Dante’s World 4: Crimson Nights

by Willa Okati

  Fox. The name chilled Ransom to the bone now that he was properly awake. A real dirty piece of work, Fox the vampire. He felt a bit sick to his stomach. His subconscious was getting seedier than one of the downtown underground stations.

  Ugh.

  He decided to ignore the first round of the town crier and smashed his face into his pillow. Only his own scent there, none of Fox’s vampire smell or the spicy cologne he’d worn.

  Good.

  No, fucking great.

  Fox the vampire. Ransom snorted. There was a nightmare, eh?

  * * *

  Fox straightened his hair and sighed, wishing he could still see himself in the mirror of the highly guarded townhouse he’d ‘appropriated’ for his own uses. Shame. He’d been a handsome devil once upon a time, as he recalled, but there’d be no telling what he looked like now. Double shame. He’d have liked to see the whisker burn that tingled on his cheeks and look across, not down, at the finger-shaped bruises on his upper arms.

  All the same, he figured he was pleased enough with what his appearance happened to be. Leila, his sister vampire, not half so feared or well known as he himself, would be bitch enough to comment about him playing with his food if she noticed, but who cared about her? H’ran, the only vampire Fox answered to, might pick up on the sex-rumpled look, but he’d just be pleased things were going according to plan.

  After all, seducing a seer had been his idea. Not that Fox minded. He’d been pleasantly surprised with how randy the young Ransom could be, all the spicier for the demon tang to his sweat and his skin. If he were to be saddled with a partner, he couldn’t have chosen one he’d liked better. The vision thing, well, that was just icing on a whiskey-soaked cake. His very favorite.

  He laughed to himself, thinking on how confused Ransom would have been right about then. If he did say so himself, he’d done a fantastic job of dusting the man with sleeping powder as they’d fucked, knocking him out after the last of the show and giving Fox a chance to tidy up a bit. Ransom ought to be wondering just what the hell had happened, if it were a strange new dream or a real encounter, which amused the hell out of Fox.

  Oh, yeah, it’d been a nice set of concoctions H’ran had come up with, letting him slip past Ransom’s natural defenses the way he had, first by a pinch in his drink, then another, and finally a dose passed from tongue to tongue, until the curly-headed half-demon was wholly and entirely under his spell. Fox patted the pocket of his tightly-fitted pants where a small bulge betrayed the packet of deeply enchanted herbs he had left over.

  Of course, this wasn’t the whole battle, not at all. Fox grinned as he imagined H’ran cautioning him to be careful. They’d won a single skirmish, not the war. Still had to coax Ransom over to their side, away from his hard-knock life as a laborer and into service. Into his life as a full-time lover.

  As for himself, Fox looked forward to every second of the clash and fray.

  * * *

  Ransom was in a foul mood when he got home from work a couple of weeks later, which was no surprise. He’d gotten to where he was just about afraid to go to bed, no matter how tired his mind, how his muscles ached to stretch out, or how weary he was. The way he figured, something out there had it in for him to send him the same variations on a dream almost unendingly. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to conclude the following, which was that the gods had: A) a really, and that did mean really, really shitty sense of humor; B) a grudge against him; C) some trick hidden so far up their sleeve it’d be past the elbow; or, D) all of the above.

  As Ransom stripped the sheets from his bed for the fourteenth time in as many days, he reckoned sourly that he already knew the answer to that particular riddle. D, definitely D. There’d be no other reason for the torment he’d gone through over the particular cycle of visions, dreams, and mind-diddling as he’d had over the past couple weeks.

  He wiped his hand on a clean corner of his working trousers, wrinkling his nose from the mixed smell of his own honest sweat and the heavy smell in his rooms. God, the place reeked of male climax, salty and musky. Not something he disliked, mind, it was just he’d rather have a little say in the matter. And he hadn’t -- not once -- been given the chance to say no.

  Every single time he closed his eyes to sleep, for the night or just a little snooze, there he was: the vampire Fox. Broad in the shoulders, lean in the hips. Either dressed for a nightwalker’s evening on the town, or slouching in thin denim pants that fit just a little too right and tight, or wearing nothing but his own skin. Fox himself, the damned and damnable hell-beast that he was, looking at Ransom with those whiskey-brown eyes radiating the one message he always came to deliver: “C’mere, baby. Give me a kiss. Then fuck me and let me fuck you until neither of us can stand up.”

  Gods! The thought gave Ransom a shock to the loins from just thinking about that rough voice, even while awake and cleaning up after himself.

  But who could blame him? Yeah, Fox had that kind of a look down to an art. You couldn’t miss it and most times anyone in their right mind wouldn’t want to. Ransom had never seen the like directed at him, but he recognized each glint and glimmer. Fox knew just the right amounts of heat and temptation to mix together to have his knees melting and other bits, Ransom’s cock in particular, springing to attention. A man could fall for such a look, whether it came from a vampire or no.

  Ransom was no fool. He knew the vampires were always and forever after demons and demonesses as their servants ever since they were discovered on Dante’s World, and he’d been extra-special careful… but maybe not quite cautious enough, even for a half-breed. All the same, he’d watched his steps. No one he knew had reason to suspect he was anything but one of the lads.

  So how’d he gotten so mixed up and confused? Was it the way the Fox in his dreams stared at him? When he’d looked at Ransom, he’d nearly been licking his lips. Sometimes he did. The vampire was so hungry for Ransom that he could jump on him and eat him alive, showing no mercy.

  Sometimes, he did.

  No, the hell with “sometimes”. Try every night. Every fucking night. While Ransom was meant to be resting, his mind was occupied with being a right active sex fiend -- and with Fox, always Fox.

  It was going to drive him absolutely around the bend.

  Ransom sighed as he tucked in a corner of the last blanket. He was a man who had a fair turn of mind, and to give the dream-vampire credit, he offered up a good deal of variety once they got down to things, didn’t he? Fox didn’t seem to mind being the one on his knees or on his back, or the one with his head buried between Ransom’s legs, sucking hard at his cock until Ransom spilled heavy loads of seed into his mouth. He did like things the other way around, mind you, but he seemed amiable enough about taking things in turn and turn-about.

  “Wouldn’t want things to get boring, would we?” Ransom snarked at the ceiling, really hoping that something was listening.

  Their little trysts came about in so many ways. Could be they’d meet and they’d greet in the bed, always the bed, sometimes with the leftovers of a picnic or a board game that they’d been sharing or playing between them. But always, after a few bites or turns, they’d move on to other things with a nasty, wicked, secret thrill of having a one-night-stand -- even if they did happen to come together every night.

  Or on the other hand, Ransom might swim up through the fog of ordinary dreams to find Fox already ready for him, cozied up bare-ass naked and laughing. But no matter what, most often at first, and always at the last, they were having at each other like beasts, one buried to the balls in the other’s ass and giving it holy what-for.

  Now, it wasn’t the man-on-man thing that bothered Ransom. If it weren’t for Fox being a vampire and himself part demon, he reckoned he’d have set about finding a way of getting into those pants within five minutes of meeting the bastard. Eminently fuckable, that one.

  Standing with a pillow in his hands, Ransom lost himself in an ordinary daydream, picturing how things might hav
e gone down if he and Fox had come together for some ordinary tryst. He figured Fox to be the type who would rather top, given the choice. The man would pin your wrists down above your head while you spread wide as you could to let him lie nice and comfortable between your legs. With the way he swaggered, you could tell Fox had a hell of a cock on him.

  Ransom swayed, imagining himself a virgin to the whole scenario. Imagining Fox’s prick as if he were seeing it for the first time, wondering how that’d feel, nudging deep inside his ass. Now, there was a pretty picture to set his pulse a-thumping and his prick a-twitching.

  Sometimes he thought he should take off into the taverns again and hunt himself down someone as far different from Fox as possible, someone tall and blond and muscled from head to toe, but he couldn’t even bring himself to step inside a drinking establishment -- him, who’d been a seven-pint man in his day!

  Not only that, Ransom couldn’t so much as go from start to finish with a fantasy about just such a man, not truly, when he drifted off into idle daydreams during breaks at work. Sure, he might start by thinking of peeling ordinary coveralls from strong, sun-browned limbs, but sooner rather than later he’d find himself imagining tugging the leathers off a tough, ivory-colored vampire whose lazy drawl urged him on to all sorts of depravity, might the gods help him.

  Then, he’d have to go and hide his hard-on from the fellows. Although some might have thought it was for them, with the way he’d be staring off into space and come to himself to find out he’d been gazing at a bloke he worked with. As to that, well, he didn’t so much mind. The men at work were a live-and-let-live type. He’d been put down a time or two, but kindly. So far. Someone who took violent objection… well, that would be something Ransom figured he’d like to postpone for -- oh, forever, that’d do nicely.

  And he didn’t want one of the blokes from work, not really. They’re solid and ham-fisted, and that sort of man wasn’t for the likes of him; never had been, never would be. He liked men the way he liked women: supple and limber, able to take things slow and easy, maybe a little seedy, and safe, above all else safe, with no guesswork involved.

  It was definitely best that no one else knew. Ransom figured the few other vampires he’d seen in passing weren’t clueless, what with preternatural senses and all that, but Ransom was either beneath their notice, or they just didn’t want to know why he smelled like the hormones put off from the back room of a brothel twenty-four seven. The aroma probably inspired either jealousy or a wobbly tummy.

  Although he had caught a neighbor or two subtly sniffing the air around him as he passed them on the stairs. When that happened Ransom blushed, thanked mercy for their live-and-let-live silence, and hopefully got along home safely -- ha, safely! -- without an altercation. Things had worked out so far, anyway.

  Was it so bad, then, to have these lovely nightly sex dreams?

  Hells, yes, it was! At least he could be damned sure he’d only been dreaming. Every time he woke with the front of his sleep trousers soaked or his sheets a soppy mess, there’d be nothing but his own come there. No foreign look, taste, or smell to the stuff. No lube slathered between his ass cheeks, no soreness from being all but split in two, or the kind of beautifully chafed dick a man got by giving someone a proper seeing-to.

  Ordinary dreams. Rides on the night mare. Nothing but by-products of the mind.

  Thank any small gods who looked out for half-breeds. Were any of this actually real, Ransom didn’t know what he’d do.

  Course, he wasn’t so sure what his next best move would be, either.

  * * *

  That night, he managed to stay awake until past the turn of the clock, till fully one in the morning, and no visitors, no, not a one. Trouble was, a hard-working man -- demon -- needed some sleep. Problem, though, was that he doubted he’d get any decent rest if he did drift off, even if there were no dreams -- he couldn’t help it, he was just that damned jumpy. Problem two, the way his mind wouldn’t stop working over and over visions of the vampire coming to him. Gods help him but he’d had to jerk off, coming so hard that it felt like he hadn’t gotten off in months, all but humping at the air and spurting out thick pulses of jizz.

  Maybe if he slept on his beat-up old couch? He’d bought the thing a few months back for the occasional guest he hoped to invite home, so they’d have a place to sit besides the bed, but what with one thing or another it’d become home to all the bits and bobs a man accumulated, and besides, he’d figured out fast why it’d been such a cheap bargain. Had a peculiar aroma of its own, it did, not unlike sex, but more like pussy than dick and ass. That’d teach him to buy from a bawdy house, so it would.

  Besides, he’d sat on it once or twice when there was still room, and learned that it followed the Inter-Dimensional Rule of Springs -- no matter where you lit, one of them would be jabbing you in the buttocks. Catching a nap on that, even if he could clear it off, was just plain out.

  The one chair he owned? Ransom eyed it warily. Not that comfortable on its best days, but it did recline if you worked the handle just right. Not a cheap plastic model, either, so there’d be no sticking of the material to uncomfortable bits. That, plus a pillow; that might do.

  He ran a tired hand over his face. Ah, hell, it’d have to do, wouldn’t it? Foolish as it might be, he couldn’t help thinking that if he lay down in the bed, it’d barely be a blink of the eyes before Fox was there to join him, just as he had, just as he’d continue to do unless Ransom stopped him.

  And by the gods, he had to be stopped. ‘Twas far too dangerous for a half-demon who didn’t want any master to be toying around with a vampire who could bind him as its servant -- for so he’d learned they could do, with blood or sex or both, if the demon didn’t go willingly.

  Mercy help him, he was almost willing. But he valued his freedom, he did, and so he’d fight until the last, win or lose.

  Down in the chair he went, then. The old thing turned out to be surprisingly comfortable. No pokey or pointy bits, and it molded around his joints like a nice, well-worn blanket. As a whole the construction creaked a little, but that was only to be expected, and once he’d settled himself…

  I must have been more tired than I’d realized, he thought as he yawned. Right, he could still catch a few hours before the town crier started his hue and cry, and it’d be time to get up and straggle into work.

  Then, he was asleep.

  And he was dreaming.

  And damn it all if Fox wasn’t right there, waiting for him.

  The dream had changed, this time. They were outside, and it was the kind of early not-quite-morning Ransom remembered from his childhood in the mountains. Not the sunny city idyll kind of day, but dark gray and misted over, a little chilly, a little damp. Fox’s hair was curling up from the moisture in the air, and he wore a thick blue cable-knit sweater against the cold.

  Huh. Did vampires feel the chill? Well, if nothing else, this had to be the most clothes Ransom had seen on the bloke in a long time, even if his battered denims did look like they’d been dabbed on with a brush. He wore high boots with a short heel on those elegant feet, though the leather wasn’t new but beaten into a comfortable fit.

  Ransom gave himself a hard shake.

  The movement didn’t help much. Fox grinned at him, leaning up against a thick, leafy tree. His hands were casually tucked in his pockets and his hips canted forward a bit. “You took long enough tonight,” he drawled. “I’d thought for sure after last night’s fuck, when you had me twisted up into a fisherman’s knot, you’d be running back for more.”

  Ransom could feel his cheeks color as the vampire tipped his head back in pleasure. “You,” Fox said, withdrawing one hand to lazily stroke his chest, “are one fine fuck, you know? You’ve got the tools, and you know the trade. Every time I take a step I can still feel you drilling right through me.”

  “Glad enough that I can’t recall it,” Ransom lied. On account of he did remember, every second of that hot velvet squeezing around hi
s cock, Fox writhing beneath him as his thrusts lost their rhythm and he went straight for speed. He’d been wanting more, more, deeper, harder, gaining ground but still hunting for more. There had been open-mouthed kisses, wet and hot over Fox’s flexing shoulder blades as he gripped the bedposts hard and called out Ransom’s name.

  Fox pulled his other hand out of its pocket and stroked down the length of the bulge between his legs. “You ready to go again, Ransom?” he asked, voice husky. “I could stand another taste of you tonight. Except this time I want to make my mark on you. Want to pound you into this ground right here until you leave claw marks in the turf. Such a pretty place to be. People might walk by later, and they’ll puzzle over the scratches you’ve made. Now what, they’ll wonder, leaves that kind of track? But you’ll know. And I will, too.”

  His voice washed over Ransom, dark-brown sugar syrup rough-edged with lust. “I can smell you from here,” he said. “Cheap whiskey from that bottle you hide in your room, the traces of spunk, and the last little bits of soap from a shower you must have taken after work. Good thing we’re not in a bar. I hate the smoke from those torches. Stops me from scenting you.”

  “From tracking me down?” Ransom demanded.

  Fox shrugged easily. “Call it what you want. I always do find you, though, or you find me.”

  Which was true enough. Ransom shifted uneasily. Then he blurted, without meaning to, “Why’s it always got to be sex, then?”

  Fox lifted a lazy eyebrow. “There’s a change. I never heard you complaining before, Ransom. From what I recall, you like what we do just fine each and every time.” He pushed off of the tree and moved in closer, ambling slowly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but to clever eyes appearing graceful as a snake weaving toward its prey.