by Martha Woods
“Oh god,” Damon panted, thrusting deeper and faster every second, “You feel so good!”
“Y-you too!” I gasped, “Both of you! So much!”
Vincent didn’t answer, for obvious reasons, but the chuckle that vibrated between my legs struck me like a bolt of lightning, his face burying even deeper against me and his only addition to our conversation to make me stammer and moan even more. The two of them were good at reducing me to a voiceless, boneless heap, so this was nothing out of the ordinary, but the pure brazenness of his taunting… I was going to have to do something to get him back, one of these days.
Damon grunted behind me, his eyes clamping shut and his trusts getting rougher and sloppier, almost falling on top of the both of us in his reckless quest to lose himself completely. “A-Amy…” He panted, “I’m… not gonna last much longer…”
It had been a stressful day for all of us, not really much opportunity to relax and take a moment to ourselves to breath. It made sense that we wouldn’t be able to drag this out to hours, much as the idea was always tempting, I still had a schedule to keep to after all, and the stress that he’d been under… he needed something to just let himself lose control and collapse for a while. Who could blame him for that?
“Don’t worry,” I said, reaching back and wrapping my hand around his wrist, “I… I love you Damon.”
He choked, barely pulling himself out of me before he stroked himself to completion, a flood of warmth coating my back and dripping down across my cheeks, both of us shuddering in our mutual climax as Vincent guided me through the rest, tongue lapping up every drop of my nectar that dripped from between my legs, his hand a soothing comfort along the soft skin of my inner thigh.
Damon fell back, not even caring that he was sitting on Vincent’s legs as he panted and shook, trying to get himself under some sort of control after the show that he’d put on for me. “God… that was… that wasn’t fair Amy…”
“I’m sorry,” I giggled, moving myself off of Vincent’s face and collapsing on my stomach completely, “It just made sense to say at the time.”
“Talk about a blind side,” He laughed, looking down at Vincent and raising an eyebrow, “What are you looking at?”
“You. Sitting on my legs.” He flexed his thighs for emphasis, bouncing Damon lightly. “Do you mind?”
“No,” He answered, falling onto his back without bothering to move himself, “Deal with it, I’m too tired.”
“Fantastic, and after all the help that I’ve given you today.” Vincent craned his head to look at me properly, scoffing to himself, “Though I should probably thank you for not cumming on me at least.”
“Don’t mention it,” Damon said, “seriously, don’t mention it.”
The bickering really never stopped between them, no matter how close it was that we managed to get. A while ago I might have found that to be intensely annoying, probably the grounds for a very serious and very bland talk about how we all need to get along better, but now I realize that… it’s just the way that they get along together, like petulant children that just can’t admit that they actually like spending time with each other. Best friends who consider themselves mortal enemies, and then act surprised when one of them can make the other laugh.
It’s charming actually, I can’t imagine them ever being any other way now.
Though a little help getting to the shower would have been appreciated, but I don’t fancy getting them into an argument about who was the one who should take me there, I was too tired right now for that. So I guess I’ll just lay here for a little longer, acutely aware with every passing second how gross I was starting to feel in the open air like this, until I finally got feeling back in my legs and was able to walk myself there like an adult.
All in all, I think I would consider myself to be pretty stress free now.
Chapter 8
“Are you sure this is going to work?” I asked Damon, scratching my neck as I tied the tie around his neck, “You don’t think it might be a little bit reckless?”
“The guys that I’m going to go and talk to tonight have been with me since the beginning, they stuck with me from my first hunt, they stuck with us when Tristian cut and ran, and they’ll be with me through all of this. There’s no one that I would trust more to help us out with our problem, otherwise we’ll just be floating directionless.”
“I know, we need all the help we can get. But… doesn’t it seem like a bad idea? To get the help of hunters when we know that the spies themselves are hunters?”
“When you say it like that it makes me sound kind of stupid don’t you think?” He grinned, placing a kiss against my knuckles and nodding to himself. “Trust me Amy, I know what I’m doing here. By the time tomorrow is through we’ll have our names.”
“If you say so…” I stepped in, pressing my lips against his and pushing him back to the window. “Go on, don’t get in too much trouble.”
“Trouble? Me?” He laughed, stepping up onto the railing and waving farewell. “Who do you think I am?”
He was gone before I could reply, and all that I was left with was a sigh and a smile. I must have been standing there for a good few minutes without realizing, the feeling of Vincent’s arms wrapping around my waist shocking me out of the trance that I’d drifted into and almost making me leap straight into the air. “Oh!” I said, “Sorry, you scared me.”
“That much is clear,” He chuckled, leading me back inside, “Come, I want to speak with you about something important.”
I followed him into the living room, taking my usual place on the couch as he continued to the kitchen, taking out two glasses and a bottle of wine. My meetings had all gone by today without a hitch, the warning that I wanted to pass along to Cara and Tariq passing through with a grateful nod of her head, I suppose I’ve earned a glass of wine after a hard day of work. Especially if this was going to be a serious sort of conversation, which I had a feeling it was.
“Now, I think I’ve figured out why it is that Damon has been so… skittish lately, especially around the two of us.”
“I didn’t know that we were digging for a reason.”
“Of course I was digging Amy,” He said, “I hate not knowing the reason for something not being right, it’s the only way that things get better. And in this case… it’s not really the fault of anyone why he’s been feeling the way he has. Except, I suppose, maybe me.”
I accepted the glass that he passed into my hand, waiting patiently as he took his seat before I asked, “Why would it be your fault?”
“You’ve seen him lately, the way that he… hangs himself up around us, every time one of us touches him its like he is sad for it, especially with you. There are moments where it looks like he couldn’t be happier, then the breeze will shift in a certain way and leave him looking like only death could be a blessing to him.” He sighed, taking a gulp of his wine that was far larger than I was expecting from him, “I’ve spent months trying to puzzle out the reason for it, and I’ve finally come up with the answer.”
“Well,?” I asked, “Don’t leave me in suspense, tell me!”
“It’s because of what I did, the impulsive, selfish decision that I made in dragging him out of death and back to us, regardless of how he would have felt about the situation. At first I thought that he would adapt, that his sadness was just due to being a hunter before turning into a monster, but… now I know the truth.” He looked at me, a profound sadness in his eyes as he downed the rest of his glass and said, “It’s because of you. I took away his chance to have a life with you, one where the two of you grow old and make a family, one where you go through life at every step and go out holding each other closely. I took that away from him, and doomed him to stay the same age forever, while you are destined to grow older until you eventually fade from this world.”
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that it couldn’t be the reason but… it all made sense, the fleeting touches, the pain in his eyes that disappe
ared whenever he noticed me looking too long, of course this had to be the reason for it. And much as I didn’t want to blame Vincent, as much as I didn’t blame Vincent, it was due to his actions that this had come around. But what other choice was there really?
“If you hadn’t done what you did,” I said, “then he wouldn’t have gotten that chance anyway. He would have died cold and bloody in a rainy alleyway, and we would have to try and pick up the pieces afterward. I think, as much pain as it’s causing him, I don’t think that he would actually give it all up if he had the chance. I think that he would have fought and bled as hard as he could just to have even a minute more with us.”
“I know,” He said, looking away from me, “But that doesn’t make it easier, knowing what it is that I’ve forced him into, watching you fade away while he is powerless to do anything.”
“You would have been forced to do that too,” I said, “even if he hadn’t needed to be saved by you, even if we’d gotten out of there that night without a scratch and went on to live our lives together, eventually we both would have died and left you all alone. This way… I’m glad that you can have someone to be with after everything is done, I don’t want you to have to walk through life all on your own, not after all the time you spent doing exactly that.”
“I’ve done it before Amy, I was willing to do it again.” He took my hand, squeezing tightly and bowing his head. “But I didn’t want to be the reason someone else went through that same pain, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize Vincent, you did what anyone would do if someone they loved was dying and in need of help, you offered it in the best possible way that you could find to do so. If that’s a sin then… God, what does something truly good look like?”
He didn’t reply, breathing to himself and studying the cracks in the wall. I don’t imagine that this is something that is easy to confront, no matter how long it is that you’ve lived and how long you’ve had to come to terms with different actions that you’ve had to take over the years. I suppose that any more attempts to tell him that he’s not to blame for anything might just… annoy him, so I just kept silent and sat there with my hand clasped in his. There were worse ways to comfort someone, but in this case… I don’t really think there could be one better.
“Even if he blames you, he’ll come around,” I said, “now come on, I’ve got some things that I want to go over before tomorrow.”
“Making me work to stop me from thinking?” He said, smiling gratefully, “That’s very smart Amy. I suppose I should get started.”
Again, worse ways to comfort someone. But at least this way we would be getting through it together.
“I’m sorry, you what?”
Even Vincent was having a hard time believing what he had heard, holding his hand up in a questioning manner before giving up on whatever it was that he was going to ask. “That’s… not what we were really expecting you to say when you came back here.”
“It struck me in a moment of brilliance,” Damon laughed, pulling out his tie and tossing it across the room. Going by the drop of blood on his cheek he’d gotten into a bar fight, which with what I knew of hunters was really not much to be worried about, it was more or less one of their ways of showing affection. “Why bother trying to find them, when we can just invite them to us?”
“Because that’s a criminally stupid idea Damon,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose, “I thought the entire idea of something like this was finding them secretly so they didn’t have any chance to get suspicious and run?”
“I thought so too, but that’s the brilliance of the whole thing! The spies will be expecting someone to be looking for them quietly, they’re probably on the lookout for people in trench coats or the moments where they’re walking through a quiet alleyway, if someone wanted to grab you they’d do it while you were away from help. But if you got invited out to a night on the town with your boys, where you’ll be surrounded by people who would leap to your aid as soon as you were even a little bit in danger… why would they ever be suspicious then?”
“Much as it pains me to say it,” Vincent sighed, “the idea does actually have merit. The difficulty is in making sure that you don’t tip off any of the targets in the process, which is difficult when you’re using members from the same group to trap them.”
“And again, the guys that I went and saw today are my guys, and we know from what Claire told us that these traitors came into town a few months ago, which is a good couple dozen hunters, but still that gives us something to work on!”
“Especially if we narrow it down to hunters that were there that night that I was kidnapped,” I said, nodding along, “You could probably invite all of those and have it be a regular sized group.”
“Exactly. My guys get in contact, say that they want to have a night out at Alexis’ club, unload a bit, have some drinks, it’ll be a good time to relax. Then once we get there everyone starts drinking, and we watch who’s just a little too giving with their money, then we home in on them and keep prodding till we get the answers that we need.” Damon raised his arms in triumph. “See? Perfect plan!”
“It’s… not terrible, I’ll give you that.” I shrugged. “I’ll have to speak to Alexis to make sure that everything would work, but if she gives the all clear then we can at least try it. If the spies there make a move to try and hurt anyone though she’s going to kill them, I hope you know that.”
“Yeah, we’ve got no problem with that,” He said, “just tell her to give us a sign so I can stop any other hunters from jumping in. Don’t want anyone getting hurt who doesn’t deserve it.”
“Will do, I don’t want her club to turn into a complete bloodbath, I might be investing in it soon.” Pushing him off to the bedroom and picking up my phone from my desk, I prepared to have a very strange conversation with a woman who was likely incredibly used to having anything except normal conversations. “What has my life become?”
“Amy!” Alexis greeted me, wrapping me in a warm hug and brushing the hair out of my eyes, “Just in time to see your very stupid plan come to fruition.”
“Hey Alex,” I said, looking around her to the open door of her office, “Oh hi Tabitha!”
“Hi Amy…” She waved, crossing her legs in her seat at the window. “I wanted to make sure that everything worked out, hunters can be kind of… unpredictable.”
“She’s here so that if any of them get out of line she can break their legs with a snap of her finger,” Alexis said, “she's been learning a lot, and also teaching me some things that I hadn’t considered before, we couldn’t ask for better backup.”
“Well, I’m just hoping we won’t need that backup,” I said, “if anything goes wrong hopefully the other hunters that Damon spoke to can take care of it.”
“They’re not exactly shy of a fight,” She said, “I don’t doubt they would be willing to do so.”
“So how are you going to keep an eye on them?” I asked, looking around, “Did you set up microphones or something?”
“No, something much harder to detect if you’re just looking for surveillance. The music that you hear playing right now?” She snapped her fingers, the heavy bass thumps and drones stopping instantly. “They’re fake, only an illusion that all of them believe that they can hear, but we hear nothing. And since they think that they’ll have to talk over the music, they’ll be yelling everything that they say to each other. Its perfect.”
“Wow,” I said, raising my eyebrows, “That’s… pretty brilliant actually. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“Well, it’s not the first time that I’ve had to take care of suspicious customers, I’ve learned to experiment over the years. I’m sure that even if we don’t hear anything from your spies tonight we’ll still hear some things that we would rather not, customers typically don’t have the most chivalrous things to say about my workers when they think no one is listening.”
“I can only imagine…” I walked over to the window, joi
ning Tabitha at her side and watching over the floor. “How are you Tabitha?”
“I’m good! Everything with the witches is going well, we’ve been learning to work alongside the werewolves pretty well, it’s nice to be able to heal someone after so long just being involved in violence.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, momentarily jealous of those that had the power to heal with their hands. If I’d had that maybe Damon wouldn’t have had to be turned. “The werewolves are grateful for your help, I don’t know if they’ve told you that.”
“Oh they have, multiple times. They’re much more polite than I thought they would be, but I guess that was just me not having any idea what they were actually like as people before we started this whole thing.”
“Before we started this whole thing they were busy trying to tear your throats out, I think it’s understandable why your two groups weren’t gathering around the fire and singing Kumbaya.” Looking down at the crowd below, you could see that it was far more than just the hunters that were here tonight, werewolves and vampires had turned out to see whoever their favorite girls were, I had yet to ask Joseph what his thoughts would be on asking his two lovers if they wanted a job would be, but if the answer was positive no doubt there would be an even larger crowd here three nights out of the week. Even here, a place where you could come to just… express a little bit of the lust that you normally kept bottled up, even here was becoming a place where people from all of our groups were finding safe to mingle and bond, rather than to just stay in their homes and hope that no one found out where they were.