Dark Knights 1: Eternity of Darkness

by Shana Nichols

  Julie couldn’t help shuddering. Not so much at the sight of Stefan sipping blood from a mug, or even by the fact he’d just told her he’d lived for over four centuries, but at a woman on the dance floor who’d just sunk her teeth -- fangs -- into the neck of her partner. The look on the man’s face hinted not at agony, but more like ecstasy. He looked almost as though he were experiencing a sexual climax right there on the floor. When he lowered his hands and cupped his partner’s buttocks, Julie squirmed.

  The woman’s skirt swirled about his pale fingers, the burgundy chiffon dark -- bloodlike -- against his slacks. Soft, sensual, it moved with the breeze from their motion, kissing his dark gray suit pants, then retreating. They swayed to the escalating rhythm of muted drums and mellow woodwinds that spoke of smoke-filled rooms, a time live with action...untold forbidden pleasures.

  I’m not a voyeur. I’m not. Yet Julie couldn’t take her gaze away from the couple. She imagined the man dragging his partner to the floor, spreading her legs, returning her love-bite with many of his own. Not just on the pale column of her throat but on her nipples. Her belly. The insides of her quivering thighs.

  Julie trembled with fear -- and yearning, too. What was it about this scene -- highly erotic yet anything but pornographic -- that made her yearn to drag Stefan onto the dance floor? To beg him to take her? She met his gaze, saw the raw hunger in his expression.

  “That’s the sort of a mating dance that made vampires enjoy. The males are unable to have conventional sex,” Stefan explained, as though he’d read her mind.

  Damn. She’d forgotten he was an telepath. He probably was reading her every thought. She couldn’t help thinking how he’d taken her last night. “I remember now. You said you were -- “

  “A born vampire.” He smiled, his fangs a flash of white made brighter by the colored lights. “Born vampires can mate as humans do. Occasionally we even produce a baby vampire to proliferate our clans.

  “And yes, it would heighten your orgasm if I did to you what she’s doing to him, at the moment I began to spill my seed. But I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I’d risk turning you...or even killing you if I couldn’t control my bloodlust.”

  “Turning me?”

  “Making you like them. Consigning you to an eternity of darkness.”

  Julie sipped her wine, savoring the rich, slightly fruity flavor of the fine vintage. Questions tumbled around in her mind, needing to be set free, explored.

  The otherworldly lovers’ searing passion encompassed Julie like a soft, sensual cloak of fire, red, orange and electric blue. Erotic echoes of the mellow music caressed her ears, her soul. Her nipples tingled, and she grew damp between her legs. The dry, fruity essence of the fine red wine heated her throat, curled lovingly in her belly. What was happening to her? She didn’t get swept away by colors -- by passion.

  The masters who’d tried to unleash her inhibitions, encourage her to express her feelings unabashedly in her art had given up, certain she lacked the emotional depth necessary for greatness.

  Here in a den of vampires, though, the haze of convention that dulled her emotions fled. She felt raw terror, not for her life but for her very being. Fear that was deep and real yet eclipsed by an insatiable desire to become part of the milieu, to immerse herself completely in her vampire lover. Excitement crackled all around her, and when she reached over and took Stefan’s hand she experienced a jolt of carnal need, yet something more. A forever kind of feeling, a need for him to take her to that plane of ecstasy she sensed lay just beyond her grasp. “Dance with me,” she whispered, every cell in her body aching for...

  A taste of the rich, red fluid from his lips. Confirmation he was indeed of another time, another place, another world where he might take her, keep her cocooned in his desire so her own might flourish. A place where he would keep her safe from harm. Safe from the monster that was Louis Reynard.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.” Setting down his mug, Stefan rose as though resigned to honor her plea, as tall, commanding a presence among his own kind as he was among Julie’s. He held her chair, then took her hand. A familiar song from Chicago’s gangster era blared through the speakers, its heavy percussion and wailing woodwinds beating out a rhythm that brought to mind crowded dance halls, gun-toting molls, and hot, sweaty sex. When they stepped onto the hardwood dance floor, the strobe lights reflected brilliant shards of red and gold off his raven hair, forming a macabre halo that encompassed him and her in a kaleidoscope of sensation.

  When he pulled her into the circle of his embrace, Julie knew. She wanted him. But did she want to say goodbye to her mortal existence, live for centuries by his side in a shadow world instead of decades as a mortal in the only world she knew? Watch generations of her friends and loved ones age and die? Could she bear living for centuries with her father no longer there to give advice and love?

  You’d have centuries with Stefan. Forever in the safe haven of his embrace. Forever seeing all the shapes and colors in vivid hues, experiencing all the sensual, sexual pleasures of belonging to your vampire lover... Seduced by this place, the music, the seething sexuality he wrapped around her even as they swayed together fully clothed, Julie had her answer. She might regret it later, but she couldn’t resist. It felt right. So right...

  “I want it all. Bite me, Stefan. Transport me to a plane beyond any where I’ve ever been. Invade my heart and body and mind and make them yours.”

  He growled, a deep, anguished rumble that seemed to have come straight from his soul, but he grasped her hips, drew her close enough to feel the strength of his erection. Closer. The heat of his big hands molding the curve of her buttocks, the gentle motion of his breath on her hair, the brush of his chest against her nipples as he led her in the dance all stoked her desire to a fever pitch.

  Then he took her mouth, wiped away any doubt that it was blood he’d drunk from that chilled stein. The slightly metallic taste, was unmistakable, like the taste of her own blood when she’d sucked away the pain from a minor paper cut. Arousing, though, not revolting as she’d thought it might be. Hungry, she traced the seam of his lips with her tongue, blatantly inviting him to plunge inside. His groan of acquiescence tickled her lips, and she opened them to his tongue’s insistent, rhythmic invasion.

  God, but she wanted it all. Wanted it right here and now. Wanted him to raise her skirt, rip away her flimsy panties and impale her on his huge, rigid sex. She laid her head back, bared her throat as she’d seen the vampires do. “Bite me, now.”

  “You’re just experiencing a dose of vampire sexual attraction,” he said, a touch of desperation in his voice. “Vampires have a strong seductive effect on mortals. I used it that first night, to get you to let me into your home.”

  “Are you using it now?”

  “No, but -- “

  “Did you use it to seduce me?”

  “Julie,” he said, his voice ragged. “No. Of course not. But -- “

  “Then my feelings are my own. Nothing you’ve planted in my mind. They’re only for you, no one else in this room.” She paused, then looked into his eyes. “Did you want me, or was it all a trick?”

  “I wanted you.”

  “Then want me now.”

  Maybe it was the atmosphere, or the influence of the otherworldly people around them, because Julie almost didn’t care that he’d influenced her that first night to save her life, and maybe other times he hadn’t told her about. She didn’t even care if he’d used his vampire powers to get her into bed. She knew he wanted her, as a woman always knew. That was all that mattered.

  Though her masters had despaired of her abilities, Stefan found her astounding. She recalled Giorgio’s insisting she was a true artist, and as such she had the ability to see beyond the surface. Perhaps she did, for her doubts fled. She saw truth, uncolored by doubt or fear. Stefan was trying to protect her, but her true protection lay here, as close to him as she could get. “I want it all,” she whispered again.

  He drew
her closer, so close the pulsating heat of his erection seared her belly and his ragged breathing beat a staccato path along her temple...her jaw...her throat. She held her breath, waiting, but he came no closer. Instead he looked down into her eyes, his expression tortured. “I cannot. Cease tempting me, Julie, for I must not do this.”

  She tried to talk, to persuade him he must, but the only sound that escaped her was a pitiful whimper...and a sob.

  “It’s for the best. Come, I’ll get some carryout and take you home.”

  Chapter Eight

  Stefan had never been so hard, so ready. Instead of beating slowly as it usually did, his heart pounded in his chest, pumping blood furiously through his tortured body. His fangs ached. Julie trembled beside him, her arousal palpable, during the short cab ride from the bar to her townhouse.

  When they arrived, she handed him her key. “You do it. I can’t.”

  He shifted one of the rice cartons that contained his meals for the next few days to the other hand, took the key, and opened the door. “Do you have somewhere I can keep this cold?”“

  “This way.” Her motion jerky, hurried, she led the way to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and then let Noodles in from the patio. “Hey, girl. It’s your bedtime.”

  The refrigerator lit the otherwise darkened room, showcasing its contents: milk, eggs, some dainty looking plastic cups of yogurt with pictures of fat black cherries and ruby-colored raspberries. A ripe peach and a slice of strawberry cheesecake. The neatly arranged food underscored the fact they were from different worlds. Stefan set the cartons on an empty shelf, then closed the door with a hard thud. The wall between them shouldn’t be breached. She’d lose too much. The tastes of Earth’s bounty. The warmth of the noonday sun. Sounds and smells and touches so familiar to mortals, so alien to those of his kind who thrived in darkness. That wall must not be breached, no matter how much they might both wish it otherwise.

  He could not change for her. She must not change for him. The passion that sizzled between them could not, must not last other than in his memories. With the room now in total darkness, he took her hand and led her, for she had not his ability to see in the dark, to the room where they’d first made love.

  Yes, love. Not merely lust. Because he loved her, he’d meet her needs...take her to the heights of passion and beyond. He’d save her even if doing so destroyed him, and then he’d walk away. Even though he sensed that leaving her would do more to harm him than Louis Reynard ever could.

  Beside her bed, he gently removed her clothes and his. Her little whimpers when he stroked her fed his need, but also steeled his determination to save her from himself as well as the killer. He concentrated on bringing her desire slowly back to fever pitch, while holding his own passions ruthlessly in check.

  Her pale hair felt like silk between his fingers, looked like spun gold in the dim light of the moon. He tunneled his fingers among the strands, indulging his need to taste her by taking her mouth. With heart-wrenching trust he swore would not prove misplaced, she opened to him, welcomed his tongue’s thrusts and met them eagerly. Her tongue tangled with his, brushed against the tips of his fangs, tempting him almost beyond resistance. The heat of her hands on his bare back, his buttocks felt so good. So right. As though fate had meant this to be. Meant her to be his mate.

  Stefan deepened the kiss, anticipating... She’d taste sweet, so much sweeter than his sustenance. Like nectar -- not necessity. He’d pierce her lightly, take just a sip.

  No! He broke the kiss, foiled temptation for now. Groaning audibly, he swept both hands down her body, cupping her beautiful breasts, rubbing his fingers gently over already engorged nipples and gently kneading the warm, pale flesh.

  “I love the feel of your hands on me. Love tasting you.” When she bit into his shoulder with her benign, human teeth, it was all he could do not to retaliate, sample all she’d so clearly offered, all he must not accept. “I love the way your skin feels so smooth beneath my hands, lets me trace each muscle beneath its satin surface.”

  When she moved her fingers along his pectoral muscles and found the sensitive flesh of his own nipples, he suddenly wanted air. He inhaled deeply, and the mingled scents of her perfume and aroused mortal female filled his nostrils. Her touch on his belly, the little sounds of pleasure she made when he touched her -- when she touched him -- had him throbbing with a degree of urgency much stronger than any lust he’d felt before.

  Being with her in his world, the world of night, seeing her silhouetted by the waning moon, her golden skin and pale hair absorbing the little light and giving her a surrealistic glow, made him want -- so much more than he dared to have. He wanted to invade her mind and heart, make her his not just for now. For always. He’d never been so hard, so ready -- or so afraid he might lose control. Take her...and destroy her.

  She cupped his sex and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Make love to me now, my handsome vampire. Take away the ache inside of me. Now, Stefan. I’m burning.”

  More than her words, the breathy, highly aroused sound of her voice drove him past reason...past restraint. Scooping her into his arms as though she weighed no more than Noodles, he laid her across the bed and followed her down, kneeling between her widespread legs. Her damp heat reflected on him, beckoned him.

  “Oh, yes, please. Don’t wait. I want you now.”

  “Your wish is my command.” When he positioned himself and started to enter her, she wrapped her long legs around his waist, sucking him in deep, bathing his cock in her hot, slick dew. Her flesh pulsated around him in perfect harmony with the thrumming of blood through his veins, her movements and his point-counterpoint. Pressure built in his cock, his balls, throughout his body. Driving away caution, restraint. Robbing him of the fragile strands of sanity he tried hard to hold onto.

  She lay across the bed, her head slightly over one side, her throat bared, taunting him with the throbbing vein just below her golden skin. Stefan closed his eyes, trying to put that enticing vein out of mind. Instead he concentrated on the way it felt when she milked his cock, the rush of pressure building in his balls. She pulled him down on her with her legs, until they lay chest to breast, belly to belly. Until his cock was buried to the hilt in her silken heat.

  Her climax began as tiny tremors, multiplied and intensified until she writhed beneath him, whimpering his name. Moaning, digging her heels into his ass, she clutched him as though she’d never let him go. She shifted her hands to his head, drew him down against her vulnerable throat. Her vein pulsed invitingly beneath his cheek, so temptingly that he barely resisted her effort to move him into perfect alignment.

  “Damn it, bite me. Don’t hold back. I want it all. All you’ve got to give.” She clamped down on his cock with her inner muscles, broke the last of his restraint.

  “You don’t know what you ask. I cannot. Help me, don’t tempt me. I’m coming now.” As his seed began to spurt, Stefan shoved his own forearm into his mouth, burying his fangs, tasting his own blood, letting his climax carry him away from the pain of denial...to a surprisingly satisfying place.

  A place where differences between them didn’t matter. Where good always triumphed over evil.

  Chapter Nine

  Her body was still beneath him. Stefan pressed his nose into her hair, wishing he didn’t have to raise his head and see the hurt in her eyes. He knew it was there, felt it in every rigid line of her bare body. “I’m sorry.”

  Knowing he’d disappointed Julie caused Stefan greater pain than the throbbing puncture wounds he’d made in his own arm. He rolled over, blocking the view of the rising sun by covering his eyes. “We need to talk. I need to tell you -- “

  “I have to take Noodles for a walk.” She sounded miffed, but calm.

  Stefan raked a hand through his hair, wishing it would help his headache go away. He started to curl his hand around her arm, keep her stubborn, lovely ass on that bed until he made her listen -- but that wasn’t how he wanted to handle her. Sh
e needed a moment, needed space. Hell, he needed some himself. “Fine. But I’m going with you. It’s not safe for you to go out alone, especially now when it’s hardly even light outside.”

  Sitting up on the edge of the bed, he reached on the floor and grabbed his clothes. “Wait. I’m getting dressed. You are not going anywhere unless I go with you.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Stefan. You said yourself that Louis would try to strike in two more nights. Not now. And not in the daytime.”

  Stefan pulled up his slacks and slipped his feet into his loafers. Then he stood. “Indulge me. Reynard has already modified his pattern of killings. He might do it again, might very well be waiting for you in the park, assuming that you’ll be walking Noodles. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The sun rising over Lake Michigan practically blinded Stefan when they stepped outside. Mentally cursing his weakness, he slipped on the dark glasses. Hated them. Hated that they suddenly represented all the reasons he couldn’t take Julie, make her his own.

  This was her world. A world where she could exchange pleasantries with an elderly couple like this one. Where he had to take care not to show his fangs and hope the fragile Yorkie on its braided satin leash wouldn’t sense danger and dig its little teeth into his ankle.

  “I’m happy to meet you,” he murmured, vaguely aware Julie had introduced him as her friend from Normandy. Because the old woman seemed to expect it, he bent and brought her thin hand to his lips after shaking hands with her husband. Fortunately the Yorkie seemed disinclined to bite him, although it didn’t take to him the way Noodles had.

  “I see them walking their dog every once in a while,” Julie mentioned after they’d parted company. “They seem so loving, and they always have a kind word for everyone they see. Each time I see them, they seem less robust...I wonder...” She looked at him, as though she thought he might be the salvation of mortal mankind.