Crimson, Volume 1

by Sax Alexander

I knew he didn’t want me to give him too much praise, so I just said, “It will suffice. Get up here, and lie down on your back.”

  He did as I ordered, and his hardening cock jutted up from the apex of his thighs. I climbed on top of him and settled myself over him. His hands came up to caress my breasts, and I swiveled my hips to rub my pussy against his cock. He groaned, and I felt him hardening further. He was almost ready to fuck, and I reached down to play with my clit. His gaze was glued to my fingers, and a few minutes later, he was fully hard and ready to fuck.

  I lifted my body and slid a hand between us to position his cock at the entrance of my pussy. I lowered myself down on him an inch at a time, savoring his intense heat. My body was so much cooler than his that the difference made every spot we connected more sensitive to both of us. I rode him as only a vampire woman could. My speed and endurance are much more than a human could have managed. He kept his hands on my hips, giving the illusion that he was controlling my movements.

  When I felt his cock start to swell as he prepared to come, I lifted myself off his body and knelt on the bed with my ass facing him, not allowing his release. He groaned in frustration, and I quirked an eyebrow at him, daring him to say something. He looked away, choosing wisely not to challenge me. I truly did want to be fucked hard tonight, and the best way to get the results I wanted was to bring him to the brink of release and then change position. He was ready to pound into me with the force I desired, and I lifted my ass higher in the air.

  William moved behind me and buried himself in my slick pussy with one movement. He moved fast and hard, hitting that sweet spot with each thrust and sending shocks of pleasure through me. I moaned loudly and pushed myself back against him. We fucked like that for a while, our moans and the sound of skin on skin—the only noise in the room. I rotated my hips as I rode him, pulling his scorching hot cock deeper into my pussy.

  Everywhere we touched, my skin warmed from his body heat. He reached one hand around my waist to toy with my clit and the other he curled in my hair, pulling me upright and arching my back. William’s thrusts were powerful and deep, causing my ample breasts to shake every time he drove into me. My moans of pleasure echoed through the room as he fucked me just the way I liked. No human could keep up that furious pace for long though, and when I felt him approaching orgasm, I allowed myself to join him. We came together, filling the room with a symphony of moans and gasps, and then slumped to the bed as one.

  I turned in his arms and grinned at him. “You’re doing well, William. Do you have enough time to stay for another round?” I asked, dropping the act while he nuzzled my breasts.

  He smiled happily at me and said, “Not tonight. I have too much to do tomorrow and I need to head back. Thank you, Villete. You were perfection, as usual.” William rose from the bed, and I stretched out lazily as I watched him dress.

  “That’s too bad. I really would have enjoyed a good ass fuck,” I replied with a wink.

  He took the money he’d brought for me out of his jacket and set it on the dresser. “Next time, Villete. Next time I will pound into you like a jackhammer,” he said with a cocky smile.

  I laughed and got out of bed before slipping into a silk robe. I walked him to the door and waved as he drove off. My times with William were always pleasant. Getting paid to fuck him was certainly one of the perks of my job.

  On my way to the bathroom to shower before meeting my next client, I grabbed the money he’d left and added it to my safe. I was happy to see how full the safe was. A trip to the bank would have to happen soon. I was in the business of fantasy, and business was good.

  The Chalice and Elise

  by

  Phong Chau

  There was wine on the nightstand: half a bottle, half a glass. Yellowed papers, broken bindings, and new prints cluttered every available surface. It had started with her finding a font where it shouldn’t have been, before its recorded time. At work they had shrugged but Elise had researched it further. Traces of the first paragraph written in that particular style persisted even when the author stopped using the trademark font.

  She chased him over centuries—his special brand of vanity a dead giveaway. Notions fueled by the subject of his writing had her reeling, kept her going as she raided basements and attics for him. After almost six months she had an address.

  Today she celebrated with scentless wax candles and of course the red drink to symbolize what he was, what he lived off. She wasn’t the kind to walk around naked, even when the blinds were down, but for an hour now she had been bare. Images of a mysterious hunter in the Victorian night had been enough of an image to leave her with two fingers curled inside her. Her feet dug into the bed to lift her hips and grant the ghost her imagination had invited better access. One hand scratched at the side of her neck to simulate his teeth. That abuse deepened when the fingers inside and the palm on her clit drove her further into a lucid, inward burst.

  Afterward she hurried to wrap her body in a robe. Next week, she decided, when she had enough courage, she would walk up to his home in the middle of her own city to see what he would look like— feel like.

  ***

  Everything had fallen apart once she stepped over his threshold. This meeting had not unfolded the way she expected and hoped. She was by his feet. Elise could see something now in his vibrating eyes between blurred lashes and she could feel it in the array of wet chills on top of her goosebumps. He and she were not of the same matter. The truth was there in the anomaly of his beautiful face; a mask of perfect shards and shadow. Those bones under thin skin finally struck her as a warning rather than a reason to come closer. Minutes too late. Lifetimes too late. One of her shoes was missing. Both of her legs were crisscrossed under her. Her back against the door that had his name on the outside. Okin Marra. When had her skirt rumpled up like a belt around her waist?

  “What did you hope to find?” And without saying the words: What would she give in return? Her mind disintegrated in the search for an answer that might please him. Okin didn’t want to hear an accusation for having shoved her against the door where she now sat, collapsed. He didn’t want her resume or heritage. It was painful to realize she could offer him very little more than the life she wanted so desperately to keep. But he, she suddenly found, could offer her—

  “Mercy.” She didn’t stutter the word as she lowered her attention to his bare toes sticking out from under the cuffs of his black pants. She imagined talons on the dark floor instead. In her research she had found suggestions that his kin hailed from dragons. The idea of dragon blood in men had made her warm, uncomfortable in her gut. Want-laden. The reality of a slight woman with an accumulated three hours of self-defense classes colliding with this tall, all-purpose, liquid carnivore was a rude surprise to say the least. Perhaps the teeth behind those luxuriant lips of his wouldn’t be for play after all, but for shredding. She swallowed back a reflex of stark, livid guesses about what the inside of his mouth might feel like. Yes, swallowed it back far. It was those kinds of misplaced, juvenile perversions that had gotten her here in the first place.

  “Honest and insightful.” He said, voice less accusing now. It made her peer up. No less intimidating with his hand out. She took it and he dragged her to stand on the heel of one shoe and one bare sole. The friction she felt from the door through her blouse encouraged recently frozen nerve endings to warm her shoulders and spine. She tried to calm the small riot by leaning against the wood again, palms and all, where she hoped it would be cold. The brown in his gaze was almost red. It mirrored his image of her, of all he wanted from her. Afraid again. Good. “And what would you offer in return?” had said it out clearly. She didn’t have enough money that she could sway a man who lived like this. The currency his greed responded to was too rich, wasn’t it, even in exchange for her absolution?

  Although she never practiced her deer-like body in the art of obvious seduction, she was sure she would have thrown it at him, if he’d deal in matters of the flesh ra
ther than those of the blood. He was moving closer. A quick, controlled step. His blue shirt didn’t flutter, close as it was to his figure. Her lips parted to tell him off, to assert some decisiveness of her position, but that puff of air tasted more like awe than strength. She felt eclipsed where she stood, held between the thick door and his eternal body. His forearm comfortably rested against the door to support his weight as he looked at her from his higher vantage point. Weren’t his kind supposed to be cold, dead? Why did his personal, deep scent roll off him and onto her face with such heat? All the artwork of the white walls; that mirror to the side; everything was obscured by his body. The pace of his breathing contaminated her own rhythm. They shared what little oxygen existed between them, expelled the same scorching air. And above, his features had gone, only eyes there, looking down, waiting unforgivably. Elise couldn’t remember anything save for what she knew about his fuel, what he needed. Who was she to deny this creature?

  “Inside.” Her voice not breaking but not steady either. Her world, what he’d become, leaned down to bring those Mars eyes at level with her own mercury ones. Oh, how much he must have bent his back to accomplish this. “You can have what’s inside.”

  It made him smile and she rediscovered his face. Elise found herself wondering if he was pleased with the offer or if he was amused that she thought it might be enough. Her fingers spread against the door and a freeze of mortification danced with the magma he was conjuring in her stomach. What if he would simply decline and kick her out, as monsters do with unfit prey? Did her silver gaze convey her pleading now? Still that indecipherable smile on him.

  “Very well.” His approval was all-encompassing, made her blush harder than she had, made her hurt. She was going to say something, anything when suddenly her lips were held open by his, her head grinding back on the door as his tongue became everything she could taste. Thick, but fluid, and naturally dominant. There was no choice but to swallow the kiss, and he drew out of her mouth long enough for her to do so. Then he left her, two paces away from the intimacy they had created. Elise felt abandoned and slightly scorned. Incomplete, as if it were he who owed her something. He didn’t look at her in any way that made her feel threatened, but his attention seemed directed at her all the same. Elise became aware of her unflattering state and pushed down her gray skirt to conceal the small mound of black lace exposed underneath. Again, when she’d breathed half a word of the question she intended to say, he interrupted her.

  “Leave.”

  “What?” she asked in disbelief, her hands blindly straightening the already flattened skirt and pulling at her blouse. She had been prepared for a life-changing collision with his nature. The gratitude at having kept her life was overwhelmed by the robbery of the crescendo that should accompany any meeting with a monster. He made a gesture at the handle, inches from her left hand. It made her frown.

  “You’ll be back.” He promised before he turned away, showed her the back of his shoulders, impossibly wider when he put his hands deep in his pockets. He was about to walk away, wasn’t he?

  Elise wanted to do something, wanted to break his stride. Wanted him to look at her as if she were a woman. Or prey. Or anything at all. Perhaps this was the only natural relationship a dragon could have with something he didn’t deem fit to eat. She had wanted more, wanted to catch his attention or fancy enough that he might act on it. How wretched, she thought as she found her other shoe by the threshold of his spacious living room, to walk away from something so deliciously evil without so much as a scratch to prove it.

  ***

  Embrell watched Elise Solyana leave the tower of glass and dark metal ruffled and dissatisfied. He knew that was how Okin liked to render his prey at first. Elise thought it was over and she was wrong. She looked small from the floor where Embrell stood. Perhaps Okin had the same perspective, even when standing next to her. But she wasn’t just another morsel at the tip of some spoiled prince’s finger, waiting to be licked or flicked away—she had found one of their kind on her own. Okin was flamboyant with his obvious beauty, prideful as he was powerful, but he too knew it was better to hide from human scrutiny. If anything, he should have found secrecy more elegant than the lack thereof. And yet this crafty, obsessive romantic had jumped head first into dusty parchments and computerized archives to follow a trail that led her here, right to their back yard. Congratulations, human, you were just promoted from cattle to threat. Brown eyes glittered warmly before he turned from his perch to pursue.

  ***

  Elise hissed with every other breath. Her skin was rippling, tingling. Her jacket felt too warm and too cold where it clung around her waist and stomach. It had started in the cab, with the scabby seat suddenly scratching at her palms. The sun was too bright. Something about the kiss, she thought, something vicious that he had made her swallow. She tried not to feel the discomfort as she staggered homeward, uphill to the small blue house among the others. It wasn’t paradise but she was only twenty or so years away from owning. And the neighbors rarely had shouting fights anymore. Her thoughts didn’t linger long on the lack of spirit among who that lived close to her. She concentrated mostly on her sudden awareness of her own body, how it hugged her bones too tightly, how she wanted to step out of it for just a moment. She thought on this so hard she didn’t hear the soles of someone moving rather quickly to catch up with her.

  “It’ll get better.” The voice triggered a dramatic net of nerves along the left side of her skull. She winched accordingly and jerked in his direction. His short waves of faded bronze cut into eyes that were shades lighter still. He was even taller than Okin, but not larger, as if the same amount of muscle had been used, but drawn out further. Unreal, she thought, with his long legs and unusual colors enhanced by the tight garden of pitch black, fat lashes. There was no playful smile like the ones she’d seen on Mr. Marra. It made her forget about her fever and what chaos it was wreaking on her mood. “And then it will get worse again.”

  ***

  Embrell thought she was pretty like this, suffering and confused, even with that angry wrinkle where her forehead became her nose. One thin wisp of her brown hair stuck to the lips that had kissed his king. It made her seem ruffled and natural, honest. She attempted to continue walking past her home. Clever trick, if he hadn’t known. He held her by the arm. Her pulse exploded into his palm through her jacket. Embrell didn’t indulge when he ate. He only took the willing who offered and went on with his work. Elise Solyana could be considered the finer dining he usually denied himself.

  ***

  “I’ll scream,” she said, and meant it too, frozen by the gate of her own rusted fence. He was obviously like Okin but with less desire to play. Some uncertainty distorted the line between his irises and the whites of his eyes. It was a pretty effect for as long as it lasted. He must have moved fast under the cover of her confusion, because suddenly she was staggering in to her own hall, without memory of being dragged in through the door. With some anger she turned, but he caught her again, forced her body to touch the full-view mirror on the wall. Her palms left fog prints while her breath made clouds on the cold surface as he kept her there.

  “It’s moving your blood,” he said it as a fact, as if she’d be an imbecile to object. “Like water before it boils.” It was true. The mirror was hurting her with its contradicting chill. She didn’t feel intact, didn’t feel strong. What would happen if he pushed harder on her back? Would she break before the glass? She wheezed and managed to make it sound aggressive. He didn’t seem impressed. “Soon you’ll discover that you want it out, want it drained.” The fight in her paused so she could see how right he was. Yes. It felt like she imagined poison would feel. Somehow Okin had convinced her body it needed to be rid of the running life inside. Genius. Demonic. With a kiss, they became the perfect predators, or rather, she the perfect prey. Her fingers quivered now, ruining the vapor paint on the glass. Her eyes shut hard to try to will the spell away, but her thoughts were increasingly overta
ken by the wish to be bitten and cleansed. He caressed the back of her hair with his other hand. It felt as if her blood was gathering under her scalp to reach for his fingertips.

  “Can you do it? Can you free me?” she asked. Still angry, still in need. Her breaths were wet. Everything inside was in an uproar, bustling. When she quaked she tried to hold on to the glass without success. Her mind was quickly dissolving in the maelstrom of hatred for her own blood and the desire for his possible release.

  ***

  Embrell was reminded that he rarely trifled with the Prince’s prey, so this Elise Solyana was an exception in more ways than one. He was the only creature but the Prince himself that could fulfill her wish, since Embrell and the Okin were bound by blood. That fact made him smirk into the back of her ear. She gasped when he pressed harder against her.

  “I won’t.” He quickly turned her around and kissed her. A saturated mash of lips. She swallowed from the intrusion of his tongue as he imagined she had from Okin’s. Perhaps she knew on some level that the liquid would work to cancel out her current craving. “But” he said, voice low on her still wet mouth. “I’ve calmed the effect.”

  ***

  He was right, Elise discovered as she leaned her forehead against his, basking in the retreat of her destructive thoughts. This one wasn’t at all like his darker kin she’d tracked down. His lighter hair, his gold eyes, all of it felt kinder. She couldn’t help but kiss him again, a peck on his lower lip. “Thank you...” The words trailed off awkwardly, as she had aimed to say a name she hadn’t learned yet. It seemed to take those golden eyes a moment to identify her puzzlement. He held her closer, leaned them both further back into her hallway mirror. Suddenly she trusted him not to break it.

  “Embrell, Ms. Solyana.” He informed her. Then his posture straightened to let her go. Elise kissed him again, held on. The response to her affection didn’t seem as immortal and confident as had been his demeanor up until now. But eventually he seemed to warm to her offering. She was still laced with bothering warmth pooling between her legs and scratching at her breath. This need she understood. How adorable that Embrell seemed adept at almost every aspect of this situation save for how to deal with her carnality. She urged him on with her torso and then boldly wrapped her legs around him. Then his confusion seemed to shift to desire. The suction of his kisses hurt. The pain of them fed her own want. She pressed into him as the glass cracked behind her. Elise didn’t have the mind to care.