“But he . . . he obviously loves you.” She could almost hear the fumbling littleness in the back of her throat. Not to mention that terrible tang of patronization—God, the look on his face when he registered that. He looked like he wanted to throw up something corrosive all over her, and even when he’d gotten that feeling under control, there was another awful one to take its place.
“Not as he loves you,” he said, with so much bitter desperation she almost couldn’t answer. The words were an ice storm, pushing her back and back.
But she fought her way through.
“You can’t know that for sure. You can’t just rely on some mystical vampire bullshit. I won’t rely on some mystical vampire bullshit. If you want me gone, I will go away.”
“Then you will most likely die. Or kill everyone you ever cared for, before you can stop yourself. There was a chance at first that you might get over this and carry on, but I see now that the fever is probably too deep. The infection is too great. If you leave, the bond between you and Ezekiel will turn you mad, whether you fully become what we are or not. Even I cannot leave you to such a fate.”
He seemed to struggle with the last words, but that was understandable.
She struggled with them too. The situation was difficult enough without the sudden sparking realization that sentiment produced. He cared about her. Maybe not in a normal way, with hearts and flowers and kind gestures—but it was there nonetheless. A kernel of concern, buried deep beneath layers of ancient frost and frigid feelings, as terrifying and amazing as true love would have been in anyone else.
And he seemed to know it. He seemed to want to take it back once he saw her expression—probably as soft as pudding and twice as pathetic. His lips parted; his cold eyes flashed with understanding of his mistake. Then she jumped in, with the only thing that would silence him.
“Then we’ll find a way to work through this, for all of us.” She thrilled to see it have the desired effect. In particular, the word all seemed to really strike him, confusion and doubt immediately warring over his usually so composed features. Maybe we could, that expression seemed to say. Maybe that is the way.
He even questioned her in a wondering, near-hopeful sort of voice—so much smaller and less certain than his usual one, and so much more heartening.
“Why would you want to do such a thing? Do you not hate me?” He spoke as though her opinion actually mattered. More than that, in fact—her opinion mattered so much he almost sounded afraid to hear her answer. His brows nearly met in the middle, and for a moment those eyes were not the eyes of an ancient and cold creature.
They were full of a kind of anxiety.
One she was happy to assuage in any way she could.
“I don’t think you’re half as awful as you would have people believe,” she said, sure and certain it was the right sentiment. He didn’t want her to hate him. He wanted to be something else in her eyes—she could see it.
But that only made his reaction all the more confusing.
He took a step back, as though she’d lashed out at him. And the step itself wasn’t as graceful as he usually was. He almost seemed to stumble—a fact that appeared as shocking to him as it did to her. He actually looked down at his right leg in horror, as if the thing no longer belonged to him.
And when he finally spoke he sounded distressed.
Distressed, she thought, and also possibly crazy.
“I have just realized I must leave,” he said, which was very odd for a number of reasons. To start, Merrick was not the kind of vampire to make excuses before he left a room. The room usually had to make excuses for not being up to his standards. And then there was how weird the excuse itself actually was.
What on earth did he have to leave for?
Was there another chained-up vampire somewhere, waiting to challenge his self-perception? Maybe he had love rivals secreted all over the place, and that was the real reason he looked so perturbed. It couldn’t be her alone. It couldn’t possibly be her alone.
She suspected it was her alone.
“Merrick, maybe we should talk—”
“No, I have to go. Good day, madam.”
She could see he wished he hadn’t said madam. Or possibly even good day.
But that was okay. She wished she hadn’t said anything either—though maybe not for the reasons she would have thought. She should have felt bad about making him rush back up the stairs, or maybe awkward about this or that. Instead a rush of weird warmth went through her to see him be like this and hear him say such odd things, and the second it did she knew her mistake. She knew she shouldn’t have pushed.
Now she didn’t just want to help him.
Now she had feelings for him.
Now she liked him, God help her.
She vowed to talk to him again the next day, but he didn’t come. He didn’t come for a good deal of time after that, to the point where she started to wonder how long it would take for a vampire to die of starvation or thirst. She wasn’t hungry for anything other than blood, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe without any food at all her body would simply start to mummify, until she looked like the big doll that stood in the corner of the basement.
The one she kind of wanted to examine, in case that was the last person Merrick had gotten upset with. She didn’t think it was, considering the glass eyes and the straw hands. But somehow the presence of glass eyes and straw hands were not a comfort. Nothing was a comfort anymore, and not only because of the blood sizzling in her veins and the pain and the constant oppressive ache for Zeke.
Now she had this other thing to deal with.
This other thing that somehow seemed even more difficult than weird vampire problems and lust so intense she often woke to find herself humping the nearest random object. One day it was almost definitely going to be the doll, yet still the Merrick problem trumped it. The Merrick problem was worse than the idea of humping a creepy doll.
She could hardly fathom that, yet it remained true. Even after he finally decided to come down and see her again, she couldn’t say any of the things she had planned. He looked too raw—as though someone had flayed a layer of skin off him while he slept. Now he had woken into a world where people could just do that stuff to him, and he quite clearly didn’t like it. He didn’t like it to such an extent she could have sworn his hands were shaking as he laid out a clean nightdress on the table by the wall.
But that was impossible, wasn’t it? She doubted he flinched over a stab wound. Mobs of villagers had probably threatened to behead him before today, and the most he’d managed in response was a faint lip curl. Why was this such a problem? She didn’t even know what this was. At best she would have described their last meeting as mildly embarrassing, with a side of sudden unintentional liking.
What was bad about that?
So she liked him, so what. Most people would probably like a vampire with self-perception issues and cheekbones up to Jesus. It wasn’t such an odd thing—not even if he liked her back. Even coldhearted vampires liked people back when they unexpectedly said nice things to him, and she wasn’t sure why he found that so odd. It didn’t mean they were married or anything. She wasn’t going to attack him in the night with her vagina.
The whole thing was ridiculous really—so ridiculous that she grew impatient with him. She grew impatient, and then did a very silly thing. Of course she knew it was silly before she did it, but not to the extent it actually turned out to be. She thought he would maybe be mad that she had dared to reach out and snag his arm. She imagined him snarling at her for demanding his attention. She was even prepared for all of those things.
She was not prepared for the thing that actually happened.
Her bare skin just barely brushed his bare skin, and some kind of nuclear blast went through her. For a second she thought he had hit her in the gut, but realizing he hadn’t wasn’t any better. She was still doubled over. Her body carried right on buzzing in this horrendous and unbearable manner. The onl
y way she could describe it was like biting down on tinfoil, only everywhere, and that wasn’t even the most horrifying part.
The same thing was happening to him.
She could tell it was, despite how hard he was trying to deal with it in a more dignified manner. He clenched his jaw so tight she could practically hear the bones squeaking. Every muscle in his face worked toward keeping his eyes at a reasonable size, and his hands made the most desperate-looking fists. But no matter what he did, she knew the feeling was there.
She knew because she had felt it before.
She felt it all the time now, to varying degrees. The only difference really was in the size of the sensation, which had previously seemed pretty enormous. But now she saw how mistaken she had been. That piddling paltry fever was nothing compared to this. This was a tsunami. This was putting the lights on only to discover the monster was real all along—and not just because she was practically on the floor in some kind agonized ecstasy.
She didn’t care that she was on the floor in agonized ecstasy.
She cared that this was happening because of Merrick.
And he definitely cared that it was happening because of her. After a moment of admirable restraint, he actually moaned the word no. He took three steps back, as though three steps would make it magically go away. Then when it didn’t, he tried a different tactic.
He tried a really insane tactic.
“How have you done this, witch?” he asked, but she could hardly fault him for it. She was wondering the same thing. Hadn’t he said that there is only ever one fever? And even if he was a complete idiot, the clichés were definitely on his side. Every book about fated vampire love said almost the exact same thing.
You could only have one true love, or one true mate, or one magical blood bond.
If you had two, your vagina exploded—or so it seemed. Something terrible was definitely going on down there, at the very least. Now that the initial brutal shock wave had died down, the ache between her legs was pretty much all she could feel. It thrummed away over the top of more reasonable thoughts like This is really awful and Maybe we should apologize and pushed her toward actions she absolutely did not want to do.
She did not want to reach out for him again. That would have been the height of insanity, considering his anger and her many misgivings about the whole thing. Yet somehow, she was doing it anyway. It was like blanking on her own sense of self. She knew what her self looked like and could remember how it usually behaved, but in that fevered moment she couldn’t place it. All she could think was how much she wanted him and needed to be near him, and most of all by God, she craved his hand between her legs.
Anything would have done in fact. His mouth, dear Lord his mouth, that mean mouth, that wicked tongue, oh yes if he could just use it to lick her, to lick her unbearably swollen clit and her wet and wanting hole yes, yes, surely he could. Surely he understood.
Of course he didn’t at all.
He took one look at her reaching hand and writhing, wretched body, and ran.
She wasn’t above begging, by this point. It seemed foolish to carry on thinking she was, considering the circumstances. Last time Merrick had seen her she’d hypnotized him with her magical vagina and then crawled on the floor to him with her arms outstretched, while probably moaning. You couldn’t get much lower than that.
So who really cared if he heard her pleading for mercy? What did it matter if she spent all day writhing around on the floor with her nightdress around her waist? She would have licked his bootheel for a bit of relief. In her head she did lick his bootheel.
She thought of every lewd thing she could to try to get at that final, blissful orgasm, and when she exhausted all the normal stuff she simply moved on to the darkest dirtiest stuff that she’d never dared to entertain. She thought of one of them fucking her ass and the other fucking her pussy, and when even that wasn’t enough she tried going weirder.
She imagined Merrick forcing her to lick his ass while Zeke watched, everyone upside down and back to front, people fucking mouths with all kinds of body parts, cocks spurting come almost everywhere, but none of it helped in the slightest. It only seemed to get her hotter, and wetter, and more frustrated. Several times she came close to snapping the chain—because really what did it matter now?
Why did she have to resist anything? She was never going to be human again. She was no longer standing in the way of true love. They were all apparently the true love of each other, so absolutely nothing was preventing her from doing whatever she wanted. It should have been the easiest thing in the world.
But if it was, then why didn’t they come to her? She was sure Merrick must have said something to Zeke—though if he had, her fine hearing hadn’t picked it up. All she could make out now was silence, ominous and unending silence. In her more lucid moments, she wondered if they’d killed each other in the wake of this new revelation, but there hadn’t been any sign of that either.
Maybe they just left, she often found herself feverishly thinking, even though she knew it was irrational. She knew it was; she knew they couldn’t just leave, yet still her exhausted, lust-addled mind fixed on the idea. She fixed on the idea so hard that when she felt a hand against the side of her face, she almost wept.
The touch was so tender, so soothing, so fully of mercy. It broke her in two, and that was before she opened her eyes and saw who was giving it to her. It would have been sweet enough if it was Zeke—after all this time her lovely Zeke, come at last—but it wasn’t.
She turned her head, and there was that cold blue gaze, seemingly softened by feelings for her he barely knew how to have. There was that face, so typically severe, now collapsing beneath the weight of whatever this was. Merrick was the one who had come, and oh that finished her off completely, completely.
Then his words did the rest.
“I want to say I came because I could not stand your pain a moment longer, but that would not be true. I came because I could not stop myself.”
That was it. Every bone in her body turned to butter. Every muscle ran right out of her and headed for pastures anew. He couldn’t stop himself. Zeke had lasted weeks, but Merrick had barely made it a few days before he simply could not stop himself.
And he meant it, too. He didn’t hesitate once the idea was out. There was no holding back after that. He fisted his hand in her hair—like some far less refined sort of man—and brought her throat to his lips.
Almost as though he wanted to kiss it, she thought, about a second before the pain. Oh the pain was bright and sharp, and so much worse than it seemed in the movies. In the movies there was always swooning, and two delicate streamers of blood. Here the blood ran thick and frightening, and she couldn’t have swooned if she’d tried.
She was too busy trying to do the same thing to him. She needed to do the same thing to him. Her incisors ached to do the same thing to him. They wanted to sink into something, anything, and when they finally found their mark it was like nothing else. She thought of long drinks of water after a thirst, and finishing five thousand mile races on one foot, but neither of those analogies seemed adequate.
They didn’t really cover how arousing the whole thing was. The best she could come up with was how a man must feel when he sinks his cock into a warm, wet cunt, but even that wasn’t good enough. Nothing would ever be good enough to describe the sense of his skin giving beneath the prick of her new teeth, the sense of him stiffening in shock, then letting her have it, and finally the flood of that rich, wonderful liquid.
She didn’t know if his blood was superior somehow, being a vampire’s, or if human blood was better. She only knew how glorious it was on her tongue, how much it sang through every fiber of her bursting body, as it sank down and down to the tips of her toes. It was like being warmed from the inside. Everything was suddenly loose and lax—or at least it was in one way. In another she was still waiting, aching, and in truth the taste only made that need even more intense.
By th
e time he pulled away—in one long sigh of pleasure, throat as bared and bloody as hers, teeth like shards of glass winking in the light, eyes like fire—her hand was back between her spread legs, working and working her slick little clit in a way that should have made her blush. It should have, but it didn’t—not even when he turned his head to look. He did it slowly too and with just a hint of accusation, like someone discovering a naughty girl in a room she shouldn’t have entered. Yet still she hardly cared.
If anything, it only deepened the thrill. She watched him watching her with kind of uncertain eyes, and almost came right then and there. She shuddered when he curled his tongue up to touch one curved fang and moaned when he cocked his head in some sort of assessing manner, so really it was no surprise that she reacted the way she did when she realized what he was going to do.
She could see him looking at her spread pussy, with intensely curious eyes. Like he hasn’t seen anything like it for a long time, she thought, or maybe never at all. He had pretty much shown her he leaned neither one way or the other, but he’d clearly stayed faithful to Zeke. How many years did that cover? How many years without knowing a woman?
She couldn’t know.
All she knew was how it felt when he bent down and breathed her in. When he looked and looked and looked at her until it seemed as though his eyes were hands, touching her before he’d even actually done it. She couldn’t blame herself for the sound of shocked delight she made.
Or the words she then used.
“Mmm, yes, taste my pussy, lick me there,” she said, and only wanted to take it back for the barest moment. Then he licked, just as she’d demanded, and the moment was gone. It was like it had never been. The person she was had never been. There was only Merrick lapping at her slippery folds until her back arched and her cunt clenched around nothing.
He was tasting her wetness, the way he had tasted her blood. He was satisfying that craving with a far ruder thing—just as she had thought of doing.
And it worked. She knew it worked. She knew because after a while she found herself tearing at his clothes, desperate for that exact same thing, and the second she worked them free and got to him—the moment she took him in her mouth—that satisfaction went through her too. Her whole body went warm again, and that tingling feverish feeling intensified.
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