by Heidi Lowe
“It means what I said it means.”
She turned me to look at her. “What did you do?”
“I did what you did.” I smiled spitefully, enjoying every second of her increasing anxiety.
She straddled me suddenly, pinning my arms above my head, fire in her eyes. “You really think I slept with Robyn?”
“You wanted me to think you slept with Robyn.”
“That was a joke, a little trick I played on you to teach you a lesson for snooping and not trusting me. You don't really believe I'd do that, surely?”
I didn't respond.
“Answer me, Lissa.”
More silence.
The next thing I knew my panties were torn from my body. Literally torn off and flung across the room. I'd lost count of how many pieces of underwear she'd destroyed through wild passion. She had to keep buying me new ones.
She went to kiss me and I purposefully twisted my head to the side so her mouth only just grazed my lips, and the kiss landed on my cheek. I knew this would piss her off; she loved kissing me. She said my kiss was like the elixir of life.
When she spread my legs, the force with which she did so, and the grip she had on my thighs as she buried her head in my crotch, I knew this was going to be wonderful. Sometimes her tongue worked like a machine, depending on her mood. I'd worked her up now, and I had no doubt she would take it out on my vagina.
“You think I would be unfaithful to you?” she mumbled against my sex, the vibration driving me wild. “Clearly you need to be reminded of my devotion to you... and her.”
She kissed me down there, and dragged the kiss out. She was determined to get her kiss no matter what.
I trembled as she caressed my sex with her tongue, leaving not one corner or inch untouched. I bucked and writhed against her mouth like a woman possessed. Unable to control myself, I filled the room with whimpers and bleats as her nose grazed my bean. Her technique was refined, perfected, and threatened to send me over the edge within a mere minute of her starting the act.
But she knew how to keep me there, giving me enough to bring me close, but not enough to destroy me completely. As I squeezed the bedsheets, my nails almost tearing the fabric, I was grateful for every one of the women who had come before me, who she'd practiced on to become this skilled.
“Ohhh,” I moaned.
“I know, baby,” she cooed against my sex, and continued chowing down.
And then she upped the stakes.
She released my thighs from her hold, and while her tongue teased my bean – giving and taking away – I felt her fingers glide inside with ease.
I didn't last much longer after that. Once she started with synchronized sucking and pounding, I came undone in the loudest way I ever had before.
She kissed me again down there, chuckled quietly to herself before making her way up my body, kissing a trail until we were face to face again.
She smiled down at me, taking in how exhausted I now was thanks to her. “Do you feel better now?”
I nodded slowly and let her kiss me. I tasted myself on her.
“I knew you would.” Her smile was still too smug. Clearly she hadn't learned her lesson.
I let her kiss me a little while longer, giving back tiredly, still spent from her assault on my sex. What she didn't know was that I was luring her into a false sense of security. Moments later, when she was off her guard, I used all the strength I had left to flip her onto the bed and climb on top of her. It was my turn to pin her down.
“You can boss me around all you like at work, and I'll be a good little girl and obey you. But here, at home, I'm the boss. I'm queen.”
Her smug look had vanished, replaced by modest apprehension as she prepared for her punishment. She easily could have tossed me off of her, but she remained submissive.
My attempt to rip her panties off didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. I thought she would laugh at me when I couldn't even make a little tear in them, but she didn't.
I whipped them off instead, and just as carelessly as she had, tossed them across the room.
I used my teeth to release both breasts from their cups. Her body tensed underneath me as I tormented her nipples with the tip of my tongue, not giving her enough of the pressure she craved. She responded by trying to thrust her chest up, to gain more contact. It didn't work. Talk was cheap; if I wanted her to believe I was boss, I had to show her.
She moaned – in frustration and with pleasure.
“I want to hear you say that I'm the boss,” I said, my hand drifting between her legs. I rubbed at her sex, pleased to feel how much she wanted me. Her eyes fluttered shut as she dug the back of her head into the pillow, moaning.
“I can't hear you,” I said, releasing my suction on one of her nipples, while my hand continued stroking that sensitive area between her legs.
“You're the boss. You're the queen,” she breathed. “You're my queen.”
Nice touch.
When I entered her, her body stiffened in the usual way. I started off slow, breaking her in again, before speeding up. Even though I knew it wasn't real, I loved being the one to take her virginity. It felt real every time I did it.
“This is mine. Say it,” I demanded, plunging deep and hitting her spot, which I had gotten to know very well.
“It's yours,” she cried.
“You're mine. Say it.”
“I'm yours.”
And those were the words she kept repeating as I thrust and thrust and finally brought her to her peak.
I was the one smiling smugly when it was over. She held me close.
“I am yours,” she insisted, her eyes serious. “Don't you ever forget that. You're my one and only.”
I kissed her and let my lips linger on hers, just happy to feel her body against mine. I didn't have to tell her never to play such a cruel trick on me again.
She wept that night, when she thought I was still asleep. By my count that made three times. Three times that I was awake for, at least. Who knew how many more times she did it? Maybe she cried when she was alone in her chamber, just before the big sleep.
It frightened me to imagine what could have caused her to cry like that. Deep down, call it intuition, I knew that when she decided to share it with me, everything would change. Deep down, I knew it had something to do with me.
Like, sometimes there was this melancholy cloud to her dark eyes when she looked at me, as though it hurt her to love me. Maybe it was naive and childish of me to feign ignorance – to ignore the obvious signs that she was hiding something. But I wanted to hold on to this bliss for as long as I could. Who actively set out to ruin their own happiness?
All I could do was be prepared.
TWENTY-ONE
I'd just stepped out of the shower when someone tapped lightly on my bedroom door.
“Lissa, there's someone downstairs to see you,” came Sandra's jovial voice.
“To see me?” I asked, wrapping the towel tighter around my body. “Who is it?” I asked when I opened the door.
“She says her name's Hilarie.” Sandra's eyes and tone said all that she didn't dare say, like why is there a woman coming to my boss's house looking for you? She was just as loyal to Jean as Robyn was, and probably didn't agree with strange women showing up for her boss's girlfriend.
“My ex?” I said, answering the question she couldn't ask. “What the hell does she want?”
I dragged on a T-shirt and some jeans and rushed downstairs. Hilarie stood in the hallway, looking the most modest I'd ever seen her. She even smiled when she saw me.
“Hi,” she said, waving. It had been two and a half months since we'd seen each other. A very small but cruel part of me took pleasure in the fact that she looked as though she had aged about five years in that time. Her blonde hair was messy and uncombed. Her face was ashen, and her eyes slightly red. Sleep-deprived, I assumed.
“Hello.” I frowned at her, not really sure what to say. What did you say to an ex who turned up
out of the blue to your new girlfriend's house? Even though it was unlikely, I wondered if she had come to give me a birthday gift for my twenty-fourth the following day.
“How have you been?” she said.
“Well. Yeah, good. You?”
Sandra gave us both dubious looks then trotted off to busy herself elsewhere.
“Working all the hours God sends, you know me.” Hilarie gave a nervous little laugh. “Can we talk?”
I led her into the living-room, offered her a seat.
“I know I have no right coming here and asking this, and believe me I deliberated over it for a long time. Long enough to suppress all traces of my pride.”
“What is it?”
“Someone came to me a couple of weeks ago. The father of one of my patients. He broke down, Lissa, right in front of me. Everyone's advised turning off the life-support machine. He's seen all the specialists money can buy, and they've all said the same thing – it would take a miracle for his child to wake up from the coma.”
“That's terrible.” But what has this got to do with me? I thought to myself.
“He has all but given up. He knows there's nothing modern medicine can do. All the funds in the world can't help him. At least not directly...”
She was fidgeting with her hands the way she did when she was about to say something that made her uncomfortable.
“He has offered to fund my research for next year. He doesn't care what it takes. He doesn't care what I have to do, as long as his son wakes up from the coma.”
I didn't like where this was going.
She stood up, turned her back to me, sucking in a deep breath. “There's only one thing that can achieve that; he knows it and I know it. That's why I'm here.”
I stood up too, suddenly cognizant of her reason for coming. “Vampire blood? You want to use Jean's blood to save your patient?”
She faced me now. “I know I have no right to ask–”
“Damn right you don't! It's also illegal to give that stuff to humans. But your patient's father already knows that, doesn't he? He's rich though, right? The one percent. So the rules don't apply to him.”
“I know it's unethical, Lissa. Don't you think a part of it disgusts me? But let's not pretend he would be the first person to use it. He certainly won't be the last.”
“Why would Jean help you? The last time she saw you, you embarrassed her in front of all her friends.”
“I'm hoping you could persuade her on my behalf. I know she loves you; I realized the night we broke up. She would do anything for you. I think that's what pushed me over the edge in the end. Knowing she could and would do everything for you that I could never do.”
I glared at her. “Don't try and make this about us, Hilarie. This is about you getting what you've always wanted. Finally someone will fund your research.”
She remained silent for some time, taking my glare and never giving one back. Then she said, “Please, Lissa, just ask her. I would be eternally grateful.”
“Fine, I'll mention it to her. But don't be surprised if she tells you to stick it where the sun don't shine. I'm still trying to figure out why I haven't done the same myself.”
We spoke briefly about her patient, though she didn't give me much. She said, for security reasons, the family had asked to remain anonymous, but that it was a 'special' case, whatever that meant.
Then she thanked me and left quickly, before I could change my mind. Just where did she get off asking for a favor like that? And when had she become the woman who would break the law in order to advance her career? Granted, it was for research into a cure for lupus, but still, research to benefit her pockets. So Doctor Hilarie, sanctimonious do-gooder that she was, was like the rest of us in the end: selfish.
My shift had started before the sun set, so Jean wasn't awake by the time I left the house. I'd been working at the bar for two weeks, and so far it was going well. My first ever paycheck was due the following day, on my birthday. I planned to buy myself a new coat and a pair of heels I'd had my eye on for a while. Jean didn't know anything about them, thank God, otherwise she would have bought them for me. Sometimes I wondered whether she had any idea of the concept of earning your own money in order to buy the things you wanted. That is, she understood it perfectly well when it came to others – just not to me. I no longer told her to stop spoiling me, because it did no good.
The act of cleaning tables and clearing away empty glasses was actually quite therapeutic, especially coupled with the relaxing jazz music playing in the background. I got a lot of thinking done on my shifts. It beat trying to work the beer tap, getting the head wrong, and subsequently receiving irritated looks from the customers because I'd ruined their drinks.
“I've never seen anyone clean a table with so much joy before, Lissa,” one of the other barmaids commented. She was one of the prettiest members of staff, and it didn't surprise me that she had also been one of the scarf-wearers I'd seen my first ever visit. She wasn't wearing one tonight, though. No one was, not even Robyn. Since I'd started working there, I hadn't seen anyone wearing them, or any traces of Jean on their necks. There may have been other less visible places she'd fed from on their bodies, however; though I knew the intimate areas – like the inner thighs – were now out of bounds.
“I don't know why but I find it relaxing, peaceful.”
She laughed. “Are you sure you don't want me to take over for a little while, while you go behind the bar?”
“No, it's fine. Honest.”
She cleared her throat suddenly. “Boss is here.”
I turned around to see that Jean had arrived. We'd been together two and a half months and her entrance into a room still made my heart stop for a second. It was worse when other people were present. I often felt like running to her, kissing her in front of the whole bar, and shouting at the top of my lungs that she was all mine.
“Hi Jean,” the barmaid and I said when she came over.
She said hi, but it was missing its joy. She seemed agitated.
“Lissa, please come and see me in my office in five minutes,” she ordered.
I nodded sheepishly. Her tone and expression worried me greatly. Knowing my luck I'd screwed something up – maybe left something on at home and it had caught fire? Then I had an even more harrowing thought. What if Sandra had told her about Hilarie's visit, and Jean thought something happened between us?
She said hello to everyone else and disappeared through the back.
“That didn't sound good. Someone's in trouble,” the barmaid said, shooting me a look of doom.
For the next five minutes I agonized over what I could have done wrong. And when the time was up, I went down to her office – my girlfriend's office – almost shaking with nerves.
“Come in,” she called when I knocked the door.
I stepped in tentatively.
“Close the door, please.” She got up from her chair, perched herself on the edge of her desk, and with her index finger, slowly beckoned me over, her expression steely.
“Have I done something wrong?” I asked in a timid voice.
“Yes.” The next thing I knew she had snaked her arms around my waist and pulled me between her legs. Her eyes regained their softness; a smile crept to her lips. “You weren't home when I woke up, and I didn't get my wake-up kiss.”
Relieved, I shoved her a little, sticking out my bottom lip. “That was mean. I really thought I'd done something wrong.”
She kissed my face – my chin, my cheeks, and then finally my lips, which had missed her just as much as she missed them.
“I'm sorry, honey, I couldn't resist teasing you.”
We kissed like estranged lovers finding each other again after a decade of separation.
“Hey, you said I don't get any special treatment at work,” I giggled, feeling ticklish as she peppered my neck and collarbone with kisses.
“I know what I said, but I underestimated how irresistible you would be, and how aroused I wou
ld get seeing you scrub those tables.”
I let out a laugh. “That turns you on? You get aroused by watching me do manual labor? Nice.”
“I get aroused watching you do everything.”
Seeing as she was in a good mood, I decided that would be the best time to bring up Hilarie's request.
“Sandra probably told you that Hilarie came by the house today,” I started.
She didn't stop kissing me, only worked her way down gradually to my chest, and unbuttoned a couple of the buttons. She murmured her acknowledgment.
“She came to ask a favor. Not from me, from you.”
She looked at me, her brow furrowed. “Why would your ex-girlfriend want a favor from me?”
“Because she's desperate.”
“What does she want?”
“She wants you to cure her patient. A kid in a coma.”
“She wants my blood?” Her brow furrowed even more. “It's illegal for me to give it and for someone to take it. The law's pretty clear on that.”
“I know. She knows. But she asked anyway. Apparently the kid's dad will fund her research into an incurable disease if the kid comes out of the coma.”
She fell silent, and I couldn't tell what was going through her head. Her face became a blank sheet that gave nothing away.
I combed my fingers through her dark-brown locks. “What are you thinking, baby?”
“So it's a child who won't come out of the coma without my help? And its father, in return, will fund research into cures for diseases? If I were ever going to donate my blood, those are the worthy causes I would go for.”
“You're really considering it?” I asked, my voice becoming squeaky in my alarm.
She shrugged. “Considering it, yes. Getting caught donating isn't my main inhibition. It's that I wouldn't want a child, or anyone for that matter, having this poisonous, cursed blood running through their veins, especially when they can't make the choice themselves. Because if they could make it, they would choose death.” Her expression matched her tone in darkness. Even her body felt colder than it usually did.
“I don't believe that. Why would someone choose death over living, even if they have a bit of vampire blood in them? It doesn't turn them into a vampire.”