Her Vampire Addiction (Midnight Doms Book 9)

by Tabitha Black

  “It’s fine,” Augustus says. “I was about to head down anyway.” He punches a code into a keypad beside the door—funny, I never noticed Ethan doing that yesterday—and it slides open to reveal the stairwell. “Have you known Maximus long?” he asks casually as we begin to descend the steps.

  “Not very,” I admit. Augustus is very attractive, I notice, with his closely cropped beard and rugged features. He’s not a patch on Maximus, though.

  “I see.”

  I’m tempted to ask what exactly he means by that, but then we’ve reached the downstairs club, and my heart begins to pound in my chest at the thought of seeing Maximus again in just a few short moments. I can’t believe I actually made it back in here on my own steam.

  Augustus scans the area, and I don’t miss the way his nostrils flare. If anything, the club is even more busy than it was yesterday, but there’s just one face I’m looking for in the crowd.

  “Over there, in the corner.” Augustus points. “I assume you can make your way alone from here?” His accent is also strange, also slightly British. What exactly is it with these club employees?

  “Of course. Thank you.” Sure enough, there he is, barely discernible in the red gloom, but even after such a brief time, I’d recognize those broad shoulders anywhere.

  “Have fun,” Augustus says, and as I turn to cross the dancefloor, I half expect him to pat my butt. He doesn’t.

  This is it. Be cool, I tell myself as I take yet another deep breath and thread my way through the throng.

  Maximus is watching someone else; he hasn’t spotted me yet. Once I’m a few feet away, I will him to look at me and, as if by magic, he does. Our eyes meet, and a jolt of something I’ve never felt before slams through my system, making me blink.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  “Sabina,” he says, getting up off his stool and pressing a kiss to my cheek. His lips are strangely cool. “How did you get down here?”

  “I brought back your jacket,” I blurt out, suddenly completely unnerved by his proximity. Then I kick myself for acting so stupidly. For god’s sake, you’re a grown woman, I scold myself. Not a teenager with her first crush.

  “I see that.” Am I imagining it, or is he bemused? “Thank you.” I hand him the coat and he takes it, slinging it over the crook of his arm. Once again, he’s wearing a suit. I wonder how many he owns. And that leads me to wondering what his closet looks like. His bedroom…

  There’s a long, awkward pause, during which I find myself wishing the ground would swallow me up. “Um. Are you on duty?” I say at length. Anything to break the silence.

  “Not tonight, no.”

  For a second, I’m filled with a blind hope that he’s only here because he knew I’d come. But that’s a ridiculous notion. Nothing in his demeanor ever suggested he was more interested in me than any bouncer is in a club guest.

  Although, he did ask you to play, a little voice says in the back of my mind.

  “Well, since you came all this way, would you like a drink?” he asks at length.

  “I’d love one. Thank you.”

  He gestures toward the bar and inclines his head in a strangely polite nod. The movement reminds me of the way men conduct themselves in Jane Austen movies. “After you,” he says.

  Giving him a shy smile, I turn and head towards the bar, hoping that my exposed back will have the intended effect on him. He’s here. He’s not on duty. He’s asked me to have a drink with him.

  Tonight is already shaping up to be way better than yesterday…

  7

  Maximus

  Even though I had been hoping Sabina would show up again tonight, I hadn’t realized just how strong that hope was until she was standing there before me, looking stunning in a purple, knee-length dress. Breathtaking, I think—not that I have any breath left to take. In fact, I only breathe around humans so as not to unsettle them.

  When she turns around, my cock jerks at the expanse of smooth, white back she’s displaying to me. The globes of her ass are accentuated by the clingy material, and suddenly my fingers are itching to touch her.

  What the fuck is it with this girl? I’m reminded of the time when I was a young lad in Rome. Our neighbor had a beautiful wife who used to walk around their outside rooms naked, knowing full well anybody who went past could see her. Even though she seemed pretty old to me at the time—comparatively, anyway, she may have been in her thirties—that woman fueled many of my adolescent fantasies. I damn near rubbed my cock raw thinking about the things I’d like to do to her… and have her do to me. It was so many hundreds of years ago now—gods, well over a millennia and a half—and I still remember how the mere sight of her made a bolt of lust punch through my gut.

  Sabina is having the same effect on me now.

  I notice her shoes. Still pretty, but much more sensible. The straps wind around her ankles and go up her calves. Gladiator sandals, I find myself thinking.

  It’s a good thing I’m off duty, as all I can focus on is the shapely woman walking in front of me, like a slavering dog with a bone. And it’s then that I realize: this is lust. Not love. It’s nothing like what I had with Caroline. How could it be, when I know next to nothing about Sabina? You can’t love someone you don’t even know.

  The realization is comforting. Love, you cannot control. Lust is a whole different animal. Lust, you can slake. I can screw this woman into submission and out of my system, and then we can both go our separate ways. She won’t even have to find out I’m a vampire.

  Sabina reaches the bar and perches on the same stool in the corner I made her sit in last night. Her dress has ridden up her thighs, and I wonder idly whether she’s wearing panties. She probably is, she did yesterday. Although I never did see the point in what they call G-strings—that tiny strip of satin or lace or whatever barely covers anything. Maybe they were designed with sadists in mind. I do like to yank them tight against a girl’s pussy until she’s afraid to move for fear of the pain. Then I realize Sabina is looking at me with a shy smile.

  “Are we going to have that drink?” she says softly, and I curse inwardly that she caught my moment of inattention.

  “What would you like?”

  “A double gin and tonic?”

  She’s phrased it like a question. I grin at her. “Are you asking, or ordering?”

  When she looks down, I notice how long her lashes are and wonder whether they’re real.

  “Ordering,” she says.

  I lift a hand to summon Alaya’s attention. “One double gin and tonic, and one Scotch. You know how I like it,” I tell her.

  “Coming right up.” The dark-haired bartender hurries away to get our drinks, and I resume my study of Sabina.

  She’s blatantly nervous, and I wonder why. It might just be excitement to be back here, to be seeing me again, but there’s an undercurrent of tension that implies something more sinister. “Did you get everything sorted out?” I ask, fishing.

  “Huh? Get what sorted out?”

  I make myself comfortable on the stool beside hers and sling the jacket over my lap. All the better to hide my hard-on. “You seemed troubled when you left last night. That text you received?”

  A myriad of emotions flicker over her face before she resumes her former cool expression. “It’s nothing,” she says casually. “Just my ex being a dickwad.”

  Oh, how I miss the days when ladies didn’t swear. When showing a bare ankle was considered immodest. All right, I wouldn’t go that far. “But he’s not threatening you or anything? You’re not in danger?”

  “No,” she snaps, a mite too quickly. Then, recovering herself, “He’s just a weirdo. I should never have gotten involved with him.”

  “What’s his name?” My instincts are very rarely wrong, and I just know there’s more to this. And even though one could argue it’s none of my business, I can’t help it. If anyone intends to hurt her, I want to know about it.

  You want to hurt her, I think. But only in delicious
ways.

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” Sabina says, lifting her chin in a tiny gesture of defiance. “Thank you,” she adds as Alaya sets a tall glass down on the bar beside my tumbler of whisky.

  “Fair enough. Then we won’t talk about him,” I say. Yet. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I… I don’t know.” She takes a huge gulp of her drink, and I wonder again why she’s so on edge.

  “Was yesterday your first time here? I don’t recall seeing you here before.”

  “It was.”

  “Then I’m even more sorry you had such a shitty time.”

  She looks up at me, then, and I’m struck by the look in her deep blue eyes. “Ethan was shitty,” she says. “Meeting you… wasn’t.”

  Ethan. I’ve been keeping an eye out, but that slimy bastard hasn’t reappeared here so far. Just as well, since I haven’t had a chance to talk to Lucius about him yet. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I tell her.

  She smiles shyly. “That’s how it was intended.” The pale column of her throat works as she swallows more of her drink, and it makes me want to lick my lips. My fangs will be buried in that milky skin before the night is done, I vow. I take a huge slug of whisky to distract myself.

  There’s a brief period of silence, which is strangely comfortable and charged with sexual tension at the same time. I do love this part—the flirting before the play. The play before the fuck. The fuck before the feed…

  Sabina shifts on her stool, uncrossing and re-crossing her legs, and my acute sense of smell picks up the tiniest trace of her arousal, even despite the million other smells surrounding us.

  Fuck, I want to bite her thighs.

  “My invitation from yesterday still stands,” I tell her in a low voice. “If you’d like to play, I’d be happy to oblige you.”

  She’s wearing a delicate silver chain, and the crescent moon pendant nestled in the hollow of her throat is jumping in time with her pulse. I can almost feel her breath catch.

  I so love a responsive woman.

  “I…” She swallows again. Thinks for a moment. Then, in a decided voice, she says, “I’d like that. Sir.”

  She added the honorific as an afterthought but it has the intended effect. My cock twitches in my suit pants. “I assume you’ve some experience?” I say.

  “I do. That’s actually why I came here yesterday. It’s been a while since I had a good scene.”

  “Your ex didn’t satisfy you?”

  “I told you, I don’t want to talk about him,” she snaps.

  That’s answer enough for me, but the game has begun and I need her to realize that. “Watch your tone, young lady,” I growl at her, gratified by the instant change in her expression. “Uncross your legs.”

  Sabina hesitates for the briefest second before doing as she’s told.

  “Spread your thighs a little further apart.” Another waft of her unique, sweet but musky scent hits my nostrils as she complies. I lay my palm on her knee, then slide my hand slowly up her left thigh, allowing my fingers to trace their way down and around until my knuckles are almost grazing her mound. Then I use one of my favorite tricks: capturing a tiny bit of sensitive skin between my nails and pinching her inner thigh cruelly, slowly increasing the pressure. “Look at me.”

  Her pupils are so huge, they’ve almost wiped out the blue of her irises. Her nipples are poking against the flimsy material of her dress. “Does that hurt?” I ask her.

  She nods breathlessly, then lets out a gasp as I pinch harder.

  “First rule if you’re going to play with me: always be respectful. That includes no swearing. Do I make myself clear?”

  She nods again.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Yes, Sir.” She lets out a little gasp as I release the pressure.

  “Good girl.” Gods, I’m already so turned on, I have no idea how I’m going to pace myself. “Now, let’s have a little talk about safewords and limits.”

  “Garlic,” she says.

  I fight to hide my amused surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “My safeword is garlic.” She shrugs. “Because I hate it.”

  It’s a common misconception that vampires cannot stand garlic. I happen to love the stuff. Is this some kind of hint? A test? Surely it can’t be sheer coincidence. However, my raging erection forces me to stay on course. “All right. Garlic it is. And limits?”

  “I’m not a big fan of humiliation,” she says quietly. “Verbal, at least. Being insulted, that kind of thing.”

  “Noted.” The only usual way a submissive ends up having that sort of limit is when she’s been abused in some way, and I bite back the fury I feel at whomever caused this stunning creature that kind of torment. “But you like pain?”

  The blush staining her cheeks is visible even in the low light. “Very much.”

  “Shall we go see how much?” I’m trying not to get too excited. A lot of submissives overestimate what they can take. I’ve had girls beg me to hurt them, only to scream blue murder the moment I’ve delivered the first stroke. But she took that first excruciating little taste I gave her without making a sound, and I didn’t miss the way her pulse quickened as my nails tightened in her sensitive flesh. Maybe I’ve struck gold.

  “Yes please, Sir,” she whispers. “May I please finish my drink and go visit the bathroom first?”

  The difference between her over-confident, defensive side and this demure sweetness is like night and day. I just don’t know which is the real her. “You may,” I tell her. “Meet me back here.”

  After draining her gin and tonic, Sabina sets the glass down carefully on the bar and heads off in the direction of the restrooms. I watch her go, my cock pounding in my slacks. Her buttocks wobble as she walks, and I suppress a smile as I think of all the wicked things I’m going to do to her tonight.

  I’m going to make Sabina scream…

  8

  Sabina

  It’s actually going to happen. I’m actually going to play with Maximus. I feel like I’m floating as I emerge from the bathroom and head back towards where he’s waiting for me by the bar.

  Usually one to linger in the ladies’, I hurried this time, only casting a quick glance at my reflection as I washed my hands after. My eyes were blazing, my cheeks flushed. My nipples were clearly visible through my dress, as if they were already aching for his fingers.

  He’s so attractive, I find myself thinking as I reach him and he stands up, extending the arm not holding his jacket. I notice a strap slung over his shoulder: a toy bag. When did he get that? Where did he get it from? Maybe he keeps it behind the bar, just in case he comes across a little sub he wants to play with. Pushing that thought away, I slip my hand into the crook of his elbow, my heart hammering.

  So what if he’s not husband material? I don’t need anyone, anyway. I’m not looking for a husband. I’m looking for a good time, and this gorgeous, tall, broad-shouldered hunk with strange, smoldering eyes is basically guaranteeing me one.

  Yep, this is already shaping up to be a much better night than yesterday.

  “I think booth one is free,” he says in his soft, gruff voice. “Or would you like to go somewhere more public?” He inclines his head toward the open play stations lined up along the far wall.

  “Private is fine,” I say, glad he’s given me the choice. I don’t enjoy public play much. “I trust you.”

  The corner of his mouth quirks up and something flashes in his eyes. “First mistake,” he says.

  I raise an eyebrow questioningly but he doesn’t elaborate. Instead he leads me over the dancefloor, through the throng of club goers, and whisks me into the private alcove.

  Once inside, I glance around. It’s not unlike the one I was in yesterday. A thick, heavy velvet curtain separates us from the rest of the club, muffling the sounds of music and voices. A shiny black St. Andrew’s Cross is leaned up against one wall. There’s a sex swing in the corner, and my knees almost give out at
the image of myself lying in it, being rocked back and forth on Maximus’s hard cock.

  We haven’t discussed that, I realize—whether sex is even on the menu. I wonder how to bring it up, how to let him know that I’d absolutely be down for it, and can’t think of a way. Maybe it will happen organically. He’s in charge right now, I remind myself. If he decides he wants to fuck me, I’m sure he’ll make that known.

  “Strip,” he growls suddenly. That tone of voice makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I hesitate for only a moment before tugging my dress over my head. He saw most of me naked yesterday, after all.

  He’s set his bag down in the corner and has shrugged out of his suit jacket, taken off his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt at the neck. If he rolls up his sleeves, I’ll be a goner. Crouching down, he starts rummaging through his implements, and although I’m desperate to see what kinds of things he has in there, I focus instead on slipping my panties down my thighs. I’m wadding them into a little ball, not sure what to do with them, when I realize he’s gazing at me, his expression intent. “Give those to me,” he says.

  I do, and he raises them to his nose, inhaling deeply, his nostrils flaring. A combination of shame and arousal makes my face prickle.

  “Delicious,” he says, putting them in his pocket. “I’ll hang on to them for now.”

  I stand there awkwardly in the middle of the booth, not sure where to look or what to do with my hands. Crossing them in front of my chest would make me look defensive, so I simply put them behind my back, gripping one with the other.

  Maximus rises from his crouched position and turns to face me, his eyes roving over my naked body. “Are your shoes comfortable?” he says.

  “They’re not hurting.”

  “Then keep them on.” He takes a step toward me. It’s not cold in the booth, but my nipples are still jutting out. I can feel my pulse beating between my legs. “Turn around. Slowly.”

  It’s almost as if I can feel him appraising me but I do as I’m told, rotating to give him a complete 360 view, hoping he likes what he sees.