Lay down…I need to lay down.
I pushed weakly at his chest, and he let me go. I flopped on my back, untangled my legs from him, and curled into a ball. It can’t get worse than this I thought, as I felt the bed began shaking its way across the floor. Great, now I’m going fucking nuts too. I would have laughed, but another spasm ripped through my intestines, and the bed moved again, proving that I was not really crazy, just in a great deal of pain.
A new voice broke through my haze of agony.
“Marcus, I heard you were called out by the High Council for keeping a human for a year. Ah, and here is that human. So, you are keeping him?”
My addled brain finally registered something. The bed that I was currently curled up on was the doorway into and out of here. No wonder it had just moved, someone had just come through it.
“Glad you could come to the Birthing, Claudius. This is Sigmund.”
Edward, I managed to insert, before my stomach roiled again and caused another burst of horrendous pain in my gut.
“Oh, I can see why you find this human so special. You have had him for a year, and he is still defiant. Wait, is he the one who stabbed you? That is why this place is so austere now. I used to enjoy coming here for chats, but it is so cold in these rooms now.”
“Once Sigmund is completely changed, I will redecorate.”
Edward.
“Your name is whatever I decide it to be, Siggy.”
Oh God, if you’re going to start calling me that, I’d rather answer to Sex.
I panted and rubbed my forehead in the sheets. My stomach was burning, and I couldn’t curl in any tighter.
“Sex it is. Besides, you cannot use your human name anymore. You are dead, and to protect your family, the knowledge that you are a vampire has to remain unknown, for now. Has the cramping stopped?”
Yes.
The pain had lessened somewhat, but I wasn’t going to chance it coming back by uncurling from my fetal position.
“Claudius, would you be so helpful? Can you prop him up? The first transfusion was difficult. He should have gotten some strength from it, though, and may prove to be more of a handful than he usually is.”
I don’t know how long I rolled on the bed, cradling my midsection, but it wasn’t anywhere near long enough to make the sharp stabbing pains dissipate, and I gave a startled yelp when I was dragged upright and felt naked flesh pressing up against my back. I opened my eyes and stared at this new vampire, Claudius, as he grabbed my upper arms and pulled them back to his chest.
What the hell?
He was pale, paler than a human, but not so much that he would stand out in the crowd. He had irises of the kind of deep blue that I had only ever seen on a documentary about arctic ice flows and I stared up at them in awe. I don’t think I have ever met someone with eyes quite that shade of blue before. Black strands of hair hung forward over his shoulders, escaping from a loose ponytail that tickled my chest. He was naked. And he’d caught me staring at him.
“Birthing is such a bloody business. I do not want my clothing stained,” he answered to my unasked question.
Marcus moved in front of me, pressing upon my stomach with his own abs. I blinked up at him.
How the hell did I get to be the blood pack in the middle of a vampire sandwich?
Claudius chuckled softly. “He is delightful, Marcus. Still, we will have to have words about this.”
Marcus sat on my thighs, anchoring me down on the bed. He stared into my eyes with a question, but I had no clue what he wanted to hear from me, so I simply turned my head and presented my neck to him, which must have been the answer he was waiting for because he tore into my throat again. It was just as horrible as the last time, the disabling feeling of having your life sucked out of you and not being able to do anything about it.
He let go just before I blacked out, and I got one of my arms free from Claudius and punched Marcus in the head. He fell out of my line of sight, and I felt a sense of satisfaction.
“Hold him!” Marcus yelled, righting himself.
“I did not think he would be so strong after just the first exchange.” Claudius sounded amazed.
Marcus took me by the jaw and squeezed, forcing my mouth open. He’d slit his wrist again and was pressing it now against my lips. “Drink it,” he ordered as the warm blood flowed into my mouth. I swallowed, and he quickly filled my mouth again.
I was actually quite disappointed when he pulled away, I’d been starting to get a taste for his blood, but then the pain in my stomach hit me again, and I curled up in agony. I panted, my head resting on Claudius’s shoulder, his hands still tight on my arms. Marcus shifted for better leverage as my hips came up off the bed. I let loose a scream that deafened my ears, and when I was done, Claudius laid me gently back on the bed and stroked my hair soothingly.
“There, there, little fledging, it will not be much longer.” The black-haired vampire looked over at Marcus. “Have you been engaging in blood play with him? I have never seen so dramatic a transformation. He should not be so strong.”
“I have only drunk from him.”
The cramping feeling in my gut passed quickly this time, though I felt like I had the mother of all hangovers, and my neck was sore. I was lying in blood, and the scent was strong, filling my senses, while my head was hurting so much, and the lights were far too bright. I complained, and when Marcus dimmed them, I curled back up into a protective ball.
Thank God. When is this over?
“When you sprout fangs and bite me, Little One.”
Okay, will do. Fangs, fangs, fangs.
Marcus laughed, but I was serious. There was no fucking way this was going to take twenty transfusions. I could hear my heartbeat, it was slow and sluggish, and my breath sounded like an old man’s death rattle, and there was a fire burning out of control in the pit of my stomach. Was this what I truly wanted? I didn’t know, but I urged the fire to burn brighter, feeling it warm everything inside of me. It was almost there, but not quite enough of it, whatever it, was.
I pushed myself up off the bed. I needed help to sit upright. Claudius propped himself against me again, holding me. Marcus came into my field of vision. He was sporting a purple bruise on his cheek where I had punched him. I stared. I shouldn’t have been able to bruise him at all.
“What did I say about keeping your hands to yourself?” Marcus chastised, as he linked the cuffs together behind my back, and they each took up their positions around me again.
I was physically too weak to struggle, though that didn’t keep me from a running dialogue of what I thought of him. I could feel a burning deep in my chest, almost like acid reflux. It felt like it was waiting for a douse of gasoline, so I could explode. My neck was in agony from Marcus’s bite marks, but that was okay, this was going to be the last time. I heard someone moaning…that someone was me.
His teeth were in, and I could feel the suction as he drew deeply. Pulse, suck, pulse, suck…my heartbeat was getting erratic.
Give it to me. I want to drink you.
He released my neck and set his cut wrist at my mouth, and I sucked on it like it was penny candy. He didn’t expect it and pulled away. I tried to follow, but Claudius held me tightly to him.
More.
Marcus approached and held his wrist to my mouth again. I licked at it greedily and fastened my lips around it before sucking hard. The flame inside me grew brighter and hotter, with each swallow. Marcus had to shake his wrist to get me off.
No, just a few more swallows.
He was just about to give me his bleeding wrist once more when the fire within me ignited. Every fibre of my being was set aflame. I screamed and screamed, and screamed some more, until someone took pity…and knocked me out.
I awoke to the tinkle of ice cubes swirling around in a glass.
“That better not be any more of that fucking cranberry juice.” My voice was cracked and low, which wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t used it much over a year, and I
think I did a hell of a lot of screaming before the lights went out.
“Your cranberry juice days are over, my Little One. Welcome to my world.”
Sitting up, I looked down at myself, and saw that my chest was covered in blood. The sheet I was laying on was drenched with it as well. My hair was matted to my head…with what, I didn’t want to know. I needed to shower, but as I tried to get off the bed I ended up on the floor. My legs were refusing to work.
“Do you require my assistance, Sex?”
I gritted my teeth; I’d given him permission to call me that. “Yes. Did I get my fangs?”
Marcus walked towards me, wrapping a linen bandage around his forearm. “Yes, you got your fangs, though you will need to learn how to bite. You did not even hit a vein.”
“Sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sorry in the least. He caught me around the arms and hauled me to my feet. I was so light-headed and weak that my limbs felt like nothing more than dead weight. I started to topple over, but he quickly grabbed me and swept me up into his strong arms in the typical bridal lift again. I’d take being held like this as opposed to slamming my face into a concrete floor any day.
Once we were inside the shower Marcus deliberately slid me down his naked body. His cock was already stirring.
“You’re going to fuck me? I can’t even stand up!” Did I say that out loud?
“You need to drink,” he answered, pressing me back against the shower wall and leaning over, presenting his neck. I could see a shallow pulse there, and my eyes locked on it. “You can live off other vampires if you need to, but the best blood is human. You cannot control the extension of your fangs yet as you can’t bring them down at will, so you’ll have to rely on scent to do that for you. The scent of fresh blood will do it every time.”
I watched as he broke the skin of his throat with his thumbnail, and a drop of crimson blood oozed out. A sudden sharp pain, as though I’d been punched in the jaw, made me grab at my mouth. Sharp fangs now protruded where my canines had once been; crap, they were long, far longer than Marcus’. Even he was staring at them.
“What…?” I challenged.
“Your fangs are at their full extension. Once you gain control over them, you will be able to control their length. Now, find the vein in my throat, and remember, straight in and straight out. The key is to not leave any sign on the donor. Try five swallows. No more than that. You are still changing, and too much will simply make you sick.”
Hearing him giving me instruction on how to drink blood was just like being critiqued on my kissing technique. I was so self-conscious that I didn’t even know which way to turn my head, and when I did lean in, I scratched him with a fang. Using my tongue to find the pulse, I pressed down my jaws and my mouth was instantly filled with his sweet, warm blood. I groaned and eagerly swallowed his essence. It was heavenly. He tasted of cold, crisp apples and wet leaves. He was my very own apple orchard. I swallowed again and again, and then, concentrating, I tried to make sure I backed straight out so as not to hurt him. Little rivulets of blood seeped from the dual wounds, and I licked at them in the same way as Marcus had done to mine so many times.
“You don’t have to lick vampires, we heal quickly,” he said, watching. “But maybe you should get into the habit anyway. How are you feeling?”
“Stronger.” I stepped away from the shower wall, waiting to see if I was going to start swaying. I didn’t. “A lot stronger,” I reaffirmed, turning the shower on and setting the temperature as Marcus came to stand behind me.
“May I have you?”
I blinked and turned around. I had to tip my head back to look up at him. He was looming over me, his palms pressed by the shower head and his upper torso angling toward me.
“What’s to stop you, since me being all bloody is apparently a turn-on for you?” He lowered his head, and I thought he was going to kiss me like he normally did, but instead he stopped a couple of eyelashes away from my lips. I pressed my back up against the tiles, trying to get some space between us, trying to make sense of what he was doing. He hovered in closer, but he still didn’t touch me. I stared him straight in the eye, knowing something had changed. “What makes this time any different than the rest?”
“I am asking. Because you are a vampire now. You are a part of the Blood. You are a member of my House. Therefore, you are an equal.”
“So all those times that I said no, they meant nothing because I was just a part of the food chain?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t expect him to say that, to admit to it, and it silenced me. I reached for the shampoo bottle but he took it first, squirting some out into the palm of his hand and using it to start washing my hair.
I am not a pet poodle, and I smacked his hand away indignantly, surprised that I actually did so.
“Keep your hands to yourself,” I huffed.
“How about I only touch you? You can initiate intercourse.”
Shampoo crept into my eyes and stung them. I blindly pressed my hands on Marcus’s chest and shoved him away from me…slightly. “I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that I climbed onto your cock willingly in the first place,” I told him, lifting my soap filled eyes up to the jets of falling water, rinsing them.
“Give me leave to touch you,” he begged, moving me backwards, crowding me into the corner of the shower but not actually touching me.
Blinking, I didn’t protest when I felt his hands on my head again. I let the shampoo and the showerhead wash all the blood out of my hair, not that you could distinguish it from the longish red mess it was now.
Marcus must have read the bottle and was following the instructions religiously. He slapped more shampoo into my hair and rattled my head around in an attempt to clean my hair thoroughly until I smacked his hands away in agitation.
“Are all of you sex-crazed?”
“You are my mate.”
I cursed as my eyes popped open at that statement and I ended up with more shampoo in them. I blinked and winced and blinked some more, turning my face back up to the shower stream.
Once I could see again, I shook my head slightly. “I assume this isn’t a ‘let’s meet the rest of our mates down at the pub’ kind of thing?”
“I chose you as my immortal love when I saved you from death that night,” Marcus answered.
I tried to step away from him, but he just held onto me and tightened his grip. I started to confess quickly. “Before you came along, I was dating girls. I wasn’t good at it, and it wasn’t very often. Truthfully, I only dated two different girls, and I’m pretty sure it was because they both felt sorry for me. But until now, girls were my preference. Really, I’m not gay, so how can this work?”
Marcus caressed my cheek. I found it strangely comforting. “They did not appreciate you, and you were lying to yourself,” he said. “Like calls to like, my love. Those women did not see the potential inside of you. But I did.” He pressed his face up to my cheek as he whispered this, and I stayed still. I had nowhere to go.
“How did raping me every day bring out the potential in me?” I asked.
“If I had set up a treadmill and said, ‘Use it,’ you would not have. I had to make you fear me. Once you feared me, you did as I said. ‘Two hours on the treadmill, Sex, or it will be two hours on your knees.’ Remember?”
Yes, I remembered those words. And he was right; I would have done anything to get him off of me.
“Now, look at this.” His hands ran over my flesh, tracing the well-defined shape of my lean and muscular physique. “This is what I saw when I first looked at you in that bar. This is what I knew was inside you. This is what I helped you to attain.”
I frowned. “You made me skinny, so now I’m your eternal bride?”
“I wish it could be that simple, my Little One. Now that you are one of the Blood, I have free rein to pursue you as my mate. But, our bodies already know each other so well that it would be a shame not to let them fornicate as often as necessary.�
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I shifted my shoulders and pulled at the hold he had on my waist. “Yeah, well, your ‘necessary’ is nowhere near my ‘necessary’. And if what you’ve said is true, you’re not getting near my necessary for quite a while.”
“Marcus?” a voice called through the bathroom door. “Are we still going hunting? It is getting late if you want to go to that bar.”
I was surprised that Claudius hadn’t walked in and joined us in the shower. Only minutes ago he’d had no qualms about stripping completely on the bed in front of me. Why should he be so coy now?
What the hell is it with these vampires? Or is it just these two?
An index finger reached up and Marcus stroked away the furrow in my brow. “Now you see why I told you not to think,” he chided. “And yes, Claudius is a good friend, and you can rely on him if you need help, and I am not around. Ah, there, you are all clean. Go and put your clothes on. I have one more birthday present to give to you.”
I stepped out of the shower cubicle and grabbed a towel. Great, one more present from him…The last one had been a killer.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
I started laughing as I was hit with the absurdity of my life…err…death. I was still a fuck toy, only now, I had an extended lifetime warranty. Get up, wipe those tears away, and get dressed, I told myself, fighting the building hysteria inside of me. No matter what Marcus and Claudius had planned for tonight, nothing could be worse than dying.
Fuck…
I was so very wrong, because for my last gift, I found myself back in that very same gay bar that he’d taken me from to begin with.
Great fucking birthday present.
Seven
Killer Sex
The blaring music was pumping hard; I could feel it as it pounded through my chest. The light show had gotten a little bit more elaborate since that last time I was here, and a rainbow of colors was washing over the people packed in the room.
I was still looking around when I felt a hand slide down the front of my pants. I thought it was Marcus touching me up again, but when I turned around I found myself facing some dirty, dishwater-looking blond, with emerald contacts in his eyes. I opened my mouth to tell him to get the fuck away from me when he lunged forward and shoved his tongue down my throat. I brought my hands up to shove him off just as Marcus grabbed his wrist and yanked it from out of my pants.
Cake: A Blood Nation Novel (Volume 1) Page 6