by Seth Eden
Mark slid Crystal’s panties down and she immediately spread her legs for him. He swelled in his britches, wanting to fill her, but he would give her pleasure first. Gestures like this meant something, he found. He ducked his head and slowly, but without prelude, he plunged his tongue inside her, tasting her as he gently held her thighs. She gasped and writhed, pressing herself into his mouth. Her pleasure spurred him on, making him want her yet more, and he wrapped his arms around her thighs, lifting her up off the bed as he lapped her juices up, finding himself yet more desperate to be sated.
“It’s so good,” she said breathlessly. “Oh… oh shit, you’re good…”
He smiled into her, feeling more pleasure and contentment than he had since his days back with his mate. But he wasn’t thinking about his long dead mate now. He was only thinking about this woman he was making arch and squirm and cry out and just when he felt her on the verge of bliss, he stopped and stripped naked. She watched him with blown out eyes, her nighty pushed up over her breasts and her panties down around her ankles. She bit her lip and watched him tear his clothes off. She palmed her own breasts and hummed as she waited and the sight made his cock ache as it jutted out in front of him.
Sliding inside of Crystal was like coming home. It made no sense; they’d only just met. And yet, there was no other way to explain that feeling of completeness. Mark had never told anyone about the way he felt like such an outsider. He had a brother he had not seen in too long. Kal had been the same way. They only had each other when they were young. There were others like them, sure. But still, somehow he always felt as if he was on the outside of his race looking in. Since his mate had died, especially, he felt a volcanic sense of loneliness, a deep dark well of emptiness that threatened to take him over. Now he felt as if something new was filling that hole.
But now he looked into Crystal’s eyes as he filled her up. Her arms came around him and her parted, pink little mouth threatened to overwhelm him in new ways he had never thought possible. When he kissed her, he felt them melding into each other, bliss like a thunderbolt of pleasure overtaking him as he thrust into her slowly. She tightened around him, wrapping her legs around him. Finally, he pulsed inside her, and when he bit her neck again and drank from her, she cried out her orgasm, clenching around him. They held each other through their pleasure and then gradually they went still, coming down, breathing together there on the little bed.
“Was that to your satisfaction?” He whispered, and the question struck even him as funny. He lay beside her and she sighed, curling up to him, her hand resting on his chest, twirling a strand of black chest hair around her little finger.
“Fuck yes,” she said, and smiled a little as she looked up at him. “I mean… I still miss my apartment and my roommates and all my shit but… Jesus, that was almost worth the entire shebang.”
He laughed into her neck and held her. She was small but so soft and pleasurable to embrace, and he liked the way she clung to him. He felt possessiveness like some wave rolling through him. Drake would come for her. He had a bad feeling about it. If he had been interrupted in his “conquest,” he would inevitably want to finish it. If he had tasted her even a little, he would want to finish what he had started.
“So,” she said softly, tracing little circles along his chest with the soft pads of her fingers. It must have been a human, he thought. No Vampyren woman would make a gesture so meaningless yet intimate. “So you can sniff me out now? If I’m in danger?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re marked now. You’re…. I don’t want to say you’re mine. Not exactly.”
“I don’t mind,” she murmured. She leaned over and pressed little kisses to his skin. “We’ll see how it goes.” Then she raised her head and her ponytail fell over the side of her face, giving her an endearingly adorable expression. “I really don’t mind if you keep making me feel like that.”
His cheeks heated when she spoke like that but he smiled. He liked her. How strange and interesting.
“If anyone comes for you,” he said carefully, “if anyone even tries anything, I want to know. But I’ll make it known you belong to me.”
“That doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world,” she said, scrunching up her nose in amusement.
“I had a mate, you know,” Mark said quietly. “On our world.”
Crystal seemed fascinated by that and she sat up, bracing on her elbow. He had trouble looking at her eyes and not down at the swell of her breasts over the sheet. “Really? I’ve always heard female Vampyren are impossible? They kill their mates? Eat their young?”
He only shrugged. “I think they have their reasons, to be honest with you. And some of that they can’t help. Anyway, Calinda wasn’t like that. She was tougher than me. Tried to kill me when she met me but never after that.”
“That was nice of her,” Crystal cracked.
That made Mark laugh and she lit up, looking down at him with bright eyes. “You have a nice laugh.”
He reached up and twirled the end of her ponytail around his finger. “I appreciate that.”
She gave him a long look then. “What happened to your mate?”
“We invaded. She died battling your human armies in the first sweep. I believe it was in… Are-can-saw.”
“Arkansas,” Crystal murmured. “Hmmm.”
“What was your life like before the invasion?” Mark said.
“I was in school,” Crystal said. “But I didn’t know what I wanted to be or what I was good at… I didn’t find out any of that until after the invasion. I’ll tell you one thing, it’s not being forced into breeding. I’m good at making deals and knowing a guy and getting shit for people. That’s my thing. I’m good at leading too. I’m good at being a friend, I…”
She was teary now. It made his heart clench in his chest to see her upset. He stroked her cheek, wiping her tears away, and he expected her to pull away but instead, she cuddled up to him, holding him tight. “Will you find them? Jet and Nina? My roommates? Will you tell them I’m okay? They’ll be so scared without me.”
“I will,” he whispered in her ear. “I will, Crystal. I promise.”
5
Crystal
“Why don’t we just get everybody protectors?” Crystal said. She was eating with Keira. The two of them were sitting cross-legged on top of the big, fancy mahogany conference table in what used to be a conference room.
Crystal had managed to make friends with Keira over the past two days. She was grateful to her and Loren, even if she hated that there was any need to be grateful. Mark had left, the duties of his position of unit commander calling. But he’d promised to find her roommates (in secret) and return as soon as he could.
She found herself at odds and ends without him. She had not felt so beholden to anyone and she did not appreciate feeling dependence at all.
“Some of the women claim they don’t want them,” Keira said. “Say it’s patronizing or something.”
“Their funeral, I guess,” Crystal muttered. “What about Sasha?”
“We got her somebody.”
Crystal nodded at that. Now that she was beginning to settle into the creche life, she found herself trying to think of ways it could be improved. She had a notebook where she jotted down every trading contact she could remember. Two floors below where the women stayed, the children of the creche were kept. It functioned as an orphanage. Crystal thought the way the children of the Vampyren were raised was weird at best, abusive at worse, and definitely unnatural. The purpose was ostensibly to breed for greater numbers. It was intended to be a volume business. That meant the mothers didn’t raise the children themselves (which fairly often they didn’t want to anyway).
The children’s areas of creches were also notoriously secretive. It was purported to be a matter of safety for their sake. But it struck Crystal as suspicious. The Vampyren had been, in war, notoriously ruthless and brutal. She somehow doubted that life was peachy for their half-human offspring.
“Do you think there’s a chance I could get out of here?” Crystal said quietly.
Sometimes she daydreamed about going back to her apartment with Mark and introducing him to her roommates. They would like him, she decided. They would like him if she assured them he was good. At the same time, she couldn’t imagine getting out if the other girls couldn’t get out too.
Sometimes she cursed her own sense of ethics.
“I don’t know,” Keira admitted, frowning at her sandwich. “The Council controls the creches and the breeding farms. They make a big stink about letting anyone out. We might be able to plot an escape for you but—"
“It’s not fair,” Crystal murmured. “If the others can’t go too.”
“Well…” Keira shook her head. “That’s a non-starter. The Council isn’t negotiating on the existence of the creches or breeding pits any time soon. They view it as a necessity. Population growth and all that.”
“Bunch of bullshit,” Crystal said, with her mouth half-full.
“Don’t have to tell me,” Keira said.
“Keira, do you think Drake still wants to find me?” Crystal could hardly speak his name but she pretended to be nonchalant. “Probably not, right? I mean… I’m just some girl. It’s not like I’m important.”
Yet there were nights when she dreamed he was after her again. He was too strong and too big. He could do whatever he wanted with her. One night she dreamed of being with Mark. He had been so gentle and sweet, more gentle even than most of the human men Crystal had been with in her life. He was warm and his body molded to hers perfectly. Then, when she looked at him, his pretty face became Drake’s: grim, angry, sharp. Suddenly he was larger and broader and stronger and he was shoving her face against the wall and holding it there. He was telling her she was worth nothing but what he could take from her whenever he liked. She could do nothing about it but scream, and it was those screams he wanted to hear. It was her fear that he fed off. More precious than her blood.
“I hope not,” Keira said, but she didn’t sound certain. Nobody was and a couple of the more jaded girls like Sasha seemed annoyed that Crystal had been affected by the attack at all.
He didn’t even rape you, Sasha had said. But Sasha didn’t fool Crystal so much anymore. Now she just seemed sad. She was someone who wanted to throw her rage at anyone who was near enough to take it. Crystal could understand that.
On the other hand, sometimes she wanted to pull on Sasha’s hair until she screamed because Sasha was, on occasion, a raging bitch. The thought of it all made her edgy, and she craved a cigarette.
“Have you heard about the human police force that started up?” Crystal said. She still had another half of a sandwich to eat and she had to practically force it down her throat. The chicken was too pink, the lettuce too wilted, the cheese too rubbery. It was disgusting. On the other hand, it was food. She had been told she should not be too slim in the creche. They weren’t supposed to be couture models around here, they were supposed to look fertile (even if she did have a protector). That meant wide hips and a sense of health and vitality.
Then give us better food. Crystal had this thought about tent times a day. But she fought through the urge to gag on the stuff and kept eating.
“I’ve heard,” Keira said. “They haven’t come up against the Vamps yet. Which is interesting. Seems like they’re mainly enforcing some kind of law within the population.”
“I don’t know what good that’s supposed to do,” Crystal said derisively. “I mean we have no courts to enforce the laws so the cops are really just vigilantes anyway.”
“It might be useful later,” Keira said thoughtfully. “I mean inevitably humans and Vampyren are going to have to learn to live together. They can’t breed with Vampyren women, they have to breed with us so they’re dependent on us.”
“I think they could actually breed with Vampyren women,” Crystal said. “My theory is, they’ve fucked over their women so hard they don’t quite know how anymore.”
“Heh. Now they’re fucking us over,” Crystal said wryly. “Sooner or later the assholes have got to learn.”
“Yeah, well our men haven’t since the beginning of life on fucking earth,” Crystal muttered. “Do you really think we’ll reach some kind of peaceful coexistence status quo? Doesn’t seem likely.”
“I mean...we can try to fight back,” Keira said, “but we really have no shot. Plus, the Lucian are coming. We’re just too dependent on each other. If the Vampyren leave? The Lucian will still come. They’ll kick our asses. We need the Vampyren for our survival now.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Crystal said.
“Exactly.”
“We need supplies,” Crystal said, crossing her arms and attempting to look fierce.
She was talking to Gail, the matron, who did not look very impressed. It had been easier to talk to other traders to make deals than it was to talk to anyone from the creche. Other traders spoke to her as if she were an equal because they knew their business enough to realize that Crystal knew everyone and could get just about anything possible, and sometimes even things that weren’t possible. But matrons didn’t know anything about the trading network and matrons outranked breeders in the creche. So even now Gail, who was one of the friendlier matrons, just eyed Crystal warily, as if she might be up to no good.
But Crystal wasn’t. She was, in fact, up to plenty of good if she could manage it. Although she heartily believed in the “by any means necessary approach” to good works.
“We have plenty of supplies,” Gail said, which was just typical. Gail might have been friendly, but she rarely had the patience to hear about any complaints or problems but that was probably because the girls so often complained about things like a lack of good nail polish colors or that there was nothing good to read in the place. The complaints were thought of as silly and frivolous. Crystal did not agree. She still remembered the aching void of emptiness right after the invasion when she’d been struggling day by day just to survive, how important small things were. Good nail polish colors might not mean anything to Gail, but to some of the girls, it was all they had.
“Really?” Crystal said, raising an eyebrow. “So if Mel comes and says she has a yeast infection just like Tricia does, what’re you telling her?”
“She can wait for the next doctor visit—"
“Oh my God,” Crystal said, clapping her hands to her face. “That’s only once a month! And you don’t need a doctor for that! They just need some cream around! Also fucking chapstick, Cortizone cream, antibiotic ointment, over-the-counter painkillers for the love of God and good Christ the menstrual product situation in here—"
“We’re doing the best we can!” Gail all but exploded.
“I know you are,” Crystal said firmly. “But I can do much better than your best. If you’d let me. I can get my hands on all this stuff.”
“That’s not your job,” Gail muttered.
“What is my job?” Crystal said, having a sudden and intense urge to burst out laughing. “I belong to Mark. I like belonging to Mark. But that’s it. The rest of the time, I’m just stuck here. I’m a prisoner. At least let me help make this place less miserable. You need a whole bunch of shit that I could get if you’d just let me.”
Gail pursed her lips and Crystal shut her mouth. She bounced on the ball of her feet and chewed on her thumbnail, waiting for some response from Gail. She thought she might lose her mind if she didn’t have something worthwhile to occupy it with soon.
“Make a list,” Gail finally said, through clenched teeth. They were sitting back on the leather couch in the lobby. It was an awful couch. The second couch was microfiber and much more comfortable. This one just made you sweaty and sticky with the heat, the backs of Crystal bare thighs uncomfortably stuck to the cushions. “I’ll think about it. I would have to clear it with the council.”
“You know,” Crystal said knowingly, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”
“You are a terrible influence,” Gail said sternly.
“I am trying to help the only way I know how!”
“I know. It’s very annoying.”
Mark had been gone for five whole days before he came back again. That gave Crystal time to not only make a list of what the breeding farm needed to properly care for its women but also to write out in her little notebook all the questions she had about the creche on the floors below and what they might need. There was nothing else to do with her time anyway. She wrote down contacts she was thinking about finding to provide certain things, but that wasn’t particularly time consuming either. So she ended up becoming to the women of the breeding farm, just what she had been before. She negotiated valuable items out of Gail and the other matrons. Those cigarettes and airplane bottles of booze had been hidden from them all this time but they were valuable currency that the matrons hadn’t been using.
One afternoon she made herself useful by reorganizing the supply room and taking inventory. It seemed logical that if she were to request new supplies, she should know what they already had on hand. She had been unaccountably pleased to find a real clipboard and a half-used legal pad.
She played music on the little boombox they’d found with a stack of accompanying CDs. It was all ancient 90s stuff. Oasis, The Wallflowers, The Goo-Goo Dolls.
Crystal swung her hips and counted every single maxi pad, bottle of nail polish remover, box of personal wipes, cotton ball, Kleenex, cigarettes, toothbrush, bottle of hairspray and everything else. It wasn’t a big room, but it was stacked floor to ceiling with stuff, most of which Crystal thought they really didn’t need but which would fetch a decent trade on the network.