Jack’s thrusts steadily increased in both depth and speed. He felt Ryoko’s body trembling from the intensity of the experience. He was almost trembling himself, drunk on the heady euphoria of her sweet essence.
“Oh…” she moaned. “Oh god…”
He had to force himself not to take too much of her blood, but luckily, her body was there to distract him as soon as he pulled his fangs out. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips, and then brought his focus back to where it belonged. She was his lover. She was his maid. And so frequently, she was also this. A thrall in all but name. She was exactly what he needed.
Ryoko let out a high-pitched, pleasured squeal as Jack began to thrust faster. He pinned her knees up, admiring both her flexibility and the awesome angle it gave him. He kissed her deeply, and then let his forehead press against hers, moving faster and faster. Feeling her warmth and softness.
Her breasts mashed into his chest as he started pumping into her deeper and more aggressively. Ryoko started tensing against him, writhing lustfully against his onslaught. He heard her breath catch in her throat, and then felt her melt against the couch. Jack kept going, shifting his pace to meet his own pleasure, and within a dozen thrusts, he felt himself lose control.
He almost collapsed onto her as he finished. Whenever he fed off Ryoko, the experience went both ways. She reacted in a visible, obvious manner to his bite. Her blood, likewise, stirred something within him. It primed him for pleasures of lust and desire, and it made his release that much more intense and sweet.
He hugged her against him in the afterglow of their mutual orgasms, basking in the warmth and softness of the moment. Ryoko ran her hand through his hair as he rested his cheek on top of one of her petite breasts. They spent several, timeless minutes like that. Lovers entwined within each other’s embrace, suspended outside of the world at large.
“About tomorrow,” she whispered, breaking the silence. “I’ll have to stop by Katherine’s to get more of the anti-enthrallment potion before we leave.”
“Right,” said Jack. “Of course. Just make sure that she doesn’t catch wind of the plan. I wouldn’t put it past her to try something stupid if she found out about it.”
“I’ll think of something to tell her, sir,” said Ryoko.
Jack lifted his head up to scowl at her. It annoyed him a little when she fell back into her role as his maid during their intimate time. From the smile on her face, he could tell that she was doing it to tease him, at least in part.
He cuddled with Ryoko for a while longer, until her breathing slowed and she fell asleep. Jack carried her to her bed in the servant’s chambers. She’d slept in his bed more often than not over the past few days, but it seemed a little presumptuous to bring her up to his room without asking her first.
Before heading to bed, he sent a text to the number on the card Pierce had left with him. The response back was almost immediate.
PIERCE: Tell me as soon as you know where this plane is headed. Stall for time once you arrive at your destination. I’ll meet you there before you make contact with the Jade Circle.
Jack frowned as he read the words. He still didn’t know if he was making the right choice. Unfortunately, now he was committed to it.
CHAPTER 7
Ryoko came into his room the next morning and woke him up with a soft kiss on the lips. Or rather, she tried to. Jack was surprisingly tired, and he felt a little guilty as he watched her rifling through his wardrobe and assembling his luggage for him.
“Sir,” said Ryoko. “You’ll be late if you don’t start getting ready now. I already prepared breakfast for you downstairs.”
She kissed him again, and Jack finally managed to summon the will to get up.
“Thanks,” he said. “I can handle packing the rest of the things I’ll need.”
Ryoko nodded. “I should get going. I need to get to Katherine’s early so she’ll have time to prepare the potion.”
Jack hugged her and said his goodbyes, then set about the process of going through his morning routine. Half an hour later, he was devouring the last bite of a bagel and egg sandwich as he sat in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport.
He felt an odd, persistent sense of foreboding as he paid the driver and hauled his suitcase up the airport’s stairs. The last time he’d been at the airport with Mira, they’d been enemies. Now, he wasn’t sure what they were, especially given the deal he’d agreed to with Pierce behind her back.
The airport’s interior wasn’t large, but there were so few travelers about that morning that the emptiness created the illusion of wide open space. Jack checked in at the one open security line and then scanned the hall for Mira.
She was waiting for him off to the side, and she smiled and waved as soon as she saw him. She had on a white and yellow sundress with a matching jeweled choker, and her blonde hair hung loose across her shoulders. Jack walked over to her slowly, frowning as he noticed that she didn’t have any luggage of her own.
“I thought you said we’d be gone for a couple of days?” asked Jack. “You aren’t bringing anything?”
“It’s already on the plane,” said Mira. “That was the surprise I’d mentioned. I enthralled the owner of a private jet, and he was kind enough to lend it to me for my purposes.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at that. He didn’t like the idea of Mira enthralling people to get what she wanted, but a selfish part of him was glad that they wouldn’t have to endure the drudgery of a regular plane flight.
“So where exactly are we going, anyway?” asked Jack.
“You’ll see soon enough,” said Mira. “The Jade Circle is an old vampire clan, and as such, they’ve remained closer to The Origin over the years.”
“The Origin?” he asked.
“It’s an old term,” said Mira. “It references the area in Eastern Europe that served as the hotbed for vampires throughout most of history. It holds no real significance or meaning outside of the fact that there was a time when vampires were powerful and organized enough to form their own communities there. Cities, even.”
“Are there any members of the Jade Circle from around that time?” asked Jack. “Given how long vampires can live?”
Mira flashed a smile at him.
“That’s a very good question,” she said. “I do not know, precisely. I am still considered to be rather young, by the standards of our people, and knowledge of vampires older than myself is difficult to come by in accurate detail. But I would keep that thought in mind, moving forward.”
Jack was about to ask another question when he felt a tug at the side of his suitcase. A slim teenager with a shaved head and androgynous features was trying to take his luggage from him. Jack furrowed his brow, unsure of how to react.
“Oh, where are my manners?” said Mira. “This is Aiden. My primary thrall.”
“Uh…” Jack let go of his suitcase, letting Aiden take it from him. “Nice to meet you.”
Aiden gave a small smile and a nod of the head. It was hard for Jack to tell whether the person he was dealing with was male or female off of appearance alone. He assumed male, given that Mira was primarily interested in men, as far as he knew.
She’d explained to him how vampires were only able to force themselves to feed on those they weren’t physically attracted to under desperate circumstances, and even then, it was an act with a threshold of shame involved with it.
“Aiden doesn’t speak much,” said Mira. “I found him trying to sell his body for drugs on the streets of Miami and just couldn’t get his boyish face out of my head.”
Jack nodded, though “boyish” was probably the last adjective that would have come to mind when describing Aiden’s face.
“Do you just feed on him?” asked Jack. “Or are the two of you, well, you know…?”
Mira let out a small, girlish chuckle, clearly amused by his reaction.
“Aiden is not attracted to women,” said Mira. “It’s how I prefer my thralls, in case you were
wondering. It helps me keep a tighter handle on my impulses while I’m feeding.”
“Right,” said Jack.
“Where is your thrall, anyway?” asked Mira. “We need to leave soon.”
“She had to run an errand,” said Jack. “She’ll be here any minute.”
He turned and scanned the airport’s entrance, expecting to see Ryoko at any second. There was someone heading through the security checkpoint, and as she drew nearer, Jack felt his breath catch in his throat.
Katie was walking toward Jack and Mira, pulling a small, wheeled suitcase behind her. She had on black yoga pants and a loose grey blouse, and her brown hair was tied back in a simple ponytail. She didn’t make eye contact with him, which only served to annoy Jack even more.
“Katie!” he snapped, as soon as she was within earshot. “What are you—”
“Ryoko still isn’t feeling well,” Katie said, cutting him off. “But I made sure that she was comfortable, just like you asked.”
Jack gaped at her. Mira made a curious humming noise and tapped a finger against her lips.
“You’ve enthralled this one, as well?” asked Mira. “I was under the impression that you valued her for her feistiness?”
Mira glanced over at Jack, raising an eyebrow. He had to work to keep his anger from showing in his expression. He couldn’t let himself think too much about whatever trick Katie must have played on Ryoko to usurp her role in their plan. He couldn’t react to that. At least, not now.
He couldn’t tell the truth, either. Katie had the power to sabotage not only Pierce’s plan, but Jack’s entire relationship with Mira. She was too clever for her own good, and Jack wasn’t entirely sure that he knew the full extent of what she was capable of.
“I didn’t exactly have a choice about it,” Jack said, forcing the words out. “It was unexpected. It just kind of happened.”
“Yes, well, that’s the way of things with thralls,” said Mira. “If you’d taken her as one back when I’d first suggested the idea, you would have saved yourself a great deal of time and exhaustion.”
Jack shrugged. He thought better of pointing out that he and Mira had still been enemies when she’d made that particular suggestion. She’d also gone so far as to steal their supply of anti-enthrallment potion ingredients in order to force the issue, which had very nearly worked as intended.
“Come now,” said Mira. “We need to get moving. Aiden, would you please be a dear and help Jack’s thrall with her luggage?”
Aiden moved to take Katie’s suitcase from her and headed for the door ahead of them. It led directly out onto the runway, which had a surprising amount of wind and noise. Jack used the opportunity to slip in closer to Katie and pull her just out of Mira’s earshot.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.
“Looking after myself,” whispered Katie. “And cleaning up your mess.”
Mira glanced back at them, and Jack tried to wipe the annoyance from his face. He followed her up the retractable stairway leading to the small jet they’d be flying on. A single pilot and a flight attendant waited off to one side, the former smoking a cigarette and the latter fixing her makeup in a small hand mirror.
“It’s so much more convenient to fly on a private jet,” said Mira. “I don’t think I’ll ever go back, now that I’ve made the switch. Oh! Sit here, dearest Jack. Right next to me!”
Each side of the aisle only had two adjacent seats, though they were larger and more comfortable-looking than the airline standard. Mira pulled him into the one next to her, keeping her arm linked with his and briefly letting her lips graze across his cheek.
“It’ll be a long flight,” said Mira. “But we’ll have the entire plane to ourselves. And plenty of time to get comfortable.”
From the seat behind Jack, Katie cleared her throat loudly. He gritted his teeth.
CHAPTER 8
Aiden and the rest of the flight crew made their way on to the plane, and the stairs slowly began to retract. Mira stood up and pulled an overhead screen down from the ceiling of the seat in front of them.
“We can watch a movie on the way,” she said. “Or five. It is a long flight, as I said.”
“And the plane will wait for us?” asked Jack. “To bring us back, once we’re finished?”
“I’ll let them know the day before we depart, and they’ll return to meet us,” said Mira. “Relax. I know you still might harbor some… mild suspicions about my motives. But I don’t intend for us to stay amongst the Jade Circle for longer than a few days, regardless of how our negotiations go.”
“That’s reassuring,” said Jack. “I guess.”
Mira gave him a knowing smile that made him question if she knew more than she was letting on.
“We still have a few minutes before takeoff,” said Mira. “Now would be a good time for us to feed.”
She waved a hand to Aiden, who immediately hurried over to her. He slid by Jack, sitting on top of Mira’s lap in her seat. Aiden was scrawny, and more than a little bit smaller than Mira, but it still looked ridiculous for her to have a grown adult in her lap.
Jack watched as Mira sank her fangs into Aiden’s neck. Aiden shivered, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head, and his muscles tensing slightly as Mira began to feast on his blood. She let out the occasional moan as she drank, which combined with the wet sucking noises of her lips and tongue made the process sound incredibly lewd.
“Jack,” said Mira, in between sips. “You’re amongst friends. There’s no need for you to hold back. Otherwise, you won’t get a chance to feed until the jet reaches altitude.”
“Uh…” Jack frowned and glanced at Katie, who didn’t look overly thrilled by the idea. “Is there a private place I can take her?”
“Oh, that’s just adorable,” said Mira. “You’re shy about feeding. I sometimes forget just how young and precious you still are. Very well. There is a bathroom through the door in the back. The space is a little cramped, but it will give you the privacy you desire.”
“Perfect.” Jack stood up, grabbed Katie’s hand, and unceremoniously pulled her down the aisle and into the bathroom.
It was more than a little cramped. Jack barely managed to get the door closed, and the restrictive space squeezed their bodies tight against each other. He tried to remember his anger and ignore the sensation of Katie’s soft breasts pressing into his shoulder.
“Unbelievable…” muttered Jack. “You are fucking unbelievable.”
“I could say the same about you.” Katie set her jaw and glared at him. “You were going to bring Ryoko, of all people, to face off against an entire vampire clan.”
“I’m not facing off against them,” hissed Jack. “And what the hell did you do to her, anyway? She’d better be okay.”
“I didn’t hurt her, Jack,” said Katie. “Jesus, who the fuck do you think I am? All I did was slip a sedative into her tea.”
“Against her will,” said Jack. “Don’t try to spin this like it’s no big deal.”
“If you’d been honest with me about what was going on last night, maybe the situation would have played out differently,” said Katie.
Jack scowled at her and tried to pull back. The movement only served to grind their bodies into even closer contact. One of Katie’s legs shifted past his, putting them in an undeniably compromising position.
“This isn’t on me, Katie,” said Jack. “Don’t try to pretend like it is.”
“This involves both of us, in case you forgot,” said Katie. “If Pierce decides to tell the Order of Chaldea about what he knows, I’ll be in nearly as much trouble as you’re currently in.”
“That doesn’t justify you taking matters into your own hands,” said Jack.
“What choice did I have?” asked Katie.
Jack exhaled through his teeth and shook his head.
“How did you even find out about the plan?” asked Jack. “Did you force Ryoko to tell you before you drugged her?”
/> Katie jutted her chin out at him, a motion that put their lips in dangerously close proximity.
“Pierce told me,” said Katie. “Without hesitation. Amazing, isn’t it? I hadn’t spoken to Pierce in over three years, and he still trusted me more than you did.”
“Well maybe he shouldn’t have,” said Jack. “And maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t be so quick to trust him, either. He’s basically blackmailing us for our cooperation, Katie.”
“He’s just doing his job,” she said. “He won’t be able to justify pushing the Order of Chaldea for leniency on our behalf without something to show for it.”
Jack shook his head, even though he knew that she had a point. He just couldn’t help being frustrated with her. He wanted to keep arguing, even if it was pointless now that they were basically at the point of no return.
“What about Bruce?” asked Jack. “We’re going to be gone for days, Katie. Is he really alright with letting his fiancée disappear like that?”
“For your information…” Katie hesitated, and blinked a couple of times. An edge of vulnerability entered her expression, and she had to clear her throat. “Bruce and I… are taking some time apart.”
“You’re… what?”
“We have been for a little over a week now,” said Katie. “It was his idea, not mine. We’ve still been living together, but we haven’t… we haven’t been sharing a bed.”
“Uh…” Jack wasn’t sure what to say. His anger felt suddenly useless in light of Katie’s shifting emotional state.
“We were at the party last night as friends,” she said. “Or maybe just for appearance’s sake. Bruce has even… Well, he’s been talking with someone else.”
“Who?”
Katie made a face of disgust.
“Do you remember my friend Synda?” she asked.
“Oh, that bitch,” said Jack. “Uh… Sorry, I guess?”
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