by Dani April
At this height, a wind came out of the night and ruffled the flimsy gown and blew her hair back over her shoulders. With Peter standing right next to her, she still did not feel cold. The rapid ascent in the air had made her feel numb, and the beauty laid out in front of her made her feel awe.
She stepped to the edge and looked straight down. This made her dizzy because of the great height. Below them was Peter’s castle. It looked almost stately in the white light of the moon and, seen from this height, looked merely like a child’s toy.
She realized Peter had taken them to the butte the castle was built beneath. It would have taken a rock climber all day to scale it, and for all Rebecca knew, it might have been unscalable. They had made the ascent in less than ten seconds. She was certain she was seeing the desert in a way no other human had ever seen it before.
“I come up here almost every night to think and be alone.” He came to her side and put his arm around her to ward off the chill.
“Thank you for bringing me here.” She heard her voice as a whisper in the night next to his. “This is magnificent. I feel as if we’re standing on the moon looking down at the earth.”
“This is the way a vampire sees the world. I would like to bring you here every night with me for the next one thousand years.”
“Peter,” she began as she settled back into him, and he wrapped his arms around her chest to keep her warm. “A human being can’t relate to that time frame. Sorry, but we just can’t. If you’d said the next fifty years, you would have had me hooked.”
“You won’t be human for much longer, my darling.”
She sighed, not wanting to argue with him here in the face of all this beauty. Instead, she decided to change the focus of their talk.
“Who was your wife, Peter?”
Two or three minutes passed. There was nothing but silence and the howl of the small gust of wind. She didn’t think he was going to respond to her. But his arms enfolded her body with even more strength as she waited for him.
“Vampires don’t get married,” he finally whispered to her.
“Who is the woman buried in the crypt behind the castle?”
“She was with me for a long time.” His voice was flat and simple and without emotion. “We were lovers over the centuries, but we felt no love.”
“Then she was a vampire, too?” This was a new wrinkle. Had she been wrong about Peter? Had Ian and the other guys misjudged him? Had he made other women into vampires against their will?
“She most certainly was a vampire.” Now she heard a twinge of emotion break his voice. “She was a beautiful vampire and very powerful. As a vampire, she could have had anything in the world she wanted, but all she seemed to want was me. However, I was not like her in any way. We both looked at the world through the eyes of vampires but reached totally different conclusions about what our role was.”
“Did she want to become a vampire?” She turned around in his arms and looked up at him, knowing the answer to this question was important to her future.
“I have no idea,” was his surprising reply.
“But you made her into one?”
“No, of course I didn’t.” Peter shook his head with a sad smile on his face. “She was my maker, Rebecca. She was the one who took away my life as a man and turned me into a creature of the night.”
“Oh my God!”
“I lived with her for almost a thousand years. Strangely enough, we never became close in that time. We traveled the world together, enjoyed our wealth and power and each other’s bodies. We were never apart, but there was no emotional common ground for us to communicate on.”
Something clicked in Rebecca’s mind. “Ian spoke of a string of killings that had followed you wherever you went for centuries…Was she the one?” Rebecca let Peter finish for her.
“She preyed on humans and cared nothing for the sanctity of their lives. For that reason, I hated her, though there were a million times I tried forcing myself to love her. I argued with her and fought her over the issue, but all to no avail. Since she was my maker, she held certain powers over me. I had to yield to her. I was her creature in almost all the time we spent together. But I swear to you, Rebecca, I never once took a human life for her. Even with the power she held over me, she couldn’t make me do that. I withheld that part of my soul from her.”
“When Ian first met you, he thought you were responsible for the killings. He had come to kill you.”
“Yes.” Another sad smile creased his handsome face and made him look tired. “He was quite an effective vampire hunter. He almost succeeded, too. But in the end, I was able to show him the truth of the matter. He realized I was not the taker of all of those lives.”
“How did she die?”
“She had been alive for two thousand years. The Roman Emperor ruled the world when she was born. I am not sure in what year she was born. The date I had placed on her grave was the date she made me. It seemed the only fitting date for her.” He cleared his throat and continued. “Vampires don’t age like humans, but they gain more power as they get older. Her power had reached its limits.” He paused and released her from his grasp and looked away into the expanse of desert beyond, turning his back to her. “Rebecca, she became human again…”
“What?”
“The disease of vampirism had run its course in her body and allowed her to become human once more. All of the human lives she had taken over the centuries couldn’t stave it off. Back in my office, you were looking at a picture of her and me taken in the south of France about thirty years ago just before she died.”
“The old woman in that picture was her?”
“About fifty years after she had turned human again…Yes, that was her. She started to age from the bright beauty of her youth. She became old and weak because she was not a vampire any longer. Then since she was a human being, she died. She died peacefully in her sleep one night as a very old woman. Not the same type of death she had afforded her victims over the centuries.” Peter caressed her face in the moon light as he explained his story to her. “I stayed with her until the end. She was not a vampire anymore, so she no longer held any power over me. I could have left her. I thought of doing so many times. But fifty years out of a thousand is not a long time. I knew that in her own twisted way she had truly loved me. I think she found happiness as a human that she never found as a vampire. Her last request of me was to be allowed to die in my arms, and I let her do so.”
For a moment he seemed lost in thought as he was no doubt thinking over his long past life. “I’ve known other vampires that died before of this evil virus we all carry inside of us. But none of them became human like Athena did, not a single one of them. They all died abruptly with the next sunrise. Vampires are not immortal. They die eventually. Athena was the only vampire who got to live as a human again before she died. It was most extraordinary.”
“Then after she died, you came here to live?”
“Yes.” He took a deep breath of night air and seemed to try and bring himself away from all of the memories. “I’ve tried to do a small amount of good for human beings over the last years in an attempt to make up for all of the harm she did while she was alive.” He looked away from her and down at the rock strewn ground. “I’m afraid I have not succeeded very well.”
She turned his face back down to hers and reached up to brush his lips with a kiss. “Thank you for sharing this with me, Peter. I feel like I am starting to know you for the first time now.”
“I want you to know me.” His passion rose in him again as he took her back into his arms. “I want the two of us to spend millennia exploring each other in mind, soul, and body.” His hands were exploring down the open back of her gown with a desperate need.
“I don’t want to think about that now, Peter. I just want to think about tonight.” Her lips were back on his body roaming over him. “Take me back to your room and make love to me,” she whispered in his ear.
* * * *
“You want Ian to make love to me tonight?” Rebecca asked Peter on their way back across the courtyard toward his underground layer.
“Yes. The aphrodisiac of the vampire blood requires you to have sexual release. I know you crave it now.”
“I do,” she admitted. “But I liked what we did together last night.”
“The longer the vampire blood flows in you, the stronger your sex drive will become. You’ll need more than oral sex tonight to sate your urge. Trust me. I know.”
“Why can’t we, Peter?” She caught him by the arm and stopped him. “You’re right. I do crave sex now more than anything else after the first time you bit me. Hell even after the first time you kissed me, all I could think about was getting fucked. But why can’t the two of us have intercourse? Why can’t you satisfy the hunger inside of me?”
“Because you are not yet a vampire.” He cast a gentle look down into her eyes and caressed her face with the back of his hand. “If I penetrated you and ejaculated inside of you while you were still a human, you would be driven mad with desire. Don’t you realize what even a drop of my saliva can do?”
“I swallowed a mouthful of your cum last night,” she reminded him.
“And I should never have let that happen. I let my desire for you overcome my better judgment. Look how flushed you are tonight. Because I allowed myself a moment of weakness last night, you are experiencing this insane craving for sex again tonight.”
“But you’ve fucked other human women before me!”
“Yes, but I didn’t care anything about them.” She could see he was struggling with his emotions as much as she was. Well, after all, she had to remind herself, they both had vampire blood flowing through them now. “Those other women were just someone for me to have a good time in bed with for a few hours. I had intercourse with them. I came inside them. They went through ecstasy that drove them to the brink of madness. Then I hypnotized them with my stare and caused them to forget. A day after they had left me, they didn’t even remember my name. But I am in love with you, Rebecca. I will not use you that way.” He backed away from her and ran a hand through his hair. “As it is, I have already used your body unkindly. It is my fault that you are going through this terrible lust now.”
She came back into his arms and laid her head on his chest. Her heart was beating so fast. He was right. She was going through the throes of lust like she had never experienced before. She was sweating once more. Her pussy was on fire. All she wanted was for him to take the silly nightgown off her body and throw her to the ground and fuck the hell out of her for the entire night.
“We will make love, Rebecca,” he assured her and stroked her hair. “But only after you have become a vampire and can take the sensation without losing your mind.”
She was going to say something. She was going to say that could never be. Because no matter how much she wanted him at that moment—and it was more than she had ever wanted anything—she refused to give into him and let him turn her into what he was and take her life away. She would fight against that no matter how much she wanted to have sex with him.
“If you do not want Ian…” he told her as he continued to stroke her hair, his gentle touch sending electricity shooting through her body. “Perhaps Tex and Ramos… I will ask them to join us. As you have already learned, they are more than adequate lovers.”
“No, it isn’t that.” The disappointment could not be kept from her voice. “Ian seems like a good man, and God knows he’s certainly very attractive. Only I…” she stuttered.
“Then maybe I could give you a strong sleeping pill. You would sleep for the next fourteen hours and feel no more discomfort or pain from the lustful state I have caused you. Tell me what you want, Rebecca? My only wish is to help you and make you happy.”
She looked up into his eyes. They were so beautiful, especially now that he was not using them to hypnotize her and she didn’t have any reason to fear them.
“I want us to talk about you turning me into a vampire, Peter,” she said. “I’ve told you how I feel about that. I think we know each other well enough now to discuss it.”
“We can talk about it if you like, my love.”
She swallowed and wiped the sweat from her brow. “Yes, but this isn’t the right time. I can’t think straight now. You’re right about one thing. If I don’t get release soon, I’m going to go insane for real. And I don’t want to take a pill. That just isn’t going to do it for me the way I feel now.”
“Tell me what you want to do, darling?”
“Is Ian waiting for us?”
“Yes.”
“Then take me to him.”
He smiled and kissed her on the forehead. “Good. I want to watch him give you pleasure.”
She couldn’t resist the maddening sensation sweeping over her any longer, and it was a waste of time to fight it. She thought she might as well get it over with and only hoped after it was over she could start to think clearly again and come up with a way to save her life and convince Peter not to turn her into a vampire. She needed to regain her wits so she could come up with a plan to escape from this castle. But she would have to take first things first. God, she knew if she ever got out of here, she was going to need ten years of therapy.
* * * *
Peter ushered her inside his room and shut the door behind them. Ian was seated in one of the wingback chairs nursing a glass of scotch. When they entered, he rose and came to them.
“Are you okay, pretty lady?” he asked.
“Peter and I had a long talk,” she told him.
Peter and Ian shook hands. “How you doing tonight, mate?” Ian asked the vampire.
“Pour the lady a glass of whatever it is you’re having please, Ian.”
Ian poured her a stiff drink and handed the glass over. She took a long pull on the drink and welcomed it into her system. But even the alcohol wouldn’t be enough to help her think straight tonight. Only one thing would satisfy her desire now.
Peter pulled up a chair across from the bed and watched her and Ian silently. It was as if he was watching a movie on the TV screen. He folded his hands under his chin and waited. From this point on, he was only going to be an observer. Rebecca tried to pretend he wasn’t there, but that was going to be a difficult feat to manage since he was only a couple feet removed from the bed.
Ian approached her. She found as much lust in his eyes as she knew was inside of her. He removed the scotch glass from her hand and set it aside. His fingers played expertly across her bare shoulders and turned up the straps holding her gown.
“Do you want me, pretty lady?”
“Yes…” Her husky voice nearly failed her. The rate of her heart had increased tenfold.
He played with her hair and placed kisses on her forehead and down her cheeks, torturing her with raw desire as he toyed with the straps of her gown. She realized she had wanted this giant man from the first moment she had met him, and now that their time was at hand, the world was spinning before her eyes. Ian was Peter’s gift to her.
“Pretend we just met for the first time tonight in a bar,” Ian instructed her. His hand traced her chest and brought her sore nipples instantly erect. “Imagine I picked you up and brought you back to my place for a one-night stand. There is music playing for us in the background. The alcohol from the cocktails I bought you at the bar is making you abandon all your inhibitions. My bedroom faces the beach, and I have the doors open letting in a fresh breeze and the sound of the surf. Can you see this?”
“Yes…” She let out a soft moan filled with yearning.
“You don’t really know me,” he continued instructing her. “At the moment you don’t really care who I am. You only care that I’m a man and that I have a strong need to be inside your body tonight. Do you want to open yourself for me? Do you want to give me free access to your most intimate places for just one night?”
“Oh God…Yes…I do…” She closed her eyes and thought that his lust-filled words
whispered torturously low in her ear would cause her to swoon at any second. A hand was tracing down her spine and bunching up the silk fabric over her butt. She felt her bare cheek clasped tightly behind her by a rough and sure hand and let out a strangled cry of need.
“You don’t care about what happens in the morning,” he whispered to her. “All you care about is tonight. I want you to tell me if you’re wet for me now.”
“Oh, God, I am so wet right now…” She was losing herself and wondered if she would ever find her way back.
“You know that when I take you it will be intense, perhaps even more than you can bear.” Now he was sliding one of her straps down her shoulder. He was working it slowly, trying to torment her with the motion. “I am going to force you to come for me, Rebecca. I am going to force you again and again. I am going to make you cry out for me. Every scream of ecstasy you give will be met by another thrust deep inside you. Before I am finished, you are going to beg me. You may beg me to stop, or you may beg me to continue. At times you may beg for both, but either way, I promise you that you will beg like you never have before or ever will again. Before we start, I want you to tell me… Tell me that you want me to take you.”
She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. “Take me now, Ian! God, please take me now!”
He let go of the straps, and the gown slid down her nude body and pooled at her feet on the carpet.
Without further preamble, a rough hand scooped up her breast. He leaned into her chest and took the nipple and half the breast into his open mouth. He sucked hard on her. She threw back her head and closed her eyes. The thrills of ecstasy passing through her were beyond belief. She held onto him, demanding him to continue, and whimpered into the air.
Now his other hand had run over her belly, and was invading the folds between her legs. Her swollen pussy was wet and open for him. He penetrated her with two long fingers. This brought a scream from deep in her lungs, and she held on tighter.