by M. Cheykota
The force of his kiss nearly bruises me, but the desire he awakens inside me makes me forget his rowdiness.
Austin’s hand slides under my tank top and squeezes my right breast hard. The action should be painful and will probably leave a bruise, but it causes my breath to catch in excitement. He pulls his lips off mine and buries his face between my breasts. Trailing kisses from my breast bone to my nipples, my superheated skin seems to melt under his touch. I can only watch as he nibbles on the tips of my nipples, careful not to nick me with his fangs. He unbuttons my jeans and his mouth follows his hands down my body to just below my belly button. He spends some time using his tongue on my navel. His hands feel like they are all over my body. My jeans disappear and my tank top soon follows. I watch as Austin lowers his head and kisses me between my legs. My body arches on its own accord as I moan in pleasure. He slides my panties off and touches me gently. He caresses that special spot down below until I can hardly breathe. The muscles inside me are clenching so tight, it feels as if I am turning inside out.
“Let go.” He whispers against my inner thigh.
The whispered command or the feel of his hands on me sends me screaming and bucking over the edge.
“Yes, that is it Jessica.” He whispers encouragingly.
Before I can catch my breath, his fingers slip inside of me. The moisture from my orgasm is lubricant for his fingers. His well-trained hands perform magic on me. I have two more orgasms before he pulls his underwear off and throws them across the room in his haste. I watch as he puts a condom on. My body is completely relaxed and I feel like I am floating on clouds.
Austin spreads my legs slowly and positions himself at my entrance. “Just relax. Do not tense your body.”
He slowly enters me. I whimper as he stretches and fills me. He pauses as he reaches the obstruction inside of me. Bending over my body, his mouth swallows my yelp of pain as he thrusts himself fully inside me. My fingernails scrape deep, bloody lines down his arms. He groans as he resists the urge to move, giving me time to adjust to his size and the pain. When the sharp throbbing subsides, he slowly begins working in and out of me.
The blood-scented air is raising my blood thirst. Our bodies are moving in time with each other as our breathing deepens. Unable to resist any longer, my fangs extend and brush across the side of his neck.
Austin growls in agreement. “Yes, do it now!”
My fangs plunge into his neck. Austin is pounding me at an impressive pace. As I am feeding, I pierce his shields and enter his mind. Understanding his excitement from the images in his mind sends me into a draining orgasm. Austin is right behind me. Our orgasms seem to bounce off each other and my mental barriers crash. My mind is wide open.
Panicking, I throw Austin off me and run into the bathroom. He is so exhausted; he chooses not to come after me.
I lock and barricade the bathroom door. The long shower I take restores my senses and I gather enough energy to rebuild the barriers around my mind.
When I return to the bedroom, an uncomfortable silence fills the room. Austin is relaxing in bed. He has already redressed and must have showered in another bathroom because his hair is still damp.
“Is everything okay? I was very careful.” He states blandly.
Feeling the shame heating my face, I look at the floor. “I’m okay. That was nice, but I don’t think we should do that again.”
Shrugging, Austin easily agrees. “Okay.”
“That is all that you have to say?” I ask him angrily.
“You are a beautiful woman and I enjoyed our time in bed. However, I prefer to bed women with much more experience. I got what I wanted and you received several orgasms. The curiosity on both our parts has been satisfied. There is no reason why we should sleep together again, especially when you have so many restrictions.”
Irritated by his easy dismissal, I dress quickly and pick up my weapons scattered around the bedroom floor.
“Do not be angry with me Jessica. Considering it was your first time, you were not bad. It was only sex. Remember that. Sex is a means of gaining pleasure or entertainment for vampires. Even Weres feel that way about sex until they find their mate. If you allow yourself to believe it is more, you will be hurt any time you climb into bed with a man. Just remember the pleasure, forget the rest.”
I am putting on my shoes when he puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Why are you so angry?” He asks confused with the way I am responding to his calmness.
Turning, I face him with my anger showing on my face. “Just because I said it was okay to have sex doesn’t mean you have to be so… cold.”
Austin sighs. “I had a good time. I want you to understand me. I am trying to get you not to invest your heart into sex. That is the point I am trying to make. Forever is a long time to love someone when all you want is to have a good time in bed.”
His explanation eases some of my tension. Forever is a long time to stay in love with someone.
Realizing that I might be overreacting to his dismissal, I accept what he is telling me and settle in the bed next to him.
We talk for hours. He tells me things that I have always wondered about vampires, but did not have anyone to ask. He answers my questions without hesitation even when I am less than forthcoming with my answers to his own. Less than an hour before sunrise, I leave Austin’s house and return to my apartment.
Over the next few months, Austin takes me under his wing, but not into his get. He teaches me how to move, think, fight, feed and behave like a vampire. The most crucial thing he teaches me is the importance of appearance and ceremony is to all vampires.
Austin is a high maintenance man and I am his little pet project. He is always buying me clothes, shoes, makeup, lingerie or whatever else he can find that will make me more glamorous. Never having any designer anything growing up, I easily accept his offerings and enjoy every minute of his attention.
Our relationship morphs into more of a father and daughter type. We never share our deepest secrets, but we still have much respect for one another. He offers me a room at his home, but I only use it for a place to change clothes when I visit him. Sleeping under the roof of a house full of vampires does not appeal to my angel sense. There is no need to tempt fate. I don’t think Austin or his get would harm me, but it is better to be on the safe side.
I visit Austin when I have questions or when he wants me to accompany him to some prestigious event someone invites him to, but I continue to keep my distance from him.
He is having difficulties lately with another master vampire in the city regarding their boundaries and I didn’t want to get involved in their dispute so I did my best to stay away from Austin until their dispute was over.
One night, almost a year after Austin and I met at the vampire club, now twenty, I decide to go to Blixen for a night on the town. That same evening, the master vampire in which Austin has been having problems, raids his compound in force, killing Austin and most of his get for his territory. I don’t find out about the attack until the next day from rumors on the street and watching the news reports explain away the battle as a gang dispute.
I mourn Austin, Jalik, and Uri’s deaths the hardest. I can’t help but wonder if I could have helped them fight if I were there. Most likely, I would have ended up dying myself. He was much more powerful than I am, so there would be little I could have done to change their fates. Melancholy, I spend the night at Blixen drinking to their memories.
Chapter 11
Soon after Austin and the others’ deaths, I become deeper involved in crime. I begin doing hits for drug cartels and the mafia. Eventually, I become a mercenary. With my tracking skills and extra abilities, I become one of the most contracted mercenaries in the region. On my first substantial payday, I bought my first Giorgio Armani dress with Prada shoes to match in memory of Austin. For years to come, I silently thank Austin for showing me what it is like to have taste and a sense of style.
It is not long before o
ther mercenaries begin targeting me. I came home one night to find my apartment destroyed. My apartment building was set on fire by someone hoping to get lucky. Unfortunately, for them, I was not inside.
Instead of finding another apartment, I decide to move again. Realizing I need more space than an apartment can offer and move to another part of Phoenix, into suburbia. The house I have built is made of brick and sits on a half-acre plot of land near South Mountain in a very nice neighborhood.
I always hated those cookie cutter types of houses that are made out of cardboard they call drywall.
I do wish the house had a fireplace, but I am satisfied with having the contractor build a large basement instead, an unusual request for a home in Arizona.
I spend a lot of the money I receive from my mercenary jobs fixing up my basement. The basement will eventually be my fortress and a hiding place if anything ever goes wrong.
I install a state of the art security system in my house and basement right after moving in. Any secrets or cash I keep at home stays in the basement.
The basement room has only one entrance and exit, which can only be open by me using a handprint scanner, a pinprick of blood and voice identification. I am serious about my security. No one knows about my basement. That is the most closely guarded secret I keep, besides what I truly am.
Adding a sheet of steel with a high silver content along all four walls of the basement first, I decide to fortify my basement even more by hiring illegal workers to add another foot of cement walls inside my basement to give myself an extra layer of protection. Then, I take the time to wire all the electricity myself, along with motion sensors throughout the basement to a special computer built for any and all my needs. The computer is located in the forefront and middle of the basement. The basement also holds all of my weapons and emergency supplies. In the back of the basement, I have setup a small living area, with all of the modern necessities in case I have to lock myself downstairs for some time.
In the far right corner of the basement, I had the illegal workers install a small bathroom. It is large enough to house the sink, toilet, shower stall, and a vertical washer and dryer unit. The back wall has two full-sized refrigerators, counters, cabinets and a small oven and stove. One refrigerator I will use for bagged blood when I can find a way to steal some from the blood bank. The other refrigerator I use for food. Since I don’t feel in any danger right now, it is full of sports drinks and water. I use my refrigerator upstairs for all my food. All of the cabinets in the basement are full of non-perishable items in case of an emergency.
Unlike vampires, I do have to eat. My angel side requires me to eat food as much as my vampire side requires me to drink blood. I may be truly immortal, but my body requires some maintenance to survive.
On the left of the kitchen area, I setup a cozy living room with a couch, chair, coffee table, and TV. The bed I put down here is separate from the living room by two short walls, less than half the height of the ten-foot ceiling on either side of the bed. I have a large dresser at the foot of the bed.
The entire wall on the same side as my bed is for my weapons. The wall has a backlight that illuminates the swords, daggers, rifles, and shotguns hanging from the white Plexiglas wall unit. The clear and white Plexiglas drawers illuminate when the drawer opens. A sensor at the back of the drawer allows this to happen. The drawers hold my ammo, handguns, knives, and smaller automatic weapons. I also use the drawers for my belts, holsters, and knife sheaths. I haven’t found the need to keep grenades or explosives in my basement yet so I usually purchase those specialty items on an as-needed basis.
With my blood thirst finally under control, Austin dead, a new profession, and with the modifications on my house complete, I begin to settle in to some sense of normalcy in my life. I focus my attention on finding a way to get bagged blood so I will no longer need to feed on living donors.
I scout out a few blood banks over a couple of weeks, plotting a way to steal some blood.
I am watching the American Heart Blood Bank closely for at least a week before I finally decide to break in for blood. There security seems to be the weakest of all the blood banks I have scouted.
Right before I move to break down the back door, a tall, strange looking young man with curly, red hair opens the back door. He has dark freckles all over his face. His big blue eyes are abnormally too large for his long slender face. His equally large hooked nose is distracting, positioned above his small mouth with thin lips.
The young man calls out into the dark alley. “You have been out here every night for a week. What do you want?”
Surprised by his boldness, I walk out of the shadows and notice him move aside to allow me entry. Once inside, he gestures towards a chair at a small desk. When I sit down, I notice a small TV on the desk displaying the alley. Realizing he has been watching me with a hidden camera, I take the offered seat. We get comfortable before he begins to speak.
“You have been out there in the alley every night for about a week. What do you want? Are you like some kind of human rights activist or something?”
Realizing I could just enter his mind and erase his memory of me if he freaks out, I tell him what my plans are after I break in. “I was looking for a way to break in so I can steal some blood. I have been scouting out the building to figure out the security you have here.”
“Why steal blood? You could just go to the doctor and get blood if you need it. It would be very dangerous if you got the wrong blood type or something.” He replies curiously.
“Not for me. I am a vampire. I can drink any type of blood, although, I do have my preferences.” Smiling, I reveal to him the tips of my fangs.
I am expecting him to say ‘Really?’ or ‘Vampires don’t exist.’ I expect him to ask me to prove it. What I am not expecting is the redhead to believe me at my word alone and not ask the obvious questions.
He looks at me and nods his head for me to continue.
Astonished that he believes me outright without dispute, I stare at him in disbelief. “You believe me? No questions or comments about how crazy I am?”
“The world is filled with wondrous and miraculous things. It does not surprise me that other beings besides humans exist. I watch Star Trek and other sci-fi movies. The ideas have to come from somewhere. Either you are a nutcase that wears those fake vampire teeth or you are telling me the truth.” He shrugs. “Either way, I’m bored enough that I don’t mind hearing more of what you have to say.”
After hearing his logical response, it is easy and natural to become friends with him. It never hurts to have a contact at a blood bank for a vampire who prefers bagged blood to walking donors.
After a couple hours talking and negotiating payment, the redhead named Tyler Burns and I come up with an agreement. The blood bank always needs donors of all types. As an employee, Tyler gets referral bonuses for all new blood donors that put his name on the application as a referral.
The deal we make with each other is simple. If the blood bank is low on A-positive blood, he asks me to find donors that are A-positive blood. My nose is sensitive enough to distinguish a human’s blood type just by being near them. When Tyler tells me the blood type of the donors he needs, I go to a very public place like a shopping mall or movie theater and just walk among the humans. If I smell someone with that blood type, I enter the person’s mind, implant the urge for the person to donate blood at American Heart Blood Bank, and have the person put Tyler’s name down as a referral. In return, he keeps me stocked with bagged blood. This is a win-win situation for all. The blood bank does not question how Tyler always finds so many donors, because they are more than happy with the results. They never run into shortage problems like other blood banks, which greatly improve their ratings as a preferred blood bank.
I am twenty when I meet Tyler. He is a little over a year older than I am.
The meetings between Tyler and I are mostly businesslike until the day he offers to open a vein for me. Unknowingly, m
y powers have been growing and what should have been a simple feed with a friend turns into so much more. While I am feeding, I enter his mind. Some strange new power overwhelms me and I make some kind of link to his mind. That is when I make the decision that I should not drink directly from another human again unless necessary. Tyler and I are still friends, but I always feel this weird feeling or connection when he is around me. It is too intimate. I have no idea what I have done or how to undo it. Tyler doesn’t seem to mind our special connection and occasionally I’ll see him staring at me with a look that is much more than friendship.
As lonely as I am, I can’t resist being friends with Tyler, despite that strange connection.
Sometimes, we just hang out at his place, thinking of ways to make and spend money.
Jokingly during one of our many discussions of moneymaking schemes, I make a suggestion about selling my blood because it has unique qualities that can heal human diseases without turning a person into a vampire. I was vague with the details about why my blood is unique, but he’s used to my evasiveness now so he doesn’t try to ask more questions. That night, we came up with the idea to harvest my blood and sell it on the Black Market. Brainstorming, we realized we could make billions on my blood if we can figure out how to sell it anonymously.
Unfortunately, Tyler and I haven’t found a way to get into the Black Market and remain completely anonymous. We decide that we would start storing away a few pints of my blood every week. As an employee of the blood bank, they have trained him on how to draw blood and he has all the equipment at work to do it after hours. When we do figure out how to make a profit from selling my blood, we will have the blood already available. I will continue to stockpile my blood in my basement without anyone’s knowledge until that time comes.
