Fetish

by Sherri L. King

  “What do you mean? I’ve done nothing. I wouldn’t hurt you, Aerin, you know that. You’ve been in my arms, in my bed. No matter what you think of me, remember—”

  “Shut up,” she screamed shrilly. “Don’t tell me that, don’t say it. I don’t want to talk to you. I never want to see you again. Stay away from me.”

  “You know that’s not going to happen.” The velvet had turned to steel. “Not now, not ever. You’ll have to get used to some things from here on out. I don’t know how you found out so much without my telling you, but it’s obvious you don’t know enough or you wouldn’t dare push me like this.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Her throat was dry as sand.

  Velvet crept into his voice again, but the steel was also there, covered by the softness. “Sugar girl, I don’t make threats—”

  “Then leave me alone,” she moaned brokenly.

  “—I make promises,” he finished. “And I promise you, if you’ll just calm down and listen, you’ll understand that nothing has changed.”

  “Everything has changed, you goddamn liar. You’ve changed me. Everything about me.”

  “You changed yourself Aerin. I only gave you the power to do it.” How still and calm he sounded, how hard and unyielding.

  “That accident the other night, the one you left to take care of. That was no accident at all, was it? It was a murder,” her voice rose and cracked. “A man died at Fetish Saturday didn’t he? And you had something to do with it—”

  “I’m coming over.”

  “No! I’ll—I’ll kill you if you do, I swear to Christ I will,” the sobbing, panicked words tripped over themselves in her haste to say them.

  “How?” He sounded unfazed by her threat, merely curious.

  “Fuck you, Violanti! Fuck you, don’t you come over here.”

  The phone clicked in her ear. Deafening silence came through the line.

  With a wild cry, she raced through the house, locking her doors and windows, even as she was blinded by angry, terrified tears.

  She had no gun, no weapon, save a butcher knife which she grabbed from a drawer in her kitchen. Turning on every light in every room she tried to think of some plan to keep Violanti away. She knew she couldn’t call the cops and tell them her wild tale of vampires and murder and sex. No one would believe her, and if she was lucky they would simply ignore her and not lock her away in some lunatic asylum. She was on her own.

  Left to face the devil or vampire or whatever he was.

  “Wait a minute. If he’s a vampire, he can’t come in here unless I invite him, right?” She thought back over the years, trying to remember every vampire movie she’d ever forced herself to sit through, every horror story she’d ever dared to pick up and read on the subject. She was certain that the one cardinal rule in just about all those tales of the macabre was that vampires could not enter a home without the owner’s permission.

  Hysterical, triumphant laughter exploded from her lips. She’d just sit here and wait him out. He’d never get an invitation from her, no matter how long he knocked on her door. For all she cared he could rot out there on her doorstep. She wasn’t letting anyone in her house tonight.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sometime during her long midnight vigil she must have fallen asleep. And she was having such a delicious dream she didn’t want to think about waking up from it.

  Cool silken lips danced over the thin cotton of her tank top. The tip of a wicked tongue wet the hard stab of her nipple before the mouth drew it in, sucking it gently.

  Fingers cupped and squeezed the mound of her sex through her boxer shorts, a flimsy barrier against such sensual determination. Aerin moaned and let the dream take her deeper…

  Violanti smiled against her nipple, knowing she slept too deeply to awaken. He wouldn’t let her awaken. He liked her just as she was here, dreaming in his arms, no longer scared or frightened, but open fully to his touch like a blooming flower in the heat of a dewy summer morning.

  Her mouth parted on another moan, drawing his eyes. Oh the things he wanted to do to her mouth—and would do before the night was through. So she knew his secrets now—some of them anyway—he didn’t care. For the first time in five centuries a human knew who and what he was and he cared nothing but that she did not turn away from him. That she did not flee.

  All it would take was a little convincing, he was sure, to keep her from bolting. She was in thrall to his sensuality, to his charm, and he would use that against her like a weapon until he got what he wanted.

  But what did he want from her? Ultimately, he did not know. It bemused and perhaps alarmed him a little, this strange uncertainty in him, but that didn’t matter. He’d been playing with fire from the first moment he’d locked gazes with this woman. He’d upped the ante by giving her his painting, knowing it would release her from the spell of forgetfulness he’d laid over Fetish whenever she caught sight of it. He’d known she would suspect something sooner or later after receiving that gift, after accepting it into her home.

  And as she’d accepted that gift, so too had she unwittingly invited him into her home, something he knew she’d been smart enough to determine not to do tonight, for not all Hollywood fictions were far from the mark. It was why she’d waited up for him instead of fleeing. Waiting with that paltry and insufficient weapon clenched tightly in her hands, until he’d sent her into a deep sleep and carried her easily to bed. Tonight, he vowed, he would show her how useless all her defenses were against him, and in doing so he would also put an end to her unfounded fear of him.

  And she would love every hot and sticky minute of it.

  His sugar girl was no dim-witted human, even if she was a little naïve. Her discovery of his nature—or at least the gist of it—had proven that much. And after their conversation on the phone—if that farce of an argument could indeed be called one—it was abundantly clear that she was no longer timid or shy. She’d actually had the courage to tell him to shut up. Hell, she’d screamed it at him. No one had ever commanded him to do anything, let alone to shut up. She had changed in so many ways from the frightened innocent he’d first met.

  It was so endearingly irritating. Everything about her was, and it made him hard as a rock knowing he’d helped her spread her wings as well as her legs.

  Moving up he kissed her on the mouth, hard. Gods but she had the most fuckable mouth he’d ever seen.

  She was a menace.

  He’d be wise to get up, wipe her memory clean, take his painting, and leave. But he knew he couldn’t. No more than he could kill her without killing himself. He loved her too damn much.

  And when had he come to love her?

  From the first night, when she’d eaten him with her innocent eyes as he’d shot his load all over his stomach? She’d been breathless, trembling. And so wetly aroused he’d actually smelled the faint traces of blood from her most recent menses there in the heat between her legs. Oh yes, he’d loved her even then, and had known full well he was doomed to tell her everything sooner or later, whether she wanted to listen or not.

  He knew he would have to let her awaken. Knew, too, that he’d have to overcome her anger and her fear before he could accomplish anything further in their relationship. But first…her mouth drew his eyes and he licked his lips like the dangerous predator he was.

  The long fingers of his hand went to the fastening of his pants and Aerin sighed deeply in her sleep.

  * * * * *

  “Wake up Aerin. It’s time to talk.”

  Cold water couldn’t have made her gasp awake faster than those smiling words from Violanti’s mouth. With a shriek she backed up on the bed. Her mouth was full of an odd lingering sweetness, her head was dizzy, and she wondered how in the hell she’d ended up in the bed with him when only minutes ago—

  “You made me sleep.”

  Those sinful lips of his stretched in a wide, wicked grin. “I did.”

  “You broke into my house.”

  “Yes.�
� The grin broadened, blazing with teeth that glinted in the moonlight. He’d turned the light off in her room, she realized, thought it didn’t seem important in that moment. He’d probably done it to put her off balance.

  When her eyes fully focused in the dark—where were her contacts?—she realized that he was deliciously rumpled as he lounged there next to her. His pants were open, his cock—shiny and wet and hard—jutted up towards his navel, and his shirt was pulled high on his stomach.

  “What did you do?” Her mouth tingled.

  “What do you mean?”

  His wide-eyed innocence didn’t fool her for a second. The sweet flavor that lingered on her tongue seemed suddenly significant. “Why do you look like that?” she motioned towards his dishevelment.

  “Why do you think?” Such a wickedly sinuous voice, it made her crazy with lust, even though she fought like hell against it.

  Her mouth felt swollen, sexy, bruised. That, combined with the lingering flavor in her mouth…and she knew exactly what he’d been up to.

  “You pig! I was asleep,” she screeched with indignation even as she savored the wild taste of him, and savor it she did, despite the circumstances and despite herself.

  He laughed. “So? I wasn’t. And you liked it,” he leaned conspiratorially closer, eyes glowing in the moonlight that shone through the window of her bedroom, “you moaned around me.”

  “In disgust!”

  “Liar. You gulped me down like a woman dying of thirst. You licked me with that long tongue of yours, purring like a kitten with each spurt.”

  “Why you jerk—” She launched herself at him, beyond fear, pissed as hell over his sheer, unrepentant gall.

  He let her hit him, laughing like a loon in a carefree way she’d never heard from him before. Not even trying to dodge her blows, as if her slapping and punching him didn’t hurt at all.

  And then she realized it probably didn’t. Not if he was a vampire. He was too strong for that.

  She stilled, her veins chilling to ice. “Did you come here to kill me?”

  He sobered instantly. “Don’t be stupid. I could have killed you a thousand times by now and you know it.”

  “So why didn’t you?” She sank back, eyeing him warily.

  His impatient glare was so filled with exasperation she wanted to punch him again, and would have, if she’d thought it would faze him any. “You know why, you just don’t want to accept it. I’m no killer, Aerin.”

  “But you are a vampire. Aren’t you?” Never in a million years would she have imagined she’d be having a conversation like this, across from a man who was naked and sensuously replete from his moonlight molestations. It was all too absurd. She almost laughed, but didn’t, because she knew it would sound hysterical.

  His eyes shimmered in the dim light, from silver to blue to green to bright and burning crimson and she knew he did it on purpose. To drive the point home, as it were. “I am. But not like your normal, Hollywood vampire.” His hand moved down over his cock, toying with the silver bar that pierced his still-hardened flesh.

  She tried to look away—knew it was a hopeless endeavor—so instead watched his every move with growing excitement despite her fear.

  “Isn’t silver bad for vampires or something?” she asked, her mouth dry and her voice raspy.

  His eyes were devilish and knowing. “I guess you could say I’m allergic to silver. It burns,” his fingers tugged gently on the silver bar and his breath hissed between his teeth, “quite a lot.” The head of his cock wept a lone tear of arousal. “I love the small pain; it heightens my pleasure.”

  Aerin took a deep, unsteady breath. She tried to remember why they were here, why they were having this conversation. Tried with all her might to ignore her own needs, her own arousal. “If you’re not like a Hollywood vampire then what are you like?” She had to know.

  His fingers stilled on himself and he straightened his clothes decisively. Aerin could have wept when he refastened his trousers. “Will you listen? Truly listen to what I have to say?” he asked.

  “Yes. Just tell me.”

  “Very well then, Aerin my love. I’ll tell you what I have never told another human being for over five hundred years…”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Florence, Italy

  1497

  “Violanti, stupid boy, bring me the egg yolks—and hurry.”

  Violanti’s mouth twisted in a fury. He was no longer a boy—not at twenty three—but his master insisted on calling him that and would until he either died or Violanti killed him. And Violanti D’Arco knew he just might do it, he was that fed up with the old man’s incessant demands.

  After all, his name meant, loosely, violent darkness. It was his nature, after all, to eventually wreak havoc in some fashion. Hadn’t his drunken louse of a father told him so time after time, more often with his booted foot than not? If anyone would know of that violence in his heart it would have been his father, who’d had the same dark blood.

  The D’Arco family was descended from sorcerers, practitioners of the black arts that dated back to Merlin himself. Or so the stories went.

  It should be little surprise to anyone that he harbored such dangerous thoughts as beating his master to death. But he wouldn’t do it. He knew he wouldn’t. He’d grit his teeth, bury his anger, and see to the old man’s demands.

  Violanti did want to become his own master, after all, and the only way to do that was to stay with this master and learn the last lessons that would perfect his art. He’d been learning his whole life, studying and producing, but his present master—a student of Lorenzo the Great—would teach him things no school, text, or teacher could have taught him before now. It was why he’d come here three years ago at the advanced age of twenty, to this city so far from his rural ancestral home, to learn from one of the greatest painters in Florence.

  Painting was the only thing that mattered to Violanti. Painting and women. And he was a gifted artist with both mediums. He’d been painting all his life, had been bedding women since his thirteenth birthday, and here, at last, was his chance to perfect both skills. Here, in the epicenter of renaissance learning that was Florence.

  “Hurry up boy,” the old man growled again, impatient and scowling.

  Violanti gritted his teeth and did as his master bid him, opening his mind to receive the lesson he would learn as the old man set brush to canvas in the sultry summer air of the palazzo.

  Hours later, as the sun sank down over, Violanti looked at the fruits of his labor. A vibrant painting, a scene of plump female statues rendered in marble among an overgrowth of twisting vines and broken pottery. The piece would please his patroness, and Violanti would earn many florins for the effort. He was pleased. It was not yet perfection, not yet good enough to appease his demanding thirst for excellence, but it was close enough for now.

  “You will take it to the Signora tonight.”

  Violanti frowned. “It is not yet dry. It will take many days for the pigments to set—”

  “I know this boy, but she has commanded that it be delivered the very night it is finished and no later.”

  Well the rich and pompous noblewoman who had commissioned the piece could have it whenever she wanted, so long as she paid Violanti the coins she had promised. He grunted his assent to the old man, who scowled at what he no doubt found intolerable insolence in an apprentice. “I will take it to her,” Violanti murmured.

  “After the sun has set and no sooner.”

  Of course, he remembered the Signora’s eccentric request that their business be done in only the moonlit hours of the night. How could he dare forget with such a ripe purse involved? As the sun set over the horizon he gathered his precious cargo and made for the Signora’s home.

  Walking the streets of Florence in the hours of the night was an experience Violanti greatly enjoyed. So many different walks of life mingled here, in search of knowledge, in search of art. Politics were discussed openly and heatedly, the lifeblood of the
city. Poetry and song filled the air. Food and wine flowed; pretty women spread their legs eagerly for any man with traces of paint under his nails. It was a lovely, magical place, Florence.

  “Hello, beautiful one,” a sultry voice called to him from a doorway.

  “Maria, my flower.”

  The woman laughed, sashaying over to him with a promising smile on her lips. “Did you think to slink past me without my notice? You devil. I am not so easily tricked.” Maria sighed and licked her lips like the wanton she was. “I am hot for you tonight, my stallion. Will you not join me for an hour?”

  Violanti, careful of the painting, kissed her hard on the lips with gallant flair. “Not now my flower. I have a painting to deliver to its new owner, and it cannot wait.”

  Her hooded gaze lit up with a sudden fire, glancing towards the canvas he held so protectively. “Can I see—?”

  He stepped back. “No. It is still wet. I hold it over my head, see,” his hands tightened, “so that the paint does not smudge or run.”

  She pouted, and Violanti had to admit that it was a luscious pout indeed. “You are cruel, Violanti. I love your paintings, but you do not share this one with me. You owe me greatly for that,” she teased. “You’ll come back tonight?”

  “I’ll come back,” he promised, not knowing then that he would never see the lovely Maria again.

  “Kiss me again so I will believe you.”

  He did, opening his mouth for her tongue, feeling his cock grow hard with the promise in that kiss. Breaking away wasn’t too difficult, but it wasn’t entirely easy either.

  With a jaunty swing in his step he made his way at last to the Signora’s house. It was dark inside, unlike the thousands of other homes that lit up the night with their numerous emblazoned candles. He wondered idly if she was home, he did not want to have to carry the painting back to the palazzo. He wanted to stop and spend an hour—or three—in the arms of the luscious Maria.