The Red Collection

by Portia Da Costa

  Laughter bubbled up in her throat. How could anyone, ever, manage to get themselves into a situation as ridiculous as this? She’d finally found the perfect man – a decent man, who she wanted as a friend as well as a lover, and who was spine-meltingly gorgeous into the bargain – and he was a vampire!

  Hysterical laughter broke free, took a hold of her, and got out of control. Her body shook and tears of manic merriment trickled down her face. Zack’s strong arms slid around her and she could feel his chest heaving with laughter too.

  Several chaotic moments followed. They rocked together, bonded in a bizarre glee, until the door to the little sitting room opened and someone popped their head in.

  ‘Whoops, sorry!’ They were gone again before either Teresa or Zack could stop, but the spell of their mad fit was finally broken.

  She stood up, forcing Zack to rise gracefully to his feet too.

  ‘Well, as they say in every romantic film or drama I’ve ever seen, we need to talk, don’t we?’ He smiled down at her, his beautiful mouth quirking.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly, dark prince.’ She reached for his cool hand. ‘Shall we retire to our chamber?’

  Zack shrugged eloquently. ‘I think we’d better.’

  In the lift, Teresa noticed something she hadn’t seen the last time they’d ridden up.

  ‘Hey! I can see you … sort of … I thought you weren’t supposed to have a reflection?’ She pointed to a small courtesy mirror at the back of the lift. In it was Zack’s image, faint and shadowy, but definitely visible.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you see in movies or read in books.’ In the glass, Zack’s beautifully curved mouth was hazily reflected. ‘There are degrees of vampirism, and as many different kinds of us as there are normal people.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes. And I suppose you’d say I’m at the more human end of the spectrum.’

  She thought of his kindness towards her, and the way she always felt cared for and protected by him. His attitude had been help, not harm, from day one.

  Or at least it had seemed that way.

  ‘So you’re not planning to … to drain me dry and either kill me or make me into a vampire too, then?’ She tried to speak lightly, but her voice wavered.

  Emotion played across Zack’s face, complex and haunting, and she felt guilty for betraying her lack of trust.

  But – but he was a vampire. A vampire. Human end of the spectrum or otherwise.

  ‘I would never intentionally do any of those things …’ He bit his lip, and Teresa thought of all the times she’d naively noted how white and shiny and sharp his teeth looked. No wonder they were sharp, didn’t he bite necks with them?

  She put her hand on his arm. He felt so strong, so normal – and so human. But still she trembled.

  ‘What do you mean by “intentionally”, Zack?’

  The lift door sprang open, to reveal a couple who Teresa vaguely recognised, waiting outside. She smiled briefly at them and then led the way towards the room. It would be easier to talk there, but her heart still thudded. How foolhardy was it to lock herself behind closed doors with a vampire?

  ‘So, “intentionally”, Zack,’ she repeated once they were alone.

  Instead of answering, he walked towards the mini fridge. He took out a whisky miniature for her and poured it into a glass, then a flask of his ‘iron shake’.

  ‘I’m so stupid … I didn’t even work out that was blood!’ She grimaced as she took a sip of her own drink and she sat down on the bed. She’d never been a whisky drinker, but these were desperate times. Clutching her glass, she stared long and hard at Zack’s throat as he took a swallow of his own ‘drink’. Dark, terrifying thoughts began to circle.

  ‘Please, for God’s sake, tell me that’s animal blood!’ The whole universe seemed to hinge on his answer. Was she just feet away from a mass murderer?

  Zack frowned. ‘It is … and you did, actually …’ He put aside his flask, as if he’d lost his appetite. ‘Work out that it was blood, that is.’

  Layers of shock piled on one another. Teresa drank more whisky, not tasting it.

  Slowly, he shook his head, lingering across the room from her as if he daren’t approach.

  ‘What do you mean, Zack?’

  ‘This is so complicated … so hard to put into words. What’s happened to me, the way I am – and the stupid, selfish things I’ve done.’ He studied his long narrow hands for a moment, running the pad of his thumb across a nail, then suddenly made a strange elegant gesture, a kind of pass.

  Accompanied by that elusive, silvery humming in her ears, images, impressions, sensations all flooded in. Blanked out memories and exquisite, unearthly pleasure.

  ‘You bastard!’

  Teresa flew across the room as if she was the one with vampire powers. Fired by confusion and fury, she thumped and beat at Zack’s chest and shoulders. It was like belabouring a statue made of granite. He didn’t lift his arms to protect himself. He just took it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered when the energy had gone out of her, and she stomped back across the room, retrieved her glass and sloshed down more whisky.

  ‘How could you?’

  Deflated, Teresa slumped, and let her jumbled emotions settle.

  She felt bemused, still angry, slightly betrayed, and bizarrely, as before, she suddenly wanted to laugh.

  She’d just beat up a supernatural being who could probably snap her neck in a heartbeat – and she’d got away with it. Eat your heart out, Buffy.

  ‘So why the mind-games?’ Across the room, Zack was standing just as she’d left him, but he winced visibly at her words.

  ‘Because, if I’d let you see the truth, you wouldn’t have stayed in my house.’ He seemed to have regained his beautiful stillness. Something Teresa realised now stemmed in part from the fact he didn’t breathe and his chest never moved. ‘And if I’d let you remember me touching you, you’d have remembered the biting too.’

  His gaunt face was tormented and whiter than usual, if that were possible. Self-recrimination made his eyes darkly haunted.

  Teresa put down her glass again, and held out her hand to him as her muddled feelings dropped into place like the tumblers of a lock. She was afraid of his strangeness, and the fact that he was fiction and magic made real. But he was still Zack, and she still wanted him – and loved him.

  Despite everything he’d just admitted, he was a troubled soul and she wanted to hold him and comfort him and soothe him. For all his supernatural potency and his sly mind-warping powers, he was still that lost innocent boy she’d always dreamed of. Still the beautiful virgin she’d longed to initiate.

  How she knew this, she hadn’t the faintest idea. Maybe it was vampire telepathy, working in reverse?

  ‘Come here.’ She slid her free hand across the bedspread. ‘You’re obviously able to control yourself.’

  Zack’s eyes were troubled, but unexpectedly he complied, striding across the room and sitting down beside her.

  ‘I’m not so sure of that,’ he said, as she reached for his cool hand.

  He looked away for a moment, then squared his shoulders and turned to face her again. He took her hand, turned it over and then folded it into his. The process was almost a transformation, the drawing upon an inner strength and dignity to face a crisis. Something he must have done before, many times, to survive.

  ‘The thing is –’ his fingers traced her palm ‘– for my kind, lust and bloodlust are two sides of the same coin. One triggers the other. I don’t want to harm anybody. I don’t want to damage anybody. So to avoid one, I have to avoid both.’

  ‘But you’ve been experimenting, haven’t you? With me.’

  For a being that didn’t need to breathe, Zack sighed heavily and looked towards the ceiling.

  ‘I’m not sorry.’ When he looked at her again, his smile was a chiaroscuro of emotion. She saw remorse, and genuine penitence, but also the slow impish beginnings of seductio
n, like a naughty but very grown-up boy beginning to flex his sexual powers, ‘You’re beautiful … and I adore you. I wanted to give you pleasure.’ He paused and heaved another faux vampire sigh. ‘But it’s not safe. I might not be able to hold back another time.’

  ‘How do you know unless you try?’

  Teresa’s heart was thudding fit to burst. This was the most dangerous thing she’d ever done – but she’d never wanted anything more intensely in her life.

  Zack’s eyes glittered, brilliant with those conflicting emotions. But Teresa knew she was winning. The fine line of red around his blue irises told her so. ‘Teresa, this isn’t a game. I could easily kill you.’ He ran his tongue around his lips, then over the edges of his teeth – checking. ‘And I’m … well … not experienced. It’ll be like handing a learner driver the keys of a Lamborghini.’

  ‘But you’re not going to learn anything – least of all how to master your darker urges – if you don’t try, are you?’

  Are you sure? he seemed to ask silently. His eyes were changing, changing, even as she watched him, and his white fangs were already sharp points of danger.

  ‘Don’t worry … if you get out of hand, I’ll just knee you in the groin,’ Teresa answered, ‘that’s usually guaranteed to stop any man … alive or dead, hopefully.’

  Tired of bargaining and coaxing, she released Zack’s hand and slid her own up his arm and around the back of his head, drawing him to her. As their lips met, his suppressed growl rang in her brain.

  With his tongue in her mouth, he tipped her backwards onto the bed, pushing her effortlessly across its width and moving over her.

  The taste of his mouth was astonishing – both exotic and familiar – and the brush of his extended canines set her nerves shivering with a delicious sense of peril. She felt it tingling in every part of her body, not only against the tender inner skin of her lip. She pressed her tongue back against his, daring to flick swiftly at the sharp points.

  As she tasted the tiniest drop of blood, her sex clenched and Zack growled, his hips rocking.

  Still kissing, they tugged at their clothes, the tangling and fumbling only adding to the thrill of struggle. Shoes clomped onto the floor, and cotton, silk and high-quality suiting all went flying into heaps, willy-nilly. As the pieces came off, they paused to press skin to skin, and it wasn’t only Zack who made unearthly sounds of hunger.

  Naked on the bed, he was an object of pure beauty. His skin was milky pale but had an exquisitely dense sheen like polished marble. Muscles in fine long slabs adorned his arms, his torso and his thighs.

  His cock was astonishing. Large, jutting, fiercely hard, it reared up from his body, silky and seeping and rosy pink.

  ‘I thought your sort didn’t have circulation … how does this come about?’ She ran her fingertips along it, making him hiss and clench his jaw. A tiny trickle of his own blood stained his lip as he bit down.

  ‘It’s not circulation – just hydraulics.’ His voice was low and ragged. ‘I don’t know how it works but right now I’m just glad it does!’

  Tipping her back on the bed, he started to explore, his cool fingertips travelling over her body in sweeps that were both hungry and tentative. Again, she got a strong impression that he was in brand new territory, that he was a novice – but one whose powers of instinct and empathy were phenomenal. Maybe it was something to do with what he was? And he could read her feelings and her thoughts? Whatever it was, his touch was perfect without any need for coaching.

  Teresa trembled as his mouth began to move on her. Studiously avoiding her neck, he kissed first the line of her jaw, and then darted straight to the curve of her breast, his cool tongue flicking out and tasting her skin. The short, scurrying licks flickered around her nipple, but didn’t settle on it. Round and round he went, skirting the sensitive areola but not closing on it.

  You teasing devil. Teresa slithered against the quilt, unable to keep her hips still. Every part of her wanted him. She groaned out loud, gripping his strong shoulders, her nails digging into his astonishingly hard muscles.

  And then he sucked, hard, on the tip of her breast, his lips pulling, his tongue circling like a rude little serpent.

  ‘Oh God!’ she gasped, her molten core rippling as his mouth moved instinctively. She pushed her hips against him, her sex blindly seeking his. Her hands roved over his magnificent back, his flanks and his bottom.

  Her body seemed to shout with hunger as his lips parted and she felt the prickle of his fang-tips against the crown of her breast.

  Bite me. Please bite me, her mind screamed.

  It was madness, sex and yet not sex. Grabbing at him, Teresa’s mind grabbed at something indefinable, other, far greater than the fleeing confluence of their bodies. A sense of yearning flooded through her, the longing for a communion that was immense and monumental, beyond time itself.

  Zack jerked back.

  ‘No!’ he gasped. ‘I can’t … I shouldn’t …’ He shook his head, his dark curls tossing. ‘I don’t care if I live a thousand years and never have a woman!’

  The concept she’d been reaching for, dissolved like mist, and despite her desire, Teresa reached up to touch Zack’s dear face, frowning as she processed his words.

  ‘Zack, love, what do you mean? What do you mean “never have a woman”?’

  How could that be? He was beautiful, exotic, and virile – with hypnotic powers into the bargain – how could he not have had scores of lovers in an unnaturally long life? She’d relished her ‘virgin male’ fantasies. But surely that was all they were – fantasies.

  Sitting up, he turned away from her, his white back a wall of tension.

  ‘It means just what you think it means.’ He lifted his hands, smoothed them over his hair, gripping the thick, shiny curls at the back of his neck. Letting his hands fall again, he turned back towards her. ‘I’ve never been with a woman. I’ve never dared.’

  Teresa sat up too, reaching for him. Despite the high sharp thrill of his admission, it was sympathy she felt most strongly. What kind of torment must his long life as a vampire be? He had a soul. He was a good man. And his principles had prevented him from ever putting a woman at risk. Even if the woman wanted that risk.

  I love you. The thought popped into her head.

  So impossible, but she felt it, and knew that the emotion had been with her a long time – probably as long as she’d known him. And all the time her heart had secretly recognised his sacrifice.

  But she was still curious.

  ‘What about before? Wasn’t there anybody then?’ But when was before? ‘How long have you been a vampire?’

  Zack seemed to relax. He flashed her a wry, boyish smile.

  ‘I was turned back in the 1930s, so that would mean that I’ve been what I’ve been for seventy years, although I’ve tried not to keep count.’

  ‘But they had girls in the 1930s, didn’t they?’ Teresa smiled back at him, ‘I mean … well, you look about twenty-five. Surely at that age you had girlfriends? What the hell happened to you?’

  The thought of Zack with other women gave her a bit of a stab, even though they were most likely dead by now.

  ‘I was a novice in a Benedictine monastery, Teresa. Pure as the driven snow, you might say.’ He laughed, a shrug lifting his finely formed shoulders.

  ‘Crikey!’

  ‘Crikey indeed,’ he intoned, still smiling, ‘although after I became a vampire my religious faith took quite a knock.’

  Teresa made a decision. It was perilous and foolhardy, but there was no way she was going to let this glorious man deny himself any longer.

  And she wanted him more than ever. A thousandfold.

  ‘You’ve got to trust yourself, Zack. You’re a good man, despite the fangs.’ She inclined herself towards him and kissed the corner of his mouth. His fangs had retracted a little but she could still feel their points as she pressed her lips against his. ‘And I believe you can control yourself.’ She kissed the other corner
of his mouth, flicking her tongue between his lips, seeking out the sharp badge of his condition. ‘I’ll help …’

  His arms came around her, cool-skinned, yet warm in intent. He was shaking, and she imagined tears like jewels trickling down his beautiful face. A moment later she felt the moisture against her cheek.

  They kissed again. Slowly at first, yet growing wilder and wilder with every second. Teresa felt free and confident and full of desire, stirred to elation by this miracle of a man, who was her dearest fantasy, and yet so very, very, very much more.

  And Zack relaxed at last. She could feel him smiling as he kissed her, his lips curving against her skin, even as his fangs slid against it.

  ‘If I start to bite, don’t forget that knee in the groin.’ He was laughing as she slid her sex up and down the muscular length of his thigh, loving the friction as she curled her fingers around his chilly but magnificent cock.

  ‘I’ve thought of that.’

  And she had. It was perfect. Rising up over him, she pushed him down onto his back against the covers. He looked like some kind of crooked angel with his dark curls against the crisp white cotton pillowcase.

  ‘I just want you to lie back and think of Transylvania!’ She swirled the tip of her finger around the head of his penis, and watched him snarl silently, his upper lip curling to reveal the strange beauty of his fully extended fangs. They were awesome, but she wasn’t going to allow him to make a mistake with them.

  How long would a man who’d been waiting seventy years for sex be able to last, she wondered. Especially one who had vampire fire burning in his blood?

  Still touching his penis, she lowered her lips towards it. Forming an ‘O’ she guided him safely in.

  So cool. So hard. So sweet and clean, not at all like any man she’d ever sucked.

  ‘Oh, God, Teresa!’

  Zack’s voice was plaintive. Full of wonder. She imagined him masturbating, perhaps frequently, but if he’d never been with a woman this would be a revelation. She let her tongue dance, exploring his sumptuously flared shape, while out of the corner of her eye, she watched him writhe and tear at the bedclothes, his face contorted and his eyes crimson red.