The Bite of Silence

by Mary Hughes

  I fell back onto the coverlet. My breath came in short, sharp rasps. Overhead the saffron darkened to old gold as my vision narrowed.

  “Moan for me.” His thumbs spread my pussy so he could attack my clit. His tongue rasped the nub. “Moan.”

  How could I not when his tongue ran over me like hot oil, flicked me like a flint wheel? I moaned. He licked and flicked, then reached up with one hand and plucked my exposed nipple until my bottom clenched.

  “Ride me, Twyla.” Without looking he reached forward, unerringly found and cuffed my wrists, brought my hands to his head. “Grab my ears and ride my face.”

  “What?” Adventure, excitement, yes. But he couldn’t mean…he was just talking dirty, right?

  “Ride me.” He bore down on my pubic bone with his mouth. “Fuck my face.”

  “I don’t-”

  He clamped his mouth over my entire pussy and sucked.

  I shrieked. My hips undulated frantically, recklessly. Sweet Mona Lisa, his sucking mouth felt incredible. I rubbed against him, heat rising deep in my abdomen. My fingers shot straight out, scrubbing against the short silk of his hair.

  His hands tightened on my wrists. Surfacing from between my legs he looked like a sea monster, his face glistening and his fangs half a foot long. He tore my fingers off his scalp, slapped them over his ears. “I said ride.”

  With a snarl, he sank those sharp, gleaming fangs into my mons.

  I screamed. Grabbed his ears, the only thing I could hang onto in the exploding storm, and ground myself against him. His tongue slapped against my slit, skidding on my cream. My hips moved, tentatively, riding his chiseled jaw. He bit down again. I jerked. Huge shivers wracked me. I rubbed harder against the granite of his face, his bites goading me faster and faster until I was finally pounding myself against him.

  Climax overtook me, not like a surf or even tsunami but like a truck. Like a semi tractor-trailer hitting me square in the sex. I cried out as darkness washed over me.

  My eyes slit open to soft yellow above. Oh yeah, bed canopy. Silky comforter and soft mattress below. A buzzing came from around my navel.

  Nikos was licking my belly, purring. It brought reality home. A) I’d gotten it twice and he hadn’t gotten any yet and B) my boyfriend was a vampire. Or maybe not boyfriend, maybe it was only a business arrangement. Fine, my gigolo was a vampire. Who cared? I’d gotten some out of it, see A, above.

  I watched him lick, not really compos mentis yet. His shoulders, twice as broad as my hips, were exquisite. Chiseled like a smoky quartz sculpture but in motion, muscles sleek under his glistening skin. His hair bristled from his skull, thick and jet black. I really was going to have to work on getting him to grow it long enough to curl.

  I wondered what the rest of him looked like. Hadn’t seen it yet, surprisingly. Most men I knew would have tried to stuff their John Henry in some orifice by now. Did vampires even have penises? I’d felt a healthy bulge in his jeans, but guessing wasn’t knowing. “So do you do more than lick? Or can’t you?” I tried to see past shoulders.

  His head snapped up. His eyes were ruby red, his fangs were huge. Damn. Not in Kansas any more, Toto-wyla. He stalked up my body until we were face to face.

  As he did, something hot and smooth trailed fiery fluid up my belly. Couldn’t be what I thought, since he was at least a foot tall on hands and knees…I glanced between us.

  Great Rodin’s chisel-Nikos had a yardstick for a cock.

  His eyes were riveted on mine and he must have read my shocked expression because he said, “Want to know?”

  Excitement. Push the limits. But not rip the limits. “It won’t fit!”

  “Let’s find out.” He grabbed his shaft, pointed it like a cannon between my legs.

  “Wait…I have something to tell you first.” I scrabbled back.

  He seized me by the scruff of the neck, hauled me under him. I clenched my thighs tightly but he just pushed that monster erection through. My own cream lubed its passage.

  I tried to weasel away again but he held me firmly and pushed forward until the head nudged my swollen sex. I clamped my legs tighter. He purred, rotated his hips, and pressed forward again. Despite clamping against him, his glans spread my labia.

  “I said wait.” I grabbed his arms, a mistake. His pumped biceps were too big for my hands, and his skin was slick with arousal. My vagina spasmed at the feel of him.

  “You want it.” His eyes were intense, almost as if he were reading my every thought, every emotion. “Why wait?” He pushed a little with his hips, but teasing, not threatening.

  “I have information-”

  “Excuse.” His lids dropped as his focus shifted inside himself. He pressed forward another inch. His cock filled my opening, stretched me.

  “No! All right, I’m scared.”

  He stilled instantly. “I won’t hurt you, Twyla.” His red eyes shifted back to me.

  “I’m afraid because this is just business to you. You don’t really want to do this.”

  He blinked. “I want to.”

  “You want sex, maybe. But not me. You don’t want me.”

  His eyes closed. He shook his head, not once but several times. “How can you think that?”

  “If you really wanted me you’d be more passionate. More carried away.”

  “Hercules run me through.” Abruptly he pulled out. His eyes flared open, blood red, his fangs shot out halfway down his chin. “If I got carried away, then I’d hurt you.” He grabbed his cock and dropped it on my belly. It hit with a whump. “Stuff that in your tight little channel without a care? Sink my fangs in you as deep and hard as I want? Drink as much of your ambrosia as I want? As I need?” He leaped off the bed, stalked away, spun back. “You are driving me insane with want. And you’re saying I need to be more passionate?”

  I blinked. “You never showed it-not unless I provoked you.”

  “What should I have done? Talked to you? Twyla, love, I’m a Spartan general made vampire two and a half millennia ago. I now have a cock twice as big as a human man which I want to stuff up your cunt while I drink hot blood from your throat. And, oh yes, I have a bit of a thing for domination.”

  He’d said more in the last minute than the whole of our acquaintance. That probably qualified as carried away. “You really were a Spartan?” My throat was tight. “That explains the laconic wit.”

  “Out of everything, you picked that?” He barked a short laugh. His erection, jutting out from his hips, shuddered with it. “You’re impossible.”

  “Hey, I’m not the mythical creature here.”

  His mouth eased, a small but real smile emerging. “No. You’re a beautiful woman. But Twyla, you’ll never hear it enough from me. I was raised a warrior, not a poet. And oh, Zeus, I want you.” He groaned the last.

  I want you. That was all it took. “Honey, you may not have a lot of words, but they’re the right ones. Besides, I don’t need words.” I spread my legs. “I need action.”

  His sudden intake of breath was sharp. He jumped on the bed so fast he was a blur, practically mist. Or maybe, remembering his comment on losing his clothes, he was mist. He came out of warp space positioned on hands and knees above me.

  He stared at me. “Are you sure?”

  I almost smiled. “Now you’re giving me a choice?”

  “No. Yes.” His eyes were intent on mine. “I want you. I can’t think. What do you want me to say?”

  Apparently want, for a vampire, was pretty intense. “I don’t want you to say anything.” I grabbed him by the ears and kissed him.

  His big mouth covered mine. His tongue pushed inside me at the same moment his glans spread my labia. He groaned deep, went to his elbows to kiss me to my tonsils, his hands shaping my hair. His cock sank in another inch. I wriggled, felt my vagina open a little, swallowing another inch of shaft. A little thrill burst in my belly.

  He was kissing me like he meant it, but he’d always done that. Should have listened to my mouth.
r />   But this time he was also loving me like he meant it, trembling with his restraint, holding back when he obviously wanted to slam himself in to the hilt. I had no doubt his huge body could generate quite enough power to ram that monster cock past my cervix. I was ready, wetter than I’d been my whole life, but even fully aroused he filled me, stretched me. I wrapped my ankles around his hips and snaked a hand between us, around the root of his cock to keep him from hitting too deep. I couldn’t quite close my fingers.

  He sank in another half inch, sweating now. “Heracles’ teeth, Twyla. You’re like an oven.” He was practically panting. “When you’re stretched, I’m going to take you like a bull. Like a locomotive.” Another half inch. “Fuck.” He stopped, swelling inside me, stretching me until I gasped. “You’re so hot…so tight…I’m coming.” He sucked in a couple breaths. “Damn me, I’m coming now.”

  He arched back until all I could see were the sinews standing out on his arms and the muscles of his chest, clenched so tightly they were almost white. Hot fluid filled me in a rush. I felt each hard spurt from his tight balls, several inches back on my buttocks. He still hadn’t fully sheathed himself. It went on and on, until the fluid splashed out onto my thighs. He groaned and purred the entire time.

  When it was over he relaxed onto me, weight heavy but not crushing, and kissed me tenderly, almost lovingly. As he kissed me he stroked my hair. He eventually rolled off, continuing to stroke me, to lie raised on one elbow at my side.

  Even tender, he assumed the superior position. Like a Spartan general. If this relation went long term, I’d eventually have to deal with that natural machismo.

  Long term? I’d thought that Nikos might be Mr. Long-term Affair but that was when I just guessed, didn’t know. Now…now I was in New York for some excitement. For pushing boundaries, testing limits. Not for anything domestic. I’d sort out LTA later.

  His hand stopped. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Or nothing I wanted to deal with now. “Can we talk about my crazy cousin? We only have until midnight.”

  He frowned down at me. “Why midnight?”

  “ Aylmer said vampires are going to be brainwashed into attacking humans in Times Square tonight.”

  He sat up, eyes cool and clear. “Tell me everything.”

  The taciturn general was back. I should have seen it before. Probably part of why I wasn’t totally freaking out at the two-and-a-half-millennia thing. A Spartan vampire. Incredible, unbelievable. But it fit beautifully with the Nikos I’d experienced. And it sure beat the scenarios I had been dreaming up.

  He let me talk without interruption. As I finished he arrowed off the bed for the dresser. The mattress got several inches higher. “I want to meet your cousin.” He dressed quickly, efficiently. Oh yeah, definitely military.

  Bruce drove us back to the brownstone. In the lobby of Aylmer ’s building I sorted through the keys he’d given me, but none of them got us in. That giant key ring and we were reduced to flathanding again. I guess with guys it wasn’t size but how they used it. Aylmer ’s huge ring got us nothing.

  Nikos’s huge palms got us half a dozen buzzes.

  Aylmer ’s apartment looked the same as when I’d left it, a disaster. Smelled the same too, unfortunately. Nikos’s nostrils flared.

  I said, “It’s just month-old garbage.”

  “No. Blood. Fresh.” His eyes narrowed and he prowled into the apartment, unnervingly like a beast of prey.

  I ran after. Fresh blood could mean anything from a paper cut to a bad wound to…dead bodies. “How much blood?”

  “Enough.” He caught sight of my face, which must have been pale beneath my perpetual tan, and hooked my chin with gentle fingers. “Not that much.” He kissed me.

  “Oh. Good. Where?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Probably just bandaging a scrape then, right? Probably…oh, no.” The bathroom was a door off the kitchen.

  Through it I saw blood.

  A lot of it.

  Chapter Four

  “Don’t look.” Nikos blocked my view by shifting his massive body. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

  “That much blood?” My memory splashed drying brown all over the peeling floor, spattered it down one thick plaster wall. “Let me see him, maybe we can still help.”

  “ Aylmer ’s not here.”

  “What? No, that can’t be. He never leaves his loft.” And with all that blood…my vision wavered.

  “Twyla.” Nikos took me by both arms. “I know this is shocking to you, but it’s really not so bad.” He waited while I took a deep steadying breath, then released me to move into the bathroom.

  I followed to the doorway. “So Aylmer walked out of here on his own? It only looks like a gallon of blood?” I managed to peek around Nikos’s massive frame, saw he was right. No body lay anywhere in the tiny bathroom.

  “He lost one, maybe two pints. Made him dizzy, but didn’t kill him. Ah.” A tink told me Nikos had picked something out of the shower base. “Bullet.”

  “ Aylmer was shot? That’s bad. A bullet in the heart…or the brain… Oh, God.”

  Hands caught my shoulders, pushed me to the floor. Tucked my head down. “Easy, Twyla. Not the brain. No gray splatter. And pumped blood is a different spray. Leg, probably, or arm. Shh, it’s all right. I’ve got you.”

  I shook with cold and shock, my only thought being how damned chatty my vampire got when he thought I was losing it. Personal problems? Relationship woes? Monosyllabic grunts. But get me an inch from crying… I rubbed my prickly eyes and realized I was closer than an inch. I turned my face into his warm chest, let him hold me and rub my back.

  When I could sit without embarrassing myself I took a deep breath. Gathered a very tattered cloak of my normal competence around me. “So. What does this tell us?”

  “That’s my girl.” Nikos sat cross-legged on the cheap kitchen linoleum, pulled me into his lap and cuddled me close. “Two men were here.”

  “Two men? How can you tell? Although…maybe that means it wasn’t Aylmer who was shot. Maybe-”

  “Smell tells me there were two. But the blood is your cousin’s.”

  “How can you know that-” I remembered that he drank blood for a living. “You tasted it? Oh, yuck. But how do you know it’s Aylmer…wait. It tasted like me?”

  A little purr started. “You’re smart.”

  “If I’m so smart what am I doing aiding a madman?” I was shaking again. “Why do haughty rich women look down on me? Why is my sister a happily-married brain surgeon and my brother halfway to Marine general while I’m only a glorified secretary?” I covered my mouth. Where had that come from?

  “Shock,” Nikos said, answering my thoughts. “And breaking some boundaries automatically felled others.”

  Since I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth, I didn’t reply. And here Nikos was getting downright talky. Like we were learning from each other. Maybe there was a future for us after all.

  I had not just thought that. Shock. Yeah, shock was making me weird out.

  Nikos laid a light kiss on top of my head. “It takes a lot to rattle my Twyla. I like that.”

  My Twyla? Sometimes it only took a few words to completely freak me. “Don’t say stuff like that unless you mean it.” I scrambled out of his lap, rose to my feet. “Who do you think the other person is?”

  “Klaus. He’s glib, annoying and far too interested in you.” Nikos frowned. “But he wouldn’t have left the blood.”

  “Klaus…from the plane? But why wouldn’t he have left…oh no. Another vampire?” I sank to my knees. “I should be getting used to this. Look, you may be right about Klaus. I saw him here, at the brownstone.”

  “What?” Nikos’s fangs shot out and his skin hardened alarmingly.

  “But if they’re working together, why would Klaus shoot Aylmer? Wait.” I ran through the sequence of events in my head, from the plane with modelboy Klaus to Aylmer ’s hushed whispers to Aylmer slamm
ing out of the kitchen.

  “ Aylmer must have called Klaus to complain that I wasn’t taking him seriously. But in case I did listen, Klaus came here to silence Aylmer.” My knees collapsed. Abruptly I sat back down. “ Aylmer was shot because of me.”

  Nikos gathered me into his lap again. “If it helps, I don’t think Aylmer is dead. He would have squirreled away ‘evidence’ somewhere.”

  It helped. As I relaxed, Nikos tucked me close. “Twyla, this frightens you, but you’re still fighting. You are a strong warrior.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” I burrowed deeper into his strong chest, just for a minute. “I’m not my brother the Marine.”

  “A good thing. I would not have enjoyed sex with him.”

  I felt the start of a smile and sat up. “See. Not a lot of words but just the right ones. All right, how do we find out where they’ve gone?”

  “The boxes in the living room, to start.”

  The letter boxes were labeled eMailnXpress. I opened one, pulled a sheaf of papers from it and was surprised when more tumbled out. They were connected, multi-part printouts. I scanned a couple, saw lists of items, quantities and weights. But instead of dollar amounts I saw cities. “What are these?”

  “Freight bills,” Nikos murmured thoughtfully. “ Aylmer audits truck lines.”

  I tossed the papers back into the box. “How can these help us find them? You know, things were a lot easier when all we had to do was stop my crazy cousin-wait.”

  Nikos cocked a jet brow at me. Maybe his version of “tell me more”. He wasn’t as closed off as I’d originally thought.

  I picked out a form. “Look at these. Paper, and pin-fed at that. Eighties technology. And Aylmer himself is stuck in the fifties.”

  Nikos gave me a single nod. An eloquent “go on”, for him.

  “Well, think about it. The favor I did involved a very high-tech company. How does that square with pin-fed forms and tinfoil hats? I think-”

  A big warm hand suddenly covered my mouth. “Shh.” Nikos cocked his head at the front door.