Thomas's Choice

by Tina Folsom

  Eddie’s gaze collided with Amaury’s.

  “Oh. Thomas hasn’t mentioned anything about you moving out.”

  Eddie swallowed. “I haven’t told him yet.” And he had no idea how and when to tell him.

  This was not a conversation he looked forward to, even though he knew he had to have it—soon, before things got out of hand. In the end, it would be best. They could simply be colleagues and friends with a clear boundary between them that neither would cross again.

  13

  Thomas entered the windowless room and perused it. Nothing had changed. It was sparsely furnished with a couple of benches, a rack with various ropes and chains, and several whips, canes, and other tools used for flagellation. He possessed most of them himself and stored them in his basement in a room he’d used for sexual games with his various partners. Mild bondage and self-flagellation had all been part of his regular routine, but since Eddie had moved in with him, he’d barely used the room. Certainly not for any sexual games with other men. He’d only on occasion used it to flog himself whenever he’d felt his dark power rise. He’d beat it back into submission by using a cattail whip usually made of knotted cords, the same kind of tool the members of Opus Dei had used during private prayer. Only, he wasn’t praying.

  And tonight, he needed something more than just the mild flogging he could deal himself. He needed a firmer hand that could beat his dark power into submission.

  Thomas walked to the sink in one corner and took off his jacket, letting it fall onto the chair next to it. When he pulled the T-shirt over his head, he could clearly see the deep cuts his claws had left on his stomach. They hadn’t healed yet and would only do so once he’d had a few hours of restorative sleep and sufficient fresh human blood.

  He opened the button of his leather pants and slid the zipper down. Tossing off his boots and socks, he finally stripped naked. His cock was semi-erect, a reaction to the smell of Eddie’s semen that still clung to his hands. He’d not washed it off him, but simply wiped it on his T-shirt, although he’d run home to get his motorcycle and would have had an opportunity to clean up if he’d wanted to.

  Thomas stared at the sink. He could wash his hands now and make this easier on himself by not being reminded constantly of what he couldn’t have. But he’d never been one to take the easy route when there was a more challenging one he could choose instead. Did that make him a masochist?

  The cracked mirror didn’t give him any answers—there was no reflection in it.

  Slowly he turned and walked toward the rack. It was of simple construction, with several bars anchored in the floor and reaching up to the ceiling. On a crossbar, several leather straps hung suspended. Thomas reached up and slid his hands into the loops, pulling down on them so they tightened around his wrists. While his vampire strength made it possible for him to rip free of the restraints, he liked the illusion of being tied up and feeling powerless.

  It all helped him trick the dark power back into submission. The dark power felt everything his body felt. If Thomas was in pain and felt at the mercy of his tormentor, so was the dark power inside him. It would believe that it wasn’t as powerful as it was and retreat, afraid of being destroyed. As long as he could pretend to be powerless, he had a chance of defeating the evil inside him. It was the reason he liked to play the submissive partner, even though he was anything but. Whenever his dominant side emerged, his dark power appeared with it and broke through the surface, just as it had earlier.

  His true nature was to be dominant and strong. Kasper had seen that in him. That’s why he’d chosen him and given him his blood. Blood that was evil to the core. Blood that made him want to do terrible things. He’d been fighting against it every day of his life, ever since he’d left Kasper. Back then, he’d thought that once he withdrew from Kasper’s influence, the thirst for power would subside, but he’d been wrong. It was still there, running through his body like an undercurrent, like a dangerous riptide that nobody noticed until it was too late.

  Thomas spread his legs and focused his gaze on the wall ahead of him. He took deep breaths, readying himself for what was to come. His heartbeat slowed. By the time the door opened a few minutes later, he was entirely calm and ready.

  Footsteps approached. He didn’t turn, not wanting to see who the man was who would deliver his punishment. When it was over, he would wipe the person’s memory so nobody would ever find out what had happened here. He’d done it many times before, and tonight wouldn’t be the last time.

  “The leather cat,” Thomas instructed simply. It was a flogger with nine long leather strips.

  The hardest leather had been used to fashion it. It was what he needed tonight.

  The man didn’t answer, but Thomas heard him take one of the tools from the wall and step closer.

  Thomas’s palms tightened around the straps. Simultaneously, he clenched his teeth, preparing himself.

  Without warning, the first lash whipped across his naked back. Pain radiated through his body, making him cry out involuntarily. He sucked in a quick breath, but there was no relief in sight: the second lash followed instantly. Then a third and a fourth. His skin broke, and he smelled the blood that started oozing from the open wounds. It mingled with the scent of the human who was flogging him with unerring precision.

  He felt the dark power inside him wanting to fight back against his punisher. Thomas gritted his teeth. “Harder!” he ordered the stranger.

  The man complied without a word, slashing the flogger over Thomas’s back with more ferocity now.

  “Yes!” he cried out. He would beat the dark power. He would win this battle! He had to.

  Losing wasn’t an option. Losing meant destruction.

  As the pain became sharper and more intense, Thomas tried to separate his mind from his body. He focused on the wall in front of him as if wanting to drill holes into it. Every lash tried to pull him back and made him lose focus. Every bolt of searing pain that shot through his entire body made his gums itch. His fangs begged to be released, hungering for a vicious bite. They wanted to drive into the man who was flogging him, to punish him, to destroy him. But he fought against the urge to harm the man.

  Instead, he focused back on the wall, on the emptiness of it. He inhaled, but the scent he picked up was Eddie’s. It was still there, still tormenting him. He closed his eyes, and suddenly every lash of the whip felt like a caress by Eddie’s hands. As if Eddie were stroking his back.

  “Lower!” he ordered. And his mind gave the men another order. Gentler!

  The whip moved lower, the leather strips lashing over his ass. He didn’t feel the pain this time. He felt a firm touch, the touch of Eddie’s hands on him. His fingers spreading over his backside, sliding down, caressing him.

  “Yes!” Thomas cried out.

  Every single leather strip felt like a finger sliding gently over his ass. When one caught in his crack, Thomas groaned out his pleasure. His cock hardened, curving against his stomach, yearning for release.

  “More,” he begged. “More!”

  Again and again, the whip touched his ass and his mind conjured up the feeling of Eddie’s hands stroking him with more passion, more determination. Again he felt the pressure between his ass cheeks. And again, he cried out. Bending forward as much as the restraints around his wrists allowed, he offered his backside for a more thorough flogging.

  On the next stroke, his fangs extended and a bolt of lust shot through him. The whip lashed at him again, and this time it not only hit the full length of his crack, it also touched his balls, sending a shot of electricity right into his cock. His balls pulled up, tightening.

  His eyes shot open. Fuck! He was going to come.

  The flogger changed his angle, cracking the whip not from above, but from below now, hitting his balls again. His vision blurred. Without thinking, Thomas ripped his right hand free of the restraints and gripped his cock. With the same hand with which he’d pleasured Eddie, he now tugged on his own cock, jerki
ng it up and down in vampire speed, while the flogging continued.

  He closed his eyes, once again imagining the leather strips that slashed his ass and slipped into his crack to be Eddie’s caressing fingers that drove into him to explore him.

  With a groan, he exploded, shooting his seed against his stomach, letting it rain over his hand. He hadn’t planned this. It was meant to be a simple flogging session. That he’d gotten so aroused that he hadn’t been able to restrain himself, masturbating in front of the stranger who’d flogged him, hadn’t been part of the plan. He could only blame his ever-growing need for Eddie.

  He had to do something to crush it.

  14

  Thomas closed the door behind him and stepped out into the street. He’d wiped the guy’s memory and had gotten dressed in a hurry. Blood had started crusting over his wounds, but the pain was still fresh. His ass hurt like hell, but it had been worth it. He’d never come so hard and so fast before. He’d only needed a few strokes with his own hand before he’d climaxed. Eddie was the most powerful fantasy he’d ever had.

  These days it didn’t take much to get him aroused. One thought of Eddie was enough, and he was as hard as a crowbar. Each evening when he got up, the first thing he did was jump in the shower and masturbate to fantasies of Eddie and him making love. And every day when he went to sleep, he lay in his bed, his hand around his hard-on, imagining Eddie naked in front of him, watching him. And then he imagined Eddie lowering himself onto the bed and burying his head between Thomas’s spread legs, sucking his cock into his mouth. Every day, he fell asleep to that image.

  Now he had more details to add to his fantasies: he knew what Eddie’s cock felt like, and how his body moved, how he’d thrust into his hand with such passion, as if he’d meant it. And he knew now how Eddie kissed. How soft his lips felt, how his tongue tasted. He’d felt Eddie shudder in his arms when he’d licked his fangs. It had been the sweetest of victories. But it hadn’t lasted.

  Thomas rubbed his chin. He could still feel Eddie’s fist slamming into his face, raw anger shooting from his eyes when he’d come to his senses. He wasn’t gay, Eddie had professed. And he’d only done it to fool the four vampires on their tail.

  Bullshit!

  There was something else to it. No straight man would kiss another man like this and respond to a hand job with as much enthusiasm as Eddie had if there wasn’t something else going on.

  There had to be! He didn’t want to believe that Eddie had simply put on a show. He wanted to hope that there was more between them.

  Thomas reached his parked motorcycle and pulled the key from his pocket.

  “Did it help?” a male voice asked from behind him.

  Thomas swiveled on his heels and stared at the dark figure stepping out from the shadow of the adjacent building. The man was dressed in dark clothes that looked casual yet expensive. His hair was cropped short, his face even and somewhat pale. There was no doubt the man was a vampire—one he’d never seen. Dark power swirled around him, mingling with his aura. It was weak, but it was there nevertheless. He recognized its signature immediately.

  But Thomas had no intention of engaging with the vampire who carried Kasper’s blood. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  A nonchalant smile played around the stranger’s lips. “Oh, we’ve all tried it, and eventually given in. It doesn’t work. Not for long anyway. The power is stronger. It’ll break through when you least expect it.”

  “What do you want?” Thomas barked.

  “Wasn’t that evident from my letter? I’m sorry, I didn’t sign it. I’m Xander.”

  That the letter had come from him was no surprise. Only one of Kasper’s disciples could have written it. Because only they knew about the dark power that Kasper’s blood had brought to all of them.

  Thomas clenched his teeth. “Are you trying to threaten me?”

  “On the contrary. I’ve been sent to ask you to join us. You’re one of us, you can’t deny that.”

  “I’ll never be one of you!” he cried out, feeling his fangs lengthen.

  “You say that now, but once you feel the power grow stronger, you won’t be able to resist.

  His blood is strong in you, stronger than in the rest of us. You were one of his first.”

  “I destroyed that power. Just like I destroyed Kasper.” Which wasn’t technically the truth— Rose had shot Kasper, or Keegan as he’d called himself then, though Thomas would have killed him had Wesley not interfered in the fight and broken his concentration with a spell of witchcraft. But that was beside the point. He’d effectively brought about Kasper’s death.

  “Destroyed Kasper?” Xander asked, a look of confusion on his face. “Not likely.”

  “Yes, just like I’ll destroy you if you don’t get out of my life.”

  Xander’s eyes didn’t show any fear at Thomas’s threat. “There are many of us. He created an army. More are coming each day. Collectively, we’re strong. You’ll soon feel it. You’re nearly as strong as he. You can feel us already, can’t you?”

  Thomas shook his head, trying to deny Xander’s claim, even though he knew it was true. He could feel the power coming from Xander. And now he also realized that he must have gotten a faint whiff of it from the four vampires he’d encountered earlier in the night. “I’m stronger than Kasper. Because I can resist the evil in me. He couldn’t.”

  “Not all power is evil.”

  Thomas scoffed. Kasper hadn’t done a single thing in his life that wasn’t considered evil.

  He’d been rotten to the core. “Could have fooled me! If you believe that, then you obviously didn’t see the atrocities Kasper committed with his power. You didn’t see the pain he inflicted just because he could. Don’t confuse me with Kasper. I’m nothing like him.”

  The stranger stepped closer. “It doesn’t matter what you think you are, or what lies you’re telling yourself. Over time, his blood will take over. It will make you into what you’re supposed to be. You’ll accept the dark power within you, and you’ll come back to the throne he built.”

  Xander’s words were spoken with such determination that a shiver ran down Thomas’s spine. He fought against the sensation of dread that tried to engulf his body.

  “Throne?” Thomas expelled a bitter laugh. “I want no throne that’s built on death and destruction and the tears of women and children. I want no part of it.”

  “You have no choice!”

  Thomas grabbed Xander’s throat and slammed him against the wall of the building behind him so fast, the stranger couldn’t even blink. “I have a choice. I have free will. And I’m exercising it. You hear me? I’ve made my choice the day I left Kasper. He knew it, he just couldn’t accept it.” He released the man and took a step back. “Now leave. I never want to see you on my turf again. None of you. Leave this town, or I’ll be coming after you.”

  Thomas turned in vampire speed and jumped onto his motorcycle, racing away without looking back. He would never do the things Kasper had done. Evil things . . .

  London, England, 1897

  Thomas let the entrance door to the mansion he shared with Kasper and a few others of their kind snap in behind him, shutting out the chilly night air. Jeeves, the butler, a spindly man with a crooked nose, took the cloak from his shoulders while Thomas stripped off his gloves and tossed them onto the table in the foyer.

  He’d been out on his own, feeding, since Kasper had said that he needed to attend to some business. “When Master Kasper returns, have a bath prepared to our rooms.”

  The butler folded the cloak over his forearm and bowed. “But, sir, Master Kasper is already home.”

  “Impossible! He was on his way to Whitechapel when I left him. You must be mistaken.”

  Jeeves straightened his shoulders. “Master Kasper often surprises us by appearing unexpectedly. Maybe he simply changed his plans.”

  Thomas wrinkled his forehead. The butler was right. Kasper made a habit of showing up when and where he was le
ast expected. He seemed to be ubiquitous. It was at times irritating and unsettling.

  “Where is he now?” Thomas demanded.

  “Downstairs. But he asked not to be disturbed.”

  Thomas’s hackles went up. Was Kasper having an assignation with another man? While Thomas was fully aware that Kasper fucked whomever he wanted to, whether female or male, the thought that these trysts happened under the roof they shared was something Thomas couldn’t stomach. They had agreed that whatever fornication happened outside of their relationship would take place outside of their home.

  Thomas’s fangs lengthened and a low snarl ripped from his lips. Jeeves took a step back. The human was aware that he worked for vampires, and had in fact been in Kasper’s employ for many years, easily controlled by mind control and generous wages. He was loyal to Kasper.

  “Who’s with him?”

  Jeeves lowered his lids halfway. “Nobody, sir.”

  “You’re a worse liar than I am, Jeeves,” he replied and strode toward the door that led into the basement of the building.

  “Sir, please, the master . . . ” he called after him, but Thomas ignored him, taking two steps at a time to descend into the cellar.

  It smelled musty and damp. Electrical lights had been installed, lining the long corridor. It was an improvement over the old gaslights that he remembered from his father’s country house.

  Kasper kept up with technology and whenever a new invention was publicized, Kasper was one of the first to give it a try.

  A sound came from one of the rooms at the end of the corridor, and his feet carried him closer, his chest tightening, his hands balling into fists, jealousy charging through his veins.

  Thomas ripped the door open without knocking. He smelled the human instantly, but Kasper wasn’t feeding from a human, nor was he fucking one. Thomas’s entire body revolted at what his eyes perceived within a split second.

  A woman was tied to a rack on the wall, her pregnant belly sticking out prominently. He’d rarely seen pregnant women in society, since they confined themselves to their homes once they were increasing, but from a friend of the family he’d seen during her confinement, he realized, judging by the size of the woman’s belly, that she was within weeks, if not days, of giving birth.