by Aja James
He rode the elevator with her and walked her all the way to her door. Her heart was breaking some world record in sprinting as she fumbled for her electronic key.
He was standing a few feet to the side, not crowding her. It wasn’t the body language of someone who wanted to prolong their visit, but Ava was an eternal optimist.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked when she finally got the door open.
“No.”
Well. So much for glass-half-full.
“I have ramen noodles and lots of snacks if you skipped dinner,” she invited, either too naïve or too desperate to give up.
“I’m not hungry.”
For food.
Ava sighed. “Is this where you order me into my room and say goodbye?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she spoke faster.
“I didn’t even get to know you a little better. Every time we meet I hog all the air time and you never tell me anything about yourself. You’re a really good listener.”
“Dr. Monroe—”
“Seriously?”
He huffed what sounded like a half chuckle, half groan.
“Ava.”
“Yes?”
She leaned closer to him and realized that her feet had already moved her body in his direction until they were only a few inches apart.
“Your door is closing.”
“Oh!” She stuck her foot in the gap and pulled out the manual latch so it couldn’t lock by itself.
When she turned around, he was immediately before her, his arms bracketing her body, his hands flat against the wall on either side of her head.
“What do you want from me?” he rasped huskily, his mouth a hair’s breadth from hers.
She thought of saying something flippant or flirty, but couldn’t come up with anything but the truth:
“Everything,” she whispered.
A sharp indrawn breath, and then—
Heaven.
As his mouth covered hers, hot and delicious.
She bloomed as he plundered, her lips moist and plump, her sighs fragrant and wet. Her hands held onto his waist at first, then traveled up his stomach and chest and shoulders to wind around the back of his neck, pulling him lower, closer.
He angled his head to accommodate her, plunging his tongue voluptuously inside her mouth, curling it to skim the sensitive roof, retreating to lap at her pillowy lips, then enter again in a slow, erotic undulation.
Lord! Ava thought, though her thoughts were blinking in and out like badly connected Christmas lights, if this was how he kissed, she might not survive the rest of it!
If she could ever convince him to take it further, that was.
Already, she was orgasming on a low-vibration setting just having his tongue inside her mouth, his hard-on against her stomach. Her core was weeping in both anticipation and loss for the missing piece to her puzzle:
His sex long and hard and full within her.
He was so impenetrable and male, all angles and planes, so different from her generous womanly curves. She wished he would hold her too, touch her with his hands. He’d only ever touched her face when they kissed before. Even as he demanded and coaxed and raided the sweet recesses of her mouth, her lips and tongue, there was always a reverence with which he kissed her.
She was plenty worshipful of him too, but she also wanted to drag him down to earth and have her wicked way with him.
When they both came up for breath after what might have been one minute or ten, she whispered with certain desperation (and she didn’t care)—
“Stay with me.”
He shuddered and averted his face from hers, his hands still braced on the wall on either side of her head. She had the distinct impression that he was cursing silently.
Abruptly, he stepped away.
Again.
“This can’t happen again,” he stated resolutely, his voice frayed with an unnamed emotion.
“Why?”
He closed his eyes briefly and clenched his jaw, exhaling through his nose.
Yes, she thought, she was that exasperating, that persistent.
“Promise me you won’t stay out after dark.” He completely ignored her question.
Too damn bad.
“You’re a tease,” she flung at him, ridiculously angry all of a sudden. She didn’t realize sexual and emotional frustration could make her behave so… antagonistically.
“What did you say?”
The hissed question should have warned her off, but she was too far gone.
“I don’t play games,” she said hotly. “I told you how I feel about you and you seem to reciprocate. You kiss me like…” she stuttered in memory and touched her swollen lips.
“…Like that. And then you push me away. Maybe you have throngs of admirers everywhere you go and do this sort of thing without a second thought. But I do have second and third and a thousand thoughts. About you. While you probably won’t even remember my name in—”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever kissed.”
That line worked wonders to cut short her tirade.
She open her mouth to say “Ha!” in disbelief, but she couldn’t quite get it out. Something in his eyes told her that, as incredible as it seemed, he did not lie.
“I will not forget you.”
He speared her with a long, intense, devouring look.
“Stay safe, Ava Monroe.”
And then he was gone.
Chapter Seven
The kite’s leg was healing nicely. It might even be able to move freely in just a few more days.
Not that there was much room for it to move around in.
The prisoner absently stroked the bird’s soft cheek as it slept against the crook of his neck, making a makeshift nest of his long hair.
For the past few days, he had received two meals, slotted through a small opening at the bottom of the iron door on a flimsy tray that would be picked up when one of the guards came in to clean his refuse every so often. He saved both meals for his little friend, having almost none of it himself.
If he could die of starvation and thirst, it would have happened a long, long time ago.
Footsteps echoed up the stone steps of the tower, coming closer. But it was too soon for another meal.
The prisoner scented the air. She was coming. And she had two, no, three males with her.
He took the bird from his chest and pushed it behind his back as he sat lopsidedly against the wall, hiding it, piling his long hair behind him and around it as a shield, and whispered for it to be quiet. If they were to discover the kite, he might be able to distract them long enough for it to make a dash through the cell opening. But the chances of survival were slim to none.
She had learned quickly not to let escape anything he came in contact with, least of all a living creature.
Shortly, the series of locks and levers unwound themselves in mechanical clicks and clangs around the cell door. The heavy iron slowly eased open, letting in a wave of fresh air, fresher, at least, than the stench of mammalian waste in the prisoner’s cell.
He heard her step into his prison and stopping short, her males standing at ready behind her.
She was examining his nakedness, he knew. She always liked to look at him for a time before getting to business.
He let her look her fill. Not that he had any choice. And not that there was much to see.
He was a living, breathing skeleton covered in grime. She usually had the guards hose him off before she came for a visit, which had become fewer and farther in between. The better to see and admire the result of thousands of years of torture perhaps.
He was her work of art. Her masterpiece.
That she had not planned this visit in advance was an anomaly interesting to note.
“Look at you, you poor thing,” she cooed in that snake-like hiss.
He thought for a moment she was talking about the bird. But no, she was likely shaking her head in false pity at him.
>
He said nothing; she did not expect it.
“You know how to end this endless agony, my love,” she coaxed, stepping closer despite his stench.
“Come to me and you shall have the world.”
He wondered what she would do if he suddenly leapt up and threw himself at her feet, begging for her to end the humiliation and pain and declaring his eternal devotion and loyalty to her.
She wouldn’t believe him, that was certain, not after all this time. And he’d probably vomit in his mouth if he attempted the act. He’d never been good at lying and that one would be whale-sized.
“No?” she asked, all sweet solicitousness, “Need more time to think it through?”
She must love talking to herself.
“Well, next time perhaps,” she said after a few more moments.
“But I do need something from you.”
Ah. So we finally got to the point of the visit.
The prisoner did not move so much as a hair as two of the males came forward. If they intended to drag him somewhere for a new form of torture, they’d do it without protest or help from him. Of course, he was so weak and frail and light now that a mere child could subdue him.
But they did not pick him up by the hair and drag him out of the cell. One of the males knelt beside him and pushed his legs wider apart. The other put two manacle-like fists around his bony upper arms to hold him still.
Hmm. Was rape on the menu today? She rarely resorted to that form of torture, though every once in a while she got frustrated enough with him to issue the order or see to it herself.
He didn’t give a shit. Been there. Done that.
The prisoner neither moved nor uttered a sound as the male working on his lower body used something sharp to scrape away the pubic hair until the skin of his groin was raw and red. Then something burning was poured on the area, and roughly dabbed dry.
The fists around his arms tightened. The male by his legs put two meaty hands on his thighs to brace them apart. The third one must be guarding the rear.
She came forward and crouched between his spread-eagle legs.
“You’ll feel a little pinch,” she murmured regretfully. “Every pain you feel, know that I feel it too.”
Blah, blah, blah.
“But this will hurt you more than it hurts me,” she hissed, and he could hear the sinister delight in her voice.
Without further delay, she brushed aside his penis and took his scrotum in her hands. Just as the pressure of her squeeze reached an unbearable pitch, a cold metal device clamped around his balls and proceeded to tighten in increments until the pouches were flattened completely.
All the while the prisoner remained silent and still, though his breathing quickened as the mind-numbing pain escalated.
Was it over? Did she finish what she came for?
Just as he dared to have the thought, something multi-pronged and sharp inserted into his scrotum from the metal clamp.
He could not stop the gasp that escaped his cracked dry lips at the unimaginable pain that engulfed him.
A tear of blood gathered in the outer corner of his eye and slid quietly down his cheek.
*** *** *** ***
It was almost noon when Ryu returned to his safe house and the secret chamber toward the back.
His night had been long and had extended even longer into half the day. He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to rest for the nightmares that besieged him when he was alone with his memories.
But he could not avoid them indefinitely. And after being with Ava despite his determination not to see her, he needed another kick in the pants.
He’d started digging into the string of violent murders that had the City frozen in terror.
His first stop had been Shinjuku, where the first mutilated body was found a few weeks ago, shortly after the Chosen and their Pure allies had routed Simone Lafayette. Just as fight club activity decreased in New York and its surrounding territories, new networks began to spring up elsewhere around the world.
They suspected the Russian mob boss, Sergei Antonov, was behind it. At least, they believed him to be on the front lines of the network expansion if not ultimately the mastermind.
Tokyo seemed like the next epicenter of bloodletting.
Having surveyed the crime scene to get an idea of scale, and the methodology the killer might have used, combined with the evidence he hacked from police records, including those from their special investigations unit, Ryu deduced that the bloodbath occurred in the same dead-end alley where the body was found.
As to cause of death and murder weapon, the official documents wrote “inconclusive.”
But Ryu knew that it was exsanguination, not dismemberment in the vampire feeding frenzy that happened later. The male had bled out from multiple puncture wounds and torn flesh. There were other wounds, around the knuckles, elbows, knees and feet, both aggressive and defensive wounds, that were estimated to have been sustained an hour at most beforehand, consistent with a no-holds-barred fight.
As to the murder weapon… good luck to the police on that one. Whoever dared to venture in the right direction might get laughed out of the Force.
Because the answer was: fangs.
More than one pair. And you won’t be able to put them in a zip-lock baggie as evidence exhibit number two unless you pull them out of the vampires’ skulls while they were fully extended.
Akihabara was the same, as well as the most recent body count, a twofer in Harajuku. The time between fights (that they knew of) had escalated from weeks to days. And the most recent one in Harajuku had attracted a crowd—the killing, that was, not the fight.
The authorities had yet to figure out that the deaths were related to illegal fight clubs around the city. The consensus was that victims had been brutalized as part of gang violence or symbolic retribution before the kills.
Ryu had gotten there just as the police had, with network reporters hot on their heels. He had smoothly talked his way around the investigators, pulling out authentic-looking fake IDs and sharing “insider” knowledge to gain their trust.
Apparently the vampire rogues who had feasted on the two human fighters did not bother to conceal themselves from passersby, so caught up in their bloodlust were they. A late-night sake-binging group of cosplay performers on their way home had seen the noisy chow down from a distance and walked toward the scene for a better look, probably thinking a large group didn’t have anything to fear.
Careless humans.
They were, of course, detained for questioning as eye witnesses, but they had only caught glimpses of what was happening as far as Ryu could tell.
Perhaps they were too drunk, or perhaps their disbelief of what they saw prevented the memories from taking hold.
Ryu had managed to isolate one of the young girls from the group to question her privately, away from the real officials. His gut told him she knew more than she was telling the police. Which was nothing. She was the most quiet and withdrawn of the colorful and drunken group, some of them in Anime character outfits, and a couple dressed as—ironically—vampires.
This girl, around college age, was dressed as Rurouni Kenshin. She even had a decent replica of a samurai sword at her hip.
“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked when they were alone beside his Kawasaki, several yards away from the taped off crime scene.
“Why would I do that?” he quipped casually, handing her a bottle of water.
She shrugged. “I already told them everything.”
“I doubt that,” he said, gazing at her steadily.
She considered him. “You’re not a cop, are you?”
“What gives me away?”
She eyed him up and down, taking her time, sipping her water.
“You’re too put-together and dangerous to be one of those pencil-pushers, you’re wearing shades at night that normal people can’t possibly see through, and you have this sweet ride.”
She stroked the seat
of his Kawasaki Ninja appreciatively.
“Who do you think I am?”
“One of them,” was her answer, as she stared at him so intently he got the feeling she was trying to look into his soul, even through the near-opaque aviators he wore.
“One of the-the- vampires.”
Her eyes were wide and round when she finally got the word out through her stuttering, as if saying it out loud was like opening Pandora’s Box. If you didn’t say it, maybe it wouldn’t be true.
Ah. So she had indeed gotten an eye-full.
“You know about vampires?” he asked in the same casual tone, as if he were the adult humoring a fanciful child.
She was silent for a while, still staring intently at him.
“I know what I saw.”
“Please share.”
“I saw their teeth,” she said a bit belligerently, as if pissed that she was having to prove herself. “I saw them rip into those two guys.”
“You have exceptional vision?” Ryu asked innocently, “They were pretty far away I hear.”
“I was the closest.”
“You don’t think they were playing dress up like you and your friends?” Ryu eyed her outfit. “You even have two vampires in your crowd.”
“They looked like you,” the girl blurted, this time with a hint of fear. “Not like… you. But the way they moved, the eyes… they had this animalism about them. Like you.”
Ryu considered her for several long seconds, during which time her breathing gathered speed, and he could sense her adrenaline kicking into high gear. She was nearing her fight-or-flight inflection point. Any moment now she was either going to scream and come at him like a banshee or turn tail and run away as fast as she could.
“After witnessing what you did, why did you come with me if you think I’m one of them?”
Abruptly, she seemed to have come to a decision. She neither fought nor fled. She took a calming breath and said, “You’re different. You’re more…”
Ryu waited for her to come up with the right word. She seemed to be searching hard. More what? More calculating? More controlled? More lethal?
“More human.”
Back to the present in his secure chamber, Ryu’s mind caught and held onto the girl’s description of him.