He felt the heat boil off Arisada’s skin, a sign of the younger vampire’s overwhelming need to climax. His fangs sank into the tender flesh of Arisada’s thigh. The bite a warning as much as a sign of possession. Blood welled. Sadomori slurped it up.
A talonned digit forced its way past Arisada’s tight rim. Then a second and a third twisting deep into his vitals until one curled over the spongy knob of his prostate. His orgasm boiled through his body. His balls throbbed in agony, unable to release their load. Arisada bit his tongue. In begging desperation, he ground his ass against Sadomori’s hand.
Sadomori lips curled into a semblance of a smile. Writhing beneath him was the only creature ever to bring him fulfillment. The power to deny his beautiful Primary his climax drove Sadomori’s lust to new heights. His cock pulsed into life. Sadomori grabbed his erect member, forced it against Arisada’s hole then drove with fury past the clenched rim.
“I am your Master. Never forget it.” Sadomori claimed Arisada as his property with merciless thrusts of his organ
The Daimyō felt his balls tighten. He hovered on that ecstatic edge for a few delicious seconds. But when he finally ejaculated, his spunk dribbled out. As always, his body cheated him of that ultimate pinnacle of pleasure.
His maniacal scream of frustration echoed in the vast bedroom. His fangs emerged so fast they tore his gums. He fell against Arisada and bit deep into his chest. Greedily he sucked as he slammed his hips against Arisada’s ass. No use, his flaccid member had already slipped from that pulsing hole.
With a snarl, Sadomori pulled on the cord around Arisada’s cock. The intricate bindings unraveled immediately. Arisada screamed as blood and sensation flooded back into his abused sex. The agony of his orgasm exploded through him, sending frothy arcs of cum jetting over his belly and chest. Pain from the shackles drove his release to an unendurable height.
Jealousy ripped through Sadomori as he plunged his mouth over Arisada’s spurting prick. The Daimyō gulping down the thick, salty essence while his fingers mauled his own indifferent member.
With a final moan, Arisada collapsed insensate, driven beyond even his Seisakusha’s reach.
The blood drained from the Daimyō’s eyes and his irises regained their obsidian depths. He sat back on his haunches and gazed at the one who had been his for hundreds of centuries. The older vampire traced his forefinger over the symbol cut into Arisada’s cheekbone, Sadomori’s mons, and proof of ownership. Yet he knew he would never possess his Primary’s spirit. Thousands had given up their souls as Sadomori sent them screaming into their deaths. But this one, this Sōhei monk, would never truly surrender his tamashii, it belonged to another. For that Sadomori hated Arisada.
Sadomori viewed his Primary’s cum-slicked flesh. An echo of arousal flickered through his cock, but nothing more. Deep within his dark heart, he knew he detested his own desperate need for this lithe beauty. He too was held in bondage. With a massive effort, he reined in the rage that threatened to engulf him again. To unleash his anger now meant death for Arisada.
His expression verged on benign as he kissed Arisada’s forehead. Gently, he released each of the abraded limbs, stretching them out on the futon. He smoothed his hands along cramped muscles, massaging life back into them. He brought a soft, wet cloth from the bathroom, and cleaned the fluids from the unconscious vampire’s body. His hands gentled as he wiped over the groin, fondled for a moment those softened genitals.
The action woke Arisada. He pushed himself upright, limbs trembling, his hair hanging in wet crimson strands over his chest and back. Pain still shadowed the golden depth of his eyes. A fine trembling possessed him as Arisada climbed off the bed and waited for permission to dress.
Naked, the Daimyō strolled over to the huge plate-glass window with its expansive view of the Bay. His body was awash in the feeble light from the night sky. The thin body looked almost emaciated, yet the lean muscles and pronounced tendons held a supernatural strength. His white skin stood in stark relief to the multitude of tattoos that blanketed his back and buttocks—Sadomori’s life history rendered in ink on flesh.
Sadomori poured a glass of wine before dropping into the Queen Anne chair by the fireplace. He regarded his Primary through hooded eyes that held only the admiration of a connoisseur for a work of art.
Saito Arisada was truly of the aristocracy with the pure features of a noble lineage. So perfect in form that Sadomori could easily believe the young vampire was a descendant of the Gods. And Saito Arisada belonged to him.
“Drink, renew yourself,” Sadomori urged. He draped one leg over the chair arm, spread his thighs and stroked his genitals. The gesture was a deliberate invitation to feed at the tender juncture between the thigh and the groin where the femoral artery pulsed with life. As he planned, the movement drew Arisada’s attention.
Arisada’s breath caught. His eyes locked on the inside of the older vampire’s groin. The flaccid genitals dangling beneath were of no interest to him. But the unhealed scabs from deep puncture wounds on the insides of both legs made him tense with shock. “You are letting the young kyūketsuki feed from you? Are you insane?”
Sadomori held his anger at this outburst. His relaxed demeanor, the casually draped leg were a pose. He wanted Arisada to see the bites, and Arisada knew it.
“Jealous, my love?” As if to emphasize his indifference to Arisada’s concern, he took another sip of his wine and stroked over the scabs. “I see no danger. Every vampire knows it is an honor to feed from me.”
“Why are you doing this? The disease in our bodies is too old,” Arisada cried. “No kyūketsuki, especially the younger ones, should drink our blood. You know how violent they can become, how unnaturally strong. They become mindless rogues.”
Abruptly, Sadomori stood, setting his glass on the bar so hard the stem shattered. He ignored it. His white eyebrows drew together. “What do I care if a few go rogue and kill a human or two? It is time mankind feared us.”
A shudder of fear rippled through Arisada. “I do not understand why you insist on this rash course of action. You are endangering us all. The people will turn on us.”
Sadomori’s lip lifted in a slight curl showing his fang tips in a subtle warning. “Hear me, monk, I will make those human cattle bow before us.”
Arisada tried one last desperate plea not only for Sadomori but for himself and their kind. “We obey only the laws that ensure our survival. We control humans through their own vices, the drugs, gambling, the sex trade. Our payment to the hundreds of indentured for their blood allows both our species to co-exist.”
“, sō desu ka, that is right. We pay for what we should be able to take by our right. We are stronger and faster than the human vermin. But we have no real power. Men are treacherous animals. To us they should be nothing more than cattle, mere fodder.”
“They will turn on us. Have you forgotten what happened to you in Europe five hundred years ago? The same citizens who shouted their love for you sent assassins after you. You barely escaped. Now, like then, you could offer so much if you would relinquish your obsession for absolute power.” Alarm ripped through Arisada. “Please, reconsider your actions. These times are far more dangerous to our kind. Stop this insanity, I beg you.”
Sadomori ignored the entreaty. He took Arisada’s hand, turned the palm up and kissed it. “Perhaps you are right, monk. Perhaps it is time for me to be beneficent.”
Arisada never trusted these mercurial moods of his Seisakusha. But the older vampire’s gesture tugged at his heart. “I feared for you each time you exacted your vengeance against the Kurosaki family. You derided my anguish when I heard you had slain the last of them. You taunt my beliefs in the benevolence of the Buddha. Still, it is my vow to redeem the honorable warrior within your soul.”
“Ah, my beautiful Sōhei, when will you stop seeking my redemption? You waste your time, I do not desire it.” Sadomori shrugged and turned back to the bar to pour a fresh glass of wine. “You may leave me now.”
Sick with defeat, Arisada dressed. At the door, he paused and defied his Daimyō one last time. “Remember Ukita-san, humans do not tolerate each other, much less other species. We exist only because they let us. Give them reason, and they will exterminate us all.” In a sad silence, Arisada left the room. Sadomori’s derisive laugh echoed after him.
As he sped away from the Sadomori’s mansion, despair filled Arisada once again. Why did he endure this brutal existence? Not for the oath torn from him by his Seisakusha, Ukita Sadomori. No, he survived to find the reincarnation of Koji Nowaki. And he’d found him. But what justice from an ancient era would be served by killing this beautiful, green-eyed boy?
The voices of his long-dead Sōhei brethren answered him. “For fukushū. For vengeance. There is nothing else. Only fukushū.”
.
Six
Restless and frustrated, Tatsu paced the confines of his rented room. Four nights of wasted effort, of stalking and confronting vampires and questioning people had led him nowhere except three more dead kyūketsuki on his conscience.
Then, despite his resolve, memory of his mysterious savior from the Whore’s alley rose behind his eye. A man who would have been called bishounen in another era.
Who was he? Was he a hunter like Bana? Had he been following the rogue vampires? And why the fuck did the man kiss him? Not that Tatsu minded. The almost harshness of those lips demanding entrance, the hot wet slide of the man’s tongue, the taste of his mouth, sent a want shivering down Tatsu’s spine straight into his cock. Hell, there had been only one other time in Tatsu’s life when a man stirred that kind of need in his body.
Kuso, this was getting him no place. He tried to still his confusion by pouring over the Nagasaki police files and his grandfather’s journal but found nothing new. He looked at the tattered photo he always carried.
Five people dressed in the crisp, new clothing of holiday makers posed beneath the banner for the Tokyo Pan-Asia Tenjihin. Lights from the massive Ferris wheel in the background reflected a halo over the little family. The man was tall, Caucasian, with short blond hair and a shy smile. One arm draped over the shoulders of the petite Japanese woman. Tatsu’s mother. A squirming toddler in her arms reached for her hat. The man held the hand of a boy, around five years old. Beside the youngster stood a taller boy with a shock of brown hair. Although trying to look serious and grown up, the boy’s sideways grin revealed his excitement.
Tatsu recognized none of them, not even himself. The small, intimate details that should make each face beloved remained a mystery. He could not recall the sound of his mother’s laugh, nor of his father’s voice. How did his baby sister smell fresh from her bath? Did his younger brother tag after him, pester him, call him Onii-chan? Yet he knew he loved them.
With care, he placed the photo on his dresser and looked out the grimy window to the street three floors below. No signs of life in the dark and silent predawn hour. Harsh gusts of wind promised rain. As if it ever did anything but rain here. Unexpected nostalgia filled him at the thought of Santa Fe’s bright, arid climate. Here, everything smelled of mildew and rot. Again, he wondered why he was here.
Screw it. Only one solution to these shameful doubts—a good workout. All concerns, all uncertainties disappeared under the sublime discipline of shin-shin no tanren, the samurai training of mind, body and spirit.
Tatsu changed into his practice gear and wrapped a tattered cloth around his head. Grinned ruefully into the mirror. Even in the voluminous culottes and wide-sleeved shirt, he still looked like a skinny-assed kid.
As he trotted across the street to the dojo, he smiled, recalling his first day in Seattle when the owner, Morinaga Watari recognized Tatsu’s Nagasaki accent and presented him with the keys and the request to “honor” his humble establishment at any time.
As always, Tatsu slipped off his zoris inside the entrance. He never turned on the lights when alone. Why waste the owner’s electricity? He bowed before stepping across the threshold of the shiaijo, a room built for sword fighting. He racked his katana in a slot in the high wooden stand that held a dozen iaito. Carrying one of the blunt practice swords, he bowed again before stepping onto the mat covering the center of the room.
Kneeling, he closed his eyes and focused on the measured rhythm of his breathing, sought the center of his being, his tanden. The turmoil in his mind melted away. Within a few minutes, he reached zanshin, a heightened awareness of all things around him yet focused on not one thing in particular.
Holding the sword in the classical combat style with both hands, Tatsu warmed up with several basic exercises called suburi. He moved into left-and-right katas, the sword flying from single to double-handed holds. His measured shouts broke the quiet of the dojo as he practiced several solo forms.
An hour later, he was relaxed and focused, breathing and heartbeat barely increased. He took a second iaito and moved into the difficult techniques of niten’ichi, fighting with two swords. In a blur of motion, he executed a flurry of cuts designed to eliminate multiple attackers at once, unaware of the enemy waiting, utterly still, in the shadows.
Arisada’s nostrils flared, again taking in the sweet scent of this boy, a distinct scent that had allowed the vampire to find the boy among the humanity in this city. He marveled as the boy held himself with both swords ready in the stance only used before by the great Musashi. And now by this bishounen, this beautiful boy.
The way Tatsu’s hakama flowed around the youth’s lithe body with every precise move woke Arisada’s needy groin. He wondered if the bore clothed his genitals with a Western-style jock or bound by a traditional fundoshi. The thought of those naked buttocks outlined by the loincloth excited him. Those buttocks would be firm, the muscles defined and rounding on either side of a deep crack.
Ruthlessly, Arisada locked his love into a tiny prison deep within his heart. Meiyo first, honor first. He was here to kill this young hunter. However, for a short time, the vampire would savor the sight of this incomparable swordsman the same way he savored the perfection of an ikebana flower arrangement. Or the perfection of seppuku.
The challenge was too compelling. Arisada would bed this boy without using his vampiric thrall. Fellate and fuck him. Take him to heights of ecstasy no human had ever experienced. Then kill him.
But as Arisada watched Tatsu become one with the Way of the Samurai, doubts ate like acid through the vampire’s resolve. Arisada had never considered the eroding weight of fukushū on his soul. Or how time affected his morality. Eight-hundred years. Too long. Far too long. The vow of vengeance had spilled with full force from his lips, its intent driven by all that made Arisada Sōhei—honor, tradition, discipline and his implacable devotion to Mii-dera. But the centuries had eroded the meaning of that vow. Rendered it worthless in the light of the one truth Arisada thought would be forever denied him—love manifested in the body of this one exquisite boy.
With a searing flash of insight, love tore its way through the vampire’s heart. Love negated all need for fukushū. Yet revenge, his purpose for enduring the desolation of centuries, did not depart lightly. It refused to surrender to Arisada’s rejection, and fought with all the ferocity of the wildest mountain cat.
With a force that was almost physical, Arisada repudiated his oath for fukushū. Vengeance for the events of a too-distant past could never justify the taking the life of this innocent boy. The vampire accepted the dishonor staining his soul. Accepted that his brethren would never be avenged. In a rush of emotion that almost brought him to his knees, Arisada knew his honor was lost.
Wakatta, better to exist with shame than destroy this lovely, vibrant human. Awash in an inexplicable mix of joy, sadness and relief, the vampire shifted his weight to leave. But his longing to touch this youth again, if only for a moment, stilled his step.
Just as Tatsu raised the iaito over his head in the jodan position, Tatsu sensed the presence of another. The air whistled as he began the descending cut. Instead of his weight l
anding on his forward leg, his body pivoted so he faced the entrance as he finished.
A silhouetted form moved against the darker square of the doorway. A man, maybe an inch shorter than Tatsu’s five-foot ten, took a single step over the threshold and bowed. A full-faced menpo hid his face. In his right hand, the stranger held a sheathed katana pointed forward and down in the samurai gesture of neutrality.
Tatsu believed he knew all of the dojo’s dozen or so shinkendo-ka. Hell, over the past week he’d defeated every one of them. Still, the stranger’s commanding stance—weight always balanced on his forward foot, body held loose, with a deceptive stillness—could only be that of an expert swordsman. Perhaps even a sword Master.
Then a shiver of recognition flashed through Tatsu. This was the stranger from the alley behind the Whore. For an absurd second Tatsu didn’t know whether to thank him for saving his life or ask why the fuck he kissed him. He did neither, covering his confusion with an abrupt ritsurei, a standing bow. “What are you doing here?”
“Sumimasen, I do not mean to intrude. The owner, Morinaga-sensei, lets me practice here from time to time when I’m in town,” the man replied in oddly inflected Japanese. “You are excellent. I have not seen swordsmanship like yours in a very long time. Would you honor me by opposing me in tachiuchi?”
Tatsu heard a smile in that voice. That smile held too much of a challenge. “Hai, dozo,” he assented. “Besides, it looks like you are already prepared for one,” indicating the man’s mask with a flick of his weapon.
“Watashi wa koiedesu.”
“I, too, am honored.” Tatsu’s pulse raced with an unexpected excitement.
The stranger lifted his katana horizontally at face level, bowed beneath it, then in the direction of the shiaijo. To Tatsu’s astonishment, the man offered a third bow to Tatsu before placing his weapon on the floor against the wall. Without another word, the man glided over to the rack of blunt steel blades and tested the weight and balance of several before selecting one.
Eternal Samurai Page 7
