HuntingtheSiren

by Jeffe Kennedy

  They’d treated Mélanie’s demise with casual unconcern. The queen even seemed pleased about it. But then, death clearly meant nothing to her.

  The vampire girls cleaned him thoroughly, their nimble fingers leaving no crevice unwashed, which he tried to bear with as much stoicism as possible. They finally let him out of the tub and rechained him in the same position by a larger fire, briskly rubbing him down and then massaging oil into his skin.

  Why they kept him chained, he didn’t know, since they managed him with such easy, supernatural strength. Except that the queen had told them to. Psychological games then, meant to make him feel even more helpless.

  It worked, too, as the girls groomed him like some mute beast. His cock had flagged, but one of them worked it back up to full mast, rubbing the oil in and tugging with expert, impersonal pressure. She worked the oil well up into his anus too, slapping his haunch when he flinched away. Sex toy in all ways he would be then.

  Until the toy turned in her hand and became the weapon that ended her unnatural life.

  They trimmed his finger and toe nails, shaved off his beard and even cleared his ear and nose hair. Working more oil through his hair with a comb, they apparently decided to leave it long.

  No doubt she liked that kind of thing.

  Finally one crouched at his feet, offering a pair of scarlet silk pantaloons for him to step into. He obeyed the suggestion, relieved for some clothing, at least. One left the yurt while the other sat him at a low table, set with modern eating utensils. They seemed so odd, the metal shining with dull familiarity, almost anachronistic. The world of set tables seemed so long ago, as if he’d crossed into another time and place.

  They set a tray in front of him and he blinked in wonder. Was that a…a steak? Yes. The scent of hot meat assured him and his stomach leapt. A baked potato—okay, smallish and maybe a little withered—accompanied it, along with bowls of butter and sour cream. Made from goat’s milk, he decided, tasting it. And a slice of bread—thick-grained and coarse, but still.

  Who in a vampire camp was baking bread and churning butter?

  He dove in, trying to pace himself and not wolf it all down. Privation is indeed the finest spice. No meal had ever tasted so delicious. Not even the thought that he was like Hansel, fattening himself to be another’s supper, made him a whit less hungry.

  When his plate was clean, they marched him through the encampment, taking him to a yurt like all the others, protectively encircled in the center.

  He was unsurprised to be similarly chained again, arms stretched tight above his head, feet still manacled together, the silk pants draped low over his hips, held up only by a drawstring.

  In front of him, a huge four-poster bed dominated the yurt. It looked like an antique more suited to a European castle than a nomad’s temporary structure. The dark wood spiraled with carvings too shadowed to make out and the bed itself spilled over with crimson blankets, soft furs and mounds of pillows. A curious blend of sensuously savage femininity.

  More chains attached to the posts of the bed winked at him, promises of his near future.

  Alone with only his dark anticipation, he waited for her to arrive.

  Chapter Three

  Imogen took her time. Letting him stew. A good interrogation was one part torment, two parts seduction and three parts wearing the spirit down, like the wind wears away the hard soil of the Steppes.

  She would get to the bottom of his plan, make him reveal how he’d discovered so much about her people, tracked them down and how he’d truly managed to overpower Mélanie. The French vamp had been full of foolishness but, even weakened, should not have succumbed to a mere human. The keriss gleamed, clean of blood, and she turned it in her hands, contemplating. The runes etched into the blade flashed with uncomfortable familiarity.

  Surely it couldn’t be.

  “My Queen?”

  She’d heard Sandahr enter the empty yurt, but frowned at him. “Why are you not off with the others? Go feed.”

  Sandahr raised forbidding black brows. “I will when you will.”

  “I’m letting him tenderize.”

  Sandahr barked out a disbelieving laugh.

  “I thought you were all pleased I took a pet.”

  “Yes, my Queen. And deeply relieved.”

  She kept her face carefully blank. “Explain.”

  “Do you think I don’t see?” Sandahr looked briefly devastated, grief creasing his dark face. “What will become of us if you starve yourself to nothing?”

  “I am strong still.”

  “For now. Yes. But your guilt eats at you. You flog yourself in punishment for events you cannot control.”

  “I have nothing to feel guilty about.”

  “I know that.” Sandahr snapped, then sank to his knees, taking her face in his and staring into her eyes. Even with him kneeling, he towered over her. “My Queen—Imogen—do you know that?”

  Her throat closed. The ground shifted under her. The world coming apart. She shook him off and rose, pacing, turning the keriss in her hand.

  “Do you think to psychoanalyze me, Sandahr? That’s a modern human’s foolish pursuit. There is nothing new under the sun. All is chasing after the wind.”

  “Drink, eat and be merry, for the time of our life on earth is short and uncertain.”

  She raised an eyebrow, amused. “I didn’t take you for a reader of poetry.”

  He shook his head, bemused. “You know how it is. A fragment of a memory.”

  “Yes.”

  They regarded each other in silence, feeling the press of centuries.

  “Go eat, Imogen,” Sandahr said, with a quiet gentleness. “Indulge yourself with the human man. He lusts for you—let him. Let yourself enjoy him. Tomorrow will come soon enough.”

  “This is not simple.” She held up the keriss. “Do you believe this little sticker of the man’s could be magic?”

  Sandahr examined it thoughtfully, not touching. “I have heard such stories over time, yes.”

  “But always myth, yes?”

  “True. Still—the world has changed. Who can say what now moves openly that was once hidden?”

  “That sounds awfully mystical for my practical Sandahr. First poetry, now this.”

  He tipped his head in acknowledgment. “Perhaps not only the world has changed.”

  “Keep this safe.” She handed him the keriss. “I shall be closeted with my pet.”

  Sandahr grinned. “Bon appétit, my queen.”

  * * * * *

  The anticipation coursed hot in her, much as it had that night so long ago, when she’d sneaked out to meet her first lover under the grape arbor in the warm summer evening. His face and name had faded with time, but the memory of his touch remained clear, the way passion overwhelmed everything, her teenage, nubile body craving and feeling.

  So long ago.

  And now she’d lived to see the end of the world.

  Sandahr was right. Tomorrow would come soon enough. Now was for feasting.

  She strolled into her yurt, deliberately not looking for the man, but inhaling his rich scent. Lust and musk and male. Her nipples tightened and her sex pulsed, while the hunger, the blood hunger that eclipsed everything else, rose up like a tiger, shredding at her control. That would not do.

  Therefore she must wait.

  The chains clinked and she knew he must be watching her. She went to her clothes press and took out a short, sheer robe. Glancing over her shoulder, she drank in the sight of him.

  Oh yes.

  His oiled muscles flexed in the lamplight, corded arms pulled over his head. His flat abdomen, dusted with fine black hairs that trailed enticingly down to the red silk slave pants, moved with his breath. The pantaloons clung to his strong thighs. He wouldn’t meet her gaze, still, but his clean jaw flexed in a tight line, Slavic cheekbones giving his face a classic manliness.

  “How do you know not to look into my eyes?” She kept her voice low, purring, but he flinched, lips
pressing together.

  “How is it that you have baked bread, steaks from real cows and potatoes?”

  “Did you enjoy your meal?” She tossed the robe on the bed and strolled over to him and indulged herself by trailing a pointed nail down his pecs and the tempting center line of his belly, then toying with the loose waistband of his pants. “I know I intend to savor mine.”

  “Do your worst lady—I can’t stop you.”

  She leaned in and licked playfully at one of his nipples. “True. And yet I think you are not unwilling.”

  “I am unwilling to die at your hands.”

  “Understandable.” She chuckled, then stretched up to kiss the sweet spot between his neck and shoulder. “But I have a hint for you, Lapushka—it wouldn’t be my hands that do it.”

  His breath came hard and fast. Aroused, afraid. Determined to show neither. Oh yes, this was a man to savor, indeed. She stroked her palms up his straining arms, enjoying the play of hot flesh, pressing herself against him, so that his erect cock pressed into her belly.

  “I think perhaps,” she slid her hands down his torso, loving the way he moved under her touch and wrapping her fingers around his cock through the silk, “that you would die happy.”

  He cursed under his breath, even as his cock leapt in her hands. “I’ve heard stories about you since I was a boy. You’re like a siren of death, drowning in blood.”

  “Is that why you sought me out?”

  She circled one of his delightfully sensitive nipples with her nail and released his cock to toy with the drawstring of his pants. His gaze seemed riveted to the sight, so she drew it out, spinning him into her web.

  “You can tell me, Lapushka. You’ll love your reward.”

  “I feel like I should be reciting my name, rank and serial number,” he gritted out.

  Imogen laughed. “Do you suppose the human military ever thought to use such measures? I wonder.”

  She left him hanging and sat on the end of her bed, unzipping one boot and then the other, gratified that he watched every move. Flexing her toes, also glossy red, she stood and began unlacing her leather vest. Slowly, drawing each lace through the grommet, while he drank her in as if he were the starving one.

  His breath sighed out at the sight of her breasts and she obligingly toyed with her nipples for him.

  “If you tell me, I’ll let you touch them,” she purred. “You can even bite them, as men like to do. You can’t hurt me, not like a fragile mortal girl. Don’t you want that, Lapushka?”

  She unzipped the skirt and slid it down her thighs, kicked it away. The man’s gaze stayed on her lace-covered pussy, he was nearly panting in his arousal, so she played with the panties. “You could rip these off me, if I unchained you. Can you imagine it? Spreading my legs, pounding into me—how you would punish me, yes? Show me my place.”

  Ah—a miscalculation there. His gaze broke, nearly flicking up to her face before he caught himself.

  “You are a force of nature,” he muttered, almost to himself. “No one could master you. It would be an abomination.”

  “And yet you claim to wish to kill me.”

  His eyes fastened on her mouth. As close to looking at her expression as he dared, she imagined.

  “Yes. That’s your answer. This is why I sought you out. To kill you. So I already said.”

  She tsked and shrugged into the robe, pretending to look disappointed. Not difficult, since her own tale of having him between her thighs had made her excessively hot and wet. And hungry.

  “Oh, Lapushka, no reward for you now. I want the why and the how. How did you know about us? Why seek us out? How did you find me? Why do you care what your mythical Blood Siren does or does not do?”

  The man clamped his lips tight and turned his head as she approached.

  “Nothing to say?” She tugged at the drawstring of his pants again, this time pulling it so the little bow gave way. With a sigh the silk slipped down his legs to pool around his manacled ankles. His cock, throbbing hard for her, glistened with moisture. She sank to her knees, scraping his luscious thighs with her nails as she went. “Well, then, I shall have a little snack while you think.”

  He nearly lost his mind when her mouth closed over him. Blazing hot and tight, her velvet throat sucked him in impossibly deep, teeth scraping his turgid flesh with light sparks of pain.

  Terror and desire fisted his heart in a savage combination that had his hips pumping in a helpless frenzy.

  Had she said he’d die happy?

  If happiness was the utter obliteration of his least thought, of his humanity, then yes. Yes he would. He’d give his lifeblood to her and beg her to take more. Because all he found himself able to want in that moment was the excruciating pleasure of her mouth on him, the knife edge of those long, glossy red nails digging into his ass, holding him still while she drove him up, up and over the edge, the orgasm crashing through him and taking him under with lethal speed.

  Swimming through the morass of red and black swamping his head, he fought his way back to rational thought.

  There were the manacles around his wrists, the chains in his grip biting into his hands, as if he needed to hold himself upright.

  There was the fur rug under his bare feet.

  There was her mouth on his cock, still pulling on him, her high cheekbones flushed. Dizzying completion flicked with need again as she continued to milk him. Drinking more than his semen.

  The atavistic terror of every man tore through him and, with a hoarse cry, he tried to pull back from her avid feeding. She let him, more or less, releasing her deep swallow and swirling her tongue around his shaft.

  Like the sweetest of kittens, she cleaned the pink-tinged fluids away, leaving his cock shining and without sign of injury. She looked up through her lashes and he forced himself to look away.

  Already she’d demolished him.

  He no longer knew whether to beg for her to let him go, that he’d never darken her doorway again—or to pledge eternal fealty.

  “See?” she murmured, sounding ever so pleased. She stood, shook back her hair and stretched, sinuous, deadly. “No lasting harm. Tiny cuts, quickly healed. Delicious.”

  “Next time, you could warn me.” He shook the chains holding him helpless.

  “Consider yourself warned, Lapushka,” she flared. “Don’t forget you belong to me. If I choose to slowly suck you dry through your cock, you can’t prevent it.”

  She slithered up to him, her hot little body pressing against his flesh through the sheer silk, her dark nipples taut. Her hands stroked over him, as she’d done before, testing and teasing every line of him, her clever tongue flicking into the hollow of his armpit, hmmming with delight when he shivered.

  “I think you’d even beg me not to stop. What do you say, Lapushka?” Her glossy nails trailed down his midline, descended lower and lightly scratched at his rising cock. He groaned, turning his face away. Her fingers, delicately strong, wrapped around his shaft and began pumping. She stood on tiptoe and pressed hot lips against his cheek. “Tell me to stop.”

  “Please…” he whispered.

  “Please what? Can you tell me you don’t love this?”

  He groaned, incoherent.

  She licked the pounding pulse in his throat. “Now you see yourself in the mirror, Lapushka. Governed by your animal desires as humans are. I could keep you my desperate slave forever.”

  Her nails trickled down his back, slid into the crack of his ass and probed inside him, finding the sensitive spot on his gland. Spreading her legs, she pressed her hot, slick pussy against his thigh while she worked him, back and forth between her hands, her mouth now nipping, now licking his neck.

  “Or…” she breathed, “I can let you go. Just tell me who you truly are. How you found us. It’s your only hope.”

  “No,” he muttered, even as he thrust into her hand. A wild part of him wished she’d stop teasing and just sink those darling fangs into his neck already. “You can take everyt
hing else from me. But I won’t tell you that.”

  She giggled. Pecked his cheek. And left him cold.

  “It feels like ages—maybe it has been ages,” she observed, strolling away from him, her tight ass perfectly shaped and perfectly visible under the short little robe, “since I’ve had a pet with a truly strong will to play with.”

  She spun around and he studied her feet. Her toenails were painted the same glossy red and he suddenly wondered where she obtained the polish. Surely it would be impossible to find these days. Along with baked bread and steaks.

  Her thighs wiggled together in a little dance and the lace panties followed, sliding down her golden skin, stopping any hope of him breathing again. She kicked the panties aside and he caught a glimpse of her nether fur, sleek as a mink’s pelt. Her scarlet nails flashed, drawing his gaze to the ties of her robe, mesmerizing him so he watched them come apart, the sheer material sliding away so that she stood naked, cloaked only in that glorious mane of hair.

  His cock throbbed, thighs straining and head swimming as if he hadn’t just released in the best orgasm of his entire life.

  She caressed her tawny skin, lifting her breasts to show him their full heft, then sliding a hand over her hip, trailing suggestively over the glistening fur at her cleft. Her dark nipples pricked hard, begging for his mouth.

  He did long to press her back on that fantastic bed and have her on the blanket of her hair. As if reading his thoughts—he sent a fervent prayer that wasn’t among her powers—she sat back on the end of the bed, first with her legs primly crossed while she stroked her sleek thighs. Then, in a whisper of satin skin, she uncrossed them and slowly opened, showing him her wet and swollen pussy lips.

  An incoherent sound escaped him and he realized he was straining forward against the chains.

  “Did you say something?” she asked, all innocence, idly toying with one nipple and sliding a glossy nail along her lean thigh to its inevitable apex. “You can tell me, Lapushka.”

  He shook his head, desperate to clear it. He’d been worse than a fool to hunt her, to think he could best this seductive demon.