Billy turned on his heels, heading for the gym. ‘It was just a ptarmigan,’ he said. ‘One worthless little bird, OK?’
Billy pulled a peg from the bench press weights.
‘One worthless little bird,’ echoed Simeon. ‘Isn’t she just?’
Johannes grunted and turned in his sleep. Doug, bending to lace his bunny boots, stiffened and listened. He didn’t want to wake anyone and he waited till Johannes resumed his snoring, air whistling through his nose, before continuing. He’d been lying there with a full bladder for almost an hour and it wasn’t going away.
He fixed his headtorch, closing the door softly before hurrying to the outhouse. Hell, it was so cold his dick had nearly vanished. He stood there, shivering, wishing he were back in the UK where he wasn’t in permanent pain, where his throat wasn’t scorched and where his toes didn’t feel brittle and burnt. Daylight too. God, he ached for a sunrise. He hadn’t a clue the darkness would do his head in like this. He’d been training like a maniac for this trip – months of running, cycling and weights – but, mentally, he clearly wasn’t prepared.
In a few days at about noon, the sun would show its face, or rather its burning gold edge for the first time that year. Doug reckoned he’d feel better when he saw it, loads better, even though sunrise and sunset would be more or less the same, the day as short as a gnats’ shag. Currently, day as they knew it consisted of the winter sky holding the colours of twilight, a rich bruise spreading around the horizon, indigo, violet and charcoal blue. The rest of the time, they were in darkness, usually starlit. Madness, but sometimes Doug could believe the sun had gone forever, died a death, and all that remained was this frozen wasteland. Sun made life. And there was no life here.
He fastened himself and was scuttling back to the cabin when a great wave of emotion snagged him. He stopped to look out over the ice, hugging his chest and beating his hands against his arms, feet stamping. How he hated it. It was a barren hellhole, sucking the energy from you. He glared at the emptiness, wanting not to be cowed, wanting to defeat it and everything it did to him.
After a while, he stopped moving and just held himself, shivering. The ice glittered with pinpricks of light. It was so beautiful, so immensely beautiful and at the same time it was terrifying. Looking at it was like looking into forever. A person could disappear entirely here.
No wonder he was freaking out. He needed to think small. Yes, that was it. Small and manageable. But small drove him crazy too, the equipment flapping on his parka, Margret’s cough in the mornings, Bird’s stupid accordion and the way he’d insisted on pasta when a spicy stew would have been better. Chillies. Food with hot, spicy chillies. Fire in his belly.
Doug had heard it say that out here you needed stories more than you needed food. He could almost believe it. Stories to fight the desolation, to fill the emptiness. But he wanted food too.
And Essie. Jesus Christ, but he wanted her more than ever after last night in the tent. Seeing and hearing her come had been so homy. She seemed all twisted up, half pained, half shocked, and it was such a sexy dirty sight. He should have made his move in London where everything was simpler, warmer, more civilised. Dinner, some conversation, a fuck, breakfast the next day. He imagined her wearing his bathrobe, and she looked amazing, so gentle and at home.
He was thinking better out here, alone in the dark. He needed to get a grip. He was behaving like a twat. Essie would end up hating him if he didn’t wise up. Tomorrow he’d cool it, try and make it up to her. Try not too think how wet and soft she’d felt when he’d sunk into her pussy. God, even in these subzero temps, his dick was twitching. Time he went back into the cabin. He’d have a quick one off the wrist inside his sleeping bag. He’d be out like a light after that.
He was about to move when he heard a soft crunch on the snow. Shit. No weapon. Always carry a weapon. He had nothing.
He spun around. There was movement by the cabin. He hadn’t believed Essie. Thought she was screaming to get him off her. From the shadows, a young woman skipped forwards, smiling. She was slim and beautiful, golden hair cascading around her shoulders, eyes of icy blue. And she was wearing a summer dress, lime green cotton printed with lilac dots.
Doug staggered back. It was a dream. He tried to roar but no worthwhile noise came out, only a hoarse crack and clouds of breath. He started to run, stumbling and slow in his parka and boots.
The woman’s merry laughter sparkled into the night. She began to follow, frolicking alongside him. Her small breasts shook as she skipped, dancing close and spinning away. Doug heaved and gasped, feeling as if icicles were stabbing inside his throat. His lungs were ready to split. His body barely worked. He was running in slow motion, running into the emptiness, turning to look at her.
Then he fell, his body sinking in a puff of powdery snow, glacial ice beneath. The woman skipped around as he hauled himself up, her summer dress swishing, polka dots dancing. Doug hardly had any joints to move. He was all padding. Where could he run to? Infinity? He needed to get back to the cabin. He started to deviate but she headed him off, forcing him to keep going, the gleeful smile never fading from her lips.
She was wearing sandals, strappy brown sandals, and her toenails were painted red. Where was the frostbite? All Doug could do was run. He felt he might fall off the earth’s edge and go spinning into forever with all the snowflakes and stars. Run and run. But it was impossible in these clothes. He was fat and bumbling. He was meat.
The colour was high in the woman’s cheeks and when Doug threw a terrified glance her way, her smile opened into a huge triumphant laugh. Doug saw his death right there, caught in the moonlight that flashed on a pair of white incisors. Her throat was a velvety red cavern, and it grew bigger, trembling with her laughter, rippling with sinew, moist and stretched.
If I just keep running … just keep …
But there was nowhere to run to, and then he smelt her and he felt her. Her blonde hair snagged on his beard. Then the only thing he knew was throat, and everything went wet and red.
3
Esther used to be Selin, a servant in one of the grand wooden yalis perched on the forested banks of the Bosphorus. As the Ottoman empire dwindled, her days were spent fetching and carrying. Billy’s were spent sleeping, protected from the sun in the shuttered apartments of Kasim Nadir, his mentor and vampire guide, and a man of immense cruelty.
Billy didn’t yet know he was a snow vampire. Restless and alone, he’d left his home of Saxony in Eastern Europe, where he’d been a minor noble, yearning for peace and companionship. He’d had no understanding of the force that had bitten and changed him. A sailor, that was all he knew. He hadn’t really clicked with the Carpathian vampires he’d met and, having learned how the Turks had suffered at the hands of Vlad the Impaler, he’d headed east, wondering if the answer lay in the land of Vlad’s enemy. It would be decades before Billy understood his power, and found the vampire line to which he belonged.
Constantinople enchanted him. It was a magical city, a place of terrible beauty founded on lust, poetry and ruthlessness. Nadir, a man as brutal as the country that reared him, had been delighted to take Billy under his wing. Together, they’d stalked the city’s alleyways and gardens, lurked in the shadows of mosques, or sucked on hookahs, Billy’s blond hair hidden by a turban. Sometimes, they’d prowl along the river’s tree-dense shoreline, feasting on victims in the dappled moonlight of leafy darkness. ‘Take him,’ Nadir would command. Or, ‘Ignore the peasant, her skin looks coarse.’
But when Billy saw Selin, everything changed. In the twilit dusk, she sat alone by the Bosphorus, pale feet trailing in the water. Daringly, she’d pushed back her veils, revealing lush black curls, a gentle face and a slender neck of exquisite Slavic pallor. Since arriving in Turkey, Billy had seen little more of its women than their shy eyes darting above yashmaks.
‘Take her,’ ordered Nadir.
After watching her for several more seconds, Billy turned to Nadir. ‘No,’ he said, calm an
d clear.
It was Billy’s first challenge. Nadir, as swarthy-skinned as the peasants he so disdained, cocked an eyebrow, his thin sensual lips twisting in amusement.
‘Wilhelm,’ he drawled. ‘You are in love.’
For the next few months, it seemed the woman was always there on their night-time wanderings. Nadir had a knack of happening to pass by her as she bathed her feet; braided her hair by a window; filled a pitcher from a fountain or picked flowers from a garden. From the richness of her dress, it was clear she was a servant of some standing or a favourite in the house. Billy didn’t care to imagine why.
Once, the two vampires had stood behind a marble pillar of a lantern-lit garden and had seen the girl prick herself on a rose thorn. She’d frowned, and the jewels dangling from the scarf around her head had twinkled in the soft light. Billy trained his vision on her thumb, watching her squeeze the tip to force a bead of blood to the surface. The droplet gleamed like a ruby, then Selin, lowering her yashmak, had licked it clean, her sweet little tongue darting out.
Billy’s cock had pulsed harder, growing fast. He wanted to leap forward and take her, to sink his teeth into her throat, imagining how her neck would be as soft as kid leather. And at the same time he wanted to sink his cock into her cunt and fuck her until she begged for mercy. He wanted to force himself into her mouth, ramming until her eyes brimmed with tears. He wanted to corrupt her to wantonness so she’d be on her knees, veils in tatters, begging for his dick. In short, he wanted to take her beauty apart because nothing in the world was hotter than virtue and perfection debased.
‘You are still saying no?’ drawled Nadir, and somehow Billy was.
But Nadir was too clever for Billy. ‘You’re a vampire, Wilhelm, don’t fight it,’ he would say.
If Billy had been in control of his lusts, he could have fucked and bitten her. He longed to drink her orgasm and have her pure, private ecstasy coursing through his veins. But he didn’t trust himself to quit after a nibble because he also longed to feel the last pulse of her life gliding down his throat.
‘Death is life to us,’ Nadir would say. ‘She’s nothing, just a pretty girl. If you kill her, what of it? There’ll be more trinkets. You have immortality ahead of you.’
Billy began to listen and defer to Nadir as he did on all matters vampiric. They were, after all, a feeding partnership, and so it was that one dark cloudless night they decided to risk it. It would be a test of Billy’s restraint. ‘Feed wisely,’ advised Nadir. ‘She’ll forget everything, then we can have her again and again. Abduct her and bring her to my apartments. I’ll await you in the courtyard.’
Had Billy been more adept and less eager, he might have captured her by hypnotising her into submission. But he was impatient, horny and nervous, and when he saw her in her usual spot by the water’s edge, he stole up behind her and clamped a hand to her veiled mouth. She squealed and writhed, her breath hot through the fabric, her feet thrashing in the water like caught fish. Billy was as strong as three men, and she presented him with no problems, only pleasures.
He ought to have carried her straight back to Nadir’s yali but her beauty, the scent of her skin, and her struggles quite undid him. On the grassy slope, he’d tugged her yashmak free, pinned down her arms down and forced a kiss onto her lips, tasting her moans of protest and feeling her body surge and squirm. He cupped a hand between her legs, exploring her through layers of clothing with a crudeness that later shamed him. When he drew back, she was almost still, gazing up with stunned eyes and a sluttish open mouth that so clearly wanted more.
It was all down to her. He hadn’t even tried to put her under his vampire spell.
Billy knew enough of the language to ask the girl her name.
‘Selin,’ she said, making the word sound like a gift.
By the time he’d got her to Nadir’s courtyard, she’d sobered somewhat, and was a woman battling with the agonies of wanting it and not, outraged to have been kidnapped and yet thrilled to have been transported.
Urged on by Billy, she stumbled to stand before Nadir where he reclined on a divan spread with cushions, looking every inch the cynical old roué that he was. His black hair, freed from his turban, hung in a ponytail over one shoulders and his naked torso, spare and mahogany dark, was slashed with a silver scar, jagged like a flash of lightening.
Stone pillars edged the courtyard, and the walls gleamed with tiles of Iznik blue and turquoise, Koranic calligraphy forming a high elegant border. A plane tree dominated one corner and the air was heady with perfumes of night-scented flowers. A peacock wandered idly behind a row of pillars, its closed feathers trailing like an iridescent gown, and moths fluttered around copper lanterns. At the centre stood a marble fountain, burbling gently.
‘Show her to me,’ said Nadir. On the floor by Nadir’s divan stood an empty goblet and Billy guessed he would want to fill it with blood.
Selin, standing before the divan, gave a pettish wriggle of protest as Billy began undressing her. He didn’t touch her once, yet when her breasts were bared and she was in nothing but baggy shalwar and slippers, she was whimpering and breathless, her spine arching as she thrust herself forwards, greedy for a touch.
Nadir smiled and Billy, wanting to please his mentor, toyed with the girl’s nipples, humiliating her by rousing a lust she’d rather hide. He traced his fingers over her skin, skimming beneath her breasts, and traced swirls on her back. Selin closed her eyes, flushing with shame, and her conflict turned Billy on all the more.
‘She’s a natural,’ said Nadir. ‘She’d do well at the harem. Or is that where you’ve come from pretty maid? A concubine cast out onto the street for being over fond of her role?’
‘I’m no concubine,’ breathed Selin, seemingly oblivious to the lusty sway of her hips.
‘Show her your prick,’ said Nadir. ‘Let’s see how she fares.’
But Billy was ahead of him. He had one of Selin’s scarves in his hands and he tore it in two, leaving himself with a length of cloth perfect for binding limbs. He clasped her hands behind her back, and she made no complaint, only murmurs of delight, as he bound her. When Billy raised his brocade kaftan and freed his big cock, her mouth opened hungrily. She was falling under his influence.
Billy, fisting his erection, stepped back. ‘Come on, then,’ he breathed. ‘Reach for it.’
It made Nadir laugh, and that pleased Billy. Selin fell to her knees and shuffled forwards, mouth gaping like a baby bird’s, chasing his length.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please, efendim.’
Efendim. My master.
The word blew Billy’s mind. He didn’t deserve the epithet, not a bit of it, but it thrilled him she was horny enough to degrade herself by using it. And so he gave her what she wanted. She swallowed him, her head tipping back as he speared her throat, her neck arcing, muscles opening to encompass his cock.
‘Hot little wench,’ said Nadir. ‘Send her this way when you’re done.’
Selin was in Billy’s power, rapt and stripped of inhibitions, and she didn’t seem to care that another man watched. Centuries later, Billy could still summon up tactile memories of his cock sliding in the warm wet cave of her mouth, her lips slipping on him, her tongue dancing, and that undeserved word still echoing: efendim.
Cynics might call it a skilled blowjob, but Billy knew it was love. And he had a lot more love to give. He withdrew from her, and pulled her to her feet, clasping her around the waist and bending to suck on her small hard-tipped breasts. Her black hair streamed towards the floor and her pale torso arced deliriously, her groin thrusting at his muscled thigh.
‘Be careful with her,’ warned Nadir but Billy hardly heard.
He stripped off his upper garments and, from the scabbard belted at his waist, withdrew his kilij, a short sword with a nasty curved blade. Selin made little protest as he sliced at her shalwar, leaving her naked save for a jewel around her ankle and bangles around her wrist. Her nudity was creamy white and, as her religio
n dictated, the hair of her mons and armpits was shorn.
Metal clanked on stone as Billy let his knife fall. With easy strength, he carried the woman to the fountain where he draped her on the broad marble rim. She steadied herself, arms bound behind her back, and spread her legs wide, showing him the plump groove that glinted between her thighs. She really was a work of art, and the urge to defile her by reducing her to lewd, loose desire thrilled and repulsed. Thrilled, mainly. Billy was as hard as rock.
She tilted her hips to him, head rolling from side to side, splayed for him like some dissolute water nymph. Her black hair farmed out into the pool, undulating with the low bubbles, and sheets of water clung to the fountain’s marble tiers, shimmering in the lantern-lit courtyard.
Billy dropped to his knees and fastened his mouth onto her pretty pink cunt. She tasted divine, as salty as the oceans, and he suckled and licked, hearing her bleats of pleasure surge and babble with the murmurings of the fountain.
The urge to feed was strong, and when she came, pushing tremors of ecstasy against his mouth, Billy was at his limit. He hurried out of his shalwar, watching the girl spread her legs like a harlot. Bending over her, he positioned himself, and her lipped entrance was a kiss melting on the dome of his cock. She cried out as he drove in deep, and she kept on crying as he plunged over and over, losing himself in her soft supple wetness.
He wanted to time his bite, fearing he might get carried away if he went in too soon. He recalled Nadir’s words: Feed wisely and we can have her again and again. But the more she gasped, the more her beautiful little pussy seemed to liquefy around his cock, and the more impossible moderation began to seem. He wanted to sink his teeth into her neck and suck so hard the force would gash her skin. Nadir intervened, his motives far from altruistic, although in the end, it made no difference.
Nadir had Billy’s dagger. He stood by them, levelling the curved blade at the side of the woman’s neck. ‘Do you want it?’ Nadir asked Selin.
Lust Bites Page 4