by Kallysten
“You’re my Childe now,” she said as though it were the most evident thing in the world. “Whatever you did before I turned you doesn’t matter anymore. Not to me.”
Jack had always prided himself on knowing when people lied to him. Now he spent a long moment observing Angela, searching for the telltale signs that would give her away. He found nothing but openness and it unsettled him. If she hadn’t killed him, turned him as revenge for him killing her Sire, why had she done it? What did she want from him?
After a moment longer, a small frown drew her eyebrows together. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
It came to him in a flash. It was exactly as she had said. She had turned him so she wouldn’t be alone. She had made herself a companion with whom she could live, sleep, hunt—and kill. The part of Jack he was beginning to recognize as the vampire inside him was fine with all of that. Anything his Sire wished, he wanted to give to her especially if it involved blood, sex, or both. But he was too stubborn to let go of the rest of him, the part that had been a Special Enforcer long before he graduated from the Academy. He had always known keeping people safe from vampires was what he wanted to do, like his grandfather before him. He couldn’t betray himself now. He refused to—even if the hunger was tearing him apart.
“I don’t want to kill,” he said slowly, weighing each word with all his determination.
Angela’s frown deepened. “What? We’re not talking—”
He interrupted her with a shake of his head. “I spent my life, all my adult life, stopping vampires who killed humans. I can’t become a killer now. I won’t.”
Had he still been human, his heart would have been pounding by the time he finished. But now he could only sense his vampire self raging; not about his refusal to kill, as he would have expected but about Angela. Jack was consumed with fear of what would happen if he angered or disappointed his Sire.
Angela sat up straighter on the bed and fixed her robe over her shoulder. Even half-clothed she exuded an almost regal aura. She looked at him with cool eyes in which only a few sparks glittered like gold.
“I could force you to do it, you know,” she said in a calm, composed voice. “You’re my Childe. If I order you to do it, or even thrall you, you will obey.”
As much as Jack wanted to deny her claim, he couldn’t. What Angela said was true. He could feel it, sense it in a way he couldn’t have explained. If there had been a human victim between them, if Angela had demanded that he bite that person, Jack knew he would have done it. He wouldn’t have wanted to; he would have been defiant, angry at her, disgusted with himself but he didn’t think he could have said no if she ordered him.
Jack was about as proud as he was stubborn, but he had to at least try.
“Please.” Oh, how it burned to say that word to the vampire who had killed him, to beg her not to make things worse when there was nothing he could do to stop her… “Please don’t force me to kill.”
It would kill my spirit, kill who I am, he wanted to add, but he couldn’t allow himself to be that melodramatic.
Angela considered him for a long moment. Her face gave nothing away. When she finally granted him a tiny nod, Jack closed his eyes for a second, his body sagging in relief.
“You don’t have to kill if you don’t want to,” she said, each word slow and measured. “I won’t force you to, not like my Sire forced me. But I’ll expect the same courtesy in return and you will not question the way I feed.”
Her words resonated through Jack’s mind. Could he live with the knowledge that she killed? He’d probably see her do it and maybe even have to help her dispose of the bodies. Could he accept that, or would it break him as surely as having to kill would have?
Before he could answer, Angela spoke again, her voice now tinted with impatience. “Whichever way you decide to feed you will need blood, you realize that, right?”
Jack nodded numbly.
“And you need blood now,” she continued.
The hunger Jack had tried to ignore flared up again, now so deep, so intense that for a moment he felt as though he were looking at the world through a crimson veil. Angela’s lips seemed redder suddenly. Her skin more pink, more alive, as though blood were flowing just under the surface, waiting for him to simply break into it. She didn’t demand that he ask for her blood again; she didn’t need to. The expectant look on her features spoke loudly enough.
“Can I…” He dropped his eyes and tried to swallow his pride, yet he thought he still heard the old defiance. “Can I have some of your blood?”
Angela laughed lightly. She had a nice laugh, Jack thought, even as he wondered if the laugh was a negative reply.
“Is that the nicest way you can ask?”
Something that sounded like a growl tried to climb out of Jack’s throat, but he did his best to stifle it. “I never claimed to be a nice person,” he muttered.
She laughed again. “You don’t need to be. But if you want blood, you’ll need to do better than that.” Her grin took a decidedly predatory intensity. “Make me come, Childe. And then you may feed from me.”
Jack’s body understood her words before his mind did. His cock, which had been losing interest in the conversation, sprung back to full attention while her request still hummed in his ears. His mouth fell open and he blinked twice before finally stammering, “Make…make you come?”
Her gaze flicked to his lap and stayed there, as though she could see right through his hands. She licked her lips and gave a little shrug of her shoulders that threatened to have the robe slip again.
“I assume you know how to give a woman pleasure?”
Jack’s mind was still playing catch-up. He understood everything she said but it all sounded so strange…
“I… Yes,” he replied after a beat, knowing he sounded less than sure of himself.
“Well then.”
She rose to her knees on the bed, shrugged out of the robe and slinked up next to him. Her thigh brushed against Jack’s knee and reflexively he jerked back, retreating to the edge of the bed. Unperturbed, Angela laid in the center of it, propped against plump pillows with an arm curled behind her head. She raised an expectant eyebrow at Jack.
“Get to it, Childe. I’m waiting.”
Every time she called him that, shivers of warmth and lust ran through him. That simple word awakened something deep inside him, something that resonated with his hunger for blood and his desire for sex. The fact that she was offering him both only heightened his need.
As he turned to face her more fully, something on the floor caught his eye: gleaming metal. He looked down and realized with a shock of surprise that all his possessions were scattered on the floor. His clothes, the same black jeans, t-shirt and jacket he had worn like a uniform for years. His wallet, open, the contents spilled beneath it, including the old picture of Lydia and him in happier days. His crossbow, with a thick wooden arrow still loaded. His spare stakes.
He froze, unable to tear his gaze away. His entire life was there, laid out in these few objects. It would have taken him no more than a second to reach for a stake and little longer than that to use it.
“Remember, Childe,” Angela said. Her tone was flat, almost unconcerned. “Kill me and you’ll feel me dying. You will feel it for the rest of your life. The same way I’ll always feel my Sire’s death.”
He could have picked up a stake. All he had to do was lean down over the edge of the bed. But then what? He had failed to kill her once before. And even if he managed to do it this time, he knew she was right.
Finally looking away from the weapons, he turned to Angela. She was observing him with a small smile, waiting for him to make up his mind. He reached a hand toward her and for a few seconds his fingers hovered above her body, following her curves without making contact yet. He had had a few girlfriends and he was nothing of a prude, but he wasn’t used to being
in bed with a woman without knowing much more than her name.
Angela didn’t seem to have such scruples. When he hesitated, she sneaked a hand into his lap and took hold of his cock. Jack pressed into the touch.
“This was a nice surprise.” Her tongue flicked out and ran over her lips, leaving them shiny and inviting. “I like a man with a nice dick.”
Her fingers formed a tight ring at the base of his cock and she slowly pulled up, tightening her hold as she went. Jack gasped and instinctively pushed his hips toward her, trying to accentuate the contact.
“I like it even more,” she continued on the same teasing tone, “when he knows what to do with it. Do you?”
The last two words were a challenge if Jack had ever heard one, and deservedly so: there lay a gorgeous woman, entirely naked, requesting to be touched, and Jack still hadn’t put a finger on her. Indeed he hadn’t touched a woman since breaking up with Lydia. Maybe it was time for him to move on.
After all, this was a new life.
He trailed his fingertips along her leg, starting a little beneath her knee and sliding upward along the inside of her thigh. Her skin was pale, smooth and flawless. Had her complexion been this fair before she had been turned into a vampire?
When he reached the apex of her legs, she shifted under his hand, opening herself to him. The curls that obscured her folds were glistening with her own arousal. Her sweet, alluring scent pulled at Jack’s cock as firmly as her hand had, calling him forward to take and taste. Ignoring his instincts, he guided his fingers to her hip and over her stomach. He continued to caress her, to explore with his fingertips and gaze the body she had laid bare and open in front of him.
He knew she was watching him. He could feel the intensity of her eyes on him, but he didn’t dare look up to meet her gaze. Did she disapprove of the time he was taking to get to know her body, a single fingertip now following the underside of her right breast, sliding upward into the valley between her breasts? Did she wish he’d do more than run that one fingertip around her areola, one circle on the outside, a second one on the inside of the dark, puckered skin, and a few faster circles directly around—and over—her hardened nipple? If she wanted something else, she didn’t say so, simply arching into his touch with quiet sighs that sounded appreciative enough.
Jack mapped her breasts thoroughly before moving higher still, his fingers brushing her throat and neck until he found what he was looking for. The bite marks were so faded that he could barely see them on her skin, but under his fingertips they felt distinct. Her body quivered when he touched those marks, and he raised his gaze to hers to see if it was pleasure or something else shaking her into motion. He lost his breath when he saw that her eyes were entirely devoured by golden flames.
He had seen vampires look at him like this before, usually right before he killed them. But it wasn’t anger or fear burning through Angela at this moment; her scent was pure arousal, thick enough that Jack felt like he was breathing water. He took his hand away from her neck and let his eyes roam over her form once more. Her arm was still curled behind her head, her throat arched, her nipples dark and hard, her thighs rubbing gently together as she gave herself some much needed friction. A pang of need echoed through him, so strong his cock hardened a little more still.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, because it felt right to say it.
The flash of a pleased smile lit up her face before she chided him. “Lots of talking. Little action so far.”
A deep growl reverberated through the room and Jack was startled to realize it was coming from him. It was twice now that she had challenged him. Part of him wanted to keep things slow, or even slow down even more, and tease her until she was half-crazed with need and begging him to let her come. Had he been human still, he might have done just that. But there was something else inside him, a stronger, louder part that craved the blood Angela had all but promised him, and now demanded that he prove himself to her, prove himself worthy of her. There was only one way to do it.
Without any pretense of gentleness he pushed her legs apart and settled between them. If Angela disapproved of his roughness, she didn’t say. She merely looked at him with a wider grin and eyes blazing more fiercely than ever. She canted her hips as he shuffled forward, then wrapped her legs around him to draw him on. Jack didn’t need any more encouragement. Holding himself up above her with one hand, he guided his cock to her opening with the other and plunged inside her in one fast, deep stroke.
Angela cried out as Jack’s cock filled her and Jack’s voice would have joined hers if he hadn’t forcibly clenched his jaw shut. He had known she was aroused, her scent too thick to ignore, but now he realized just how wet she was, how much she wanted this, wanted him and it was almost too much. He remained still for a few seconds, his cock deep inside her and his eyes screwed up tightly, surprised not to hear his heart pounding in his ears. Only when he had himself under control again did he open his eyes.
His hips snapped forward of their own accord, setting a fast pace that left no opportunity for finesse, allowing only sheer speed and friction. Flames coursed through him, a wildfire as intense as it was unexpected, devouring his thoughts and leaving nothing but lust in its place.
Thoughts of biting her swirled through his mind, of plunging inside her with his fangs like he did with his cock, of taking her blood like he was taking her body. His fangs extended, scratching his lips and the drops of blood that slid onto his tongue only accentuated his need.
His hands clenched, one on her hip and the other in the fine sheets. He fought to control his urge to bite. After, she had promised. After he made her come he would be able to bite her. He would break skin as delicate as pearls and reach the blood he craved. Right on the edge of his consciousness, the last sense memory of his human life was the flavor of her blood. He wanted to taste it again, experience its strength and make it his. But until she came, he had to control himself.
Controlling himself soon became a lot more complicated when Angela’s hands slid up her body to cup her breasts. Jack’s eyes widened and he didn’t dare blink anymore, unwilling to miss even a second of her fingertips playing over her flesh, squeezing, caressing, tracing arabesques and curls around her areolas, arching her back to press into her own touch.
Jack’s thrusting started becoming erratic. He couldn’t tear his eyes off Angela’s hands, couldn’t help wishing they were his hands instead. But if he touched her like that, if he even kept watching her, it would all end and far too soon.
Letting go of her hip, he grabbed one of her hands and pulled it off her and to the side. He pressed it against the mattress, then took her other hand and held it on her other side. She made a quiet, unhappy sound and he had no doubt that she could have thrown him off if she had tried. He knew how strong she was. Still, she barely gave a token struggle and allowed herself to remain pinned down.
She didn’t say a word, but a rising eyebrow spoke volumes. One more challenge. Jack intended to prove himself to her more than ever. He would make her come with nothing but his cock—show her that yes, he did know how to use it.
A quiet grunt answered her challenge. Jack struggled to find his rhythm again, his fingers slipping to entwine with hers and get a better grip. The bed started moving with the force of his thrusts, the headboard banging rhythmically against the wall with each roll and push of his hips. Every few thrusts, he dipped low and brushed his chest against the hardened point of her nipples. Each time he did, her moans rose in pitch. Her legs had locked at the small of Jack’s back and her fingers were tight enough over his to hurt.
Confining the pleasure that wanted to burst through him with an inward chant of not yet, not yet, not yet Jack continued to piston his cock inside Angela. He studied her face for the clues as to what felt good—and what felt really good. He was learning an entire language in her eyes, in the curve of her mouth or the wordless moans he drew from her, bu
t he had always been a fast learner.
Her orgasm swept over her like a tidal wave and with just as little warning. Jack forced himself to stop and pull back as much as he could without slipping out of her. As close as he was, he didn’t want to fall with her, or at least not quite yet. He watched her, watched bliss wash away everything else from her face, until all that was left under him was a beautiful woman.
He had refused to see it when he was still alive, because she had been the enemy and nothing more. He had been too confused to pay it much mind when he had awoken, seeing little more in front of him than his new Sire. But now that the amusement and pain and curiosity were all gone, only Angela remained. The almond shape of her eyes, their unusual color, the waves of hair that framed her strikingly angular face, all of it left Jack in awe—and grateful that he was allowed to touch her like this.
Her body started to slacken as pleasure receded. She blinked and when her eyes focused again, they were locked with his. Her mouth curled into a satisfied little smile.
“Do I pass the test?” he asked, the words shaking with his own denied pleasure.
“I’m not sure,” she said with a breathless chuckle. “I might need another sample to be—Oh!”
Before she could finish, Jack pushed back inside her, fast and strong, and he could feel the tremors shaking her like an aftershock. He started rocking inside her again, slower now since he was still so close. A lock of hair had fallen across her face, obscuring it. He let go of one of her hands to brush it away. Rather than taking her hand again, he let his fingers play over her, touching her cheek, her chin, her lips.
“Kiss me, Childe,” she said in a whisper that was like silk sliding on bare skin.
Without breaking his rhythm, Jack leaned closer to her and pressed his mouth to hers. She brushed her tongue back and forth along the seam of his lips then pressed in. Jack moaned at her touch but almost at once she broke contact and said tersely, “Fangs away.”
It took Jack a few seconds to sense that his fangs had extended, to understand what she meant. He tried to control himself and retract them, but he wasn’t sure how he had done it before and he couldn’t manage to focus now, not when he was so close, not when Angela’s eyes were burning with golden flames.