I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath. "There's no time."
"I won't let you tear my throat out, just because the master has bitten off more than he can tame."
I shook my head, eyes still closed. "Don't be afraid, Byron, please, that fuels the beast. I'm offering the ardeur . " I opened my eyes and stared up at him. He still stood as far away as the stretched fabric of the black robe could take him. My voice had found an edge of growl when I said, "But it's a limited time offer. Either come across, or food won't be a euphemism."
A funny look crossed his face. "Do you mean sex? Real sex? Not a euphemism for anything?"
If I'd had time, it would have been funny. "Yes."
"Oh, duckie, why didn't you say so?" He came to me, undoing the sash of his robe and letting it fall away. He was wearing only the tiniest of black thongs, with his pale, pale body exposed everywhere else. The muscles that he'd managed to acquire in less than a month worked under his skin as he dropped to his knees in front of me. "Who gets to be on top?" he asked with a smile.
I put my hands on his bare shoulders, and the moment I touched his skin, the smile faded. "I do," I said, and pushed him to the floor.
37
Byron lay back against the floor with my body riding him, my hands on his wrists, pinning him to the floor. The only thing I'd ripped off my own body had been underwear. There was no foreplay, there was no time for it, no need for it. Everywhere I touched him, I could feed a little. Bare skin was all I needed now, but it was an incomplete feeding. It wasn't enough. I pressed our mouths together, slid my tongue into his mouth, and again I could feed, but it wasn't enough. I ground myself against him, but he was still trapped in the thong. I let go with one wrist, and his hand found the side of the thong first.
"Snap away," he said, in a voice that was deeper, more real than his usual.
I tore the cloth away, and he was suddenly naked against me, not inside me, but pressed against me, and he was warm. Warm with the blood he'd taken from someone else. The feel of him pressed against me made me cry out.
Nathaniel said, "Anita?" He came pressed as far from us as he could get and stayed where I could see him. "It's like the ardeur , but worse, more." He looked almost panic-stricken. He had an armful of gauze packets.
I wanted to say I'm sorry, or something civilized, but Byron moved his hips underneath me, and that one small movement brought my attention back to the man underneath me. His eyes had darkened like sky before a storm. And staring down into them, I wondered how I'd ever thought they were soft. He spent so much time being the charming youth, playing to the body he'd been given, but now suddenly out of his eyes I saw just how much grown-up I was dealing with.
"Fuck me," he said, and it came out softer the second time, "fuck me, fuck me." He whispered it over and over, softer and softer, until his breath itself whispered, "Fuck me."
I leaned over him, pressed my mouth to his, and it was as if I could feel his soul down the long tunnel of his body, as if I knew how to reach in and snatch it away. I knew in that instant that I could feed on everything that Byron was. I could feed on that divine or infernal spark that made him vampire. I could eat him up, completely and utterly, and leave only the lovely corpse behind.
I came off his mouth screaming, because the urge to do it was almost overwhelming. The hunger wanted it all. All of him. It couldn't have all of him. It couldn't. I wouldn't do that to him. I wouldn't do that to anyone. For the first time I understood just what they meant by a fate worse than death, or rather that sex wasn't it.
If I could feed the ardeur , then maybe this darker thing would go away, but even willing, I had trouble. I didn't know Byron's body. I tried to simply rock back onto him, slide him inside me, but twice we slid across each other but didn't go in. I finally yelled my frustration, and he said, "Let me have my hand, lover, and I'll help."
A hand appeared between us, and it actually took me a moment to realize it was Nathaniel. He had a condom in his hand. "We don't know where he's been."
I growled at him, but he growled back. "The only way you can catch something from a vampire or lycanthrope is if one of us has fucked someone who's got something, then fucks you after. You want to take that chance?"
"Let me have my hands, lover, and I'll put on anything you want."
I let go of his wrists, and he moved himself just enough so he could open the foil packet and slip it on. Then he slid himself back where we'd started, with him pressed against me, but not inside. He put his hands on either side of my thighs and lifted me at the same time that he shifted his own hips. He slid inside me, in one smooth movement that threw my head back and made him yell, "Oh, yes!"
When I looked back at him, his gray eyes had lost focus, his lips were half-parted. I wanted to cover his mouth with mine, I wanted that brief sweet taste of his soul again. I finally realized it wasn't the ardeur we were fighting, not entirely. Something else was happening, something darker, something worse. I'd thought the worst would be sex with strangers, but I was wrong. Byron wasn't my friend yet, I didn't make friends that quickly, but he wasn't a bad man. I liked him, with his "duckie" and "luvs." I liked that he had told me the first time we'd met, that no, he wasn't that Byron, and that actually Lord Byron wasn't one of us, that had just been a rumor spread by people that wanted an excuse to burn him at the stake in some backwater country. Though if he'd known the great poet was going to get himself drowned before the age of thirty, he'd have offered.
I liked Byron. He didn't deserve to die. There was an angry echo in my head. I thought it was Primo, and then knew it wasn't. He didn't have the kind of power it took to interfere from a room away, not through my shielding and Jean-Claude's. I asked myself the question, Where would the power go if I sucked Byron's life away? I threw the question out to Jean-Claude. I let him see that darkest of desires in my head.
"That is not our hunger," he said.
"Who is it?"
"She is the Dragon." He spoke in my head, and there was urgency there.
"She made Primo," I said, and it was only then that I realized I wasn't talking out loud.
"She's using him as a conduit for her own power."
"How do we stop it?"
Byron suddenly drew back and thrust himself inside me again, and did something with his hips and legs at the same time. It blew my concentration all to hell, and all I could do was stare down at him. "A man likes to know he's not boring a girl," he said, but there was no smile to go with the light-hearted comment.
Jean-Claude echoed through my head. "We stop her as we did Moroven, by sending her something she does not understand."
"Let me guess," I said, and again it wasn't aloud.
"Sex, or love, ma petite, what else is there for us?"
I don't know what I would have said, because Byron rolled me. He rolled us over in a sudden amazingly fast, fluid movement, and never fell out of me, which is harder to do than it sounds. I was suddenly on the floor staring up at him, my hands on his shoulders as if I'd grabbed the nearest thing to prevent me from falling. He grinned at the surprised look on my face and said, "You're not moving enough, luv, let me show you how it's done."
He did two quick thrusts that left me breathless, then he raised up on his hands like he was trying to do a bad push-up with his groin pressed tight against mine. His smile faded, and he frowned. "You're bleeding, luv."
I'd forgotten about my wrist again. I followed his glance and found that blood was seeping out from it. There was blood spattered across my blue top.
"Some gauze, please," he said.
I think it took both Nathaniel and me a second to realize who he was talking about, and why. Nathaniel fumbled a package open and handed it to him. It was acutely uncomfortable to be trapped under the body of a strange man while Nathaniel knelt beside us. It was more embarrassing than having Richard watch with Damian. It just felt worse, as if I should apologize.
I think I would have done just that, but Byron pressed the gauze to my wounded
wrist, pinning it to the floor. It hurt, sharp and immediate, and I was left gasping and staring up at his face. He pinned my other wrist, so that he was pressed above me, and I was very, very pinned.
I might have complained, but Jean-Claude roared through my head. " Ma petite, I need to feed. You are not moving fast enough with Byron."
"You're a big vampire, feed yourself," I said, and that was out loud.
"Do you understand what you're giving permission for, ma petite? "
"Tonight, yes, help me, Jean-Claude. Feed, for God's sake, feed."
Byron hesitated, poised above me. "Something wrong?"
"We're not moving fast enough for him, apparently."
A nearly evil grin crossed Byron's face. "Oh, we can fix that, luver, we can fix that," And he fixed it. He moved himself in and out of me in long writhing waves of his body. It was as if the thrust started at his shoulders and danced its way down his body until he thrust himself inside me. Once inside me, he did something with his hips that seemed almost to make him roll inside me. It was as if that writhing dancelike movement went all the way down his body and inside mine. It wasn't fast, as in speed, but it was fast in other ways.
My breathing had sped up, and my body had figured out at what point in his writhing that he plunged inside me, so that my hips thrust upward to meet him. It began to be like a dance, except we were both flat on the floor, but when he realized that I wanted to move, he changed how his lower body pinned me, so that mostly only him sliding in and out of me pinned my lower body, and the rest of me was left to rise and fall against his body.
He kept my wrists pinned, and I kept thinking I should say something about that, but I kept forgetting, and I finally realized I didn't want to say anything.
Another British voice came from behind us. "Jean-Claude said I was needed in here, but it looks like you've got a queue."
I said his name, "Requiem," just that and nothing more, but he came to me. He knelt in a fall of black-hooded cloak. He pushed the hood back to reveal hair as straight and black as the cloak itself. His eyes were a deep, rich blue like startled cornflowers in the white skin and black hair of his face. The thin mustache and Vandyke beard were as raven dark as his hair and the eyebrows that framed those startling blue eyes. He'd once told me that Belle had wanted to buy him from his old master. She'd wanted a third blue-eyed lover. Asher had the palest blue, Jean-Claude the darkest, and Requiem had the brightest. His master had refused, and they had fled France.
He knelt by my head, kneeling over us on his knees like some dark angel in the cloak he would not give up for any modern coat. "What would you have of me, my lady?"
My voice came breathy, but clear. Good for me. "If you take blood at the same time I feed on him, then I'll feed on both of you."
He didn't argue. He simply laid down behind us, so that his face was close to mine. "As my lady wills it, so shall it be done."
"Well if it's to be done, do it fast," Byron said, and his voice sounded more strained than mine.
Requiem looked up at him, propped on his elbows by my head. "Are you implying that you won't last much longer?"
"Yes," and his voice sounded half-strangled.
"You're out of training," Requiem said.
"You haven't fucked her. Don't criticize until you've tried."
"Are you implying that she's such a good shag that she's going to bring you early?"
"Stop bickering," I said, and my body still rose and fell with Byron's. He was still fighting to keep the rhythm even and pretty, but he was beginning to lose that smooth glide, and I knew when he stopped dancing above me, that that would be it. "Hurry, or you'll miss us."
"As my lady bids." Requiem dropped to his chest, his stomach, and ran his hands through my hair. "Bad angle," he whispered, "may I improve the angle, m'lady?"
"Yes," and it was a strangled sound.
He dug his fingers through my curls and pulled my head sharply to one side, exposing a long line of my neck. He balled his fist in my hair and pulled it sharp. I gasped, and it wasn't a pain sound.
I found myself staring not into Byron's gray eyes, but at Nathaniel. He was still there huddled near, but not too near. He looked both afraid and eager, and I didn't understand the look. I wanted to, and I had an instant to feel how he saw this. One lover pinned my wrists to the floor, grinding his hand into a fresh bite, plunging himself into me over and over, while I writhed underneath him. Now another man had jerked my hair tight and painful, exposed my neck, and when I orgasmed, he would plunge his fangs into my neck. Both vampires would plunge inside me at the same time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It didn't matter to Nathaniel that I'd given permission. It mattered that I was trapped and helpless and at their mercy, and the entire scene did it for him. It just flat did it for him. He was enjoying watching, because this was the closest he'd come to what he'd wanted in months.
I felt his need like a weight in my mind, and I knew that he would have given almost anything to be the one on the bottom.
Byron's body began to lose its smooth gliding rhythm, and he seemed to be fighting not to simply plunge in and out as fast as he could. "Close, very close," he whispered.
I started to turn my head back so I could see his face, but Requiem's hand tightened, and I couldn't move. His breath was hot on my throat, and I knew that he'd borrowed that warmth from someone else. "Are you close, m'lady, are you close?" His voice spread like heat down my skin.
Byron leaned heavier on my wrists, grinding them into the floor, and his body took on a more urgent rhythm. I felt that weight in my groin, that grew and grew and would spill out, would spill out. I whispered, "Close, almost."
Requiem's lips touched my neck, just his lips, as if he kissed me. Byron fought for something smoother, more controlled, but his voice was hoarse, breathless, "Almost, almost, almost."
That heavy warmth inside me burst outward, and I screamed. Fangs plunged into my throat, and Byron's body bucked over me, convulsed against me, inside me. Requiem's mouth sealed over the kiss of his fangs, and he began to feed. And it was as if every suck of his mouth brought a new orgasm.
Byron cried out above me, and his body rocked with mine. Requiem's hand convulsed in my hair, and his hand gripped my shoulder, dug nails into me, and I felt his body jerking, rocking with us.
I screamed until my voice went hoarse, and still he fed, and still Byron stayed pinned inside me, thrusting into me. It was like being caught in an endless loop of pleasure, one movement feeding the others, until we finally collapsed into a quivering heap. Requiem's mouth fell away from my neck. "I can drink no more." His perfect voice was breathless, barely a whisper.
Byron collapsed on top of me like a puppet whose strings had been sliced. He lay on top of me, and I could feel his heart thudding inside his chest like a trapped thing. His breathing was ragged and sounded painful, and mine wasn't much better.
He found his voice, hoarse, and shaking. "If I wasn't dead already, I'd say I was having a heart attack."
I tried to laugh and ended up coughing.
"Oh, don't do that," Byron said, "oh, please." The coughing fit had tightened me around him again, and it jerked him up on his arms, pushed him one last time against me, which made me writhe under him.
He collapsed again, and begged, "No, more, please, Anita, no more. I never thought I'd say that from just one time, but give me a moment to catch my... breath."
"Breath," Requiem said with his face collapsed next to mine, "not breath, pulse. I knew you had the ardeur , but you should warn a vampire if you can do things like that."
I found my voice, "Like what?"
He moved his head just enough so that he could look me in the eye with his face on my shoulder. "I knew you would feed from me, but I didn't know you would bring me."
"Bring us," Byron said, "bring us again and again." He was collapsed across my chest and body so all I could see was his brown curls. "I usually try and keep track of things like that, but I gave up when we passed
five. Or was it six?"
"Eight," Requiem said, "or maybe more. I think if I could have kept feeding, we wouldn't have stopped." He closed his eyes, and a faint shiver ran through him. "I'd forgotten how many different ways the ardeur could be fed. I'd forgotten how good it could feel."
"I don't have anything to compare this to," Byron said in a hoarse voice.
"You never met Belle Morte, did you?" Requiem asked.
Byron seemed to want to look at the other man when he spoke, but he gave up when raising his head was too much effort. "No, never had the pleasure."
"It was a pleasure," he said.
If I could have moved, and been sure I wouldn't fall over, I'd have told everyone to get off of me, but I couldn't move, and if I couldn't, I knew at least Byron couldn't, either. He'd been using more muscles than I had. But it felt odd to lay there with them draped around me and talk as if I wasn't there. I asked him, "Why didn't you let Belle keep you, then?"
"Have you met her?"
"In a manner of speaking, yeah."
His blue, blue eyes, looked sad, the excited exhaustion fading in the light of memories. "Then you should know the answer. No pleasure is worth her price, and besides, I don't like men, not even a little, and if you aren't at least bisexual, you can't survive at her court."
"Why?" I asked.
"When she's not fucking the men, she likes to watch the men fucking each other. I don't think there was ever a waking moment at her court when someone wasn't having sex either with her, or for her entertainment, or the entertainment of her guests."
Byron managed to lever himself around so he could give gray eyes to the other vampire. "I like men, but you make it sound like I wouldn't have liked it, either."
"There is no pleasure without payment. No pleasure without some pain attached, and not the kind of pain you'll enjoy. First she finds what you most desire, she learns your body as no other lover can, then she begins to deny you that love. She begins to make you beg for it. She addicts you to her, if she can. Then when she has you, truly has you, she begins to pull away, so that you spend the rest of eternity gazing into the face of paradise, but you are locked outside the shining gates and can only touch glimpses of heaven."
Incubus Dreams ab-12 Page 36
