The Darkest Colors

by David M. Bachman

  “You don’t think you lost your temper a little bit?” Raina blurted.

  Duvessa narrowed her eyes at her almost angrily. “I beg your pardon? Are you implying that I only punished him because I am not in control of my own emotions?”

  “No, no, I just … what I meant was … maybe you just got a little bit caught up in the moment, and in all that excitement you just … y’know … weren’t careful about how you kicked him.” She felt extremely sheepish with everyone looking at her then. How dare she question the Grand Duchess? How dare she? Whatever.

  “Wait a moment with that, dear,” Duvessa said to Svetlana as she tried to dab the napkin at the wound. Looking past Raina to Brenna, she said, “It would be a shame to waste good blood, would it not?”

  Brenna looked at her for a moment with a slightly surprised expression, but she readily caught her drift. She raised an eyebrow as though to silently ask for permission. Duvessa nodded with a smirk and pivoted in her seat to lay her leg across Raina’s lap so that Brenna could reach it. She took the Grand Duchess’s long, slender, very pale leg in hand almost delicately, much in the same way that Raina had first handled Duke Sebastian’s sword when it was bestowed upon her.

  Consciously, Raina knew what this was. She knew what Duvessa was trying to accomplish, and she could see that Brenna was playing right into it. She was feeding her treats, so to speak. Duvessa was leading her on and doing her best to win her over. It was plainly obvious now. Things like this before would have simply seemed strange and random before having heard what Countess Wilhelmina had told her, but now it was all so very easy to see through. Raina could only hope that Duvessa would not be able to sense her thoughts with such detail as to sense just how much she was aware of how she could see that her dear friend was being played.

  Smiling, glancing at Raina frequently as she did so, Brenna held Duvessa’s foot with a hand upon her strong lower calf and the other under her heel and slowly raised it to her face. She extended a moist, pink, slightly pointed tongue and licked around the wound ever so carefully. The taste was immediate and, from what Raina could both sense and see as Brenna’s eyes closed, the flavor was heavenly as she was honored with a taste of the most sacred of any High Court blood. Raina had never thought to ask if Brenna had a foot fetish, and frankly the idea of having someone’s toes anywhere near her mouth was a little bit gross. Even so, she found herself to be somewhat envious as Brenna circled the tip of her tongue around the perimeter of the still rather ugly wound to Duvessa’s instep, closing her eyes with delight and opening them only slightly with heavy eyelids as she looked at Raina invitingly.

  “Oh … God,” Brenna breathed with a smile, “I had no idea it could taste this good.”

  “The blood of a High Court vampire is the sweetest of any to be found,” the Grand Duchess explained. “The blood of a Fallamhain is the most highly prized of all, and for more reasons than just its power.”

  “I can see why,” she answered with a light nod before resuming her small feeding. After a moment, she looked to Raina with a smile. “Now I can see how you took your first drink so well the other night.”

  Watching Brenna relish her slow, sensual feeding, Raina dimly recalled the moment she had taken that first sip from the chalice of Duvessa’s blood during the Communion of Blood. Having been a phlebotomist, she had already been very well-acquainted with the scent of human blood. As a human with a macabre interest in vampirism in general, she had tried to sample her own blood a time or two in the past and had found anything more than a few drops to be overwhelmingly strong, bitter, and metallic. Facing a cup half full of freshly-shed blood, Raina had not been squeamish so much as honestly disgusted by the idea of consuming so much of something that she had been certain would taste so foul and wrong.

  However, when her lips had first met that sacred fluid that was so warm, almost hot, and the first trace of it had hit her taste buds, something within her had opened up. Something, some innate instinct told her right away that this was not just good but absolutely awesome. She had tilted the chalice away for a moment to recover from the surprise and shock of it, and without even thinking, she had gone back for more and devoured it with gusto. She had not merely gulped it down, either. Raina had been so approving of its unexpected sweetness and smoothness that she had held much of it in her mouth to let it sit upon her tongue, analyzing and savoring its primal essence like some expert wine taste-tester before swallowing it.

  The urge, the spasm she felt within herself as she watched Brenna feed was both her own reaction as well as what she sensed from her friend. Brenna was undeniably aroused by the act in which she was engaged, and Duvessa seemed no less happy to oblige her with this token blessing. Their feelings were Raina’s feelings – damn her High Court emotional empathy! The close quarters of the limousine in which they were packed meant that there was no way she could physically distance herself from them to better discern her own reaction from theirs. Worse still, with Raina essentially sandwiched between the two of them, she was essentially being forced to receive their sexual vibes in stereo.

  Just the same, she could not deny the appeal of what she witnessed. Her mind was awash with sensory memories as she watched Brenna begin to not so much feed upon as fondle the Grand Duchess’s foot and lower leg. Raina knew the taste of Duvessa’s blood. She knew the alcohol-like intoxicating effect that blood had upon vampires. She knew the feel of nearly every inch of Duvessa’s soft, pale, feverishly hot, subtly glowing flesh. And she had kissed Brenna just enough to know the sweet deliciousness of her lips. She found herself watching Brenna caress Duvessa’s foot and lower leg as she looked to Raina. It hardly came as a surprise that Raina found herself being passionately engaged in a kiss with Brenna in the next while Duvessa drew away her leg.

  She did not fight it. She did not draw away. She was beyond that, now … finally. It didn’t matter. She was not being seduced. She was not being used or manipulated. And she certainly was not drunk – at least not in the traditional sense. No, this was what she had wanted. This was what both she and Brenna had waited for all this time. This was finally happening.

  Raina and Brenna kissed long and fully, embracing passionately, fingers running through hair, tongues intermingling, and deep breaths escaping through flared nostrils while their lips remained almost perfectly sealed together. Audience or not, and no matter if it went too far or no farther than this kiss, Raina welcomed this moment of emotional release.

  Though her eyes were closed for much of it, Raina knew that Duvessa was sitting back in her corner in stillness to watch and admire. The Grand Duchess was impressed by their passion, their genuine love. Though the instigation of this event had been largely physiological and spontaneous, the emotions behind it were long-standing and very raw. Of course, the voyeuristic delight Duvessa got out of such close observation of the event was understandable and intense, but she elected, perhaps even politely, not to include herself for the moment. She had done enough, already, to initiate the moment with the sharing of her own blood. It was like striking a match in a small room drenched in gasoline, and both Raina and Brenna were burning, oh yes, burning alive as a result.

  Brenna’s lips moved to her cheek, then along the line of her jaw as a hand cupped Raina’s left breast roughly through the fabric of her blouse and bra. Raina gave herself to it, letting her head fall back and closing her eyes while Brenna kissed a trail down the side of her neck. When Brenna reached that sensitive bit of muscle where the base of her neck met her inner shoulders, Raina almost reflexively tilted her head aside and away in surrender. She opened her eyes and found her face very near Duvessa’s. She smiled at Raina and caressed her cheek gently while Brenna gently kissed and nipped at her throat, using her front teeth rather than her canines. Duvessa kissed Raina briefly, lightly, and looked directly into her eyes, so enchanting and clear in their color, even in the gloom of the dark, dark interior at night.

  Raina waited for it. Brenna kept kissing, nibbling, but going no
further. She kept her eyes fixed upon Duvessa’s, blinked slowly a few times, and then let out a heavy sigh as she closed them.

  “Do it.”

  Not even a second later, she felt the sharp sting of fangs sinking into her flesh. She winced, but managed not to tense up her shoulders. It was like physically preparing herself for a blood draw – and it was just that, although not in the usual medical sense. Instead of needing to relax her arm, she had to avoid tightening her neck muscles. Brenna had told her enough about it beforehand, and even as drunk as she had been at the time, Raina had vividly remembered Duvessa’s hands-on crash course on vampiric feeding. Relax completely, do not anticipate the bite, and savor the pain when it comes, she had said.

  The hum of Brenna’s sounds of approval against Raina’s throat tickled slightly, and the feel of her lapping away the blood that welled slowly to the surface from those shallow puncture wounds was quite soothing. Vampiric saliva, she had been told, had a bit of a natural anesthetic in it, much like that of the vampire bat and other similar creatures. It did little for the pain of the initial bite, but it certainly did well to erase it soon after and to sweeten the experience of having one’s life essence sucked and licked away. She gave herself to Brenna for the first time ever, and she wondered then how she could have been so foolish to be afraid of this gentle, sensual, intimate act for so long and to have denied it to Brenna, or any other vampire for that matter, for all of her human years. She had thought that the idea of being a vampire’s steady blood was simply a morbid draw that some people had, or that it was perhaps a price they were willing to pay for the sexual and emotional relationship that usually came with such an association with a vampire. Raina had no idea that the act of letting someone else feed upon her could be so divinely pleasant.

  Even more surprising, as she narrowly opened her eyes and looked aside, was the sight of Svetlana pressing Noriko down and aside, feeding upon a fresh bite inflicted upon her bared shoulder. Neither of them made a sound, and while Noriko seemed to be submissively allowing herself to be used by her fellow Commoner, she did not seem to be unhappy about it in the least. Her beautiful almond-shaped eyes were closed and her lips were parted with shallow breaths of ecstasy. She had thought Noriko to be a more strictly heterosexual vampire, but on second thought, she had neither seen nor heard of her having done anything with anyone else, aside from perhaps Duvessa. Was every female in this camp gay, or at least halfway so?

  Raina let Brenna take as much as she wished, alternately keeping her eyes closed for awhile and then opening them to look into Duvessa’s, occasionally kissing her. With a dimly passing thought, and as she sensed some strange twinge of amusement that did not seem to be her own or anyone else’s nearby, Raina finally turned her face and looked toward the front of the limousine. Above Svetlana and Noriko, through the barrier window between the front bench and the rear passenger area, she saw that William was turned around in his seat to watch with a deviant smile. Loki’s eyes could be seen repeatedly glancing back at them in the driver’s rearview mirror as he drove them along to whatever destination awaited them. Brenna’s hands slipped underneath Raina’s skirt and hooked her fingers about the waistband of her panties, tugging them down. She wanted this, but for some reason, having William and Loki as an audience felt too pressuring. It was one thing to be physically involved with more than one person at the same time, but to be simply observed like a sexual entertainer … that was something she would leave up to someone far braver, like Brenna.

  “Sorry, gentlemen,” Duvessa said, apparently sensing Raina’s uneasiness, “ladies only.”

  With the press of a switch, the darkly tinted privacy window slid up between the rear passenger area and the front. William’s soft chuckle could be heard as he turned away just before the window fully closed.

  * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  They arrived at their destination long before anyone was willing (or able) to exit the limousine, and even then they had to pause for a few minutes to reapply makeup and tidy themselves up before stepping out in view of a few lingering paparazzi around the hotel. Half of the entire House of Fallamhain was so intoxicated with blood and sex that they each had to be physically escorted, literally drunk enough that they needed to be led by the hand from the limousine into the hotel.

  Brenna felt as though she were higher than she had even thought possible after finally having consummated her love with Raina. It had been, without a doubt, the single most awesome, emotionally and sexually intense experience of her entire existence, bar none. Of course, having Duvessa on hand to lend her support, so to speak, was no minus at all. Watching Svetlana feed upon Noriko and then gently return the favor had been an additional side treat. But at least ninety percent of the experience was her focus upon Raina. It had been perfect, every bit of it. She had fantasized of this event countless times before in a variety of seemingly impossible scenarios. Never before had she expected or even dreamed that such a thing would happen in such company, but the fact that it did only seemed to heighten the experience and the majesty of the moment all the more.

  It was all for Raina, all of it. Brenna’s sole delight in the experience had been in pleasing Raina. And if the fact that she had quickly lost count of her orgasms had been any indication at all, then it seemed quite obvious that she had succeeded in at least that much. She had wished for nothing at all in return, expecting nothing, but since Duvessa had delighted in involving herself and pleasuring her as Brenna had focused wholeheartedly upon Raina, she felt as though the pleasure had been just as equally her own. Of course, she had felt obliged without even being asked to return the favor as soon as Raina had indicated her surrender – literally left intoxicated by blood and sex, Raina had briefly passed out – and so Brenna’s sensual worship of the Grand Duchess had been both a matter of gratitude and privilege, as well. She had quickly forgiven Raina for having succumbed to her charms and her expert touch, as Brenna had been just as instantaneously and completely overwhelmed by them, herself.

  They had paired up in leaving the parking lot and begun to make their way into the hotel – Noriko with Duvessa, Svetlana with Raina, and Brenna with Mary, after she had hurried over to them from the parked luxury SUV. William, Robert, Loki, Jen, and Ian all seemed rather amused by the whole matter, smiling and exchanging knowing glances here and there. At least they were discreet (and wise) enough not to actually make any comments. A small-scale orgy in the back of a limousine? What, was this something no one in history had ever done before? Brenna thought with a smirk, If they think this is something special, they should rent some copies of some of the movies I’ve done. They’d probably even write down notes for future reference.

  The twilight hours were approaching, but dawn was not even beginning to show even a faint hint of glow upon the eastern horizon yet. Indeed, just as a new day was about to begin, this was to be the dawn of a new era of happiness for her. Brenna had, after all, been permitted to finally take that one big, almighty step through the barrier that had separated her love from Raina’s. She was still simply ecstatic that the time had finally come that she had opened up to her, totally and completely. Their love was mutual, their passion equally shared. This was no longer a one-way street of affection. Raina loved her, and she knew it. She was certain of this not simply because Raina had finally had sex with her, but because a shy girl like her had been brave enough and committed enough to do so in front of others. It wasn’t a matter of being kinky, it was simply a matter of proving a point. Indeed, Brenna realized she should be content to know that she had, indeed, realized the love of a lifetime, and that all of the waiting and frustration that she had endured for so long beforehand had finally paid off in full.

  It wasn’t the first such occasion that Brenna had been amongst a group of vampires that were staggering about like a bunch of drunken college kids on their way home from a wild frat party. But for Raina, surely, this was kind of a weird and new experience, to say the least. And honestly, in
spite of how giddy and utterly euphoric she was about her now mutual love with Raina, Brenna felt a little awkward about the whole night thus far, as well. They had gone to Dante Giovanni’s residence in a rather somber mood, intending only to pay tribute to those in the House of Fallamhain whom had recently fallen; they had returned to the hotel bearing smiles and laughter, everyone seeming to brazenly paw at one another like newlyweds as they made their way inside.

  Brenna realized that there was a strange sense of familiarity now in being amongst the House of Fallamhain. This was her new “crew,” her new group of colleagues with whom she would be sharing both good times and bad, alike. Instead of strippers and porn actresses and actors, snooty royal figures and servants surrounded her. There was both good and bad that came with it all. She had been quick to see much of the negative side of it, but she had been surprised to find this other much more positive side of things almost as quickly. She had long ago dismissed the High Court race, as a whole, and all of their associates as stuffy, holier-than-thou aristocrats that were completely out of touch with middle- and lower-class reality. A lot of that sentiment still remained, an impression that was very hard to deny completely while being around someone like Duvessa. Still, it was a great relief to know that they were not so far-removed from humanity (and reality) as to find themselves unable to indulge in a bit of spontaneous excitement.

  Even more surprising was how Duvessa had done a complete about-face from the time they had left the hotel to the time they had returned. It had not been that long ago that Brenna had quite literally feared for her life, almost certain that the Grand Duchess was simply trying to think of an excuse to kill her. Before they had even met, Duvessa had actually threatened her with death simply for copping an attitude with her over the phone. While her punishment for that had apparently been commuted from death to eternal servitude, even that was not much of a disciplinary action. She had not been willing to protest the lesser punishment at all, for she was certain that Duvessa would just as happily reinstate an unofficial death sentence upon her.