Bite Me: A Vampire Anthology

by Cain, Addison

  Silence. No reaction. Worse, no denial. No chuckle at the ludicrous statement.

  Their staredown continued as he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the old wood, steepling his fingers as he pondered a response.

  “Armand.”

  That wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it was a start.

  “Armand,” she repeated before adding. “Just Armand? Like Cher or Beyoncé?”

  That drew a tiny curve of his lips. “I don’t enjoy much contemporary music, but I do recall liking a song or two of Cher’s and her husband years ago. Am I to believe this Beyoncé is also a singer?”

  She wanted to keep him talking. “If you’ve been down here as long as you say you have, no wonder you’ve never heard of her, but yes. She’s like the queen of popular music.”

  “I thought Billie was the queen of American music?”

  “Billie Eilish?”

  “Who’s that? I meant Holiday.”

  That made her chuckle. “Billie Holiday was a bit before my time. Come to think of it, she was before your time too.”

  He wasn’t laughing. “Ah, well I might be a bit older than you suspect.”

  She didn’t know how that was possible. He might look old enough to almost be her father, yet he did have an old-world feel to him.

  Knowing she needed to keep him talking, she asked, “What’s the last new music you remember hearing before you were trapped down here.”

  “Let’s see, as I prefer classical music to your popular rock and roll, I was not one to keep up on popular music. I do remember enjoying several Elvis songs though.”

  “Elvis. Seriously? Come on, I think he died even before my mom was born.”

  “You asked. I answered. As I said, I prefer classical music.”

  Armand waved his arm wide and glanced toward the wall of shelves that lined three-quarters of the round room. Lily followed his motion, focusing on the thousands of books, records, and movies that lined the dozens of shelves in the round room.

  Curious, Lily didn’t wait for an invitation. She sauntered to the shelves in the direction Armand had waved to find an entire shelf full of old LP records, still in their protective covers. Lily leaned down to start reading the spines. She hadn’t heard of most of the artists. She pulled out a few that sounded interesting, noticing most looked really old, which considering they hadn’t been manufactured in decades, wasn’t surprising.

  “You weren’t kidding about liking classical. Beethoven, Handel, Boston Philharmonic rendition of Les Misérables.”

  Armand seemed to apparate next to her without a peep before reaching out to pull one album case from the stack.

  “Surely you had to have listened to this one before. I believe it is a classic.”

  In a Silent Way by Miles Davis

  Lily shook her head softly.

  Not deterred, Armand pulled another album from the shelf.

  “You have to have heard this one.”

  Abbey Road by the Beatles

  “I’ve heard of the Beatles, sure. But, I’m not sure I could name a single song of theirs off the top of my head.”

  Armand’s light gray eyes turned darker. “You jest. They are the biggest band of the twentieth century.”

  “Maybe, but this is the twenty-first century. No one uses albums like this anymore,” she said, waving the one in her hand. Then it dawned on her to ask. “Do you have internet access down here to get Spotify?”

  “What is internet access?”

  Duh. Of course he wouldn’t have WiFi.

  “Okay, but how about CDs instead of LPs?”

  “Oh, yes, the damned things. I just get a collection and they change to a new format: LPs that would scratch; those crazy 8-tracks I hated; cassettes that would unravel. I had finally broken down to start replacing some of my favorites with CDs.”

  She watched him reach up to a higher shelf and pull down a CD case, walking to a big, clunky stereo system. He turned on power and it lit up as he inserted the disk.

  “If you have electricity for music and in the bathroom, why don’t you have any lamps in here?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Why the candles and light by fire?”

  His back was to her as he answered abruptly. “Because I prefer it.”

  “Okayyy… If you say so,”

  “I do say so.”

  The soft strains of an orchestra filled the enclosed space. The music sounded vaguely familiar. “Who’s this?”

  “It’s the Bavarian Radio Symphony playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number 3, my favorite. I’m grateful I had it on CD before…”

  His unfinished sentence hung between them. Before he had been taken prisoner in his own strange bedroom. A new question formed.

  “Why did you have your master suite in the basement instead of upstairs in one of the many bedrooms? I mean, I didn’t get to explore, but I saw enough of the property to know this is a huge house.”

  “Castle. This is no house.”

  “Even better. Why not sleep up upstairs where you could get a beautiful view of the mountains? I haven’t been to Austria before, but I’ve always wanted to come here to see the gorgeous landscapes.”

  Lily glanced back at him when he didn’t answer. The faraway look in his eyes let her know he had lost himself in memories from his past. She held her breath, watching and waiting until his face hardened in anger. The look in his eyes when he returned his gaze to her was of fury.

  “I may have had my sleeping quarters here in my dark haven, but my primary living quarters upstairs have the grandest views in the county. I will soon enjoy watching the moonlight shine off the lake to the north as I make the final arrangements to slay my enemies.”

  Why moonlight? Not sunlight?

  They held their gaze as the music crescendoed in a particularly powerful movement. Armand closed his eyes, swaying to the music, clearly lost in it for almost a full minute.

  When his eyes flew open, he caught her red-handed staring.

  His scarred skin oddly did not detract from the aristocratic allure of the man. Her brain fought to warn her of some unseen danger, but in an instant the rest of her body heated, suddenly on fire as a wave of out-of-place sexual need gripped her core.

  Lily shook her head as if to shake away the unwanted feelings. Closing her eyes for but a few seconds to calm her breathing, she found Armand had silently disappeared when she reopened her eyes.

  Spinning to look around the room for him, she fell into his arms. His scent overwhelmed her in an instant, surrounding her like a blanket of fire, igniting her further. Fear, excitement, and lust swirled beneath the surface of her skin, as deadly of a cocktail to her as the drugs flowing in her blood. In fact, that had to be it—the drugs she’d been given were causing her to hallucinate about feeling his arms closing in around her.

  A flash in her brain told her to run to the bathroom and try to put a locked door between them, but gripping desire overshadowed it. Her body almost collapsed against him when Armand stepped closer, closing the last gap between them.

  Lily fell into his open arms, curving against his body as if they were magnetic puzzle pieces snapping into place. It was equal parts comforting and alarming to succumb to the invisible pull of him as he held her firmly, as if afraid to release her, too.

  Armand’s guttural growl against her ear flamed her need higher as his hands began to roam—one higher near her shoulder to hold her while the second slipped lower, below the hem of his own linen shirt covering her body.

  The touch of his fingers branded the bare skin of her upper thigh as he slowly traced a line of heat higher, cupping the curve of her lower asscheek gently before gripping the flesh hard, using his hold on her to pull her tighter against him until she felt his own arousal growing into an impressive erection between them.

  When he lifted her off her feet, she went willingly, wrapping her legs around his body in an attempt to brush her hot core against his cock, despite the layer of his clothing preventing skin-on-skin conta
ct. She recognized her own groan of frustration at the barrier between them as Armand turned and started carrying her through the dimly lit room to the round bed against the only part of the wall with no shelves.

  A trace of fear fought to break free in her brain, but it was snuffed out by an overwhelming sense of surrender. She’d never felt an instant attraction like this before in her life. A thread of reality told her it didn’t make sense, but she let the thread break, succumbing to an almost feral need to be taken.

  Armand took the few steps that led up to the raised bed platform in a rush, acting as anxious to be inside her as she was to be taken. As much as she hated to lose the feel of him against her, she welcomed his throwing her down onto the surprisingly comfortable mattress if only so he could begin working the buckle of his belt.

  Their eyes met—his own lustful need glaring back at her. As crazy as it was, Lily felt an odd pride at being able to make a man look as hungry for her as Armand did in that moment. His silver-gray eyes shone almost black in the candlelight as she waited to be raped by the near stranger.

  Because surely that was what this would be. No respectable woman would spread her legs wantonly, as she had just done, for a near stranger just hours after their meeting. Yet, that was exactly what she was doing—placing her feet flat on the bedding and using her bent legs as leverage to lift her ass off the bed, up and down, in an emulated, lewd, sex act.

  He growled as the hem of the dress shirt she was wearing fell to her stomach, exposing her pussy to him for the first time. He purred, “Perfection.”

  His one word summed up her present mental state precisely. Lily pushed down the small voice telling her to scream at the first glimpse of his flawless cock. The shaft was long and thick. Engorged and hard. Unlike the skin previously exposed to her, his penis was smooth. She would surly die if he didn’t fuck her with it soon. It felt like it was the only thing that could snuff out the sexual hunger gnawing at her core.

  When he paused to look back into her eyes as he took his own button-down shirt off, their gaze connected again. It felt like there was a pipeline of emotions between them, pouring back and forth in a yin and yang tug-o-war. It was overwhelming. Despite lying down, she grew lightheaded.

  “Armand…” she called out, unsure what she was even asking of him.

  An almost sad smile crept to his lips. “My Lily, I am sorry I am weak.”

  His words made no sense, yet in that moment she didn’t care. She felt only relief when he joined her, kneeling on the bed between her spread legs. The feel of his fingers as they brushed the lips of her pussy were like a tease. Too soft. Too brief.

  “More…” she begged.

  “Mon coeur, you have only just begun to beg, yet it is sweet music to my ears.”

  Such an odd compliment, yet it flamed her fire higher. His lunge forward brought his tongue to her pussy, lapping at her in short, teasing strokes meant to drive her insane. When she humped her hips, he wrapped his arms around each of her upper thighs, using the leverage to lift and hold her wet folds against his mouth.

  He ate her with gusto—a man starved. When the sensations became too much for her, Lily tried to yank away, but his grip on her tightened, preventing her from pulling away from his lapping tongue. When he concentrated his licks on her sensitive nub, her elation spiked until she felt the first wave of euphoria coming. Armand used that moment to suck her clit into his mouth as he nipped her lightly with his teeth.

  The pain of it pushed her into a powerful orgasm, but the pleasure was there to ease her down from her high. Pleasure and pain—the perfect companions.

  Lily shut her eyes, basking in the glow of the most intense orgasm of her life. She collapsed to the bed to recover her breath. It wasn’t until she felt her nether lips being spread again that she opened her eyes to find Armand’s hard cock positioned at the entrance to her pussy. There was a frantic look in his eyes that made her worry that he was on the edge of his control.

  She’d thought she was ready for him, yet when he thrust his hips forward, impaling her in one hard plunge, her vision exploded in a burst of light. It felt too good to be real. She couldn’t have formed words to save her life as Armand set about fucking her at a fast pace. There was no finesse, only raw passion. There were no endearing words, only grunts of primal need as Armand pressed his body against hers, pounding her into the mattress with a fast rhythm.

  When the pleasure dimmed, replaced with growing pain, Lily cried out, but his fucking only got harder. When she tried to push them up and off the bed, he grasped her wrists and held them in one hand above her head as he lowered his face to the crook of her neck, kissing and nibbling in an almost endearing way that was in direct conflict with the almost violent sex.

  “Armand!” she cried out. His thrusts stilled, giving her a moment to take a deep breath as her body grew accustomed to his girth.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m too far gone.”

  She assumed he referred to his sexual aggression until he added, “I cannot wait to feed.”

  She didn’t have time to assimilate what he’d said before a blinding orgasm gripped her hard as her world exploded, surrounded in pleasure and pain. It was impossible to know where one ended and the other began.

  Armand’s war cry coincided with a burst of pain just higher than where her neck and shoulder met. She’d never felt anything like the sensations coursing through her as white light filled her vision.

  Lily clamped her legs around him, desperately trying to keep his cock seated inside of her as the walls of her pussy milked every drop from him.

  It was in that moment that reality began to force its way into her consciousness. It was unwelcome. She wanted to live in that blissful state forever where she had nothing to worry about. It was better than facing her reality.

  “Lily…” Armand spoke her name in a tortured voice as he collapsed heavily on top of her.

  “Armand?” she asked, pressing against his chest with her palms to try to lift his heavy body.

  But he didn’t reply.

  Each second that passed slammed reality into her harder, until she felt as if she’d suffocate under his dead weight. The dread that he might have died, leaving her alone in the odd prison, scared her. She mustered all her energy to press Armand up as she rolled them over, not stopping until he lay below her as she straddled his body, his softening cock slowly slipping from her body as their combined juices gushed out all over the comforter.

  One glance at Armand’s pale and scarred face finally succeeded in drawing a scream from her. Fear chased away the final dregs of the hazy fog that had consumed her before, leaving behind the raw evidence of her dire situation.

  Their eyes met, and she found it odd that he looked more frightened of her than she did of him in that moment, which made literally no sense at all. His face had become so pale it was almost translucent. But it was his elongated teeth combined with the line of blood dripping from his blood-filled mouth that were the final clues she needed to piece together her reality.

  He closed his eyes as he violently shook his head from left to right several times as if trying to shake something loose. She took his distraction as an opportunity to push off his body, stepping out of his reach. Lily hoped a bit of distance would help her think of a better answer to the mystery she’d dropped into, instead of the insane idea her brain had latched on to.

  She stood by his bedside for several long minutes, watching Armand writhe in pain while turning the clues over in her head again and again until she knew with a certainty rarely achieved.

  Armand was a vampire.

  Chapter 4

  Armand felt the first tug of reality as he recognized the song playing in the background was David Bowie’s Young Americans. It made no sense. He never played that music, although he vaguely remembered purchasing the CD just before…

  Memories slammed into him like a fast moving train, hitting him hard. Memories of a dark-haired beauty named Lily felt like
a dream, except vampires didn’t dream. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. Yet that’s what Lily felt like to him.

  A mirage.

  But a nurse? He welcomed flashes of her putting cool compresses on his forehead as he’d succumbed to the fever brought on by the cocktail of drugs. He’d take hallucinations like that any day.

  “It’s about time you woke up. I seriously need your help.”

  Her voice didn’t sound like a dream.

  With effort, Armand opened his eyes, then slammed them closed again.

  “Too bright…” he croaked.

  “Ah yes, Mr. Dark and Dangerous likes his candles.”

  Mr. Dark and Dangerous?

  One minute later, she injected, “Okay, the coast is clear.”

  “Clear for what?” His voice cracked as he choked out the words.

  “I lit the candles and turned off the lamps.”

  True to her word, when he opened his eyes to slits, the room was dimly lit by candles. He heard the fireplace crackling across the room.

  Delusion and reality battled. Armand finally managed to ask, “How long?”

  The young woman standing next to the bed looked down where he lay. She was even more beautiful than in his dreams, standing there in his own dress shirt turned mini-dress, yet it was hard to read her expression.

  “Three. Very. Long. Days. Three extremely enlightening days.”

  Panic sprang up at the thought of being at her mercy for three full days, completely incapacitated. Still too weak to move, Armand started taking inventory of how he felt physically and had to admit he felt better than he deserved.

  Memories were coming faster now—of feeding his hunger just before he fell unconscious from the cocktail of drugs in her contaminated blood. Despite the poison, her blood had been a rare treat—the kind of perfection that had made it impossible to take just a sip, especially when he was so hungry. He’d drank deep, too fast, and paid the price.

  When the memories of how he’d snapped—losing control and forcing his will into her brain just before plowing his own hard cock into her perfect pussy—only then did the guilt start to seep in.