by Aurelia Fray
DEATH LOVE LUST
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, including photocopying, recording, or transmitted by any means without written consent of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, establishments, names, companies, organizations, and events were created by the author. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, companies or organizations is coincidental.
Published by Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing
Test Copyright 2016 held by CHBB Publishing and the Individual Authors
Edited by Olivia Harper
Cover by Rue Volley
DEATH LOVE LUST
Published by Hot Ink Press
An Imprint of
Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CATHERINE STOVALL - VENGEFUL LOVER
AURELIA FRAY - MIDNIGHT
VICTORIA KINNAIRD - THE PRICE
LIBBY BISHOP- THE START OF FOREVER
JEN L. JOYAL - RESTLESS DESIRES
AURELIA FRAY - ALWAYS
LILY LUCHESI - THE DEVIL’S DOZEN
JENN NIXON - SOUL STEALER
PATRICK TUMBLETY - RESTLESS SINNERS
JACLYN OSBORN - WAITING FOR YOU
ISKRA RYDER - I’LL BE SEEING YOU
AURELIA FRAY - DEATH
AURELIA FRAY - LOVE
AURELIA FRAY - LUST
CHARLOTTE ONDAC - DEVOTED
CATHERINE STOVALL – DON’T OPEN YOUR EYES
EMMA MICHAELS & MICHAEL CROSS - UNTIL DEATH WE WON’T PART
DEATH LOVE LUST AUTHOR PAGES
VENGEFUL LOVER
Catherine Stovall
Eyes that no longer see.
Lips that no longer part.
The silence of lost beauty.
The stillness of a broken heart.
A love wanted but denied.
A passionate fire gone cold.
A heartfelt proposal denied.
A sin committed and gone untold.
The shudder of a long held breath,
The chill of hands drawn up a stiffened spine.
The long awaited kiss of death.
At last, you will be mine.
MIDNIGHT
Aurelia Fray
Midnight.
Isn't that when it always happens, in that darkening moment between the zeros, as the clocks chime-in a new day? They use that moment like a gateway between the realms: Ours and theirs. Their gossamer figures, slip through the ether, roaming free before the quickening of the dawn. This is their time. This is their hunting ground and we are the prey.
I met one once. He stole my childhood. Visions of him corrupted my naive innocence and buried themselves so deeply, that he haunted my dreams nightly. I had been thirteen years old— that age between childhood and womanhood— and something of an outcast among my peers. During a school camping trip, I had wandered out of my tent into the darkness of the cold hours before sunrise, hoping to see the dawn blaze across the sky with its magnificent flares of color.
He was there; flitting like shadows and smoke. He moved from tent to tent, before halting in the center of the campsite. He shimmered and solidified before me. His red eyes glared hotly into mine.
"Do you see me?" he hissed.
I could not speak. My voice had shriveled up and swallowed itself. Only sharp stabbing breaths existed in my constricted throat. He moved in undulating sways, making me feel like I was afloat on an ocean of darkness. He enveloped me in his shadow. Tendrils of gauze and air stroked my flesh, chilling me to the bone.
I nodded slowly.
I saw him—I saw only him: Blood-red eyes, sharp teeth, and skin as black as scorched earth. He moved towards me. First man, then smoke, then man once more. He towered over me but bent low so that his dancing, flame-lit eyes were only inches from my face. His white teeth flashed as he spoke.
"I will not kill you, little one. You will sustain me and forget," he whispered irresistibly into my ear. I had no choice. He was not asking. He tracked a hot, forked tongue down the side of my face and sank his teeth into my throat.
It burned. My skin shrieked in protest as he took me. However, my lips squeezed tight, refusing to give voice to the scream. As he coiled around me, his arms squeezing me firmly, I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
"You are too small. Too empty. You know nothing, have seen nothing," he sighed, "You cannot sustain me."
His words stayed with me long after he vanished, long after the sun rose and illuminated the world around me. I told no one about him or what had happened. Who would believe me anyway? I kept it hidden; my awful little secret.
As the years moved on, lifting me up on their cresting waves and drowning me in their wash, I carried him with me. Each day he felt closer to me and these days it was as though he was right there, just over my shoulder, somewhere behind the veil that hid their world from ours.
He was even closer in sleep. In my dreams, those subconscious wanderings where the veil became permeable, he was right there with me; none more so than when I felt like my world was falling apart. When my parents died, when my relationships crumbled, when everything felt bleak, he would be there to comfort me as I closed my eyes. With each visit, he appeared more transformed. His skin had smoothed out to a warm honeyed tan, his shark-like teeth appeared less threatening, and his burning, red eyes had simmered to an effervescent brown.
His nightly visits began with subtle appearances. He was an apparition within my dreams, always hovering; observing the action but never interfering. However, in the last few months he progressed to conversations and then began to monopolize my attentions: Touching, teasing, and tasting me. He drank from me, as he had that first time, only now he reveled in my subtle flavors. He sought me out, and always left me quivering, yet unsatisfied.
I wanted more. I needed more.
But more was impossible considering what he was and where he came from. Instead, I had to forget him. Quit my nightly fantasies, where he would envelop me in his cloaked aura, suffused with his scent of smoke and sex. Where he would torture me with forbidden delights and move within me as only he could—air and power and death personified. I would never be whole if I held onto him. I needed to focus on my life and what it meant to me rather than how it could sustain him.
Tonight I would finally do it. Tonight I would focus on me and my realm. Tonight I would allow another man into my life and let go of my dream lover.
***
“You seem a little distracted Melanie. Are you okay?” Gavin asked. He had been amazingly attentive all night despite my nervous reticence.
“Just thinking,” I replied, knowing it was not a good excuse, but an honest one at least.
Gavin was a colleague. One who had made his attraction known a long time ago. He had also waited patiently for me to be ready. He was a good man; handsome, too in a geeky way. He wore his hair long on top and shaggy, hid his grey eyes behind thick, black-rimmed glasses, and chose to wear brightly colored converse high-tops with everything including his mandatory suits for work. He was polite and rarely cursed. Gavin took everything at face value and lived gracefully; even his walk was graceful.
I hated to admit that he didn’t burn me the way my dream lover did. He did not stir my bones or my heart, but he was a good catch, everyone thought so. I was willing to try anything to forget Him, even lie to myself.
“Have I bored you? Sometimes I get carried away with things that don’t interest other p
eople. You should tell me to shut up,” Gavin stumbled nervously over his words. His eyes sought reassurance.
“Shut up,” I teased. My words came out too austerely due to my own nerves. He looked offended. I hurriedly tried to make amends. “No, I mean shut up because you are not boring. You are kind and sweet and attentive.”
“That actually doesn’t sound good.” He smiled anxiously, expecting a ‘but’.
“It should, because I was actually thinking about inviting you to stay the night, even though I know that it might make me look like—”
“It makes you look like a woman who knows what she wants,” he responded abruptly, cutting me off before I could offer a reason why it was a bad idea. “There is no shame in it. Besides, we have known each other for years. Our friendship was kind of the precursor to this. I mean—”
“No you are right. It feels right.” It didn’t. Not really, but I would not admit that to him. I needed him to wipe away the creature in my head.
“So yours or mine?” he quizzed shyly. I liked that he was nervous too. I liked that he felt safe and dependable, that I knew where I stood with him.
“Mine,” I affirmed with a nod. He grinned appreciatively and reached out for my hand, squeezing my fingers in encouragement. His skin was cooler than my creature, it sent goose-pimple-chills along my arms, and a shiver shuddering down my back. He noticed immediately and pulled me in for an embrace as we hurried along the dimly lit street, to my apartment block.
We scrambled up the stairs in a strange anticipatory silence. Gavin hovered at my elbow as I unlocked the door and motioned him inside. He did not look around. He did not bother to survey my home or tentatively invite me to my own sofa. He simply stood with his back to me, whilst I closed the front door, and then spun to face me once we were both locked inside.
Something about the way he moved seemed familiar to me. Something in that graceful turn and the narrow, lust filled glare made me feel like prey. My sick-self reveled in the feeling. I enjoyed the power he exuded over me. He stalked the meager two strides to meet me and pushed me back against the bolted door. He was not a large man, however, the way he pinned me to the wood made him appear larger. My rapid breaths stuttered against his skin. His slow ones caressed mine. His lips met my earlobe and he sucked it in before tugging roughly with his teeth.
“We have waited a long time for this, Melanie.” His mellifluent words tickled at my conscious mind. We? Did he mean him and me?
“I think I should have a little fun with you first. We have time to go slow,” he added. I couldn’t work out his meaning. This was hardly going slow. My sluggish mind registered his hands creeping up under my skirt, pulling brutally at my stockings and tearing them so that they fell from my legs in useless swathes of fabric. He was very different from the quiet man down on the street.
“Gavin…to the bedroom,” I stammered between hot, wet kisses. He was all tongue and teeth. He smashed at my lips and tore at my tongue. I needed to slow him down. I hadn’t figured he would enjoy it rough.
He lifted me up, pressing me to his bulging pelvis, and carried me through to my bedroom. He didn’t need to ask, the room was visible from the doorway. He shredded my clothing as he went, slamming me up against walls to better grip at my blouse or skirt. Everything I had worn to look pretty for him lay stripped and ruined in a trail across the floor. He flung me, brusquely, onto the bed, deftly removing his own clothing and staring appraisingly at me. I wore only a flimsy pair of panties, my bra now hung from the end of the bedpost, a debauched ‘do not disturb’ sign to the world.
“What is the time?” he asked distractedly looking around my room for an alarm clock. I had none. I didn’t need one when my nightly lover awoke me with his absence at dawn.
“Why?” I asked. Was he in a hurry? Did he have somewhere else to be? He seemed to run hot and cold. His behavior was beginning to unnerve me.
“I need the time,” he growled reaching down into his discarded pockets for his phone. The screen flashed on and he blew a huge sigh of frustration.
“We can do this another time. I can wait,” I offered relieved, now, to have a way to stop this whole evening. Something about Gavin’s zeal felt wrong. He seemed like a Jekyll and Hyde and I was looking for something a lot less complicated. Or monstrous.
“No, it’s fine. We can do this. Just hurry, okay?” This time there was a glimmer of something else in his expression. Mixed in with the annoyance and frustration was something darker. If I was right, it was fear.
“I think we should stop. You don’t seem yourself,” I told him as I grabbed for the sheet to cover myself with. Suddenly, I didn’t like the way his gaze ate me up or the sneer that had formed upon his lips in the last few minutes. This was not the Gavin I knew and it certainly wasn’t the kind of man I wanted.
“Don’t play coy, Melanie. We are long beyond that. Just turn yourself over. Get up on those hands and knees for me, bitch, so that I can fuck you from behind.”
Well, that was not something I was willing to hear and something I had no intention of doing. Not for Gavin, anyway.
“Get the hell out. You are done here,” I yelled, sounding more sure than I felt.
“On the contrary Mel, we have only just started. In about five minutes you will see exactly what we have planned for you.”
There he went with that we again.
I reached down under my bed for my baseball bat, the one I keep on the pretense of protection. I lifted it up in both hands, steadying myself securely in the center of the bed, on my knees. I fortified my grip, all the while, wishing I had not bothered with the date, with Gavin, with my life. He would rape and kill me tonight, of that, I was sure, but I wouldn’t go down without a fight. We stood staring at each other, neither moving an inch. Somewhere in my apartment, probably the kitchen, a beeping noise welcomed in the new day.
Midnight.
Gavin’s sneer twisted and stretched across his face. A hazy glow pulsed from somewhere behind him. It reached out like vines of soft white light in my darkened room and slunk around to coil itself all over his naked body. I watched in abstract horror, as it seemed to pour itself inside of him, filling every pore and orifice. He swelled with it and glowed. Why did this always seem to happen to me? Was I a beacon for all the weird crap in the world? Had my run in with Him all those years ago open me up to this?
Just as he looked fit to burst, the light receded and he sighed in pure blissed-out pleasure. From behind him stepped a small lithe female, as ethereal and diaphanous in form as my own dream lover. Where He was darkness, she was light. This in no way made me feel any sense of relief.
No.
Her teeth were sharper, double layered and long. She bared them at me in a hissing sneer. Her eyes were a sharp, cruel blue and her little golden hand fisted around Gavin’s already rigid penis, pumping him smoothly, readying him for whatever plans they had for me.
“We have been waiting for you,” he said again, speaking for both of them. The figure hadn’t yet noticed I could see her or at least, if she knew, she didn’t seem to care. “You are marked,” Gavin stated.
“. . . but not taken,” the figure mocked.
“Get out. You are not welcome here. Neither of you,” I spat.
Gavin’s eyes widened, his grin lost some of its malevolence as he absorbed the fact that he was not as special as he thought.
“You see her?” he asked, shocked by my inadvertent confession.
“Yes. You are not the only freak in the room, Gavin. Now get the hell out!”
“Do you know then? Do you realize what has been happening to you?”
“Do you?” I screamed. His figure wafted around him impatiently. She seemed unwilling to approach me, but desperate for Gavin to reach for me. She slid up his body and pursed her lips around his neck, making sure, all the while, that I could see exactly what she was about to do. He stilled a moment as she sank her mouthful of pointed needle-teeth into his throat. I watched, sickened, as his eyes rol
led back into his head and an indulgently masculine sigh of pleasure slipped from his lips. His penis pulsed in her hand and I knew I had just witnessed him orgasm beneath her bite. My own experience was so similar to his. I felt envious that his creature would give him the end that I so desperately craved.
“What do you want with me?”
“I am going to give you to Voraya. My gift to my incubus,” he informed me on a lover’s sigh. Voraya’s hands fluttered across his abdomen. She had him totally enthralled.
“You have to be confused. Incubi are male. That isn’t what she is… surely?” I asked dumbfounded. How could she be an incubus? Did that make my dark lover a succubus? How was it even possible?
“Do you know nothing, Melanie? Did he tell you nothing of what we are?” Voraya’s cold voice prickled at my skin.
“No…I…he…”
“We feed from only one host, little one,” His warm voice caressed my ear. He was here. Finally here without dreams to tear us apart. He surrounded me just as Voraya surrounded Gavin. “We take from you but we give to you also. You sustain us and we sustain you. It is a symbiotic relationship.”
“But she said she is an incubus. I don’t understand.”
“I will explain. First, though, I would like to know why you are here, Voraya?” The figure skipped behind Gavin rounding him to appear, once more, further from my own dark watcher.
“None of your business, Raphael. My host was invited,” she sniped. She projected defiance, yet stank of fear. Even I could recognize its heavy quality in the air surrounding us.
Raphael? After all this time, I finally had a name for him.
“Did you invite this man here, little one?” he asked. He looked hurt, but encouraging all at once. He wanted the truth.
“Yes,” I responded in a small voice. “I wanted to forget you.”
Voraya laughed raucously. She brazenly sauntered out from behind Gavin and glared at Raphael.
“She does not want you, Raphael. All these years you refused my help. All these years you wasted on this whelp and she does not want you.”