by Cameron Dean
The elevator gave a sudden chime, and my eyes flew open. Ash’s face was stark with passion. The doors slid apart. I didn’t move. Ash stepped forward, pivoted, then stepped out, moving not toward the dramatic wall of glass that looked out over the Strip but toward the bedroom.
I followed him through the vast rooms, passing low couches and tables, and Egyptian and Greek carvings, each on its own spot-lit pedestal. Ash paused for a moment, touching a dimmer switch that brought a soft glow to the inner rooms. I paused, too, struck once more by how arousing simply watching Ash was. As if to tease me, he picked up his pace. As if to tease him, I let mine slow.
Ahead of me, Ash slid open the bedroom door and a sweet and familiar smell filled the air. Sweet peas. My favorite flower. I could see bouquets of them in the room and petals on the bed. Ash stepped through the bedroom door, and then I was running.
I burst through the doorway, moving at full speed. Ash was waiting for me. I leaped, and he caught me, spinning us around as he let the force of my momentum carry us into the center of the room. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my mouth fused to his, hands streaking over his body. He took four staggering steps back and collapsed backward onto the bed, still holding me tightly. I released his mouth to give a laugh of pure exhilaration, reared back, and tore his shirt open.
“That was my favorite shirt,” he protested.
I laughed again, power and desire screaming through my veins, then leaned down to flick my tongue across his nipples. First the right then the left, lapping like a cat at a bowl of cream. They stiffened and I teased them gently with my teeth. Ash gave a groan.
“I’ll buy you another one,” I promised.
I felt his hands move restlessly across my back, mold themselves to the curves of my ass. “You have on too many clothes.”
I pressed a series of kisses up along his jaw until I reached one ear. “Then do something about it.”
Ash slipped his hands into the front waistband of my jeans, then moved them downward to slide the buttons from their holes. His fingers lingered for a moment, pressing hard against my clit before he lifted me, drawing the denim down my legs in one slow and easy motion. No sooner had he settled me down again than his hands were fisting in the back of my shirt. With one quick yank, he ripped it open.
“Copycat,” I said.
“You’d like to think so.” Beneath the torn shirt, his hands moved to the front of my body to my breasts. I thrust them forward, into his caress. “Candace, lift up your arms.”
Slowly, I lifted my arms above my head as Ash slid the shirt up my arms and off. Before I could move, he captured my wrists lightly with one hand, holding them in place. I watched as his eyes took in the lace I’d concealed beneath the shirt, saw the way they darkened.
“Well, now,” he said, the pleasure like a strain of music in his voice. “This is a nice surprise.”
“I was hoping you’d think so.”
He shifted then, leaning up, and I felt his tongue slide along my bare skin through the slit in the lace at the front. My stomach muscles began to quiver. Ash turned his head, circled the closest nipple with his tongue, then drew it deep into his mouth. I arched toward his touch, twisting my wrists to break his grasp. Instead, it only tightened. Ash’s mouth pulled at my breast as if he could find sustenance there, his tongue flicking wildly back and forth. I cried out.
He released my arms then and lay back, pulling me down with him. Suddenly ravenous, I nipped at his lips, parted them with my tongue, then took Ash’s own tongue inside my mouth to suck. With one hand, he held the back of my neck steady. I felt the fingers of the other dance down the length of my spine. They teased the cleft in my butt then slid forward to find the place where the leotard was open at the crotch. As his fingers brushed against my sensitive skin, I jerked, and felt his fingers slip inside me. I tightened around them and began to rock as Ash slowly slid them in and out.
“More,” I gasped as I tore my mouth from his. “More, Ash. I’m so hungry for you.”
His eyes on mine, he put the pad of the thumb of his free hand to my mouth. I bit down, tasted blood, then pulled it deep inside my mouth, dancing my tongue across it until all trace and taste of blood were gone. Ash drew it out. In the next moment, I felt the slick warmth of it circle against my clit even as his fingers drove into me, hard. With a cry, I pitched forward, pelvis tilted up, hands bracketing Ash’s head as it lay against the comforter. His hands increased their tempo, stroking, driving me on.
“How hungry are you, Candace?” he whispered. “Tell me how hungry. Tell me what you want.”
“Everything,” I said, then gave a groan of sheer ecstasy as he reared up to pull one breast inside his mouth. “Everything, Ash,” I panted. “Body. Heart. Mind. Blood.”
I felt his teeth scrape against my nipple, then part to surround it as his tongue played back and forth. I quivered, teetering on the breaking point of passion, the world narrowing down to the feel of Ash’s hands and mouth. In every act of desire, this moment arrives. The moment when going back becomes impossible. So impossible it no longer even exists. There is only forward. There is only desire’s fulfillment, and then, finally, its demise.
The grip of Ash’s teeth tightened suddenly. My vision hazed red as I felt a spear of hot pleasure shoot from breast to groin.
“Take it, Candace,” he said. “Take what you want.”
My body quivering, reaching for the brink, I bent my head and put my teeth to his throat. Then, for a split second, I hesitated. “Take it, Candace,” I heard Ash say once more. And felt the slide of his muscle, the taste of his skin inside my mouth.
I bit down, and the whole world exploded.
Ash’s blood, inside my mouth. Ash’s fingers, inside my body. The pleasure of both so intense that I was gone. I was no longer in the world in any way that I had ever known. Nothing existed except what Ash and I did together. What we created and made together. We were one blood. One love. Desire without end.
“Hold on, Candace,” I swore I heard Ash’s voice say. “Don’t let go.”
I won’t, I thought. I vowed. I’ll never let you go, Ash. I’ll never want to.
I heard him make a sound then. And knew that it was one of joy.
I woke at dawn. Lifting my head from the pillow to find the room around me just beginning to brighten. Beside me, Ash was still and silent, his own eyes closed. We had made love all night, the curtains of the room pulled back to the lights of the city below us, the light of the stars and moon above. Apparently, we had forgotten to close them.
Driven by some sudden restlessness, a need I could not quite name, I slipped from between the sheets, pulled one of Ash’s soft wool robes from the wardrobe, and moved to stand at the window.
This was the moment that, according to popular vampire lore, a vampire was never supposed to see: sunrise. In fact, this notion was something a human had made up. What happens in the daylight is not destruction but a diminution of a vampire’s powers. Vampires are strongest in the shadows, most powerful in the place that humans fear: the dark. They do not love the sun. In the light of day, the truth of their existence is impossible to deny. They are undead. In a world that lives and breathes and changes, they do not. Not truly a part of life and not life’s true opposite, they are some strange combination of both.
They, I thought, and recognized my mistake. Old ways of thinking would no longer work.
We. Us. I made myself rephrase my thoughts.
It’s happening, I realized. First my body, and now my brain and heart were accepting what had happened. I am a vampire.
I felt it then: the feeling that had propelled me from bed in the first place. A strange ache in all my limbs. An itchy sort of restlessness, as if my skin were suddenly stretched too tight across my bones. An urgency that gnawed. There was something I was supposed to do, some act I needed to perform. Once I had done it, everything would be all right. Abruptly, I realized that I was standing with my arms straight down at my sides, hands clenching
and unclenching into tight fists. I folded my arms across my chest, and stuffed my hands into my armpits. In front of me, the sun catapulted over the horizon like a great burning ball.
Red. It was bloodred.
Oh, God, I thought, and felt the gnawing hunger become a painful twist of need inside my gut.
Blood. I needed blood. Not Ash’s. Not the blood of another being like me. What my body needed, what it craved, was the one thing Ash couldn’t give me. The taste that would make me undead forever: the taste of living blood.
Bloodlust. This is the beginning of the bloodlust, I thought.
I freed my arms to press them against my stomach, willing the pain, the desire, to recede. Was this the true reason vampires avoid the dawn? Because sunrise was really just the payoff of some enormous cosmic joke? The need for living blood strongest even as we begin to be diminished, our powers fading even as the sunlight brightens the world?
“Come back to bed, Candace,” I heard Ash say. And as if just the sound of his voice had the ability to push my demons back, I felt the horrible, grinding need inside me ease, then slip away. I turned, walked to the bed, slipped between the sheets and into Ash’s arms.
But first, I pulled the curtains closed to shut out the day.
Several hours later I loitered in the entryway of the Beijing’s casino, idly watching the tourists as I waited for Ash. As we came downstairs in the elevator his cell phone had gone off; the call, one he indicated he had to take. I stopped at the concierge’s desk to request Ash’s car be brought up from the garage. The boxes containing our purchases of the day before now waited out by the curb. Under my previous circumstances, I would have joined them, enjoying the cool of the morning.
But not today. Today, I…
“Candace?” a voice behind me inquired.
I turned slowly, already knowing who I would find. I recognized the voice.
“Hello, Carl.”
I hadn’t seen Detective Carl Hagen in months, not since our awkward, painful breakup in a room at the morgue. Carl and I had dated pretty seriously for several months after I moved to Vegas. He was the first guy I had let touch me, the first one I’d wanted to touch me; the first I’d wanted to touch after San Francisco and that last near-fatal encounter with Ash. Having Carl suddenly turn up now seemed to bring things to some sort of strange full circle.
“It’s good to see you,” I said, and discovered as I said it that it was true. I took a moment to study him. Carl Hagen has always been one of the most driven, dedicated people I know. Now he looked…relaxed. His expression, less distracted. Fewer shadows darkened his eyes.
“You’re looking well, Carl.”
“Yeah?” he shrugged, and I couldn’t help but smile. His work was the only thing about which Carl ever really felt comfortable accepting a compliment. I watched his steady gaze take in my appearance. “Same goes.”
We stood for a moment while the air between us hummed with unspoken thoughts. Should we try to continue the conversation or shake hands and go our separate ways? Carl and I hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms last time around. He had pretty much told me he couldn’t trust me. He accused me of holding back information vital to a case he was working. He was right on both counts. The information I failed to share had to do with the existence of vampires, a situation Carl was still in the dark about. If I had anything to say about it, that’s the way things would stay.
“I took some time off,” he suddenly went on. “Just now getting back to the grind.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Fly-fishing in Montana?”
He grinned but shook his head, his eyes both pleased and surprised, as if he hadn’t expected I would remember his love of fly-fishing. “Good guess,” he acknowledged. “But no. I went east, helped my brother in Vermont on his Christmas tree farm.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” I said, surprised in my own turn.
“Probably didn’t mention him,” Carl said simply. “In recent years, we sort of, I don’t know, drifted apart. But after…” His voice trailed off, and I realized he’d been about to refer to our parting. “I guess I figured maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough and I should give things another shot. The worst that could happen is the same thing as last time.”
“And what was that?”
“He told me I was a self-righteous prick and to go to hell.”
I gave a quick laugh, suddenly feeling better than I had all morning. There was something so straightforward about Carl. It had been part of my attraction to him in the first place. It wasn’t that he didn’t have depths. He did. They just weren’t hidden ones.
“I’m glad things worked out better this time around,” I said.
He nodded. “Yeah. So am I.”
He paused for a moment, his eyes on mine. And, suddenly, I knew what he wanted to say next. Oh, don’t, I thought. Not here. Not now. I don’t want to hurt you again, Carl.
“So what brings you here first thing in the morning?” he asked, shifting the course of our conversation as if he had sensed my silent plea. “You haven’t changed jobs, have you? I can’t imagine Al Manelli ever letting you go.”
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I—”
“Sorry that took so long.”
Smooth and clean as a sharp knife, Ash’s voice cut through mine. He stepped up beside me, and I felt his hand come up to curl around my elbow. I started at his touch, as though I’d brushed against a live wire.
“Am I interrupting something?”
I watched Carl blink, just once, before his cop face slammed down. His expression became absolutely neutral. His eyes, watchful and intent. Not a trace of what he was, or wasn’t, feeling showed.
“Not really,” I said, as easily as I could. “I just had the good luck to bump into an old friend, that’s all.” I shifted ever so slightly, dislodging my elbow from Ash’s grip, so that the three of us formed a triangle with me as the point. “I can’t remember if the two of you have ever met,” I went on. “Ash, this is Carl Hagen—Detective Carl Hagen, I should say. Carl, this is Ash Donahue. We knew each other in San Francisco, before I moved to Vegas.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Ash said, extending his hand. Carl took it. I watched them perform a mano-a-mano handshake.
The formalities over, Ash’s silver eyes flicked to mine and held. “Are you ready to go home, Candace?” he asked, quietly.
He didn’t say our home, but then he didn’t have to. The meaning was there, clear as the chime of a bell. All of a sudden, I realized how tired I was. Tired, and the human day was just beginning. This is what it will be like from now on, I thought. The interplay between my former life as a human and my new existence as a vampire. Every single sentence, every syllable of every single word would have a double meaning that only I would know. Carl didn’t trust me because I concealed things. I wondered what his reaction would be if he knew what I was hiding from him now. Simply standing beside him made me feel like a liar.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m ready.” I extended my own hand toward Carl and he took it without hesitation, the grip strong and gentle all at once. Carl, himself, in a nutshell. “It was lovely to see you, Carl.”
“You, too, Candace,” he said. He gave my fingers one last, tight, squeeze, then let go. “Take care, now. I’ll see you around.”
With a nod to Ash, he walked past us. The casino’s automatic doors whooshed open, and Carl stepped outside. I waited, Ash still as a statue beside me, until Carl had passed out of sight. Then I stepped through the doors myself, out into the light of the sun.
Both Ash and I were silent as he skillfully piloted the Mercedes through the Vegas streets. It wasn’t until we reached the outskirts of town, on our way to the gated community where Ash—and now I—lived, that he spoke.
“Your detective is impressive.”
I gave a mental sigh. Apparently, some things held constant for males whether living or undead. “He is impressive,” I agreed, careful to keep my voice n
eutral. “He’s just not mine.”
Ash negotiated a turn, punched the accelerator. I could almost feel it leap like an animal straining against its tether.
“You’re trying to tell me you weren’t lovers?” Ash asked.
“Would you believe me if I did?”
“No.”
“Then it will hardly do me any good to lie. For the record, what I did with Carl, or anyone else for that matter, can hardly be considered cheating on you, Ash. You weren’t exactly in my life at the time.”
Except in my memories, and in my dreams, I thought.
A car shot past us, the sun glinting off its windshield. I winced and shied my head away, closing my eyes. I kept them closed as the silence inside the car began to stretch. It’s like playing chicken, I thought, and wondered if I would be considered the one to blink first if I gave in and spoke when my eyes were already closed.
“Were there others?” he asked, his voice tight, and I fought against a sudden, desperate impulse to laugh. I hadn’t been the first to blink after all.
“Absolutely,” I said. “So many, I lost count. Why do you think I moved to Vegas in the first place?”
I opened my eyes, turned toward him.
“Yes, Carl was my lover,” I said, in a clear, concise voice. “A very good lover, in fact. I enjoyed him, and he enjoyed me. When he broke things off, I was sorry. Is that what you want to know?”
“Did you love him?”
“No.”
Ash turned his head. For a split second, his silver eyes met mine, and I saw that they were filled with turmoil. Some tortured need to have an urgent question answered, a question he was unwilling, or unable, to ask aloud. His reaction to Carl wasn’t simply some perverse and futile Y-chromosome-related need to dominate the past. There was something else going on. Something much more important. The only problem was that I didn’t have the faintest idea what it was.