized being used on her bottom and throwing it across the room. Suddenly she really wasn’t in the mood to be punished, especially not by a cold blooded jerk who thought she was too irritating to warrant a nice, friendly, no strings attached roll in the hay. No, she was more in the mood to dish out a little punishment, thank you very much. Eve began to hum under her breath as a plan formed in her ever-fertile mind. She was suddenly glad Leo was paranoid enough to make sure each of his guest rooms had an escape route in case rogue immortal slayers breached his defenses. As if any immortal slayer would bother with him. He didn’t even drink human blood, for god’s sake. Even if one managed to ‘penetrate his keep,’ they would probably die of boredom before they managed to do Leo any harm. “You lost your chance to penetrate this keep, buddy,” Eve said, trying not to think about how very not so bored she had been a few minutes ago as she wiggled out the narrow window of her room and landed with a soft thud at the top of the steps that curved around the outside of the tower. Eve took the narrow steps two at a time, not the least bit phased by the fact that they were several centuries old or that there was absolutely nothing to keep her from a five-story fall if she were to lose her footing. She was a vampire, and mostly indestructible. Even if she weren’t, Eve had never been a ‘hold onto the guardrail’ type of girl. If she had been, she wouldn’t have come to this castle in the first place and she certainly wouldn’t be going out of her way to put a bee in the bonnet of one of the most powerful vampires in the world. But then, love can make a girl a little crazy.
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“Lust, you mean lust,” Eve reminded her subconscious before she stepped off the final flight of steps and disappeared into the woods. **** “Find her!!” Leo screamed into the pale and terrified faces of the sixteen servants he managed to acquire over the centuries. They were all brilliant, faithful, committed people who he paid well and usually treated better, giving them not only the gift of immortality but his loyalty and protection as well. He hadn’t yelled at a single one of them in at least fifty years, let alone the entire lot at once. But he was not in a good mood, to put it mildly, and Ernst in particular had already more than earned his way onto the shit list. He watched his staff scatter then turned to storm out the back entrance to the keep, through the sculpture garden, past the gardener’s quarters, back to the edge of the grounds where a fifty foot wall of solid stone protected his privacy and in earlier times, his life. Leo scaled the wall easily, not even bothering to remove his shoes. Matilda could polish the damn things if they became scuffed; it would serve her right. She had been all for Eve extending her visit and even tried to convince him to move the young vampire’s quarters closer to his own to facilitate some sort of midnight rendezvous. Caroline and Theresa were also traitors and he made a mental note to find exceedingly unpleasant tasks for them as soon as he retrieved his missing houseguest and shipped her out on the first train. Why all the women in his life seemed to think an outrageously annoying girl with purple streaks in her hair would be good for him was beyond his capacity for understanding. Eve wasn’t remotely his type, not only because of her looks. Her lack of feminine grace, rough language, and horrendous taste in music were all good reasons for him to find her completely unappealing. Unfortunately, no matter how many good reasons he could find to loathe the girl, he couldn’t seem to keep from thinking about her, dreaming about her, imagining what it would feel like to peel those skin tight leather pants off her curvy body and kiss his way up the inside of her thighs. He had been so close to losing control in her room it had shocked him. The very coarse language he couldn’t stand to hear coming out of her pretty little mouth nearly drove him to rip off their clothes and do exactly the things she was suggesting. He longed to slide his fingers deep inside her wet center, to feel her lips closing around the head of his cock before he threw her onto the bed and drove himself mindlessly inside her until he felt her body tighten in ecstasy around his own. Leo shuddered as he landed on the opposite side of the rock wall, the memory of how much he had desired Eve enough to send a fresh wave of nearly painful 30
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need straight down to his unruly member. He hadn’t had a woman in years, far too many years—that was the only reason he craved Eve so badly. It wasn’t that she was the first person to make him laugh out loud in a century, it wasn’t that he enjoyed the unpredictability she introduced into his life, and it surely wasn’t that his heart was softening towards her. He didn’t have a heart to soften, had firmly locked that part of himself away a hundred years ago when Stephen became a master vampire and left his protection, taking Leo’s love of over a century with him. Marian had been everything to him, his greatest comfort, his love, his treasure, the reason that he looked forward to living another day. She had been his mate in every way except that final formal ceremony--- that near death exchange of blood to bind them forever. But Marian had never been willing to take that final step and Leo hadn’t pressed her, more than happy with their life together just as it was. Then one evening, he awakened to find her and his oldest friend gone and nothing but a note saying they were in love and starting a new life together in America to explain what went so terribly wrong. And now, a hundred years later, Stephen sent this girl to torment him, Eve with her angel face that reminded him so much of Marian, and her American ways that were the complete opposite of his gracious, refined first love. Refined and unfaithful, graciously cutting your heart from your chest. “Damn you, Stephen,” Leo cursed into the silent autumn woods, no longer certain why the younger vampire had sent Eve. He hadn’t wanted to believe Stephen had meant to be cruel, but the idea he was trying to make up for stealing Marian away was ridiculous. No one could ever take her place, especially a girl not even a third his age who didn’t remember a time before televisions and microwave ovens. Who you ache to bed more than any woman you’ve ever met, who challenges you even as she looks at you like you like you hung the moon, who— “Shut up,” Leo mumbled to himself, moving into a run, grateful that the sun had yet to set. Eve would be slower in daylight. She was too young to retain her full powers during the day. She actually needed to lean on his arm at the end of their afternoon walks in the woods, a small intimacy he had looked forward to more than he wanted to admit. With any luck, he would catch up with her long before she reached her destination. Though he had sent his servants to scour the town and rest of the grounds, Leo had little doubt where she was going in her present state of mind. There was only one place he asked her not to go, one section of the woods that she not explore. Leo had actually been surprised that she hadn’t pressed him further about the cottage, hadn’t demanded he tell her why she should never go there, especially alone. But she had obeyed him without question. 31
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Now that he thought about it, no matter how much she defied him with her mouth, she obeyed with her actions on almost every request. True, she fed on one of the humans under his protection, but then he had been asking a lot of a young vampire to feed on nothing but animal blood, and refrigerated animal blood at that. Then there was what she had done to her room, but he wasn’t too old fashioned to realize what she had in mind with those silky black sheets and the leather straps on the wall. In fact, his imagination had launched into such overdrive at the sight of the little leather crop by the desk that he’d had to sit absolutely still for several minutes to keep from acting on the fantasies flooding his mind, to keep from pulling her over his knee and putting that crop or the flat of his hand to use on her tightly rounded bottom. He knew that was what she wanted, he finally understood that she had been testing his limits because she wanted him to push back. He hadn’t played games like that in years and even then, they hadn’t been as enjoyable as he had hoped they would be. Marian didn’t like bedroom play, preferred to keep herself as tightly controlled in the bedroom as she was out of it. It made him wonder what it would be like to finally have a lover who would enjoy indulging his fantasies. It would have been a heady thought, far too tempting to refuse if he thought himself capable of that level of abandon. After a hundred years of denying that part of himself, of tightly controlling his life so that there would be no more surprises, he didn’t know if he could let go of the thousand daily habits that helped keep him aloof from his stronger emotions. And he knew that he couldn’t take a woman like Eve into the bedroom without taking her into his heart. He had heard modern men say that only women allowed sex and love to be so inextricably connected, but he had seen enough men fall cock first into lifetime commitments to know better. It was true there were some women a man could keep as a sexual partner and nothing more. But a woman like Eve, a woman full of life and spirit and a mass of intriguing contradictions, she was the type that would soon have him wrapped around her little finger to do with as she wished. Until she tired doing with you and decided to do someone else. “Exactly,” Leo said as he quickened his pace toward the cottage, glad that his inner voice finally remembered he didn’t need to let a woman get that kind of hold on him again. Especially not the woman in question who had even more of a head start than he originally thought. “She must have leapt out the window the second I left the room,” Leo said, a mix of anger and fear mingling in his chest as he realized Eve might actually make it to the cottage before him, that he might arrive a few seconds too late. The very idea that Eve might be exposed to the horror he had kept carefully concealed for centuries made him churn his legs even faster until he practically flew along the 32
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ground, feet barely touching the forest floor as he dodged quickly in and out of the trees, racing toward a woman he absolutely didn’t love, but who he feared losing more than was anywhere near reasonable. **** “Hello?” Eve called into the empty cottage, a small, cozy-looking, straw roofed affair that should have been cute but just wasn’t. It was creepy and she jumped nervously as the old wooden door creaked closed behind her. Despite the fact that you want to make Leo really mad, I think it would be wise to haul ass out of here. “Yep, I think so,” Eve whispered to herself as a horrible shiver worked its way down her spine and she decided that she really wasn’t too stupid to live, no matter how often Stephen and the other vampires on the compound had teased her about her impulsive decisions. She inched slowly backward, her hand nearly on the handle of the door before she heard the growl, an unearthly, terror-inducing rumbling that seemed to emanate from between the very floorboards under her feet. “I’m leaving. I was just leaving,” Eve whispered, her throat tight as she grasped the handle of the door and pulled. But it wouldn’t open. No matter how hard she pulled, it wouldn’t open and the growls grew closer until she could feel the warm breath of something horrible seeping through the ground beneath her, smell the ancient rottenness of a creature who fed on the dead and had been feeding on them for a very long time. “Eve!” She heard Leo’s scream from outside the door. The terror that stuck in her throat like something with physical mass seemed to ease for a second, but then the growl sounded beneath her again and Leo’s voice seemed to fade away as if down a long, dark tunnel. “Eve, that’s a pretty name. It makes me think of apples and girls who like to break the rules. Do you like to break the rules, Eve?” Suddenly, the interior of the cottage began to glow with an unearthly green light. “Nope,” Eve whispered, her voice sounding small and hollow as she clutched her arms around her body and tried not to shake her head any more quickly from side to side for fear of snapping something necessary for reasonable thought. She was a vampire, a bloodsucking demon of the night; she shouldn’t be getting this freaked out by a glowing voice with creepy breath. It was undignified. “How disappointing,” the voice rumbled into the room as the green light began to congeal in the center of the cottage, an imposing bulk of a body and head forming until some sort of dog-like creature knelt on the bare floorboards. 33
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Now she could officially start freaking out. The thing was scary grossness personified, its cold blue eyes two glowing orbs of craziness suffused in a sea of red. It was as if its diseased mind had bled down into its eye sockets and onward. The rest of its muzzle was also damp and stickylooking, bringing to mind images of wolves tearing into the flesh of a recent kill and making Eve’s skin grow cold with the fear every potential prey felt in the face of a predator. But it was the body of the creature that was most terrifying. Where there should have been the furry legs and haunches of a canine, very human looking skin stretched tight over the animal skeleton. Veins stood out boldly from pale flesh that twisted painfully around itself as the arms and legs turned toward the ground and something between a hoof and a swollen human foot met the floor. The creature clicked its three grotesque toenails on the floor and seemed to chuckle, as if it could sense Eve’s revulsion and was immensely pleased. “So that leaves apples,” the creature said, moving forward two small steps before it sat back on its hind legs and raised the front two hoof-feet to its muzzle. “Apples?” Eve said, knowing the thing was making some sort of sense, some sort of play on the forbidden fruit and her name and all the rest of it, but too damn scared to think clearly. Where was Leo? Had he left? Decided she deserved to be puppy chow for whatever the hell this thing was? “Yes, apples,” the thing laughed as it opened its mouth, revealing a wealth of terrifyingly sharp teeth. “Do you think your bones will crunch like an apple, Eve? Because I have no doubt that your blood will be just as sweet as any fruit.” “Leo will kill you,” Eve said, struggling to believe her own words were true. Leo didn’t want to fuck her and planned on kicking her out of his house, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to be creature kibble. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have followed her, right? “I’m not afraid of my brother,” the thing growled viciously, baring its teeth again as its unearthly blue eyes narrowed. Eve suddenly realized why that one part of the beast looked so familiar. They were Leo’s eyes, even drowning in red and set in the face of a monster, she could see the resemblance. This thing was Leo’s brother? No wonder he tried to keep him a family secret. “Right, I wouldn’t be either if I were you,” Eve said and felt a sharp laugh burst from her throat, a tight, strangled, scrap of a sound that didn’t sound the least bit amused. “You mock me.” “No way. Wouldn’t dream of it.” “You’re not one of his people. Do not think he will offer you protection.” “He might.” “You’re a fool, a lovely little fool. My favorite.” 34
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“Leo’s outside, I heard him. Why don’t we open the door and ask him if he wants to bother protecting me or not? If he doesn’t, you can close the door and crunch my bones, gargle my blood or whatever it is you’re planning to do,” Eve said, putting her hand back on the doorknob and giving it a gentle tug, but it seemed the creature wasn’t impressed with her suggestion. “You’ve entered my resting place of your own free will, but you will stay until I will you to go,” the thing growled, though it did turn its head to look around the empty room, as if making sure no one had arrived inside while he was unaware. It then sniffed the air once or twice and finally lowered its muzzle to the floor and inhaled, narrowed its eyes, and inhaled again. “If I will you to go,” it continued, raising its snout from the floor and turning its eyes back to her with a gleam of anticipation. Apparently it was satisfied that they were alone, that Leo wasn’t coming to the rescue, and that they had all the time in the world to play cat and mouse, or demon dog man and mouse. Eve was trying to decide whether to scream her head off or burst into a fit of hysterical laughter when the sound of groaning, buckling wood filled the room and Leo burst up from underneath the floorboards not two feet from where she stood. “Eve, come here,” Leo ordered, shaking a bit of wood dust from his hair and holding his hand out to her, never taking his eyes from the dog man. “Is this any way to greet your brother, Leo, after so many years have passed since our last meeting?” The dog man sneered, voice filled with hatred, though he already sounded slightly defeated. So doggie was afraid of Leo, surprise, surprise. “Hello, Bane. My apologies for disturbing your rest.” “You didn’t tell me you had family living so close,” Eve said as she took Leo’s hand and let him guide her behind him. “I don’t.” “He’s not your brother?” “He’s not living,” Leo said. “But neither am I dead. Our mother saw to that, didn’t she?” The beast growled, his rage a palpable thing that seemed to press around Eve’s face and cut off her breath. “Our mother’s sins are not mine, brother,” Leo said, his fingers tightening almost painfully around her own, as if he were trying to tell her something with the pressure of his fingertips. It wasn’t the first time Eve wished she could read thoughts without a blood exchange, but wishing wasn’t going to help her a whole lot at the moment. “I can’t read thoughts,” she whispered into his neck. “I know that, but I assumed you could receive telepathic messages,” he said in a normal tone, obviously insinuating it was stupid to try to have a private conversation with Bane the creepy less than five feet away. 35
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“Nope, not without blood exchange.” “Good to know,” he said dryly. “Bet you wish you’d bit me now, huh?” “This isn’t the time for that conversation.” “So there will be a time for that conversation?” “We’ll have to wait and see.” “Wait and see for what? To see if Bane’s still going to eat me? Maybe he’ll decide to eat you instead.” “I can’t kill him. Mother made sure of that the day I was born. You were her favorite, Leo. You were always her favorite.” Bane moaned, dropping his head down onto his hand-hooves and rolling onto his back in a writhing motion that reminded Eve of a three year old throwing a tantrum before he began to keen in a horrible high-pitched voice, “Why, Mother, why? Why?” “Now!” Leo hissed, shoving her down into the hole in the floorboards. Eve hit the ground running, though her pace was slowed by the fact that she had to stay hunched over to avoid hitting her head on the floorboards above her and that she kept tripping over the bones scattered under her feet. Bones? Yep, they were definitely bones. Human bones if she had to take a guess, but they could be vampire bones, the two looked pretty much the same unless you examined cell samples under a microscope. “Hurry,” Leo said, his strong arm wrapping around her waist and urging her toward a tunnel in the earth. She’d never been a fan of dark, enclosed spaces, but anyplace had to be better than where they were at the moment. “You can’t take her! She’s mine!” Bane’s voice howled from the room behind them, prompting Eve to haul even more serious ass toward the tunnel and dive headfirst inside. It was a space that a grown person had to crawl through and crawl she did, urged onward by Leo’s presence at her back and Bane’s wails from inside the cottage. He didn’t sound like he was getting any closer, but she wasn’t willing to bet her crunchy bones on it. “Eve,” she heard Leo call from behind her, but there was no way she was stopping until she emerged in that patch of sunlight she saw at the end of the tunnel. She hadn’t been so glad to see the sun since the day after she’d been changed into a vampire and known for sure that she wouldn’t burn to a crisp in it. Stephen told her only one in one thousand vampires were that photosensitive, but it was still nice to learn for a fact that her luck wasn’t that bad. “Eve!” Leo called more loudly as she scrambled through the leaves at the end of the tunnel and pulled herself to her feet. “What? Do we keep running? Can he open doors with those hoof feet or what?” Eve gasped, more than grateful to fall into the arms that Leo held open. He
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didn’t look worried anymore, so she assumed they were safe and a little comfort sounded really good right about now. “No, he can’t materialize outside of the cottage. His soul was confined there during the burial ceremony two hundred years ago,” Leo said, lowering his face to the top of her head and planting what almost felt like a kiss there as his arms tightened around her. So he was glad she wasn’t Bane bait. That didn’t mean he had changed his mind about her. Eve reminded her heart not to get too optimistic. “He couldn’t have hurt you as long as you didn’t believe he could. That’s what I was trying to tell you.” “So he’s a what? A ghost?” “You could say that, but his spirit is still of this realm. In life he was a Barghest, so in death he couldn’t pass over. He could have chosen to descend to hell, but even Bane wouldn’t have liked what he found there.” “What’s a Barghest?” “The English word for the offspring of a human and a hell hound.” “You’re mom did it with a hell hound?” “I’d rather not discuss it,” Leo said, his arms stiffening around her tightly enough to cause a little difficulty in drawing a full breath. Obviously time for a change in subject. “You believe in hell?” “Don’t you?” “I try not to think about things like that.” “You’re a vampire, Eve, a creature typically assumed to be one of the damned. Didn’t it seem wise to consider the state of your soul before you chose this life?” Leo asked, pulling away and looking down at her with sad eyes. She had never seen Leo sad before and she suddenly wanted to kiss away the lines of concern on his face, let him know that everything would be okay. Instead, she started spilling her guts. “I was only twenty-two and had inoperable brain cancer. Maybe I was just young and stupid, or maybe it was the tumor’s fault, but I didn’t give it that much thought. I figured it was a way to live and I wanted to live. I guess I hoped that God would cut me some slack as long as I was a good person after I became a bloodsucker. If there was a God, which I still wasn’t sure of,” Eve blabbered, unable to keep her hands from running up and over his shoulders and twining around his neck, fingers from tangling in the softness of his hair. “How about now? Do you believe in a God?” “Yeah, I do,” Eve said, feeling oddly near tears. She wasn’t a born again vampire, for God’s sakes. She didn’t usually get this worked up about the heaven/hell stuff. Oh well, maybe it was the whole nearly being eaten by a half hell hound business that had made her overly emotional. 37
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“And what do you think he thinks of us? Of vampires?” “I think we get the same shot as everyone else. And I don’t think he’s a he. God couldn’t think straight if he had a penis.” “That would be considered blasphemy when I was young,” Leo said, the tiniest trace of a smile on his full lips. God, she could look at those lips for a very long time. Better yet, she could kiss those lips for a very long time. “So would my pants,” Eve said with a suggestive grin as she stood on tiptoe and tilted back her head. “Yes, they would, praise be,” he said. And then he laughed, a sound that made her soul, damned or not, feel one hundred percent lighter before he finally dropped his lips down to meet hers. That first kiss wasn’t at all what she had imagined it would be. It was soft, almost tender, even though the pressure of his lips was firm and the tip of his tongue quickly pushed past her teeth to sweep through her mouth. It wasn’t purely passion, pure physicality. It was almost as if they were still speaking as they kissed, communicating things she never said to anyone and never dreamed of this man saying to her. Physical hunger was still there, but there was emotion in every gentle caress, in every sigh, every moan, in the way his hands cradled her face so that he could get closer, deeper, could devour more of her mouth with his lips, teeth, and tongue. “Wow,” Eve heard herself breath as they finally pulled apart and Leo let his hands smooth leisurely down her neck, over her shoulders, play down her back until they settled over her ass with a possessive squeeze that made her shiver. “I’m a phenomenal kisser,” he said with a smile. “Yes, you are.” “You aren’t going to argue?” “I don’t argue just to argue. Only when I’m trying to prove a point.” “I think I’m falling in love with you,” he said suddenly, his eyes completely serious and his tone inferring that a part of him had just declared his own death sentence. “You don’t have to sound so excited about it,” Eve teased as she wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck and jumped up to loop her ankles behind his back. “You don’t have to look so pleased with yourself,” he said, his face starting to close down into the familiar mask she’d known for most of her visit even though his hands still cradled her bottom and in fact pulled her closer to the thick ridge of his arousal.
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“Leo, don’t be a dork. Why shouldn’t I be pleased? I’m pretty gone on you too. I tried to convince myself I just wanted to bang you or have you turn me over your knee and spank me, but after that kiss…” “You want to make sweet love to me right here in the leaves?” he asked. Teasing. He was teasing her. Would wonders never cease? “Yeah, I guess sweet love would be okay for the first go around,” Eve smiled as Leo knelt in the leaves and lowered her to the ground, stretching himself above her and bringing those amazing lips back to her own. “Sweet love is usually best for the first time,” Leo whispered against her neck as his hands pushed up her sweater and bared her black lace bra to the cool autumn air. “I could argue with you about that, but I won’t.” Eve sighed as his hands cupped her and his mouth moved over the swells of her breasts. “Good. If you did, I’d have to punish you.” “Punish me?” “If you think you might deserve a little punishment.” “Oh yes, please,” Eve giggled and then she moaned, writhing in the leaves as he pulled the fabric of her bra away and brought his talented mouth to her breasts, licking and suckling and biting the sensitive flesh until she arched into him, clawing at the close of his pants. She was all for sweet love, but right now she wanted fast love. She had longed to feel his skin against hers, his cock settling between her thighs for too long to take the long way around. She wanted him now, five seconds ago if that could be arranged. “Please,” Eve begged as Leo finally pulled her pants down her legs and she sat up to pull his sweater over his head. “Please what?” he asked, throwing the sweater to the ground, his hair deliciously rumpled as he tore at the close of his pants and was soon as without clothing as she’d longed for him to be. “Fuck me,” she begged, running her hands over that amazing chest and down to where his cock stood at attention nearly to his navel. “You mean make sweet love to you,” he corrected, pulling her hand away from his arousal and guiding her on top of him as he rolled to his back. “Or I’ll make sweet love to you,” Eve said, lifting her hips and positioning the tip of his cock at her entrance, looking down into his eyes as she slowly lowered her body, impaling herself on what was, without a doubt, her new favorite penis ever. “Sweet god, you’re perfect,” he moaned, his hands coming to her hips and his eyes closing for a second, as if he couldn’t bear the bliss of looking at her and being inside her at the same time. 39
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“I thought I was a brat,” Eve said as she began to move slowly up and down, unable to believe how perfectly he filled her, stretched her, made her feel as if no other man would ever be enough now that she’d had him inside her. “You are a brat, with ridiculous purple hair,” he said with a smile as he pulled her mouth down to his, his hands coming to her hips, angling her body until her clit ground against him with every delicious thrust. “Well, you’re a cranky old man,” she gasped. “You better believe it. Don’t get on my bad side.” “How else will I earn my spanking?” Eve moaned as she felt the tension inside her begin to crest and braced her hands on his muscled chest. “Just quit talking and come on me. Come on my cock,” he breathed into her ear and Eve found it incredibly easy to obey. Her body exploded, her walls pulsing around his thickness as he drove up into her again and again, the sounds of him finding his pleasure taking her even higher until finally they lay still in the leaves, bodies growing cool now that the sun had almost set and they weren’t too sex-crazed to think better of being completely nude in forty degree temperatures. “Let’s go home,” Eve said, turning her cheek to plant a kiss on his chest. “On one condition. You move your things to my room.” “Can I bring my black satin sheets?” “Bring whatever you like,” he said with a smile and a small slap on her bare ass that let her know exactly what he was hoping she would bring. “And you’re not going to bitch about the flow of energy?” she teased as they pulled on their sweaters and pants amid much mutual groping. “I think my energy’s flowing just fine,” he said, taking her hand and shooting her a smile that nearly knocked her back off her feet. “Stupid Feng Shui. I told you it was new age bullshit. What you needed was pussy therapy.” “Shut up.” “Don’t tell me to shut up.” “Brat,” he smiled. “Old fart,” she smiled back. Then they turned and walked back towards the castle. Eve was very glad she had brought such a crap load of luggage for a twoweek stay. THE END
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About The Author
Anna J. Evans Anna J. Evans is a multi-published author who thinks romance is sexier with a sense of humor. She loves reading and writing paranormal romantic adventures and is thrilled to hear from fans. You can visit her website, email her, or join her Yahoo group (
[email protected]) for free reads, the latest publishing news, and monthly member-only give-aways.
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FISHER OF MEN BY EMILY VEINGLORY
FISHER OF MEN Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him Matthew 4:18 Perry stood behind the bar, shifting from foot to aching foot. The goth-clad teenagers looked at him with disdainful eyes as they ordered their alco-pops. As well they might. Perry had no claim to beauty with his soft body, deeply lined face and coarse gray hair. No doubt they saw nothing but an old man, older than they could imagine. A thin girl stumbled by in her tall brothel-creeper boots and the music started. Nobody was dancing yet, held back by the cordon of their adolescence selfconsciousness. As custom dropped off, Perry watched the crowd fondly. They were little more than children and as such, even their pretensions had some charm. To his well-practiced eye, intruders stood out clearly. The two bouncers, Tom and Sharon, were quick to zoom in on the older men that only came to leer—whilst leaving the occasional parent alone. It was good if the odd dad or mum came in to check the place out, so long as they didn't linger. Perry's eyes drifted, noting where the black painted walls were beginning to peel, the blue light bulbs had burnt out, or some kid was as drunk as they should be allowed to get. Perry was not particularly proud of his joint, but it was carefully crafted to give the impression it gave. Vlad's had been the mainstay of the younger end of the Goth set in Hamilton for almost five years. Sharon wandered over. "There's a girl barfing in the loo already. Should I toss her?"
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Perry frowned. He had long contemplated not serving alcohol at all, but it would probably lose him his customers. "Make sure a friend goes with her, or she gets in a cab." "I know the drill boss," she said with a fond smile. The regular barman came in late and flustered. Teddy was a good kid who seemed to have a new piercing every day—so that he now resembled a golem built entirely out of discarded jewelry. Still, he was normally on time so Perry didn't hassle him and headed off to the DJ's booth. He felt much better with a view down upon the crowd. The kids milled at the edges of the floor, with a few show-offs now beginning to strut their stuff. The beat was mainly eighties tonight; Perry had forgotten it was a theme night. That would explain the preponderance of black tutus and crucifix necklaces. He leaned in the open window of the audio-booth. The new DJ ‘Joose’ shouted some unintelligible comment over the confusion of music and chatter. Perry would normally try to work out what he was saying, but suddenly he didn’t have the energy. He merely smiled, waved Joose away and went back to watching the crowd. Black on black, with the white flesh of the under-dressed girls flashed in strange tessellations as they moved onto the dance floor, the more reluctant boys still hung back. For a moment, Perry remembered when he saw people like this as dispensable sheep to be fed upon and discarded—a tawdry, homogenous mass of commonplace mortality. That callous perception drew him back like worn and comfortable clothing. He fought to regain the more sympathetic feelings he had cultivated of late. It was an unforeseen consequence of his strategy but Perry was getting rather used to having a softer side. He started the club as an earner to tide him over, but came to see how it pulled in those kids that were otherwise such easy prey, to give them somewhere a bit safer to go than the back of the Wal-Mart or some deserted park. There were worse ways to get by, for a while. He didn’t have too many other skills: occult alchemist for hire, fisherman with skills a century out of date? There was a whisper of movement in the crowd that was perhaps a bit too sinuous. It might be another real creature of the night. In a vivid flash, he remembered the sensation of skin giving way beneath the sharp tines of his teeth like the skin of a ripe peach—the struggles of a drunken child easily still with the glorious feeling of mastery and the tang of intoxicating blood. Perry shut his eyes. The need for blood never entirely went away, but the sheer predatory desire for it had not welled so strongly within his for many months. He shuddered. A touch on his shoulder startled him, but it was only Tom.
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"You're not looking so good there, boss," he shouted at a practiced pitch and volume that carried through the bedlam. "If you want to head out back, I'll keep an eye on things." Perry nodded and went back downstairs, doing his best to ignore Tom's worried look. It still wore on him to be treated like an old man after having spent so many centuries looking like a young and vigorous youth. His vanity stoked the dark instincts within, but he took firm hold of them as he pushed through the growing bustle towards the door to the staff area. He strode down the dark corridor where there were already queues outside the toilets. At the door at the end, Perry fumbled with the key and went through into the offices. The fluorescent lights flickered on reluctantly showing the large open plan area with his office in one corner. A second key admitted him to the small, ex-storeroom where his desk, chair and bar-fridge sat. He left the light off and the door swung shut behind him. In the darkness he was aware of chills running through his body. He opened the fridge that sat beside his desk. The light within limned the room. A few cans of beer sat inside and an open can was set in the shelf inside the door. Even should someone look, they would be unlikely to bother a half-full can—and that was where the vials of blood were secreted. It was the true problem with his addiction that cold-turkey would be a death sentence, but Perry had taken to following a very firm rule. Every day at midnight he could have exactly 5ml of beef blood. Any more would awaken the hunger, any less and he would begin to feel wane and ill. It was unfortunate that this equilibrium left him looking so old, but it was better to be old and ugly than staying in thrall to his maker and depending on innocent blood to survive. Perry was tempted even though it was not yet nine. He had wondered whether the last lot of blood had been too old or watered down. The way he was feeling now seemed to confirm it. He would get a new stock from the butcher's. His love of homemade black pudding was well known to the staff there, so they would not be surprised. He just had to make it through to tomorrow evening. Quickly, Perry slammed the door shut. It was a firm rule for a reason—his own instincts could never be trusted. What he needed was a distraction, something—anything—to get him through to midnight in the hope that even off blood would get him the rest of the way. Perry returned to the bar. It would get busy now that the music was on and the crowd was getting active, heating the room up. Perry felt a numb distance between himself and the crowd, and a nagging feeling itching at the back of his head that he had forgotten. Ted was pleased to see him; the place was starting to buzz. The chat had gone and the crowd was dancing. Perry hung his jacket over the stool beside the phone. 45
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He leaned to hear the shouted orders and turn crumpled notes into sugary bottles of liquor, none of it over five percent as a salve to Perry's conscience. Time slid by in an easy rhythm. He leaned over to one pale boy with an unusual shock of natural blonde hair. "What does the Maitre d’ recommend?" purred the voice with uncanny clarity and suddenly the air seemed scented with jasmine and ozone. Perry drew back in surprise and gave the boy a second look. Perry's boredom and fatigue melted away as he took in the pure symmetry of the boy's face. He felt his tired body automatically coil into a wary half-crouch, his nostrils flared searching for the smell of vampire musk. Out of the corner of his eye, Perry saw Teddy glance over with surprise. "Nothing that we serve—sir," Perry said in a normal voice, confident that the vampire would hear him all the same. "A discerning palate would be better served elsewhere." The amethystine blade was in his jacket; all he needed was a moment alone to turn this hunter back into his native dust. The pearlescent shine of the boy's immaculate skin showed that he drank deep and often. The vampire made some reply, but Perry could not hear it, his own ears were dull as any old mortal's these days. If this one was following the usual pattern of things, he had asked where else he might go. The drifters usually did, assuming that ‘honor amongst vamps’ would incline him to assist. Perry retrieved his jacket casually and signaled to Teddy that he was off. Teddy looked worried and Sharon was coming over. Perry went around the bar to avoid them and headed for the side entrance. He waved Sharon off but noted that she was still keeping an eye on him as he skirted the dancers and slipped out through the fire door. The vampire followed him, of course. Perry waited until they were both outside and then pressed the fire-door closed, that shut everything but the pounding bass in. It was full dark in the alleyway with only a little light from the lamp out on the main street. The concrete gleamed, vacant even of the usual hunched smokers, probably because of the harsh winter chill in the air. The vampire would not feel the cold, nor be hampered by the darkness. Perry felt the thrill of the peril approaching, wondering whether this would be the time the meta-hunter became prey, just a little too slow for once. Yet he paused. The vampire smelt wrong. There was no musk, none of the normal signs of a blood-drinker. Perry hated to hesitate; it lost him what little advantages he had—of surprise, or his magical blade. He scowled. He had to be sure. "So, what are you?" he said. "And what do you want?"
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The boy was watching him intently, a light breeze blowing his flyaway hair from his fine, alabaster features. "I am Leon," he said. "And I am interested in you." Perry smiled bitterly. "Oh, I'm fascinating, I am," he said, fingering his blade within his jacket pocket. "Why don't you tell me what you're really after?" His mind went back to the strange movement he had seen in the crowd earlier—the lithe movement of a vampire. Why on earth had he not followed that up? He would never leave a vampire just wandering the club! "Such modesty," the vampire said as he stepped close with noiseless tread. "I find you very interesting. A vampire with such—self control." He cupped Perry's cheek in his smooth cool palm and gazed up at him with acid-washed eyes, their color lost in the darkness. Perry felt his disquiet melt away, and a long parched desire rose within him. Bloodlust and simple...lust swirled inside him as he fought for control. Bloodlust? If this was a vampire before him, he should not feel that. He pushed Leon away with shaking hands. "Do not tease an old man," he said. He felt the strength in Leon's small, lithe body but the pretty boy gave way magnanimously. Perry felt a physical attraction that was too sudden and too intense to be true. "I don't know what you are, boy, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I don't want to see you again." He turned away and headed back towards the front door rather than fumble with a key while Leon looked on with an amused little sneer of a smile that he seemed to habitually wear. He was pleased for the cover his jacket gave for the disarray of his body. **** The blood tasted as thin as dishwater. The night lurched on. Perry's mind had its foot caught in a painful, pretty little trap. No matter how he tried to distract himself, his mind’s eye was fixed on the fine, sneering features of the blond boy. Well, no, more like a young man even if he was only the mortal age he appeared. Which would be about twenty, up close perhaps, a little more. A little too handsome to be a real man and a little too alive to be a vampire. Perry had some idea that there were more creatures on heaven and earth than even he knew of—and this was certainly not one he could easily identify. Nor do I care, he instructed his recalcitrant libido. Not that it seemed to be listening. Perry brought up crates of bottles, sorted the recycling and binned the trash. He served bar when it was busy, dodged the dancers and got under his bouncer's feet. 47
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Sharon was worried; she sent Tom out front and came over to grab a word alone in the alcove behind the bar. She pulled the velvet curtain and turned on the fluorescent bulb. Its tardy, flickering kindling was jarring on Perry's eyes. "What's up, boss? Who was that guy?" "Friend of the family," Perry said with easy bitterness. "You can consider him barred." Lifetimes of practice made the lies roll easily off his tongue. "My folks are difficult," he ended with a shrug. Sharon accepted it easily. He was straight with her every single time he could afford to be, and he employed on good terms. It made for understanding staff. "...And you don't need to be telling me about it," she said to show that she got the real message. "But maybe you'd be better taking the balance of the night off. I swear the rest of us can carry it two more hours and if you take your cell, we can always call if needs be." Perry was glad for the opportunity to be off. The crowd seemed peaceful enough and the night was already starting to wind down. Of course, it also meant he must be looking as bad as he felt. "Alright then," he said. "You drop the takings into the night box at the bank. Don't bother with the coin, just get the notes sorted." "About time you got a safe," she said, not for the first time. Perry tried to raise a smile as he headed for the door. "Call if there's any problem," he said. He had to go back to the office to get his phone from the desk drawer. He left through the back door and paused in the car-park. The asphalt was slick and the smell of city rain was in the air. He could delay even further by going back to search for his umbrella or to call for a cab. The cab sounded like a good idea and it was his usual habit, but the thought of his cottage came to him. A clear memory of the cozy wooden house on the riverbank, its door swathed by tamarillo vines. If he cut across the defile, it would only take twenty minutes. He set off at a fast pace. The orange glow of the suburbs gave him enough light to see by. The streets were pretty deserted. A clutching of smoking teens whispered on a street corner. Something to the effect of ‘that the bloke who runs the disco.' He turned into the walkway behind the pub. Caution was not a natural habit, but as he entered the tree-lined path, he wondered whether it was time he began to realize that most of his speed and strength had gone now. If one of those fool kids got the idea that he carried the money with him, they might follow him down the path—he put his hand in his pocket where the amethystine dagger sat cool and sullen. Its very touch was deadly to a vampire, but to a gang of human youths, it would be no more effective than any other knife. Of course, his master might send vampires against him one of these days; that was why he carried the blade. Old 48
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Gruner, who collected fishermen and delusions of grandeur. There was a limit to how long Perry could keep on being ‘the one who got away.’ He skirted the park and walked swiftly through the quiet suburbs, and finally crossed the trivet. The water used to make him uneasy, but he was discovering a love of it now that the blood ran quieter in him. He looked over the bridge as the smooth, black water slid noiselessly past. It almost seemed to beckon him. Just off the other side was the cul-de-sac with his small house at the end. It was a white, one bedroom cottage with a rusted iron roof that badly needed repair. At the door, he paused. Again his behavior was slipping out of its routine. He had ignored Leon when he first saw him and now couldn’t get his mind off the boy; he had left the club early and walked home. His very thoughts did not seem entirely his own. Something was a little wrong with everything. He stood with his hand on the door handle and the long iron key turned soundlessly in the well-oiled old lock. What could be wrong? And regardless, what could he do about it? Perry knew that he was alone, and in the end had only himself to call upon. He did not discount his instinct of peril, but nor could he let it paralyze him. At a gentle push, the door swung open silently. Everything was still, with nothing amiss but a slight smell of jasmine. Not real jasmine, which did grow in the gardens hereabouts, but the kind of powdery, soapy jasmine scent that was in some perfumes. "Leon," he said in calm, chiding voice. **** Perry heard the faint sound of a body shifting on fabric. It came from the bedroom. He shut the front door behind him and slipped the dagger into his left palm. He walked with deliberate slowness, feeling his heart beating double-time while his mind struggled to determine what emotion he was feeling. Even night-adjusted, his eyes could pick up no more than the faint outline of walls and windows. His own bedroom, a converted, windowless box room, normally provided little to delight the eye. His hands found the light switch. The bulb emitted the same dim blue light he used at the club. It was more than enough to illuminate the scene to full effect. The crisp white sheets were crumpled into precise folds around Leon's smooth white torso. He lay back upon the plump, feather-filled pillows. His expression was peculiar, suggesting both disdain and amusement. Somehow on the young man's attractive form the juxtaposition became intriguing. The sheets covered Leon's groin and legs with incongruous modesty, obviously contrived to show the rest of himself to best advantage. 49
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Perry felt immediate rekindling of his initial attraction and just as immediate, fear and concern. There was no real possibility that pretty Leon was here for a fading lump of a vamp like him. Even if he was there were the myriad complications that Leon might be a vampire...or something else. Leon smiled. "You do underestimate yourself," he said. "Your feelings now are why you attract me like the moth to the proverbial flame." Perry stayed by the door. "My feelings?" he said coolly. "Your emotions, for they are what I can feel. That is what I feed upon. You may seem stoical, but I can feel what is behind that front. You are a man of many and subtle emotions. I have, as you say, a discerning palate." Leon leaned forward. "I know that you want me too; why resist it?" Perry wavered. "I have a suspicious mind." "You have a wonderful mind, and the rest of you is rather more attractive than you seem to appreciate..." Now he knew what he was dealing with. The boy didn't just want blood. He was that rarest of things, a psy-vamp. Sanguinaries like Perry were the body and strength of the vampire community. At the margins slipped the rarer creatures: psy's, courtiers and messengers. Almost indistinguishable from humans, the psy's blended with the donors and the thralls. "Why don't you tell me who sent you?" Perry stalled. "Why don't you come up here, Peregrine, and I'll whisper it in your ear." Peregrine, the name he had borne during his time in Wellington as House Enforcer for Lord Gruner. Gruner's was the biggest rookery of vampires anywhere in the country and it had taken a firm hand to keep order. Now the question was, who sent Leon after him and why? Perry let his old wool overcoat drop to the ground and went to sit on his bed with his back to the dark Adonis currently occupying it. He took off first one shoe then the other and sighed as his hard-worn feet relaxed, wriggling his toes. Leon scooted over to drape against his back, leaning his jaw over Perry's shoulder. "Why not leave the questions for a while, and take advantage of the fringe benefits of your situation." His slender arms reached around and Leon started to unbutton Perry's shirt. Perry knew he should stop this right here but Leon's peculiar scent distracted him and then the sensation of a warm body against his... Perry shook his head. "Has Gruner's petty court become so dull that you have been driven to seek me out for entertainment? I imagine I must be something of a disappointment to you." Leon drew back his shirt, redolent as it was with the rather less appealing scents of sweat and the club's smoke machine. Bare skin against bare skin, Perry's last shred of will power, and good sense, evaporated. Slender hands drew him to lie back upon the bed. "Come join me, Peregrine." 50
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“Don't call me that," Perry sighed. Leon's lean frame moved almost like a cat's as he came to straddle Perry. "Peregrine the Red," he said. "Peregrine the Enforcer. Why did you leave that all behind? You were respected." He asked almost as if making small talk, as he undid the button of Perry's trousers. There was a distinctly surreal feeling to the scene as Perry lay with his feet dangling off the bed and a gorgeous youth sat over his thighs, feeling his cock. His cock wasn't distracted by such musings; it had played the old recluse rather too long for his body's contentment. He felt himself growing hard. Perry propped his elbows under him and looked across at the psy. Like sanguinary vampires they could live a good long while but something told him Leon was almost as young as he looked. "I left that all behind because Gruner is a crazy fuck," he said with deliberate crudity, looking for a reaction. There was a reflective furtiveness in Leon's eyes. Leon is Gruner's. Leon slithered back on the bed to pull Perry's trousers and underwear off, dogmatic in his goals. Perry thought of the blade in his jacket pocket lying on the floor a few feet away, wondering if it would work on a psy, if he had cause to find out. Perry did in fact feel a strand of his old nature moving below the surface, the forceful, focused mind that used to ride within his steely immortal body when his hair was gold rather than white. He reared up and reached out, grasping Leon by his upper arm. Perry felt his long, gaunt finger reach almost fully around but there was subtle strength within Leon's thin form that his own much reduced but larger frame could not hope to match. "I don't care for Gruner's games," Perry snapped. Rapid calculations flickered in Leon's eyes. He stepped in close to Perry so that he could feel warm skin against his again after so long. A tangled skein of desires welled up, hard cock trapped against Leon's stomach, teeth aching and sliding in their constricted gums. "What about me, enforcer? Do you care for me?" The way he said it obviously meant care for as in want. The answer was clear. With a wordless sound, Perry pushed Leon back down on the bed and kissed him. It was no tender gesture. There was blood in his mouth where his vampiric teeth broke free from gums that had grown over them. Leon responded eagerly, pressing up against him, winding his hands in Perry's hair and pulling down his head. Perry pinned Leon down and felt his reservation float loose. He pushed against Leon, cock hard, sliding between them. Leon's slender, proportionate body surrendered beneath Perry. He gritted his teeth, he would not take blood—he had fought too hard for his humanity to lose it now. Leon eased back, raising his thighs to clasp Perry's body. 51
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"So what are you, Leon? A messenger, a threat—a bribe?" "Do you care?" Perry felt a dry laugh rustle within him. Leon pressed up against him, drawing him up fully onto the bed. His movements were slow, gentle. Leon seemed rather practiced at putting a man at his ease and into the mood. He reached down, sliding his hand down Perry's side and down the crease between torso and leg. Perry tensed as Leon took his cock in a spit-dampened hand, stroking it softly. Perry's body moved to nothing more than instincts pushing forward, sliding as Leon held him tighter. Their lips met again, softer this time. Perry didn't trust this pleasure—beauty couldn't be trusted and overtures of friendship in a vampire were almost always false—but the touch, the touch was so sweet. Leon curled his back, drawing Perry down. Haste was not Perry's usual way but something in him wanted to take, to claim Leon. He wanted to be in him. Leon was so tight, but seemed as eager in return. With his own hand, he positioned Perry's cock, actually pressing the head against his body. Perry leaned down upon his elbows, pressing their bodies together. He entered Leon's body very slowly, holding his breath. He looked down at Leon's flushed face, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. They pressed together. Leon's hands hovered lightly over Perry's shoulders, touching his skin only in slight glances. Perry slid in and out of his body in short, hard thrusts. His breath rasped audibly in his throat. The taught rings of flesh rolled over his cock, tight and warm. Sensation spiraled out into his body. But a part of his mind stayed aloof looking down into Leon's opaque, angelic face. This young man might do—be—anything to him. He was still a glyph, a body and a few words that might or might not be sincere. It scared Perry to know how much he wanted it to be more and standing on the brink the connection between them was still just, physical, intoxicating—inadequate. Leon reached out to him against urging him on in a simple, harsh rhythm. Sweat slicked their bodies as they crashed together seeking, both of them it seemed, something in a harsh collision of flesh. Leon called out once, harshly like a crow. His whole form seemed to wilt after his climax, growing soft. Perry experienced a most peculiar sensation. Without coming his own erection simply faded away, leaving them joined together, soft, sweat cooling, wondering just what the hell he had done. **** Perry closed the door to his cramped bedroom and pulled the covers wordlessly over them both. Leon spooned against his body tightly. More than their hurried coupling, this seemed to be what his body wanted. Perry was so tired of being 52
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alone, and just so tired. Leon fitted snugly into his embrace. The psy's body seemed entirely relaxed, but Perry's own mind whirred. Beautiful strangers in one's bed were simply not to be trusted. Somewhere beyond the walls he could feel the sun rise languidly into the sky making the whole world hostile to them both—all the sons of Cain could not abide it long. Other than being tangled in Gruner's web, it might be the only thing the two of them had in common. "So why?" Perry murmured. "What do you want with me?" Leon stirred, discontented, but finally he answered. "Kensey will challenge Gruner soon. Gruner killed his lover in a final effort to beat back his rival before the big vote." Perry dimly remembered Kensey, a tough, dark-eyed idealist who challenged Gruner even when he was just a new-made vampire and Gruner already an established Master. That was before Perry left and Gruner went on to the worst of his excesses. He had heard tales after he left. Executions moved from being a last resort necessity for a culture both beneath and above the law to a tool of convenience to rule by fear when all other avenues began to close. Vampires were hard to rule, and could make very harsh rulers. Deep in his heart, Perry knew that Gruner was never somebody he could just walk away from. "And it is counsel tomorrow night." "Annual Counsel," Leon confirmed. "The one time Gruner's leadership may be called to a vote. Even Gruner doesn't dare, as yet, to evade the vote." Perry lay still between the soft, burred sheets. All the vampires of Wellington in one hall. That would have been about a hundred when he left a dozen or so years a go, it might be a few more now. Some of Gruner's rivals had been expanding their houses as quickly as they dared. There were rumors of an unofficial open season on fledglings amongst Gruner's cronies. But after centuries under one man's rule, a change could mean chaos—vampires breaking free from the old man’s archaic rules and colliding with all the opportunities the modern world offered. It could even lead to discovery, the ultimate fear of all the elders. And there it was, fear. Even in his own heart, it was fear that allowed Gruner's tyranny to carry on. "You've decided what to do," Leon said in the darkness. "Is that the point of this?" Perry asked. "You here in the bed to find out for Gruner just what I will do?" Leon sighed. A resigned, sad sound. "I'm empathic not telepathic. One is a way to live and feed, the other is science fiction, for God's sake. I could just feel that you were troubled and that you reached a resolution of some sort." 53
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Now here was an interesting thing. Leon said god with a subtle hint of capital ‘G'. That was a rare thing in a vampire. Perry had to admit he didn't know much about psy's—what they sense, how they feed, what they did to those they were with. He didn't feel much concern though. He settled back on the mettle that had made him a great enforcer for so many decades. Once Perry decided what to do, he simply did it. **** Shortly before dusk, Perry felt the strength to rise. He got out of bed as early as he could, not well rested but troubled with thoughts about Leon knowing where he lived and loyal throngs of Gruner's human thralls busy in the daylight. He looked down at Leon, lying loose-limbed and oblivious like a child. Asleep he didn't exude quite the same magnetic presence but his vulnerability added just another facet to his appeal. Whether it was tonight or some future night, this psy was going to send him to his eternal rest. Perry knew this with a sourceless and absolute certainty. Strangely, it didn't bother him all that much. He smiled. There were worse ways to go. To the side of the bed there was a large trunk. He had to pull it out from the wall to have room to swing the hinged lid upwards. This faint sound was enough to wake Leon, who raised his tousled head and regarded him with bleary eyes. "You're going to help Gruner deal with Kensey, aren't you? In return for being left alone." He may not be a telepath but Perry was pretty sure the psy could use his talents like a lie detector, so he tried not to make any response, inside or out. "I don't know what Gruner thinks one vamp can do, but you'll need your strength—and my blood. You can, you know. Psy’s can be donors." Perry made sure his reaction to that was clear. No. He would stick to his regime of near-starvation. It was the rush of the blood in great amounts that made a vampire strong, fast, and arrogant. The more powerful drank deep and drowned their consciences on the way. Perry had been there. He blinked the memories away. Not even for Gruner would he return. "I was never so strong, and in a room full of dozens of vamps it will hardly matter what one man can do. No..." Perry opened the lid and looked down at the oiled and ranked contents. "My equipment was my advantage. Generations of my family developed these. Witches, alchemists, scientists…" Leon peered over. Perry ran his hands over the bolts and rounds in their protective boxes, types designed to destroy every kind of creature known to exist. Weapons to fire them. The potions and tinctures were divided between the trunk and the refrigerator. 54
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Amulets, hypodermics, powders. Perry never parted with the knowledge of how to make these things. He did, however, burn the books his father left him once he was sure he knew all that was within. Perry was Gruner's wild card; he must be desperate to play it now. The question really was how was he being played and did he want to go along with it?. "That's not why he called you," Leon said. "No?" Perry lifted an eyebrow. "The vamps still speak of you. The sanguinaries tell stories of what you did, how you were. Obedient but never bloodthirsty. Loyal but never blindly so. When you left, it shook Gruner's power-base and things have never been entirely the same since. He still has his soldiers, lined up like attack dogs to do whatever he commands, but he doesn't have Peregrine the Just by his side. He needs the fact that your support will sway the vote. You always had the words that needed to be said. You were always worth listening to on the rare occasions when you spoke. All the elders say so and the youngers believe it." Perry surveyed Leon coolly, wondering if this was at least part of the truth. There was barely enough time to get to the Great Hall in time. He started to check the best and most lethal of his equipment. His old pistol with its chamber modified for soft rounds of mahogany and inherited silver. One advantage of his family background was relatives who made sure to leave him a lot of silver. A spring-loaded syringe with a fatally excessive charge of bloodbane. A few other surprises and of course, the knife. Amethystine, carefully sheathed. He looked up into Leon's wide, attentive eyes and was surprised at his next thought. Perhaps some risks are worth the prize. **** The highway glided by in a smooth flickering blur, broken only by the syncopated swatting of the windscreen wipers. Flurries of snow drifted down. Perry leaned back in the front passenger seat, letting Leon take the wheel for the last few miles into Wellington. It was a few minutes from midnight, the counsel would be already coming to order in the hall. "You're really going to back Gruner up with nothing but a hogleg?" "Who's been reading too many westerns," Perry replied sardonically. He resisted the urge to tell the boy that only colts go by that name. Leon pulled into the car parking level with assurance, definitely the confidence of a native. The attendant peered into the car but then let him in without so much as a word of challenge. Perry let the psy take the lead. It had been over a decade
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since Perry could treat the Rookery like his home, and he looked rather different then anyway. Perry knew he had sinned in most ways that were possible but in his current form, vanity at least was also out of reach. Maybe Leon was for real, maybe a guy that stunning didn't need looks in his mate. Perry shook his head. There was plenty he needed to know about that boy. Currently, all he could tell was Leon was a psy and didn’t know all that much about guns. That wasn’t such a bad thing. His blackhawk flat top was the most reliable companion he'd ever had, and likely to keep that title—but he didn’t make the mistake of thinking that reflected well on him. Leon led the way to the lifts. Perry was pleased to see the decor inside was the same right down to the row of three keyholes. He took out the small brass key that hung beside the others on his key ring. His Rookery instincts cut in as Perry handed Leon his pistol. The young psy baulked but took it, the heavy pistol looking large and ungainly in his slender hand. "Keep a hold of that until I ask for it," he said. His old key still fit the center slot and the car lurch as it slid to a stop at Gruner's private level in the second basement just above the hall. The doors slid open with a creak. The antechamber had been redesigned with a tall backlit aquarium teeming with corals and sea anemones. Through the distortion of the bubbling water, he could see the dark apartment. So the bastard went ahead and had the damn thing put in. Leon hung back in the lift. Perry left the choice to him, walking down the shallow stairs and around into the living room. Gruner lay back, lounging on a wide, white leather corner unit watching a flickering television with the sounded muted. He looked the same, of course. Gruner was like the archetype upon which all other vampires were based; a highboned Slavic face with square temples and long, glossy black hair. He was wearing a black suit tailored in an impeccably modern fashion with narrow lapels and a single button over a collarless shirt. Long, fitted trousers accentuated his lanky frame. Gruner looked up with a bland expression. "You brought Lassie back with you," he said dryly. Gruner's gaze went over Perry's shoulder presuming that Leon was there. "So what was it, Gruner? You bumped off Kensey's boo, and thought he might do me in before you got a chance too?" Gruner liked very few people and fucked many, but as far as Perry knew, he was the only one who fit in both groups. So in Gruner's paranoid little world that meant Kensey might pick him out for a revenge hit.
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Gruner laughed sharply. "Kensey's boo, that's precious." He stood and came to stand altogether close to Perry and placed his hand flat on the collar of Perry's old wool coat. Back when it was both presentable and fashionable, Gruner had given him this very coat. No doubt he remembered that. "This is a new look for you," Gruner said, meaning the aged body beneath, no doubt. "Distinguished." He tilted his head. "We are keeping our kin waiting." Gruner paused quite nonchalantly to pat Perry for weapons, knowing he never carried anything smaller than his old blackhawk. Then he simply nodded his satisfaction and led the way. As Perry fell in behind Gruner, it felt far too natural. Ever since the old man had turned him near on a century ago. The last few years felt like a pale illusion. Perry glanced back to see Leon following behind then, an uncertain expression on his face. Gruner or Leon—neither was exactly a winning proposition. Gruner entered the hall, directly into the dais. Vampires of every kind were seated in ranks. But Gruner's place on the dais was not vacant. Kensey looked the same on the surface but twelve years had given him some internal stature. The air between Gruner and Kensey all but sparked with hostility. "Calling for the vote of deposition, were you?" Gruner said in a still, small voice as dangerous as a serpent's hiss. "I have already..." Kensey's eyes slid over Gruner to Perry and took a moment to recognize what they saw. "There is a small matter of tradition," Gruner said, as if tradition were ever a small matter for vampires. "The incumbent and the challenger may both address the counsel before the vote is taken." There was embarrassed shuffling in the audience, amongst whom ballots were obviously already circulating. Kensey stood stiffly erect, then bowed and stepped back from the dais. Gruner claimed the center of attention as if it were his birthright and every eye was fixed on him. "Most of you here present do not recall the times when common men knew of our kind, hunted and reviled us. You did not live in the times when our traditions were formed and honed for the safety of all our kind. In this modern world a single error, a single rash action could reveal and exterminate us all. This is not the time for children to rule us." Perry stood stoically behind Gruner. He knew there was an element of truth to what the old man said—these were dangerous times to be a creature of the night. But Leon had confirmed the whispers. Gruner was killing with increasing impunity, planning to take total control over who was made, so that all vampires answered to him, tithed to him and obeyed him. Kensey was young, there was
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much he didn't understand but the elders were all too conditioned to follow Gruner. Only the youngest would ever rebel. Gruner turned to Perry and gave him that secret smile, the one he always used before revealing his carefully laid plans. As he began to speak again, Perry held his hand back towards the curtains. Gruner had his back turned but the rest of the audience must have plainly seen Leon reach from the cover of the stage curtains and pass his old pistol over. There was a chance Leon wouldn't have done it. His allegiance should be to Gruner but he could always pretend he assumed Perry to be still under the old man's orders. There was a murmur in the crowd--- ‘Peregrine', it seemed they could recognize him after all. "So you will understand," Gruner said to the audience. "That I have to take precautions for all of our safety. There is precious little potion my associate Peregrine's family passed down to him. Absorbed through the skin and more than capable of conveying you all that extra mile to permanent death." Perry felt the gaze of the assembled throng on him now. Well, of course. Gruner wasn't looking after an old comrade's safety; he simply needed a prop—something to make his threat plausible and his hold over the vampires complete. It was not beyond plausibility that Gruner obtained a sample of one of Perry's more dangerous concoctions somewhere along the line and had it analyzed. Even if Perry denied Gruner's claims and was believed, it might lead to the death of every vampire in the room. Except if it was his recipe.... Gruner was counting on Perry falling into a long habit of obedience, paralyzed and unsure. The all but starved of blood Perry wasn't quite as much a slave to those vampiric imperatives as he used to be. He looked at his maker and knew he could not allow this bluff to continue. "Gruner," Perry said quietly. Gruner just waved him away, a casual gesture that had been all too familiar during his time in the old man's service. "Gruner, I'm not backing you up on this one." Gruner's hand had been lying casually in the dark shelf below the podium. He spun in one smooth arc to point a small, modern gun—finger already tightening on the trigger. Perry's conscious mind was not expecting the move but deeper instincts never slept. Gruner always laid plans within plans like Russian dolls. If Perry would not support his ploy, Gruner would take him out swiftly. The shock of the elimination of another elder, a feared enforcer, on the stage before them would cow the younger vampires and sway the elders to caution. Well before Perry drew his conclusions, he raised the old pistol that he held naked in his hand. His bullet blew through Gruner's chest throwing him back an instant before he fired, sending his gun barrel up and off target. 58
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The room went still. The absolute rulership of a century faltered and drew back leaving a fearful void. Kensey stood to one side of the stage, Perry to the other. Many in the audience would have their particular followers but the passage of years made these bonds specific and unyielding, there were few, very few who could hope to win a vote today. And Gruner wasn't dead. There was no bullet on earth that would kill an elder vampire outright. Perry disregarded the crowd. He walked forward to where Gruner lay paralyzed, his outflung arms trembling. Perry knelt by his side. Gruner's eyes were small and dark, showing unfamiliar surprise, and fear. Looking down at Gruner, Perry spoke to Kensey, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Tell me why you challenged Gruner." "What?" "Tell me why you challenged Gruner." Kensey did not speak in haste, after long moments he replied in a steady voice. "He started to kill. Not just the crazed few that might reveal us, nor those guilty of any crime. He killed any who opposed him and could not protect themselves. He killed those who inconvenienced him, and even those he merely did not like. And even before passing the edict that new vampires could not be made without his approval he killed the new-made, casually, like drowning kittens." Power, after all these years, had finally taken Gruner down the long dark path it had always offered. Perry stood and went to Kensey. He took the capped syringe from his pocket and handed it to the younger vampire. "While Gruner lives you will never be safe. His only desire is to rule our kind and he will do anything to depose anyone who takes that role from him. He will continue to kill those you love, or know, or even meet on the streets. He will live only to destroy you, if you allow him to live at all." Kensey took the syringe and walked over to Gruner. He looked around. Gruner's soldiers stood and merely watched. With the old man humbled, thrown down they were not obliged to obey him and none seemed inclined to do it for the sake of true respect or commitment. The choice was Kensey's. Kensey looked down at Gruner and it was clear on his face—deeply, savagely clear how much he hated this man who had ruled and brutalized him, killed his lover. But then he walked over to Perry and returned the drug to him. "It is time we found another way," Kensey said. "A new way to be safe not only from the great mass of humanity, but from each other." Perry took the syringe and placed it back in his pocket. Without a word he went to the front ranks of the audience where ballot papers lay upon the narrow desk
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before the first row of seats. He took a pen from his lapel pocket and marked the ballot clearly with Kenney's name. As he walked to the great brass canister where votes were collected he unfolded the paper and showed it to the crowd before he pushed it inside. "Leon," Perry called softly. "Come here and receive the votes." Kenney was tense, hardly believing his fortune. Perry passed him as he went back to the door through which he had entered. "Get me a sample of any material that Gruner may have used. Have everyone stay long enough for me to determine if Gruner's threat was in earnest and produced the antidote they will need." "Gruner was never one for idle threats," Kensey replied. "Perhaps not, but there was a time he would have done just as you have done today. There was a time when he was never so ruthless as to try and poison his people into obedience. Try to remember mercy, Kenney. Remember it for as long as you can. Long life and real power will steal it from you in the end." “I will,” Kensey said vaguely, his mind no doubt racing ahead, scheming to seize total control of Gruner’s domain. As he left the room, he heard Kenney step forward to the podium and start to speak in a clear, warm voice, giving instructions for the vote, for the containment of those who might have been poisoned. Perry hoped his old equipment was still here somewhere. The likely antidote would not be difficult to make in large amounts. He stopped for a moment in Gruner's living room and held his hands out in front of him. His fingers shook. He knew that some time in the confusion of this night he would take that syringe and do what Kenney could not. Rulers needed to be gentle men, men of principle and moral depth. And men like Gruner needed to die. **** By immense force of will, Perry stayed awake well into the day, assembling his old dusty equipment. It was lying ready, no doubt set out by Gruner who expected the counsel to cave into his threats—and his old lover to return to his side. A powder dusted over the hall showed every sign of being bloodbane. The vampires were moved throughout the Rookery, the halls hummed with conniving but by the time most of them had gone to their rest barricaded in Rookery suites and guarded by human thrall, Kensey was elected, albeit by a small margin. The topical effect of the bane on the skin was not all that severe but Kensey arranged to have the ingredient collected and Perry constructed a salve to minimize unpleasant effects, and comforted the minds of those effected. If anyone had inhaled it in significant amounts, there was nothing that could be done. 60
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Kensey was busy establishing his rules, forming the first alliances of the new court. As the next night began to fall, Perry came back to Gruner’s old room, which lay empty. With a sigh he settled down onto the sofa. His body and his heart felt leaden. He lay down upon his side, feeling the cold leather against his face. Sometime during the night, Kensey had arranged for Gruner to be removed, and nobody knew where. Somebody sat beside him, and without looking he knew who it was. Leon. “Well, that was fun,” he said acidly. “Collecting votes from every vampire of the city whilst most of them were busy freaking out. I’m lucky I survived. Thanks for dumping that job on me.” Perry opened his eyes reluctantly, just wanting to stay right here. During the night, he could never sleep but just lying still would be enough. “It set you in the center of Kensey’s new court, Leon. Don’t miss your chance. And, if in your travels you found where Gruner is, you might tell me that.” Leon looked down at him, lips pursed. “Why do you need to know that?” “If Kensey’s rule is to be established, your own role safe, Gruner needs to die.” Leon shook his head. “After what you said to Kensey.” His disapproval was clear. Perry struggled to sit up. “After what you did for me, Leon, Gruner will never rest until you are dead.” “Is that how Gruner started,” Leon rebutted. “Self preservation, to protect his people from those more savage and dangerous? It doesn’t stop there, does it?” “No, I suppose not.” Perry looked aside. “He meant well to begin with, the old man. I suppose people always do but...” “But killing crosses a line, and only becomes easier once done.” It seemed Perry struck a chord in Leon—something along the lines of ‘thou shalt not.’ Leon was right. It was not only Kensey who needed to cling onto his mercy, but what of what Gruner would do if allowed to live? Who could contain him? How could holding him eternally prisoner not be more cruel than death? “Is that why you left him?” Leon asked with an edge of irrational jealousy in his voice. “Because of the killing?” “I suppose it was why I stayed away,” Perry admitted. “But I left because of a simple argument.” He looked over towards the small foyer. “I was a fisherman once, it was one of Gruner’s little conceits that he liked to take fishermen as thralls and fledglings. He saw himself, increasingly in the literal sense, as a Christ figure.” “And the argument?” “It was so foolish, so utterly foolish. He was installing that aquarium. I didn’t like it. It reminded me that Gruner chose me on a whim and might caste me aside so easily. I was just one of his fishermen, those damn fish would be a daily reminder of it... I stormed out when he insisted on that stupid thing even after I 61
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explained to him that I never wanted to see another fish, another reminder of my former life.” “Well,” Leon said. “Maybe there is still a softer side to the old man.” “What on earth do you mean? In a ham-fisted way he just threatened everyone here with death, he is utterly ruthless.” Leon nodded. “I’ve been here the last few years, Peregrine. I might know the depths Gruner sank to even better to you. But take a closer look. Corals, anemones, hermit crabs and snails—but there never has been a fish in that tank. Maybe he really did want you back.” Leon was right, even if it didn’t seem to make much sense. Gruner had to be shown mercy. Killing him in cold blood achieved nothing but speeding Perry’s own descent into damnation. That was true mercy, wasn’t it? Not to spare the innocent who were never any threat, but to spare those who might turn upon you that night or the next. To give the damned a chance at redemption. Who knows, maybe the sudden change in his circumstances might bring about change in Gruner—just like withdrawal from the blood had wrought a change in Peregrine, once enforcer of the Rookery. Perry stood compulsively. “I have to get out of here. Leave young Kensey to it.” “Perhaps keep an eye on him, from afar?” Perry shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps vampire rulers need a few checks and balances like human government. Someone to watch for the callousness that blood and power breed. I will rest easier knowing you are near him, someone who can see the ruler’s feelings no matter what he says, and remind him of his promise.” Leon came to stand behind him. “Maybe you’d rest better if I stayed here, but I am not yours to command, as yet. Give me the keys Perry; I’ll drive.” Perry handed over the car keys, but stood still a moment as Leon headed over to the elevator until he could barely see the boy through the bubbling water of the aquarium. “Are you coming?” Leon called out saucily. Perry laughed. Life suddenly looked so much better, not just because of what he was leaving behind, but what was going with him. “That’s rather going to depend on you,” he replied as he went to join his lover. Perhaps he had finally become, in his own modest way, a fisher of men—a catch of one was all he’d ever need.
THE END
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About The Author
Emily Veinglory Emily Veinglory is a writer of fantasy and erotic romance. She writes many types of romance but is best know for her gay romance e-books with fantasy and paranormal themes. She is also involved in book reviewing, illustration and stock photography. Emily is a New Zealander currently living in Indiana and working as a postdoctoral researcher in the area of animal behavior. Visit her at: http://www.veinglory.com
Our authors love to hear from their readers! You can write to Emily here: Emily Veinglory c/o Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729
JOHAN’S POSSESSIONS By Adrianna Dane
JOHAN’S POSSESSIONS
He belonged to her, was devoted to her every need. She savored the taste of his blood, which was thick and so very rich, and he had become a dedicated disciple to learning to appease her voracious appetite. She liked that about him. It had been a long time since she had bound a human to serve her, one so…eager. When she encountered the brooding young man in The Blood Pint six months before, something drew her attention to his perfect male beauty. Maybe it was his look of desperation, the pain she saw reflected in his eyes. Surprising emotion washed through her, the urge to soothe him, yet at the same time to savor him. He had been an eager player in her little game and she was not disappointed by her choice. Nate more than lived up to his potential. He maintained his position at the hospital because she chose to allow him to do so. She liked the idea that he continued to have access to a ready blood supply if an emergency should arise. However, she did insist that he move into her home. His own apartment was not much to speak of anyway. She enjoyed hearing the steady rhythm of his human heart, to smell the enticing aroma of his warm blood, knowing that at any moment she chose, he was there to assuage her hunger. Yes, his presence was in some way comforting, and arousing. Each night she awoke, she knew he would be there, waiting for her, ready to please her in every way imaginable. She no longer felt so alone. There was no overwhelming urge to make him vampire, instead she enjoyed the heat of his humanity at her service. She now sat at the end of the gleaming rectangular dining table watching as he consumed his hearty dinner of succulent thick, rare steak, fresh carrots, and baked potato. He leaned back and sipped at a glass of red wine, staring at her over the rim. She lifted her own glass and sipped from it. The white tuxedo stretched across his broad shoulders enhanced his dusky, rich complexion. When they first met, his hairstyle had been short and spiky. Now, he wore his thick, sable hair longer, tied back neatly, as she required of him. He kept 65
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his body toned and defined by using the exercise room located in the basement of the house. He was so beautiful, even more than when she had first met him. Everything he did was now centered around her pleasure, her needs. Tonight was his night off from the hospital and she had plans for their evening together. Her gaze moved to the throbbing, purple vein that threaded along his neck and she licked her lips. Only having recently risen from her day of rest, she ached to consume his blood. She always took very good care of her possessions. Just looking at Nate, one could tell he was cared for, not like some she had encountered over the years. His dark gaze tangled with hers over the rim of the glass before he set it back on the table. “Did you have a good rest?” he inquired in his husky voice, vibrating warm life. She liked the sound of it as well as the vibrancy throbbing through him. He belonged to her and she meant to savor and appreciate her possession tonight. She looked forward to unwrapping him from the attractive packaging, tasting of the rich texture of his lifeblood and feeling his cock pulse with energy inside her. Licking her ruby-embellished lips, she rose and sauntered along the carpeted distance lying between them, trailing her fingers along the polished surface of the table. She made a point of feeding well the night before so she could sup at her erotic leisure from her succulent slave this night. “Mmmmm.” Her fingers stroked the defined angles of his face, studying him, pleased by what she saw. Anyone looking at him would want him in their bed. “I slept very well. I hope you did so as well. You’ll need all your stamina tonight.” She saw the lust flare in his liquid brown eyes. It had taken little mental encouragement on her part to bend him to her will. From the beginning, he had been more than eager to provide her with whatever she demanded. “Anything you wish, Electra. You know I am yours to command.” She sank to her knees between his legs, her tight black leather skirt riding up over her pale thighs, the red shirt pulled tight across her full breasts. His gaze traveled down her body and she saw the need fully bloomed in the thick bulge between the apex of his hard thighs, could feel the heat of his desire. But he would never take, not unless she allowed it. She rested her hands on the tight muscle of his steely legs. His hands remained on the arms of his chair, but she could feel him tighten with anticipation. Licking her lips, she allowed her fangs to lengthen in preparation, knew the feral glitter was already present in her heated gaze. “Are you?” she purred. She felt the tenor of his breathing increase, heard the harsh rasp of need. And expectancy. “Show me your submission,” she demanded in a firm, yet silky tone of voice.
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As she watched, he slowly angled his head away, pulling down the collar of his shirt, baring the thick column of his neck for her perusal. The defined, purple vein throbbed with life, calling to her. She leaned closer, drawing a red-dipped nail along the line of the vein, and saw a spasm pass along its length. She pressed for a moment, constricting the flow of blood and watched as its color deepened, as though preparing for her. Visions of the pulsing veins along the length of his cock had her wet with anticipation to taste that particular pulse of life as well. That was for later. She licked her lips as she stroked the warm, pliant flesh of his neck with her nail. “Do you want me to take my pleasure of you there?” His heavy gaze was locked with hers, unable to look away. “I am yours, Electra. What I have is yours to command. Always.” Dropping forward, she licked the fat, pulsing indication of life, then swiftly sank her fangs deep, piercing it. She felt the wash of his special brand of heat spill into her mouth. Drawing quickly from the exposed tissue, the exquisite vibration of his moan of acceptance sent the heat pulsing through her, then she lifted away, satisfied for the moment. Blood trickled from the tiny dual wounds and dripped onto the pristine collar of his shirt, stark, vivid crimson against virgin white. What a beautiful blend of colors. “Good evening, Electra,” a dark, sinister voice called out. Electra whirled around to face the unannounced guest in her home. Her shocked gaze met the imposing presence of the tall, broad, silver-haired vision of the last vampire she expected to see in her home at this moment. Quickly, she rose to her feet and wiped away the few drops of blood that remained on her lips. She moved in front of Nate in a protective fashion although she knew in the long run it was of no real use. “What are you doing here, Johan? It’s been a long time.” He strode into the room as he removed the swirling black satin-lined cape he wore, then riveted a gaze toward Nate, who had risen to his feet and now stood behind Electra. “You,” he pointed at Nate, “take this and put it somewhere. I do not want it wrinkled.” Electra swiveled around to see Nate’s gaze turn to her, questioning uncertainty evident there. She nodded and he stepped forward to accept the cape and goldembossed cane Jonah held stretched out to him. As Nate accepted them and was about to turn away, Johan reached out and curled his long, pale fingers into the lapel of his jacket drawing him closer. Electra knew that look and it would be impossible for Nate not to accede to the wishes of the master vampire. She was impotent to help him; it was not her place. Johan took what he wanted, when he wanted it.
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If she thought her words would stop Johan, she would have reminded him that Nate belonged to her. But she knew Johan—all too well. He now drew Nate inexorably closer and understanding his ability to control, Nate would be unable to resist the pull of the strong vampire’s mind. When Nate’s face was but scant inches from Johan’s, he held him motionless, studying him closely. She saw his attention lower to study his lips, then move to the fresh marks of her possession but moments ago. She saw his lips curve into a smile. “He belongs to us.” She straightened her back. “He belongs to me.” Slowly, he turned his head to laser her with a cold black stare. “What you claim is mine as well. Do you dare to challenge my right of possession?” She knew better, or at least she should have. She wanted to rebel. After all, she had become strong over the years. She could challenge him. Looking into his eyes, she knew. No matter the passing years and the strength she now had, she was no match to the power of this particular vampire and never would be. Her gaze flitted away, accepting defeat, yet hating she had no choice. “No.” He released Nate, who staggered back, seeming to be unsure of what he should do next. Johan turned to look at Electra. “I am in need of some diverting entertainment this evening. I heard you had acquired new blood.” “I don’t want you here, Johan.” “When have you ever had a choice, my dear? I own you, don’t forget it.” His voice demanded her attention and her acceptance. “Why now?” “I told you. And, of course, I thought it was time to check up on you. It’s been what—a hundred years or so? Time passes so quickly when one is immortal, don’t you agree?” His eyes glittered with intent. “I wouldn’t want you to forget who sired you. Who retains possession of your black little soul. Everything you are, everything you have, belongs to me.” **** She remembered her first meeting with Johan in 1898. Her name had been Clara Thomas then and she had been the wife of one of the dignitaries at the court of Franz Josef at a time when Austria was in its glory. She and her husband had met Johan at the opera, and Arthur took a particular liking to the darkly handsome, well-to-do gentleman, even going to the extent of inviting him home for drinks. In her previous life, she had been someone else, a wife who knew her duty to her husband and always acceded to his requirements. There had been no question. He did not ask her if she minded the addition of a guest in their carriage to 68
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accompany them home. Would she have objected if given the chance? It was doubtful. She had learned over the years not to question Arthur in any respect. He was not pleasant company when he was angered or crossed. There had been something about Johan that drew her–and her husband as well—into his dark realm. His eyes, dark pools mesmerizing her, sent her heart thundering in her chest, with a strange need warming her body, a desire to be touched by him. He knew of his effect; she could see the awareness in his eyes, and doubted she was the first to fall beneath his spell. It was an alien emotion for her and it had frightened her. She never would have thought of looking at another man, being a respectable woman in a time when infidelity in a wife would never have been condoned. But that night had changed her life. Actually, that night had ended her life as she had known it. He had held them both spellbound. It was only afterwards that she realized what had happened and how quickly they succumbed to his desires and become pawns in his game. She remembered that night with the same clarity as if it were only yesterday rather than a century ago in another country. He had sipped at the cognac from the glass Arthur handed him. She sat on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped tightly watching them as they stood on the other side of the room before the fire. “This is fine cognac, my friend,” he said, saluting Arthur with the glass. Arthur grinned broadly, preening at the compliment. “Thank you. I brought several cases with me from England when I was assigned here.” “Yes, it must be one of the finest I have had the pleasure to taste in quite some time. I am most impressed. I do appreciate fine things.” His gaze had turned to her with an intensity that seared through to her soul. It had felt as though she were falling through the sky and she gasped as she tried to cling to the moment, to the room, but she felt herself being drawn from her body. Unable to look away from his hypnotic gaze, she found herself powerless to move, to turn away. Consciously, she knew he was on the other side of the room, yet it felt as though his hands were stroking her body, touching her breasts, burying inside her. Her breathing grew more erratic and she had felt close, so very close to falling off the edge of the world. Then he broke the connection and it felt as though she’d been dropped to the ground. The air whooshed from her lungs as she fell back against the cushions of the sofa. Rapidly, she blinked, trying to assimilate herself to what had just occurred, her body still humming from the ghostly ministrations. As she looked at Johan, she saw his attention was now focused on Arthur who stood as if transfixed. She saw the obvious bulge in her husband’s pants and felt her own body respond to the sexual need exhibited.
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Unusual wanton thoughts entered her mind and she was unable to halt their assault on her senses. Without breaking the connection with Arthur, Johan carefully set his glass on the mantle of the fireplace. “You have a very beautiful wife, Arthur,” she heard him say in a low, hypnotic tone. She saw Arthur nod slowly. “Thank you, Johan. She is a good wife.” Her breathing again altered as she felt ghostly fingers trailing along her body, magnifying the lust building inside her. Unclasping her shaking hands, she gripped the side of the sofa, fighting the pleasure running rampant through her. “Yes, she is very attractive. And you are a good host. I imagine you always see to the pleasure of your guests as any good host would do.” Again, Arthur nodded. “Always. Is there something you wish? I would be honored to extend you every courtesy.” She saw a slow smile spread cross Johan’s chiseled lips. “I would like to sample the delights of your wife’s beautiful body. Would that meet with your approval?” She should have felt horror at what she was hearing. But she did not. Instead, her body tingled with the possibilities. The hands on her body became more demanding and she arched, wanting them deeper inside her, yet they teased and taunted her with the possibilities that awaited. She held her breath, waiting for Arthur’s response. “Of course, Johan, my home is yours.” “My dear Clara. Perhaps you should retire to your room. I would appreciate it if you would disrobe and await us there.” She had no choice but to do as he requested. In a haze of lust she rose from the sofa, her juices dripping down her thighs, urgent to do as he wanted, knowing her desire would be assuaged soon. Stripping quickly with shaking hands, she lay naked upon the bed, waiting for them, her body on fire, no thoughts of propriety running through her head, only of the need to be taken by the man who had directed her to prepare herself. When they had entered the darkened bedroom, she noticed something different about Arthur. He was pale and his movements were sluggish. She watched as he silently undressed and then moved toward the bed. It was only then that she saw the vivid marks on his neck, but had no idea what had caused them. Climbing onto the bed, he moved behind her to gather her into his arms. Notching her comfortably between his legs, he then reached down to press her legs apart, opening her wide to Johan’s studied attention. He then cupped her breasts with his hands, as though displaying her to the man who hovered near the door. “Is this how you want her? Does she meet with your satisfaction?” 70
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She trembled with anticipation as Arthur held her, watching as Johan slowly began to undress. He turned his attention to the couple on the bed. “Perfect, Arthur. I thank you for the gift. You are a superb host.” He came to her then, claimed her in a way that she would never be the same, and Arthur held her, displaying her, doing exactly as Johan commanded. After fucking her, deep and hard, time after time, bringing her to climax after climax, she became practically senseless with pleasure, allowing him to do anything he pleased to her and acquiescing to whatever he demanded. He then turned his attention to Arthur and swiftly drained him of almost every last drop of blood. He had sipped from her veins, slow and leisurely, as she lay there still caught in the throes of his lust, as he marked her his possession. If she was honest she would admit by the time he took her, she had been eager to be his, would have died if he had not claimed her. He had taken her in lust as Arthur watched. But afterward, that was when he began the seduction of her soul and laid claim to her body and her life. She remained with him for ten years after that night, hunting by his side, reveling in his possession. She had loved him with a vampire’s deep passion as he drew her into his decadent, erotic world. She had not looked back, nor had she mourned Arthur’s death. It was only now that she realized that Nate’s devotion reminded him of herself so many years ago. Not once in all the years that passed had she regretted her decision to succumb to Johan, not even after he left her did she regret her choice in accepting immortality. He never warned her that he planned to abandon her. One night they had fed voraciously and he had made savage, delicious love to her, leaving her totally exhausted and replete. Then he vanished, just like that. It almost broke her, but in the end she had survived. It was then she learned the fine line between love and hate. After that night, she left Austria, deciding to travel to the United States, to a relatively new world of challenge, attempting to leave the memories of her vampire sire and lover far behind. Here she had remained, a solitary creature who fed, but never sought to acquire a dedicated companion, never needed one. Until Nate. Often, she wondered if Johan had been killed, yet something told her he had not, or she would not still be walking the earth. He left her desolate and now he appeared as quickly as he had disappeared from her life. For ten years she had been his lover, sharing in his passions, his pleasures. For close to one hundred years, she went on to survive without him, to revel in her own limitless power. She glared at him across the room, wanting to deny him, to demand that he leave her house. It took everything inside her to remember that she hated him. Yet, 71
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she felt the strong pull of his attraction as though the years had never passed. Unwillingly, she felt herself drawn across the room to stand before him. He raised a hand to cup her face, dropped it to her neck, then leaned forward and branded her lips. Searing icy heat blazing through her. Her body remembered his touch, his taste, his dark passion. He bent her to his will, and she succumbed, as he knew she would, as she always did. Even the span of years could not quench her addiction for him though it had lain dormant for so many years. She would do anything for him. Had done anything he asked. She remembered that dark moment so long ago. Flush with his possession, her body tingling, needing more of him, when Arthur’s last heartbeat was about to stutter to a halt, he handed her a knife to claim that last breath from him, in Johan’s name. She did as he demanded. In that last spark of humanity she had been the one to end Arthur’s life and in so doing, became the willing possession of this master vampire. He owned her as surely as she knew he would now claim Nate. He ripped the red silk blouse from her body and tossed it to the floor. His mouth sucked at her lips, yet again drawing her deeper beneath his control, a firm reminder of their past. His hard hands worked at her clothing, tearing her delicate bra open and pushing it off her shoulders. He could have willed her clothing away, but that had never been his way. He liked the ritualistic human-like contact of baring her with his hands, branding her with his will. His demanding hands gripped her hips and pulled her to him, grinding against her. She felt her icy passion melt beneath his assault, heat flooding her, her pussy dripping with the need to feel his cock fucking deep inside her. She reached out for him, clutching at his arms, as he crushed her mouth beneath his. Softness had never been his way. And she realized how much she had missed his brand of passion. He ripped at the skirt and pushed it over her hips, leaving her clad only in her drenched, red silk panties, a garter belt, black stockings, and her black leather boots. Aggressively, he slipped his huge hand into the front of her panties, felt her hot, wet pussy, and without preamble slid three fingers deep inside her. She gasped with the invasion, yet her channel expanded eagerly to accept him, seeming to remember the touch of him, even after all this time. Searing heat like she had not felt in a century consumed her. “Johan,” she managed to croak as she arched toward him, soft clay in his hands to be molded and fashioned to fulfill his demands. He thrust back and forth with his fingers, driving her higher and higher toward the summit and she found herself pushing against the invasion, her body craving the powerful release only he could give her. 72
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She had missed this. Oh, hell’s salvation, she had missed this so much. No man had ever made her want to submit to him. Certainly not the way Johan did. He was the only one who could bend her to his will and make her eager for more of whatever he wanted to give her or take from her. His hands and mouth consumed her, driving her closer to the edge, and she needed to jump into the abyss so very badly. She heard her breathless pants, could not turn from the sensual assault. He pulled free of her and she staggered back, trembling with desire. She looked up at him, her body tight with arousal and anger. His dark, commanding gaze locked with hers as he raised his fingers to his mouth. She watched as his tongue licked over them slowly, savoring the taste of her. Pulling his fingers from between his lips, he smiled at her. “As delicious as ever, Electra. More so, I think.” She remained mute, unable to answer him, unable to harness the surging emotions running rampant inside her. “Nothing to say, my love? You are dripping with need.” His eyes turned hard as granite, his gaze shifting. She turned her head and saw Nate, standing there staring at them, shock evident in his expression. She looked at Johan and saw a smile curl his lips. “Take him and prepare him for me, Electra. You know what I want.” “He’s never taken a man, Johan. I need more time with him. To prepare him properly. To make him understand.” “You have thirty minutes. Then I will join you. Have you lost your touch, my dear? Have you grown soft over the years? I remember well how convincing you can be when you set your mind to it.” His gaze seared through her. But Nate was hers, she wanted to scream at him. She did not want to share him. Because she knew that once Johan took him, her needs would come second, always, to those of the master vampire. Nate had been hers, all hers, and would do anything to please her. She should have known it would not last. Contentment was surely a temporary state even in immortality. The moment Johan stepped into the room, the sole rule over her domain ended. She may have been mistress for a time, but now Johan was back. Why he had come back she had no idea, but it was of no consequence because through eternity she and everything she was belonged to her sire. She had the opportunity to deny him when her heart still beat in her chest, and she made the choice. He purposely gave her the opportunity to deny him. She had not. “I will do as you ask,” she finally answered him, rebellion tingeing her words, yet knowing there was no alternative. This house and everything in it now 73
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belonged to him if he chose to claim it. And it appeared that was what he was here to do. She felt the call of his mind and was unable to deny it, moving to him. He stroked a hand down the side of her face. “Of course you will,” he murmured. A hand gripped the cheek of her ass and she winced as his fingers tightened, pulling her to him. “Tonight will be most pleasurable for all of us. You will see. I have returned, Electra, and I’m here to claim what is mine.” Her pussy wept with the need to be taken by him, seared with the memory of the pleasure she had once shared with him. So many years had passed and she found others to assuage her needs in the interim. Yet now she realized nothing matched the searing passion she had shared with Johan. One part of her hated the thought of losing her servitor to the dark desires of this vampire. Another thrilled at the return of her master, the sire who made her what she was. He was the only one to command her emotions completely, to make her more than she was. Would he make Nate one of them, or allow him to retain his half-life of humanity? It was no longer for her to question. They both belonged to Johan and it would be as he directed. Live or die by the will of the master. Such was their lot in this eternal twilight world they lived in. He released her and she turned and stumbled away toward Nate. His eyes registered confusion at the scene before him, his hands were balled into fists. “I don’t understand, Electra. Who is he? Why is he here?” His tone held a hint of mutinous denial at the arrival of another male. She stroked the side of his face. He was such a beautiful young man. She hated the thought of sharing him, of watching him change beneath the attentions of Johan. Although he did not realize it now, by the end of the night he would become besotted with Johan, a willing slave to his every demand. “Come with me and I will explain everything.” Johan had given her thirty minutes to impart a lifetime of information and rules. Nate had never taken a man into his body, never shared himself in that way. Now she must prepare him to become one of Johan’s possessions. She reached for his hand and led him up the spiral staircase to the bedroom above. When she was done, he would be more than ready to accept their master. She had been lenient these last months with him, she now realized. It was time for her to take command or it would only be harder for Nate to adapt to his new position. If there was anything Electra was good at, it was convincing a lover to explore unknown territory. Even though she hated Johan for his abandonment, she wanted Nate to know only pleasure in the submission to Johan’s desires. For in all honesty, no master
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would pleasure and care for him better than her own sire. Hate him she did, but it was an emotion tinged with remembered love and passion as well. **** Electra led him into the darkened bedroom, lit only by a multitude of candles flickering throughout the room. It had been prepared for their tryst. She could not have known it would be so altered from her original sensual plans. In her own way, she had come to care for Nate through the intervening months as she introduced him to her world. It was not with the same depth as she experienced with Johan. That emotion–what might be called love by mortals–transcended any passion or love she had ever understood as a living human. It encompassed so much more. That night at The Blood Pint when she first met Nate, she had planned to seduce him, to feed from him, and to walk away, leaving him much as she did any other she supped from. But something inside her altered that night. Instead she took him with her, and claimed ownership of his living soul. It was not love in the usual sense, but for the first time she had sought a companion not of her own kind. Eventually, she brought him to live with her here in her home wanting him close by. Trust like that which he gave to her did not come often. He brought her a sense of contentment she had never experienced before–not even with Johan. She would prepare him as best she could for Johan because she did not want him hurt or damaged in any way. But sadly, even in that, she knew her first alliance must be to her sire. Nate cupped her face and leaned down to kiss her. She liked the taste of his tender, sweet kisses. He did please her so very much. She pulled back with regret. How she wanted to savor the quiet passion she had come to know with him. “Nate, we must prepare.” She began to help him off with his jacket, then untied the black silk bow tie and allowed both the jacket and the tie to drop to the floor. She slid her hands up along his shirt front. “Prepare for what, Electra? Who is that man and what does he want with you?” His warm hands clasped hers, halting their movement. She looked up at him. How would he take what she must reveal to him? “Johan is my sire. Do you understand what that means?” She saw the questions in his beautiful eyes and she reached up to stroke his silky hair, releasing it from the confining band. It swirled about his shoulders, perfectly framing his defined, attractive features. Like a dark angel fallen to earth. Honestly, how could Johan not desire him? “He made you a vampire? Is that what you mean? He’s a vampire, too?” 75
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“Yes. That’s part of it. He also owns my soul. He claimed it so many years ago, yet I haven’t seen him for close to one hundred years. But now he is back and I owe my first loyalty to him. He’s going to claim what belongs to him by right of first possession.” She began to unbutton his shirt. “What do you mean?” She paused and looked up at him. “He owns me. I own you. He owns us both. He wants to claim you. Tonight. Sexually. And he wants your blood. Your first loyalty from this night forward will be to him.” He backed away from her, shaking his head. “You can’t be serious. I don’t do men. You know that. I don’t want to be with anyone but you.” “I’m sorry, Nate. He will have what is his. There can be no going back. I will make it as easy as I can for you.” “You can’t ask this of me, Electra. You know I’d do anything for you, but this–this is going too far. I can’t do it.” Her eyes bore into him. He was not going to make this easy. She would have to take control; at least until he understood what he must do and allow himself to submit to the pleasure. “You will do as I ask.” Her hand again slid up over his chest and she brought her lips to his, demanding his acceptance, his submission. “Think of it as an adventure into the unknown, much like when I first took your blood,” she purred as she moved down to rip each button from his shirt with her teeth. “Do you remember following me into the darkness? Allowing me to do what I wanted with you? Do you remember the heightened pleasure you experienced at accepting the unknown? I would never allow him to do anything to hurt you, you must know that.” “Electra,” he groaned. She nibbled at his puckered nipple through his shirt and she heard him hiss, felt his cock grow harder, saw the bulge at the front of his pants. She brought one of her hands down to stroke across it, cup his heat, and press. She felt him shudder and then thrust his groin against her touch. “That’s better, my love,” she purred against his shirt, then tore it open exposing his smooth, hard chest. “You are so beautiful, it’s no wonder he wants you.” “Stop, Electra. My God, I can’t take much more.” She stripped the shirt from his body, then began unfastening his pants. “You will enjoy the attentions you receive tonight, believe me.” She pushed the trousers and his underwear down over his hips. “We’ve had other women join us in the past and you enjoyed that, didn’t you? Watching me with another woman? Taking pleasure from us both? Watching me feed from them as I fucked you at the same time? I know you enjoyed it.”
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She knelt down and removed his shoes and socks, followed by his pants and underwear. Then she reached up to grasp his rigid sex in her hands, stroking along its length. She dropped her head forward and took him into her mouth. Johan would not be pleased if she allowed Nate to come, but she was going to bring him as close to orgasm as she could, heightening his pleasure, his need to climax, his willingness to obey. He would be willing to submit to anything to be able to climax, that much she knew. She feathered her breath across his slit, which was now oozing with pre-cum, his fingers laced through her thick, short hair. She lifted her gaze to look up at him. “You like that, don’t you, Nate? You like my mouth on your cock.” With that she sucked him deep inside, swirling her tongue over the slit, beneath the smooth ridge, lapping at the liquid passion. “Yes, damn you, yes. But watching you with a woman is a whole fucking different thing.” She felt him grow harder, the tip of his penis deeply blushed, throbbing, engorged with his desire. It grew harder and she felt the pulsing of his blood as the impressive head hardened and thickened. She released the solid length from her mouth and pushed him onto the bed. He fell backwards. “I like the taste of you, Nate. All hot and hard and exotic. So filled with life.” Her hand enclosed him, the other fondled his heavy balls and she stroked a finger between and beneath them, felt them tighten as he again drew closer to his climax. Her breath eased across the evidence of his lust. She wanted to taste his blood, saw the pulsing vein rising over his cock, and wanted to savor him. She felt her self-control slipping away. “You will like the taste of him as well,” she said just before she enclosed him with her mouth yet again, catching him by surprise. He shuddered beneath her as she sucked and licked at his length, sifted her fingers through the nest of his short, wiry, dark hair. “Jesus, Electra, you’re killing me. I need to come.” She eased him from her mouth with one last flick of her tongue. Lifting her head, she smiled up between his widespread legs. “Not yet.” She swirled her tongue, then kissed the glistening flared tip. “Soon.” She reached to the table next to her and pulled out a tube of lubricant. Then she grabbed one of the pillows and placed it beneath his hips elevating him and giving her better access to his ass. She uncapped the tube, then squirted it over his puckered entrance. He jumped when he felt the cold lubricant enter his channel. “What are you doing?” She felt him stiffen. She swirled a finger around his opening, through the wetness. “Don’t tighten up, darling. Let me in. I promise you will enjoy the new sensations.” She directed 77
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her attention to her nails, reducing their length with her mind to that of short halfmoons. She watched and waited as they conformed to her thoughts. Satisfied, she centered her finger at the small opening, then pressed inward. She squirted more lubricant. Her finger passed through the tight anal ring and entered his rectum with ease. Squirting more lubricant onto her hand, she then lay the tube aside and with her other hand grasped his cock. He arched against her. She felt his vibrating groan of pleasure. “You like the feel of that, don’t you, my sweet?” She ease her finger in further, allowing him time to become accustomed to her presence, then slowly began thrusting with deep, long strokes. She pulled her finger out, picked up the tube, positioned it, and squirted more into his opening. Laying the tube aside once more, she thrust two fingers inside, widening him, easing deeper as her other hand stroked his cock, sliding beneath the plumed purple head and down the shaft, back up again and across his wet slit. She felt him begin to ease, to loosen as he began pushing against her fingers. She ceased stroking his cock, afraid he would climax before she was ready. Her pussy was sopping wet with the need to be fucked by him, her ministrations to him driving her closer to her own climax, her silk panties drenched with her cream. Yet she knew she would have no surcease until Johan had been well pleasured by both of them. She added a third finger stretching him farther. He began to push more aggressively against her fingers. “Oh, God,” he moaned. “I didn’t realize. Deeper, you have to go deeper, and harder.” Electra stilled as she heard a soft, deep chuckle from behind her. Without stopping, she looked over her shoulder to see Johan naked, sitting in the chair behind her, watching them, his hand stroking along his own impressive tool which was rigid and dripping pink pearlescent pre-cum. Their gazes locked. “I think he’s ready. You have done well, Electra.” She pulled her slick fingers free and looked at Nate whose eyes were glazed with lust, his body hot and tight. “Nate,” Johan called out to him. Nate stilled on the bed. “Come to me. It’s time for you to find out what a vampire’s cock tastes like.” Nate looked at Electra, panic superimposed over the lust in his eyes. She leaned over and stroked his body, leaned up to kiss him, driving her tongue deep into his mouth, then pulled away. “You will enjoy it, love. Do as he asks. I’ll be there with you.” With her mind, she locked with his, encouraging him, stroking at his need. Slowly, he rose from the bed and walked toward the imposing vampire seated in the chair. He knelt before him, staring at the huge, thick length. 78
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Electra knew the taste and texture of her sire’s cock. It was unlike a human’s and looked more like solid polished white marble threaded with dark veins over its surface, the tip wide, blushing crimson when ready to climax. He would taste of dark lust, hot ebony silk, searing ice, the pleasurable sting of a frosty glass, filled with creamy liqueur attacked by a hot tongue on a searing summer day. Yet it was more, so much more. It held a taste like no human had ever encountered. Yet once consumed, nothing matched it. Once Nate knew this particular pleasure, he would be forever changed. Suddenly, Johan reached out and cupped his face forcing Nate to look at him. “You belong to me and you will serve me as I will. Do you understand? If you love Electra, then you shall love me as well. We are one, sharing the same blood and you will be a part of both of us. Now savor the taste of that which shall make us one. You know what you like when Electra services your cock, you will do the same for me, only more.” He released him and as though caught in a trance, Nate lowered his head to take Johan’s cock between his lips. Johan sighed, closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “Yes, that’s the way. There is nothing like the heat of an eager human’s mouth servicing my cock. You will learn to please and so shall you be pleased when the time comes.” He opened his eyes and turned his onyx gaze to Electra who still sat on the bed. “Fuck him, my dear.” Her eyes widened. “You can’t mean it.” “Your assistance will prepare him to receive pleasure when I take him. The dildo I know you have will help to ease my way. We wish to keep him happy, do we not? And human?” She nodded and rose from the bed going back to the dresser and reached into the bottom drawer for the strap-on dildo she kept there. How could he know she had such a thing? It certainly had not been part of their pleasure toys so long ago. She removed the rest of her clothing and then strapped on the dildo. Easing the shorter end into her eager, wet pussy, she then settled the belt into place. Moving back to the bed, she picked up the lubricant and used it generously on the inanimate length she would use to build Nate’s pleasure, then moved to kneel behind him. Lowering her hand, she squirted the tube into his opening and felt him stiffen at the cold invasion. She stroked a hand over his tight ass, then used both hands to expose his now loosened puckered hole for her sensual invasion. “Relax, love,” she cooed as she centered the rod at his opening. She knew he felt pleasure when she had used her hand and she wanted him to feel even more pleasure with the dildo even though it was certainly thicker than her fingers, yet much smaller than Johan’s granite-hard organ.
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Yes, Johan would be even bigger when he chose to take him there and she didn’t want him hurt when he did. This could only help to prepare him even more. Slowly, she pressed past the anal muscle and entered his colon, easing her way inside. She felt the pressure on the length inside her own pussy as it rubbed against her clitoris. Oh, yes, this felt much better than it should. She began to thrust inside him, as she placed her hands on his hips, holding him steady. She heard him moan as he worked hard on Johan’s cock, knew he felt the pressure in his rectum. She also saw how eagerly he consumed Johan’s cock. Only when long moments passed and he began to thrust against her did she know he began to feel the hot pleasure of her penetration. Her own need mounted as the thick presence inside her pussy drove her desire higher and she began to thrust harder and deeper. As she watched, Johan removed his rigid erection from Nate’s mouth, leaned down and claimed his lips, giving him a deeply passionate kiss, using his hands to rub his hard nipples. He lifted away. Johan’s gaze turned to Electra, who was on the verge of climax. “Enough,” he commanded and she wanted to scream with her denial. She knew better and instead eased from Nate’s passage, collapsing onto the soft carpet beneath her, her breath fast and hard as she attempted to control the need to climax. She turned her head to the side to look at Johan and Nate. Nate was hunched over, seemingly trying to control his own lust. Johan put a finger beneath his chin and lifted his head. “What is it you want?” he asked him softly. “I-I can’t believe I want it, but I want you to finish it. I want you to fuck me. I need it. Sucking you was different than I expected. Now I want to feel you in my ass, fucking me. God, how I want it.” Johan watched him with cool, emotionless black eyes. “You submit to me? You think you’ll feel pleasure when I take you?” “Yes,” he gasped. “Please, I never thought I would ask, but the heat, the fullness–I need more, I need you. I want to belong to you–like that.” “Sexually, you mean.” “Yes,” was the quietly spoken response. “I will take your blood as well, do you understand that? I will make you mine in all ways, subservient to my will alone.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, I understand.” “You will belong not only to Electra, but to me. Foremost to me. This is what you wish?” “Yes. Master.”
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Electra wanted to scream, but she knew the power of Johan once he set his mind to something. She would have to accept that she was no longer first in Nate’s thoughts. Johan’s gaze met hers over Nate’s head. She saw the triumph. He had not needed to use his mind control over Nate. It only took an awakening of sensations inside Nate to draw him to Johan. And now there would be no going back. “Get on the bed,” Johan ordered. Nate quickly rose and walked over to the bed, to lie on his back. “No, I want you on your hands and knees.” He turned to look at Electra. “Would you like to come, my dear?” Yes, they were both in his control, under his domination, subject to his desires, his pleasure. Quickly she unstrapped the dildo and eased it from inside her body, shuddering at the sensations as she pulled it free. Tossing the belt aside, she climbed onto the bed and knelt before Nate, spread her legs wide and allowed him to consume her needy pussy. Oh, God, it felt so damn good and she shivered with the pleasure. “I should hate you for this, Johan,” she gritted out as the hot sweetness of Nate’s tongue swirling over her clit drove her to new heights. Unable to help herself, she moaned with the need for release. The bed shifted as Johan got into position behind Nate. She heard the squish of the lubricant as he applied more. Then she felt Nate’s body tighten as Johan began to enter him. Felt him relax as he became accustomed to Johan’s cock inside him. They settled into a steady rhythm of fucking and licking. There were no sounds in the room other than that of pleasure, deep moans and purrs of consummation. She scented their mingled heat in the air swirling around them and it fueled the fire building inside her. She balanced herself against Nate’s firm shoulders as he sucked at her slippery core. The world swirled inside her head as she pressed her mound closer to his mouth, wanting his tongue deeper, harder inside her. She felt the rhythm increase, knew they were getting closer and when they exploded it would send her over the edge as well. She felt it building, higher and higher, the air in the room crackling, enclosing them within the lustful heat. Nate’s hot tongue pressed deep inside her, sucking at her, driving fast and furiously to the edge. And then she lost all sense of awareness as she fell over the edge, explosion after explosion ripping through her. Johan had taken Nate’s cock firmly in his grasp when he first entered him, and now he drove him to orgasm, both of them seeming to shatter at the same time. Her fingers dug into Nate’s shoulders as she tried to grind herself against him. Pulse after shattering pulse consumed her, echoing through her again and again. Unable to catch her breath, she hung on for dear life until the spasms slowed to gentle rippling echoes. Finally, his mouth left her and he dropped forward onto 81
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the bed. Johan pulled from his body and looked down at the sweaty, exhausted man before him. He looked across at Electra who had collapsed on the bed, her legs unable to hold her upright any longer and she saw him smile. It was satisfied, triumphant. And then she saw the look change, deepen, containing the glittering thirst of the vampire, and she knew what came next. With a growl, he flipped Nate onto his back and hovered over him, pressing his body close. She saw the fear in Nate’s eyes just seconds before Johan swooped, sinking his fangs into Nate’s bulging jugular at the exact spot where Electra had taken him earlier. She saw Nate stiffen, then relax into the possession, boneless acceptance a given as Johan drank from him, grinding his body against Nate, enforcing his ownership. At last, Johan released him and Nate collapsed back on the bed, blood still oozing from the larger wounds. Electra shifted forward to rest Nate’s head against her legs, stroking his damp hair. His eyes were closed, his jaw slack, replete and exhausted after the intense encounter. She leaned forward to lick at the drops of blood lingering on his skin, savoring his human taste. She rose and glared at Johan. “It was too much, Johan,” she hissed at him. Johan leaned back against the pillows, his cock still marble hard, his natural state, still slick and shiny. “He will recover. He did well for his first time.” Suddenly he bounded from the bed. “Come, to the shower,” he commanded. “He must be clean before he rests.” She leaned forward and kissed Nate softly. “Come, Nate, we will wash you so you may rest.” With sluggish limbs, he rose from the bed and staggered toward the bathroom. She watched him go and wondered if when tomorrow arrived he would seek to leave her after this night’s passion. Could he live with the newly-acquired needs they had instilled in him tonight? Slowly she rose from the bed, padding after them into the bathroom. Leaning against the doorjamb, she watched as Johan took great pains to wash the young man thoroughly, stroking and kissing as he did so, enforcing his touch into Nate’s memory. She saw Nate’s cock again harden at the attention he received. Johan turned him toward the wall, both hands resting there as Johan slowly washed his back, stroking across the hard muscles and down around the firm cheeks of his ass. Johan’s slick hand reached around to enclose Nate’s prick, sliding along its rigid length. Electra felt her own body respond and tighten as she watched them. It was not long before Nate was again spurting his climax into Johan’s demanding grasp, gasping with the pleasurable release. Johan hovered over him, cleaning his body, then turning Nate toward him as he claimed his lips. She knew that Johan’s hands on his flesh, bringing him to yet another climax, would brand the memory of the pleasure he had experienced at Johan's hands into 82
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his mind. She was no part of this rite of bonding between the master vampire and his new supplicant. Johan sought to sear Nate with his touch, to mark him as his possession. They murmured words to each other as she watched. She saw Nate hesitantly reach up to touch Johan’s chest, swirling a curious finger over his erect nipples. Johan leaned down and claimed his lips and she saw Nate respond to the kiss with fervor, finally clasping the larger man to him, accepting his claim. Her own body betrayed her arousal at witnessing this bonding. For some reason, watching them, she felt no lingering jealousy at the closeness they exhibited. She felt only relief that Nate had accepted Johan’s touch and his claim so readily. Finally, Johan commanded Nate back to bed and to sleep. As he passed her to leave the bathroom, she stopped him and reached up to cup his face, turning him to meet her gaze “Electra–” he began. She pressed two fingers to his lips, not wanting him to utter the words of apology she knew hovered there. “It’s all right, Nate. I understand. He is irresistible.” She leaned up to press her cool lips to his before allowing him to trudge out of the bathroom, a glazed, yet tired look evident in his expression. Then her gaze turned back to Johan and met his dark intention. “Come here.” She lifted her head to stare back rebelliously. “Why?” “I have said so. The human needs rest, but you...you are vampire. What you need is a good fucking–one long overdue. Come here.” She took one step forward, her eyes flashing to his, her pussy gushing with the need to be filled by him. “Why do you think it is you I need? I can wait for my...our...human to awaken. Maybe I can wait until tomorrow night. Maybe forever if need be. Who says it is you I need or want?” The urge to wipe that self-satisfied smile off his face was strong. Damn him. Damn him for leaving her alone for so long. Damn him for returning just when she thought she had her life under control. She was unprepared for him when he reached out like a striking cobra and yanked her into the shower stall up against his hard, unyielding body. “You definitely need me. Your arousal permeates the air. I know your mind. You and I are as closely linked as any could be. The intervening years cannot change that.” “You should be satisfied with what you have gained this night.” She heard the growl deep in his throat. “I will fuck you hard, the way I know you need it. The way you like it. Too bad I have none of our special toys with me that you so enjoy. We shall remedy that soon enough.” He forced her against the
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wall, rubbing his body against hers and she felt his hard erection pressed against her mound. “It was good, Electra. You must remember how it was between us.” “You left,” she struggled to get away from him, but he held her fast, skin to skin. “For your own good, but now is not the time to discuss it.” He leaned down and scraped his teeth across her shoulder. “You are mine, vampyress. Never forget it.” **** She felt his teeth graze along her neck, knew he would sup from her blood and require her to take from him as a re-establishment of their connection, driving home his claim to her soul as well as her body. The pressure at her throat increased and then she felt a sharp, searing prick and the rush of his possession as he drank from her slid through her. In hazy recognition, she felt his shaft at the entrance to her pussy and she shuddered as he powerfully invaded the slick entrance of her channel, filling her completely with his hard sex. Pulling his fangs free of penetration, he lifted her against his body and she wrapped her legs around his waist, forcing him more deeply inside her. She looked up at him through slitted eyes, saw drops of her blood still clinging to his sculpted lips. She leaned forward and licked at his lips, tasting her own flavor mingled with his taste and the melded essences drew deep inside her. He pushed into her, and she felt herself expand, conforming to his girth, his need. Pinning her to the shower wall, for a moment he glanced up at the showerhead and the cascade of water ceased. His gaze then returned to her. “Human ritual has its purposes.” He drove hard, tunneling inside her, making her his, branding her with his power. “Take me,” he growled, the vibrations emanating from him pushing her toward the edge as she met his demands thrust for thrust, her pussy lubricating his passage, more and more with each penetration. One of his hands gripped her hair, forcing her head back. “Take me,” he commanded, punctuating with a demanding thrust. “Now.” A low growl emanated from deep inside her just before she pulled from his grip and bared her fangs. She pierced his skin, consuming his blood, swallowing deeply, feeling it mingle with her own, reviving his domination within her. His blood took possession, she felt it heat inside her, and the coldness of the years fell away. Finally, she lifted her head and licked her lips, shuddering with the impact. His strokes grew harder, more pronounced, his eyes glittering with lust. “I have never been far away,” he gritted out, as he pounded into her. 84
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“Why?” she gasped meeting his powerful demands with her own, his elemental energy swirling inside her, giving her strength. “Why did you leave me?” He undulated his hips, pressing against her engorged clit and she moaned with the connection. “You needed to find your own strength. You had become too dependent on me. It would have eventually culminated in a death sentence for you. You had to learn to survive on your own, to come into your own power.” She felt her climax rising, blooming inside her. It was magnified by the rage still simmering from his abandonment of her. “You bastard,” she rasped out, driving her hips against him. “How dare you leave me. For my own good. Damn you.” Her nails back to their former length, she raked them down his spine, heard his hiss of pain and reveled in it. He dragged her hands away and imprisoned them above her head against the wall. “Vixen,” he bit out. One last plunge deep inside her and she felt him spasm with his release. “Come,” he demanded. And she did, with a depth of feeling she had not known for a century. She screamed with the passion of her release, clenching her hands into fists at the powerful orgasm that consumed her, her pussy contracted and released around his cock, gripping him tightly, pulse after intense mind-blowing pulse. On and on it went releasing an eternity of need, until finally she calmed, collapsing bonelessly against him, the echoes of her climax still shivering through her body. She lifted her head to look at him. “Why have you come back?” she asked quietly, as he held her close to his body within the strength of his arms. He returned her steady gaze. “You have found your own strength and determination for survival. You are mine and have learned to cope with your immortality. You have become strong in your own right, not as only an extension of me.” “Why did you feel the need to make Nate yours? He was mine. I made him what he is. I didn’t want to be alone any longer. He belonged to me, has been my only solace.” His grip on her tightened. “And you belong to me, as I have said. I am your sire, your mate, your master. I claimed you long ago and I do not give up what is mine. After so many years, you needed to be reminded. And I found your taste in possessions quite attractive.” “I have had others. Why didn’t you come to me then?” “You have never brought any of them home with you. This one was different. You have changed, Electra, and you have become the vampyress I knew you to be.” 85
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He slid from her body and she moved to stand on her own strength. “What if I don’t want you back?” A smile rose to his lips that did not reach his eyes. It was a look of purse determination, arrogant possession. “There was never a choice. From the moment we met, you have been mine. Your choice in human servants pleases me. We will do well together.” He encircled her waist and drew her flush with his body as he guided her toward the doorway. “It’s time to wake our young man. I am refreshed and I want to play some more.” She looked down at his body and saw, as ever he was hard and ready. She stopped and looked up at him. “For how long, Johan?” He turned and cupped her cheek, lowering his mouth towards her lips. “For eternity, my darling vampyress. For eternity.”
THE END
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About The Author
Adrianna Dane Adrianna Dane (who also writes as Tess Maynard) has been writing since the age of ten. She currently resides in the state of Washington and has been a member of Romance Writers of America and EPIC for the last several years. The first defining love story Adrianna read back in junior high school was "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte, and that set her on the road to her long standing love affair with the romance genre. Her inspiration in writing often can be found by listening to song lyrics and reading poetry by such poets as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allen Poe, and Ranier Maria Rilke. But finding inspiration for her stories truly has no boundaries for Adrianna. She freely admits she is a romantic by nature and adding sensual heat to romance with a dusting of suspense is her motto. "Esmerelda's Secret," released in 2004, was Adrianna's first published book, and with that story and her subsequent books has firmly established herself as a voice within the sensual/erotic romance genre. Adrianna always looks forward to hearing from her readers and she may be contacted at
[email protected]. Find out more about her current releases as well as planned future releases and book signings by checking for updates at her website (www.adriannadane.com) periodically. Our authors love to hear from their readers! You can write to Adrianna. here: Adrianna Dane c/o Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729
PHANTOM DESIRES By Bianca D’Arc
PHANTOM DESIRES
She woke, bleary-eyed, in that state where the mind is half-conscious but the body still believes it is asleep. She blinked several times, but sleep was winning. In the darkness, she thought she saw a man sitting in the chair at the side of her bed, watching her. He was utterly relaxed, something about his stillness confident and supremely masculine. Those impressions lasted even as her body won the fight with her semi-conscious brain and she dropped back to sleep. The next morning, the image of the man's shape stayed with her. And it frightened her almost beyond reason. It had felt so real. Not like a dream image at all. She was a capable, steady career woman, not given to fits of imagination. Yet, she could have sworn she saw a man sitting in her bedroom, watching her sleep in the dark of the night. Was he a phantom? Some sort of spirit left by the former owners of the small Wyoming farmhouse into which she had just moved? Or some stray figment of her imagination? Carly shook her head and tried to ignore the shivers coursing down her spine at the memory of the slightly sinister apparition. The house needed a lot of work, and there was only her to do it. She pushed back the strange memory in the cool light of day and went to work, unpacking, moving furniture into place, and cleaning house. On Friday night, after sleeping undisturbed for a week, a vivid dream once again assailed her. She was in a bedroom filled with lit candles, the spicy aromas of the scented wax wafting sensually throughout the room. A strange man leaned over her naked body, caressing her with his eyes and his strong hands. The stranger was handsome. Perhaps the most handsome man she had ever seen, but she knew this more from impressions than any real vision of his face. It was night in the dream, and shadows from the flickering flames played about his angular features.
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He had a foreign air about him, and dark hair and eyes that watched her with fiery hunger. He was one with the darkness. Strangely, he seemed to know her, though she’d never seen him before in her life. The unknown man called her by name as he licked her nipple. He praised her beauty as his hands delved between her legs, touching, torturing. His lips moved down her body with leisurely deliberation, his teeth dragging at her skin, making her shiver with excitement. Slowly he spread her legs, settling like a master between them, gazing his fill at her swollen folds as his hands drew nearer to her core, spreading her open for his touch. Leaning forward, he licked at her clit. She convulsed in the dream and in reality with a gasping cry. Shocked to wakefulness by a burst of pleasure so intense she’d never experienced anything like it in real life, she remembered the moment his tongue touched her. The shock of his heat had coursed through her. It was familiar, yet as foreign as he was. The feel of that unprecedented dream haunted her all day as she went about her chores, shopping and cleaning and putting the old farmhouse to rights. It puzzled her, excited her, and heated her blood. Carly had been fondled by men before. She hadn't reached the ripe old age of thirty-five without dating a few men, but she had never once felt the instant flame of response her dream man had elicited. It made her feel empty and that bothered her. Those few moments of dreamtime made her ache with longing for something she doubted she would ever find in the real world. The most exciting her love life had been lately were some vivid dreams. She was a thirty-five year old spinster, with little social life and a healthy bank balance due to hard work. She could write the custom code for her computer software anywhere, so why not the wilds of Wyoming? She had a big contract with one of the colleges near Laramie and an SUV to get her there when it snowed. She bought the old farmhouse on a whim, but it suited her. She had her work, and lots of quiet and open spaces in which to do it. She had her friends too. Just a month ago, she’d traveled to Lissa’s wedding in California. Her old college friend had found a hunk of a man who owned a vineyard and together they seemed happier than anyone had a right to be. The reunion of the old study group had renewed those old bonds and she spoke on the phone with Kelly and Lissa often, now that Kelly had gone to work for Lissa and her new husband at the vineyard. Work kept her busy too, even on this isolated job. Once a week or so, she would have to meet with the staff at the college. She also had to go down to the campus just about every day for a few weeks, to test, observe and fix any glitches that came up. It was a challenging job, and one she enjoyed. 90
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Up until a few months ago, she would have been overseeing several of these installations at once. Now she was delegating the other installations and overseeing just this one, which was the most complex her little company had on the table right now. * * * * Professor Dmitri Belakov watched the small woman race from her car just after sunset. He had checked the installation schedule and knew tonight the young computer programmer would be running a key installation that would take her most of the night. It was his perfect opportunity. First, he would teach his evening course in history, then casually drop by the administration building where his office was located. It was also where the sexy woman would be working, probably until dawn. He would meet her then. She would never know he had been watching her in her new home for weeks now, biding his time for the opportunity to meet her legitimately and put her under his spell. If such a thing were possible. This woman seemed to be immune from his more subtle abilities to an almost alarming degree. She had even caught him as he watched her sleep that first night. It was all he could do to overpower her strong mind and lull her back into a dreamless sleep. She also had the disturbing ability to see him in her dreams. Several times now, he had found his consciousness seduced into her dream. Each time, he was able to extricate himself only after some difficulty, leaving her none the wiser. Except that one time. In that one hot dream they had shared, he’d pushed her too far. He had wanted so badly to taste her, he brought her to a screaming orgasm with surprisingly little effort. The wave of pleasure had jolted her out of the dream before he could pull back and mask his presence. She had seen him that night, without a doubt. But she was so sweet! He wanted to taste her in truth and perhaps he would, but first he had to work on seducing her mind. Her strong mind and their close proximity made it imperative that he meet her in person and bring her under his power, but it had to be done subtly. She had to be convinced that he was nothing special, no cause for alarm, so that they could both live peacefully side by side in the wilderness. He needed the solitude and peace of the open land as much as he surmised she did. He’d done some investigation into her background and learned of the highpowered lifestyle that had finally driven her out of the city and into the open places. He could commiserate with that feeling, but he needed the privacy of the open land for his very survival. Without the secrecy of his existence, all would be lost, and he could not let this one mortal woman endanger him. 91
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She would come under his power tonight or she would die. * * * * The coffee was strong and black, just the way she liked it. She gulped down another mouthful as she set the high-powered computer in front of her to its task. The program would take almost an hour to load and install. She would have to sit and watch, just to be sure it all took place as it was supposed to. Not a very exciting part of her job, but essential nonetheless. She was just settling back to watch the screen when she felt a presence at her side. Looking up, she jumped a bit. The most handsome man she had ever seen was standing above her, his eyes inscrutable as they passed over her form like a caress. He looked vaguely familiar, his handsome face teasing her memory for a moment until she dismissed the odd thought as foolishness. “Uh, Professor Belakov?” The department chair had warned her that his colleague might stop by to check on her progress. In answer, he rolled a chair out from the neighboring workstation and sat altogether too close for comfort. “Call me Dmitri.” His accent rolled over her, bathing her senses in warmth. She clenched her thighs together under the desk, feeling the wetness gathering there. All from just three words! What would happen, she wondered with an inward chuckle, if he uttered a longer sentence? “Dmitri.” She tested how the exotic name rolled off her tongue and found she liked the taste of it. “I’m Carly. As you can probably see, the installation is proceeding according to plan. So far, so good.” “Excellent.” He turned his gaze from the slowly scrolling screen to rest fully on her. “I was told you were the best in your field when I researched this project.” She liked the sound of that. Even more, she liked the sound of his voice, his accent, his warmth. She could listen to him for hours. And yes, he could probably make her come with just his voice alone. “That’s a lovely thing to say.” She fumbled, realizing he was waiting for some response from her. “It’s no more than the truth.” His eyes seemed to sparkle in the low light of the office. She kept the lights down when she worked late so as to minimize the glare from the computer screens but now it was serving a double purpose. The low light made the atmosphere more intimate between them, causing her to shift in her seat. Her stomach fluttered, as did regions further down. The computer beeped, requiring a few keystrokes from her, which she put in almost by rote. She noted his gaze following her fingers as they flew over the 92
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keyboard. Usually when people watched her work they made her nervous but this man had an entirely unexpected effect on her. This man fired her long-dormant libido. He made her want things she had never wanted this badly before. He made her want to throw caution to the wind. She finished entering the last string of commands and turned back to him. He was such a disturbingly masculine presence at her side she needed to get him gone so she could think. “I’ll be at this a few more hours. It should probably finish the loading sequence somewhere around three in the morning.” “So late?” His voice warmed with concern. “I don’t like the idea of you walking around campus alone at such a late hour.” She shrugged, trying not to show how much his concern warmed her inside. She had been alone so long. Nobody had ever really worried about her keeping odd hours. No one since her foster parents, and they were long gone. “It can’t be helped. But I’ll be careful. I can call campus security to escort me to my car if I feel the need.” “That will not do.” He made a slight tsking sound as he shook his head gravely from side to side. “I’ll tell you what. I need to mark a huge stack of essays. I can do that while you work here and when you’re done, I’ll walk you out myself.” “Oh, I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.” “No trouble at all.” He stood with some finality, his body language making her realize he would not take no for an answer. And what a body! He was muscular and hard in all the right places. “I insist,” he continued. “Perhaps you will join me for a cup of coffee at the all-night diner in town? I suffer from insomnia and find it difficult to sleep at night.” His self-effacing little shrug touched her heart. For such a strong man to admit to any sort of weakness was somehow very endearing. How could she turn down such a simple request, especially when her more adventurous side was yelling at her to take him up on his offer. She took a steadying breath and nodded, liking the immediate light that came into his eyes. “That would be nice. I could probably use a bit of time to unwind after this is done. It’s always the most boring, but nerve-wracking part of the job.” She chuckled and he followed suit, the slight upturn of his lips lighting up his whole face. She thought with an inward chuckle, a full out smile from him might very well kill her. He was that potent. Dmitri surprised her by taking her hand. Bowing slightly, he kissed the back of it in an old-world gesture that would have seemed silly coming from any other man, but Dmitri Belakov had the dashing charm to carry it off. She nearly swooned 93
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when his lips parted and his tongue brushed ever so lightly against her knuckles, dipping into the crease between her ring and middle fingers for a sensuous lick. Her breath caught and her eyes shot up to his. The amusement in his gaze lit a fire in her blood, daring her to laugh back and she did, surprising herself. The man was magic. He had to be. She had never responded to any man this intensely or this fast. Ever. “Call me if you finish before three. Otherwise, I’ll come check on you at that time.” She found she had no breath to answer him, merely nodding as he offered her a slight smile and left the room. She had been right, she realized. His smile was completely devastating. At three in the morning, Dmitri checked on the small woman who was busily typing away. She was so intent on her work she didn’t sense him at first, though that was hardly surprising. Most mortals would be unable to sense his presence at the best of times but he had come to realize this woman was much more sensitive than most mortals. She had sensed him in her dreams, pulled him into her phantom desires and was aware of him on a level most mortals would never plumb. He liked that. Perhaps a bit too much. She would, in all likelihood, die tonight at his hands, but he would give her a fair hearing at least, before deciding her fate. “Carly.” She gasped and jumped up straight in her rolling chair. Her eyes turned to him unerringly in the darkened room. “You frightened me.” “I apologize. I came to see if you were almost ready for that coffee.” She bit her lip, turning back to the glowing screen. He found himself staring at her perfect, white teeth as they worried at a plump, pink lower lip. How he wanted to be the one biting her. “Uh, I should be done here in about ten more minutes. The last module is being a bit stubborn.” She turned back to her work, all too easily dismissing him from her mind as the computer problem took his place in her thoughts. He did not like being so summarily dismissed. The thought jarred him. Usually, he was more than happy to leave his human prey with no recollection of his presence. In fact, it was important that he be able to exert his control over their weaker minds in order to contain the secret of his existence. It was imperative to his survival and one of the most important rules he had set when he had taken over this territory some three hundred years before. He was Master of this region now, as he would be well into the future barring some unfortunate circumstance. Only his death would cause him to relinquish his leadership of the vampires in this region. He loved this wide open country too much. 94
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There were not many of his kind here, but enough that he had to exert his power and authority now and again. He led them with equanimity and a fairness about which none of them had ever complained. He ruled with absolute control and his word was law. Luckily for his people, he was a fair-minded man with more inclination to let them live as they would with only a few simple guidelines and laws they could not break. Breaking one of his laws, they all knew, would be cause for immediate and deadly punishment. Adhering to his few, well-reasoned laws, however, allowed them all to live harmoniously in the shadow of the mountains where so many werecreatures resided. There was an uneasy truce maintained between his kind and the weretribes and he wanted it kept that way. Chief among his laws was secrecy. No mortal should ever be left with a memory of their kind. Vampires needed to feed from mortals, but he taught even the youngest of his people to cover their tracks. No memories remained with the mortals of their encounters with his kind, unless they were memories of exquisite sexual pleasure with an unknown, faceless partner. He would love to give Carly those kinds of memories, in truth. He would fuck her over and over while he feasted on her blood, but manipulating her memories might prove more difficult than with the average woman. Her mind was enticingly complex for a mortal with just hints of something...other…he could not identify. It was there and then it was gone. It intrigued him, as did the woman. She was bright, brilliant in fact, and had a confidence in her intellect that was very attractive. At the same time, she seemed wholly unsure of her attractiveness as a female. She had a voluptuous body, though her manner indicated she was still untried in many ways, her eyes going shy whenever he looked at her breasts with interest. That intrigued him as well. More than that, she had a purity about her, a kindness that manifested itself in the small ways she interacted with those around her. She was thoughtful, respectful of her elders and those for whom she worked, and honest in her dealings. Those were rare traits, he knew, among mortals of this generation. She was unique and uniquely arousing. She turned him on like no woman had done for centuries. All he had to do was look at her for his dick to go hard and wanting. All he had to do was think about her for his fangs to drop, seeking her essence. Before he realized the passage of time, she was turning back to him, a brilliant smile on her face. She seemed genuinely happy about the victory she had just won over a stubborn computer program. “All done.” He found himself smiling back and noted the hitch in her breathing. His eyes strayed to her pounding pulse then down to the swell of her breasts. She was so aware of him, he knew it would be easy to take her now, but he needed more 95
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information. He needed to know if she was a threat to him, and if so, he needed to decide her fate. Live or die? He did not want to rush to judgment on this one. “Shall we see about that coffee?” She nodded, collecting herself and stood. With a few economical moves, she shut down the computer system, then grabbed her coat. He took it from her before she could put it on and held it open. He wanted to get his arms around her, the sooner the better, but he was cautioning himself to slowness. He had to get her used to his touch first. Gentleness wasn’t something he was used to giving but he instinctively knew it was what this particular female needed. She turned her back to him and allowed him to help her into the coat. When he didn’t let go, she started nervously, like a frightened doe, but he held her close, her back to his front, his arms wrapped around her over the bulky shearling coat. “You are a beautiful woman, Carly.” His nose nuzzled through her soft hair, seeking the scent of her skin where her shoulder joined her neck. He felt her shiver and smelled her rapidly rising arousal. Good, he thought, she is as responsive in the flesh as she was in her dreams. “Um, thank you.” She seemed frozen in place, curious but frightened. He liked that she did not run from him. If she had run, he knew his predatory instincts would come to the fore and he would chase her down. This was so much better in the long run. He needed her to come to him willingly. Keeping that goal foremost in his mind, he let her go and stepped back, breaking the spell. The all-night diner was surprisingly busy but they were able to snag a corner booth that was relatively quiet. Dmitri was the perfect gentleman, encouraging her to order whatever she liked though he stuck with plain black coffee. She noticed he didn’t drink much of his coffee, just a few sips and when she questioned him on it, he said he didn’t want the caffeine keeping him awake all night. She wondered why he hadn’t just ordered decaf but let the question slide as he neatly changed the subject and started asking questions about the new software system she was installing. Before she knew it, three in the morning was only a memory and it was getting closer to dawn. Dmitri drew her attention to the slight pinkening of the sky and she gasped. They had talked for more than two hours though it seemed like only minutes. She was that comfortable with him. With a few parting words and a somewhat awkward—at least on her part —peck on the cheek, he let her go. She climbed into her car and set out for her little farm, about twenty minutes away by car. As she crested a hill, the sun greeted her and the beauty of the dawn stole her breath. It was a beautiful day to be alive. * * * * 96
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Dmitri made it home from their rendez-vous with only moments to spare. He could fly quite fast when there was need but he had cut this just a little too close for comfort. Still, he reasoned, any time spent with the enchanting Carly was time well spent. She had thoroughly captivated him as they sat in the diner, talking about anything and everything. His mental abilities allowed him to probe a little beneath her complex surface, learning just a hint of the thought processes that went into her answers to the many, many different questions he had posed to her. Though she hadn’t realized it, she was being carefully studied, analyzed and judged. He had decided rather quickly to let her live at least a bit longer while he probed deeper into the amazing effect this surprising mortal woman was having on his mind and body. All she had to do was smile and he was ready to fuck her. Hard. He knew he could make her want it. He had read her attraction to him in the subtle shifts of her body, the alluring scent of her arousal. It was heady stuff. He hadn’t wanted sex with a mortal in a very long time, but this one woman was making him want sex, and her blood, in the worst way. He would have her, he decided. Both her luscious body and her sweet, lifegiving blood. She would feed all his desires, his hungers and his needs. Then he would decide her fate. For now, he would invade her dreams once more and begin the process of seduction. While she slept in the farmhouse several stories above his own dwelling, he would seduce her senses and bring them both an echo of the pleasure they would find together. * * * * He spread her out before him in their shared dream, her whimpering cries of pleasure music to his ears as he licked through her folds and delved his tongue within, mimicking the motion he wanted to make with his cock. She writhed beneath him, her legs churning as pleasure threatened to overtake her. “Come for me, little one. Come now.” He whispered against her wet, silken flesh as his fangs came down, his own excitement growing. With a growl he nipped at her little clit, fighting against his baser nature to treat her gently, his teeth teasing, not hurting. He never wanted to hurt this small woman, giving herself so freely to him in the realm of dreams. He vowed silently that she would give herself just as freely in the flesh. He couldn’t wait much longer to claim her in truth. The short time he had already spent studying her only made him want more of her. She spasmed against his mouth, crying out her release as he rode her through the storm, licking softly. This time, the climax didn’t startle her out of the dream. 97
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He knew she was greedy for him now and the pleasure he could bring her. She stayed in the dream, wanting more. Wanting him. It made him feel like a king. At length she quieted, and he knew it was only a matter of moments before she was once again writhing in his arms. He worked toward that goal, stretching out over her, his body suddenly naked in the way of dreams. He rubbed up and down, his body against hers, his hardness against her softness, his hunger against her welcoming warmth and wetness. She was almost there. Lowering his head, he brushed his closed lips against hers, pulling back, making sure he held her eyes as he smiled, letting her see his fangs. The moment of truth. Or close to it, at least. If she thought about it at all, she would put his appearance up to her imagination in the harsh light of her day, but he knew he wanted her to think about what she had seen in the dream. For there was no question but that she would be remembering this dream when she woke up. He willed it so. He wanted her to think of him and wonder until he could see her again the next night. Then he would challenge her. He would confront her perceptions of reality and dreams. He would claim her for his own. At least for one night. Maybe two. Maybe a decade. Time meant little to him, a master of his kind. She gasped as she saw him fully in the dream, her hand coming up between them. He thought she meant to push him away, but she would find him impossible to move. Instead, she surprised him, her soft eyes turning curious as she traced delicately with one finger over the sharp point of one deadly fang. The motion cut her and a drop of her precious blood seeped out onto her skin. She drew back but he grasped her hand and brought her little, bloody finger to his mouth, licking out to taste her, if only in a dream. Her eyes darkened with desire, shaking him to his core as he sucked her finger in deep. He laved the little digit, coaxing more of her essence into his suddenly starved senses. Too bad this was only a dream. He longed to know what she tasted like for real. Soon, he counseled himself, soon. He pulled back, allowing her to pull her finger free with a slight suctioning pop. He parted his lips, letting her see what was coming as he lowered his mouth to her soft throat. She fired his blood as she made no move to stop him, uttered no words of fear. She wanted this. If only in her dreams. As he moved down to her beautiful throat, he moved his cock to the hot, wet opening that was so ready for him. As he plunged his teeth into her jugular, his cock found its home in her pussy, pumping hard. Her blood pulsed into his mouth as his cock pumped into her hot pussy. In and out, harder and stronger, his desire flamed higher than it ever had before. He felt
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her contracting around him, her own cries speaking nothing of fear, only of ecstasy. “Harder, Dmitri! Harder!” She gasped next to his ear, firing him higher. He pushed her to her limits and then beyond, his mind intimately twined with hers in the realm of the dream. Her heart pulsed in time with his thrusts, hot and hard, fast and strong. He knew she was seconds away from exploding, as was he. With a groan, he sucked deep, exploding hot within her tight depths, feeling her own release squeeze him with velvet gloves while he came and came, longer and stronger than he ever had before. Even in dreams. Their coming together was magical and sublime. He found himself already thinking of when they could do this again. He wanted more of her body, more of her blood. More of her. With a polite lick of his tongue, he closed the wounds on her neck, pulling back as both of them came back to earth in the dream. He made sure he had her full attention before speaking, not allowing his teeth to retract. She needed to see all of him, even if she would only think it was part of her imagination the next day. When he knew he had her focused on him, he dipped his head close, holding her gaze. “You will remember this, Carly. You are mine now. Mine.” Carly awoke that afternoon, her mind a little bleary from more odd dreams, her body still humming from a completion the likes of which she had never known. She remembered every moment of the strange, hot, incredibly erotic dream. Suddenly her phantom lover from all the nights before had a face, and it was Dmitri Belakov’s! She scoffed at her own imagination. Why, she had even dreamed he was a vampire, of all things. How ridiculous. The man was definitely sexy and had gotten under her skin in a big way, but he was no vampire. Vampires didn’t exist. It was just his sexy foreign name and slight accent that put her in mind of those old horror movies she had loved as a kid. Still, he certainly made one sexy hunk of vampire in her dream. She couldn’t remember ever achieving such complete sexual satisfaction from a dream before. One thing she knew—Dmitri Belakov was potent if just the memory of him in her imagination could make her come like a freight train. She had work to finish up on campus that night and as she showered and dressed, she couldn’t get the memory of that incredible dream out of her mind. How on earth was she going to face the man when in her mind he had been making love to her half the day, and sucking her blood? Sure, there was no way he could know the content of her erotic dreams, but she knew, and the memory would claim her the moment she saw his handsome face. 99
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“Well, this is going to be an interesting night at work,” she said to her reflection as she made her way out the front door of her little farmhouse. Down below in the secret dwelling, Dmitri laughed. She had no idea. * * * * Carly sensed Dmitri’s presence just an hour after she settled in for the night in front of the bank of computers. She had more loading to do, then just a bit of testing and it would be all done. She was always happy when a project completed successfully but she would miss the campus. If she were honest with herself, she would admit she’d definitely miss this intriguing man. Carly yawned as she faced the screen, suddenly aware of Dmitri at her back. He moved so silently she hadn’t heard him come into the room though the whole building was pretty much closed for the night. “Didn’t sleep well?” he asked, a sexy smile on his lips. She smiled and shook her head. “I had some odd dreams.” He fairly purred as he swiveled her chair around to face him. “Some dreams,” his eyes seemed lit from within, “are more than just dreams.” “What do you mean?” “How did it feel when you came in my arms last night, Carly? Did you like the way I licked your pussy and fucked you with my tongue? I can assure you, it will feel even better in the flesh.” Carly gasped as his fingertips traced down her arm, over her soft knit shirt. Even with the fabric between her skin and his, she could feel the electricity of his touch. “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about when I fucked you in our dream. I shared it with you, Carly. I’ve never come so hard or so good as I have these past nights in your arms. In your dreams.” “That’s not possible!” She drew back from him in alarm but his strong hands on the arms of her chair held her in place. “Oh, I assure you, it’s more than just possible. It’s real. As am I.” Dmitri felt his fangs aching...dropping...and he knew she would see everything. It was time. He smiled. She gasped. “Oh my God. You’re...you're...” “Vampire.” His voice vibrated through the room and he knew she was affected by the slight trembling of her lithe body. “You’re crazy! There's no such thing.” “I beg to differ.” His smile widened as she brought her fingers up, as she had in the dream, to test the sharpness of his feeding teeth. 100
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Like the dream, she felt the sharpness of his tooth but pulled back before she cut herself. He found himself disappointed. How he wanted to taste her! “You’re not kidding around, are you?” Her voice was soft with wonder and just a touch of fear. All in all, she was taking this better than he would have credited. It had been decades since he’d had to reveal himself to anyone and such revelations usually did not go so well. “I’m afraid not. I am, as you say, the real deal.” “Are you going to kill me?” She asked it straight out, with a courage he admired. He shook his head. “I had given it some thought but you are too interesting to kill, Carly. Too intelligent.” His hand moved up to stroke her soft hair back from her face. “Too beautiful.” “Then what are you going to do with me? Why show yourself?” He stepped back, releasing her chair completely. He paced away a short distance, his eyes following her movements as she straightened her sleeves unnecessarily. “Now we come to the crux of the matter.” He sighed. “I have been watching you for some time. Since you moved into the farmstead, in fact.” “The farm? Why?” His gaze pinned her. “Because I live there as well.” He paused but she made no comment. “Under your home, several stories down into the earth is a replica of the farmstead, built by the last Master of my kind to live in this area. He left it to me when he passed the job to me and I have been living there in peace and safety for over a century. For all that time, the same family has owned the farmstead and we have peacefully co-existed until old Jacob died last winter. He had no family to leave the place to in his will, so it was sold.” “To me.” Her voice was a calm whisper. “To you.” He agreed with a nod. “Now I am faced with the problem of a mortal inhabiting the space above me who has no idea of my existence and no loyalty to the compact I formed with Jacob’s ancestors, binding on all subsequent generations. That compact is, in effect, null and void now that their line is ended.” “So you want to form a new compact with me?” He smiled. “I thought so at first.” He moved closer to her once again. “But?” she prompted. “But I recently became dissatisfied with the old compact. I want to broker a new deal with you, Carly. A much more intimate deal.” His hands framed her face, tilting her head up to his. “I want you, Carly. In my bed at night, and safeguarding my rest during the day.” “Does this also include...um...my blood?”
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His smile turned carnal. “Indeed. I want to taste you, Carly. I want to drink you and take your essence into myself. But I won’t hurt you. I will only bring you pleasure, like I’ve been doing in our shared dreams, only much, much better.” “Oh, God.” “I can see I’ve given you a great deal to think about.” He stood and headed for the door. “Finish your work here and I’ll see you home safely.” He turned back to look at her, his dark eyes pinning her in place. “I’ll give you a bit of time to decide, Carly, but I can’t wait long. I want you more than any woman I’ve ever met and believe me, that is saying something. Call my name and I will come when you’re ready to leave.” How she got through the final installation and testing, she never knew. Around four in the morning, the job was finally done. True, it had taken her quite a bit longer than she had originally expected but with such chaotic thoughts racing through her mind what else could she expect? It’s not every day she was propositioned by an honest-to-goodness vampire. Holy shit. That thought and several others raced through her mind every few moments despite her best efforts to stay focused on the project. She had to finish it tonight. It was important she settle her work before tackling the much larger personal problem she had just inherited by buying a cursed farm! How was she to know there was a vampire living under her house? Shouldn’t the real estate agent have disclosed something as serious as that?! She laughed inwardly at the thought, knowing that the old man who had owned the house before her had taken the secret to his grave as had his ancestors before him. They had lived with the vampire and all the people she had spoken to about old Jacob loved him. He had been a happy old man, always ready with a kind word or a helping hand, or so everyone claimed. No way could he have been some kind of evil servant of the undead. Right? But Dmitri wanted more from her than just peaceful coexistence. He wanted her body and her blood. He wanted her to be his mistress, she realized with some shock. Here she’d been hoping since she was a little girl to find some good man and become his wife. Apparently fate had something different in mind for her. She was to be the mistress of a vampire. Either that…or what? She realized with a shiver that Dmitri hadn’t given her any alternative. When she could delay no longer, she called his name softly. In moments he was there, his dark eyes boring into her, watching her every move as if he could see into her mind. And perhaps he could, she thought with a gasp. “Can you read my mind?”
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He chuckled. “Actually, not well. Most mortals have very surface thoughts that are easy to pick up but your mind is more complex, Carly. Beautifully complex.” “Well, thank heaven for that.” She muttered but still, she could tell from his amused expression, he heard every word. “Come,” he picked up her coat from the chair and held it open for her. She allowed him to help her as he had the night before and, as before, he held her and did not release her right away. He held her close, wrapped in the coat and his strong arms while his mouth teased the skin behind her ear and down to where the pulse beat strong in her neck. She felt his sharp teeth scrape over her flesh. It brought shivers to her spine but whether of fear or arousal was anyone’s call. She knew what he was now and it gave every one of his motions a whole new meaning. He released her and stepped back, holding the door for her. When they got to her car, he simply held out his hand for the keys before taking the wheel and guiding them safely, if a bit speedily home. Apparently the undead liked to drive fast. When he pulled into her barn as if he lived there, she realized with a start that he did! If he was to be believed, there was structure under her house where he slept during the hours of sunlight. She wondered if it would be some kind of creepy crypt. He held her door and tugged her small hand into his as he started for the opposite end of the large barn, passing her collection of odd automobiles as they went. “I meant to tell you I really liked the Astin Martin,” he said as they passed the car in question. “I’ve always loved those cars and the ’66 Mustang is gorgeous. Will you let me drive them sometime?” She chuckled at his obvious enthusiasm. “Vampires like vintage cars?” “Everything about me is vintage.” She laughed along with him as he led her to one of the few remaining horse stalls. Inside, he tugged on a nondescript piece of wood and revealed an ingenious trapdoor that she never would have noticed in a million years. “This is one of the entrances to my home. There are a few tunnels running deep under the property so you’ll understand my caution about any plans you might have been making to dig anywhere near the house.” “Yeah, hidden tunnels would be kind of hard to explain to a construction crew, but not to worry. I have no plans to dig anything, except maybe a few pansies and tulip bulbs.” “That should be safe enough,” he agreed with a smile as he led her down a dark, winding spiral stair. 103
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He took a flashlight from his pocket and gave it to her. Apparently he could see in the dark but had brought the light for her. It was a thoughtful gesture that seemed oddly kind considering the dire situation. When they had walked a distance down a relatively straight and surprisingly well-appointed tunnel, he unlocked a massive steel door, inputting several combinations of numbers and at least two keys before it swung open with hardly a sound. He motioned her to precede him and with a wave of his hand, lit several candles to illuminate the spacious room. “Take a look around.” He swept his hand out in a welcoming gesture. They were in her living room. Well, not her living room, but a replica of the room in her house above ground that was the same size, shape and position to the front door. She moved forward, noting the lovely, antique furniture that was in pristine condition and the elaborate décor from a bygone era. It was beautiful. The doors from the living room led off in the same configuration as her home above, though the rooms were used for different purposes. Her kitchen, for example, was here a very masculine study complete with wingchairs and a beautiful writing desk. As she explored further, she found a spacious bath, with waterworks probably shared from the house above. She avoided the door that would lead to the master bedroom but Dmitri was behind her every step of the way. He cornered her in the room next door, a room he used as a library, though it had comfortable chairs and a sofa near the door. “So what is your answer to my proposal, Carly?” She faced him squarely, her heart in her throat. “Do I really have any choice?” He shook his head slowly. “No. Neither of us has any choice in this at all, I fear.” He moved closer, taking her in his arms, gently but securely. “Fate has decided for us, my sweet. You are mine.” “I’m not a promiscuous woman, Dmitri.” “I know that,” he said with a gentle smile. “I value your discretion and the fact that I will be the only man to know your beautiful body from this moment forward. You will be mine completely, Carly. Don’t expect me to be able to share you or let you go.” He brought his lips down to hers, probing inside with his hot tongue, unable to wait, but she was with him every step of the way. A little hesitant at first, she was soon grabbing at his clothes, pushing the jacket from his shoulders with eager little hands. She wanted more of him. For real this time. He took her to the sofa, tucking her under his large frame as he tore at her clothing. The coat had been dropped in the living room, thankfully, but the button down shirt and jeans she wore were definitely in his way. Buttons popped and scattered as he tore the shirt open, literally ripping it from her body. Her jeans were 104
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harder to deal with but he dispatched them just as easily with his great strength. The lace of her bra was gone with the snap of his fingers as was the little scrap of lace between her succulent thighs. When she was naked, he sat back and looked his fill. She was gorgeous, as he knew she would be. Lifting her in his arms, he took her into his bedroom, where he had dreamed of having her for many long nights. “This is the room from the dream.” She apparently recognized the opulent four-poster bed and the tapestry wall hangings as he deposited her on the plush goosedown mattress. “This is my bedroom, Carly, where I have brought you and taken you countless times already in our dreams. This time, it’s for real.” He smiled, allowing her to see his fangs as he spread her legs, securing them to the post of the bed with silk cords already waiting. He did the same with her arms as fear entered her eyes. “Why are you tying me? Are you going to hurt me?” “No, love,” he dipped his hand down between her thighs, testing the amazing wetness that waited for him there. She was already so excited, ready for him—it was truly amazing. “This is for my pleasure. And yours as well. I’ve dreamed of you tied to my bed. Now that you’re here, I can’t wait to make the fantasy into reality. Humor me.” He licked the inside of her knee as he spread her legs as wide as they would go, settling between them as he let her get a full view of his fangs. “Are you going to bite me…there?” True fear shadowed her words. “Not tonight, sweet, but in time, you might come to beg me for it. Still, for our first time, we will try things the traditional way.” “Tied up and spread-eageled is traditional?” Humor sparked in her eyes and he marveled at this special, brave, beautiful woman who was tied to his bed. Where she belonged. “It’s about as traditional as I get, I’m afraid.” He silenced anything she might have said by the simple expedient of diving down to plunder her pussy with his tongue. Just like in their dream, he fucked her with his impossibly long tongue, his sharp teeth combing through the folds of her pussy delicately, never once breaking her tender skin though the slick feel of her was amazing. He brought her to a quick climax, sucking on her clit just enough to send her up to the stars and come back down to find herself spread and tied to his bed, ready for more. He was so hard, he couldn’t wait. He needed her. Now. Climbing over her, he rocked his hard, thick cock in her slot as she creamed again and again for him. Dmitri kissed her lips, bringing her back up to the precious peak they would tumble off together this time. When he knew she was almost there, he adjusted his position, joining their bodies for the first time. It was a tight fit and he had to move more slowly than he expected, but it was heaven brought down to earth. She moaned in his ear, lost in the passion flaming 105
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between them as he seated himself all the way within her. He held her gaze, noting the dazed dilation of her pupils with pride. She was so perfect for him. She had been made for him! Starting his slow slide in and out of her hot core, he bent to her neck, waiting for the precise moment to join them completely. He didn’t often fuck while feeding anymore, though he had indulged countless times since becoming a vampire several centuries before. In the early years, he had enjoyed the wicked sex as much as the feeding and he always got more energy from the blood of a climaxing woman. His kind fed on two levels—the physical and the sexual. Both were needed to sustain his life. Often these days, he brought his prey to a sexual peak with the power of his mind and the stimulus of his bite without actually fucking them all. The fun had gone out of it after several centuries, and thousands of different cunts. Only one pussy would do for him now and he suspected as he drove home within Carly’s tight hole, he had finally found it. The bite would tell him what he needed to know. If they connected body and soul when he took her blood, she was the one. Impossibly, after all this time, he might have actually found the one woman in all the world that could sustain him through eternity. With her at his side, he would need no other. They would feed each other fully for the rest of their immortal lives. But Carly wasn’t immortal. Still, he could turn her, if she was the one, and if she agreed. He cared for her too much already to take such a decision from her. He roared closer to the peak and knew it was time to find out one way or the other. He needed so badly to taste her essence. With a groan of animal lust, he reached down with his sharp teeth and bit delicately into her pulse. Sweet, hot warmth blossomed into his mouth, feeding him with the richest, most fulfilling taste he had ever known. A moment later, he realized her mind was open to him as it never had been before, as was his to her. He was feeling their lovemaking from her perspective and knew what she wanted before she could even think it. Sucking deeply of her life essence, he moved one hand down to pinch her clit hard, forcing the orgasm that she wanted so desperately. He came with her, pulsing long, hot and hard into her depths, greedily drinking deep while filling her womb with his hot cum, over and over and over again. The question was answered. She was the one. They made love many times that night, only parting when the sun rose. He showed her the secret entrance from her pantry to his den and saw her off at the landing with a quick, hard fuck against the wall before she left for the house above to do her daily work. 106
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She floated around the house in a daze, touching his mind with hers from time to time, trying to concentrate on answering her email and keeping her business running. About mid-afternoon, a desperate call came from the campus and she had to drive down to check on a faulty connection. She got into her car and headed for the distant campus, noting with interest the gently falling snow, but she had a sturdy SUV. She could get through a little snow. “Carly!” He awoke in a sweat, knowing something terrible had happened to his mate. As soon as the sun sank low enough, he transformed himself and took to the sky. He flew to the hospital at breakneck speed, entering unseen and finding his way to her room. She was alone and in bad shape. There were all kinds of tubes leading out of her small body and the sight of them hurt his heart. “Carly.” His whisper was gentle as he took her small hand in his own. “Dmitri. You’re here.” “Anywhere you are, I must go. How do you feel?” “Like I got run over by a truck. Oh yeah, I did.” Even in such pain, she tried to make a joke and it touched him. She was so brave. So strong. Yet so fragile and so...mortal. “My love, I can’t stand seeing you so hurt. I would take all this pain from you if I could.” He cursed under his breath. “But you should know that I can do so. I could easily make you like me. The process of the change would heal your hurts and bring you immortal life, but you would never see the sun again and I would want you to spend every one of your immortal years with me.” He grasped her hand. “I won’t force this on you. You have to make the decision.” He held his breath while she thought for only a short moment, but he could see the consideration in her pain-filled eyes. “I would rather have eternity to share with you, Dmitri, than the sun. I can live without the sun, but I can’t live without you.” He held her close, tears of blood leaking from his eyes. “I feel the same.” He would not tell her that without his life-altering bite, she would most certainly die. He had wanted her to choose him over the light and she had. It set his frozen heart free. Tucking her close to his chest, he jostled her as little as possible in the pure white snow of the hospital bed as he bent to her neck. Feeling his fangs grow long and hungry, he sunk them into her neck, draining her nearly dry before moving back. She was so glorious! Ripping a wound in his wrist, he held it to her parched lips, massaging her neck to help her swallow. Her pale, pale skin began to take on more color as he fed her his blood, his life’s essence. She would require time to heal but now, he knew, 107
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she would survive. They would have eternity to share together while he taught her the ways of the darkness. She would be with him always. When she had fed enough, he pulled his wrist gently back and sealed the wounds. He would need to feed well this night so that he could provide for her when she woke again. For now, sleep would claim her while her body underwent the enormous change that would make her immortal. Dmitri left her in the hospital bed, not going far. He had much work to do and little time in which to do it. First, he changed the hospital records to show a remarkable recovery on her part and a late evening release. He found the few members of staff who would need to have their memories altered and took care of that within a few moments. He also took the time to feed just a little from each of the humans he cornered. Taking a little from each, he quickly built back his strength, leaving them none the wiser. Within an hour he was back in her room, disconnecting her from the monitors and taking her up in his strong arms as he left with her, through the fifth story window. Shapeshifting quickly, he allowed large, leathery wings to spread out behind him. He moved like the phantom he was through the dark night sky. There were few humans about at this hour but he was darkness itself. None would see him. Or her, as he cradled her close in his arms. He took her to the bedroom, two stories under her own bedroom in the house above ground. There he lay her gently on the rich fabric of his bed, tucking her under the soft covers. He sat at her bedside as he had for so many nights while watching her sleep in the bedroom above ground. He dare not share the bed with her yet. She was still healing and changing. He would keep careful watch over her for the slightest sign of discomfort. Only when she was well would he take his place at her side, claiming her for all time. It was a moment he looked forward to with every fiber of his being. Carly was bleary-eyed when she woke. The room was darker than she remembered and the furnishings seemed somehow different, but her mind was in chaos, her body aching in so many new and different ways. She became aware of eyes watching her from the chair beside the bed. A supreme sense of déjà vu came to her, as she recalled having this dream before. “Dmitri? Is that you?” The flare of a candle suddenly lit the darkness, causing her to squint. “I’m here, my love.”
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He leaned closer, his dark eyes warming in the flare of the candle flame, taking their heat and pulling it within his irises. He was so beautiful. He was a miracle. “Am I dreaming?” He came down beside her and gathered her into his strong arms, wrapping her gently within his strength. His lips found the side of her neck, sliding up over her jaw to seek out the corner of her lips, then moved to kiss her, his tongue thrusting deep inside. Her pulses pounded and there was a roaring in her ears. Her body felt so strange! Dmitri kissed her long and deep and she felt an ache in her teeth as they seemed to grow in her mouth. He pulled back, mesmerizing her senses as he moved down to lick at her pulse, his own teeth scraping back and forth in a rhythm that had her pussy clenching in time. “Are you hungry, my love?” His voice growled low near her ear. “Ravenous.” “Do you recall what you said to me in the hospital? That you would rather have eternity as my bride than stand again in the sun?” She nodded as he pulled back to look into her eyes. “That was the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me in my many centuries.” He let her see the tears that formed in his eyes. She raised up slightly to kiss them away. He was such a tender soul, such a strong man with a beautiful heart. “I meant every word.” He kissed her again and once more her teeth felt so strange. “Dmitri,” she pulled away, shock in her voice. “What’s happening to me?” His smile warmed her insides and went a long way to calming her fears. He ran one sexy finger around her puffy lips, dipping inside to test the sharpness of her new fangs. “You are becoming like I am, my love. Don’t be afraid. Your fangs are coming in for the first time.” “Fangs?” She was amazed, then amused. She hadn’t really thought about what it meant to become a vampire when he’d asked. Suddenly it was all too real, and kind of cool. “Who do I get to bite?” “Only me, my love.” His eyes were deadly serious. “I will provide all you need.” So saying, he climbed onto the bed, tearing off the covers in one harsh movement. She was naked underneath and oh so ready for him. He moved faster than thought to remove his robe, his cock springing hard against her thighs as he kneed her legs apart. She was more than willing as he positioned himself, testing her only briefly and smiling with a smug male satisfaction when he found her pussy dripping wet.
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He shoved home with a groan as he came down over her, his gleaming fangs glowing in the fiery light of the candle. Rolling, he pulled her on top of him, baring his throat. “Take me, my love. Take all of me!” Carly bent down over him and allowed new and exciting instincts to take over. Her body rode his as she licked her way up his throat to the strong pulse just under his ear. With an agonizing hunger, she sunk her newly-formed teeth into his flesh, gently at first, then harder when the first streams of his sweet, coppery blood hit her tongue. It was ambrosia. It was heaven. It was love made flesh. She rode him, feeling his climax as they joined body to body, soul to soul, for the first time. It would be like this from now on, she knew in her heart. They would never be parted. She ran her tongue over the wound, sealing them with instinctual caresses of her mouth as they came down from the pinnacle. She rested on top of him, his cock still within her though somewhat relaxed now. She knew he would be up for more within moments, but this short time of quiet joining was precious to her. “You are a miracle, my love.” His satisfied rumble made its way through her body to her newly enhanced senses. “No, Dmitri, it’s you.” She kissed his chest with little nipping kisses. “I never thought I could feel this way. I never thought I could bite anyone.” She giggled as he stroked her back. “But I love you. I’ll be whatever you want, if only I can stay with you.” “You are my bride, Carly.” He sat up slightly so he could look into her eyes. “We will always be together. Now and forever.” Her smile held the sun. “Now and forever.”
THE END
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About The Author
Bianca D’Arc A life-long martial arts enthusiast, Bianca enjoys a number of hobbies and interests that keep her busy and entertained such as playing the guitar, shopping, painting, shopping, skiing, shopping, road trips, and did we say… um… shopping? A bargain hunter through and through, Bianca loves the thrill of the hunt for that excellent price on quality items, though she's hardly a fashionista. She likes nothing better than curling up by the fire with a good book, or better yet, by the computer, writing a good book. Join Bianca's discussion group by sending a blank email to:
[email protected]. She also has a Newsletter group, where you can receive news and announcements about her books without any chatter. You can subscribe to the newsletter by sending a blank email to:
[email protected]. Learn more about Bianca D'Arc and her books at http://biancadarc.com. Our authors love to hear from their readers! You can write to Bianca here: Bianca D’Arc c/o Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729
POSITIVE ENCOUNTER by H.A. Fowler
POSITIVE ENCOUNTER
WELCOME TO POSITIVE ENCOUNTERS! You are about to experience the sensual thrill of a lifetime! Dance with humanity's darkest fantasies! Try the safe, legal, erotic thrill ride—a great alternative to dangerous drugs, alcohol and risky sexual behavior—that's sweeping the nation! Encounter Donation is the recreational wave of the future! Fall in lust with the vampire's bite! Please remember that the following guidelines (we call them The Encounter Commandments) were created to ensure your safety and well being. It is imperative that you follow them to the letter. These are for the protection of Donor and Host alike, so please be certain you understand each one. If you have any questions, DO NOT hesitate to ask your membership coordinator! THE ENCOUNTER COMMANDMENTS: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Ladies should not schedule their Encounter during their monthly cycle. Please follow all of your Host's directions precisely. Do not eat highly acidic or spicy foods 12 hours before your Encounter. Do not drink excessive alcohol or ingest mind-altering drugs 24 hours before your Encounter. 5. Please do not attempt to communicate with your Host beyond what is necessary to facilitate a successful Encounter for you both. PE is not a dating service. 6. Do not make direct, prolonged eye contact with your Host. 7. Do not exchange personal identifying information with your Host 8. Please do not encourage or attempt to elicit intimate behavior with your Host. 9. If your Host suggests that you terminate the Encounter, do so immediately! Other arrangements will be made to fulfill your contract with Positive Encounters. 10. Please do not tip your Host. 113
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THE PAST PASSING
It looked like any upscale medical office on the inside: soft pastel accents on warm, dark wood. Plush carpets with plastic runners for walkers or wheelchairs, softly upholstered waiting room seats, low tables covered with surprisingly recent periodicals on topics ranging from celebrity gossip to parenting. A tropical fish tank dominated one burgundy flower-papered wall, and soft, nondescript classical music floated in the perfectly temperate and pleasantly scented air. The young lady at the reception desk matched the décor—attractive in a clean, young way. The atmosphere made Winifred Mulligan feel comfortable and safe. Ironic, considering the location. The girl gave her a pleasant smile when she checked in, then handed her another dictionary's worth of paperwork. After the rigmarole she had gone through to get to this point—multiple interviews, tissue and blood tests, and extensive background screening—a few worksheets to fill out seemed like nothing at all. "Welcome to Positive Encounters," the receptionist greeted, and Winnie felt welcome. Was that vampire magic, or was she really, for once in her life, doing the right thing? Finally breaking down the walls of the box she'd been living in and seeing what was on the outside? An hour passed as she read the booklets, signed the papers, and then, at last, went for her final consultation with Positive Encounter's Membership Coordinator, Ailean Duncan. Ailean was, bar none, the most beautiful woman Winnie had ever seen. Incredibly tall, impossibly lean and graceful, like a cross between a supermodel and some exotic pagan statue touched by dark magick. She wondered as they spoke if the light coffee-skinned goddess with her crystal blue eyes and shining raven wing hair was one of the vampires over which she'd been obsessing from the moment she first heard about this place. How else could her skin be so flawless, her lips such a full, luscious red, like some enchanted fruit? How else could Winnie be so enthralled by her presence when she had never felt even an inkling of desire toward a woman before in her life? 114
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Ms. Duncan gave a general description of the "Encounter Routine" —what would actually happen when Winnie and the vampire met—then presented her with a pink, laminated piece of paper with an attitude of gravity usually reserved for awarding honors like Nobel Prizes. She announced with matching solemnity, "These are the Encounter Commandments. It is imperative that these be followed precisely in order to ensure a safe, positive exchange." Ms. Duncan didn't seem to notice Winnie's unwavering, intense regard of her. Or maybe she did, and it was part of the program, and so went without comment. It was certainly an interesting selling technique, having your clients unable to look away from you while you were speaking. "Once these are clear, you can pay your membership deposit, and we can make arrangements for your first Encounter. Do you prefer male or female?" "Male," Winnie replied automatically. The vampire in her dreams was always completely, incredibly male, her weird attraction to Ms. Duncan not withstanding, and she was straight as the Pope's pipeline to Heaven. "Definitely male." A small, creepy smile touched Ms. Duncan's unearthly sinful lips. "Of course," she said, insincerity oozing from each syllable and making those two simple words sticky like dialogue from a dirty movie. "Whatever you wish. Now, if we could review the Commandments." Winnie looked at the pink paper. "You must understand, and I can't emphasize this enough," the alluring director continued, "Vampires are not people. They may look like you, act like you. When they wish, they can easily pass as mortal with no one the wiser. But as you will be placing yourself in direct contact with a hungry immortal, not a human being, you must be fully aware of how unpredictable they can be. We have created The Commandments based on tragic past experience. They exist for good reason, and every one must be followed to the letter. Do you understand?" Winnie sat frozen, able to do nothing more than nod and try not to drool while Ms. Duncan read the list aloud in her deep, smoky, mesmerizing voice. She read slowly and succinctly, and made sure that Winnie understood each one before she moved on. They seemed straightforward, clearly meant to keep both Donor and Host from temptation. Always be prepared for safety, try to avoid any untoward situations—good advice in any circumstance. Winnie believed it, and apparently, so did Positive Encounters. But the middle of the list bothered her. How could she not communicate with the creature with whom she was sharing such an intimate act? The man—vampire—would be drinking her blood—giving her an orgasm for heaven's 115
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sake—and she was just supposed to ignore him? Pretend he was an inanimate object, like an undead vibrator or something? The list went on. Do not exchange personal information with your Host. Do not encourage intimate behavior with your Host. If your Host suggests you terminate the encounter, do so right away! And the kicker, number ten: "Please do not tip your Host." The last one just seemed petty and stupid after the dire warnings at the top of the list, a mundane splat on the colorful, dangerous canvas of the other nine. "You talk about them like they're wild animals or something. Like they're dangerous," Winnie blurted out, feeling like a naughty schoolgirl speaking out of turn in class, but she couldn't help herself. Ms. Duncan nailed her with those mysterious eyes. "I told you. They are dangerous, Miss Mulligan. They are barely more than wild animals. This is a controlled environment in which you can interact with them, a petting zoo or a safari of sorts, where humans can partake of a taboo activity that under normal circumstances could lead to their death. These vampires, and those in the world outside, are simply playing at civility in order to protect their existence. To live and feed without fear of retribution or reprisal from humanity. However, there are still only these thin rules standing between you and chaos during an Encounter. It might be a nice dream to imagine taking a gentle vampire lover for some dark fantasy romance, but I assure you, the reality is far more gruesome than you would care to contemplate." That shut Winnie up. She wrote the check and counted out the days to her next period on a small promotional calendar they gave her. When she walked out of Positive Encounters, she carried a fancy red laminated membership card with the date of her first Encounter printed neatly on the back, along with another copy of The Commandments on that same hardy card stock. Two weeks from Saturday at 7:00 p.m., Winifred Mulligan would meet her mysterious vampire Host, and she would follow the Commandments and his instructions to the letter, without question. She wanted an adventure, not some kind of rebellion. **** He stayed away from that awful place, the abomination that only barely kept him alive, as long as he possibly could. With practice, he reached a point where he could go weeks without feeding on live blood, until the cold animal substitute from the butcher left him weak and feeble minded, wracked with chills and haunted by the fear that if he delayed another day, he might degenerate into the mindless animal bent on death and destruction he knew he could easily become. 116
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It wouldn't be the first time. And he was so tired of fighting, he found himself more and more tempted to just let go. But when it came to those last shreds of dignity, conscience and control, when his body demanded sustenance and nothing less than heart's blood throbbing straight from a lush vein of a living human being would keep the monster at bay, he called the bitch who owned his soul and told her he needed "an Encounter." Encounter. A fix, he meant. He sold his soul over and over again just for a taste of that forbidden fruit. That liquid life he both hated and adored in equal measure. The center of his existence. Duncan sneered at him, at the tatters of pride and sanity he clutched around him like an ancient and ragged cloak that no longer kept him warm. Once, she had been his servant, his lesser according to the dictates of their society. Now, she held him on a leash like a starving, rabid dog. She knew he was afraid to hunt, afraid he lacked the control not to kill when he fed. She recognized his aversion to victimizing others for his own gain. She comprehended that by giving him the safe haven of her abhorrent "club," she was humiliating him as much as saving him, over and over again. She relished this, her favorite game: pricking the pride of the man she once called "Master." He and all of his family, now no doubt rotting and burning in Hell, deserved worse. What ever made them think it was acceptable to own other human beings? It seemed fitting that it was he who was reduced to the least of his parts—his hunger, rather than his back for labor. Dante omitted the owners of slaves in his rolls of the damned, but Briggs thought this low point in his unlife would fit perfectly into the Inferno. No matter now. Duncan began her revenge the night she murdered him in his big plantation bed, and took it every night since the terrible craving had yoked and enslaved him to the aberration that was Positive Encounters. He moved slowly, exhausted and famished, but still found the energy to make a face at the ridiculous name and all the sterile, unnatural rules and regulations attached to it. Such a mortal construction—Duncan was more human than any vampire he'd ever known. Who else but human beings would pare the sacred and profound source of their mortal fears down to its most bare and lifeless skeleton, and then sell that as a commodity, binding the very creatures that are the source of that fear? Such hubris! Such naïveté! Impotent little gods, every one. Come, lamb, and lie down with the lion. So long as you don't look him in the eye or give him your phone number or ask him to kiss you, you can leave afterward with all your limbs and essence and self-image intact. Just sign this release form on the dotted line and like magick, you are safe from fang and claw and tearing hunger.
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Sacrilege. But for starvation and her sister, gory murder, he would never profane and blaspheme against nature again. Since this was his very special, very personal torture, he was afforded privileges his fellow whores were not. These somewhat lessened the humiliation of being reduced to a set of venomous fangs. Such as access to information about Donors. The vampires were expected to play by the rules, and the exchange of blood for pleasure ostensibly anonymous. The Host was not supposed to distinguish the Donor beyond the taste of their blood. It might as well come from a jar, according to the philosophy of the strictures placed on the stripped ritual by Duncan's "logic." Which was ludicrous, of course. The rules were useless against the bond that inevitably took root between predator and prey. The vampire, in procuring some small part of the human's life, acquired all that came with it —memories, personality, emotions, knowledge—and tucked it away in some vast mass vampire consciousness, a well from which his kind could draw and feed back into the great circle of the hunt once more. Vampires knew their humans. Anonymous? Impersonal? The entities that comprised Personal Encounters (he always spat at the name in his mind, an old fashioned curse) liked to believe it. But his fringe benefits—the only benefits he derived from being Duncan's thrall—included not having to pretend too hard not to know his "Donors." He received their names, copies of full portfolios with all their information and interview materials. Sometimes he had a few days to get to know them, others a month or more. A particularly interesting Donor could become a brief occupation, as he indulged the worst obsessive stereotypes of his kind. He followed them. Skulked in shadows and took little sips of their lives like a cocktail before the main feast of the Encounter. One question spun in his mind as he watched each new client: Why? What had brought them to the point where they were willing to undergo such a deeply personal invasion into their health, background, and lifestyle in order to purposefully make themselves vulnerable to a dangerous creature? Was there so little joy in modern human life that true feeling must always be spiced with the unknown or bodily peril in order to be fulfilling? Not that such pursuits, or the people dedicated to them, were new. There had always been those mortals who sought the vampire's kiss—the forbidden thrill, the walk with death, the ecstatic high of the bite. Of course, in this modern era, adrenaline junkies were legion and relentless in their pursuit of ways to thwart their inescapable end. Drugs, extreme sports, war games, high-risk sex, storm chasing... But these Donors...most of them seemed like perfectly ordinary men and women with average homes and nice families, secure white-collar jobs and two 118
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cars in the driveway. Flat screen plasma TV’s. Weekends with the kids. Summers at Disneyworld. High speed Internet. Private fitness trainers who made house calls or gym memberships to keep dying bodies fit. So why did they enter into the darkness? What were they really attempting to experience besides a complimentary bottle of juice and written instructions on how to avoid anemia and keep the wound from getting infected? He always wondered, but never asked. The invasions of their privacy in which he indulged remained his secret. He allowed them their comforts, their illusions. They were only mortal, after all. When he obtained Winifred Mulligan's portfolio, he knew the time for restraint was coming to an end at last. Her photograph alone was enough to snap something delicate and tenuous inside him. She was a classic fairytale beauty, with delicate, almost ethereal features and long, wavy hair the color of golden summer wheat. Her eyes were enormous, a blue so close to silver they seemed unreal in their frame of lush blonde lashes. Her mouth was a full, rich, light berry pink, the corners turned up as though a smile was its natural expression. In the photograph, she peered upward somewhat, as if Duncan had to ask her to look at the camera rather than shyly at the floor. And charming Winifred appeared to be blushing, as if caught doing something naughty. For all the varied levels of shame and embarrassment he had seen in his clients, or that they have claimed in their confessions to him, he was quite certain he had never seen one blush. He was instantly enchanted, and his usual habit of stalking future clients simply to pass the time suddenly became something more—a clawing need that set a strange new edge to his hunger. He needed to know more about this woman. His reaction to her wasn't based on some romantic notion, as if she was the reincarnation of some long lost love or such foolishness others of his kind reveled in to relieve their boredom. It was something more fundamental. Raw. Something deeper and more complicated than lust or love at first sight. Something less fanciful than the notion of a soul mate, and yet... The sensation of being drawn inexorably toward her was so strong it was almost frightening. For a moment, he was tempted to resist invading her life even from the shadows. To call and cancel the appointment or have Duncan rescind the offer of membership altogether—he couldn't bear the thought of anyone else touching her. On top of the growing hunger that drove him there, the storm that was the arrival of Winifred Mulligan into his existence was more than he could handle. He agreed to take a last minute client simply to reclaim some small modicum of control. A fix to take the edge off, though he knew full well it wouldn't be enough now. 119
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He followed the damned Commandments to the letter for this Encounter. He didn't want to really see the client or know her name. He didn't bother modulating his hunter's senses, so when she entered, she barely registered as anything but a heart rhythm and the hot-sweet scent of excitement spicing her racing blood. He could smell marijuana and possibly tequila under the arousal. He should have ended the session right then, sent her away like he so desperately wanted to, but those particular rules were meant to protect him, and he was not interested in protection. He needed to feed. He took her wrist—big-boned, thickly muscled, an outdoorswoman's arm. He bit into her like a ripe plum and she moaned deeply, sagging back against the couch as she poured into him. He tuned out the rush of her emotion, the images from her life, even the taste of her ecstasy, which he usually enjoyed. He imbibed the nourishment only, distracted himself from the voices in his head telling him this was wrong—wrong blood, wrong woman—by focusing on the drugs and alcohol in the Donor's system. He felt their effects for a moment, then filtered them out one by one and dissipated them before they could penetrate his tissues fully and alter his consciousness. It was as clinical an exchange as anything Duncan could ever have imagined in her most sadistic dreams. The Donor thanked him a dozen times, lounging with her complementary bottle of juice afterward, never making eye contact like a good lap dog. He accepted her illicit, exorbitant tip and left without saying a single word to her. He went directly from the club to Winifred Mulligan's apartment in the middle class heart of the city—a sad little box tucked in tight among dozens of identical sad little boxes. But it was clear she had worked diligently to make her life's cubicle more cheerful and individual than the bland cookie cutter apartments of the neighbors, like a flower trying to bloom in the crack of a sidewalk. An explosion of plants burgeoned on her tiny cement patio. Wind chimes hung above an ornate French door that was obviously not original to the abode. He peered inside and his flawless night vision showed him that she decorated in bright, happy colors. Every surface was covered with books, the wall space with paintings and photographs. The furniture and carpeting were economical, worn, but soft, obviously comfortable, and well loved. He smelled the lingering scents of her life—recently baked cookies, some floral bubble bath or soap, baby powder, potpourri. A stranger's blood ran through his veins, but simply looking into Winifred's home was what nourished him. He left without looking into her bedroom. He tried to tell himself that it was out of respect for her—to let her enjoy her final days unencumbered by him, because he was increasingly certain that once they touched, nothing would be the same for either of them ever again. 120
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He fancied that thought, but it was nothing so noble. He was, very simply, afraid. Afraid of what her effect on him in person would be when only a photograph and a glance at the barest outward trappings of her life made him feel as though he'd been bulldozed. The thought undid him and all his careful control. Why this woman? Why was she already so deeply in him when they'd never so much as occupied the same space? He had never been a fool for romance, even when he was alive and playing the gallant southern gent. He courted proper ladies, even fell in love a few times, had a few sordid affairs with fallen women, but never became really entangled with one. Even Duncan, who altered his existence forever, was an outsider, a slave, not an intimate. He decided to put Winifred out of his head until the Encounter. He would wait and see what happened when they were together at last. He would look at her, gauge her reaction to him, and know. Soft, pale flesh scented with sunshine, and woman, and life. Eyes wide and flashing blue laughter. Lips like berry wine, salty sweet and breath mints. Would they be his to taste, to touch? He didn't dare to hope, for hope was the only thing that could truly destroy his kind.
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THE FUTURE APPROACHING
She decided to plait her hair for the Encounter. Easy access to her neck, and she liked the sensation of the long, heavy braid dangling down her back like a rope. She could be Rapunzel, or maybe Lara Croft. She was, after all, about to become an adventurer for the first time. Her outfit was simple and comfortable: a long dress in soft, midnight blue cotton, long sleeves and a scooped neck. A turtle neck sweater to cover up after, just in case there were marks. How did she never ask if there would be marks? Chills were a common side effect of the bite. She had read all the literature a dozen times—maybe a hundred. The pages lay torn and scattered on her night stand, some of the ink had even smudged. She knew the Commandments by heart and no longer questioned their wisdom or the meaning behind them. What was meant to be, would be. Que sera, sera and all that. There should have been some fanfare upon her arrival, she thought as the cab stopped in front of the modern stone and glass building that housed Positive Encounters. There was something momentous about the evening, the culmination of so many weeks of effort and imagination. An erotic dream come true. Hadn't she always had a thing for sexy vampire heroes—drooled over Lestat, panted over Gary Oldman's or Gerard Butler's Draculas, cried and sighed over Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Even so, who ever would have imagined that shy little Winnie would actually walk into a vampire's den and let him have his wicked way with her? She looked up above the reception desk as she approached and saw an enlarged version of the Commandments hanging above the desk in an elaborate frame. Rules and regulations meant to rein in unruly hungers. Make naughty fantasies tame. Okay, not so wicked, maybe. But still illicit, and that was pretty much the same thing. She still felt free, coming there. The receptionist smiled as Winnie introduced herself. "I have a 7:00 uh..." she paused, searching for the right word. "Encounter." 122
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The smile on the receptionist grew until it was almost eerie. "Oh, sure. Have a seat in the lounge, and Ms. Duncan will be right with you." She turned, and the mysterious Ms. Duncan was already standing behind her, impassive and cool, unruffled by her guest's jumping half out of her new silk stockings. "I'm glad you could make it," the membership coordinator purred in that preternaturally smooth voice. "Your Host is ready for you." Ms. Duncan didn't cast a reflection in the receptionist's glass partition. Winnie's heart stuttered, throbbed—this was it. This was real, and the stunning Ms. Duncan actually was a vampire. She wiped suddenly damp palms on her skirt and wondered where all her earlier bravado and certainty went. Hadn't she been feeling supremely sure of herself in the cab just a few minutes ago? They walked down a long burgundy carpeted hallway, Ms. Duncan in the lead with Winnie a few steps behind. The elder woman murmured, "I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the Commandments." Why couldn't the woman ever just talk? Why did she have to be so weird and sensual and otherworldly? Were all vampires like that? Would her Host be? "No, of course not," Winnie reassured her, because she was, in spite of everything that led to this moment and what it was leading up to, a good girl. No eye contact. No chit-chat. No sex. No drugs. No names. Follow directions. No tipping. She got it. All the fine hairs on her body stood on end with nerves and anticipation. Ms. Duncan led her onward down the mostly nondescript hallway with its warm, homey lighting, the walls lined with ornately carved wooden doors with baroque brass knobs and numbered plates. They paused before #7. Ms. Duncan shot an unreadable look over one slender shoulder, and then knocked. The door clicked open on cue, and Ms. Duncan stepped aside with a sweeping gesture toward the room beyond. Winnie noticed for the first time that the membership coordinator was wearing the same deep, blazing crimson that seemed to be the thematic color of the rest of the place. It made her skin look like very light caramel under her almost silver-pale vampire pallor. She was like some mythical guide to the underworld, and Winnie was suddenly more afraid than ever. "You can go in, Ms. Mulligan. Enjoy your Encounter," she said, and slinked away. Winnie smelled roses and sandalwood wafting from the room, beckoning with an undertone of something warm, musky and male she couldn't quite identify. Sexy. Enticing. "Come in." Deep voice, thick and rumbling, the kind of sound that hit her low in her belly and froze her, deer-in-headlights, exactly where she stood in the hallway. She couldn't move. She willed her body, screamed at it internally, scrambled 123
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desperately for her long-lost nonchalance, tried to pretend that she was her best friend Shiloh (a.k.a. She-Who-Will-Try-Anything-Once) like she always did when she was nervous or frightened, but nothing worked. He paralyzed her with two simple words—how were Ms. Duncan's precious Commandments ever going to protect her? Maybe this is a huge mistake after all. "Hello?" The new word was touched with all-too-human confusion, and Winnie heard footfalls on the carpet coming toward her. She wondered nonsensically if he was wearing shoes. How dangerous could a barefoot vampire be? He appeared in the doorway, and the first thing she did was make mindbending, brain-melting, will-crushing, utterly direct and completely prolonged contact with her Host's impossibly dark green eyes. Not hazel green, or even rare emerald, but a forest green so dark they were almost black. He was beautiful, of course. To her surprise, he looked as pole-axed as she felt when they came face to face—those stunning eyes wide and mouth dropped open for a moment before he could collect himself and closed it. "Hello," he repeated, with more surprise and a touch of pleasure this time, and reached out a large, strong-looking hand. She was lost. The Commandments forgotten. "No eye contact" should be number one, she thought as she let the vampire lead her into Encounter Room Number 7. **** Briggs watched her sharp blue eyes scour the Encounter Room, and realized that he never really bothered to notice the décor before. Warm, dark colors, heavy with Duncan's favored deep crimson, antique rugs and tapestries on walls papered in gold, a few calm night scenes in watercolor hung here and there for accent. It was not a room that lent itself naturally to any normal activity—too formal to be a sitting room, too stuffy for a bedroom, not enough furniture to be anything but functional for this particular occasion. There was only the large, overstuffed, extra deep sofa and the coffee table with a small refrigerator beneath stocked with juices, cookies and fresh fruits for the Donor's refreshment. The door had an exit sign lit above it in ominous emergency red, a fire extinguisher hanging on one side, a phone and first aid kit on the other. Nothing was left to chance when it came to safety and potential lawsuits. Duncan was many things—a fool not among them. He should never have looked into Winifred Mulligan's eyes. He never should have allowed this Encounter to happen at all. He should have gone to ground when he realized what she could be to him. Run far and run fast from the metamorphosis he felt looming over this beautiful horizon.
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But he was too weak, and now it was too late. Here she was: his doom. His salvation. He knew she was coming, but he was still utterly unprepared for her arrival. She wore all that glorious golden hair in a tight braid down her back, its end calling attention to the soft, lush tuck of her waist and swell of her rear beneath the high quality cotton of her simple dress. Her body was small and curvaceous, with an earthy sort of grace—had he read that she did yoga? She was so alive that the warmth of her skin burned him when he took her hand out in the hallway. He rubbed the still sensitized flesh in sensual remembrance. She blushed deeply, as though she could hear his thoughts. He pushed the beast down into its cage, repressed his own sudden urge to be shy, and gestured toward the sofa. "Please, make yourself comfortable." She smiled and sat down, carefully crossing her ankles and folding her small, fair hands into her lap. He had been whoring in Duncan's pit of horrors for more years than he cared to count. He'd performed this dance dozens of times, but this was the first he could recall that he was at a loss what to do next. The "Encounter Protocol," which always seemed so wrong and unnatural, though he could fall back on it when he didn’t feel socially able, seemed doubly incorrect when applied to this utterly earthly creature. Like enjoying a rare and delicate flower by crushing it under his boot heel. He fell back on long-forgotten human niceties instead. He was more than a little rusty. "Would you like something to drink? We have a full complement of fresh juices from the bar." She shook her head, glanced up at him from under her lashes for a moment, then quickly away. Her flush deepened, and the scent of nervous fear, arousal and warm woman wafted into the air from her skin like exotic incense. "No, thank you," she politely refused, and he breathed her in—all of her, the sound and the smell and the way the room came to life with her presence. "What's your name?" The question took him by surprise as so few things could do anymore. He opened his eyes to find hers looking directly into them once again. The gaze punched him straight in the gut, sparked a strange, irrational anger, reminding him of the way she made him lose control. A burning compatriot of the fear that almost drove him from her before they even met. "You don't seem to take the Commandments of this establishment very seriously. Weren't you sufficiently warned?" he snapped, and regretted the harsh words the moment they were gone from his lips. The small smile that hovered around her pink mouth vanished like a sweet vapor on a gust of fetid wind. The acrid tint of fear in her scent increased exponentially, and with it came the dull, moldy smell of embarrassment. 125
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"No, I do," she insisted very quietly, her eyes sliding back to their proper place, looking at her hands trapped in her lap like bound birds. It was as though she was shrinking before his eyes, and Briggs couldn't stand the thought of her vanishing before he really got to be with her. "I'm sorry," she added. His fear of her slipping away overcame his hesitation and strange anger, and he moved to sit beside her on the couch. Close enough to feel the warmth of her skin, but careful not to touch. "I'm the one who should be sorry," he admitted. "You're the customer, after all, and the customer is always right, right?" She shrugged as if unsure of the answer, but the tension eased some, and he knew the situation would be as all right as it could possibly be. She was as edgy as he was, as uncertain of what was happening and doubly shy. He wondered if she was as overcome by the maelstrom of other sensations and questions as he. If she thought this was something far more important than a single, sterile Encounter dictated by the rules of a cold, distant corporate entity and a sadistic vampire who loathed his existence. If she felt the press of profound change hovering just between them. "Frankly, I don't care about the Commandments," he told her. "They're the organization's, not mine. You're safe with me no matter what you do, I promise. And...I need to know you." He blurted out the last before he even consciously thought it. Her gaze ticked up and locked to his, obliterating Commandment #6 once and for all. Her unreal blue eyes were so much more intense than in her photograph; so much more alive for the carefully banked fire he could see within them that a camera could never capture. "Really?" she asked, suddenly breathless, excited, as if what he just said was exactly what she hoped to hear. Her shyness evaporated. "I want to know you too! I mean this whole thing seemed so cold from the start. How are we supposed to share something so personal with all these rules holding us back from each other? If you're so dangerous and out of control, why let humans near you in the first place, rules or no rules?" Her enthusiasm was like a warm light bathing the dim room. An unexpected ray of sun upon his dark world—and all the other possible romantic clichés ever uttered. The fact that she seemed to understand the shame and humiliation of his predicament, the way this situation robbed him and all his kind of dignity and power, and her kind of its honored place as prey, drew him even closer to her than he thought possible. He dared to reach out and take her hand once more. The simple contact sent a shockwave ripping through his long neglected system, shattering the numbness that had overtaken him in recent months. She leaned closer, almost imperceptibly, a 126
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subtle bit of body language none but a predator would ever perceive and squeezed his cold fingers in her warm ones. Even though he appreciated her understanding, as much as touching her in such an ordinary way was quickly obliterating his good sense in a cloud of bliss and want, he still felt the need to protect her. To give her one last chance to escape before something happened that they would not be able to take back. He reluctantly relinquished her hand. "But I am dangerous, Winifred. I can be deadly. Though I don't agree with all of the rules, they were created for your protection. I'm not human, and if I lose control, the things we do together could kill you." A little frown marred her angel's face as she pondered that. Then she repeated, "What's your name?" He blinked, taken aback. He had completely forgotten she asked that question a moment before. "My name is Briggs. Briggs Aubrey." It felt so good to say it, like a confession. As though giving her the power of his name somehow made him—made this moment—real at last. She smiled and offered her own delicate hand as if they were any two people meeting on the street. It was bare of nail polish or any decoration but a thin band of Celtic knot work encircling the first finger. An ancient prayer to Brigid for inner peace, if he was not mistaken. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Briggs. I'm Winifred Mulligan. My friends call me Winnie." They shook, and that little spark lit once more. This time, it flared outward from where they touched, spreading heat through his body as the handshake lingered a moment too long to be strictly polite. The tingle quickly became a fire in his veins, growing and spreading, decades of loneliness, longing and frustration fueling the flames. The uncertainty of the past few weeks of knowing and yet not knowing her, equal parts poison and aphrodisiac. Her eyes, her smile, her small, round body a siren song to his craving. He felt his will slipping away and could barely find the strength to care. "Winnie," he whispered, eyes riveted to her lips. Her voice went soft as well. "See? We're any two people who just met, and now..." He moved closer, just another inch. He could smell the orange juice she drank earlier, sweet on her warm, living breath. "And now..." She closed that last distance between them and brushed her lips to his. The tiny bolt of electricity the touch of their hands created was but a pinprick compared to the lightning strike of the kiss. He reeled, fell into her, took her into his arms as he explored the warm haven of her mouth with his seeking tongue and lips and teeth. 127
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She tasted of wild peppermint and citrus, and he devoured her with tender reverence. His tongue thrust gently, firmly, stroking hers, and she gave a sighing little moan in response as she went pliant in his arms, her tiny fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him impossibly closer, until he was breathing her breath into his dead lungs. Had kissing ever been so erotic, so completely enthralling, so deeply moving to him before? He couldn't recall it being so—it was just part of foreplay, simply a stop on the path to mating or feeding; never this art in its own right, this ritual of deep communication, of knowing so intimately without words. The fire became a conflagration driven by the kindling of her breasts pressing into his chest, the scent of her arousal—a deeply feminine musk setting perfect contrast to the floral perfume she wore. He let a hand slide down to cup one firm, fleshy breast, to squeeze and test its perfect weight, a thumb pad to tease the responsive nipple into instant rigidity. She moaned his name, and he was lost yet again. Her hands wandered down from his hair, exploring him, caressing shoulders, back and waist until she claimed the hem of his sweater and tugged it up over his head without so much as a by your leave. Not that she would ever need one. "Winnie, are you sure?" he murmured into her mouth. She laid both hands flat on his chest, caressing his pectoral muscles in slow, sweeping circles. Her cheeks were flushed with heated passion’s blood, and she gazed at him with ravenous eyes. "Yes," she breathed. "Oh, yes." **** He was nothing less than amazing. Better than any of her darkest, most erotic dreams. The minute she heard him say, "I need to know you," she knew this was Destiny with a Capital D. No. Before that. From the moment she overheard those women talking about Positive Encounters in the bathroom at the library where she worked, she had been rushing headlong into this perfect, burning moment. Each step along the way had been a lesson, a preparation, a trial and a benediction to earn her this. His mouth, so strong and sure, yet so gentle. The same with his big, broadfingered hands. As he kissed her, Winnie could not resist the temptation of the wonderful body she knew he hid beneath the non-threatening burgundy sweater and grey wool slacks he wore. He matched the décor. Just like another accessory in the room, and the thought made her angry for him. She knew he was so much
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more than what Positive Encounters wanted to reduce him to in her eyes and the eyes of her fellow humans. He was Desire. Need incarnate. She pulled off his sweater like some crazed, wanton animal. She half expected him to object to her attack, but instead he asked if she was sure. Was she sure? Was she sure that she had paid a month's rent to be here or that the red light on her dashboard meant the oil needed changing? Of course. She told him so with what little breath he hadn't already stolen from her lungs with his kisses or his touch. He was perfect. She had never lay hands on such a wondrous specimen of maleness before—lean, cut muscles covered in skin softer than she ever felt on a man. She skimmed his pectorals, over the broad cut of his ribcage and onto the adamantine six pack of his abdomen with a feather touch. He sucked in a breath, let it out on a low groan that vibrated through him into her as her fingers came to rest at last on his fly. Some part of her mind that remained shy little Whiney Winnie whimpered and cringed at her behavior, screamed that this wasn't right. That she was a stupid slut, and she was about to get punished for the sin of breaking the rules. But she ignored it...knew that this was right. The rules didn't matter —she had been waiting her whole life for this man, this moment. She unbuckled his belt and made quick work of his fly before plunging her hand in for the ultimate prize. He cried out as she wrapped her fist around his substantial cock and gave one long, firm stroke from root to tip. "Stop, Winnie!" he gasped, halting her sensual assault with his own hand. "This will be over far too soon if you keep doing that." Her grin was feral--she didn't care. For a second, she was tempted to push his hand away, to finish what she started, to make him come in her hand, feel him, hot and wet on her skin, tangible proof that he wanted her as much as she did him. But she had been patient this long, and she knew that there was so much more that could happen between them. She wanted it all. She could wait. Briggs inched back from her, and she adored how ravished he looked—her fallen angel. It was the first time she really had an opportunity to look at him fully, and he was absolutely breathtaking in his debauchery. Thick, wavy black hair just a touch too long and wild from being tangled in her tunneling fingers. Broad, bare chest hairless but for the glory trail of sable dusting his belly, leading down to that incredible penis. She didn’t have a lot of experience in these matters, but Winnie was positive that there wasn't a more perfectly shaped, perfectly sized penis in all the universe. He could be a dildo model with that member—so pink, hard and vein-y, begging for attention in spite of its master's objections to the contrary. 129
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She had to physically repress an urge to bend over and just start sucking it like an undead lollipop. What was wrong with her? It was like she'd been possessed by Shiloh on Ecstasy. All she could think of was sex...having sex with this vampire, right here, right now. She had become the monster, starving for the weight of this man on top of her, the press of him inside of her, and that frightened her more than anything so far. Her surprise and chagrin must have shown on her face. A shadow of concern swept across his. "It's all right. It's just pheromones," he explained with a smile, and the expression managed pride, lust and amusement in equal measure across its kiss-swollen expanse. "We're a good match. But then, I suspected we would be from the first time I saw you." She touched her own lips, swollen and sensitive. "I'm not usually so—" Insane. Wild. Starved. He took her trembling hand and lay it over his chest. She could feel, to her surprise, that his heart beat in a frantic thunder beneath the pale, heated skin. She never imagined a vampire would feel so alive. "Neither am I," he said, tucking his other hand behind her head and drawing her back to him once more. "Though we aren't restricted for time, Duncan will be suspicious if we're not finished in an hour or two. I would like for us to use all that time to our best advantage." "What would happen to you if she found out we were doing this?" she asked, unable to stop the words before they left her mouth. He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. She is nothing. Her rules mean nothing. There is only us." Then she was in his arms once more, their mouths fused, tongues dancing. He caressed her back in long, smooth strokes like he was comforting her, preparing her for something unbearable. She realized as his kisses wandered to the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat and explored the soft skin near her pulse, that he just may be. And yes, she wanted it. She wanted so badly to be penetrated—fangs and cock. To be possessed by him, utterly and completely. All of him, her heart cried. As if he could hear her frenzied thoughts, or maybe smell the lush scent of the juices gushing between her legs, he slipped a hand beneath the folds of her dress. He slid his palm, long and slow up the inside of her leg to her quivering thigh, where he paused to explore the lacy tops of her stockings before brushing the mound of her aching sex. Teasing outside the thin silk of her thong, tickling the hypersensitive flesh. Making her weep with this unfamiliar hunger before finally showing sweet mercy and slipping one thick finger into her heated cleft. Its tip found her pleading clit unerringly, stroked it expertly, as though he had always 130
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known her body's rhythms and could match them without a thought. His mouth moved to similarly bless her breasts, pulling away the fabric of her blouse with his teeth. He suckled and nipped at her turgid nipples like a famished child while his fingers stroked, slow and languid, inside her cunt, over her clit and back again until she feared her body would rip apart at the seams if he didn't let her come soon. She reclaimed his cock, almost surprised to find it bigger and harder than before. She took the same pace with him as he with her, and they moaned and sighed together as they stroked and strummed one another to a fever pitch. She was so close, her body had become nothing but one pulse of burgeoning bliss after another. Just when she thought he might finally let her go over, he lifted her effortlessly astride his lap, tore away the tiny shred of thong and plunged deep inside her pussy with one hard thrust. She barely had time to begin the airshattering shout that came with her orgasm before he folded her down toward him and slid his fangs into her throat. Twin ecstasies. Twin agonies. He stretched and tore her, caressed and soothed her as she flew apart. She heard herself scream as if from a great distance, heard him sobbing against her flesh, making greedy sucking noises as he fucked her with ferocious abandon. He drank her fiercely, one hand clamped on the back of her neck and the other digging into her hip hard enough to bruise as he drove into her again and again. He pulled her down as he pounded up into her, and every one of her climactic heartbeats pumped more of her blood into his mouth. She heard him cry out, felt him jerk and spurt inside of her, hot and hard and she blacked out, uncaring if she ever woke again. But she did regain consciousness, stretched out on her back on the couch where they made such magnificent love, her clothes carefully rearranged and a light blanket thrown over her. She turned her fuzzy head and found a large bottle of orange juice sitting on the table beside her. Briggs stood with his back to her, gazing out of one of the room's floor to ceiling windows. He had drawn the heavy blackout drapes aside and stared at the night shining, obsidian sprinkled with stars, beyond the glass. The blackness outside told her nothing about how long she had been unconscious—or what he was thinking now. "You should drink that juice," he advised without looking at her, "It's a special formula Duncan has mixed and imported for the clients. It encourages blood cell production and contains a mild analgesic that helps with the headache." He sounded like a commercial, his tone amiable, businesslike. But she could sense that there was more inside him that he was trying to hide from her. How she could possibly know such a thing, she had no idea. She just did, as though translating the tension in his broad shoulders was as simple as reading his mood
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from a book. She was a research librarian, after all. Perhaps her blood had connected her to him, like plugging into his very soul. "Briggs," she said, hoped that he felt the same connection, and knew what she was asking. He turned. His expression was kind, almost affectionate, but still shuttered and distant, like she was an acquaintance he ran into on the street. If he felt the same intimacy that she did, he concealed it well. "I don't know what to do next," he confessed. "I avoid attachments—with anyone, human or vampire. I don't know how to be a vampire mate or a human lover. I don't know how to treat you. How to take care of you. I'm not certain I should even try." He was so beautiful and sad, her fallen angel. Winnie slowly sat up and claimed the juice, gulping it down in a few swallows without regard for manners, and set the empty bottle back down on the table, with a shrug. "I have no idea either. Maybe that's what we came here to learn. Did you feel it too? That pull?" He finally smiled, and it was like a little sunrise illuminating his already magnificent face. "Yes, I did. You are very perceptive and wise for such a young woman." He moved with feline grace, raw and carnal even fully clothed, and she nearly lost her breath watching him as he approached and sat down beside her. He took her hand, then brought it to his lips and brushed the knuckles with a tender kiss that sent a new shiver of desire crackling up and down her spine. Oh, she may have suddenly been feeling wise and sure, but she had no doubt she could easily die of wanting this man for her own. "I don't know when I got that way," she mused, "I'm usually the one hiding in the corner with a book." "Make it a blood bag, and that describes me as well." They stared at one another in companionable silence for a long time, reading each other's eyes. His were dark and limpid, and though Winnie expected to see nothing but shadows and sorrow within, she instead found a hint of fathomless knowledge, ages of wisdom, a sparkling fire not human, but not inhuman, either. And feelings for her that she had never seen shining in another pair. "Why are you here?" they both asked simultaneously, and laughed. "You're the guest. You first," he urged. She looked away for a moment, pondering the same question that had haunted her from the start of this unexpected adventure. She still didn't have an answer. "I could say I was steered here by fate, but...that's stupid, right?"
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He shrugged. "There's more to our world than we can see or touch. Who's to say there's no destiny? That the Fates don't manipulate our lives for their own amusement, or for reasons we can't comprehend?" "I guess that's the only answer I have then. I never thought of a reason why I had to come—I just knew I wanted to. Had to." He nodded. "I am here because the alternatives have become untenable. I am, as you say, 'burnt out' on the vampire lifestyle of this age. Tired of hunting, tired of random, anonymous donors. Of forever being terrified that I'll lose control and hurt someone. I've stopped feeling things—anything—because of it." His gaze went molten and scoured the length of her body. "Until tonight. I've never been so sated in two hundred years. It may be, my dear Winnie, that you are the answer to my many unspoken prayers." "Breaking out of the box!" she blurted suddenly, a fragment of thought invading from a lifetime ago. "Pardon?" "I was thinking, when I first decided to do this, that I never step outside of this little box I built my life in. I thought I was comfortable in it. I liked it, you know? It was safe. And then one afternoon I heard this woman talking about being bitten, and—" She squeezed both his hands and turned to face him fully. "It was like I had just woken up from this long nap. Like I was about to be born again. God! Every cliché in the book. I never decided to break out. I just did it. The why doesn't matter." He looked at her for what felt like an eternity, then suddenly rose to his full 6' odd inches of height. "I'm leaving here, and I'm never coming back," he declared, and reached out a hand to her, "I would like to walk outside the box with you, if you would have me. If you would dare to flout The Commandments without reason." Winifred Mulligan didn't hesitate. She took the vampire's hand along with his offer and all the untold danger that might lie behind it. "Oh, I definitely dare," she replied. They marched out into the hallway, and to Winnie, the décor seemed sad somehow in a way that it hadn't when she came in. Like washing the place in the color of blood could somehow distract from the travesty the clinical environment sought to make of something she now knew was deeply sacred and intensely intimate. Her whole body still tingled from scalp to toes, and every time she recalled a moment of their tryst, her sex gave a pulsing throb that made her want more. That this place existed to sanitize the feeling that filled her, changed her, seemed a deeper sin than any her lover might think he committed.
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Ms. Duncan was waiting for them in the lobby, her expression characteristically inscrutable. Briggs walked directly into her personal space and glared down at her. "I'm finished being your circus freak," he said. "Is that so?" she asked, unfazed. "That is so. I'm sorry for what my family did to you, but it is time for both of us to let go and move on. Two hundred years is long enough for anger and guilt." The vampiress' eyes flicked to Winnie and combed her from head to foot with such derision that Winnie blushed, feeling suddenly dirty, dumpy, and very plain. Then Briggs took her hand, pulled her close to his side, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and she recalled how special she really was. Together, they were complete, and nothing could stand between them. "If you'll excuse us," he said. Anxiety trembled down her spine, and she wondered if this was the moment when the sirens and flashing lights would start, and guards with machine guns or flamethrowers appear to drag them off. To her surprise, Ms. Duncan simply smiled, an eerie, knowing expression, and stepped aside. "Of course. This place is not your prison." Just like that, they were free. They walked together hand-in-hand into the cool night. In the cab on the way to her apartment, she and Briggs laughed and cuddled and vowed to spread the word far and wide about the true pleasures that could only be found through free-range vampire love. Winnie refused to think about The Commandments—about the reasons for their creation or Ms. Duncan's ominous farewell—anymore.
THE END
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About The Author
H. A. Fowler Heather lives in Upstate New York (almost Canada) with a very large cat named Pig and an obscenely large collection of books. She is currently working on her second bachelor's degree in English Lit (the first was in Psychology... or Typing, as she's fond of saying), likes yoga, reading, and finding new and ever more interesting ways to procrastinate. Heather has nurtured an unhealthy interest in vampires since she read INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE and saw Frank Langella's "Dracula" when she was 9 years old. She is the author of dark fantasy novels THE VEIL, THE BLACK SUN CHRONICLES, and OTHERWORLD, and the short story SWORD OF REGRET. You can learn more about Heather, join her mailing list, or check out her blogs at http://www.hafowler.com. Our authors love to hear from their readers! You can write to H. A. here: H. A. Fowler c/o Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729
VISIONS OF THE NIGHT By Kay Derwydd
VISIONS OF THE NIGHT
The first thing Jonathon noticed upon waking was the thick blanket of darkness. He lifted his hand and held it over his face. The heat from his body was the only indication of his hand’s proximity. Before he could even contemplate getting up however, a strong arm snaked around him to pull him closer. Jonathon closed his eyes and smiled as a soft sigh of contentment escaped him. Three years had passed since that fateful night in a New Orleans cemetery. Each year also brought forth a new book starring Kain Hart. Jonathon’s smile widened as a tongue slid slowly over his shoulder. “Hungry?” he asked with a chuckle. “I’m not sure which hunger is stronger: the one for you, or the one for blood.” Jonathon shivered. Kain’s voice had the effect of convincing even the sanest man to do any irrational act Kain could conjure. A soft lick and chuckle from the vampire brought Jonathon’s attention back to the matter at hand: Kain was hungry. Jonathon shifted, rolling onto his side. As his eyes focused, he saw the outline of Kain’s body. Nothing but a thin white sheet covered him from the waist down, and the sight alone had Jonathon hard within seconds. Despite the darkness, he saw Kain smile slowly, as if the vampire could read his thoughts. “See something you want?” Kain teased. Jonathon moved to stretch out over him, his knees on either side of Kain’s thighs. Kain gripped his hips and began grinding against him, which in turn caused their cocks to slide alongside each other. Jonathon groaned and dropped his head to Kain’s shoulder. “That’s fucking cruel,” he mumbled. Kain’s chuckle was deep and reverberated through Jonathon’s body. “Am I now?” Kain slipped a hand down Jonathon’s spine and a finger trailed down the crack of his ass to tease at his hole.
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Jonathon gasped softly and spread his legs further, bringing them higher up to give Kain better access. Kain pulled his hand away, sucked two fingers into his mouth to wet them then pushed them inside Jonathon. “Oh, fuck.” Jonathon rocked back on Kain’s hand, wanting much more than a simple tease. “Please.” Kain’s other hand slid into Jonathon’s hair, gripped it, and pulled his head up. At the same moment his tongue slid between Jonathon’s lips, Kain’s fingers found his prostate. Jonathon’s whimper died out in their kiss as those fingers worked inside him, circling over the small, smooth gland. He began to tremble and knew damn well he would not last long at this rate. Kain was entirely too good with his hands. Keeping a tight hold around his waist, Kain flipped Jonathon over without missing a stroke with his fingers. Jonathon pulled his legs up and ground down on Kain’s hand, arching his back and digging his fingers into the vampire’s arms. With his head spinning and his control quickly spiraling away, Jonathon knew exactly what Kain wanted. Kain would wait until he was right at the edge of having a deep-seated orgasm, then he would remove his fingers and impale Jonathon on his cock in one swift motion. The effect was unbelievable and intense, and it never failed to make Jonathon literally scream as he came. Only then would Kain feed. He said it sweetened the blood; Jonathon was becoming curious about that one. “Yes,” Kain purred near Jonathon’s ear. His fingers moved inside Jonathon, circling, pressing, stroking, until he was seeing stars. Kain was working him especially good tonight; Jonathon knew this one would be stronger than normal. Sure enough, just as Jonathon’s body began to tighten around Kain’s fingers and he began to whimper in desperation, Kain pulled away and thrust inside him, setting off a chain reaction that bolted through Jonathon’s body like quicksilver. Jonathon screamed and arched his back as he came, semen coating their stomachs only seconds before Kain’s fangs pierced his throat. He clung tightly to the vampire’s head, holding him close as Kain growled and bucked against him, filling him with his release. A few seconds later, a soft tongue licked across the wounds to heal them and Kain lifted his head to brush a soft kiss to Jonathon’s lips. “You’re going to be the death of me,” Jonathon murmured. “Then I would just have to turn you, if only to keep you with me,” Kain said against his mouth. Jonathon stilled. “You would do that?” Kain propped himself up on his arms and looked down at him. “Not without your permission, of course.”
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“How…” Jonathon trailed off and bit at his lower lip as his gaze drifted over the black hair tickling his chest. “How…?” He looked up at Kain and forced himself to ask the one question he had wanted to ask for some time. “How is it done? Turning, I mean.” Kain chuckled and kissed his collarbone. “I drink until you’re nearly drained, then you feed from me to replenish what I took.” “What does it taste like?” Jonathon asked. “When someone comes, I mean. I’ve tasted blood, inadvertently, but never during orgasm, and certainly never intentionally.” Kain shrugged slightly. “Endorphins sweeten the blood, and believe me, it’s addictive.” “Hell, it must be,” Jonathon laughed, “considering you only feed when I do come.” Kain kissed him and rolled over, glancing at the clock as he did. “What time is Jess supposed to be here?” The way he asked the question made Jonathon leery. He rolled over and propped himself up, peering across the bed at the clock. When he realized it was already eight in the evening, he jumped out of bed. “Shit!” He opened the closet, scrambling for his robe. When he did not find it, he darted towards the bathroom, only to run into Kain. Jonathon gave him a sheepish grin as Kain handed his robe to him. “Sometimes I think you’re more scatterbrained now than you were three years ago,” Kain said as he leaned against the bathroom doorframe. Jonathon shot him a ‘go to Hell’ look then brushed past him to grab the hairbrush off of the bathroom counter. “She’s expecting another book soon.” “You’ve almost finished it, haven’t you?” Jonathon nodded and stuck an elastic band between his teeth as he gathered his hair back. With the ponytail secure, he leaned forward to steal a kiss. “Yeah, just need a few finishing touches, I think.” “You’re looking pale.” Jonathon made a point to ignore that remark and started for the kitchen. “I just need coffee.” Kain stopped him as he pulled the coffee maker to the middle of the counter. “No. What you need is orange juice.” “I hate orange juice,” Jonathon grumbled. “You know that.” As he opened the refrigerator, Kain seemed to ignore Jonathon’s protests. He set the carton of orange juice on the counter and pulled a glass out of the cabinet. “You need orange juice, Jonathon. It replenishes—”
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“Yeah, yeah,” Jonathon interrupted. “It replenishes what you take when you feed. It’s been three years. I know all of this.” “Yet you still argue with me,” Kain said as he leaned up against the counter. Jonathon grimaced as he drank the juice, never taking his eyes off of Kain. When he finished, he set the glass in the sink and resumed the task of making his coffee. “I still hate the shit.” Kain chuckled and reached out to pull Jonathon close. Just as he leaned in for a kiss, the front door opened. “Guys?” “In the kitchen,” Jonathon called. He looked back to Kain. “You were saying?” With a broad grin, Kain claimed his kiss. A few minutes later, he grunted as a mass of fur wedged itself between them. Jonathon laughed as Kain grumbled. “Interrupted by a furball.” Jonathon crouched down to scratch Josh’s ears. “Don’t worry, gorgeous. There’s plenty more where that came from,” he said, glancing up at Kain. “Did I interrupt something?” Jonathon looked up and grinned as he stood. “Hi, hun,” he said as he pulled Jess into a hug. She turned around and hugged Kain as Jonathon finished making the coffee. “No. We were just fucking around. You missed the fun stuff.” “Oh, damn,” Jess said, her lips pursing as she pouted. “You really are a strange woman,” Kain quipped. “Oh, like you can talk.” Jess stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re the one who drinks blood.” The smile she gave him made it clear she was teasing. Kain grinned and walked out of the kitchen, whispering, “and you love to read about it,” as he went. Jonathon just shook his head as he turned on the coffee maker. “I want one.” He looked over at Jess as he pulled two mugs out of the cabinet. “One what?” Jess tilted her head towards the living room. “One of him!” “Kain is…well, he’s unique. I doubt you’ll ever find anyone quite like him,” Jonathon laughed. “I’ll say,” Jess mumbled. “So, how is the next installment in the series coming along? Jonathon handed her a mug of coffee and ushered her into the living room. Kain was sitting on the couch, looking a bit uncomfortable with the front half of a Golden Retriever stretched across his lap. As she sat down in the recliner, Jess patted her leg. Josh uncurled himself and made his way to her. Jonathon then took his place, nestling up against Kain. He smiled as Kain’s arms wrapped tightly around him. “The book is almost done, I think. Just need to tie up some loose ends.” 140
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Jess smiled and said in between sips of coffee, “So is Kain’s lover finally going to ask to be turned?” Silence greeted the question. Jonathon saw the wheels and gears turning in his publisher’s head. He had confided in her only a few months ago that he was becoming increasingly curious. Apparently she remembered, at least enough to ask him such a loaded question, and in front of Kain, no less. A brush of a kiss to his neck brought Jonathon’s attention back to the question. “W-well,” he stammered. It was so hard to think when a tongue was sliding across his neck. “I think...” A soft moan escaped him when Kain scraped one of his fangs over his skin. “Oh, God. Kain, I can’t think when you...” Jonathon gasped as Kain sank his fangs into his neck, obviously not caring that Jess was sitting only a few feet away, watching them intently. When Jonathon looked up and met her gaze, it occurred to him that she was enjoying the display...very much. Kain’s hand slipped around his waist then inched downward to hover over his crotch. With every deep, sucking motion Kain made on his neck, Jonathon’s cock grew just a bit harder. His breathing began to falter and he closed his eyes, knowing Jess was still watching them. Surprisingly enough, that simple fact seemed to spur Kain on and his hand lowered, gripping Jonathon’s cock and balls, his wrist pressing along the length. Jonathon reached around, sliding his hand beneath Kain’s hair, holding him close. He arched his body into that touch, whimpering softly as Kain’s grip on him tightened. Kain licked the wounds on his throat then brushed his lips over his ear. “I want you.” “Jess, I think—” “No,” Kain whispered. “Now. Right here. She wants to watch. Let her.” He moved his hand up just enough to slip it inside Jonathon’s robe. The second Kain’s hand touched him Jonathon opened his eyes. Jess was still watching, but had taken a much more comfortable position, it seemed. One leg was draped over the arm of the recliner, leaving her legs spread open. Jonathon could tell, from the flush of her cheeks that beneath the coat she had spread over her lap, she was alleviating her own tensions. Her eyes were focused solely on his crotch, and the hand buried inside his robe. Then, before he could say a word otherwise, Kain pulled the terrycloth robe open. Jess’ gaze grew hazy. “Pull your legs up,” Kain murmured in his ear. Jonathon did as he was told and was rewarded by the press of Kain’s fingertips against his hole. His head fell back against the vampire’s shoulder and he squirmed, needing to feel more than a soft, teasing touch. Kain chuckled low, then pulled his hand away. A few seconds later, it returned and two fingers slid deep inside Jonathon.
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“Oh, God,” he moaned breathlessly. He ground his hips downward, driving Kain’s long fingers deeper inside him. “Kain...” “Yes,” Kain purred. He started fucking Jonathon with his fingers, pulling them out and pushing them back in. Jonathon whimpered with every stroke. Unable to hold back any longer, he wrapped his hand around his cock and started stroking it. He could feel the hard press of Kain’s cock against the small of his back, but his own body was demanding release now. He opened his eyes, only to see Jess’ chest rising and falling quickly. Even with the coat over her, he could tell she was playing with herself. The strokes inside him sped up, Kain’s fingers twisting and turning as they plunged inside. Jonathon’s heart pounded and he turned his head, seeking out Kain’s mouth. Just as the vampire’s tongue slid into his mouth, Jonathon cried out. His cock pulsed in his hand and with a single twitch of Kain’s fingers, a deeper orgasm ripped through him. He bucked against Kain’s hand, whimpering and moaning into their kiss. Somewhere in the background, he heard Jess cry out as she came as well. **** “Kain, I’ve been thinking.” The vampire looked at his lover, amusement in his dark blue eyes. “About?” “About us. About...” A knowing smile settled on the vampire’s lips. “About becoming a vampire.” Patrick opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Kain had seen right through him. He nodded slowly, confirming what Kain had guessed. The vampire smiled again. “Come,” Kain said. “Let me love you, and then...we will talk.” “Is it true?” Jonathon nearly jumped out of his skin. He had been so absorbed in writing the pivotal scene between the fictional Kain, and his lover Patrick, he had not heard the door to his office open. He looked at the screen and remembered Jess’ blatant question earlier that evening. Damn. “Is what true?” He hoped maybe Kain was talking about something else, but when the vampire turned his chair around completely and slipped a hand under Jonathon’s chin to tilt his head up, Jonathon knew Kain remembered. “Don’t play coy with me, love.” For several minutes, all Jonathon could do was stare open-mouthed at him. Love? That was a new one. In three years, he had not heard such a word from 142
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Kain. He knew damn well that was where his own feelings pointed. Kain, however, never used the word, and Jonathon simply let it go. “Jonathon?” Jonathon shook his head and swallowed hard as he met the familiar blue gaze. “Do you?” It was Kain’s turn to look perplexed, but then he smiled slowly. He leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to Jonathon’s lips. “You doubted that?” “I...” A soft sound escaped Jonathon as Kain’s tongue slid across his lips. “You’ve never...” “I love you, Jonathon,” Kain whispered. “I always have.” Jonathon closed his eyes as Kain’s kisses moved across his cheek to his ear. “I love you, too.” Kain licked him then moved lower, nipping at his skin. Jonathon shivered. “You never answered my question.” Jonathon’s body went rigid. He sighed. “Yes, it’s true. I’ve been curious for a while now.” Kain pulled back to look at him, a dark eyebrow lifting in a cross between disbelief and amusement. “Why did you not tell me?” “Because I wasn’t sure how to,” Jonathon admitted. “Or if I really wanted to know.” “Come,” Kain said as he straightened himself. He held out his hand. “Let me love you, and then we’ll talk,” he said with a teasing wink. Jonathon laughed nervously, but slid his hand into Kain’s, allowing the vampire to pull him to his feet. When their bodies pressed together, Kain smiled, revealing two very sharp fangs. It was not often he flashed them, but Jonathon knew what was happening, and what would happen in the near future, most likely. That was when he did something he had never done before. He leaned forward, backing Kain up against the wall, and licked one of the fangs. A growl rumbled from deep within Kain’s chest and he shuddered hard between Jonathon’s body and the wall. Jonathon pulled back to look at him, then realized what effect such an act had. A dark look descended over Kain’s face, darkening his eyes, as Jonathon smiled. “You never told me they were sensitive.” Jonathon pressed harder against Kain, and curled his tongue around one of his fangs. He had only a split second to stroke it with his tongue before he found himself flat on his back on the desk. Papers and folders and notebooks slid to the floor. His mug full of pens and pencils quickly joined them. Kain tore at his clothes, and buttons flew everywhere. Jonathon sucked in a quick, sharp breath as the vampire’s mouth closed over one of his nipples. Then came the sharp pain of a bite. Kain sucked hard, drawing both blood and flesh into his mouth. Jonathon cried out, thrusting his chest up. 143
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“Kain...” A guttural growl was the vampire’s only response as he nearly ripped the zipper of Jonathon’s jeans in an effort to get them off. He pulled away long enough to tug them roughly down, then tossed them to the floor. Seconds later, he pulled his cock out of his own jeans and shoved Jonathon’s legs up, pressing them to his chest. Jonathon’s heart leapt into his throat at the display of aggression. All he could think of were ways to keep it going. He did not have long to wonder what was happening when Kain dropped to his knees. Jonathon’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the edge of the desk when Kain’s tongue pushed inside him. He tried to rock his hips up in an effort to drive that tongue deeper, but Kain’s grip was stronger. Jonathon panted as Kain tonguefucked his ass, every thrust driving him more insane. His cock was hard as a rock and leaking steadily. He needed more. As if reading his thoughts again, Kain stood. He leaned over Jonathon and drove his cock deep inside him in one hard thrust. “Oh, fuck!” Jonathon grit his teeth and held onto the desk as Kain pounded his ass mercilessly. He had never been this rough before, and Jonathon loved every minute of it. As Kain’s thrusts grew harder and faster, his growls grew more feral. Jonathon managed to squeeze a hand between them and started stroking his cock furiously. The pounding his ass was taking was a tense combination of pain and pleasure, and Kain showed no signs of stopping or letting up. The dark blue of his gaze locked onto Jonathon, and that was all it took. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck...” Jonathon panted as he jerked his hand up and down his cock. “Kain!” No sooner had he called out, Jonathon jerked hard as he came. Kain struck swiftly, sinking his fangs deep into Jonathon’s throat, growling as he came. Jonathon continued to shake for the entire length of Kain’s feeding, as rush after rush of pleasure washed over him. Kain licked the wounds closed, and stilled his movements, letting Jonathon come back down. “Holy...shit,” Jonathon said in between breaths. Kain chuckled against his neck, then rose up enough to look down at him. “I didn’t hurt you too much, did I?” Jonathon gave him an incredulous look. “Are you fucking kidding? I need to remember the fang trick more often.” With a laugh, Kain pulled out and held out a hand. Jonathon took it, then looked down at the mess on the floor. “Sorry,” Kain said with a sheepish grin. “It’s hard to control sometimes. I’ll clean it up, I promise.”
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Jonathon grinned and shook his head. “Hell, if it means getting fucked like that more often, I’ll gladly leave the desk clear of clutter.” He moved closer to steal a quick kiss. “I need a shower. Wanna join me?” Kain murmured a soft sound of agreement over Jonathon’s lips before slipping his tongue between them. Jonathon slid his arms around his neck, and much to his surprise, realized he was getting hard again. He pulled away slowly and slid his hand down Kain’s arm to take his hand. With a gentle tug, he led the way to the bedroom. By the time the water was ready, Jonathon was fully hard again. Kain looked down as he stepped into the shower, a sly grin spreading across his lips. Before Jonathon could say a word, Kain dropped to his knees, taking Jonathon’s wet cock into his mouth. Jonathon fell back against the shower wall, threading his fingers through Kain’s hair as the water rained down on both of them. “You’re going to be the death of me,” Jonathon said, echoing his earlier sentiment. This time, however, Kain’s answer surprised him. “Then let’s make it official.” Jonathon looked down at him, not quite sure what Kain was referring to. “What do you mean?” Kain continued to stroke him, which made it hard as hell for Jonathon to do so much as think clearly. “Let me turn you,” Kain said, brushing his lips across the head of Jonathon’s cock. “I… Oh, God…” Jonathon’s head fell back against the tile wall as Kain sucked one of his balls into his mouth. “I can’t think when you’re doing that.” Kain hummed and Jonathon nearly hit the floor. When he felt a finger probe at his ass, Jonathon spread his legs, using his hands on Kain’s shoulders as leverage. As Kain’s finger pushed inside him, Jonathon groaned. He knew what Kain wanted. For that matter, he knew what he wanted. The desire to spend eternity with this man was something he could no longer deny. As Kain looked up, he twisted his finger in just the right way. Jonathon cried out as he came, his cock erupting and coating Kain’s lips and chin. When Kain removed his fingers, Jonathon finally collapsed to his knees. Kain scooped up some of the semen off of his lips and slid it across Jonathon’s mouth. Jonathon opened for him, sucking his finger clean. Kain was still ungodly hard and Jonathon knew damn well how he wanted it this time. He pulled Kain’s finger out of his mouth and kissed the tip. “Do it. Take me to bed, fuck me senseless, and turn me.” “Are you sure that’s what you want?” Kain asked. Jonathon nodded. “Please. All I want is here before me. I don’t want to ever lose you, Kain.”
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A slow smile settled on Kain’s lips and he stood, offering Jonathon a hand. As Jonathon took it, Kain whispered, “As you wish.” As Jonathon followed Kain to the bed, he could not deny feeling nervous. It was not fear of pain, as much as it was the fear of the unknown. Of, essentially, dying. This was what he wanted, though, and he wanted it with no one but Kain Hart. As he sat down on the bed, he looked up at Kain, not quite believing what was going to happen, yet longing for it. “You’re sure?” Kain asked, easing himself onto the bed as Jonathon stretched out beneath him. “Yes, I’m sure,” Jonathon said breathlessly as Kain’s tongue licked a thin line from his mouth to the hollow of his throat. Every touch seemed different somehow, stronger. Every inch of his skin was sensitized, honed to a razor sharp edge beneath Kain’s touch. Kain’s kisses moved slowly downward, over Jonathon’s chest, his stomach, his thighs. Skipping Jonathon’s cock entirely, Kain slid his hands under Jonathon’s legs and pushed them up. As his tongue pushed deep inside, Jonathon groaned and his legs shook. Every stroke inside by Kain’s slick tongue was torturous pleasure. Jonathon closed his eyes, breathless and dizzy from the simplest contact. Kain took the longest time, simply tasting him, over and over, never tiring. When Jonathon’s legs grew tired from their position, Kain finally lowered them, moving up to hover over Jonathon. “Please,” Jonathon pleaded, arching his body to Kain’s. As he sat back up, Kain pulled Jonathon with him. Without giving him a chance to say anything, he turned Jonathon around and pulled him back against his chest. Jonathon shivered as Kain’s cock slid between the cheeks of his ass, then Kain pushed him forward the slightest bit. With a slow push of Kain’s hips, his cock slid inside and Jonathon groaned. Kain slipped an arm around his chest and pulled him back up, driving his cock deeper inside. “Oh, God,” Jonathon breathed. He reached around, gripping the back of Kain’s head with his hand. “Oh, God, it feels so good.” “Yes.” Kain slid his hand lower to wrap his fingers around Jonathon’s newlyawakened cock. As he began stroking it, he nipped at Jonathon’s neck. Jonathon tilted his head, wanting more. Kain’s thighs rippled beneath him as they made love, Kain sliding his cock in and out with slow strokes. With a soft kiss over his neck, Jonathon closed his eyes and waited. Here it was. When Kain’s fangs pierced his flesh, Jonathon cried out. His body shook as he came, his semen spilling over Kain’s fingers. Yet Kain kept feeding. Jonathon felt himself grow weak, and before long, Kain’s arm was the only thing holding him upright. He was vaguely aware of Kain placing him on the bed, and when he tried to focus on Kain’s face, he realized he could not. Panic began to 146
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well up inside him, but Kain’s voice, soft and comforting, eased the fear as it brushed through his mind. “Shh. I’m here, Jonathon. I won’t let you fall completely. It’s time to drink.” Jonathon tried to nod, but it was a moot point. When he felt skin touch his lips, his tongue instinctively slid out to touch, to taste. With the first taste of blood, his mind recoiled slightly. “Drink…and come back to me.” Jonathon’s erratic thoughts settled with Kain’s words and he swallowed his fear as he swallowed Kain’s blood. When his heartbeat began to slow, Jonathon tried to cry out as the fear resurfaced. Kain was there, in his mind, comforting him, even when his throat constricted from lack of air to his lungs. He tried to reach out, but Kain’s fingers wrapped to his. As their bedroom faded, Jonathon fought to pull back, terrified of what lay on the other side. The last conscious thought he had was Kain. “I’ll be here, waiting for you.” **** When he first opened his eyes, Jonathon remained still, staring up at the ceiling. He had always heard that a person could get hypnotized if they watched a ceiling fan long enough. He spent several minutes trying. Then he realized it was pitch black in the room—yet he could still see the fan spinning above his head. “Everything sharpens.” He looked over and smiled. “Kain.” Jonathon reached out and touched the face hovering near his own. “Told you I’d be here,” Kain said. Kain leaned down and Jonathon opened for him, moaning softly into Kain’s mouth. Fingers stroked Jonathon’s jaw, over his neck. He shuddered, pulling away from Kain’s lips to look into those bluer-than-blue eyes. That was when it hit him—a hunger so strong, it fucking hurt. He winced as every inch of his body ached. With a slight tip of his head, Kain bared his throat. Need overrode everything else and Jonathon flipped them both over, fangs piercing Kain’s neck as their bodies rocked together. Thick, rich blood flowed over Jonathon’s tongue like an answer to a prayer. Kain’s body arched beneath him, fingernails blazing trails down his back. With a shift of his hips, Jonathon thrust hard, driving his cock deep inside Kain’s body. A sharp cry met his ears and then he was coming, cock pulsing almost painfully as Kain’s muscles squeezed him. Shaking and breathless, Jonathon pulled away, remembering to lick the bite marks. He watched as the wounds closed. As he
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pulled out slowly, he slid down Kain’s body, licking away the semen on the hardmuscled stomach. “Jesus,” Kain breathed. “Maybe I should have changed you a long time ago.” Jonathon chuckled as he scooped up the last bit of come from Kain’s belly. Then he slid back up and pushed his tongue into Kain’s mouth. “I think,” he whispered, “I’m really going to like this.” Kain moaned softly and slid his hands over Jonathon’s shoulders. “You’re going to need to more than I could give you.” “So…” Jonathon said, kissing his way down Kain’s throat, “What do you suggest?” “Hunting.” Jonathon lifted his head and met Kain’s smile. “Hunting.” Kain nodded. “Hunting as in drain-your-victim type?” “No.” Kain shook his head. “Only take enough, but never to the point of death. Best time to do it is during climax. Feeding heightens the sensations for both you and the one you are feeding from.” “No kidding,” Jonathon laughed. “And you were definitely right: blood is much sweeter.” Rolling off to the side, he propped his head on his hand. “So, how do we do this?” “Ever been in a threesome?” Kain asked him, giving him a quick wink. Jonathon shook his head. “No, but I have a feeling I’m going to be in one very soon.” “Unless, of course, you want me to simply watch.” “Not on your life,” Jonathon whispered as he leaned close to steal a quick kiss. “Let’s do this. What time is it?” Kain rose up and looked over Jonathon’s shoulder. “Eight in the evening. You slept all day. Are you up for a night of dancing?” “In these three years, we have never gone dancing,” Jonathon said with a lift of his eyebrow. “I didn’t know you could.” Kain rolled over, sliding on top of him. “It’s only a matter of moving your body to the music,” he murmured as he rocked his body against Jonathon’s. He lowered his head, kissing Jonathon’s neck softly. “You simply feel the music as it slides through you…” Jonathon gasped as a thick cock slid along his own, both of them hard again. “If you keep that up, we won’t make it out of bed.” Kain chuckled and nipped his throat before pulling away completely. “Quite true.” He held out a hand to Jonathon. “Let’s see what sort of fun we can find downtown.” **** 148
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On Wednesday nights, The Heretic had a dress code: 3 pieces of leather or leather-type gear. Jonathon had not worn anything like that in ages, but after spending an hour digging through the closet, he finally managed to find his leather pants and vest. His combat boots completed his outfit, and when he turned around, he nearly hit the floor. “When the hell did you manage to find something like that?” Kain’s grin was utterly devilish. He turned a bit, letting Jonathon watch the overhead light spark off the brand-new leather pants. Kain’s black silk shirt was loose and untucked, the buttons halfway undone. His black boots were by the bed and beneath his shirt, Jonathon could see the black straps of a leather harness. Oh, dear God. He was so fucked. Literally, if they did not get out of the house and soon. “Bought them a few weeks ago,” Kain said as he sat down to put on his boots. “Been saving them for a special occasion.” Something told Jonathon that Kain was not talking about the pants. He could not tear himself away from the leather straps crossing diagonally over Kain’s chest. When Kain stood up again, the light glinted off of metal—the studs dotting the straps. Before he realized it, Jonathon found himself pressed tightly against the wall, Kain’s body pinned against his. The look in Kain’s eyes was quite familiar: lust and hunger, those blue eyes darkening with every second. “If we don’t leave right this second,” Jonathon said breathlessly, “I will throw you on that bed and beg you to have your way with me.” “You’d do that anyway,” Kain chuckled. Jonathon could not begin to deny that one. “True, but we’re both hungry, and I dare say that it would eventually be pointless for us to feed each other all night.” A quick kiss followed and Jonathon laughed as Kain nearly dragged him out of the bedroom. Grabbing Kain’s keys since he had no clue where his were, Jonathon locked the door and they headed out into the warm Atlanta night. Half an hour later, they walked into The Heretic. Jonathon tugged Kain onto the dance floor, squeezing through the throng of sweat-slick, grinding bodies. When he found a tiny pocket of space, he turned, slipping an arm around Kain’s waist and jerking him close. Kain growled and thrust his hips forward as they danced. His stare was sharp, almost desperate, and definitely predatory. Jonathon now understood that drive, that consuming hunger. “Bite me,” he said, tipping his head to the side. The strike was swift and a bolt of sharp pain shot up his spine. He clung tightly to Kain, a moan slipping free as Kain drank. Jonathon opened his eyes slowly, hoping and searching. When he met another man’s gaze, only a few feet from
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them, he smiled, flashing two very sharp fangs. A visible shudder coursed over the man’s body, but he smiled back and his gaze slid over the two of them. “Behind you,” Jonathon whispered. “Spiky blonde hair, labret piercing, black tank top, camos, combat boots.” After healing the wounds, Kain turned slightly. “Very nice.” He looked back at Jonathon. “Do you like him?” Jonathon nodded. “You want to taste him, to feel his cock in your mouth, his come sliding over your tongue. To feed deeply from him as I pierce his body with my cock, forcing screams of pleasure from his throat.” “Get him now,” Jonathon growled. “Or I will fuck and feed from you here and now.” With a chuckle, Kain stepped away. A moment later, he had the man’s hand in his, tugging the man close to him. Jonathon watched them, watched their bodies grind and move, cocks rubbing through their pants. The man was muscular, and every muscle jumped and twitched as he moved, hips rocking hard against Kain’s. Hunger surged quickly within Jonathon, needing to taste and touch. “Name?” Jonathon whispered. He slid behind the man and pressed his body close. He met Kain’s hand on the man’s waist, their fingers entwining to hold their newfound toy. “Jeremy,” the man said. “You’re real, both of you.” “We are,” Kain said. Before Jeremy could say another word, Kain descended on his mouth, tongue pushing inside. Jeremy groaned, his movements becoming hard and quick. Jonathon could hardly blame him. Kain’s kiss had that effect—of making a man feel like he was going to come just from the kiss alone. “Do you kill when you feed?” Jeremy asked when Kain moved his kisses lower. A hiss of breath followed a nip from Kain’s teeth. “No,” Jonathon answered him. He turned Jeremy’s head, wanting to taste that sweet mouth for himself. When Jeremy’s tongue slid inside Jonathon’s mouth, Jonathon groaned. He had not noticed the barbell in the man’s tongue before. “Now that is a beautiful sight,” Kain whispered on their mouths. Then a third tongue joined the kiss and Jonathon shuddered. He pulled abruptly away. They had to get out and now. Half an hour was a good walk, but it was worth it. Curling his fingers to two different hands, he pulled them both out of the club, not giving a damn about the looks he might have gotten. He knew he looked hungry and desperate. God knew he certainly felt it. By the time they reached the apartment, Jonathon was a wreck. It did not help matters when Kain had Jeremy pinned to the wall while Jonathon unlocked the door. He fumbled with the keys for a few minutes, too distracted by the sounds Jeremy was pushing into Kain’s mouth as Kain’s fingers deftly unfastened both of their pants. Shit, if he did not get those two into the house, Jonathon just knew they 150
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would be arrested for lewd behavior. When he got the door open, he grabbed them both, hauling them into the foyer and closing the door, making damn sure to lock it. “Fuck me,” Jeremy begged, breathless as Kain shoved him over the back of the couch, ass in the air. Kneeling on the cushion between Jeremy’s legs, Kain tugged their pants down, sucked two fingers into his mouth, then pushed them deep inside Jeremy. Jonathon fell back against the wall, caught like a deer in headlights as Kain withdrew his fingers and spit on his palm. Seconds later, that thick cock disappeared and Jeremy groaned, head falling forward as Kain thrust inside him. Lube. They were going to need lube. Lots of it. Jonathon ran to the bedroom and dug through the bedside table drawer and came up with a near-empty bottle. Fuck! He slammed the drawer shut and rounded the bed, heading for the dresser. If Kain bought a harness, then surely he bought other toys. Jonathon rummaged through one of Kain’s drawers and grinned. Plugs in three different sizes, a couple of new dildos, and two bottles of Wet. Plucking one of the bottles and the medium-sized plug out of the drawer, he returned to the living room. Kain and Jeremy had switched positions and Jeremy was now on his back on the couch, Kain on his knees on the floor, pounding Jeremy’s ass for all he was worth. Their mouths were locked together and Kain’s back was bent at just the perfect angle. Jonathon moved behind Kain and popped the top on the bottle. He coated the plug in lube, then slid two slick fingers in Kain’s ass. Kain growled and his thrusts grew harder. When the kiss ended, Jeremy gripped the couch above his head tightly, grunting and groaning through every hard stroke Kain made. Leaning forward to lick Kain’s ear, Jonathon added another finger and spread all three apart. “Not sure which is hotter: watching your cock slide in and out of that tight ass, or spreading you open myself.” “Oh, fuck,” Kain groaned. “Jonathon, please.” Jonathon chuckled and nipped Kain’s ear, then pulled his fingers out. Positioning the plug, he waited until Kain made another thrust and then he pushed the plug in just as Kain pulled back out. Kain stiffened immediately, then snapped his hips forward, almost piledriving Jeremy into the couch. Jonathon kept his fingers on the base of the plug, shifting it inside Kain, knowing damn well Kain would not be able to last much longer. Sure enough, Jeremy shouted he was coming. As his cock spurted and throbbed, Kain shoved balls-deep inside him and grunted as he came. Watching it all, Jonathon was so hard, it fucking hurt. Kain turned his head and glared at Jonathon over his shoulder. Jonathon shivered, knowing that look for what it was. “How quickly can you get it up?” Kain asked, looking back at Jeremy. 151
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In-between ragged breaths, Jeremy laughed. “Gimme a few and I’ll be hard as a rock, especially if I watch you two go at it.” “Good,” Kain said. “Because we’re going to fuck Jonathon into oblivion.” “Jonathon,” Jeremy echoed. He looked at Kain. “So what’s your name?” “Kain Hart.” The look of recognition on Jeremy’s face was unmistakable. “Oh, my God.” He looked from Kain to Jonathon. “You’re Jonathon Cayle!” Jonathon laughed and nodded. “I am.” “Wow! Kain Hart is fucking real.” A moan slipped from Jeremy’s lips as Kain rocked against him. “Very real...” Kain chuckled and pulled out of him, wincing and turning another glare on Jonathon. “So full of surprises,” he said as he stood. Jonathon swallowed hard, wondering how quickly he could make it to the bedroom. He absolutely refused to do anything on the couch. It always proved to be highly uncomfortable. He started backing up and Kain followed, almost stalking him. Glancing over at the couch, Jonathon saw Jeremy watching them intently, long fingers stroking a thick cock. A person would have to be, well, dead to not feel the tension in the room jump about a thousand degrees. “Going somewhere, love?” Kain asked. Biting at his lower lip, Jonathon nodded slowly. “Bedroom.” “Oh?” An eyebrow lifted, teasing him. “God, you two are fucking hot together,” Jeremy said, inching his way towards them. “Jeremy…” Kain said, never taking his eyes off of Jonathon. “Yeah?” “Get him.” Shit! Jonathon turned and hauled ass to the bedroom, making it just to the bed when a strong arm caught him around his waist. A long, hard body tumbled to the bed with him, pinning him onto the mattress. Hot breath caressed his neck, whispers tickling his skin. “Since you enjoy plugging things,” Kain whispered, “then we will give you the ultimate one.” Jonathon managed to turn his head just enough to see Kain’s eyes. “The ultimate one?” Kain thrust against him, rocking that hard cock across his own leather-covered ass. “Two hard, thick cocks,” Kain growled, “in one tight hole, Jonathon. The two of us sliding in and out, stretching you open.” It was not often that Kain was able to render Jonathon speechless, but that did it. It was all Jonathon could think about, even when Kain’s weight left him. To say he was fucked now would have been the understatement of the century. 152
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He rolled over and undressed as quickly as possible, fingers fumbling as he watched Kain feed, fangs sinking into pale flesh. Jeremy gasped and shuddered, clinging to Kain’s shoulders. When Kain was done, he healed the wound then turned to Jonathon. Jonathon slid back on the bed as Kain crawled onto it. Grabbing an ankle in each hand, Kain tugged him down and crushed their mouths together. Jonathon groaned and tangled his fingers in Kain’s hair, deepening the kiss. Feeling hands stroke the insides of his thighs, he spread his legs, pushing a startled squeal into Kain’s mouth as his cock was enveloped in slick heat. “Lube’s in the bedside table drawer, Jeremy,” Kain said as he pulled away from Jonathon’s lips. “We’re both fucking him.” “Oh, fuck yes.” The heat was suddenly gone from Jonathon’s cock and he groaned. When he reached down to stroke it, Kain’s hand stopped him. Then those fingers wrapped around him and Jonathon thrust into Kain’s fist. “Come for me,” Kain murmured on Jonathon’s lips. A sharp jerk of his hips and Jonathon shot, body shaking as semen coated Kain’s hand. Dropping a kiss to his lips, Kain sat back and licked his palm clean. Jeremy crawled onto the bed then, handing Kain a bottle of lube. Kain stretched out on the bed beside Jonathon, then poured a generous amount of the clear gel over his cock. He stroked it slowly and Jonathon moved to straddle him, sinking down onto his lover’s sweet prick. Kain gripped his hips and groaned, easing Jonathon down. “Oh, fuck,” Jeremy whispered. “Talk about one hell of a show.” Jonathon felt Jeremy move behind him. A hand slid up his spine and he stretched out on top of Kain, losing himself in another sweet, almost tender kiss. “Love you,” he whispered. Kain smiled on his lips. “Love you, too. Ready?” Jonathon nodded. “Jeremy, go slow.” “No problem.” Jonathon closed his eyes and rested his forehead on Kain’s shoulder, sighing as Kain stroked his back, his sides, his shoulders, helping him to relax. Two slick fingers slid along the stretched skin of his hole, then pushed slowly inside, sliding alongside Kain’s cock. Someone gasped, but Jonathon was so wrapped up in the sensations that he had no idea if it had been him or Kain. Hell, it might have been Jeremy. “More?” Jeremy asked. Jonathon nodded. A third finger joined the first two and Jonathon bit back the whimper, resisting the urge to push back. This was one time he was going to have to take things slow. Jeremy worked his fingers in and out, sliding along the stretched skin, sending 153
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ungodly sensations straight up Jonathon’s spine. Then the fingers disappeared and something larger rubbed where Kain and Jonathon met. “Ready for me, Jonathon?” Jeremy asked breathlessly. Jonathon nodded and took a deep breath. “Easy and slow.” The whimper slipped free as Jonathon’s body stretched even more, swallowing the head of Jeremy’s cock. The second it popped inside, Kain groaned, fingers tightening on Jonathon’s hips. Jonathon was aware of nothing but the intense mix of pleasure and pain in his ass as Jeremy pushed deeper. Stretched more than he ever thought possible, Jonathon began to shake, sweat beading on his skin when he felt Jeremy’s hips come flush with his ass. “Oh, my fucking God,” Jeremy groaned. “It’s just… Oh, fuck.” Jonathon could barely nod. The world was spinning, his only hold on reality was Kain’s touch, those strong hands holding down when all he felt like doing was flying. He almost missed Kain asking him if he was okay. He finally nodded, whimpering when the need to shift nearly did him in. When Kain shifted, however, Jonathon lost all control. “Oh, fuck…” He lifted his head, staring into those deep blue eyes. “Kain!” With a nod from Kain, Jeremy started moving, sliding in and out slowly, hips rotating and grinding on every push in. Every time one of them pulled out, the other slid in. Locked in Kain’s stare, all Jonathon could do was ride them, ride the near-overwhelming build-up within him. “Don’t stop,” Jonathon panted, shaking his head quickly. “Oh, my God…” Everything inside him snapped at once. Jonathon literally screamed for the first time in his life as his orgasm crashed over him, dragging him under in the most intense rush he had ever felt. Kain was right there with him, hips snapping as liquid heat pumped deep inside him. It was soon a chain reaction, and Jeremy was coming, adding to Kain’s release. Two cocks throbbing deep inside him sent Jonathon reeling over the edge again and his own cock jumped and pulsed, coating both his stomach and Kain’s. Jonathon had no idea how much time had passed. All he felt was emptiness as both men pulled out slowly, one after the other. He was eased onto his back on the bed and a few minutes later, wet warmth slid over him, cleaning him. He was vaguely aware of a body beside him and he instinctively nuzzled close. The moment he did, he realized it was not Kain’s body. A heartbeat thundered near his ear, waking another hunger he had managed to ignore. “Hungry?” Jeremy asked him, fingers stroking through his hair. Jonathon nodded. Jeremy slid down slightly and then a pale throat was bared to him. “Please.” “Yes.” Jonathon pulled himself up enough to reach and peppered the sweet skin with kisses before biting down. A gasp met his ears and he moaned as thick, 154
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rich blood flowed over his tongue. He drank it down, wanting to drown himself in it. Something…felt right. When he had taken enough, he licked the wounds closed and settled back down. Another body slid against his back and a strong arm wound around his waist, holding him close. Jonathon slid his hand down, lacing his fingers through Kain’s. When Jeremy’s arms encircled them both, Jonathon suddenly had the feeling that this would not be the last time. **** Having woken up alone, Jonathon slipped on his robe and started down the hall. He could hear Kain’s voice, but no one else. Kain? On the phone? Now that was new. The man hated telephones. Jonathon peeked around the corner and found Kain leaning back against the kitchen counter. He was definitely on the phone. Jonathon walked into the kitchen and gave him a curious look. Kain smiled and slipped an arm around his waist, holding him close. Jonathon could hear the other person on the phone and instantly recognized the voice. “Jeremy,” he mouthed with a smile. Kain nodded and kissed him softly. “We’ll give you a call later,” Kain said. “Jonathon is awake.” A few minutes later, an odd sort of smile settled on Kain’s face. “We did, too. Take care.” He pressed the button to hang up the phone and set it on the countertop before sliding his other arm around Jonathon’s waist. “Was kinda disappointed,” Jonathon admitted. “I was hoping to wake up sandwiched between you two.” Lifting a hand, Kain tucked a strand of hair behind Jonathon’s right ear. “What would you say if I told you that it was a possibility, if we want?” Jonathon closed his eyes, sighing as he leaned into the gentle touch. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that.” He opened his eyes and stared into Kain’s blue ones for a long moment. “I love you. You know that, right?” “I do,” Kain said with a nod. “And you know I love you too, Jonathon.” “But…” Jonathon smiled slowly, knowing they were on the same page with this one. Kain smiled and pulled him in for a soft, slow, easy kiss. When it ended, he pressed their foreheads together. “He’s definitely interested in a repeat.” “Really? That’s cool.” Jonathon tried to distract himself by kissing Kain’s neck, but every time he inhaled, the strong scent of Kain was mingled with another man’s. Another man Jonathon knew he himself wanted. A hand under his chin tilted his head up to meet Kain’s gaze. “I think he wants more than just a simple repeat, Jonathon,” Kain said.
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Jonathon blinked, then closed his eyes. “I don’t want to do anything that might fuck up what you and I already have, but…” “But…?” Kain prodded. Opening his eyes, Jonathon said, “But I want him, Kain. There’s something about him, something I want so badly.” He shook his head, feeling like he was not quite making his point. “You think you’re the only one?” Kain asked him. “You are my heart and my soul, Jonathon. But I agree; there is something about Jeremy that I so desperately want to keep, to wake up to every evening. Both of you by my side.” “Does he know any of this?” Kain shook his head. “Not yet, but I suspect, with time, we will find that he feels the same. Call it a gut instinct.” “You think so?” Jonathon grinned and traced a slow line over the bare chest in front of him, following a line of dark hair to where it disappeared beneath the waistband of Kain’s jeans. “You just got fucked into the mattress and you’re horny again?” Kain teased him. Jonathon shrugged and leaned in, sucking a nipple into his mouth. “Maybe,” he mumbled around the small bit of hardening flesh. Kain groaned and gripped Jonathon’s hair, pressing his face closer. The phone rang again and Kain answered it, obviously trying not to sound like someone was on their knees in front of him. Jonathon chuckled and shifted, then unfastened Kain’s jeans, tugging them down the muscular thighs. Kain’s cock, hard and leaking, bobbed out and Jonathon waited until Kain started talking. “Yeah, we’re fr… Oh, fuck.” Kain groaned, breathing heavy into the phone as Jonathon sucked him down to the root. Damn, whoever was on the other line was certainly a lucky son of a bitch to be hearing this. “Door’s un…” Kain gasped, hips thrusting forward. Jonathon chuckled and pulled back, circling the head of Kain’s cock with his tongue. Kain finally rested a hand on Jonathon’s head, stopping him from moving at all. “Door’s unlocked,” Kain said. “Hurry.” He looked down and winked. “Or you’ll miss one hell of a blowjob.” “Jeremy,” Jonathon murmured on the tip of the hard flesh as he stroked the shaft. He smiled. “So, let’s give him a show.” Kain set the phone down and slid the fingers of both hands through Jonathon’s hair. Jonathon relaxed his throat and let Kain take the lead, fucking his mouth with long, slow strokes. He stroked his hands up and down Kain’s thighs, tracing the
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muscles as they flexed with every thrust. When he heard the front door open, he hummed around Kain’s shaft and began sucking on the tip. “Jonathon!” Kain bucked into his mouth, fingers tightening in his hair. Jonathon purred and sucked, smiling around Kain’s thickness when he saw a man just out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, hell yes,” Jeremy said. Jonathon heard a belt hit the floor, then came the sound of pants sliding down. “Mm. Hello again.” The words became muffled and Jonathon looked up, never missing a beat as he sucked Kain harder, watching Kain devour Jeremy’s mouth in a heated kiss. A groan rumbled from Kain’s chest and then he was coming, shooting liquid fire down Jonathon’s throat. Jonathon moaned softly and licked Kain clean. As soon as he pulled off, Kain pulled him to his feet and into a mind-blowing, three-way kiss. “Well, now this is my idea of a ‘hello,’” Jeremy said. Jonathon watched as Jeremy stroked his cock. He wanted that; wanted to swallow him down, let Jeremy’s taste mix with Kain’s. God, he was fucking hopeless. He didn’t even know the guy’s last name and he was already smitten. When he looked up to Kain, he met the blue gaze, one that reflected his every thought, every emotion, back at him. Sliding over, Jonathon moved Jeremy’s hand away and replaced it with his own. He touched his tongue to the slit, then slid it around the head, just tasting and exploring. Jeremy’s fingers played in his hair, holding it back for him, massaging his scalp slowly. When those hips started to move, driving the cock deeper, Jonathon moaned softly. He sucked a finger into his mouth, then parted Jeremy’s thigh. He teased Jeremy for a minute, rubbing his fingertip over the puckered skin then he eased his finger inside. “Oh, yeah,” Jeremy breathed. “Where the fuck did you learn how to suck a cock?” “He’s good,” Kain chuckled, dropping a kiss to Jonathon’s head. “Yeah.” Jeremy jerked as Jonathon gave the head of his cock a sucking kiss. “Oh, fuck yeah. Not gonna last much longer…” Determined to drink every last drop, Jonathon curled his finger and stroked it over Jeremy’s prostate. Jeremy came with a shout, unloading a torrent into Jonathon’s mouth. Jonathon took the opportunity and nicked Jeremy’s cock with one of his fangs. As blood mixed with semen, he groaned and drank, lapping up every bit he could. As Jeremy softened, Jonathon willed the wound to close with his tongue then he stood “Don’t leave,” Jonathon whispered. Jeremy tugged him close, tongue slipping into his mouth to share in the taste. “Don’t wanna.” “Good,” Kain murmured. 157
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Jonathon shifted to the side and then there were three tongues, three mouths, all working in concert to drive each one of them completely insane. If Jonathon had any say in it, it would only be the first play session of the evening.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kay Derwydd Kay is an odd bird. Her tastes in nearly everything are highly eclectic and change regularly depending on her mood. When it comes to writing, however, they tend to remain static. She specializes in writing gay (m/m) erotica, but has also written several m/f pieces. Most of her stories fall into one or more of the following categories: Vampires, Horror, High Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery. She also has written several Slice-of-Life pieces, and a few BDSM/Fetish pieces. She lives in Delaware with her partner and their two toddlers. They live roughly ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean and the beach boardwalk, both of which inspire many stories, especially during the summer when the guys are scantily clad in tight shorts and T-shirts are very rare sights. Kay also writes as Mychael Black. Website: http://www.geocities.com/kay_derwydd Our authors love to hear from their readers! You can write to Kay here: Kay Derwydd c/o Chippewa Publishing LLC P.O. Box 662 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729
Lady Aibell Press http://www.ladyaibell.com a division of Chippewa Publishing LLC Catching Your Dreams of Fiction! http://www.chippewapublishing.com
