by Holly Ryan
Eddie sat in a leather armchair in front of the fire, looking very much at home while he read from his Krampus book. He glanced up and did a double take when he saw me, still wet and dripping on the plush carpet. The way he looked at me, raking his gaze over my cleavage barely contained in the towel, down to my legs and back up again, started a low, powerful thrum between my thighs. My nipples perked against the towel into tight, painful points.
“Come here,” he growled.
With an extra wiggle in my hips, I crossed toward him. The movement rubbed the towel over my nipples, caressed it over the tops of my thighs, only fueling my need.
“Stop right there,” he ordered once my toes hit the white fur rug in front of the fireplace. “Lose the towel.”
I smiled, used to Eddie’s dominant side. Behind those hot glasses and his bookish exterior, he was a wild, kinky man who knew exactly what he wanted, and he was too irresistible to resist. After a simple finger tug, the towel dropped at my feet.
His gaze never leaving mine, he set the book on the side table and leaned back in the chair. He sat with his legs spread, his hard cock pressed tight against his black dress pants.
I licked my lips. I couldn’t help it. The vampire was too delicious.
He shifted in the chair and rubbed his hand over his thigh. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“There was a disco shower,” I said, hiking my thumb over my shoulder. “We should probably get one for your house.”
A smile slid over his mouth, the one he only reserved for me. “Our house, you mean.”
“That too.” I dug my fingers into my thighs, the ache between them seeming to pull me toward his waiting cock. My hips rolled forward as if I were thrusting against Eddie himself. It felt so good, even though it was just empty air in front of me, that I did it again and ground my thighs together. “Eddie...” My voice came out like a moan, like a plea, like a promise. If he didn’t fuck me soon, I would have to pounce on him.
A low rumble vibrated in his throat, and he shifted his hand from his thigh to his cock and squeezed. “You’re so gorgeous right now, Sunshine, with the firelight on your skin.” He stroked himself, slowly, outlining his erection through his pants in perfect clarity. “Did you fuck yourself in the shower?”
“There were too many buttons in there that I didn’t have time to press mine.” I grazed my fingertips across the front of my thighs. “That’s where you come in since you know exactly what every button does.”
He stroked himself again, a little harder, a little faster. “Touch one of those buttons now.”
Panting, squirming, I smoothed one hand between my legs and rubbed my already swollen clit. A shudder rippled down my back as I slicked my fingers over my folds and then sank two fingers inside myself. My hips moved against my palm, and all the while, I watched Eddie watching me while he unzipped his pants and freed his straining dick.
“Tell me how wet you are.” His fist pumped up and down his shaft, his eyes blazing bright red.
I wanted to show him, for him to bury himself deep inside me and feel exactly how wet I was for him, and growing wetter while we jacked and jilled ourselves off for each other.
“Soaking. Eddie, please,” I begged.
Before the last word was uttered, he stood and blurred toward me. He pulled my fingers from my pussy and stuck them into his mouth, sucking off my juices with long, slow slides of his tongue. Every lick hummed through my body.
“I’ve been dreaming about how good your come tastes. Better than blood.” He knelt on the furry rug and then lay flat, his hand guiding me down on top of him so my knees bracketed his head. “I love it. I need more of it.”
I sank myself down on top of his mouth, facing the length of his body. He grasped my ass hard to pull me down even more and spread me wide like a feast laid out for a king. He dove right in, the first flick of his tongue making me cry out, the second bringing me to orgasm. I bucked against his face, coming so hard that the rest of the world vanished. It was just him and me and his giant hard cock in front of my face that begged to be sucked.
I took him into my mouth, as deep as I could, while my aftershocks slowly faded. But his tongue-fucking didn’t relent. The vampire wasn’t lying when he said he loved the taste of my come. I sucked in my cheeks as I worked up the length of his shaft and then back down again, slow and deep at first, and then faster.
Eddie groaned inside of me and squeezed my ass harder to his face as he sucked on my clit. Already, another orgasm was building, tingling at the base of my spine. My hips rolled against his face, fucking his mouth, while his cock fucked mine.
Then his tongue and lips worked some kind of voodoo magic, and I came again, a sudden, forceful snap that radiated tingles to every pore. I cried out around his cock in my mouth, and hot come spurted onto my tongue. I swallowed him all down, and once he finished coming, my fangs snicked out, and I bit into his thigh. His fangs sank into my butt cheek, and I could feel his grin pressing into my flesh just before he slapped my other butt cheek.
I laughed as I drank from him, and he drank from me, our after-sex ritual we did to recharge. To refuel enough to go at it again. But not right this second.
After we’d drunk our fill, I clambered off of him, turned myself around, and then flopped back on top of him. Both of us wore matching grins.
“Oh, hey there,” I said, propping my chin on his chest.
He smoothed the hair from my face and leaned up to touch his lips to the top of my head. As he did, his blond hair fell over his glasses. “What’s up, my gorgeous Sunshine?”
“Not much. Just chilling naked on a rug in a house that’s not mine.” I shrugged. “You know, the usual.”
“I’m glad you didn’t cut off my tongue like Krampus’s.”
“I like your tongue right where it is. And right where it was. Now, quick before I shove myself on your face again, what swans can capture Krampus?”
He laughed. “There are seven swans, rumored to have captured Krampus the first time, the only things ever successful at catching him. But they can’t capture him unless he’s right in the middle of them so they can turn him to stone.”
“Well, that seems easy enough. Where are they? Why don’t they just surround him?”
“I don’t know. There could be something preventing them from doing that.”
“Okay, so we find the swans and help them,” I said. “If you were a swan, where would you hang out in the dead of winter?”
“Simple.” He wrapped his arms around me and held me tighter. “I would go south.”
“Hmm, so I take it these aren’t typical swans.”
“I think you’re right, but I don’t know how exactly. The book didn’t go into much detail.”
“As soon as the sun goes down tomorrow, we find these swans, hopefully prevent Krampus from stealing another kid, and wrap this all up in true Christmas fashion.”
He traced one hand to the swell of my ass and squeezed. “And until the sun goes down?”
I grinded myself into him. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
Chapter Three
I glanced over my shoulder at my vamps who stood behind me in the entryway of the house and couldn’t help but lick my lips. “You guys are the best-looking bait I’ve ever seen, but please remember you’re bait, not food.”
Jacek winked. “We’ll try to remember that when Krampus is looking at us the way you are now.”
“He better not look at you like he wants to get nasty with you.” I adjusted the collar of my leather jacket with a smile aimed at the three of them. “I’m now officially jealous of a goat.”
“You don’t have to worry, Sunshine,” Eddie said, smiling. “Krampus isn’t exactly our type.”
“We won’t get eaten as long as you don’t either,” Sawyer assured me.
Did I like the idea of them being bait? Hell no. But if there were seven swans who could capture Krampus, then there needed to be a reason he’d go to them. Food was alway
s a good motivator. It was for me anyway, but if he saw me, the one who’d ridded him of half his tongue, I wasn’t so sure he’d come running after how fast he’d split last night.
I turned back to the front door, able to smell the setting sun outside, and gripped Night’s Fall with both hands. I’d just have to be absolutely certain that nothing happened to my loves tonight.
As soon as the Christmas-Eve sun dipped behind a thick wall of twilight clouds, the four of us stepped outside of the house, me with Night’s Fall at the ready. My seraph knife was sheathed at my thigh, a silver rope lay coiled in my pocket along with a pair of gloves to touch it in case I came across any unfriendly newborn vamps, and a god bone stabbed through my bun, though it was mostly for decoration.
The street stood empty. Sawyer said he’d removed the car from the front yard, and the wrecked cars down the street were gone as well, already hauled away. On top of the inches of ice, quite a bit of snow had fallen, about a nice penis length. If weather people measured the snow in penis lengths like I did, I would actually pay attention to the forecast.
Jacek looked up and down the line of houses, his orange-yellow eyes narrowed against the sharp wind. “I don’t hear any jingle bells. Think he took the night off to nurse his wounds?”
“Doubtful.” Eddie pushed up his glasses. “He’s probably more determined than ever to collect a seventh kid. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”
I stepped off the porch and firmed my lips. “Then we need to stop him before that happens.”
Sawyer strode past me, his feet never sliding once on the snowy sidewalk. “No sign of the devil either.”
“That alone doesn’t feel right,” I said. “That’s not his style to just up and leave like that mid-sentence.”
Jacek nodded as he came up next to me, still searching the street. “He’s definitely the last word type of guy, but not quite like that. And not in the middle of eye fucking the slayer.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him, which he met with a devastating grin.
“We give him the benefit of the doubt because you rejected him. Numerous times,” he added.
Eddie shook his head as his shoes crunched over the snow. “The devil’s like a sad, lost puppy around you.”
“Plus,” Sawyer growled, prowling back toward me with deadly grace, “we know how really, really hard it is not to eye fuck you.”
Jacek angled behind me and grabbed my hip, his hard cock nudging my ass. He nibbled the column of my neck, which turned into hot, wet kisses. “And we know how hard it is not to fuck you.”
A shiver started through me from the power of Jacek’s lips, from the fiery way Sawyer and Eddie were watching. The shiver rolled past my peaked nipples and collected between my thighs in pulsating waves. I almost sagged into Jacek with a moan, pushed him down into the snow, and had my way with him while Eddie and Jacek watched or joined in, but caught myself. I had a job to do. Children were at risk.
“Behave, you three,” I warned. “Our insatiable libidos are going to have to wait.” I thrust Night’s Fall up into the air. “Grab onto me and let’s go.”
Sawyer reached into my open jacket, a dangerous curl on his mouth, and palmed my breast through my thin Pokemon T-shirt, kneading it and thumbing my nipple. Jacek’s lips and tongue were now trailing up my jawline, and Eddie, his mouth twitching, slid his hand up the inner thigh of my jeans toward my aching, wet pussy.
Melting into the three of their touches, I somehow ground out, “Take us to the swans.”
Black wings sprouted from the hilt of the sword, and darkness swallowed us whole. My three vamps disappeared from my side, but I still felt them near. I had the sensation of flying, but nothing stirred around me in this void of nothingness.
Then the void spilled us out onto the snow. My vampires were as graceful as ever and landed flawlessly. I landed on my feet with hardly a stumble, the first time ever.
“Victory is mine!” I pumped my arms into the air, but they only got halfway up when a terrified scream split the night.
It sounded young. Too young.
Shit.
I pressed the hilt of Night’s Fall into Jacek’s hand and then unsheathed my seraph knife as I marched forward to protect my vamps, searching our new surroundings for the source of the scream. It was definitely still Wyoming since the air tasted the same. We stood in what looked like a park. A snow-covered jungle gym was up ahead just to the left, and on the right, a line of swings rocked back and forth in the icy wind. No sign of seven swans. No sign of Krampus or anyone screaming.
“Stay behind me, okay?” I glanced back at my vamps, at their tense, alert stances, and then behind them. Gasping, I spun around, and my mouth hung open.
My vampires followed my lead and stared.
“Some swans don’t swim,” I said.
The swans were arranged in a wide circle, a few inches taller than I was and frozen in stone. The spread of their wings and the position of their long, graceful necks were all different, but their expressions were the same. Their empty gray eyes looked too big for their slender faces, and their beaks were open as if they were in the middle of a squawk. They seemed ruffled and terrified. What had happened to them? It looked like someone had turned them into stone while they stood helpless. But they were the ones who were supposed to turn Krampus to stone.
A jingle bell sounded from somewhere nearby, followed by a yelp.
I whirled, holding the seraph knife so hard that my fingernails carved into my palms, and skated my gaze over the park. It appeared empty, except for several dark splotches over the snow about twenty feet away leading behind a couple trees.
“Okay, guys. Assume your positions and let’s get this done,” I said, stepping closer to the weird splotches. The wind carried a coppery scent just then, and my fangs snicked out. Fresh blood. Human.
My vamps took notice of it, too, with a hungry growl.
“Uh, Sunshine...” Eddie started. “We might have a little problem here, aside from the scent of blood.”
Another scream echoed through the night, this one closer and twisted with horror. A little human-shape bounded out from behind the jungle gym’s tornado slide toward the trees where the splotches led to. Krampus followed soon after, barreling after the kid with a jingle-belled roar.
The kid would never make it.
I sprinted forward, the seraph knife slicing through the air at my side as I pumped my arms and legs faster. “Krampus!”
He didn’t slow. Didn’t even turn.
I poured on more speed, my boots barely having time to sink into the snow.
Krampus raised an arm to swipe at the child.
Almost. There. A strangled cry ripped from my throat. I leaped with the seraph knife raised and arced the blade through the air. It whistled and cut through nothing but emptiness.
Krampus had lunged out of the way, right into the direct path of my still leaping body. I crashed into him with an “oomph!”, and both of us plowed headfirst into a tree trunk. The force of the blow rattled my brain against my skull hard enough to see stars. I slumped to the snow in a pile of mine and Krampus’s limbs and brought my hands to my head. Still attached. Not leaking any brain juices or anything. Good enough.
I rose on unsteady feet, only then realizing that Krampus was already gone. Jingle bells rang in the direction of my vampires, but two other noises drowned it out from behind me. A loud creaking and groaning, and the sound of whimpering dread. I turned. The tree that Krampus and I had memorized with our faces was tipping over, its roots stretching upward from the ground like gnarled fingers. And on the other side, underneath it, in the direct path of the tree’s fall, sat a little girl of about six with a blue-striped hat with a pompom on top, desperately pulling at her leg. She was caught in something.
She was also bleeding freely from the gash in her hand.
I accidentally growled, my fangs, my stomach, my preternatural eyesight all homing in on the gushing blood.
She tore her frightened gaze a
way from the steadily falling tree behind her, looked at me, and screamed.
Shit. I would probably scream, too, if I saw myself right now.
Behind her scream was a bassy shout. Sawyer. Eddie had said something was wrong, and now they had to deal with Krampus.
Without me, I decided. Shit shit shit.
Sheathing my seraph knife, I rushed to plant myself between the little girl and the falling tree. I couldn’t leave her here to fend for herself. My vampires could handle themselves for a little bit. I hoped.
The girl tried to scramble away from me, which only twisted her leg up even more. I couldn’t even tell what she was caught in.
I squatted and took her face in my hands, the brown curls sneaking out of her hat like silk between my fingers, her body heat a shock to my system. “Stop. Please. I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, though I was pretty sure that was a promise to me more than her.
I wasn’t a newborn vampire anymore, but I hadn’t surrounded myself with a lot of bleeding humans lately either. Bloodlust warred with every movement I needed to accomplish before I made it back to my vampires.
One of the tree’s branches snagged the girl’s hat and flopped it against her pudgy cheek. Her big brown eyes filled with tears as she said, “Promise you won’t hurt me?”
My dead heart broke into tiny pieces and then froze, instantly, at the loud cracks and groans of the tree behind me. Frantic, I clawed at the snow around her trapped foot and hit something hard. An overturned cinderblock frozen to the concrete path below it. Her foot had twisted itself into the hole inside the cinderblock.
Ice-covered branches formed a cage around us, some of which snapped like bones. The tree groaned again, a constant, horrendous noise. I rose up slightly as if to catch the trunk with my back, but it was a huge fucking tree.
I pulled on the girl’s foot, but when she cried out and grabbed hold of my jacket, I quickly switched to Plan B. I wrapped my hands around the cinder block and wrenched it free from the icy ground. So she’d have a cinderblock foot now. It was better than being squished.
