by Maren Smith
I’d love to tell him no, but I am quickly finding out I am nobody’s bastion of iron-willed resistance.
“I brought cream and sugar for your coffee,” he coaxes, but I’ve already broken. It’s as if he’s left me to starve for days, rather than hours. I attack the tray he’s brought and eat as fast as I can, standing up at the dresser. Bacon, eggs, toast and defeat never tasted quite so good. “I’ll want to take a look at your wound when you’re done.”
“Ha!” In two bites, I’ve finished off one slice of warm toast. “You left me chained in this room all day. Right now, I could care less what you want.”
“Come now, don’t hold grudges,” he says mildly. “It doesn’t become you. Besides, you broke my nose and my bust, and brought police to my front door.”
“I never asked to come here.”
“I never asked to get shot three times, and still I have a bullet lodged against my ribs. I can’t begin to tell you how little I relish the thought of cutting it out later on.”
“The mood I’m in, be glad I don’t have a knife. I’d help you.” I take a bite of crispy bacon, but I’ve forgotten one very important thing. The man I’m sniping at isn’t a man. When he wants to, he can move so much faster than I could ever hope to counter.
I don’t even hear him move. One minute he’s at the bed, and in the next, he’s across the room. His large hand clamps onto my wrist and the whole room spins as he swings me around. My back bumps up against the now closed bedroom door and the weight of him presses me to it. The wedge of his knee is suddenly wedged between mine, not just forcing them apart, but scissoring all the way up between mine until his thigh bumps my pubis, lifting me up until my toes can barely find the floor.
I grab his shoulder with my free hand. He has my other wrist, once more making a captive of the hand that still holds my last bite of crispy bacon.
Slowly, with ridiculous ease, he forces my hand to his lips. He smiles. His eyes neither blink nor leave mine, not even when he opens his mouth and—to my supreme annoyance and the single, heated thump of shamed arousal that pulses through my pussy—he makes me feed him.
“I didn’t know you ate real food.” My voice doesn’t tremble, but the rest of me does, particularly when he takes each of my fingers into his mouth one at a time and licks the lingering taste of bacon from each one.
“You might be surprised at what I’d enjoy eating.”
I really am trembling now. “You mean me.” I hike my chin. “Is that what you’re going to do with me now, suck me dry?”
“Oh, darling, I dearly hope not. Done right, the last thing you should be is dry.”
My cheeks burn and, damn it, those low thrumming pulses have set my pussy to throbbing beyond my ability to ignore. I have no defenses against this. With every breath, my breasts caress his chest, and with every beat of my own treacherous heart, my clit throbs against his thigh.
“Then again,” he says, tipping his head at an inquiring angle, “pleasuring you is the last thing I should be contemplating considering all your naughtiness. You have no idea how close you came last night to a good old-fashioned spanking. Had I only the time, you would even now be wearing my marks on more than just your pretty neck.”
No one’s ever told me I had a pretty neck before.
Of course he would, idiot. Remember the fangs.
Shaking my head, I flatten myself against the door and shut my eyes tight.
“What are you doing?” He sounds amused.
“Get out of my mind,” I say through tightly clenched teeth.
He laughs, a breathy sound that brushes my face with coffee-scented air. “I am not in it. Yet.” The heaviness that settles over me as his gaze bores into mine is instantly both ominous and intoxicating. I breathe in, my gasp at his mental invasion cut short. “Now I am in your head.”
I cling to his shoulder, my hand holding fast to the back of his neck, and only belatedly do I realize I haven’t even tried to push him away. I breathe in when he does, and I know what it is he’s scenting for because it’s there, molten trickles of hot wanting that flow down through the folds of my eager sex to soak into the dark fabric of his trousers.
“Do you want me, my darling Merris?” he asks, silken as the devil.
I have never wanted anyone half as badly as this. I twist my head away, not even realizing I’ve just bared the vulnerable, unbitten side of my neck to him. Before I can undo the damage, he has already bowed his head. His exhale is cool against my skin as he follows the defenseless slope, his mouth never more than a kiss away.
“Open,” he says, and I do. Both my eyes and my legs, and I don’t even realize the heaviness isn’t even in me anymore until he pauses to press a kiss upon my jugular and then raises laughing eyes to mine. “You did that of your own volition. While I did touch your mind to show that I could, I have not compelled you to do anything. Do you want me, Merris?”
He doesn’t speak my name so much as he purrs it. The very sound of it on his lips shivers me. I want so badly to shake my head and tell him no. Even more, I wonder what his kiss might feel like with a little nip of fang tugging at my bottom lip.
Aleron
I’m not weak. I don’t tremble, but I must admit I do so love the feel of Merris sitting upon my thigh, her lithesome body sandwiched between me and the door, shaking. I smell her lust. It’s firing my own and, frankly, it’s been so long since last I felt this particular appetite that I can barely restrain myself.
Let go, I think. Nothing good can come of this. It’s a lesson I’ve learned more times than I care to recall and yet, I can’t seem to make myself obey. The bow of her pink lips is a seduction I do not care to ignore. I’m going to have to change my trousers because her panties were left on Club Toxic’s floor and the wetness of her silken arousal burns into my leg. That’s a heat I would dearly love to get lost in.
“Do you want me, Merris?” I ask again.
She looks at my mouth as I say it. She wants to say no, but when she parts her lips, no sound comes forth. She aches to say yes. Aches, I decide, should always trump wants, and I kiss her.
I have kissed a thousand women in the years since I’ve become civilized. I’ve killed so very many more, but even when feeding was not the motivating factor behind each amorous display, I rarely feel anything beyond the pleasantness of living, human warmth pressed up against me.
What I feel with Merris I have not felt in ages. I don’t know if I have ever felt it. This is more than hunger. It’s more than biology, and frankly, my personal biology has been so unbelievably fickle as of late that I can hardly believe how readily it rises to the occasion that is her sweet body arching into my touch. She is an innocent eager for more, and I would give it to her.
My hand is on her breast before I know it—a perfect fit within my palm. The needy tip of her nipple responds to the rolling caress of my thumb. It stiffens fast to my gentle tweak. She catches her breath again, not quite muffling the soft moan that escapes her when I lightly—at least at first—twist.
Her grip on the back of my neck tightens. It tightens even more as I break the kiss to catch her bottom lip between my teeth. I let her feel my fangs, but I am careful. I don’t bite. Not yet.
Taking both her wrists, I place her hands against the door just above her head. “You are bound by my will. Do you know what that means?”
She is visibly shaking, but her face is flushed and her lips slightly swollen from the passion we have shared. A tiny side to side movement indicates no. She is watching me like a virgin, at a complete loss for what to do.
I’ve never much cared for virgins and yet, my fondness for this one deepens the harder she trembles.
I explain, “It means you must hold this position, the one I have put you in, until I say you may move. If you disobey, everything stops. Do you understand?”
She nods her head up and down, an even smaller, tighter motion than before.
I press her hands a little harder, cementing them in place with noth
ing more than a look. “Bound by my will,” I say again.
She shivers, but when I let go of her arms, she keeps them exactly as I’ve put them.
My lovely Merris, the mystery that so intrigues me.
I lower her gently back onto her own feet and reluctantly remove my leg from between hers. Immediately she shifts her feet closer together, but stops when I look at her. Technically, she’s broken the rules already, but the look that crosses her very expressive face is one of instant confusion.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
Her gaze flicks sideways, as if the answer lies somewhere off to my right. “T-trying not to fall?”
“Did I say you could move?”
Her cheeks pinken all over again, but with hesitant obedience she widens her stance again.
I lean in to her, bracing my forearms alongside her own against the door. Our faces are very close. My eyes level with hers, I share her shivery, uncertain breaths.
“Did,” I pointedly repeat myself, “I say you could move?”
Not daring to look away, she shakes her head.
“Out loud, if you please.”
“No.”
“No, what, my naughty darling?”
Her brows quirk and her blush deepens, my endearment embarrasses her. She swallows hard, but she eventually makes herself say, “No, sir.”
I like the way that word looks on her lips. Humming, I kiss her slowly, savoring the taste of it there while her softly hitching breaths turn into helpless moans, and her shaking intensifies all over again.
“I think I would prefer the term Master.” It’s not one I’ve held for a long, long time, although it is one I’ve ached to hear from her practically from the moment I first saw her.
Her eyes are unfocused, a smoky storm of gray that follows the motion of my mouth. I haven’t compelled her, but she obeys as if I have.
“Y-yes, um… Master.” She blushes furiously once she realizes what she’s said. Her brow furrows. She’s embarrassed, confused, hopelessly aroused, and she doesn’t seem to know why she has agreed to say it. So, I give her a reason.
Taking hold of her dress, I rip the ruined garment from neck to hem, and in a single yank, her beautiful body is completely bared to me.
She stiffens in shock, her eyes going huge, her flushed lips rounding. She doesn’t protest, though. Mostly because I don’t give her the chance. Discarding the dress to the floor, I cup her naked breasts in my hands. My fingers conquer one jutting tip, while my mouth consumes the other.
Her back arches and in her desire, she forgets the rules. She grabs my shoulders. It’s a serious infraction, but one she instantly corrects herself. Snapping her hands back to the door, she whispers hoarsely, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”
Raising my head from her breast, I look at her.
Her expression melts into a longing wince. “M-Master?”
Well, there’s no such thing as a perfectly trained submissive the first time one plays.
“Don’t let it happen again,” I warn.
She shakes her head against the door. “No, I won’t.”
Drawing back, I deliver her first taste of discipline. A sharp upward slap to her sweetly-suckled breast which catches the wet tender nipple with force enough to make her knees buckle. She sags against the door, her gasp shrill with surprise.
“No, what?” I ask, exaggerating a level of patience I don’t often bother to exercise. But then, she inspires from me all sorts of out-of-character behavior.
“Master!” she gasps as I slap the other breast in turn. Her whole body stiffens in dreadful anticipation when I drop my punishing hand down between her thighs.
I slap her little clit too, but nowhere near as hard as I have her naughty nipples. I also don’t stop at one. I spank her dear pussy briskly, repeatedly, my blows barely harder than the gentlest of pats, but on a place so sensitive and aroused that I don’t need much force to soon have her writhing against the door.
She grabs her own hair to keep her hands up. Her thighs are quaking, but she keeps them well parted.
“Good girl,” I purr, proud of her for not snapping them shut. I take her pussy in hand, squeezing just hard enough for her to realize what this is. This is ownership. This—hot moisture spilling from her onto my fingers—is mine.
I hold her gaze as I lower myself to my knees. Hers is a wondering stare, tinged with equal parts lust and uncertainty.
“Bound by my will,” I remind her.
She flattens herself to the door—all that lovely stubbornness now focused on nothing but obedience. That pleases me. So does her reward.
Parting the folds of her with my fingers, I drink in my first taste. The heat of her is luscious, the intoxication of all that hot, sweet blood pulsing through her swelling sex an aphrodisiac beneath the lash of my tongue and the kiss of my lips. I feel the pulse of her blood, the beat of her heat, the burning of her mounting desperation as she writhes, grinding her hips into the motions of my mouth.
The well of her sex weeps upon the thrust of my longest fingers—first one, then two—stretching her open while all that wet slickness drips into my palm. I feel the spasms, the milking, quivering motions of her sex as I lock my mouth upon her clit and suckle without mercy. I drive her hard and fast, not content to bring her merely to the edge of orgasm, but hurling her off that ledge into the gyrating fury of a climax that all but makes her dance against the door.
That’s when I bite, releasing that rush of endorphins that turns her shout into the most guttural of moans. I press her hips flat to the door with one hand, preventing her from bucking, riding, and grinding into each of my feeding draws—preventing her from tearing her tender flesh on my sharp teeth. With my other hand, I fuck her vigorously, feeling the ripples of her seizing flesh as she comes again.
I know better than to feed on her again so soon, so I give myself only the sweetest and briefest of tastes. One that has now left my mark in a place only another lover will ever see again. The very thought of that is so unpleasant that I’m instantly tempted to bite again—and again and again, if necessary, marking her sex in puncturing ‘mines’ that only another vampire would recognize.
And probably ignore. Too many of our petty amusements consist of deliberately vexing one another.
Forcibly restraining myself, I lick instead, gradually coaxing the bleeding to stop as I make her ride every last shuddering wave until she collapses, panting and whimpering against the door. Her legs are shaking so badly that she nearly sags all the way down to the floor, even as I rise back to my feet.
The taste of her dominates my mouth. I can’t stop licking my lips.
“That is another wound I’ll need to be mindful of.” I struggle to pull my rampaging passions back under firm control. “Was your breakfast satisfactory?”
Her eyes are half closed, her face calm and flushed and positively glowing in pleasure’s aftermath. “Was yours?” she returns huskily.
Minx.
My exhaling chuckle sounds more like a growl. She has no idea how close she is to being bent over the nearest and sturdiest piece of furniture and fucked until I’ve exhausted myself in her beautiful, fluid heat.
“Clean yourself,” I order her instead. “I shall return in ten minutes to attend your wounds, after which we are going to leave.”
That gets her attention. She looks at the puddle of her torn dress on the floor, and then, incredulously, back at me. “Where are you taking me now?”
“Home. Your home.” Drawing her off the door, I turn her in the direction of the bathroom and give her a gentle swat to get her moving. “It’s past time we found out who tried to kill you last night, and why.”
Chapter 8
Aleron
The passage of time is a funny thing. For the vast majority of my everlasting life, I have watched while we, as a species, made minor advancements in life, war, medicine, science—our basic understanding of this world in which we were created to live. Apart from a
minor burst of invention here or there, pretty much from the moment I was born—the spoiled lesser son of a nobleman—and then sired—a soldier seeking glory in war-torn Antioch in the fall of 1097—we have stayed evolutionarily stagnant. It’s only been in these last hundred years or so that human advancement has exploded to such a fascinating extent.
Cars.
Computers.
Telecommunication.
Human beings leaving the atmospheric pull of the earth to walk in manmade facilities among the stars.
Human beings on the moon.
Velcro.
And yet, as I speed up the interstate back to downtown Tucson, with Merris dressed in naught but her high heels and one of my shirts, I find myself struck by a singular realization. For all our gadgets and newfound scientific knowledge, one thing has not changed. Not in all the times that I have seen it, throughout the stretch of my incredibly jaded life—nothing beats the sight of a woman wearing a man’s shirt.
Poor Merris, she’s very nervous. She’s swimming in the pristine white fabric, constantly fidgeting with the unbuttoned sleeves that are too long for her arms by at least six inches, repeatedly checking to make sure all the buttons are buttoned and that the hem is as low over her thighs as she can make it go.
“I really need clothes,” she says, not for the first time.
“No one will see you, darling,” I assure her. “Not if I don’t want them to.”
And this is not a visage I am inclined to share, not with anyone. Still, it’s not until we pull into her apartment complex that I see why she’s nervous. I used to hunt in places like this. It’s my first thought as I look around the compound of old brick buildings with its crumbling adobe façade and whitewashed ‘security’ fence, streaked with spots of amber rust bleeding through the paint. It’s not quite a slum. The buildings date themselves somewhere around the 1950s. There’s water in the community pool, exercise and laundry facilities, and even massive air conditioning units that click on as I park the car as close to her building’s entrance as I can get. But still, in my mind, at first all I see is London’s East End, Russia’s Tolyatti, damn near anywhere in France right before the explosive rise of the revolutionists made it so very easy to add to the body count. War and dissidence used to be a vampire’s best friends. So was poverty, but then, of course, we got civilized.