Loving the Man
Marie Treanor
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Copyright ©2007 Marie Treanor
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ISBN: 978-1-59596-487-8
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Editor: Crystal Esau
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Loving the Man
Marie Treanor
The vampire Katia holds only contempt for humans. She has no reason to spare David, whom she encounters digging up pre-apocalypse “artifacts” on the edges of the City. And yet she lets him go. Her very desire drives her away from him.
But David has other ideas. A man with no mutant “gifts,” yet he is unafraid of either her superior strength or her vampire nature. Instead, he risks his life for a moment of her time, pursuing her relentlessly until Katia recognizes her own human passions, and her importance in the city’s past and future is revealed.
Chapter One
The man picked his way across the rubble like one who had been there before. Swift and sure-footed, he appeared to know exactly where he was going.
This intrigued Katia, since she hadn’t been aware there was anywhere to go to. From her charred, glass-less window, she could see only a massive pile of rubble and boulders, interspersed with the odd steel rafter, torn and perished rubber and other general rubbish. It stretched as far as the other distant, ruined building, which had no doubt also contributed to the rubble at one time. On one side it sloped down to the toxic river, cluttering that up too, and at the other it just seemed to peter out. Eventually.
Yet the man strode purposefully across this wasteland, occasionally using his hands to get over the most difficult terrain, but never hesitating or even pausing to check direction. His hair was blond, longish so that it curled around the collar of the long, wool coat he wore. And across his shoulder, he carried a ragged canvas bag. It appeared to be empty.
Katia was hungry. But curiosity got the better of her. Through the eternal dusk, she had watched the man arrive in a bashed up little car, driving down the long, straight road from southern lands she had long forgotten. It was the unusual motion that had first got her attention as she had looked out over the bleak landscape and contemplated going back into the city for sustenance. The little car had kept going at a steady pace, swerving around craters and burnt out vehicles from the past, and hadn’t stopped until it parked on the clear area a few yards to the left of Katia’s window.
She should have jumped him then and assuaged her hunger. Only entertainment had been lacking recently and the man’s oddity intrigued her. Getting out of the car, he had closed the door and locked it. Locked it! With a key! Now there was a blast from the past! But then, so was the car. Katia wondered where the hell he’d got the petrol.
The man stopped and began to move boulders and lumps of concrete. He did it scientifically, picking them with deliberation and placing them rather than hurling them. Then, when he’d created a space -- a hole that amounted to a rough doorway -- he simply jumped through it.
Katia waited no longer. Springing onto her window ledge, she leapt the short two stories to the ground. She was already running when she landed, sprinting across the difficult rubbled terrain far faster even than the man who had gone before her. Her long, black hair flew out behind her. Her body rejoiced in the exercise, in the uninhibited stretching of her limbs.
At the man-made hole in the rubble, she paused and looked in without fear. She literally couldn’t remember the last time she’d been afraid.
It was indeed a doorway. There was a short drop into what was left of a large store-room full of books and paper files and computer disks. Some of the shelves had buckled or been knocked over by a couple of fallen ceiling rafters, but for the most part it was intact. And crouched among the rows of stacks was her man, a small battery torch in one hand and a short pile of books already forming at his side.
Memory stirred. At the start of the war, they’d moved thousands of books and records from the universities and put them in a supposedly secure storehouse between the two cities. She’d never been here, never had cause to and, she recalled, no desire to. A long dead interest stirred and was quickly squashed. Learning and science were so far in the past -- for her and the rest of the world -- that they weren’t even worth remembering.
However, they burned well, dry paper books. Useful for starting fires, though they burned too quickly to create warmth for very long… So was the man collecting firewood and fuel for his family?
She didn’t expect him to sense her presence and he didn’t. After all, she’d picked up his own scent -- pure human male -- as soon as he’d left his car. He wouldn’t be able to smell her and was almost as unlikely to see her in the gloom. Leaving him to carry on pulling books systematically off the shelves, Katia turned and picked her way back across the rubble to his beaten up old car.
Interestingly, there was glass in the windscreen. The rest of the windows were boarded up with wood or battered metal sheets, leaving narrow slits on either side open to the air. Katia peered through the mud spattered windscreen, and blinked.
It had been a long time since anything had surprised her, but the contents of the man’s car certainly did. It was packed to the gunnels with rubbish. Wood and metal scraps, what looked like various kinds and sizes of engines, flasks and containers of unidentifiable liquid, books, magazines, two small sheets of unbroken glass balanced on top of a pile of clothes or blankets. There were boots, rubber tires, a pump, something that looked suspiciously like a laptop computer, boxes full of objects piled on top of each other, almost to the roof.
He could have a damn fine fire with that stuff.
“Can I help you?”
The voice spoke behind her, quiet, unthreatening, calmly amused. Yet instinct made her spin quickly to face him, before she remembered that he posed no possible threat to her. Irritated by her own reaction, she looked the man up and down.
He was easy on the eye. Tall, even taller than Katia, lean as most people were now, but far from unfit. There was strength in the broad shoulders supporting the now bulging canvas bag and in the hands that held a large pile of heavy books to his body. And though his jeans were ripped at both knees, his upper thighs were covered tightly enough to show the powerful muscles there.
Raking her eyes unhurriedly back upwards over his shapely crotch and hips, a flat stomach under the book pile, to his throat, she felt hunger stir. She could smell his blood, strong and spicy, calling to her. She saw the vein in his neck standing out, so prominent and delectable that it was an effort to lift her gaze to his face.
She supposed it was the sort of face she would once have liked. Strong boned, good-looking, with intense blue eyes from which humorous lines spanned attractively outward. There appeared to be humor too in the set of his full lips as he regarded her with a slightly twisted smile.
Katia repeated, “Can you help me? I suppose if anyone could, it would have to be you. Is t
here anything you don’t have in there?”
“If there is, I’ll find it in the end.” His eyes didn’t blink as they held her gaze unwaveringly.
“Good hunting?” she enquired, nodding at the pile of books in his arms. His gaze dropped instinctively and one of the books toppled off its precarious perch. Katia caught it easily, was grimly amused to see the impressed surprise cross his face at the speed of her movement.
Playing with him, because she had been bored for so long, she opened the book.
“Dewer, eh? The old prof would be outraged to see his worthy tome used as bonfire fodder.”
“You speak with authority,” the man mocked lightly.
“Yes I do, don’t I? He was a grumpy, self-important old bastard.”
The man smiled, causing something she’d almost forgotten to stir in the base of her stomach. “You must be considerably older than you look.”
“Considerably,” Katia agreed dryly. “So where have you come from?”
“South,” said the man, still watching her. Unusually, she could read no fear in his eyes, which intrigued her before she realized he would have no reason to fear her. He had just arrived in the city. To him, she was just a woman, young and frail.
“I should warn you to be careful in this city,” she said thoughtfully. “The people here don’t like their resources being removed. In fact, they’re as likely to kill you as not to get at yours, so leaving your car-full of junk in the street is not very wise. The people here use axes rather than keys to unlock doors.”
“I know.”
Reaching past her, the man slid his key into the door and turned it. Though his arm brushed against her breast, she didn’t move aside. She rather liked the feel of it. She watched him deposit his book pile onto the seat and reach round for the canvas bag.
“You’ve been warned about this city? We don’t get many visitors.”
“I’m not a visitor. I’m a returning native.”
For some reason that shocked her. Yet she managed to smile as he straightened and turned back to face her.
“Then can you work out what I am? Since I was personally acquainted with Professor Dewer who died fifty years ago?”
The man shrugged. Apart from that, he stood very still. “Liar or vampire, it’s none of my business.”
She smiled. “I could make it your business.”
“You want a ride into the city?”
Katia stared at him, seriously beginning to doubt his sanity. “You’d offer a vampire a ride in your car?”
“Maybe you’re a liar.”
Surprised laughter caught in her throat. “I love an optimist.” She touched the coarse wool of his coat, tracing the line upward to his shoulder. “Maybe I can take you for a ride instead.”
There was a pause. “I’ve no doubt you could.” He stood unmoving as her fingers trailed from his shoulder to the bare skin of his neck. She heard his breath catch and stepped closer, inhaling the warm, strong smell of him. Human male, clean, healthy… she could hear his blood pumping, calling louder. Her nose hovered around his throat, her lips parted.
“Aren’t you afraid, human?” she whispered.
His Adam’s apple jerked as he swallowed. “What do you think?”
She gave a small, throaty laugh. Her hand moved down from his neck to his thick upper arm. Her other hand came up to hold its companion, and she pressed closer into him.
Against her abdomen, his crotch was already semi-hard. Smiling into his neck, she moved her hips against his and felt his cock grow.
“I think you should be afraid. Very afraid. Lying is one vice I don’t have. And I’m hungry. Very, very hungry.”
She flicked out her tongue, licking his vein. She felt like purring. The scent of his blood filled her, excited her, but more than that, the taste of his skin on her tongue was delicious, a little salty sweat, a lot of earthy human male, and something else, something unique that tugged at her memories and yet was new and rare. She just knew he would be good…
He stood still in her hold. Many did. The fear got them that way, paralyzed them. Others struggled in their terror, though it made no difference. She fed from them all anyway.
Lovingly, she teased her tongue around the vein, pushing back over its pulse. She closed her lips over it, brushed it with her teeth. His breathing was no longer so even. Belatedly, the fear was kicking in at last, although below, against her abdomen, she felt his cock still growing. That felt good too. Parting her legs to fit it between her thighs, she moved against it, emitting a tiny noise of pleasure deep in her throat. This would be a good feed, the best in years…
“What’s the matter with you, human?” she whispered into his skin. “Your reactions are slow. By now your manhood should have shriveled into your own body! Aren’t you afraid to die?” She nipped his neck with her sharp incisors, heard his breath hiss. “Or are you one of those sad humans who like to be bitten? Do you get off on that, human?”
Abruptly, she swung him round, pushed until he fell back across the car bonnet. She went with him, straddling him until her pussy fit neatly across his big, hard cock. “Or do you really, truly want to fuck me?”
Though his breath was uneven, and his heart pumped faster than ever, his eyes were dark, unreadable. He said, “I don’t think you’re offering to fuck. And no, I’m not afraid of dying right now. I don’t believe you’re going to kill me.”
Katia pushed herself down hard on his cock, saw him bite his lip. She laughed cruelly. “Don’t you? Well, maybe you’re right. I might let you live. It depends how good you taste, how much I want to fill myself with your… blood.”
Slowly, deliberately punishing him for his lack of fear, she leaned down to his neck once more, bracing her hands on his arms to hold any sudden jerks. Her lips closed on his vein, her teeth angled for the bite. For a second, she allowed the anticipation to flow, gave herself up to his heady scent, to the rare sexual thrill of his bone hard cock against her pussy. His heart beat under her, pumping that strong, sweet blood around his veins, just ready for her to drink.
And if she was honest, she liked that he wanted her. Most men had the urge to screw her, until they realized what she was, what she could and would do to them. Then their cocks shriveled against her. His didn’t. Because he didn’t believe she would bite him? Because his desire for her was so strong? One or the other. It didn’t matter which.
Did it?
She could let him fuck her and find out. She could pull down his jeans and impale herself on that huge bone right now. God knew she was wet enough for it to slide in easily, despite its size. She could ride him while she drank from him. She knew she would come, quickly and easily. That would be a first for her. Defiling herself with a human.
Did life get any lower?
She should just bite him, drain him, kill him, teach him not to fear her power, to imagine she would let him live after…
After what?
Christ!
With a gasp, she raised her head and stared at him. His eyes, his whole face, were curiously unquiet. Yet he didn’t stir, either to attempt seduction or escape. Only his lips moved, very slightly, in the faintest, most rueful smile.
Move, damn you! Try to throw me off, attack me so I can kill you…!
The smile began to die on his lips. Still he lay there, perfectly motionless.
“Bastard,” she whispered, and pushed herself off him.
Without looking back, she sprinted back to the building she’d first watched him from, leapt up through the window and kept running.
Chapter Two
David opened his eyes slowly. She’d really gone. For a moment longer, he let the warring relief and disappointment tear him apart.
He’d told her the truth. He really hadn’t believed that she would kill him -- then. But there had been a time, just before she vanished, when that had all changed. Suddenly, she had wanted to kill him, and David, who’d never doubted her ability, looked death in the face.
And then sh
e’d simply vanished, leaving him weightless and empty without the indescribably sexy pressure of her gorgeous body. Raging with unsatisfied desire, he felt dizzy with the knowledge that he was still alive.
David eased himself off the car bonnet, adjusting his uncomfortable crotch. His hands shook slightly, but already he was beginning to laugh at himself, at the figure of fun he would have presented to any watcher, spread-eagled across the car bonnet.
As he climbed into the car, he wondered if she was watching from some hidden vantage point, and every tiny hair stood up on the back of his neck. She was terrifying, her impossibly strong, supple limbs like steel when they gripped. Her eyes were inhumanly cold and callous, without pity or softness of any kind. Even when she’d rubbed herself so sensuously against his hungry cock, it had been calculating, mocking, like a cat playing with a bird. He was in no doubt that she held him in the utmost contempt.
And yet she was the most beautiful creature David had ever seen.
* * *
Driving into the city was another education. The suburbs looked much as always, relatively peaceful, the crumbling houses with their dead gardens mostly respectable in the unrelieved dusk. Then he had to stop at the security point.
Security points had been there for a while now -- mainly to keep out the dangerous riffraff from the inner city. Normally, David avoided them, sneaking around the gardens and lanes in the deepest darkness, as some other inner city dwellers did to raid the suburban safe food centers. But since it was impossible to sneak anywhere in the beaten up old car, he simply drove up to the security barricade, trying to look as unthreatening as possible.
It drew him lots of attention, especially when he said he was returning after a trip and meant to stay in the inner city.
One of the security men said sternly, “It’s dangerous outside the city.”
“It’s pretty dangerous inside,” David returned frankly.
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