by A. J. Aalto
With a frustrated sigh, I looked down at my comfiest pajamas, the ones Harry called “grandfatherly plaid”, and, remembering how often I'd wished I'd dressed for just-in-case, I rethought the flannel and searched for something sexy. The closest thing I had in my closet was a matching robe and nightgown set in satin. It was blood red paisley, and I was pretty sure I'd seen Hugh Hefner on TV wearing a smoking jacket of the same fabric, but I put it on anyway, cinching the robe tight; I was sleeping, not applying for a job at Kinko's. And I definitely would have been wearing underwear if I'd been going on a job interview. I'd forgotten exactly how decadent the material felt on parts of my skin that were usually relegated to cute, comfy, cotton attire. Parts of my brain that awoken piped up helpfully, Dress for success! Success… suck…. Oh, now there was an idea worth pursuing.
When I came into the kitchen, touching my hair to make sure it wasn't a bedheaded disaster, I found Harry at the sink, immaculately dressed as always — tonight he'd added an ankle-length duster, though the night air still hung near eighty degrees — his sandy hair damp but tidily combed back from his serious face, washing up. There was a pan of freshly baked brownies cooling on the stovetop, filling the room with the scent of chocolate fudge and butterscotch and something else, familiar but just out of my reach, smelling of childhood Halloween parties and warm hugs.
“Those smell wonderful, Harry.”
“A new recipe, invented with no small sum of affection for you.” He did not turn around. “I do so hope the sweets will make you forget that you are angry about my ungentlemanly behavior in the lake.”
“What do you call them?”
He drew an unnecessary sigh. “Love, dear. I call them love.”
Part of my plan crumbled with my resolve, and I wanted more than anything to go take him in my arms and bury my face in his back. He'd been so moody lately, so unpredictable. I hoped that I could knock him out of his funk.
“It does not escape my notice that you are wearing my favorite nightgown this evening. Does he know that it is my favorite?” he asked. A flicker of his worried agitation fluttered through our Bond like jealous moths, setting off tripwires in my belly. “Will you tell him that I bought it for you, before he carelessly slips it aside?”
I blinked, incredulous. “Who?”
“That fool of a mortal, Mark Batten. I saw him leave, stinking of lust and cheap cologne. He's returning tonight, I presume, under cover of darkness, though I doubt he is gentleman enough to make you comfortable in a bed. His idea of romance is rogering you in the boat-house on the gravel.”
“Rogering?” I folded my arms under my breasts.
“Or taking a flourish up against the tool bench,” he said.
Okay, yeah, if flourish meant fuck, I could definitely see Batten doing something like that. But I had bigger prey in mind tonight. Silently, I studied the set of his shoulders, tight and bunched unhappily, as he agitatedly scrubbed and sponged.
He continued, “Clearly, the savage will not be denied.”
“Savage?” I half-smiled. “Wow, maybe he'll clobber me on the head with his club and drag me off to his man cave.”
“Am I so far off?”
“Harry, I have no plans that involve Mark Batten tonight.”
“Lies? To me?” He washed gooey batter off a wooden spoon with more vigor than was strictly necessary, and my eyes were drawn to the action it pantomimed. I managed not to smirk. Harry was picking up the run of my thoughts beneath his indignation, even if he wasn't necessarily conscious of doing so. “I want you to consider the folly of that endeavor.”
“I don't really care what you want. Tonight is about what I want. And you haven't even heard what I want yet, so there.”
“Sassing one's companion,” he said, keeping his back to me. “Goodness, but you are full of bad ideas tonight.”
Oh, Harry, you have no idea just how bad my ideas want to be. I glanced at the brownies, but what came out of my mouth was, “I need a drink.”
“I suppose that only makes sense,” he muttered on. “If I were to be laboring toward ill-considered and illusive ecstasy beneath that fumbling, sweaty cur tonight, I too should like to be inebriated to the point of insensibility. Before you run off to your barbaric rendezvous, let us be clear: You are officially refusing to provide sustenance for me tonight, though your duty requires it of you?”
“I take that back, Lord Dreppenstedt. I shouldn't have said it. You will feed.” He made an uncertain noise in the lowest register, not remotely pacified, but I could tell I had his attention. “That being said…” I felt the intimate stir of trepidation and arousal low in my belly. “Tonight, you'll work for your meal.”
The kitchen fell silent as his hands paused in the sink. He craned around to look at me with slow deliberation, his brow furrowing. “Perhaps you'd be kind enough to explain?”
I trailed one finger along my right collarbone, watching for his baffled gaze to settle there and follow the finger involuntarily to the pulse at my throat. I waited until I was sure I had the full weight of his attention, then quietly dropped my bomb. “Hunt me, Harry.”
I'd never seen him more surprised. While his face went through contortions of alarm and upset, a wash of utterly helpless lust spilled out of him and trickled through the Bond; he turned away from me as though he could hide it. My internal temperature shot up ten degrees, knowing I'd hit my mark.
“Don't be ridiculous,” he choked. “I am a gentleman, not a monster.”
“You are what you are, and I am what I am.” I stepped lightly toward the mudroom, where the door stood propped open, and laid one hand on the old washing machine there. “You've played your games tonight: fabricating stories, dunking me in the lake, testing loyalties. It's my turn to play.”
“I'd make a dangerous toy, darling. Your ludicrous purple contraption is a far safer plaything.”
I ignored the dig and pressed him. “Chase me, Harry.”
The fork in his hands bent nearly in half before he regained control. “I'll thank you to drop this preposterous charade before you embarrass yourself.”
My mouth went dry and dropped open slightly; I had to swallow before I could speak around the hot ball of lust that welled up, my own mingled with Harry's, surging through our Bond. “Hunt me.”
“Never.” I'd never heard Harry plead before, but there was a plaintive note in his one-word denial.
“Oh, you'll hunt me, Guy Harrick,” I told him. “Only I know how hungry you truly are, and I want nothing more than to slake all of your appetites.”
A fistful of rampant, white-hot need hit me in the gut through the Bond. His voice became husky, barely more than a growl. “You must not do this to me.” He was practically vibrating as he stood at the counter, his immaculate control beginning to fray.
“Oh, I'll do more than this to you. But you'll have to catch me first.”
He turned on me again, his pupils fully dilated, the luminous inhuman silver a mere ring around the big black pools. He jabbed a finger at me, his voice the quavering boom of glaciers calving, heated from below by a surge of fresh magma from a subterranean crevasse. “You do not know what you ask!”
“Then teach me, my Companion,” I said with far more patience than I felt. “You're the only one who can, and the only one I want.”
“Enough, you imbecile,” he said, though the corner of his lips twitched up far enough to crinkle the corner of his eyes, just for a second. Point: Marnie, but that tally wasn't on my usual internal scoreboard; that one was on Harry's ledger, and my body thrilled with a fresh spike of anticipation. “I will hear no more of your juvenile, girlish fantasies.”
Oh, this was a very, very adult fantasy. The woods are no place for a little girl, pursued through the night. I flashed for a moment on every horror movie heroine, fleeing through a dark forest, chased by something she had no hope of escaping, and knew I would never watch those scenes the same way again. “Take me, Harry, I am yours.”
“That you are, mor
e so with every day that passes,” he said, “and as my own, you will obey my wishes. Now, go to the couch without argument and await me there.” He began furiously drying his hands on a kitchen towel. “I shall give you a nice foot rub, and you will have a brownie, and we will watch Mad Men.”
I grinned at him. He was bargaining, now, but his hands were shaking. “Nah.”
He slapped the towel on the counter top without hanging it up properly to dry. “What did you say?” he demanded, still showing me the back of his head.
“We're not doing it your way. This time, I'm going to run.”
“Imbecile,” he repeated. His voice was a blackened whisper underlaid with a torrent of raw heat.
“And you're going to chase me. Out into the dark, out through the trees.” I pointed out the kitchen window, as my own belly quivered with anticipation. “Into that cool and secret abandon of the night.”
His fair head fell and his shoulders bunched. The counter creaked where he grasped it.
“And when you catch me, I'm going to fight you, Harry,” I challenged. “I'm going to struggle against you like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.”
“No more,” he groaned, his graceful hands tightening like a pale vise.
I pressed back against the threshold of the mudroom door, my eyes wide. “I'm going to writhe and buck,” I promised, thighs trembling. “And scratch. And bite.”
“Please, love. Your heart…”
It was thudding in my chest as if I was already running, and he heard each heavy pound, marking it with mounting excitement. Every one of my muscles tensed for flight, and I couldn't help but remember the last time I'd fled Harry, when he'd been wild and feral under the effect of Ruby Valli's spell. There had been no mistaking him then for the reanimated dead: a savage monster, high on bloodlust. I'd been terrified then, heartbroken and horrified by the sight of him, but this was different. This, I wanted.
Harry gave a little groan that slid into a growl. When he turned to face me, the chrome in his eyes was no surprise. Vibrating like a jackrabbit on the verge of fleeing, I felt his fangs extend through our Bond. The twitch of his jaw may as well have been a gunshot at the hundred-meter dash. I slapped the screen door open and bolted.
My bare feet pelted across the dew-slicked grass, pounding over rocks and twigs with little regard. I heard the tinkle of broken glass across the yard as he came through the kitchen window; it was only then I realized with a jolt how serious a game I'd started. He leapt through the fucking window. Harry under control would not have done that.
If I had started this hunt with mere mischief in my mind, it was going to end far less playfully. That put oomph in my run, but at the same time, ramped the heat in my greedy heart. Before I hit the edge of the woods flat-out, I was panting. Dodging and dipping between whip-thin limbs that struck my out-stretched arms, I flew through branches as each bush dragged against me, plucking my nightgown, wrenching pulls in the satin.
Something large tore through the leaves above me, above, for fuck's sake! The fervor of his desire to claim what he owned penetrated the night, roared in my ears as an invasion of psi as he purposefully pushed his need through the Bond. The skin at the nape of my neck crawled and I ducked, knowing it was foolish to hope he wouldn't catch me, and at the same time, wanting him to. Cool night air poured into my lungs, exhilarating my senses, flushing my veins. A doe, I thought, taking a night-blurred obstacle in an awkward lunge, hunted down like a doe. This was what his early victims would have felt, in his first years of UnDeath. I turned to glance over my shoulder and saw movement high in the pitch; he was already there, an open-armed shadow descending in a black charge.
I grabbed at shadows to leap ahead, aside, away; pulling on both the Bond and the forest for energy and speed, I threw myself through the darkness. Behind me, Harry laughed, a mixture of delight and amusement overlaid heavily with the menace of a predator toying with its prey. I fled, my entire body electrified by lust as I bolted through the woods. I felt as if I could leap into the treetops myself.
Harry took me down without a whisper of warning. I hit the ground on my side; his claiming arms absorbing most of the blow. Even still, my air left me in a startled whoop and the leaf pile we landed in went up in a dry, crackling rush. It made laughing difficult, but I wheezed a small victory. Yes, this, I thought deliriously. Just like this…
His answer to my laughter was an inhuman snarl, octaves below normal human speech, prickling gooseflesh across my scalp. Harry threw his cloak off his shoulders in one quick jerk, tossing it behind into the thick cover of leaves on the forest floor. I used the opportunity to wriggle away and make a dive for the shadows to escape again. One masterful hand clamped down on my ankle and dragged me back to him through the deep detritus coating the forest floor. He pinned me down between his slim, powerful thighs. I struck up at him, clawing for his chest while bucking my hips to unbalance him. I might as well have been trying to roll a steel girder off me. Harry dodged my swings and batted my arms aside easily, captured each wrist, and bent them to the ground, pinning them both above my head with one of his. Then he laid his full weight upon me, and parted his lips to show me his fully extended fangs, glistening wet and ready for the plunge.
I gave another hearty buck and he squelched it effortlessly. I responded to his strength primally, a ripple of wet tension lurched through me, centered on my eager core.
“Why, MJ?” he demanded.
“I know there is passion in you,” I insisted. “It may be buried deep—”
“I may be a dead man, my Own, but nothing about me is buried.”
Yet. I squirmed beneath him, tossing my head to show him the length of my neck. “Take me, Harry. Please. I'm yours.”
“Like this?” he asked, his chin sinking to my neck. “Are you mere prey to be brought down by the monster?”
Instead of sinking fang, he placed a tentative kiss along my hammering pulse. I whimpered with helpless need and bent my head back, exposing more of my throat to him. His lips quivered against my flesh with the effort of restraining himself.
“Shall I ravage you in the foul night like Saucy Jack on a Whitechapel whore?” he asked. “Is this what you expect of me?”
“If it is,” I said thickly, “will you do it?” He'd never called me names before, but my head swam at the notion of his abandoning politesse and manners as he discarded his finely-honed control. Harry, talking dirty? Point: Marnie.
His answer was a sharp, sudden jerk that shredded my nightgown, baring my breasts to the night air, followed by a blurred strike of enamel piercing in my jugular, rough enough that it tore a throaty cry from me. He fed as a convicted man offered a stay of execution, gulping noisily, gluttonous at the vein. There was no semblance to the demure sip he normally took from my wrist while we cuddled on the couch now.
My eyes rolled back in their sockets as I sank into the ecstasy of his feed, elation roaring through me from tits to toes. He let go of my wrists. I shoved my hand down between us to grope at the front of his pants. Harry's groan of encouragement and the strain of his eager stiffening had me rushing to liberate him from his zipper.
I gasped as the weight of Harry's mind pressed down on mine and coiled heavily in the hottest, darkest corners of my brain, lighting synapses and frying my restraint. Sex with Harry was always wonderful, but this was new. This was different. Harry was pushing his influence through the Bond, flooding me with the hungry sensations that caused a core-deep tremor in his own body, as though he and the Blue Sense were partners in crime. Sweet urges fell through my veins and I felt the shift of power swing back to him as he brought his own trembling under control. The back of Harry's hand brushed the inside of my thigh. I writhed helplessly, small, inarticulate noises escaping me.
“Why, DaySitter,” he said pleasantly, innocently, as though he'd done nothing. “I've barely touched you. Is everything all right?”
“Just getting comfortable,” I lied. “Leaves and sticks and stuff.”
He lifted his head and smiled at my inability to fool him. He said, “You're wet for me,” and the feather-soft sweep of his fingertips continued up my thigh to confirm his observation.
Any reply I could have come up with was lost in a sigh as Harry allowed himself more release through our Bond and it washed through me. A welcome invasion of sexual heat rocked up through my body as his free hand reached beneath my head to take my hair firmly, and with a sharp, corrective pull, he exposed more of my throat to his mouth.
I let my eyelids fall closed and gave in to it, hearing the eager sounds in the back of my throat as he finished feeding. I was used to his gentleness, and took his power and masculinity for granted; now he took every piece of me and twisted it into submission, and I melted; being tied to the bed was one (very hot) thing, but being overwhelmed from within and without was satisfying a craving I didn't even know I'd had until Harry obliterated me with the ecstasy of it.
“You asked for the monster, my Own,” he said, lifting his face from the crook of my neck. “Are you quite certain you can handle the monster?” He said it in that low, knowing tone a man will use when you're playing right into his hands and he's focused entirely on your pleasure. He chucked in that same deliberate tone; it nearly undid me from the waist down and hardened my nipples painfully. He didn't even need to use double entendres with me at this point, and my hand, nearly forgotten between us, confirmed that I definitely had something to handle. I throbbed wetly in expectation.
“If you fight me,” his voice was a playful growl, “the monster will simply try harder. Of course, the ensuing reward will be that much more delicious.” As if to demonstrate, he dropped his mouth to my breast and nipped at the hard, sensitive bud. “Give yourself to the monster, and the monster will take what he wants,” Harry said huskily, and his voice filled the dark with private, sensual promise. “Give yourself to the gentleman, and I will spend all the hours between now and dawn to bring you over and over these endless delights you crave so badly. Which lover will you choose?”