The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance

by Sonia Florens

  And because his breath comes out of him in harsh splitting-into-groans sorts of ways, and in between he says things like: Ah, that’s perfect, Jesus you’ve got a sweet mouth. Oh keep doing that, keep doing that, just like that, baby, don’t stop, don’t stop.

  I could feast on such broken words. I do feast on them. They fill my body up with a humming pleasure, a sweet ache that I’ve gone years without feeling. And when he tells me that he’s going to come, the sweet ache builds up and mingles with all of this heated excitement – I’m going to taste him, really taste him.

  He grunts thickly just before he spends in my mouth. He tells me that it’s going to happen and I should stop before he does it, but what would be the point of all this work if I didn’t get my reward? I suck harder on him, and flick my tongue against all the slippery places I can tell he likes.

  In response, he thrusts deep and hard into my mouth. His prick swells and width="1epounding and rushing and swirling going on inside him centres in his groin and his tightly drawn-up balls and his trembling thighs. I can almost feel what he feels, as he spurts thick streamers of come into my mouth.

  At the last second he tries to get away – I know how humans fret about disease and so on, but he has no worry here – and I hold him fast with one hand on his jerking cock and the other on his thigh. I get all of him, all that lovely cream, tasting exactly like he does – only sweeter, more concentrated.

  My senses reel. I grasp at him tighter because I’m so hungry for more, but it isn’t like blood. Soon it’s all gone and I’m left empty and fizzing, loving the tender feeling of his prick softening in my mouth but angry at the way he tries to prise me away.

  I’m going to bite him, now, and get my fill. I even stand up to do it as he tucks himself back inside those black jeans, and looks at me all sort of shamefaced and bashful. What does he have to be shamefaced and bashful about? He’s a stupid sort of creature, a wretched little beast. I should have stamped him out immediately beneath my boot heel.

  But then, most shocking of all, he grabs hold of me. Just like that, as my eyes are on the verge of turning and my teeth are ready to come out for him. He buries his face in my hair and … and sort of nuzzles my neck.

  I think this is cuddling. Though I cannot be sure. I don’t think humans usually cuddle after illicit car park liaisons.

  “Mmpf, that was fucking fantastic,” he says. The little sound he makes at the start is very hard to describe. A kind of relaxed, delighted, falling down sort of sound.

  It takes me a moment to gather myself, and realize that he’s rubbing his hands up and down my back. He’s rubbing them, and it doesn’t feel at all unpleasant.

  “You’re so sexy, God you’re sexy,” he says.

  I think he may be mad. But either way, I have no idea what to do. Bite, my body says. Bite now, while he’s in this languorous stupor. Even though I’m not the sort of vampire who needs to wait for a stupor. I could smash him against the nearest car bonnet at the height of his powers, with all his faculties intact.

  And yet I don’t. In fact, after he has next spoken I pull away from him, angry. I step back, suddenly unsure of myself.

  “You want me to repay the favour?” he asks.

  It’s just like with Tommy. I didn’t know how to act then, either, and he wasn’t half as bad as this. He didn’t make me want to switch one pleasure for another. He just made me want, as I’m wanting now. I’m desperate for it, now.

  “No,” I snap at him. “No, you filthy creature.”

  And then I am gone. It is as though I was never there.

  Two

  I dream of Tommy. It is understandable. The taste in my mouth echoes events long over, and sweetness long dissolved. All of it still threads through my mind when I awake – Tommy’s dark-blue eyes searing at me from his place, tied to my bed. Tommy begging me to help him, help him, God if only I would say what’s happening to him.

  I hadn’t meant to turn him, you see. He remains the only human I have ever turned, and it was just an accident.

  My face is wet. I don’t know why. The apartment above isn’t leaking and I haven’t spilled anything on myself. It’s very odd, but then all of this is very odd. Nick, and dreams of Tommy, and this rolling unsatisfied hunger in my belly.

  Didn’t I stop off at Hottingly Wood? Haven’t I eaten my fill? A deer is almost as good as a human, in terms of the meal they provide.

  And yet I’m pacing my apartment, wringing my hands. Trying to imagine what hea human, might be thinking of me. Right now, is he thinking of what I did to him? There must have been something more in the way I look, the way I felt to his touch, that drew him in. Without the safety net of my thrall, I cannot fathom why he wanted me.

  Or why I want more from him. I never want more from anyone. I have walked alone for so long that I can no longer see my grandmother’s face, though I can still hear her voice: Fear the things that lie in wait for you, in the forests of the night.

  As you can see, I didn’t listen to her. And I don’t listen to myself, now, as I go to the window and jump out into the night beyond.

  It doesn’t take me long to find him. I could find a grain of salt in a mountain of sugar. One measly human – as ripe with scents and flavours as they are – takes nothing at all.

  He seems stunned to find me at his door, however.

  He lives at the very top of a luxurious sort of apartment block – very modern, very likely to set my teeth on edge. I can hear and feel every single human in the place squeaking and squawking like rats in a labyrinth, going about their ridiculous lives with all the carelessness I’ve come to expect from them.

  They think they’re safe, with doormen and locks and security codes. But then the man at their gate took almost no thralling at all and even the best of them just opens his door to me.

  I think he is the best of them. He looks stunned to see me, but he also appears … pleased. Grateful, even.

  “It’s you,” he says.

  There is something I admire in the simplicity of such words. They resonate through me, like words remembered from somewhere long ago. They make me feel like something important, even though that’s a silly notion.

  I am already something important – more so than he could ever know.

  “How did you find me?”

  Again, a layer exists beneath his words. I think he means something else. Or maybe he just means something else to me. I think of myself, answering: I will always find you.

  “Were you under the illusion that you’re some sort of master of concealment? Invite me in.”

  He doesn’t have to do so, in order for me to enter his premises. But the old ways die hard, it seems. I want the words, freely given.

  “You sound as though I’m going to turn you down. Believe me, Miss No-Name, I’m not going to turn you down. Come right on in.”

  He steps aside, and I cross the threshold.

  His home is as I would expect, from someone who lives in a place like this. Furniture identical to every other moderately wealthy human, awash in a sea of not even knowing that he’s no different to anyone else. Paintings with a flair that only a machine can provide, ornaments churned out by factories – I don’t understand the need to keep things that mean nothing, absolutely nothing. I have books that have survived centuries. Trinkets that belonged to people long dead.

  They seem to have only money and a love of everything bland. Though I suppose they barely have any time at all to accumulate anything of value.

  “Would you like a coffee?” he asks.

  Perhaps I was wrong about him, after all. I can’t imagine, now, why he was worth coming for – coffee! Humans, and all their silly little rituals. Why by God do they need to sit together and drink something they don’t really want?

  I know he doesn’t really want it. I can smell it on him – he’s only just finished eating and drinking his evening meal.

  And yet I tell him: “Sure.”

  He gives me this puzzlctoook that I think has
to do with my choice of word, before darting into what I assume is his kitchen. While there he keeps up the talking, however. About how he never thought he’d see me again, and how he’d never done such a thing before, and that I should know how relieved he is to see me, in a lot of ways.

  I close my eyes, and block out the soft tasteful glow of his apartment. I only hear his voice, as it spreads out into something beyond meaningless prattle.

  “I mean, not just because we … and because you’re …” There is a pause, a silence, and I drift right into it. “You’re not like other people, are you?”

  Oh, clever boy.

  “There was something so dark about you – I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Kind of like the poem, you know, she walks in beauty like the night, only the other way around. She walks in night like beauty. That sounds insane, right?”

  He laughs. The laugh doesn’t hold, however.

  “It’s weird, but usually when I’m with a girl I can’t remember much about her, after we’ve split up. I have a ton of trouble with faces. But I got you completely right – when you turned up at my door, your face was exactly what I’d been picturing. I guess you’re pretty distinctive looking, though, right? What are you, Eastern European? I want to say Norwegian, but aren’t they more blonde than anything else?”

  Whether they are or not, he’s right. I shake with the power of his correct guess, and wonder at the same time if he is guessing at all.

  “Either way, you should know – you’re amazing looking. You seem real confident but kind of like you’re not, at the same time, you know? Like you don’t know how beautiful you are. But, Jeez, those eyes. Those eyes of yours make me weak-kneed.”

  It’s the openness that reminds me of Tommy, I realize. Not just the way he looks, but the casual way he’s willing to share himself in a way that other human men will not – not even when they’re thralled.

  No vampire can force someone to share their most secret selves, no matter how powerful they are. We cannot force someone to love, or admire, or do anything but follow our commands mindlessly.

  When he comes out of the kitchen with two mugs in hand, the urge to turn him into a senseless puppet is strong. But then he lays those stormy sensuous eyes on me, and I am as helpless as I thought to make him. I am helpless.

  He puts the mugs down, slowly – as though he knows. I am trying not to show it, but I think he knows it just the same.

  “Come to me,” he says, and it seems that I must obey. I walk across his glossy wooden floor to him and, as I do, I let the coat I am wearing slide from my shoulders. His eyes widen, but I’m the one who trembles.

  I long to put my hands on him. I crave the smell and taste of his flesh, made as bare as I am now. However, he speaks next. In spite of his shock at my naked state, he keeps control of himself and commands me, again.

  “Tell me your name.”

  I think I would disobey him, I do. If he didn’t push his hand into the thick fall of my hair while speaking the words. I don’t mind admitting: my eyes roll back in my head to feel his fingers draw rough over my scalp. Those same strange sensations roll over me and I cannot resist them.

  “Ida,” I say. It isn’t even a lie. That is my real name, and he is the first to hear it for fifty years.

  When I open my eyes I see him looking at me, though perhaps looking is the wrong word. He is watching me, intently, as he twines a rope of my hair around his fist. I try to think of the last human or vampire to look at me the way he is doing, and come up with no one. His eyes trickle over my face and my body in slow fluttering increments that make weak.

  Part of me wants to shove him back against a wall. But that part of me is easily subdued. He subdues it with his laid-back voice. His curling mouth that I want to devour.

  “Did you walk all the way here without anything on underneath that leather?”

  “Of course,” I reply.

  “That’s pretty 9½ Weeks of you.”

  I think he’s mocking me. But as long as he keeps rubbing his fingers through the strands of my hair, I don’t care.

  “Think I might need more time than almost three months though, I’ve got to tell you.”

  I snap my gaze back up to him, as fierce as I can make it. He should at least know how large the fire he’s playing with is, before it consumes him entirely.

  I put a hand on his perfect face, fingers splayed, nails that are not quite razors almost pressing into his skin. Almost.

  “How about eternity?” I ask.

  He grins. It alters his face from something sultry, to that casual openness that lives in his words. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re real theatrical?” he says.

  So I give him something to applaud. I show him my strength, and yank his ear down to my lips with just that one hand on the side of his face. And then I whisper, I whisper, “Wait until the big reveal. It’s a showstopper, I promise.”

  “More than being naked underneath your coat?” he asks, and then, oh then, he slides one hand over my back, bristling every nerve there as he goes.

  “More than anything you’ve ever dreamed of,” I sigh, though in truth it feels as though he may be the one with the revelations and the things to teach and the worlds I’d never dreamed of. I can feel the power in his stroking hands, and it opens me up.

  I bare my neck for him, when he lowers his mouth to kiss it. His tongue flickers out, slick and soft and unbearable against my burning for him skin, and then when he bites … when he bites I think I fall. His teeth are only these little blunt things, but it doesn’t seem to matter. They push pain and the desire to bite back right through me until I have to squeeze my eyes tight shut against it, and let his arms catch me.

  He scoops me up and I can’t do a thing about it, because I have to keep my face pressed into his shoulder. My eyes have changed, and for all my talk about the big reveal I don’t want him to see just yet. Not before I’ve had my fill of whatever else my body hungers for.

  I think he’s going to give it to me. And my suspicion is confirmed when he lays me down on his crisp-sheeted bed in the middle of his golden glowing bedroom, and ghosts his hands the length of my body.

  Hardly touching at all, but cleverly so. Such a teasing caress makes me open my eyes whether they’ve turned back to black or not, and then he puts on a show for me. He looks as though he knows it’s going to be one, but I can’t fault him for that. Not when he lifts his little clinging top off all in one motion, to reveal the solid body beneath. Not when his skin is the colour of those polished floors, pale and honeyed and sweet.

  He is as fleshy as I suspected him to be, though firm at the same time. My mouth floods with juice when I think of such a body littered with the red bracelets of my bite marks, little pinpricks all over to add to the decoration. Blood streaking that perfect skin – ah, just the thought makes me desperate for it.

  Though never more desperate than I am for his mouth on me, that swollen flesh between his legs, his body over mine. I lick my lips as he unfastens the buttons on his jeans. I stir impatiently on the sheets when he pushes the material down his long legs.

  He isn’t wearing any underwear, either. His prick stands up solid and straight, though I don’t need it to ll me how aroused he is. His heart rate picked up when he first laid eyes on my body. The scent of his racing hormones fills me up.

  I part my legs for him without having to be told or asked. That’s what needs to be done – my legs need to be apart, and then he will come between them. I am aware of the mechanics of the thing, though before, with Tommy, I rode over him like a lady on her horse. He lay beneath me, squirming and tortured by his own confused desires.

  Then, it was he who couldn’t tell bloodlust from the other kind. The kind that is making my sex slippery and my nipples sharp little points.

  When he puts a hand on my ankle and pulls me slowly down the bed towards him, I try to regain some control over myself. Unfortunately, the feel of his firm grip and the teasing look in his smoky-with-lu
st eyes only sinks me deeper in the mire.

  I spread for him without having to be told or asked. It seems as though I don’t have to be told or asked anything, even though this is all near alien to me. And he knows it, it seems.

  “You really crave it, huh?” he asks. Of course I don’t answer. But then, I don’t need to. He continues without a word from me. “Searching me out, coming all the way here, spreading your legs for me – yeah, I guess you really crave it. Question is, what do you want me to give you?”

  Does he honestly expect me to tell him? He must understand that I have no idea. Though in truth, why would he? I must seem like one of those sluttish sorts of human women who wriggle about the clubs and bars with nothing on, sure of their power even when it exists as only a transient sort of thing.

  He kisses my thigh, and I’m reminded what real power is.

  “How have you done it?” I whisper, between the trembles that work their way through me at the feel of his wet mouth on my skin in so intimate a place.

  He kisses again, higher up. This time I feel his tongue press a slick path all the way up to that neat line between my thigh and my groin. I spread wider for him, eager as a silly little wannabe.

  “Done what?” he asks, though I think he knows. I reach out one shaking hand and touch the waves of his rich dark hair, the smooth beginnings of his cheek and jaw. He seems to delight in my faint touch – his eyes flicker almost closed.

  “Gained this power over me.”

  But he doesn’t understand. He only laughs, and pokes out his delicious pink tongue to lick another stripe over my burning skin.

  “You have the prettiest little pussy I’ve ever seen,” he says. “Maybe that’s how you’ve gained power over me.”

  I frown, and look down at the object of his affection. It barely means anything to me – it is no longer the place from which I birth children. My mouth and my blood do that. It is not the seat of my pleasure, either, so that cannot be its allure.