by Mary Hughes
He slid down beside me and lay a heavy leg over mine, anchoring me in place while he suckled. I twisted but couldn’t dislodge him. So when he licked my breast until it bobbed and sucked my nipple until it stood tight, I could only enjoy.
He licked across to the other breast, eyes closed in pleasure. His mouth left a hot, wet trail on my skin.
I trembled under the weight of his leg, impatient. He only smiled, his fangs flashing…before he sank them in again.
I shrieked. Sensation tore from breast to gut and exploded in my groin, a small but potent orgasm. My blood roared in my ears. The snap and zip of my pants as he opened them was muffled by whoosh-whoosh.
But the heat of his hand on my mons was very clear. My clit felt swollen and straining and I was sure I’d die before he touched it.
His fingers slid down. Slowly he split my labia, gently rasping along the hood of my clit. He began thrusting along the pink nose, stroking, burnishing until my lust burned, until I knew dying was the least of my concerns.
And still his heavy leg restrained me. I bumped my hips, trying to open, trying to give him full access. I shoved and flexed, twisted and strained, but nothing budged him.
Finally, I grabbed his ears, dug my nails in and shoved.
He chuckled, a dark amusement underscored by purr. Giving my breast a final lick, he rose to his knees over me. His eyes were blood red, his fangs sharp and white. His cock lined the gap of his muscular thighs, longer than I had ever seen it. It should have scared me. He should have scared me.
He lifted a packet from the bedside table.
It was a condom.
“Babi. I can’t get you pregnant. But since you’re worried…”
In that moment I loved him.
“I only have the one…”
I wiggled out of pants and panties. His lips kept moving but no words came.
I parted eagerly, wanting him inside.
He tossed my clothes and thrust himself between my naked thighs. Not his hips, but his chest, in perfect position to sink his fangs into my belly.
He pierced my skin lightly, igniting a firestorm of pleasure deep in my pelvis. I moaned. He palmed my mound, fingers splaying through curls, and used the heel of his hand violently on me until another, bigger climax loomed. He opened wide to bite me again.
His fangs pressed into my mons.
I howled. Grabbed him with my thighs, an involuntary cinching at my sudden orgasm. My legs tightened, nearly crushed him when he began lapping frantically and the climax extended. On and on I convulsed, his purr filling my ears.
His hand was still threaded in my pubic hair and now he tugged on it, pulling me open, exposing my innermost flesh to his flaming tongue. Hot licks accosted my clit directly, pleasure so intense it was near pain. If he didn’t back off soon—
He bit me again, piercing my swollen labia. Another climax, driven into my softest flesh, exploded through hips and chest and lungs and emerged as a scream.
As I lay, hoarse and shuddering from that whole-body pow, he raised himself over me. A foil rip and a latex roll and he was ready. He tossed my leg over his shoulder, slotted his sheathed cock between my slick lips and drove himself deep with a single thrust.
All screamed out, I merely whimpered.
He set up a steady rhythm. The friction drove my body into another tight spiral, but I was too overwhelmed to care.
Until, still thrusting, he bent over and bit my throat.
I constricted into a black hole, impossibly tight. And then, arching back in a sweep of devoured stars, I came, diamond hard. Harder than I’d ever come in my life: hard enough to bang the mattress, hard enough to hurt myself.
He licked my throat closed as the shudders coursed through me, then took my mouth sweetly.
My orgasm rounded, swelled into something bigger than simple pleasure. Something more than physical release, bigger than my skin could hold, bigger than even my heart.
I shattered, coming apart in the sunrise tide of sensations, the brand-new dawn of me.
When my heart slowed and I opened my eyes, I found myself cuddled in Glynn’s arms, his big body curled protectively around me. His rumbling purr had softened, no longer pervasive but ruffled a bit like…like he was sleeping.
He’d fallen asleep. Dammit, he’d fucked like a sex-crazed love monkey and then gone totally unconscious. I wriggled, felt crisp sheet under me.
Huh. At least he’d rolled me out of the wet spot first.
I eased from his heavy arms. He stirred with a murmured question, but I patted one bowling-ball shoulder and he relaxed back.
My clothes weren’t immediately apparent. Some hunting produced my pants and panties at the foot of the bed, and my bra in one corner of the room. I couldn’t find my shirt.
My search took me past the tchotchke table. I paused.
The dragon almost certainly stood for Wales. The pipe struck me as quintessentially male, the cookie stamp female. Were they remembrances of his parents? I pictured a beslippered father smoking a pipe while an aproned mother baked cookies.
Then I pictured warrior-priest Glynn in the family photo and it went poof. No way he had such normal, homey parents. Besides, he’d never known his parents.
Maybe the knickknacks signified his dream family. They were clearly important and I wondered if he’d tell me, but doubted it. I wondered if he’d ever explained them to anyone but doubted that too.
I donned my pants, zipped them over my belly. Flat, and he’d used a condom, but the fifteen percent failure rate meant maybe my belly wouldn’t be flat much longer. We might have started a new family. I might have destroyed my future the way my mother had destroyed hers.
Somehow it didn’t feel as devastating as I thought it would.
Probably because it wasn’t real. Fifteen percent failure rate meant eighty-five percent success, even higher with proper usage. I put a hand over my belly. Pictured it growing round with Glynn’s child.
Nope, still nothing.
I saw my shirt and slipped it on, found shoes and socks and put those on too. I glanced back at Glynn, a mountain on the bed, albeit a sated, snoring mountain. I’d had bloody sex with a vampire. Might get pregnant. I didn’t regret any of it.
And it still didn’t feel weird.
My pink jacket lay in the middle of the floor. I snared it, flashed back to Glynn clutching himself while he totally orgasmed on my scent.
Okay, that had been weird. Strangely reassured, I shrugged on the jacket and slipped out the door.
The limo was waiting to take me home. Apparently Glynn had ordered it up, whether before or after the events on his bed I didn’t know. But it filled me with a warm sense of being cared for, protected.
Although, when I really came right down to it, nothing had changed. I had my duty and dreams. Just because I also had need, and he had need, and we came together in quite mutual satisfaction of that need, it didn’t mean answers.
Good thing he’d fallen asleep after. What if he’d wanted to talk? I didn’t really know why I’d slept with him. How could I deal with finding out why he’d slept with me?
What if he wanted to talk the next time I saw him?
Time for more avoidance. Hey, remember Queen Bess. The issue would eventually go away. Maybe.
So Friday afternoon, I buzzed Nixie. “Can you get a message to Glynn? Let him know not to pick me up?”
“Why not?”
“Um…I’m meeting Rocky?” I made a mental promise to call Rocky and ask her so it wouldn’t be an out and out lie.
“Plenty of room in the limo for two. Glynn could pick you both up.”
Friends are damned tricky. “We’re walking. For the exercise.”
She changed tactics. “Tell you what. I’ll pass it along if you spill what you found on the knickknacks.”
More sensitive than the sex issue. “Nothing, really.” I tried to derail her. “How does Julian get to the PAC if Glynn and Mishela use the limo?”
“He goes earlier
and reconnoiters, if you really cared, which you don’t. Now dump on the knickknacks, else I’ll forget to pass your message on to Glynn.”
“Bitch.” I gave in to the inevitable. “I saw them, but I don’t have a clue what they mean.”
“How can you not? Rowr, girl, after what Julian smelled passing Glynn’s room, he should have been singing the fucking ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ if you wanted it—”
I managed to finesse my way out of that one by hanging up on her. She called back and I turned off the phone. I waited half an hour before cautiously turning it back on to call Rocky. She agreed to meet me at the Wurstspeicher Haus at six.
The moment my rent-a-kid arrived, I ran upstairs, leaving the store a full hour early, sacrificing another eight and a quarter, and showered so fast my skin steamed. The sun was still high enough to spotlight my picture of Stonehenge when I ran downstairs. It hadn’t stopped Glynn before, but I was counting on the element of surprise.
I raced out the side door, screeched to a stop. Oh joy. The Cheese Dudes had something new to annoy us.
A three-story snake flailed from ground to sky like a demented sock puppet.
They’re called air dancers or tube men or advertising inflatables. They’re big to pull in customers from way far away, so normally they’re placed in parking lots or fields, to have room to billow around.
This one was right in front of the Cheese Dudes’ building—which put its flopping and flailing right in front of our walkway.
Even more annoying, it had the face of Cheese Dude Two.
The Dudes were two guys who took the geek stereotype and supersized it. Dude One was tall and skinny with greasy, badly cut hair. He wore Hubble-lensed glasses wrapped with the inevitable duct tape. Dude Two was tall, chubby and scruffy, a double for Frank Rossitano on 30 Rock, complete with ball cap. The Dudes even had the gamer personas, never showing their faces before supper and staying up well past the hour most Meiers Corners stores locked the door and turned the sign to Geschlossen.
The snake was horribly unquaint, way over the top—and a great marketing idea. My folks would never have one, which automatically made it cool.
And the little ball cap was really cute.
I reminded myself that the snake was in my way. That it was annoying, like the webcam and petty vandalism. That it was even dangerous with its jerky flopping. Up and flop. Up and chop. A Cheese Dude axe, swinging at the mouth of the walkway.
Thank goodness I’d skipped double-dutch as a kid. Mr. Miyagi’s classes had only honed my timing. I zigged out between the roiling curls into the street.
Behind me an electronic deathmetal “Cheese, Marvelous Cheese” presaged a live voice shouting, “Damn you, Stieg. Give us back our Gorgon’s Ola!”
I turned. Shaking his fist from the snake-shadowed store was Dude Two himself.
“I don’t even know what Gorgon’s Ola is,” I yelled back.
“The most popular new cheese ever? ‘Piquantly Pungent, Like a Striking Snake.’” He shook a threatening paw. “We know you stole our shipment, Stieg. We want it back!”
“I don’t have your stinking cheese, Dude.”
With a snarl he came after me. I braced for two hundred pounds of Dude. But his timing was off. A coil bonked him in his Cheesehead. He reeled back, tried again. Got punched in his Cheesebelly.
“Damn you, Stieg. Give us back our Gorgon’s Ola, or else.” Clutching his head and belly, he made one last dash.
The worm flashed down and under. Blew suddenly up.
Bonked the Dude in his unprotected Cheesedoodles.
He bent over the little Dudes with a howl. Hobbled back inside.
“Wow. Those guys are really mad at you.” Rocky trotted up, flute bag clutched to her chest. The outer pocket was unzipped, the top of a paper bag screaming CHEESE just sticking out.
I pointed at the bag. “Consorting with the enemy?”
“I like cheese.” She started toward the PAC. “Anyway, they claim you guys started it. Hey, the Kalten remodeling’s done.”
“We didn’t start…it doesn’t matter who started it.” I hitched instruments. Following, I caught my reflection in Kalten’s gleaming exterior. Rocky was right—the remodelers had finished. The place looked better than new. Triangular black marble planters formed an edgy counterpoint to the glossy marble and mirrored glass facade. “I wonder what kind of business moved in?”
“Hope for wine,” she said. “Goes with both cheese and sausage. I’m surprised you and the Dudes don’t get along better.”
“It’s not our fault. This latest cheese accusation is pure crock. Um, no pun intended. Why would we steal their product?”
“That’s what I thought, especially the Gorgon’s Ola,” Rocky said. “No sane person’d want to steal that stuff.”
“Why not? What is it, exactly? Besides ‘piquantly pungent’?”
“Believe it or not, it started as a mistake. See, sometimes cheese bacteria makes gas early. Then the cheese is ‘blown’, which ruins it.”
I eyed her. “And you know this how?”
“Ralphie gave me the Cliffs Notes while I was picking out my cheddar.”
“Ralphie?”
“One of the Dudes. Anyway, most cheese gas is CO2, but some bacteria produce hydrogen—think Hindenburg. A company accidentally produced Hindenburg cheese, but instead of throwing it away, some CEO decided it was an ‘opportunity’. They marketed the hell out of it, and it became trendy with a certain crowd desperate to be different.”
“Good grief. Eating bad cheese just to be trendy?”
“Hey, people eat raw fish. And blood sausage.”
“Which reminds me. Did your bribe work?”
“I think so.” She held up crossed fingers.
“At least now I know why the Dudes have been so angry lately, if their most popular product disappeared.”
“I wonder what happened to the shipment.”
“Delivered to the wrong address, probably.”
She gave me a look. “With our post office?”
“Stranger things have happened lately.” Like vampires. Which reminded me, I didn’t want to deal with any sexy vampires, or even snarky spouses of sexy vampires. So I nudged her toward the PAC’s side entrance.
For all the trouble I went to avoiding sexy vampires (and snarky friends), it turned out I needn’t have bothered. I never saw Glynn and saw too much of Nixie.
Oh, Glynn came. Er, arrived. Whatever. I knew he was there because at seven ten Mishela flitted by with a flirty wave and an embarrassing thumbs-up. She wouldn’t be here without her shadow, so he was somewhere in the building.
Just nowhere near me.
I was not dejected, but by the time I made my way to the pit, everyone was already in place and had eaten all the good chocolates. Not really, but it felt that way. Then Nixie latched on to me the moment I sat down—literally, grabbing my elbow in a grip of death. “So, spew. All the gory details.”
So much for avoiding confrontation.
I tried to distract her. “Hey Nixie, what’s the best thing you can play on a guitar? Solitaire.”
“Seriously, girlfriend. Was he any good?”
I almost wished she was asking about the knickknacks. I cut a significant glance at Julian, he of the supervamp hearing.
Nixie grinned. “Nothin’ he doesn’t know. Or isn’t willing to learn. Spill.”
“Um, isn’t it time to start?” I glanced out into the audience. Less than half full. Earlier than I thought. “Hey, what’s the only thing a violin is good for?”
“Lighting a viola. Even I know that one, but it won’t work. Details. Juicy. Now.”
Thankfully, that was when the doors closed and Takashi cued tuning. So, later than I thought. I picked up my clarinet to match pitch. Nixie snatched up her alto sax and Julian touched bow to strings.
His hand froze. His nostrils flared. The tips of his fangs popped out between his lips.
All hell broke loose in the lobby. Screams and s
hrieks, the shrill yip of a dog, barely muffled by the closed doors.
Julian was gone in a puff of smoke. A swirl of mist. Whatever. Nixie barely caught his dropped cello.
While she fumbled with his oversized guitar, I tossed my clarinet on its peg and sprinted out of the pit and up the aisle. I expected Glynn to come shooting from the stage, but as I ran, my brain kicked in and I realized where he was and why, and why the hullabaloo was in the lobby.
That was where Mishela was.
Dorothy made her first entrance through the house, coming from the inner lobby. Glynn would be with her.
From the ruckus, so was the bad guy.
I burst out the house doors. Glynn and a knobby masked dude were tussling midlobby. A handful of latecomers, standing just inside the outer lobby doors, stared.
Julian weaved from side to side over the wrestling pair, judging his moment. Suddenly he darted in and jabbed the masked head.
Glynn followed Julian’s punch with an elbow smash that would have taken off the head of an elephant. It only stunned the masked guy, confirmation if I’d needed it that this was a vampire.
Nixie edged out behind me. She had a pole and jammed it through the theater house doors as an impromptu bar. Hopefully Mishela had done the same with the other house door. We didn’t need more of an audience for this. Nixie said, “Did they get him?”
“I think so.”
Glynn pulled the masked vampire to his feet.
“Good. Now we’ll find out who he is…damn.”
Glynn tore off the mask, revealing Gollum-like Steve.
“Shiv,” Nixie said.
I didn’t know that could be a name, but maybe vampires took knife names like metal bands added umlauts. “Who’s Shiv?”
“A foot soldier, one of the Lestats. I’ll give you the 4-1-1 later. This explains why the kidnapping attempts were so lame. Shiv’s a fuckup. All Ruthven’s homies are.”
“Ruthven?”
“A v-guy rogue-lord and businessman who… It’s complicated.”
“Later?”
“Later.”
Shiv was blustering. “Lemme go! You can’t pin anything on me. It was dark and I had a mask on so you couldn’t know it was me…shit.”