by Rose , Renee
She lifts it to hurl at me but seems to reconsider, perhaps knowing I’ll use it on her. Tossing the flogger back in the box, she changes the subject. “Which book should I start with?”
I shrug. “You’re the fairy—call it to you.”
Her jaw goes slack. “How, exactly, do I do that?”
I don’t answer but return her gaze steadily, daring her to try it. I don’t know how fairies or witches do what they do, but I spent enough time around Anka to know it’s what she would have done.
She turns slowly back to the box and peers inside. A glow appears around one of the books.
“There! Do you see it?” I grin, pointing.
She whips her head around to look at me, confusion on her face. She looks back to the box and stares at it. The book remains lit up from my view. “Can’t you see?”
I suppose as an immortal, I have the capability of seeing things ordinary humans don’t. Like the bubble of protection she used when I first saw her.
After a long moment, she picks out the glowing one and holds it up. “This one?” Doubt laces her voice.
I smile so wide my cheeks stretch, a surge of—is it pride?— running through me. “Brilliant girl. Clever little fairy,” I praise. “I knew you’d be a quick study.”
I love the wonder in her expression. She really doesn’t know how powerful she is.
“You read the book, I’ll tidy up around here.” I’m feeling downright magnanimous. When her eyes widen, I add, “Just this once. I shall expect you to keep a neater house going forward.” I throw a wink because my vampire master thing is honestly just a big game for me. I could care less if she keeps a neat house or not.
She flips me the bird and turns to the book, opening it with curiosity on her lovely face.
I arrange her clutter into neat piles and begin to make dinner. Despite my edict that she cook, I actually enjoy preparing food. Some vampires choose not to eat at all, preferring to take all their sustenance from blood. I love food, the years I spent in France providing me with a discerning palate.
I met Anka in Paris, where she owned a bordello. The raven-haired madame had seemed as immortal as I, her magic giving her the appearance of eternal youth. She had flawless olive skin, almond-shaped black eyes with thick, curling lashes.
She had a French aristocrat for a father but was born to his mistress, a former prostitute, from whom she inherited the gift of sight and healing. At age fourteen, her father died and the stipend she and her mother lived on disappeared. Anke found her way to Paris to make her living first as a prostitute and later as the proprietor of one of the most expensive brothels.
Thinking of Anka now doesn’t bring up the usual seething. I almost pity her. Alone, with no one to help her, she had to use every bit of magic, every manipulation she knew to get ahead. Using me had been out of habit. The fact that she cursed me showed she truly cared. Else she never would’ve minded my finally walking away. I open the refrigerator and take out the steak to marinate. I also grab a few potatoes and set them to boil in a pot of milk and crushed garlic. I have a hankering for gratin dauphinois.
I haven’t thought so much about Anka as I have in the last two days. The possibility of ridding myself of her curse brings the memories to the forefront of my consciousness.
As I work on the food preparation, I catch Aurelia stealing looks at me from under her lashes. She appears to have a mystical intelligence, as if she sees beyond my self-centered vampiric existence straight into my blackened heart, where she sifts through my flexible morals to determine whether there’s anything left to redeem. An old soul, it would seem. Descended from the Fae.
I have to admit parts of me I presumed dead have come to life in the past two days. Something about this little mortal soothes my spirit, makes me feel human again.
Her cell phone rings, and she picks it up. “Hey, Gwen, what’s up?” She looks over at me. “Tonight? I can’t…” She twirls a piece of hair between her fingers and looks at me again before walking toward her room. “I met a guy,” she says in an undertone.
I smile. My little fairy doesn’t know vampires have heightened hearing. Good thing because this is one conversation I don’t want to miss.
“Yeah, well...I met him at work...sort of. And we’ve just been...hanging out for the past couple days…Charlie. Yeah. I don’t know,” she says with the suggestive lilt to her voice that teenage girls use when telling secrets.
Something in me turns warm and sugary. I love hearing her talk about me as if I’m a love interest. Her youth and innocence shines through in the conversation, bringing out a protective instinct in me. I have no intention of developing a relationship with Aurelia, but the idea of her wanting one somehow changes things.
I’m prepping the steaks as Aurelia emerges from the bedroom.
“If you work very hard, I might let you go out with your friends.”
“Shut up, vampire,” she says, but wears a flirtatious smile.
“Are you going to introduce me to them?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Why you want to meet them.”
“I’m going to kidnap them and keep them as blood slaves until you free me of the curse.”
She snorts but then darts a glance at me to make sure I’m joking.
“Nah, that’s only if you haven’t figured it out by Tuesday.”
“I don’t perform well under pressure.”
“I don’t believe that.” I give the potatoes a stir.
Aurelia walks up behind me, and I find myself longing for her to touch me of her own accord. Instead, she says, “What can I help with?”
“You could work on making a salad.”
I move out of her way, and she takes the salad fixings out of the refrigerator.
“So how did you become a vampire?” she asks as she begins chopping fresh vegetables.
I fold my arms across my chest, leaning back against the cabinets and watching her work. “I was the carriage driver and groom for the Duke of Lynton. His wife, the duchess, had a penchant for being bent over the hitching post and taken roughly from behind.”
Aurelia stops and stares at him, a mixture of fascination and shock on her face. “By you, you mean?”
“Yes, although I imagine I wasn’t the first groom she’d recruited for her recreation. The night I was turned, I’d just driven her to London and had thrown up her skirts in the stables when the Duke found us and shot me.”
Her eyes round, the knife suspended in the air.
“I managed to stumble out onto the streets of London. He let me go—I imagine he didn’t think I’d get very far, but I must have walked a few blocks before I collapsed. And then a beautiful woman lifted me into her arms as if I weighed no more than a child, and she carried me to her apartment. She asked if I wanted to die or if I preferred eternal life. I chose eternal life.” I wink.
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“What else? Does garlic keep you away?”
“No. But it does make your blood taste foul, so I can see where the legend was derived.”
“And the only thing that kills you is a stake through the heart?”
“Not exactly. We heal quickly, so most injuries wouldn’t kill us, but decapitation or some other major injury which might cause us to bleed out before regenerating would. Sunlight, obviously.”
“Silver bullet? Or no, that’s werewolves, right?”
I chuckle. “Silver can harm us too, actually. Takes away our strength and burns our skin. Not fatal but not a friendly element for us, either.”
Aurelia returns to chopping celery, but her eyes remain on me, bright with interest. “Ouch.” She jerks her thumb up to her mouth.
The smell of her blood reaches my hunger-starved brain before any thought. I blurr to her, taking her sliced thumb into my mouth and sucking hard.
* * *
Aurelia
I yank my hand out of his mouth, terrified. He did his blurr
ing trick, appearing right in front of me with his fangs fully elongated and a look of pure hunger on his face. Not lust this time. He looked like a drug addict who needed a fix.
Without thinking, I draw back my palm and slap him across the face as hard as I can.
Surprise flickers over his features.
“I’m sorry,” I exclaim, somewhat shocked at myself. A little afraid of how he’ll react.
I remember now that his saliva seals cuts. He probably was just trying to help, and I overreacted again. I definitely should not have struck him. A dumb move. Who slaps a vampire? I give a prayer of thanks that my vampire prefers kink over real violence when it comes to retribution.
As if reading my mind, Charlie clucks his tongue. “Naughty little mortal. Never lift your hand to your master.” He slowly walks me backward until my butt hits the kitchen table, then turns me and presses my torso down over it. He gives each cheek a spank, then works the button open on my shorts and tugs them down and off, along with my panties.
Sliding his thumbs between my legs, he pries them apart and outward, exposing my pussy to his view. He inhales deeply as if drinking in my scent.
“Somebody is turned on,” he remarks.
“No, I’m not,” I bite out too quickly to sound convincing.
He covers my hand on the table with his own and drags it down, past the edge of the table, threading it between my legs, from the front. He pushes both my fingers and his own against my slit, moving them up and down across my slippery folds. “Keep your fingers here,” he murmurs in my ear.
My sex is wet, the tissue swollen with need. Every thrust of my fingers sends zings of pleasure rippling through my body.
He draws his hand away, and I instantly miss it. Fingering myself was not so exciting as having someone else guide the motion. A sharp slap lands on my tingling ass then another. I draw in a breath, dizzy. Charlie begins to spank me again, at a slower tempo. With the next slap, I shove my fingers inside my channel. They almost sink there involuntarily, as if they know that’s where they belong. He swats me again, and I repeat the plunging, growing more eager with each thrust as pleasure begins to take over, outweighing the sting of his slaps.
“The spanking won’t stop until you come,” he informs me.
I groan, my knees buckling.
He reached his left hand around my hips and adds his fingers to the mix again, still spanking with the other palm. “And don’t even think of faking it because I can feel your muscles.”
He needn’t have worried, I’m just a few strokes away from orgasm. But then he begins to slap harder, causing enough pain to distract me from the pleasure. I bite my lip. Will I be able to make myself come with my ass starting to smart like this?
I still my thrusting, but he insists, pinching my clit, then thrusting my fingers and his inside my sopping channel, stretching me wide. “Oh, God,” I whisper. I need to come. Desperately.
I whimper with desire, wanting more than fingers inside me. Charlie seems to know because he begins to finger fuck me with several, or maybe all his fingers together, his knuckles pounding against my clit on the in-strokes as his opposite hand continues to spank the daylights out of me.
“Oh...God. Oh, Charlie, oh please...yes, yes, yes,” I babble incoherently, almost weeping.
My body jerks, my core spasming as the best orgasm I’ve ever had ripples through me. “Ohh—-oh!” I moan, digging my fingernails into Charlie’s forearm, holding his fingers inside me as I contract around them. “Oh my God,” I sob. “Oh, yes.”
When I finish, I literally collapse over the table, my entire body going limp. Within seconds, Charlie scoops me up in his arms, carrying me honeymoon style to the sofa where he sits with me sprawled on his lap. He cradles my back, lowering my torso and lifting my shirt up over my breasts with his teeth.
Even completely spent, my pussy gives a squeeze of excitement. He flicks the nipple of one of my breasts and the pain shoots as another signal of desire, straight to my molten core. My shorts and panties still tangle around my thighs, and he pulls them off, tossing them to the floor. While some part of my brain registers the vulnerability of lying completely naked and open to him while he sits totally clothed and in control, I feel sexier and more desirable than I’ve ever felt in my life. The wolfish way he looks at me tells me how enticing he finds me, and there’s a possessiveness about the way he holds me, surveying my body with unabashed appreciation.
Mine. He seems to project the thought. I startle at my first moment of clairaudience. Or is it telepathy? Thoughts slide away again when he tugs my knee up to expose my pussy. Too relaxed, too exhausted from my orgasm, I‘m not ready for more, but he slides his hand up my inner thigh until his fingers reach my opening. Inserting two fingers, he pushes them deep inside me and finds what must be my g-spot.
I jerk in surprise at the intensity of the sensation. “No,” I moan.
He raises an eyebrow, beginning to pump in and out, hitting the sweet spot every time. “No?”
“I can’t come again,” I protest. “It’s too soon. Please…”
“You can and you will. Do you need another spanking?”
“No.” I arch into his hand, my head thrown back, my knees open wide to give him access. It’s already too much—I fear I’ll explode from the sensations he creates within me.
My hands wave wildly, one of them smacking him in the head.
“Hold your ass,” he tells me. “Squeeze it hard and remind yourself of the spanking you’ll get if you don’t come.”
I cup my cheeks, hot from the spanking.
“That’s it.” His fingers still work their terrible, wonderful magic. “Hold it up for me, Aurelia. Offer your pussy to me.”
I lift my pelvis in the air, arching even further, opening my most sensitive anatomy to his plunder.
“I want to see you come. I want to see your face this time.”
His words shatter me. That he wants to watch, cares so much about my release, sends me careening over the edge, my legs kicking out as my hips buck. Wetness gushes from me, and I realize I achieved the elusive female ejaculation.
“That’s it, love,” Charlie croons, slowing his strokes as my muscles clench and release over his fingers.
“Charlie,” I choke.
My head swims as if I had too much to drink and lost track of time although it’s probably no more than a few seconds. Charlie slips his fingers out of me and licks one. “You taste so good.”
“What are you doing to me?” I croak, lifting my head to look at his face.
“I don’t know.”
I realize, with a start, he’s being perfectly honest.
He lifts my belly up and plants a kiss on it, then cradles me in his arms, stroking my hair with a tenderness I haven’t seen from him before.
Wanting to reciprocate, I push myself off his lap to kneel at his feet, reaching one hand to cup the rock-hard bulge in his pants as the other tries to work the button on his jeans.
“Don’t.” He stills my hand.
I meet his eyes, surprised.
The affection is gone from his face, replaced by that superior mask. “You may never touch my cock without permission,” he dictates.
Oh for fork’s sake.
I sit back, annoyed. Okay, he wants to play dominant and submissive games with me. I roll my eyes but say, “Sir, may I please suck your cock?”
“No.” His expression closes. He stands and strides past me. “I’m going to take a shower,” he says. “You finish the salad.”
I stare at his empty place on the couch, reeling.
Ouch.
What the hell was that about?
Chapter 9
Charlie
The next evening, I watch, fascinated, as Aurelia stretches and grows a ball of light between her palms. It sometimes wobbles and flickers out, sometimes grows larger but loses its density. The little fairy has learned how to channel power. We’re sitting in the living room after eating the scallops and black rice I ha
d waiting when she got home from work.
After the debacle of her asking to give me a blowjob, she was cool and aloof through dinner, as if my refusal hurt her feelings. I chewed on that fact the entire night, heading to Eclipse after she went to bed at midnight.
Why would she object to receiving but not giving? Wouldn’t that be most women’s dream? It certainly would have been Anka’s preference. But he probably shouldn’t judge women by Anka. She beat even vampires on self-centeredness.
As if Aurelia senses my thoughts—is she growing more clairsentient?—she looks up at me and demands, “Why wouldn’t you let me give you a blow job last night?”
I hurt her. I shouldn’t care. The fact that I do underlines the fact that this thing between us needs to stop. So I drive the nail in deeper. “Because you don’t have the skill yet to please me.”
Offense registers on her face right before she throws the ball of light in her hand at me, faster than even my vampire senses can follow. It strikes my cheek with a searing pain.
I jerk. It burns as if she tossed a ball of sunlight at me, frying my skin and sending my entire body into overdrive with the shock. My defensive instincts kick in at once, fangs slashing out, vision going dim and tunnel-like as I launch on her, tackling her to the floor, fangs poised to tear out her throat.
She screeches a blood-curdling scream, beating her fists against my face and head. I struggle to regain control, to resist the overwhelming urge to sink my teeth in her flesh and drink her dry. I hover above her as the scream goes on and on. Eventually, the blackness in my vision lifts, and the animal in me recedes until I become aware of my surroundings.
I force myself to relax and smile lazily down at my angry mortal, as if I’d been in control the entire time. The scent of her rage makes my skin prickle. She’s pissed at me.
I’m covering her entire body with mine. I become aware of her soft curves writhing beneath me, and my cock grows hard. I rock into the cradle of her legs, grinding up against her clit. “Ah, here we are again, little fairy.”
“Get off of me,” she snaps, still fighting. I sense her heart pounding beneath my still one. Emotion is an aphrodisiac to vampires, and now that I’m back in control, the smell of her anger stirs my desire even more.