“Let’s take a shower.” I managed to speak through the pain that was almost blinding.
Connery helped me undress and we got into the shower together. I tried to soap myself but even that small movement had me howling.
“Let me.” With gentle hands, he washed my body, his strong fingers massaging the ache from my muscles as he soaped me up and washed me clean. It was normally the sort of thing that would have had me desperate for him to take me, there in the shower, but the pain had robbed me even of my sexual desire for Connery.
I turned slightly and my injury moved under the shower head so the hot water pounded against it, making me whimper involuntarily. Through the blurring of tears, I saw the fine muscles of Connery’s naked body tense at the sound of my pain. This was unbearable for him.
“Please, Ursula,” he whispered – he didn’t want it to seem like he was forcing me into something I didn’t want to do. “Let me help you.”
“It won’t turn me?”
“It won’t change you in any way.”
I knew he was telling the truth. There were plenty of humans out there who used vampire blood as a drug – I had always thought they were pretty twisted – and it didn’t alter who they were, except for turning them into addicts. But that wasn’t the point; blood drinking was a vampire thing and I wasn’t a vampire. For all the concessions I had made since meeting Connery, that still scared me.
But it hurt so bad.
And it was Connery. A part of me I barely dared to acknowledge wanted to feel the closeness that this would bring.
“Just a little,” I replied.
“Thank you.”
Connery bit into his own wrist and held it up to my mouth.
Any trepidation I had had evaporated as soon as I tasted his blood. A thrill of the forbidden passed through me as my mouth filled with its heat. I swallowed and it seemed to scald a path down into my belly. Instantly, I began to feel better. It was as if a ball of healing fire sat in my stomach, pulsing its rays out through the rest of my body. I sucked hard at his wrist, and with the throbs of heat and healing came a deeper, baser note of pleasure, rippling within me. I liked drinking his blood. And it was certainly not a one-way street; I felt Connery shudder against me as the blissful sensations passed through him, too.
Still, he retained control and was respectful of me.
“That’s enough.” He detached me from his wrist, even as I helplessly tried to keep sucking. No wonder people got addicted. But they weren’t lucky enough to have a man like Connery looking out for them. It would have been so easy for him to let me keep drinking or to bite me himself – in that state, I wouldn’t have stopped him – but he knew that I had not wanted to go too far and he respected that.
“Thank you,” I said. And although I was thanking him for the blood, I was also thanking him for stopping me from taking more.
My body seemed to glow with good feeling, and looking down, I saw that it was not just me. Connery’s cock strained upwards, as hard as I had ever seen it. I reached out to touch it and found it like granite, and so hot that the water from the shower ought to have sizzled to steam on impact.
“Oh yes…” I murmured. On some basic level, I always wanted Connery; his mere presence was enough to have me running on hot. But right now, I wanted him more than I had ever wanted him before.
I turned my back to him, thrusting my ass out as I bent at the waist. He was as eager as I was; I felt his hands on me and then I sighed in ecstasy as his long, hard cock slid into me, my own potent arousal easing its passage. Connery’s hips pressed flat against my bottom and I ground myself back into him, twisting blissfully on his impaling cock. Whether it was the after-effects of the blood drinking or the situation or perhaps the joy of life that comes with surviving something, I did not know, but the sensations had never felt keener or sharper as Connery moved his hips in luscious circles, teasing ever more blissful waves of pleasure from my body.
As the hot water continued to fall around us, Connery’s right hand discovered my breasts, massaging the pliant flesh and tweaking my nipples with his fingers. His other hand went lower and his skilled fingers worked my clit, gently arousing it as his cock sawed in and out of me at a leisurely pace. I craned my head back to find his lips, eager to taste him as he drove my body beyond the point of no return.
The heated intimacy of the encounter had me coming in record time. Connery was easily the most skilled lover I had ever been with. Centuries of experience help, but underlying it was his basic generosity; all he wanted to do was make me happy and give me as much pleasure as I could stand.
My body jerked against him as I reached my first climax and I reached the second only moments later as Connery continued to ride his rock hard organ in and out of me while I was coming, the sparks of one orgasm igniting the second.
Falling forward against the shower wall, gasping for breath, I slipped off of Connery’s cock and heard the wet slap as it sprang upwards to hit his hard stomach. He hadn’t come yet, and I wanted more.
I turned back to face him, grabbing his head and dragging it down to meet me in a ferocious kiss, tugging at his lip with my teeth. Thrusting a hand between us, I beat along the length of his virile shaft, assessing his strength and finding him ready to go.
Connery was ready to catch me as I jumped up, wrapping my legs about his hips. I gasped as he guided me down to rest my full weight on his upstanding member, feeling it push into me once more, penetrating right to my core. I growled in furious desire, nipping at his neck, and Connery accurately read what I wanted.
I cried out as he thrust me back hard into the wall of the shower, pinning me there and setting up a hard fucking rhythm.
“Yes, oh yes,” I chanted as he pounded me against the wall, the wild animal strength of his body unleashed on me. I loved every second, clinging to him and urging him on, feeling the hard muscles of his tensed body moving beneath my grasp, slippery with water.
I realized that I was clinging on for dear life with the shoulder that, not so long ago, I had been unable to move. The thought of his blood inside me gave me a new edge of thrill and I kicked my heels at his pumping hips, urging him to fuck me harder still.
Connery answered my desires, working himself into a delicious frenzy. His face was next to my neck, and the thought occurred to me that my jugular had to be practically against his lips. His desire to bite me could surely have never been stronger and yet, he held back. I thanked my lucky stars that I had fallen for a vampire with such self-control. And in more ways than one.
As I gasped my way through a powerful, bone-shaking orgasm, Connery kept his cool. His cock looked still swollen and gleaming as he pulled out.
The shower was barely lukewarm now and we both got out and dried each other. He toweled me gently, while I vigorously attacked his straining cock, making him grunt with pleasant discomfort.
Now we made our way to the bedroom and hurried beneath the covers. I practically dragged Connery down on top of me, his aching cock finding its natural home and making me sigh once more, my hips undulating beneath him as he went into me to the hilt.
“Connery…”
“Ursula.” He kissed me, and then proceeded to drill me to the mattress.
Maybe it was the horrors of the evening and the melancholy taste that the loss of our own people had left in the mouth, but this was apparently what we both needed. To celebrate life, to prove that we were alive, that the bad guys hadn’t won yet. Or maybe it was just a necessary way of releasing stress and working off anger, but whatever the case, it was what we both wanted.
I hurled my hips back up at him, taking every throbbing inch, over and over. It was a full body workout but it was also extremely intense. Our eyes remained locked throughout as if we physically needed to see each other, to know that this was us.
Again, perhaps it harked back to the events of earlier; reaffirming that we had survived.
From his increasingly strained grunts of effort, I could tell that Co
nnery was close to coming, and he was taking me there with him, but my whole body was telling me there was something more it wanted. Whether it was for me or for Connery or for us, the need was there and I was sure it was not just a reaction to drinking his blood earlier.
“Bite me,” I gasped as Connery fucked me like a man possessed.
“What?” he asked, his hips slowing as his eyes went molten hot.
“Fucking bite me.”
I had been fooling myself. I wanted him. All of him. I didn’t want to be in the relationship halfway. I wanted all of him, to know fully that intimacy I had touched earlier when I had drank him. I wanted us to be one, and this was the way to achieve that.
Connery saw the resolve in my eyes and when his climax hit a few seconds later, he lunged for my neck.
His teeth slid into my throat and my world went technicolor. I wanted to scream but the breath was no longer in my lungs. So many sensations at once, and all of them wonderful. Inside me, I could feel Connery’s strong cock pumping his seed into my body. I could feel my pussy spasming about his thick organ, clasping it tight and with each pulse sending waves of white-hot pleasure searing through me.
I could feel my blood racing from my body into Connery’s loving mouth and the sensation was like little needles of ecstasy pricking all over my skin; my belly, my breasts, my toes, my thighs, my ass.
Every part of me seemed to be exploding in its own individual orgasm. I had always thought that women who gave themselves to vampires were weak or stupid, but I got it now.
I wanted him to drain me dry, even knowing that it would kill me – it would be worth it for how good that death would feel. I cried out over and over as my body rippled with wracking pleasure. When Jack had bitten me, there had been some measure of pleasure, but nothing like this.
Once again, he exercised his restraint no matter how much he might have wanted to go on drinking from me, and pulled away. We collapsed down next to each other, utterly spent.
“How do you feel?” asked Connery, eventually.
“Amazing.”
“No regrets?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“I’m glad.” He kissed me and then folded me into his arms.
Inevitably, as we lay there, sleep pouring in upon us, my thoughts did turn back to what had happened in the catacombs and what might happen next. But suddenly, I felt as if we could do anything.
I stroked my hand along the hip of my lover. Perhaps I was still a little dazed from the wonder of it all, and I certainly wasn’t ready to make a decision, but for the first time, I was starting to feel that a lifetime was not enough to spend with Connery. And those teeth could do more than give me pleasure; they could give us eternity.
I had hated vampires for so long that the thought remained alien. But it was there now.
And it no longer seemed as unthinkable as it once had.
Chapter 4
Things moved fast after that terrible day, and yet still not fast enough.
When Connery and I joined the resistance again in their basement headquarters, our jaws dropped. Sitting at the far end of the room, in the chair that Sharpe usually reserved for himself, flanked by security Guards, was the King of Clubs. Not the 1st King of Clubs, but the current one, the latest of the line, the Boy King, who had assumed the role in youth partly because the Court of Clubs had wanted someone easy to manipulate. For all his young age, he had a certain air of nobility as he sat there in these dingy surroundings, so much so that I found myself wanting to kneel.
“Welcome,” he said, as we entered. “We have heard much about Ursula Lee, the great bounty hunter, who has done so much to rid our city of its law-breakers. And this must be Connery.”
“Your Majesty.” Connery remembered himself enough to bow and I dropped an awkward curtsey – something I had never done before in my life.
“I’ve brought his Majesty up to speed on what’s happened,” said Sharpe, who looked to be loving his role as royal envoy.
“This is a time at which all vampires must work together,” said the Boy King. “I have not always approved of the actions of your organization – as they have been explained to me by my advisors. But it has come to my attention in recent months that some of those advisors do not have my best interests at heart. Quite the reverse, in fact. I have grown older and they have failed to notice that they are no longer dealing with a child. Their attempts to keep the truth from me will no longer work.”
From what I could see, he was still very much a child – vampires age normally until they are twenty-one – but how could anyone grow up normally with a life like the one he had led?
“This being the case,” the young monarch went on, “I am minded to issue an amnesty until this current crisis is averted. Clearly, the resistance has played its part but, it seems to me, that my own Court – if I may still call it that – has played the larger role in resurrecting my ancestor. Times have changed and 1st King has no place in a world where we try to deal with humans as equals.”
“So…” Connery looked as blindsided as I would if Queen Elizabeth II rocked up in my living room for tea, “what is our next move now?”
“Although the ‘heartist’ members of my court are as invested as I am in ridding us off this threat,” the King replied, “I do not feel confident in my authority with them there. They are keen to remove the King of Nightmares because they seek to replace me with the King of Hearts. I have known this for a while but I had not enough allies to move against these traitors. Now perhaps I do.” He smiled. “The resistance can help me, and then together we will rid the city of this menace.” He seemed to have been taught to speak by a speech-writer, each sentence and clause delivered as if to an audience, but he certainly knew how to speak. “In the meantime, on the advice of my new advisor, Katya,” even the experienced Katya looked a little taken aback by all this, “I am erecting a cordon around the catacombs to prevent any from entering and falling under the sway of the King of Nightmares. He is, I am informed, building an army of Night Wraiths.”
“The cordon won’t stop him completely,” Katya put in. “Lundercity is riddled with old caves that feed back into that network and people are stupidly curious when this sort of thing happens. Also, we can expect him to send those wraiths he has already claimed – your Guards and our friends – out to find other vampires to bring back and put them under his will.”
“And we can expect forays Topside, as well?” asked the Boy King.
Katya nodded. “I fear so, your Majesty. The sooner we let the humans know of the danger, the better.”
The King nodded. “Our relations with the Topside government have deteriorated of late. I had hoped to build bridges after the Ripper incident ended, but this will put paid to that. The humans may not take us seriously – they have been very suspicious of anything we say.”
“They’ll take it seriously soon enough,” I said, grimly.
There was a bitter irony to the ease with which the heartists, who had once seemed the greatest threat to the security of Lundercity, were rooted out of the Court of Clubs. When the King had been younger and more vulnerable to malign influence, they had controlled him like a puppet, even as the loyalists fought for control of his strings. But now he had grown old enough to think for himself, all he needed was backing, and a cause.
With the interest that the Imperial Guard had been taking in the catacombs lately, it was not hard to prove the role played by part of the Court of Clubs in the resurrection of the 1st King. The news was leaked to the Undercity media, and overnight a tide of opinion turned against some of the highest offices in the city, amongst them, Julius, a vampire who had put me in jail and threatened me with torture when I refused to play ball.
With public opinion swinging in his favor, the King lost no time in making his next move. To this point, all I had met of London’s vampire resistance was the ruling council – no more than ten vampires. But it had many members, spread throug
hout the city; ordinary people who had jobs and lives but, when called, would do their bit for what they firmly believed was the good of the city. It was still only a force of fifty or so vampires, but it was significant enough to make an impression when, at the King’s morning processional – a weekly ritual in which the Court of Clubs paraded before their monarch as a supposed show of loyalty – the resistance marched in and blockaded the doors.
The King had made sure to have loyalist Guards and courtiers on hand to gain us entrance, and the looks on the faces of the heartists as they looked about them in bewilderment were enough to raise a smile at a dark time. I particularly enjoyed seeking out the face of Julius, and seeing the anger mixed with dread in his countenance. Now it was his turn to go to prison.
“It has come to my attention,” the Boy King had announced, “that some of my Court have so little faith in my leadership that they have taken money from the King of Hearts. In the circumstances, I think it best that these people leave my service. A boat is waiting to take you to Undercity New York, and I have already sent a message informing the King of Hearts to expect you. If you are so keen to work for him, then I am quite happy for you to do so.”
It was a well-considered punishment, and also a devious one. Keeping the traitors in Lundercity, where they had friends and comrades, was unsafe - even if they were in jail they became a focal point for future rebellion. Plus, the King of Hearts had little patience with those who failed him. Whatever future awaited the heartists in Undercity New York, it was likely to be a bleak one.
The Boy King re-staffed the vacated positions in the Court of Clubs with loyalists – or at least, with people who had seen what had happened to the last bunch of traitors and were now determined to be loyal – and moved smoothly on to the next problem.
Which would not be dealt with so easily. Despite the cordon, the number of Night Wraiths being recruited to the 1st King’s ‘army’ was growing. The problem being that new members were recruited by the wraiths themselves – the more of them there were, the more they could recruit, and so on exponentially. There seemed no limit to how many the King of Nightmares could control.
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