Strawberry-A Vampire Romance

by Lena Fox

  He was so large and hard before me, even the sight of him made me gasp.

  He moved over me, his body poised for entry into mine. I spread for him, bringing my feet up around his back and we cried out together as he entered me.

  Pleasure shattered all of my defenses. I had no shame. All I had was the incredibly powerful need that built up inside me at his every touch and caress.

  I kissed his neck, right in the hollow where his shoulder and collarbone met and slid my hands up his back, relishing his weight and the reality of him. Our bodies rocked together in a slow, gentle, intense rhythm and I whispered, “Take my blood, Owen. It is yours.”

  I wanted to gift him something as sweet as what he was giving me. I had never before surrendered to his teeth; I had merely tolerated the bite. Now I offered my blood, my life willingly. I was his.

  His teeth slid into my skin. He drank and kissed and sucked at my neck. My eyes closed and I gasped as he rode me harder. The smooth motion as he pumped into me, deeper and faster, left my thighs quivering and a sweet ache spreading from my toes to my scalp. A powerful need was obvious in his touch as he pushed into me, filling me, drinking my blood deeply, his arms wrapping me so tight I thought I would break. Something was happening, something I did not understand but his body was growing warmer than it ever had before.

  That shift from cold to hot within me knocked me senseless and my body shuddered and locked tightly as pleasure hit me like a wall. Owen cried out in his own orgasm then he clutched at his chest in a gesture that scared me witless. A gesture full of pain and terror and disbelief.

  My orgasm was still shivering through me when he withdrew from me and sat up. His fingers were interlocked over his heart and his eyes had gone a strange shade of... blue.

  I stared at those eyes, at the terrified expression on his face and could not think of a single word to ask, to say. He fled, literally fled from me and I could only stare in total bewilderment as he streaked across the room and out the door.

  “Maybe it was too much garlic in my blood and he got heartburn?”

  My voice quavered and tears slid down my face. I felt naked and exposed, not only because I actually was but because shame had set in. The joke fell flat, a desperate and failed attempt to keep myself from falling into despair.

  The daylight splashed in through the open door and from somewhere in the house there was a wounded howl. My skin prickled and I crawled under the covers, smashing myself flat and small as possible. Fear broke out along my spine and I began to shiver while the rich food roiled and tumbled in my belly.

  I didn’t know what was going on but I knew it could not be good. I lay there, looking up at the ceiling for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for him to come in and kill me or for the house to suddenly go up in a puff of dust but nothing happened. I waited for the end of the world I knew. It didn’t come.

  The tension drew out nearly unbearably but eventually my mind and body could take no more and I drifted off into a dream-filled and restless sleep, marked by nightmares of Owen burning in the sunlight.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sometime in the afternoon I crawled out from under the covers, threw on Owen’s shirt that had been left in a crumple beside the bed, and began to prowl around the room. The shirt still smelled like him. I clutched the silk tight around me, rolling my shoulders in it to feel it slip against my skin, shocked at my body’s immediate, visceral reaction to the smell and feel that I associated so closely with the man. The vampire. The chain yanked me up short every single time I breached its boundaries and I began to scream in anger and misery. The screams ripped from my throat and chest, leaving a pain in my body but clearing my mind.

  The room had few to no personal effects. Just clothing and some cologne in the bathroom, several ancient books stacked on the bedside table. But the ghost of his presence in the room burned me. I began to kick the wall and tossed a lampstand over. I felt like a rock star trashing a fancy hotel room. Everything just piled up and I couldn’t help it, I needed to destroy something. The wine glass and bottle on the coffee table were the first victims, shattering on the floor and staining the heavy carpet. I pulled the bookcases down and tried to shove the couch aside but it was too heavy.

  It was when I tossed the bedside table to one side that one of the books popped open, catching my eye. The book had a fake interior, and a tiny wooden box tumbled out. I got on my knees and looked at it. It was a lovely little thing with silver clasps and inlaid ivory. The name stamped into it made me catch my breath: Adelle St Laurents.

  I opened the box with trembling fingers to see a diary, bound in leather and marked in place by a black silk ribbon that had faded to nearly gray. It was so small, it must have been made to be carried in a tiny bag, or in a small pocket. A lady’s pocket.

  I opened the diary and began to read.

  Adelle’s handwriting was rounded and flowing. It was also tiny and when I closed her journal my head was aching fiercely from the strain of it all.

  Owen had been right about her. Adelle had loved an adventure. She had seen him as one as well, a young and handsome man she could kiss and flirt with, ride at full gallop next to, dance wildly until dawn with but long before he had ever seen her she had been betrothed to her husband, a husband she never had any intention of ditching. But Owen had been exciting, and the fact that he fell in love with her just made her giddy. It made her feel important to have him lusting after her, and gave her an incredible feeling of power that she could manipulate him so blindly.

  Where Owen had gotten it was wrong was in assuming she wanted him just as badly. Adelle wrote of her manipulations and flirtations, always finding them amusing. Like the other men she kept on her string, Owen was nothing more than a flirtation, a way of passing the time and ensuring her dance card was always full at the countless balls and parties she attended. She never let any of her beaus go any further than kisses and groping up her legs because she was shrewdly and acutely aware that to do so would be to ruin her prospects for marriage.

  When she did wed and realized she no longer had to stay a virgin in order to ensure her place in society she began to take on numerous lovers, of which Owen was just one.

  He had no idea. She dangled her love in front of him for her own amusement. Her husband was indeed a cruel man who treated her with little more than contempt or rage at her inability to produce a child, but she was cruel as well. More than cruel really. She seemed to accept her husband’s treatment as normal, not going to any great lengths to avoid the punishments. Indeed with delight she wrote about how the color of the bruises had blossomed on her skin and how the marks enraged Owen and the other lovers she kept on with lies of love and faithfulness. How she so enjoyed seeing the fury and passion it provoked in them, she made sure she always had some mark upon her skin.

  When she was whisked away to France she became infatuated with Rene, a handsome man with ‘ebony hair and eyes, a walk that makes me shiver as it speaks of danger with every step and an endless hunger for life nothing seems to assuage.

  ‘From the moment we met I could feel a need for him, a starving and thirsting need that would not, has never, let me rest. I adore him despite his odd ways and violence in lovemaking. Just a fortnight ago he kissed my bosom so fiercely that he left a bite there, which made me so weak I could scarcely stand for days. The weakness passed but the bite remained in full view, making it necessary for me to stay in bed for days playing at megrims and other illness in order to keep anyone from seeing it, especially my hardly beloved husband. He would kill me if he knew I was once again cuckolding him but I think Rene would be worth dying for.

  ‘He manages to come into the house at all hours of the night, unseen by the servants or passersby on the street. He always smells of wind and places that I have never been. Oh! To be with him there and forever!’

  If Rene were anything like Owen I could understand the attraction. But not wholly. Owen was a vampire and that turned me off so totally. What made me care ab
out him was his human behavior: his kindness and vulnerability. It was when he was at his most unvampire-like best that I...

  Oh shit...

  I blocked that thought before it could work its way into my head. I could not possibly be in love with him. It just wasn’t possible. Not even if he was great in bed and a damn good cook. No way.

  I turned my attention back to Adelle. Rene had bitten her and she had gone into a serious depression when she was hauled back to merry old England. Bored and lonely she had turned to Owen, feeding him tales of her love for him. She claimed that she had been unable to see him, abed with a miscarriage or some excuse and that she had gone to France to see a doctor. All these lies and stories she’d concocted, I don’t know how she kept up with them. If anything, Adelle sounded like a more accomplished actress than I was.

  There was a sharp shift in her writing around then as well; it was as if Rene’s bite had made her somehow terribly aware of her own mortality. Was it possible she had known that he was a vampire? I believed she had, and she longed to be young and beautiful forever as well, to be able to keep her lovers enchanted and on her strings.

  When Rene came after her she was ready for him, seducing him and using him just as she did all men. Together they had turned her husband into a thrall. He was seen in public and acted as normal as could be managed. He rode in carriages and attended balls for short amounts of time before pleading illness and leaving. Rene and Adelle kept him prisoner for nearly two months before she managed to convince Rene to bite her. I think she had some idea that the two of them would float through high society with wealth and power together. I think she may have really loved him even, despite how she tried to use him. Though I didn’t know much of Rene, what she said of him made me wonder if he was playing her as much as she was playing him.

  That was when things got very out-of-control. Owen had not given up on her love. Everything he had told me about the night he had been turned had been true with one exception. Adelle had been a vampire for weeks. She had simply lied so that he would not kill her too, promised him that her love was still true, and drank from him as greedily as if he were a giant-sized cherry Slurpee.

  But Owen had bitten her back. He had known, somewhere deep down, that she was a liar, that she meant to simply drain him and dispose of him. He had bitten her wrist in a frenzied moment and she had been too caught up in feeding from him to stop him until it was too late. Adelle had been amused by his biting her, by the sudden and startling rebellion against her pretty lies. She had also thought it sexy as hell.

  So she kept him around. While Owen was busy searching for a cure for them Adelle began to hunt not just for food but also for sport and to increase her wealth. Owen drank but never killed. Adelle saw that as a weakness. She thought it was just because he was still new, and that as his humanity was left further behind he would become like her as well. She always killed her prey and often haunted the places where men with money went so she would have cash on hand to support her ever-increasing love for luxuries. They had argued about it more than once, and it was clear she began to tire of the rules and boundaries he tried to lay, and his attachment to being human. In some of their darker moments as a couple, they discovered that vampires could not kill other vampires. No matter the violence they inflicted on each other, nothing was fatal.

  Owen drifted away from her, and started to build businesses on his own labors and small inheritance. He began running a tavern, only open at night time, so it would seem natural he only appeared then to manage the business.

  Dark Raine. Duh. I mentally face-palmed. He must own the club the LARP was at. More than that, I was sure it was a worldwide chain.

  Owen annoyed Adelle with his constant need to be returned to his human state and his ongoing love for her only made her angry. She viewed him as a weight and after her husband died while still in thrall she set out to find a lover that would be willing to kill Owen.

  I could have killed Adelle for that. She bewitched a wealthy man and then told him that Owen was a vampire. He raised a mob and they came after Owen. Owen managed to escape and, in fury, Adelle killed her latest lover for failing.

  The diary ended there.

  I almost threw it at the wall in frustration.

  I knew he had killed her but how if vampires could not kill each other?

  “I see you are reading.”

  He had walked up behind me so silently I had never even heard him. I spun around and my mouth dropped open. His face was positively glowing and his eyes were still that same light shade of blue. He was wearing blue jeans, something I had never seen him wearing and a plain white shirt.

  Something very different radiated out of him but I could not put my finger on what it was. Some emotion on his face, hard, but human, relieved, but desperately sad. Still, he did not seem pissed at finding me digging around in his dead lover’s belongings so I answered honestly. “Yes, I was.”

  He held out his hand and I placed the book into it. He stared down at it for a long time. “I suppose you think me a fool.”

  “I’ve done some crazy shit because of love.”

  A smile turned the corners of his full lips upward. “Really?”

  I deflected, playing down any meaning to my words. “Who hasn’t?”

  He bent down and his shirt pulled up to reveal the smooth flesh above his waistband. Owen set the book back inside the box and back into the fake book.

  “I am guessing you want to know what happened.”

  “She tried to have you killed, then it just ends.”

  “Yes. It was after that I found her journal and realized how badly I had been used. Would you believe I had loved her for over a hundred years at that point and was still blind to her nature? She was cruel and corrupted but when I looked at her all I saw was beauty. All I saw was the one I loved, once, when I was human. I held onto my love for her as I held onto my humanity, or at least the pretense of humanity. I hadn’t been human for a long time at that point. I had forgotten how to truly feel anything. I couldn’t love, couldn’t show compassion or empathy. I had set myself rules which I stuck to, but not for any form of kindness. Only to be clever, for self-preservation. And she did not agree with those rules. When I confronted her she laughed at me and said she had never loved me, that she would never love me, and that I was weak.

  “I wanted to be in agony. I wanted to be horrified by her actions, but I could feel nothing. I left, going to my offices to get some peace and to think. All the blood, all of the years, my mortal life, wasted. All of the killing she had done, all the people no longer on the earth for no purpose but to serve her selfish need to be beautiful, to be wealthy, and powerful, and worshipped. And yet I couldn’t feel. The smallest hint of sadness came to me, at all I had lost, in being unable to feel as my human self had, and then it too was gone. Only clear, emotionless decision remained.

  “A mob showed up with stakes and torches, they swarmed through the tavern and into my office, killing two of my human bartenders — good men making a living for their families. They dragged me out into the street and beat me, stabbed me with their stakes. They narrowly missed my heart and I had just enough strength left to run.

  “I staggered away, bloodied and dying. The first human to cross my path was a child. A child. I almost killed her trying to return myself to strength and then, then, I didn’t even care. I’ve done too many inexcusable acts in my time.”

  I reached out a hand to Owen’s but he pulled away before I could touch him.

  “I grew even colder and harder inside. I travelled abroad, seeking answers. I discovered that while vampires cannot kill one another physically, there is an ancient death curse for those who are corrupt, that may have worked even on her kind. It was held within a silver ring that was possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ghost, a young woman killed wrongly.

  “I found the ring. The old Romani man who held it told me he could not give it to me, that the ring found those who deserved it. I told him of Adelle and he to
ld me if she deserved punishment it would come.

  “I went back to see Adelle. I had no plan other than try to make her see that what she did was wrong, hoping time had changed her. Even if we as vampires couldn’t feel, we could still decide how to behave based on the world around us. We didn’t have to be monsters. I went back and when I opened her door she was lying there on a chaise, her hand in the air and the ring on her finger. It could be no other, with an immense ruby cut like a drop of blood, the silver setting tarnished to black. She was admiring it and I wanted to tell her to take it off, to save herself but it was not up to me. That ring chooses its wearer.

  “I said what I wanted to then turned away. She laughed at me but then she stopped laughing. I did not turn around to see her die. I did not need to. Her ashes drifted across the room in a stinking cloud. I dispersed her wealth to the poorest of the area left England for a new... life.”

  “I’m so sorry.” My heart ached for him but he brushed my words aside.

  “It’s over now. I promise you if I had not found your blood so sweet I would never have held you prisoner. That has never been my way. I had my rules. Harvey sends porn actors to many a game at my club, and I’ve often taken them to feed from after the night has ended. But I have never killed any of them, never showed unneeded cruelty, nor kept them prisoner before, until you.”

  I choked. “I’m sorry, did you just imply I’m a porn star?”

  “What?” He blinked, looking clearly confused by my objection.

  “Oh god, you think I’m a porn actress.” I stared up at him.

  His blue eyes bored into mine. “You’re not a porn actress?”

  “I’m not a porn actress!”

  He put his hands over his face and began to laugh, huge gusty laughter.

  “But you’re so...” He bit his bottom lip, looking over my body. “I just mean...”