by Cynthia Sax
I consider following her, but I’m trying to cool it with the stalking. She’ll be in the next room, I tell myself. I can’t follow her around like a puppy. I’ll be able to hear her heart beating; she’ll be so close.
I wait in the shiny, clean, professional-grade kitchen, as Charlotte hurries through the shop to talk to the green-haired wonder. God, I want to be with her.
I pivot on my heels, taking in the new pans and baking sheets. Everything is top of the line except for the rusted, dented mess of a muffin pan displayed over the icing station. That was her mother’s, and she was the woman Charlotte inherited her love of baking from. Although I had never met her, I know she would have been as proud of Charlotte as I am. It takes a strong woman to start a business on her own.
“I’m sorry. We’re closed.” Her words drift back to me. Charlotte is more patient than I am. I would have told the latecomer to fuck off. “I’m so sorry but --”
There’s a deafening bang, and a shattering of glass. I’m at her side in seconds, traveling at my top vamp speed, but even this is too slow.
“Viktor, I think I’ve been shot.” Charlotte’s expression is stunned disbelief, her hands covering the bullet hole in her chest, blood gushing through her fingers.
“My love.” I catch her as she falls, and I roar with rage. Someone dared to hurt my beloved! My fangs drop, and my nails extend into deadly claws.
“Red, everything is red, your eyes, my hands.” Her voice is weak. Forcing myself to calm down, a damn difficult task as I hunger for blood and vengeance, I sit on the tiled floor with her, pulling her plush body into my lap.
My Charlotte is dying, and I know what I have to do. I’ve known this since the first night our paths crossed. I have to strip my wonderful, warm, loving woman of her life, her world, and her humanity.
I questioned over the past two months if I could do it, if I was that selfish. I toyed with giving her a choice, but fate has taken the choice away from Charlotte, and the decision out of my hands. I will save her by killing her, making my sunshine love a creature of the night, like I am.
I brush her hair back with a tenderness I didn’t realize I have, and I sink my teeth into her neck. She doesn’t fight me as I drink from her, her blood as sweet and intoxicating as the woman I love.
While lying trustingly against me on the cold floor, she reaches up, and caresses my face with warm, sticky fingers. “Yes, bite me, baby. You’re so very kinky and I love it.”
I love her. I feed from Charlotte, taking her blood into me, until her hand drops and her heart slows.
As her life slips from her, I bite my wrist, and hold my vein to her lips, my blood pumping into her mouth. “Drink, Charlotte,” I coax when she resists, red staining her flesh. Her green-eyed gaze meets mine, and I nod, trying my best to look reassuring, which is not an expression I’ve ever been known for.
She releases a heartfelt sigh, and fastens her lips to my skin. Fuck. My head lolls back, as I’m overcome by the intimate exchange of fluids, the joining of our souls, the strengthening of the bond between us.
With my free hand, I stroke her neck, encouraging her to swallow. My blood drips down her round chin, scenting the air.
I’m an ancient and the magic flowing through my veins is powerful. The bullet hole in her chest heals, pushing out the bullet fragments. Call me a sentimental mushpot but I save the largest pieces, catching them as they fall, and I place the metal in my shirt pocket.
As Charlotte feeds from me, I hold her, thinking of all the damn things I had planned to do before turning her. Hell, I haven’t even painted my dark, dismal bedroom, the place she’ll spend at least a good week sequestered in, while adjusting to vampire life, and she’ll hate it. I know she will.
I stiffen as I hear beings approach. We have to leave, it isn’t safe, but, wishing to transfer to Charlotte as much of my blood as possible, I wait until the small yappy dog sniffs around the entrance of the shop. He wears a leash, and before the human the beast is attached to sees us, I break my beloved’s grip on my wrist, scoop her into my arms, and dart through the kitchen, exiting into the dark alley.
A scream rents the night air, as the crime is discovered. It is a crime without a victim. Keeping to the shadows, I carry Charlotte toward my downtown mansion. She’ll never be seen again, disappearing into the night to become one of those unsolved missing persons cases that will plague police officers for years.
03 Charlotte’s Journal
I dream of blood and sex and Viktor. Feelings of excruciating pain, insatiable lust, and love, poignant and true, flood my unconsciousness.
“Viktor,” I croak. I sound like I’ve been on one of those alcohol-induced benders I specialized in during my college years. I twist in the luxuriously soft sheets, blindly reaching for my lover, my eyes closed.
“I’m here, beloved.” Warmth covers my shivering body, calming me, and I smell earth and blood. Liquid pumps into my mouth, and with it, memories of places I’ve never been and people I’ve never met. I suck thirstily, and Viktor groans, his hard cock pressing between my thighs.
I open to him, and he rocks into me, riding my tortured body slowly, gently, moving as though in slow motion, while I drink. He’s naked, his bare flesh moving against mine. I’ve never seen him naked, and I want to open my eyes, but my eyelids are too heavy. Instead, I run my palms up and down his lean chest. There isn’t an ounce of flab on him. He is muscle and strength and he’s mine, I know this as surely as I know the recipe for my mother’s strawberry cupcakes.
“Enough.” Viktor tears his wrist away from my mouth, and I pout like I’m five years old. Hey, I never claimed to be mature, and I’m so very thirsty.
“You’re a big meanie,” I tell him in my froggy voice, and I grab his arm, trying to locate the cut, but I can’t. His wrist is already healed, which is impossible, so I must be dreaming.
It is a kick-ass dream, as Viktor starts to fuck me hard and fast and viciously, driving my ass and shoulders into the mattress, his pelvis bumping mine, his balls smacking against my skin.
“Yes, baby,” I call encouragement. “Fuck me harder, sweet cheeks.” I raise my hips into his thrusts, and the entire bed shakes with our enthusiasm.
Sweet buttercream frosting with rainbow sprinkles, I’m parched, and horny. I open my mouth to scream, and fangs prick my lips, distracting me from my approaching orgasm. What the hell? I have fangs?
“Come for me, Charlotte,” Viktor pleads, varying his angle of entry to cause more torment, and I forget about my razor-sharp chompers. “Tighten that hot pussy around my cock.”
Well… since he asks so nicely. My inner muscles clench down on his shaft, and I bite him. Yep, I bite him on his neck, using my newly obtained fangs.
He bellows like an angry customer, jerking against me, his heat filling my pussy. I throb and pulse and suck his blood.
This blows my mind. I’m sucking his blood, and I like it too, no, I love it, and he’s letting me, my big kinky hunk, tilting his head to give me better access. I remove my fangs, and he tells me to lick him so I do because in my dreams, I follow his instructions, while in real life, I’d tell him to stick his head in my brand new deluxe oven.
I’m exhausted from the fucking, and the kindergarten cannibalism. Viktor pulls me to his chest, bearing me no hard feelings for substituting as my midnight snack, and I place my cheek over where his heart should be, except it isn’t there, because I don’t hear a heartbeat.
Freakin’ fondant. This is the craziest trip I’ve ever been on, even more nuts than the time I snorted a half bag of icing sugar on a dare. Nothing makes sense, especially the blood sucking.
“Sleep,” Viktor commands. He rubs the worry lines between my closed eyes. I should open them. I really should.
“I’m not tired,” I protest, finally finding my backbone. No man likes a jellyfish. I yawn, and Viktor chuckles, and this confirms the dream status because my grim lover would never, ever, ever chuckle. My world is dark, and warm, and Viktor
protects me, so I slowly lose my siege against slumber.
* * *
“Did I lock the door?” I sit up. Not locking the shop’s doors, leaving my brand-new equipment and fixtures open and accessible to crooks, is a recurring nightmare of mine. The first full week of ownership, I didn’t sleep a wink.
But at least I spent those nights in my princess pink bedroom. I blink at the dark brown walls and the heavy velvet curtains surrounding me. Holy macaroon! How did I end up in this pimp daddy cave?
“Charlotte.” A very naked Viktor eyes me cautiously, as though the blood-sucking dream wasn’t really a dream, and I might turn on him like some ravenous beast.
I tilt my chin up. It was a dream. It had to be. I don’t drink blood. I gaze at the vein in his neck. Though that does look tasty.
All of him looks tasty. “Wow, wow, wow.” I look him up and down, widening my eyes in an attempt to see more of his naked splendor. The man needs some sun, his skin is whiter than bleached flour, but other than that, he’s perfection, his shoulders broad, his chest defined, and his stomach flat.
My gaze lowers. His cock is hard, and huge, pointing to the mud-colored ceiling, like an ivory homage to manhood. Dark hair curls around his base and balls. I lick my lips, the blue veins covering his shaft triggering my hunger. His legs are long and lean. Like I said, he’s pale perfection. Even his toenails are immaculately groomed.
“You should feed,” Viktor informs me. His eyes glow crimson, and he strokes his cock with one large hand. There’s a signet ring on his finger with a dark red, almost black stone set in the finely engraved gold.
I’m not the sharpest blade in the drawer, especially in the morning, but even I get the hint. The man wants his cock sucked, and I’m more than willing to give him a treat. Being a baker, I’m an oral gal, and I’ll stick anything I can into my mouth. I especially love sucking cock, tasting the inner essence of my lovers.
I roll over, ignoring the aches and pains in my well-used body. I feel like I’ve been run over by a delivery truck.
“Oh, I’ll feed all right, sunshine.” I smile at him. “I’m going to suck this bad boy dry.” I wrap my fingers around his shaft, and stick out my tongue, licking the precum off his tip.
He’s salty with a hint of copper and rust, like he’s been cooked in an ancient pan. The flavor appeals to me, and, after telling him this, I lick Viktor’s cock some more, with quick, light flicks of my tongue as I’d lick the coconut cream cheese icing off a vanilla cupcake.
Viktor groans and wiggles his ass, flesh swishing against fabric, so I tease him, exploring his slit, searching his skin for more cum. I’m a little foggy as to what happened last night, but I do know what will happen now. I’m about to give my dour and dismal man a cock-sucking he won’t ever forget.
04 Viktor’s Journal
I’ve created a monster. Charlotte’s red curls bounce around her face while her dainty pink tongue swirls around and around my cock. She moans and sighs and coos about how big I am, and how good I taste, swelling both my already secure ego and my equally engorged shaft.
I inhale sharply as she lowers her lips over my cock, taking my tip into her mouth up to my rim. She sucks gently, the pull felt down to the soul I thought I no longer had.
“Charlotte, beloved.” I thread shaking fingers through the silk of her hair. After tormenting me with one, two, three circles of her tongue around my fleshy ridge, she sinks down on me, taking my cock completely into her mouth, her cute button nose buried in my pubic hair, her chin rubbing between my aching balls.
My cock bobs, and she smiles, her lips curled around my shaft. Over the past couple of days, she’s gone through the hellish transformation from human to vampire, yet during those long hours, I’ve frequently been treated to that joyous smile of hers.
I vow to safeguard her bubbly personality as I will protect her lush body. She is mine to cherish. I cup her indented cheeks, her mouth sucking and releasing, sucking and releasing, tugging on my sensitive skin.
Charlotte palms my balls, squeezing them gently to the rhythm of her bobbing. She is mine, but I am hers. She holds me in her hands, her mouth, and her heart.
I haven’t felt this close of a connection to anyone other than my maker, and perhaps not even to that long dead vampire. He was a sadistic bastard, and Charlotte is as sweet as those cupcakes she bakes.
She licks along the veins of my shaft. I don’t have to enter her mind to read her thoughts. I see them written on her face. She’s hungry for my blood, and she doesn’t know why, and this scares her.
“Suck me off, Charlotte, and then you can feed.” I can better explain what I’ve done to her after I ease the agony in my balls.
“Viktor?” Her fangs drop, slicing her bottom lip, and her tantalizing blood scents the air, escalating my need for her to unmanageable levels.
“Suck me,” I command, pushing her head downward.
Her emerald green eyes glitter with rebellion, but she does as she’s told, inhaling my cock up to my base. I sigh with satisfaction, and then moan with desire, as she works my cock with a punishing intensity, her sucking harsh, and her movements fast, with her fangs grazing my skin.
I hold out for mere minutes, my control wearing thinner and thinner with each brutal suck. I’m an elder, and only she can do this to me, pushing me to the edge of all reason. “Charlotte, beloved,” I warn her.
Her fangs prick my base, and I roar, testing the limits of our soundproof bedroom. I thrust my hips upward, my cockhead pounding against the back of her throat, and Charlotte sputters as my cum fills her mouth, but my beloved gulps it down, not wasting a drop of my white vampire spunk.
While she swallows, she sucks shallowly, mixing blood and cum in an erotic combination I’ve heard past lovers describe, but have never experienced myself.
My cock is drained, and I quiet, lying still, my limp cock in her mouth, allowing her to feed off me. “You’re like me now, Charlotte.” I wind one of her curls around my finger. I wanted to prepare her more for this change, but my wants are no longer possible. “We are vampire.”
She breaks from me unaided, and licks me, speeding my healing process. Pride fills my chest. My strong woman has already learned self-control.
“It wasn’t a nightmare, was it? The shooting? The pain? The blood?” she asks and I nod. “The window!” Charlotte sits up. “The guy shot it out. I have to get back to the shop, or they’ll steal me blind.” She scrambles off me.
I catch her wrist, stopping her. She twists her arm, but I don’t release her. I tell my beloved she’s a vampire, and her first concern is her business. She loves her cupcake shop, and I’ve taken that dream away from her.
No, the gunman took it away. “You were dying, Charlotte. I couldn’t allow that.” She means too much to me. “I had to turn you.”
“Yes, yes.” She waves her free hand. “I was dying, and you saved me and now I’m a vampire, a blood-sucking goth girl. I get that. About my shop --”
“Charlotte.” I try to smile, in an attempt to comfort her, but after centuries of frowning, it feels unnatural and from her widening eyes, I know I haven’t successfully captured the expression. “The cupcake shop is your old life. You can’t return to it.”
“Why not? Is it because of the sunlight thing?” She frowns for a second, and I quickly gather my thoughts, wishing to say the right things to make it easier on her, but when she smiles, her face glowing with excitement, I realize I’m too slow. “It’s not like I have to open during the day. It can be part of our marketing angle. We can do only night events, and --”
“And when you don’t age?” I break into her flow of words. “Or get sick? Or go out during the day? The humans will ask questions, and questions will make other vampires nervous. Dangerously nervous.” The Council members are tight asses about secrecy. I should know. I’m one of the tight asses. “You can’t go back, not now, not ever.”
“Oh.” Charlotte stares at me, and her body stills. I brace for her reaction. �
��Can I at least get my mother’s muffin pan?” Her voice is small, and her pain gouges into me.
“It is important to sever all ties to your previous existence.” I repeat the advice my maker gave me. “So no, we can’t retrieve it.”
“No one would know,” she pleads, covering my hand with hers. “I’ll slip in and out, and no one will see me, and no one will miss it because it’s not worth anything to anyone other than me.”
“No.” God. This is hard.
“Please, Viktor.” Her eyes glaze with the sheen of unshed tears. “It is the only thing I have left of my mother. I promise I’ll do anything else you ask of me. Let me get it.”
“No.” I feel like the most evil creature on the face of the planet, because I am. I’m a heartless vampire, a cold-blooded predator. “It’s for your safety, Charlotte. The humans will be watching for you. They’ll have the place under surveillance. If they find out who, or what, you are, they’ll hunt you down and kill you, and if they aren’t successful, another vampire will be. You’ll die permanently this time.” And I will die with her because I can’t go back to a life alone, without my Charlotte.
The joy vanishes from her face, and my world darkens as though she has flicked the lights off. Her shoulders slump, and her head lowers, her expressive eyes hidden from me.
Does she hate me? Fear me? I can’t stand not knowing so I slip into her mind. Her thoughts are like a flock of frightened blackbirds, all dark and without color and flying in different directions. I sense hatred directed at the circumstances, not at me, and I feel the warm burst of love. She loves me, the vampire, the killer.
“Oh, well.” Charlotte’s spine straightens, and she meets my gaze, determination and entrepreneurial zeal illuminating her freckled skin. “There are other pans, and I can start over again.”
She crawls back into our bed, snuggling up to my side. I put my arm around her, a tinge of wariness tempering my happiness. She is taking this transformation surprisingly well.