Unbitten

by Valerie du Sange

“What are you talking about?” said Henri, trying to sound dismissive, but failing.

  “This morning. You totally blew me off. Turned on your heel and shut the door, all pissy-faced.”

  Henri drew in a long breath, and then held it. He had not been able to sleep, imagining Jo in bed with his brother. He had barely been able to restrain himself from going to David’s room and punching him in the face. He had been in the grip of blinding rage and fury, even though of course, as he kept reminding himself, Jo and his brother had been together before Jo and himself had gotten close, long before they had kissed. He was acting like a cuckolded husband, and he had no right.

  And seeing her blazing up before him–it made him want her more than ever.

  “Jo,” he said, and his features softened, and his voice was warm again.

  But she had learned not to melt quite so easily.

  “So?” she asked, still angry. “What was that about?”

  Henri said, “Would you like something to drink? Have you just had a long ride?”

  “Yes on the ride. No thank you on the drink,” she answered, not moving.

  “Come sit,” said Henri, holding out his hand for hers.

  She did not give him her hand, but she did follow him over to the alcove where the loveseat and a pair of armchairs were. He sat on the loveseat and she dropped into one of the armchairs, her eyes still wide open and questioning, her face reddened both by emotion and the November wind of the morning’s ride, her posture ramrod straight.

  “This sort of conversation…it’s awkward for me, Jo,” said Henri. He reached for her hand again, and this time she let him take it, although it sat in his hand like a dead fish.

  Henri said, “It’s…it’s about David.”

  Jo looked down.

  “He is not doing especially well, for one thing,” said Henri. “But I suppose that is beside the point. The point is…” but he could not say the words.

  Jo stood up. She looked towards the door.

  “The point is, he told me that you were…that he had been seeing you,” Henri said, his voice very low. “I understand it is none of my business. But when I saw you this morning, it was on my mind, and I…”

  Jo felt relief wash over her.

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “All?” said Henri forcefully.

  “I don’t mean I’m belittling it,” said Jo. “I just meant, is there anything else the matter?”

  “That’s quite enough,” said Henri, drily.

  “And, your…feelings for me?” Jo inwardly cringed at having to ask, but she had to ask.

  Henri looked down at the floor, and then into her eyes. “I love you, Jo,” he said, simply. “That does not change. That does not ever change.” He stood up and walked around for a moment, needing to move to ease the tension in his body. “That is why the thought of you with David…”

  “That’s completely over,” said Jo quickly. “Over before you and I were…before the show, before anything had developed between us, beyond friendship, I mean. Ending with David–it was my decision. And not a decision I agonized over, either.”

  Henri sat down and took her hand again. He believed her. And yet, some of the doubts were still nagging at his scientific brain. She’s human, a voice seemed to whisper in his ear.

  “And what about you?” asked Jo, her voice still sharp. “Have you been involved with anyone recently? Have you been married before? Longstanding girlfriend? Anything?”

  “Not in…quite some time,” he said quietly.

  “But you have had girlfriends, right? No way you’re totally inexperienced.”

  Henri stopped himself from smiling. “No, not totally inexperienced,” he said. “Just not…recently.”

  “And whoever they were, it’s totally over between you? No lingering feelings, no promises that still might be fulfilled?”

  “No,” said Henri.

  “Then we’re in the same place,” said Jo. “No difference, really.”

  “Except that David is my brother, and it was only a few weeks ago.” He wondered intently whether David had revealed his status to her, but he was not ready to have to answer any questions about that himself.

  Jo got up and sat beside Henri on the loveseat. “David is not at all the man for me,” she said, reaching up to put her palm alongside his face.

  “You big idiot,” she said.

  Henri had just the very inkling of a smile.

  “You big, lumbering, idiotic idiot,” she said, bringing her face right up next to his, breathing in the fresh-cut grass and rose smell and nearly falling over, he smelled so good.

  He wrapped his arms around her with vampire quickness, reminded himself to be careful to slow down, and lightly touched his lips to hers, then not so lightly, relishing the softness of her mouth, her wet tongue, her Jo-ness.

  As he kissed her, he slid her coat off her shoulders. She wriggled into his lap and felt his already rock-hard erection, which made even more heat flood her body and face.

  “You smell like horses,” he said, smiling, and putting his face just where her neck met her shoulder, after picking a bit of straw out of her hair.

  “Henri,” she moaned, as he kissed her neck, sucking lightly on the skin, and then coming back to kiss her deeply on the mouth again.

  He was rocking his hips under her now, as she sat on his lap, and she let her legs fall to each side of his, and moved herself back and forth along his hardness, her hands holding his face, eyes flickering open every so often.

  They kissed for an extraordinarily long time. Jo was relishing the present moment and the feel of his body, savoring it, and Henri–Henri was thinking that he had not been with a woman since around 1920, and he didn’t want to rush a single instant of what was promising to be an afternoon of more pleasure than he had ever known.

  Eventually they stopped kissing, and sat looking into each other’s eyes. Jo was gazing at the flecks of gold in all that blue, and running her hands through his thick, sandy-colored hair, letting the curls roll into her palms, then stroking his face.

  She ran her finger along his high, prominent cheekbone, and then down his Gallic nose, over his full lips, and then she had to kiss him again, because every detail of how he looked was so beautiful and arousing to her.

  The kiss reached a point of feverishness where they were tonguing and running their hands over each other with such heat that it was clear to them both that they were not going to stop with kissing, not this time, no matter how many reasons they had both spent the last weeks compiling for why they should stop. They remembered the reasons, as they were kissing; they even ran through them in their minds. But to Henri and Jo, in the moment of this fervent kiss, all those well-considered reasons seemed completely irrelevant. Stupid, really. Gone, in a puff of smoke.

  Because their bodies touching, their lips, their hands–it felt so strange and wonderful, like something totally new and stimulating, yet at the same time, an undercurrent of comfortable familiarity, as though they had finally found home. Jo thrilled to feel Henri’s usual gentleness fall away and a powerful physical intensity take its place. His arms around her gripped her so tight, his kiss so ardent–there was nothing distracted, and nothing of the painstaking scientist showing now. He was all alpha, and she loved it.

  Henri’s cock was throbbing, of course. But that wasn’t all. His fangs had shot down and they ached, they wanted to tear into her flesh so badly. And when he kissed Jo’s neck, her warm, flushed neck, Henri did imagine sinking those pulsating fangs into her, finding the artery, feeling her blood spurt into his mouth. He imagined it, and he knew it would be electrifying to bite her, to suck her.

  But Henri had long experience in self-control and discipline, and he was easily able to notice how amazing it would be, and yet not allow himself to be tempted to do it.

  He ran his tongue from her collarbone up to her ear, making her shiver and tremble with mounting excitement.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,�
� he said, his voice barely audible.

  Jo’s eyes filled with tears again; this time, mostly happy tears. “It feels like you really see me,” she said, squeezing him tight, and pulling her face back a few inches, so they could study each other’s faces.

  “I do see you, Jo,” Henri said, cupping her face in his hands. “And I need to keep looking,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Are you ready for me to take you to my chamber?” he said, his voice gravelly and wracked with desire.

  When Jo smiled, her eyes full of warmth, he stood and then picked her up, nuzzling her neck and murmuring to her, and carried her behind the thick curtain and down the spiral stairs to his dark chamber, where no one else had ever been.

  It was pitch dark. Henri asked Jo to wait just a minute, and he ran back up to the lab and hunted for some candles. Miraculously, he found some in a messy, disorganized drawer, and some silver candlesticks on a messy, disorganized shelf, and ran back downstairs, leaping five stairs at a time, his erection making the front of his pants stick out like a tent. A very large, capacious, ample tent.

  Henri wedged the candles into the candlesticks and lit them. Jo looked very beautiful in the warm, flickering light.

  “Wow,” said Jo, looking at his pants. She grinned.

  “I’ve been dreaming of this, of you,” said Henri, pulling off his shirt to reveal a broad chest lightly covered with sandy hair and well-developed muscles.

  “Wow,” said Jo, looking at his chest.

  She was so distracted by looking at him that she made no move to undress or even to touch him. The prospect of making love to Henri was nearly overwhelming to her–she already felt so close to him emotionally, and she had never before experienced physical intimacy and emotional intimacy at the same time with the same person.

  Henri stood naked before her, his cock so erect it almost looked comical. Almost.

  Jo was mesmerized. She stared at his cock, at his chest, at his face. She held up a foot so Henri could slide off a riding boot. Then the other foot. She stood up and started to unbutton her riding breeches, but Henri pushed her hands away, knelt down, and unbuttoned them himself. He peeled the breeches away from her skin and kissed her on the place between her bellybutton and her mound. He was unhurried, deliberate, managing somehow to keep his wild excitement barely in check, but Jo could feel it. It felt to her–in a good way– like being in bed with a bomb that was going to blow any minute.

  Jo was used to men tossing her down and ramming her when they had erections that looked anything like Henri’s. But Henri had other plans.

  He pulled her breeches down to her knees, and kept kissing, with an occasional nip and an occasional lick, all down her thighs, the inside of her thighs which she opened for him as best she could with her breeches still on, kissing on her mound, on top of her panties.

  Jo felt her knees go wobbly. She held fistfuls of his long curls in her hands, pulling to keep her balance. He was licking now, flicking his tongue right on her center, still over the panties, and it was sending Jo already right up to the edge. She wanted to steer his attention elsewhere to prolong the pleasure, but she couldn’t make herself turn him aside.

  An instant before it was too late, Henri stood up, putting one big hand over her mound and holding her there. He growled a low growl.

  “I want to take you so badly,” he said, “but I don’t want to rush.”

  “That may kill me,” said Jo, and they both laughed softly, sounding to Jo like nickering horses.

  He began to unbutton her shirt. He was going ridiculously slowly, button by button, then a long pause as he greedily looked at whatever skin he had revealed, and kissed it, before going to the next button.

  Jo felt like she was going to explode from being made to wait.

  Henri moved closer and pressed himself into her. Jo gratefully rubbed herself on his cock, and they swayed for a moment, both of them losing their sense of themselves in space because the pleasure was so intense.

  Finally Jo couldn’t stand it another minute. She grabbed the sides of her shirt and tore them apart, sending buttons flying. She fell back on Henri’s large bed and pulled him down on top of her.

  “I want you to ravish me,” she said, whispering into his ear, “and I want you to do it now.”

  Henri growled that low growl that got her even more aroused.

  Henri propped himself on his elbows and pushed himself against her. First his cock was pressing against her belly, and then he moved lower, then lower again, his cock feeling to Jo like a red-hot length of iron, a red-hot length of iron that she desired above all else.

  Henri, still on his elbows, rocked his hips into her and leaned down to kiss her cupcake breasts. He touched her nipples lightly with his tongue and she arched her back, pushing herself up at him. He murmured, Jo couldn’t even tell what, except that whatever it was felt like lightning when he sucked her nipple and murmured at the same time, his hips moving faster now, his red-hot cock rubbing her in her most sensitive place where it literally felt as though showers of sparks must be flying out to cover the bed.

  “I need you now,” said Henri, his voice breaking just barely perceptibly, and he moved his cock right to her opening, and teased her for only a moment, all he could stand, before plunging himself into her with a groan.

  “Ohh,” murmured Jo as he thrust inside her. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t sure whether she was on the floor or on the bed or upside down or anywhere at all, her whole consciousness was swirling and almost unbearably heated up and wonderfully confused and lost and intensely pleasurable. He was thrusting and caressing her breast and kissing her neck and it was all pushing her right up to the edge again.

  Suddenly she opened her eyes, and Henri was looking right at her, right into her eyes, and he bucked, and waves of pleasure broke over her, as they kept looking into each other’s eyes, kept holding on to each other, kept feeling the connection of love as their bodies crashed into orgasm.

  Jo and Henri didn’t talk then; they didn’t need to. They lay in Henri’s dark chamber with the candles flickering, their bodies pressed together, their hands stroking the other or being still, and before very long the stroking became more interested, more intent, until Henri grabbed Jo’s hand and put it on his cock, which had sprung up quite readily for a 208-year-old guy.

  She wrapped her hands around it, she sucked it, she kissed it, and before long she straddled him and put it inside her, and after that he went down on her with a tonguing technique he invented on the spot, taking Jo to peaks of intense pleasure beyond anything she had ever experienced or imagined, and the two of them sailed off on another new voyage of bliss, until eventually they fell into an exhausted and extremely satisfied sleep, arms and legs entwined, the candles guttering, and then dark.

  41

  It was dinnertime. The early November dark was even darker for the heavy cloud cover hiding the moon and stars. Dominic and Maloney had walked all over Mourency, looking in at all the public places, hoping to find the labri Roxanne. Once they had her, they could hand her over to Pierre who would be in such a hurry to get her alone, he would fork over the rest of the documents the Boss wanted without a peep. And Dominic could go home and get back to his everyday vampire life.

  “I will not miss Madame,” grumbled Dominic, getting ahead of himself a little, as though he had already left the inn for good. “And I will not miss Mourency, either,” he said, peering in the window of one of the last places they could think to look for Roxanne.

  The small restaurant was about half-full, with a family of tourists and their pack of unruly children, and a few locals, bent over bowls of stew.

  “Look at that man!” yelled one of the children, pointing at Maloney, who was not so much peering in the window as standing directly in front of it with his nose pressed against the glass.

  “Maloney!” hissed Dominic. “Step back! Move along!”

  “Which one?” said Maloney, confused. “We gonna eat in there? It looks good.”


  “We’re not eating now, we’re looking for Roxanne, remember? We can’t miss her–spiked-up, East Village hair, green streak, always wears black. You know the type.”

  “I don’t see her,” said Maloney.

  “Keep looking,” said Dominic. “That’s our job right now, to find her and…grab her.”

  “I’ll grab,” said Maloney.

  “You do that,” said Dominic.

  He sighed. She was not in town, not in any bar or restaurant anyway. She wouldn’t have gotten her own room, not when they had a place for free. So where could she be?

  Suddenly, Dominic knew exactly where she was. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized it at once. That little sneak Pierre had found her at the train station, and snatched her up! Dominic remembered now, too late, that Pierre had bragged about hunting near the station. Doubtless he had gotten really lucky for once in his life.

  Dominic had no idea how they were going to get the documents from Pierre now. By not making sure they got to Roxanne first, they’d lost their main leverage. Maybe the information on whipster Pierre had been pestering for would do it. Or maybe Maloney could just beat him to a pulp. But whatever, the important thing now was to find them.

  “Come on, Maloney, we’re going to Pierre’s farm. I have a feeling Roxanne’s out there, waiting for us.”

  The girl’s skin was ghostly white. Her body was on a narrow platform made of thin green branches lashed together, with poles extending from the four corners; under her, and around her, were bunches of herbs, both green and dry. The air was pungent from the herbs, and pungent from the smells of the three women who were fussing over her, all of them dressed in dark, bedraggled, raggedy clothing, and seeming to communicate with various calls and caws and bird-like shrieks.

  It looked as though the women–who were witches, it is true, although they did not call themselves that, having abandoned human language in the wake of one of the purges that had very nearly extinguished their kind altogether–were readying the girl for something, a kind of ceremony perhaps, as they arranged dried flowers in her hair, threw different-colored powders over her, and continued with their cawing, their cooing, with an occasional squawk, cackle, and hoot.