by Maren Smith
If it gets me the answers I crave…
Shamefully, it’s not answers I’m thinking about when I jerk my head in a consenting nod. It’s the heat, and the throb, and the way my skin tingles all the way down into my nipples when he touches his lips to my neck.
“Twenty minutes,” I say. Not one second more.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not at all sure I’ll make it to eleven.
“Twenty minutes,” he echoes in agreement, taking hold of my skirt and giving the form-fitting fabric a brisk tug, baring me front and back all the way to my waist. He is just as impersonal when he dips his hands into the neckline of my dress, tugging my sleeves down off my shoulders and scooping my breasts out into the open. My nipples are hard, tight little peaks that only tighten harder when his cool breath tickles my ear. “You don’t mind if I wear gloves, do you?”
He takes them from the inner pocket of his coat, draped as it is over the back of his chair. It’s a theatrical production, watching him slip his hands into the black leather.
“They’re called vampire gloves.”
I shiver as he turns his gloved hands over and what dim light there is catches on the pointed tips of the metal spikes protruding down the lengths of each finger.
“Don’t be afraid,” he soothes when I shiver as he brings his hand up to my face. “As you are about to discover, a little bite of pain”—the tip of one finger touches lightly behind my jaw at the lobe of my ear—“can make the pleasure”—he scrapes me, following the line and raising chills as he passes below my chin and around my neck—“so much sweeter.”
His trailing finger wanders down my neck onto my chest at the same time I feel the spikes of his other gloved hand come to rest on the inside of my left thigh. Those fingers scrape lightly upward, following the inner slope of my thigh all the way to where every single one of my nerve endings is ready to riot.
That’s when I know for certain.
I definitely won’t make eleven minutes.
Aleron
She’s a pleasant armful, I’ll give her that. Her breasts are just the right size, a comfortable fit in my palm as I lightly flick and scrape the buds of her nipples with the biting spikes of my gloves. Her body straddles mine as if she were made for me. The heat of her ass burning through my clothes has my body responding in ways it usually doesn’t. Not for Jez. Not for anyone. Not for a very long time. I’m actually inspired to fuck. I feel unexpectedly young, my cock stirring beneath her, rising in search of her body heat.
It’s the sweetness of her blood, I tell myself. The anticipation of the feed when I win. I can already smell it moving deliciously through her veins as I cup her pussy in my hand, releasing a wave of seductive pheromones that tantalize me. I can smell her arousal. That part isn’t new, but feeling the tension in her body as she tries to fight me… oh, now that takes the pleasure to a whole new level.
I’m not a good man. I don’t remember a point when I ever was. They say time tempers even the intemperate, and perhaps that’s true. Because while these last few centuries I have been content to follow my brethren—walking, hunting, quietly existing among our chosen prey without humans being any the wiser for it—it only takes a semi-reluctant jerk of her hips grinding above my cock to remind me how good it is when the prey is not so willing.
She tries to turn her head away, as if she can’t bear to watch, but almost as reluctantly, her gaze drifts back. She looks down at herself, each breath a tiny catch of disbelief at the sensations I wring from her.
I am so… gentle with her. Plucking her nipples, fighting the urge to pinch and tweak. Holding her in my arms as she writhes to the ever-increasing force of my patting hand as I spank her pretty pussy until the bite of the finger spikes aren’t quite so gentle anymore, and she finally snaps her widely spread legs shut. It must prick even more to have my hand now captured between her squeezing thighs.
“Don’t be naughty,” I coax, low against the lobe of the ear I’d dearly love to bite. But I promised only my hands. Normally I love the challenge of my self-imposed restrictions, but not today. Today, every mewl of unexpected distress that falls from her lips rakes me every bit as sharply as if I have turned these gloves on myself. “Open for me.”
That she doesn’t want to is evident in the stop and start twitches of her legs as she slowly pries them apart.
I love her smell.
I am so… aroused. I can’t remember the last time that has happened over something as simple as supper. I tell myself it’s the puzzle of her, but perhaps it’s simply the humping grind of her hot little ass wriggling about on my lap as I slip my spiked fingers up into her folds, parting her intimately, opening her up so I can freely enjoy her aroma.
She arches, throwing her head all the way back onto my shoulder, catching the side of my neck in her hot, desperate hand. Muffling her gasp behind tightly clenched lips when I find her clit.
I love it.
I scrape it.
The tiniest hint of fresh blood rises into the air and, going taut as a bowstring, she suddenly rolls her head, turning to bury her face in the side of my neck and biting. I feel the blunted nip of her human teeth. It’s not hard, and there’s no pain. But in that fragile miniscule of a half second, she turns me from predator to prey.
No one has ever done that before.
I feel… is that flash of white iciness… fear nipping at the side of my neck? Or is it pleasure unlike anything I have known in almost nine hundred years? I don’t know, but my hand is in her hair, seizing a fistful of bobby pins and bun, yanking her head all the way back to rip her teeth from my flesh and bare the slender curve of her throat.
She gasps at the suddenness of it. Her body goes stiff and still, with her legs still widely spread and her thrusting nipples peaked for my touch. Her smell is exquisite, lust and sweet blood. Her muscles twitch, betraying just how closely I have her perched upon the edge of losing the game.
“I am the master,” I tell her, laying my hand between her quivering legs. “I am the only one who bites.”
One spank to punish. Despite my fondness for these gloves, I wish my hand were bare for that. I cup her femininity and heat—I wish my hand were bare for that too—and squeeze. She arches, shouting, grabbing on to my wrist and my neck.
I can’t bear it.
Ripping the glove off with my teeth, I put two fingers to her mouth.
“Lick,” I command.
She tries to turn away, but a shake of her captured hair turns her sweet and obedient again.
“Lick,” I growl, and she does. The tip of her bedeviling tongue flicks out to leave its kiss of wetness upon the tips of my fingers.
“I am the master,” I say again, reaching down between her legs. Her heat is the most exquisite I think I’ve ever felt. Her trembling as I touch her, skin to skin, is intoxicating.
“N-no,” she moans, staring helpless up at the lights in the ceiling, but her clit is mine, and I make love to it with all the skill of a man who has devoted nine hundred years to learning the female body. For the last few centuries, it is a skill I have utilized by rote—without needing to think. Without needing to care.
What I do to little Merris in my arms is not done by habit. It does not feel like automated routine. It feels as fresh as the lingering sensation of her teeth still tingling my neck. It feels as hot as the burning of her sex as I sink my fingers into her. I feel every tightening spasm in her body. Her gasps, then squeaks, then despairing cries are the music that make my cold heart sing. She can’t hold still. Her hips are rocking, riding my thrusting fingers with increasing franticness.
“No… no!” she cries, but ‘no’ is not our safeword, and I am having far too much fun to stop. “No!” she shouts, grabbing my wrist.
But ‘yes’ is the convulsion of the orgasm that rips through her body, bowing her upon my lap with a wrenching cry that echoes through the club dungeon. Her release is the sweetest victory I’ve yet held this close to my chest.
“I win,�
� I whisper, but for the first time in a long time, I don’t even bother to check my watch. I could care less about the game. I want her to come for me again. I want her to come while my cock is buried as deep into the beautiful heat of her as I can reach. I want to feel the wild beating of her heart as I press my naked chest to hers. I want to claim her—her mouth, her body—not just with mine, but also my teeth.
Sadly, none of that was promised to me.
The alarm on my watch beeps.
The tension in her body ebbs with the rolling spasms of her dying climax. She wilts, panting and whimpering in my arms. Normally, I’d have fed at the moment her orgasm hit her, but my lovely little puzzle had the temerity to bite me.
I hold her, rocking her, letting her come sweetly all the way back to herself before slowly tightening my arm around her waist. Nuzzling the side of her neck, I secure my grip on her hair, pulling her head to one side.
“What are you doing?” she asks in that sultry, hazy voice of a woman still lazying in the afterglow of her pleasure.
I lick her, savoring the taste of her skin, the feel of all that hot, sweet blood pulsing in the vein that lurks beneath my lips.
I let her feel the points of my teeth, and her body goes stiff.
Her breath catches. She no longer sounds like a well-fucked woman when she stammers, “Wh-what are you doing?”
“My kiss,” I remind her. “Should I forget to tell you so later on, my darling Merris, I haven’t had this much fun in years. Keep your legs open, please. I like the scent.”
She closes them almost immediately, contrary little thing, and twists. She’s not fighting me, not yet, but she is uncertain and wants to get up.
Given my preference, she would be naked on her knees before me every night for the rest of her life.
Sadly, that wasn’t part of the game either.
“Naughty girl,” I tell her fondly, and bite.
Chapter 4
Aleron
Merris stumbles, unsteady on her feet, but my hand at her elbow keeps her from falling as I guide her around to sit in the chair I vacated. The flush of the orgasms I gave her still pinken her skin. The rush of endorphins from my bite is probably still singing in all the places I fondled as I dined on her. I made her come twice more even as I drank from her. I could have drunk all night, but I’d rather not kill her. Honestly, I haven’t killed in decades, but she was such an unexpected pleasure that I’ll admit, I did find it hard to stop. I didn’t want the contact between us to end.
Even now, her skirt remains gathered high around her waist and her panties are still on the floor. I should let her reclaim her dignity, but it seems such a waste to conceal the beauty of her behind clothes.
“What did you do to me?” she mumbles, reaching up to touch her neck where the pinpricks of my bite still seep. The crimson drops are like jewels against the pallor of her skin.
I take her hand before she can touch and smear them. “I gave you a kiss,” I tell her.
“You did the same to Jez?”
And of course, the conversation winds back to her sister. I shouldn’t be surprised or half as annoyed by that as I am. “Yes, I did.” Although I didn’t make anywhere near as big a production out of letting Jez feel my teeth.
I hear the whisper of movement a spare second before a shadow darkens the crack around the velvet curtain that hangs over the open doorway to this semi-private play area. It’s one of Club Toxic’s household humans, the collar around her neck hiding the marks left behind by regular feedings. She has a tray in her hands, offerings of chocolate, juice or water, and bites of meat and cheese. Taking the tray, I send the girl off with instructions and a nod when at first, she only gives me a startled look. She does go, though, and for a few minutes, it’s once more just Merris and I in the privacy of my favorite dining room.
“Here.” I help her drink. Her hands shake slightly, either from her blood donation or the orgasms, I’m not sure. She eats cheese cubes and chocolate from my fingers, until gradually it comes back to her that we are erstwhile enemies. After that, she takes the offerings I give her, frowning at me as she eats.
“What did you do to me?” She tries again to touch her neck, but again, I take her hand.
“Don’t touch,” I admonish, giving the back of it a playful slap before handing her another piece of chocolate. “Let me take care of that.”
I bandage her, something the attendants here usually do. But my time with her is running out and I find myself content to horde what seconds I have left, keeping her all to myself rather than passing her into the care of someone else.
Besides, we made a bargain, she and I. I’m also content to keep my end of it.
“Give it a few days to heal, and you’ll be fine.”
“Did you break the skin?” She’s very single-minded. This time when she reaches for her neck, I let her feel along the edges of the small square bandage. She pokes, testing for tenderness.
“Just a bit of blood play,” I assure her. The standard answer. No sense scaring the buffalo before sending her back out into the herd. “But now you know everything I did to your sister. A few scintillating caresses in the shadows of this place, a nip on the neck, and then I fed her chocolates and sent her back upstairs where she had another drink before catching a cab for home. It was the only time I played with her. I never play with anyone twice.”
I can see the spark of mistrust flare to angry life in her pretty eyes. “That’s a lie.”
Her insistence that I took her sister to bed, while perfectly in line with the air I like to portray, bothers me. “Is that what she told you?”
“She didn’t have to. I—” She stops abruptly when the curtain draws aside and Leander, a vampire almost as old as I steps into the dark of our room.
He looks at the bandage on her neck, the tray in her lap, and then at me. I glimpse his annoyance that he wasn’t being called to supper.
As if I’d share.
“You summoned?” he asks dryly. And then he recognizes her and his mask falls to open shock.
“This is Leander,” I introduce. “Two nights after we played, Jez returned to the club and requested another ‘dose,’ as she called it. But sadly, I make it a practice never to play with the same”—I almost say meal—“partner twice. So, I introduced her to him.” I sense Leander’s stare boring into my back. “It was he who played with her next. Whether they fucked or not is a question best left to him.”
She doesn’t believe me, or at least, she doesn’t want to. When she looks past me to Leander, glimmers of confusion cut through her anger. The puzzle renews. Why is she so insistent?
“Are you honestly expecting me to answer that?” Leander sounds mildly curious. Again, it would take a vampire to hear the tightening anger underneath.
He glares at me. I glare back. An entire unspoken conversation is exchanged in that look.
You can’t possibly be serious.
Just answer the question.
You’ll take responsibility for the fallout?
Yes.
For fuck’s sake. Leander stifles a sigh of impatience. “I did not”—he all but rolls his eyes—“sully your sister’s…” Stopping, he stares at her and then me in carefully masked and yet increasing irritation. “Nobody even cares about reputations anymore. I have a club to close. Why am I—”
“But you did play with her,” I interrupt. Although she tries to hide it, my darling puzzle is nowhere near as adept as we at hiding the hurt she feels at the thought of her sister in either our arms.
“Barely,” Leander drawls. “She was… not herself.”
All right, now I feel the tickle of two puzzles.
“Not herself?” Merris asks.
Glancing from her to me, Leander comes as close to frowning as I have ever seen him. “She was under the influence.”
I almost laugh at him. “Jez had a fondness for vodka, but since when has that ever stopped—”
Now it’s Leander’s turn to interrupt me. “
I’m not talking about alcohol. She had… other things in her system, and I did not care to have them in mine.”
I’m surprised.
Merris is furious. She folds her arms tight across her chest, as if that hug is the only thing restraining her from doing or saying more than her tight-lipped, “My sister did not do drugs. Ever.”
Leander gives her a look. “Perhaps you didn’t know her as well as you think, because when I”—he glances at me—“played with her, the girl was high as hell. Deny it all you like—she certainly did—but she was still escorted from the premises. As far as I know after that, she failed the sniff-test twice more and the only night she passed was the night, of course…”
He stops, as if searching for a more tactful way of saying the night she died, but Merris had already turned away. She puts her back to us both. Shrugging, Leander gives me a look before he leaves, but I know the rules, and I know my responsibilities.
I watch Merris, waiting for her to come to grips with what she heard, a little surprised at this lingering fondness for what should have been nothing more to me than another night’s meal. I supped at a very beautiful neck, but dinner is over. It’s time to send her on her way. Yet, I feel regret. I shall be sorry to see her go. I’d almost like to see her again, but such isn’t practical. I’m immortal. Her life is but a flash in the pan. Here for now, but soon to be gone. Getting any more deeply acquainted than this is, quite simply, not worth the inevitable loss.
It’s a lesson I’ve learned repeatedly and well.
Lifting her head, Merris finally faces me again. She truly is horrible at hiding in plain sight. I read the pain that cuts through her, river-deep, as easily as if she were an open book upon my lap.
“What happened that night?” she whispers. “I know she saw you. I know you touched her.”
“There is very little to tell about the night your sister died.” I am brutally honest with her, although that too inspires a twinge of regret. Her pain at hearing it, however, won’t last forever. I intend to make sure of that. “She found me on the dance floor, playing with another. I did not speak to her, there wasn’t time. The bouncers removed her from the floor. It was her third strike. The owners here are not fond of drama, so I knew I would not see her again. And yet, there she was, sitting in the alleyway well after closing when I took my leave for the evening. I’m sorry to say but, looking back on it, her being high would make some of her behaviors make sense.”