Vadim kissed her once on the lips. It was tender and sweet, like the alighting of a bird. He withdrew and lingered only an inch away. “Kiss me,” he said in a deep, masculine growl.
The rumble of his voice kindled a spark of carnal hunger in her. She tried to pinpoint exactly what it was about him that turned her on, but it eluded her. Whatever it was, she refused to succumb to his demands. Raven turned her head away.
Vadim smiled. His lips brushed against her cheek and the side of her mouth. When he spoke, his lips tickled her flesh and sent shivers of delight down her spine. “You are such a naughty girl, Raven. Why do you defy me?”
“Because you assume to know me, but you don’t. I’m not your fledgling and I resent you treating me like one.”
He nuzzled her neck and inhaled her scent. “So much talking when all I want to do is fuck.”
Raven hated him for restraining her. He was probably the most arrogant prick she had ever met, and in her world of vampires that was saying something. She was well aware he was manipulating her, pulling her into the dark undertow of his seduction. The only question was why? She’d need to dredge the swamp of his devious mind to find out. As much as she resented him, she was going to have to play along. Well, for the immediate future anyway. She sighed. “Okay, I’ll kiss you.”
Vadim moved his lips a few inches over her mouth. If she was to kiss him, she would have to lift her head. She arched forward to kiss him but he moved further away. Now she was getting mad. “What is this? I thought you wanted a kiss.”
“I do but not if you’re angry.” He reached over and unbound her wrists. His dark green eyes captured her gaze and held it.
Raven didn’t really get this game. What did he want from her? Did he want her to beg? She tested him by reaching out and placing her hand on his cheek. The distance closed between them and she touched her lips to his.
The kiss was a strange and intoxicating rush. She intended to pull back, but he maintained the connection, teasing and sucking on her lower lip. He caressed his hand down the side of her body. Raven’s flesh came alive under his touch. His kisses were sweet but provocative. They were playful in a sweet and dangerous way, and she reveled in how charged he made her feel. His tongue moved to the threshold of her lips and tickled its way inside. Her tongue withdrew in surprise when she remembered his was thick and forked. But as quickly as she was surprised, she was also seduced and the revelation of his tongue couldn’t dampen her growing desire.
Vadim broke from her mouth and placed kisses down her chin and onto her neck. His hands roamed and explored her, boldly removing her clothes one item at a time. Every place he stripped bare was christened with soft, butterfly kisses that aroused and disarmed. This is what it was like to be a vampire, Raven realized. This was seduction so artful and subtle, she surrendered completely. She didn’t surrender because she had to but because she wanted it and was eager to explore more.
After what seemed like an eternity, he settled his hot mouth between her legs. There was a kiss against her clit, so delicate as to almost be missed and then that tongue dipped into her. Raven gasped and arched her back. Vadim took her right hand and kissed the palm. He placed it over her sex and said, “I want more of you. Open your pussy for me.” A wave of aching lust consumed every inch of her. Raven wanted him with a desperation she wouldn’t have thought possible. With trembling fingers, she did as he asked.
She was rewarded by the heavy and quick contact of his tongue. It wriggled and danced as it caressed her delicate flesh sending shockwaves of carnal pleasure through every extremity. Raven had never been ashamed of delighting in sex. She’d always been adventurous, willing to explore everything and anything new. But this experience went beyond pleasure. It was what everyone thought sex with a vampire should be, but in her experience at least, wasn’t. It was sex and sensuality at its debauched best, the pinnacle of mortal sin. Raven moaned and screamed, no longer trying to hold onto any decorum.
She half expected him to stop and tell her to quiet down, but instead he worked faster. His tongue wiggled into the moist channel of her pussy, awakening every nerve it passed on the way. Her entire abdomen grew tense and warm, her hips thrust toward him. They jerked up and down as if they had a mind of their own and they were in full rebellion. Her mind rolled over into something wonderful and wicked as every emotion emptied out but lust.
Her orgasm was a fevered rush of dueling pleasure. It echoed through her nerves and cells like an electric current. All desire before this paled next to this definition. She thrashed like a fever victim as the last ribbons of pleasure slipped away into the sweaty sheets.
Vadim eased over her and Raven welcomed him into her arms. He held the shaft of his thick cock in his powerful hands and touched the tip to her still tender clit. A spike of lust consumed her. Raven twisted and withered beneath his powerful body. “Oh please, Vadim, I really want you to fuck me hard. You feel so good, baby, please…”
He kissed her and seemed to draw the breath from her lungs. Then he broke the kiss and pushed the tip of his cock past the threshold of her channel. Raven cried out and lifted her hips up to try and draw more of him inside her but he held her hips still. He licked his thumb and massaged her clit. The sensation was explosive and Raven could feel how close she was to climax.
“Please Vadim,” she panted. “Fuck me.”
“From now on, you will address me as master.”
Raven’s mind wanted to argue but her body overruled it. Anything he wanted, anything. She licked her lips and said, “Please, master, fuck me.”
“Louder,” he commanded.
Raven swallowed, desperate for penetration. Her body was beginning to cool and a coiling tension made her pussy ache. “Please, master, fuck me!”
Vadim glided his cock into her pussy. His size stretched her, making a deliciously tight fit. The tension began building again. He rotated his hips from side to side grinding into her yielding flesh. Raven couldn’t have enough of his mouth, his hands, or his cock. He was controlling her with his power and there was no desire in her to stop him. She was as much his servant as if he’d chained and shackled her again.
Her climax came in a tempestuous storm of desperate lust.
The night wore on in a delirium of need and fulfillment. In that time he was her puppet master. He built her up and tore her down with a skill she wouldn’t have believed possible. They made love until the first rays of sunlight peaked through the heavy drapes. Then sometime after dawn Raven’s body, aching and deliciously sore, succumbed to merciful sleep.
Chapter 6
Vadim woke Raven with a kiss. He would have let her sleep longer but he was starving and he knew she would be too. She awoke slowly, stretching and yawning. Her lovely long lashes fluttered against her cheeks like butterflies departing from their cocoon for the first time. As he watched her, so many emotions came to the surface. There was desire of course, but something else closer to soulful longing. He tried to decipher his feeling but couldn’t. His initial attraction was because of her uncommon beauty, but now things ran much deep than that. When he was a boy growing up in Russia, he recalled the tough, rugged family women who worked in the fields all day and managed their children like drill sergeants at home. They were robust women, not these frail, needy modern misfits who followed him around, waiting on his every whim. Raven, he knew, was like the women he remembered. He just needed to help her transition.
He found it tragic she was fractured. The vampire that had turned her had not bothered to nurture the predator within. He was driven to get to the core of what had happened, but it called for delicacy. One didn’t perform brain surgery with a hacksaw. No, if he made her talk about her old master too soon, it might traumatize her all over again. She needed him to help her let go of her human emotions and just enjoy being an immortal. Vadim was determined to help her in every way possible. She did not deserve to be destroyed.
Raven hung off the side of the bed to collect her clothes but kept the shee
ts tightly wrapped around her. She picked up her underwear and bra first.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Her eyes darted back and forth. “Getting dressed. Am I not supposed to?”
“You get dressed like a deflowered virgin. Don’t hide your body from me. I love the way you look. I chose you because of it.”
Raven brow wrinkled. She appeared conflicted as she let go of the sheet like it was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship. He watched as her pale breasts came into view. The areolas were bright pink and the nipples even darker. She was magnificent, beautiful beyond words, and he hated that she didn’t know that. She made his cock roar to sinful life. He wanted to drag kisses across those heavy breasts and push his cock between her lily white thighs to find the hungry, weeping channel of her sex.
Conflicting hungers warred within him, each one driving him to the brink of madness. He wanted to fuck her but he needed to feed first. They both needed to feed very badly.
Vadim stood and held out his hand to her. “Come to me first. Then I will let you dress.” Raven came over and took his hand. He pulled her close and kissed her plump lips. He raked his long nails through her hair savoring the silkiness. She trembled in his arms, wrecked by her building hunger. “Now you can get dressed.”
Chapter 7
Raven couldn’t remember a time in her vampire life that she felt this good and positive about the future. She was tempted to think it was only the sex but that wasn’t all of it. Vadim was right. Her original master hadn’t been a very good one. He’d created her impulsively, out of loneliness she now knew all too well. In that selfish moment, he’d robbed her two kids of their mother and a woman of her life. Perhaps not a very ritzy life, but one where she’d worked hard, provided for her family and was generally happy. After the old master turned her, he’d left her for several nights in a row, alone in an abandoned house with only instinct to guide her clumsy, awkward hunts. But she’d been more careful than he had with her gift, and to the best of her knowledge, she hadn’t created any more vampires. She didn’t want anyone going through the hell she had experienced.
Then one day, her master disappeared and never returned. She learned through the council that he had been kidnapped and killed by synthetics. They had wanted to use him as a source and then they killed him afterward. That was usually how those artificial vampires rolled. Synthetic vampires were thrill seekers who wanted immortality but on their terms. They created vampires by draining their blood and serving it at drug-fueled parties for the rich. Revelers gained all of the abilities without any of the rules that governed the undead. These newly minted vampires weren’t beholden to a master, so they did as they pleased.
But none of it was as victimless as it seemed. The new vampires threatened everyone’s existence because they were untrained and sloppy. They left bodies outside nightclubs with big puncture wounds on their necks and tossed them off bridges. They created new vamps when they didn’t intend to, leaving more confused immortals like herself wandering the alleyways. In the end, the new synthetics had to be destroyed by the real vampires because they had developed so many bad, nasty habits. Sadly, none of them would submit to being retrained. It was all for the best anyway, seeing as how they got their immortality to begin with.
Vadim pulled up at an all night club Raven didn’t recognize.
This nightclub was situated in an area of town known as the Red Light District. It was a place where someone could get anything they wanted, illegal or not. It was early evening but the club was already jumping. The music was lower than Raven enjoyed but at least there were some people on the dance floor. Vadim took her hand and led her over to a table in a dark corner. He sat across from her and kissed her palm, delighting her. Neither ordered a drink; they just sat in silence and people watched. Before they left, they befriended a stoned couple and rendezvoused with them in the bathroom to feed. The couple never knew what hit them.
Vadim suggested they walk to another club, this one an after-hours nightclub for the last hunt of the night. Raven agreed even though she didn’t feel that hungry anymore. She wasn’t quite satisfied but more than anything she wanted to talk. All of this contact with Vadim was confusing. What did it mean? Was this just to make her a better, more efficient vampire? Once she was properly groomed would he be done with her? And what if she still didn’t measure up? Would that mean death?
As if all this confusion wasn’t bad enough, Raven had begun to have genuine feelings for him. That really upset her because she knew, sooner or later, he’d be gone. It would be just like when her last master left her desolate and alone. Then, out of the blue, the images of her children’s faces flashed across her mind. The memory of them sent a stabbing blade of grief through her heart and she stopped walking to collect her emotions.
At first, Vadim didn’t notice she’d stopped. He walked about twenty feet ahead apparently absorbed in his own thoughts. He glanced behind him, noticed her missing, and turned around.
A squeal of tires tore through the night’s silence. Raven’s memories shattered as a white sedan pulled alongside her. It looked like an older Buick with tinted back windows. The driver, a young, skinny man with watery brown eyes leaned over the passenger seat and smiled at her. “Hey baby, I love to party with weird chicks. Are you a vampire?”
Raven’s instinct roared to life. She smiled, flashing long, white fangs. It wasn’t so much a smile as a grim warning. “Maybe I am and I’m always looking for a date.”
The rear doors of the sedan flew open. Two men jumped out and threw a silver chain around her arms. The whole thing was so strange that it took her a moment to realize they were trying to kidnap her. Raven snarled and tried to shrug the chain off but it burned through her clothes and embedded into the flesh of her upper arms. She cried out from the pain. Fear and searing agony fired her rage. She tried to bite but they put a bandana in her mouth. One of them grabbed her around the waist and dragged her into the back seat. It smelled like cigarette smoke and stale pot back here. All of it made her sick.
Raven struggled but the chain seriously restricted her movement. She kicked at the two men who struggled to hold her legs still. The driver glared into the rear view mirror at her. “Keep that bitch quiet!” he barked.
Raven responded by kicking the back of his seat so hard he flew forward into the steering wheel. The driver roared in anger and called her every name he could think of. He was just about to pull away when the engine suddenly died.
“What the hell’s going on, James? We need to get the fuck out of here,” one of her abductors whined.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” James, the driver, replied. He turned the key several times but the car didn’t even click. The Buick was going nowhere.
The stalled car was so unexpected the two kidnappers loosened their grip on her legs. Raven took that opportunity to kick the closer one in the jaw several times. He bit his tongue and blood flowed from his lips. The first thing that hit her was the smell. The blood’s rich metallic scent filled her nostrils and awoke the dark hunger. The kidnapper wiped the blood away with the back of his hand, smearing it across his face.
He gave her a venomous glare. “Bitch! What are you staring at you freak!” He lifted his fist and punched her in the face. Raven’s head kicked back but she was unharmed. Didn’t this half-wit know anything about vampires?
The other kidnapper stared forward then pointed toward the front of the car. “What’s that? I thought you guys said she was alone.”
“Well, I guess we were wrong,” James chimed in. His tone dripped with nasty sarcasm.
Vadim stood directly in front of the car. His dark and sinister green eyes looked like an angry cat rescued from a lake. In his right hand he held what looked like a car part. He threw it at the driver’s side. The black metal smashed the window but the shattered glass only webbed heavily without giving way. The driver could see nothing now through the fractured windshield, and the kidnappers in the back scrambled to exit the vehi
cle.
Once outside, Raven heard a muffled cry and then silence. Someone grabbed her boots and pulled her out. It was Vadim. He helped her stand and removed her gag. His gaze swept down the length of her body and he grinned. “I think I like you this way—all tied up.”
“That,” Raven said playfully, “is very funny. Will you free me, please?”
Vadim popped the trunk and removed the bolt cutters. He cut her free and the chains fell noisily to the ground. A moment later, the wounds on her arms healed and the pain faded into nothing.
“I have a present for you, my darling,” Vadim said. He gestured to the curb where he had bound and gagged James. The kidnapper looked terrified.
“Nice. But how did you do that so fast? And how did you know they’d have bolt cutters in the trunk?”
Vadim smiled and his teeth looked even longer and crueler than she remembered. “I have my secrets but the bolt cutters were just a guess. No matter if you were a vampire or not, they would have needed a way of releasing you.” He shot a wicked look at James. “These idiots ruined the night. Morning is coming soon. We’ll take him home and you can question him tomorrow. It won’t be long before we finish off these vampire parasites forever.”
Chapter 8
Raven woke up the next night feeling a little disoriented. She recognized her surroundings slowly, grudgingly, as if she’d only seen this house once in a dream. Beneath her was the familiar feel of Vadim’s bed, his sheets, and his scent. She glanced next to her and saw him, frozen like a marble statue still in the spell of sleep. Nearby was their captive James. She could smell him. The stink of terror spiked his sweat but above all was the perfume of his blood, untapped beneath the skin. Raven rolled to the edge of the bed and saw him. He lay on the floor next to them, handcuffed to the bed’s metal frame. His eyes moved back and forth between closed lids in the grips of REM sleep.
A Loud and Dreamless Sleep Page 3