by Eden Bradley
“Brace yourself,” he told Amon.
He began to really work him with the whip. No warm-up, just a full-force whipping that had him writhing in moments—full force for a human. Soon blood seeped from the deep welts on his back and Ramsey leaned in to lick his lovely brown skin clean.
“You taste like honey,” he told him, but Amon, lost in the pain, could only moan.
His cock was rock hard, standing proudly. Deliciously.
Ramsey moved around to the front of him, leaned in and placed a soft kiss at the base of his throat. “You are taking it well. You will take more. And then I will drink from you. I will feast upon your blood and your beautiful flesh.”
He heard a groan and turned to see that Rogue was as erect as Amon, his lovely cock nearly tempting him from the human.
“And you, Rogue…you shall be next.”
“Promises,” Rogue taunted, straining against the chains that held him.
But Ramsey was hard as iron himself simply looking at the beautiful vampire, as if the human were not enough. Lust speared deep into his gut.
The human first. And then the beautiful Rogue.
He put the whip down and picked up a narrow bamboo cane, smaller around than his little finger, and yet he knew its flexible length stung like a lash and bit even deeper. He began right away to strike Amon’s big body with it, choosing his targets carefully: the front of his thighs, his taut stomach, his chest. The cane was leaving a criss-cross pattern of dark red welts on his skin, but Amon only cried out when he lashed his nipples.
“Ah, Gods, Sir!”
“Yes,” Rogue murmured behind him, making Ramsey’s cock pulse, his balls pull tight with need for him—to know he watched. To know he loved it.
No. Focus.
Amon’s eyes were shut tight, his head back. Ramsey tuned into him, heard his heart racing, his breath catching in his throat as he tried to ride out the pain. Lovely, the way he took it—what would have made most other humans lose consciousness by now.
He struck once more, harder this time, opening up the flesh just over his heart. He moved in fast and sank his fangs into the same spot.
Amon howled.
Rogue groaned.
He drank, opening himself to the flashes of Amon’s past.
He recognized the black garb of the post-monarchy military, the London street filled with smoke, the sound of gunfire.
Sniper somewhere. He ducked behind what was left of an apartment building. Where the hell was the rest of his unit? Too smoky to see. But Lord, his mother had lived on this very street. He thanked God she was already gone, that she hadn’t lived to see this.
Bullets whizzed past his helmet. He moved out, firing his weapon to cover himself. And felt the searing pain as a bullet hit his left arm.
He did a quick visual of the area, searching for the damn sniper—and spied him at a second floor window of the next building over, nothing more than a shadow, but he had his aim. He fired, heard the shatter of glass as he hit his mark. The man fell to the street.
He ran to make sure he was dead, and to relieve him of his weapon before another rebel grabbed it.
He waved the smoke away as he approached the body, which was twisted, broken. But it was no man. It was a boy, no older than fifteen or sixteen.
His gut twisted.
His brother’s face flashed before his eyes—his brother who had been fifteen when he died in a bombing.
No.
He fell to his knees, searching desperately for a pulse at the boy’s neck. But there was nothing but blood and smoke. Broken glass. His broken body.
Fuck.
No!
What a damn useless world this was. Damn useless…
Ramsey pulled back hard. This was not what he wanted. He ran a hand over Amon’s face, held tightly onto his jaw. The man was panting. Lost in the moment, he wasn’t even aware of those memories buried beneath the pain and desire.
Ramsey needed to shift his energy.
He ran a hand down the front of Amon’s body, stopping to smooth his fingertips over his nipples. They went hard instantly, the succulent flesh darkening. Ah, nice. He pinched, and Amon moaned.
“Come on, Ramsey,” Rogue interrupted. “Surely you can do better than that.”
“Too much from you and it will be days before you find out,” he answered over his shoulder.
He went back to the gorgeous human flesh before him, bent to take one of the hard, flat nipples in his mouth and sucked.
“Ah…that’s good, Sir.”
He let his sharp eyeteeth graze the tight flesh, his body beginning that lovely, shimmering bloodsong that told him Rogue was tuned into the human’s pain—the bloodsong which only happened between vampires.
God, he couldn’t get to Rogue soon enough. But he would not tell him so.
He continued his assault on Amon’s nipples—first one, then the other, licking, sucking, biting, until the man was squirming in his cuffs, his enormous cock iron-hard. When Ramsey saw how the head began to pulse, he stepped back and picked up a second cane, and started in on him once more with both hands.
The cane whizzed through the air, lashing the skin open on his broad chest, on his stomach and thighs. He played them over his sides, making Amon cry out when he flayed the flesh along his ribs. The blood began to pour, and Ramsey leaned in to lap at it between strikes.
His body was beginning to fill with the heady blood frenzy—his own blood pulsing in his veins, filling his cock until it hurt. But he loved it all, loved that sweet pain. And behind him Rogue was practically bursting from his chains, fighting to get out, to get to the blood and the sport and the flesh he was forced to watch.
Desire kicked hard in Ramsey’s gut, but he refused to look at him. It would be his undoing.
He reached down and fisted Amon’s big cock in his hand.
“Yes, please, Sir…Yes…”
“Ramsey,” came Rogue’s breathless voice. His chains rattled. “Come on. Be done with the human. Take me. I’m waiting for you. You win. This is torture. Watching you is… Isn’t that why you did this? What more do you want from me?”
God, he needed to fuck. He needed Rogue. He simply needed, damn it.
With a roar he tore at Amon’s flesh, didn’t stop when Amon screamed. He bit into him over and over, taking blood and skin between his teeth.
Too much. Too far.
With a groan he shoved himself away from Amon’s limp body. Julian came to take the human down from the cross, but all Ramsey could think of was this driving need. A need that could be quenched only by Rogue.
He should have known better than to tempt himself this way. To test his resolve. It had been Rogue all along. And he was far too worked up, their blood singing in harmony, to have any damn shred of control left. He could barely form the word in his mind.
He strode to the pillar that held the young vampire, tore the chains from his body so hard it cut his palms open. He didn’t care. He had to have him. Now.
Chapter Seven
Ramsey grabbed him by the neck and turned him in his arms so fast he barely had time to understand what was happening. But when the older vampire pressed up behind him, an arm snaking around his waist as he kicked his thighs apart and plowed into him, he was ready—so damn ready his cock was about to burst.
“Don’t you dare come yet,” Ramsey ordered roughly.
“Ah, you really do torture me,” Rogue sighed, barely able to get the words out, he was so overwhelmed by sensation. By the mere idea of Ramsey buried to the hilt in his ass.
Ramsey wrapped an arm around his neck in a chokehold and began to move inside him, hard strokes that felt so damn good Rogue could barely stand it, pleasure spiraling as that strong arm against his throat cut off his air.
“Yes, fuck me hard, my beautiful monster,” he gasped.
Ramsey plowed into him, his hip bones jabbing against his buttocks. Rogue loved every sensation, every tiny point of contact between their bodies—Ramsey’s cool vam
piric flesh, hard and smooth as the concrete floors of the dungeon. Even the sensation of his wool trousers, the sharp cut of the metal zipper biting into his skin.
He tried to take his swollen cock in his hand, but Ramsey slapped it away.
“Your cock is for me, young one,” he growled in his ear. “Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes.”
Ramsey shifted and pulled his arms up. “Clasp your hands behind your neck.”
“What? I—”
“Now, Rogue,” he said, a dangerous edge to the words.
He did as he was told—only because it was him. Only because his entire being ached for him, because even Ramsey fucking him, his heavy flesh filling him over and over, wasn’t enough.
He didn’t realize Ramsey held anything in his hand until the narrow metal cane came down on the front of his thighs.
“Ah, God!”
The older vampire struck over and over, keeping in time with his plunging cock, and Rogue’s blood sang the tremulous song of pain. He was torn between exquisite pain and intense pleasure. He squirmed in Ramsey’s grip, but the vampire wouldn’t let him move other than to arch his ass into his hips, opening up to his thick, ramming cock.
“Let me come, Ramsey! Just do it! I can’t…”
He groaned as the cane hit his rigid shaft—a short, snapping bite against his flesh.
“Fucking God damn it!”
“Don’t you dare try to order me, Rogue.”
He hit his cock again to drive the point home. Pain seared him, biting deep into his system, and he knew on some deeper level Ramsey’s absolute authority over him. But despite the way his body loved it, even his mind, his spirit could not accept it entirely—not from anyone.
With his last breath he whispered, “You can do better than that. Fuck me. Cane me. What else have you got, lover?”
Ramsey roared, and with the lightning speed of a three hundred year old vampire, he rammed into him so hard they both fell to their knees, the impossibly fast bucking of his hips driving them both several feet forward on the concrete floor. It tore at his knees as Ramsey’s hammering cock tore at his ass. He howled his pain, keened his pleasure.
“Do. Not. Come,” Ramsey ordered.
But he was losing it. No control. Only pleasure. Only pain.
Only Ramsey.
His body gave itself over to the vampire completely as the bloodsong filled his ears, as Ramsey bit savagely into his shoulder, adding another layer of exquisite sensation.
“Ramsey,” he panted. “Please…let me come…”
“Now, Rogue.”
The command was all he needed—that and Ramsey’s arm pulling tight against his throat, choking the breath from him as he came in a torrent of needle-sharp pleasure. His cock pulsed with the force of it, sensation cutting as deep as a blade.
He heard Ramsey’s distant yell as he felt his hot seed spill into his clenching ass, the older vampire’s blood singing in symphony with his own, both of them lost in sensation.
Small currents of his orgasm still shivered through him when Ramsey stood with Rogue’s body in his arms and carried him from the dungeon.
The club was a blur of glass and moonlight as Ramsey took him quickly through a series of hallways and into his private quarters. He laid him roughly on the big, red bed.
Rogue didn’t understand—Ramsey had taken him to his bed, then thrown him down there and stood staring down at him, rage on his face. Wasn’t he going to fuck him again? Why else had he brought him there? And he understood maybe even less the way he felt—something far more than submission to the vampire’s superior strength of both body and will. None of it made sense. All he knew was the pounding of his heart and Ramsey’s green gaze glowing in the moonlight streaming through the windows and crossing the bed with dark streaks of light and shadow. There was such a mix of emotion there he couldn’t begin to sort it out.
“Damn you!” Ramsey exploded, then he turned and began to pace in front of the windows.
“Damn me?” Rogue remained still. He said quietly, “I am damned already.”
“And so am I! Damned by what I…” Ramsey stopped, bracing a hand against the lovely ironwork of one of the window frames, his back to the bed. When he went on the words were ground out from between clenched teeth. “I cannot bear this. I cannot bear that I…feel for you.”
Rogue’s heart pounded in his chest. He refused to recognized the sensation as hope. “I don’t understand. Why would you?”
Ramsey whirled on him. ‘Do you not know your own beauty, Rogue?”
“I know what I look like. I am a vampire. We are all beautiful.”
“No. Not like you.” Then more quietly, “Not to me.”
Rogue blinked, part of him unable to believe what he heard. His pulse was racing, and it was almost like the bloodsong, yet entirely different. Just as sweet. Just as powerful. He whispered warily, “As you are to me.”
Ramsey was at his side in a flash, kneeling on the bed. He whispered urgently, “I have not allowed this to happen, and yet something in you has broken through. This is exactly how it feels to me—as though something has been broken down, broken through. I do not want it.”
“Do you think I want it? I have always been on my own. I can’t even conceive what this is. How to handle it. I hate that I…that it feels as if I need you. That instead of running I’m afraid you’ll send me away.”
“I hate it, as well.”
Ramsey’s eyes were full of green fire flecked with gold and resentment—the same resentment he felt himself. And yet…
“I have never given myself to another the way I do with you,” Rogue admitted. “The way you make me…It’s the making…” He stopped, shook his head. “No, that’s not quite right.”
Ramsey let out a bitter laugh. “None of this is quite right, young one.”
“Ramsey, surely you have dominated dozens of vampires.”
“And surely you have been dominated by others,” he said. “I do not know why this is different.”
“But it is,” Rogue agreed.
Ramsey laid his palm in the center of Rogue’s chest. He’d done so before. But this time Rogue felt as if something in him reached back as the older vampire’s expression shifted, softened, as if he were giving himself over. It was a different kind of giving over than Rogue had done in the power exchange, the kink—it was as if Ramsey had suddenly stopped struggling so hard against what was happening in this strange moment.
He licked his full lips and Rogue saw the tips of his fangs, glinting in the lamplight. Ramsey said in a hushed tone, “There are times when a connection is made between vampires. When the meeting of our strange flesh binds us without a word being spoken.”
“But this is me, Ramsey. I have never felt for anyone before. Not anything more than lust. Happiness at their company. Or pity. Or anger.”
“Perhaps you have.”
“No.”
“I want to find out. But this is not something I can do if you fight me, Rogue. Your past is buried too deeply. You have to allow me in or I will see nothing more than the small flashes I have seen already, none of which makes sense other than the trauma of being Turned. I believe there is a key tangled up in there somewhere. In your blood. In your mind.”
“I am used to being closed off.”
“So am I.”
They stared at each other. The tight knot in Rogue’s chest—the one he realized he had always lived with—unfurled the slightest bit. He nodded.
“Drink from me, then. I will try to open myself. For you. See what you will.”
Why did that feel as punitive as it did freeing?
Ramsey kept his gaze on him as he moved in closer. He didn’t say a word as he wrapped a hand around the back of Rogue’s neck, pulling him in to his strong body. He held him tight, and Rogue tangled his fingers in the long, silken dreads as Ramsey’s fangs pierced his throat.
There was that moment of brilliant, burning pain, then he let himself sink into the
sensation of the beautifully dark vampire’s mouth drawing on his blood. The power play between them allowed him to let go some of the tight control he’d always held when another vampire drank from him—something he’d never thought of until now.
Yes, give it over to him.
Ramsey.
Only because it’s him. Only him.
He opened his mind’s eye and allowed himself to see along with Ramsey.
A London flat with dingy walls. There was music playing, the smoke of burning incense—sandalwood. Blankets were piled, making a soft palett in the middle of the room. His head was pillowed on the softer belly of a woman.
“Come on, how can you not love Janis Joplin?” came the soft, feminine tone. “She’s part of the revolution, love. Women and rock and roll music are as much a part of what’s happening as the marches and the pot.” She laughed.
He knew that laugh…
No.
His mind shifted away, to a future less distant.
A small underground vampire club in Moscow—one made just for rogues like him, those who existed outside the society of the Midnight Playground clubs and their governing Council.
A girl was there—the beautiful dark-haired vampire vixen who smelled of one freshly made, and yet she was impossibly strong—he could tell that much before he even touched her. She had the longest lashes over her dark, dark eyes, and a doll’s body that made her seem innocent. He’d gone hard for her the instant he saw her. He wanted to fuck her, and he would—she’d been flirting with him for an hour. He had his hands on her ass as they danced, and she ground her hips into his.
When she pulled away from him suddenly, he asked, “What is it?”
“The sun…” she said in her halting English.
“What? It’s almost evening. We can wait until the sun sets to find a place if you want, little beauty. But I’ll happily fuck you right here.”
She shook her head, a strange expression settling over her delicate features.
He laughed. “You can’t fuck in the evening? Is this some Russian rule or something?”