TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10

by Andrijeski, JC

  Naoko heard him toss his clothes onto the bed above where he and the woman lay.

  Anxiety filled his chest as he felt the vampire approach.

  That time, he couldn’t help himself––he turned his head.

  When he glanced up at the vampire, Dorian smiled at him.

  He didn’t slow his approach as he smiled, reaching him so swiftly and gracefully, Naoko felt his body go entirely still, like a trapped animal.

  He barely had time to make a real decision.

  The vampire’s head and mouth bent to his, and then they were kissing. Nick’s tongue and lips were nicked by fangs, caressed by a swiftly probing tongue, and he let out a heavier sound, without knowing he meant to do that, either.

  He didn’t know how long that went on before he started to relax.

  The vampire’s hands were on his back and spine again, which helped.

  His cock hardened back to that painful throb as the vampire kneaded muscles and skin and bone. Naoko hung there, unmoving inside the woman’s cunt as Dorian kissed him, deepening the kiss, kissing him harder as Naoko felt more of himself slowly relax.

  Another few minutes of that, of those painful, maddening, fucking unbelievable kisses, and he let out another involuntary sound, bucking into the woman under him, hard that time, his fingers tightening on her hip.

  It wasn’t a surrender that time, it was closer to a demand.

  “Yes,” he murmured, when the vampire drew back.

  He felt his chest clench, his throat. He didn’t quite meet Dorian’s gaze, but his jaw firmed as he nodded again, his tongue thickening more.

  “Yes,” he repeated.

  Again, he heard Dorian’s smile.

  The vampire was on top of him then, and on top of the girl.

  Naoko didn’t know what to expect, how to brace himself, how to––

  “Push back,” Dorian commanded him. “When you feel me, push back, like you’re trying to push it out. It’ll make it easier.”

  Naoko fought not to tense, arousal and a faint panic warring in his chest. He didn’t try to answer the other vampire, not even to nod.

  He asked himself what in the holy hell he was doing––

  ––when the vampire entered him.

  Naoko’s whole body tensed. Then, within seconds, he thought he was going to black out.

  The vampire was wrong. It did hurt.

  What he didn’t expect was for that pain to feel so goddamned good.

  His hands gripped the floor as he stared down in shock. He supported himself over the woman, his cock inside her, Dorian’s cock inside him, and he could only groan, half in disbelief, half because it felt so fucking good he really thought he might pass out. His chest was working again, breathing imaginary breaths. The woman let out a mewling cry when Dorian drove Naoko deeper inside her.

  “Don’t come,” Dorian commanded.

  Naoko let out a disbelieving noise, but made himself nod.

  Then Dorian’s breath was by his ear.

  “You like this. You’ve been wanting me to do this since I let you out of that cage.”

  Naoko could only nod, his eyes closed.

  He could feel the vampire staring at him, staring at his face. Then fingers wrapped into his hair, clenching painfully, holding him utterly still. Gripping his hair tightly in one fist, the vampire over him let out low growl.

  Naoko heard the loss of control in that, and nearly came, in spite of what the vampire just said. He was still fighting to control himself, panting those phantom breaths, when the vampire bit him, sinking his fangs into the place where his shoulder met his neck. Naoko cried out, bucking back into him, then into the woman, and the vampire sucked harder, pulling blood out of him, making him light-headed.

  For a long moment, Naoko couldn’t see anything in the room.

  The woman disappeared, the rug they lay on, the frame of the bed, the wooden floor.

  Dorian flooded his mind instead.

  He saw flickering images from the vampire’s past, caught glimpses of him in different countries, different clothes. The wash of his presence overwhelmed him briefly, confusing him with the nuance he felt, the intensity of the emotions there, despite the vampire’s normally stoic, silent presence when viewed from outside.

  Naoko fought to see more, to go deeper, and the images shifted, twisting forward, until he saw the older vampire after he’d first dragged Naoko back to his room, after he’d first broken his neck to stop him from feeding in that club. He saw Dorian watch him while he slept on the floor of the cage, before he’d regained consciousness. He felt the vampire battling between frustration, anger at him, a growing admiration… even amusement.

  He also felt him wanting to tie him down and fuck him and bite him until Naoko would do what he fucking said.

  He felt flickers of Dorian’s curiosity about him too.

  He saw the vampire in the same room later that night, only at his desk, hunched over a computer, naked, reading files, looking at photos of him when he was human, when he was young. He felt the vampire getting more and more turned on, intrigued, curious––

  Memories flashed through Naoko’s mind, intense enough that he groaned.

  Dorian pulled on him, still drinking from him, swimming through his mind, and Naoko lay there, half-paralyzed as he saw his own human family.

  It wasn’t there, then it was.

  Nick was there.

  He wasn’t just looking at it, he was there all over again.

  His mom stood across the lawn, chatting in broken Japanese and English about something to do with the Christmas tree with his Uncle Tetsuo, complaining that the lights weren’t working right and he needed to fix it since Nick’s father was out getting more alcohol. He saw his two older sisters, Maya and Numi, sprawled out on lounge chairs in shorts and tank tops to soak up the cold, California December sun, wearing hats and sunglasses and drinking white wine as they watched their kids run over the grass, screaming in delight as they chased a soccer ball.

  Then he saw her.

  It shocked him.

  Just the sheer physical reality of her shocked his heart.

  Miri threw back her head, laughing at something his nephew, Jason, did, then kicking badly at a soccer ball in her high-heeled boots, a martini glass gripped in one hand as she threw her head back and laughed again.

  He remembered that day.

  He remembered every goddamned second of this.

  She’d looked so unbelievably gorgeous that day.

  Even as sad as she was, she looked so fucking gorgeous… he almost couldn’t stand it, even as a human. He’d felt like a voyeur, with how much he watched her that day.

  Angel gave him shit about it.

  His oldest friend nudged him, rolling her eyes at him, again and again, mouthing “stalker” at him, in between laughing at him and advising him to he needed to just cut the shit and talk to her––but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from staring at her instead.

  He couldn’t seem to talk to her in a real way about it, either.

  Well, not until it was too late.

  That day, he’d still been kicking around what he could say. He’d been conscious of what happened to her recently in Thailand, how she’d been kidnapped by that crazy seer, raped. He’d known she was confused about her feelings about Black himself, as much as it pissed Nick off at the time. He’d known they were fighting, that Miri was mad at her new boss, and that it wasn’t all some employee-boss fight, or even a fight between friends.

  He hadn’t wanted to lay anything heavy on her then, given all that, or make her feel pressured in any way.

  He was trying to be a good friend.

  At the same time, he’d stopped kidding himself he didn’t want something more with her. He’d been fantasizing about her, fantasizing about the night she jumped him at her apartment, at how close they’d come to having sex, at how fucking hot she’d been that night. He’d been fantasizing a hell of a lot, and jerking off, thinking about her.

&
nbsp; That whole Christmas Eve day, he’d wanted to wrap her in his arms, take her up into his old room, the one he only lived in as a teenager, and then again briefly as an adult, when he first got back from Iraq, and fuck her until she forgot about Black, forgot about Thailand, forgot about everything bad that ever happened to her.

  He had no idea then, it would be the last Christmas he would have with her before she married that son of a bitch.

  He had no idea then, it was his last chance with her.

  Dorian gasped, lifting his mouth from his neck.

  He hissed softly, a hiss that turned into a harder growl.

  Naoko felt jealousy spark through the vampire’s blood, heard the real animosity in the growl, right before the vampire bit into him again, harder that time.

  Naoko could only lay there, his head pulled back, his body pinned by the larger vampire. It should have distressed him maybe, but truthfully, it brought a strange kind of relief.

  It also nearly put him out of his head with want.

  The memories only made it worse.

  When he could make sense of anything again, he was fucking the woman under him, moving harder, faster, and Dorian matched him, aligning their movements to drive into her harder still, until she was crying out, clinging to Naoko even as he groaned from what Dorian was doing to his own body, not only with his cock but with his teeth.

  He forgot himself entirely, then.

  Lowering his mouth to her throat, he bit into her.

  He sank his fangs without thought, feeling drugged as he sucked her hot blood into his mouth and throat, making his eyes roll back in his head––

  Fingers tightened painfully in his hair.

  They tore him off her.

  Before Naoko knew what happened, his face was slammed, brutally, to the floor.

  Dorian didn’t release him after he did it. He continued to grip Naoko’s head in his iron-like fingers, pressing Naoko’s cheek to the rug, trapping him for real.

  Naoko groaned, licking the blood off his own lips, groaning as the vampire fucked him harder, dragging himself in and out of Naoko’s body with a sensuality that drove him out of his goddamned mind. He wanted to feed on her.

  He wanted to feed on her while Dorian fucked him––

  “Ask.” Dorian’s voice was coarse, a barely-controlled growl. “If you want something, ask, Naoko. If you want to feed, ask. If you want to come… ask.”

  Naoko groaned. “Let me. Let me––”

  “That’s not a question, Naoko.”

  “Can I? Goddamn it, can I? Can I… please?”

  “Which? Which thing do you want, Naoko?”

  Naoko’s mind spun around both things, which he needed more.

  The thought of doing one without the other, with choosing, broke him into a brief panic. Something about being forced to ask, to choose, made his cock throb even more painfully, made the hunger worse. He felt Dorian’s fingers gripping his hair, and his whole body softened. Before he could make himself verbalize any of it, Dorian drove into him again, harder––

  Naoko came.

  He groaned, unable to stop it.

  Once it was happening, he lost himself in it entirely.

  He let go, closing his eyes, feeling everything, fucking everything, in for those few seconds or minutes, however long it lasted. He was dimly aware of his body falling into that fugue state as well, bucking and thrusting into the woman as he groaned. Every nerve ending, every inch of his skin seemed to be touched, seemed to be somehow part of the sensation.

  He felt the woman spasm around his cock as he came, and let out another choked, half-growling sound.

  Dorian hung over him, Naoko’s hair fisted in his iron-like fingers.

  Dorian watched him come, and Naoko felt that, too.

  When he finished, he was only lying there, feeling the woman’s heart beat in her chest, feeling her chest rise and fall under his, lifting his body incrementally as she moaned.

  He winced, then, feeling the vampire’s eyes on him.

  He waited for the punishment he knew would be coming.

  He waited to be thrown back in the iron cage, to be told he couldn’t eat for another stretch of however-many days, to be left alone.

  Dorian’s grip eased on his hair.

  He began massaging the back of Naoko’s neck.

  For a long moment, he didn’t speak.

  When he did, his voice was low, a bare murmur.

  “We’ll have to work on that,” he said, soft. “Your control.”

  Naoko looked up at him.

  His head still lay pressed to the floor where the vampire had held him forcefully just a few seconds before, although he didn’t hold him there now.

  He stared up at the male vampire, watching Dorian look at him.

  Despite his soft words, he expected to see a rebuke there.

  He expected to see disapproval… disappointment, at least.

  He didn’t see any of that, though.

  All he saw in the vampire’s eyes was heat. Dorian stared at him, meeting his gaze with those scarlet eyes, baring the slightest hint of his fangs.

  It brought Naoko’s hunger back in a thick rush.

  Dorian must have seen that, too.

  A faint smile lifted those lips higher.

  “You’d better eat, Naoko,” he said, his voice deadly serious. “I intend to feed off you… a lot. So you’d better eat this one. Once you do, I’ll bring in the next one. When you finish that one, I’ll bring in the next. If I have to, I’ll hunt more for us.”

  Naoko’s cock got harder the longer the vampire spoke.

  He didn’t wait, though.

  He didn’t wait for the vampire to change his mind.

  He didn’t wait for him to ask again.

  Turning his head, he lifted it, looking down at the woman below him. Her eyes were glazed with sex. She smiled at him.

  He smiled back at her.

  Then he lowered his mouth, sinking his fangs into her neck.

  He bit hard that time, and deep, sucking on her straight from the vein, groaning as he drank. He’d probably drunk more than half of her when Dorian started moving over him again. Naoko moved with him, eyes closed, feeling like he was in some kind of trance.

  The nerve endings all over his skin flared back into life, turning into a kind of pleasure-attuned liquid heat, practically rippling under his skin.

  It felt So. Fucking. Good.

  So. Goddamned. Fucking. Good.

  He couldn’t remember anything ever feeling that good.

  He couldn’t have imagined anything feeling like this, in all of his years of fucking and fantasizing and wanting what he couldn’t have. He’d never tried heroin, but he might have thought heroin could be like this, if he’d had that kind of imagination as a human.

  A part of him felt the danger in that.

  That danger flickered at him from the dark spaces of his mind, enough to raise a dim pulse of fear, to jab at the more rational parts of himself, the more strategic parts.

  Whatever lie he wanted to tell himself, though, Naoko knew.

  The vampire didn’t just want sex.

  Dorian intended to share memories with him, to drink from him until both of them knew one another in a way that perhaps Naoko had never known another person in his life, not even during wartime. Dorian wanted to feed off him, perhaps for them to feed off each other, until Naoko couldn’t possibly keep his mental or emotional distance.

  He also knew something else.

  He wouldn’t refuse him.

  Even now, in that moment, knowing and realizing what he did, understanding the motives behind the vampire’s intentions, he would have done anything Dorian asked of him. He would have done anything Dorian wanted… anything, no matter what it was.

  The realization terrified him.

  It also brought up that wanting so intensely, he let out a heavy groan, still sucking on the neck of the woman as he felt the life start to leave her.

  13

&n
bsp; Disappearing

  I SNAPPED AWAKE––covered in sweat, gasping.

  Strong arms held me, winding around me, holding me tight to a muscular chest.

  Both of us were naked, but for once it wasn’t him that was generating most of the heat.

  I writhed in his hold at first, trying to get free out of instinct. Then, when he continued to blow his light over mine, calming me without words, holding me almost lightly now as he stroked my belly and hair, I sank into him instead, still fighting to breathe.

  Tears ran down my cheeks.

  I didn’t know what they were at first.

  I had no idea what they meant.

  “You were screaming,” he murmured in my ear. “You were screaming, Miri.” He kissed my face, pressing his cheek to mine. “Why were you screaming, honey?”

  I lay there against him, still fighting to get air.

  I put intention into every breath, into every inhale and exhale, fighting to think past the choking, tense feeling in my chest.

  I tried to think, to remember, but my mind was completely blank.

  “Bad dream?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” I bit down on my tongue briefly, shaking my head. “I can’t see it. I can’t see anything, Black.”

  I couldn’t.

  When I closed my eyes, trying to remember, I saw nothing.

  I saw only darkness there.

  Normally seeing darkness behind my eyes didn’t bother me. I liked it.

  Since I’d been a kid, images, feelings, meanings, presences, and voices from outside of me filled my mind. That dark, calm silence was a reprieve from all of that. It reminded me of meditation, of times I was able to quiet all the voices, both inside and out, to make them all, however briefly, go silent.

  I spent years learning to meditate for that very reason.

  Truthfully, for a lot of years, that was the only thing that kept me sane.

  That wasn’t true now.

  Now, instead of stillness, instead of calm, that darkness filled me with fear.

  Black’s arms wrapped around me tighter.

  Now that I wasn’t fighting him, he pulled me deeper against him, snuggling me up against the length of his body, pulling my hips and legs back to curl around his. Despite the heat coming off us both, I found every inch of his skin a relief. For the first time since I’d opened my eyes, I took a full breath, letting it fill my lungs completely before I let it out.