He came with a growl and then whispered her name as he filled her, bringing on another climax for Rose. With a sigh, he sank down over her and buried his face in her neck. “Thank you, my Rose.”
She smiled against his muscular shoulder and let him roll her over until she lay sprawled on him. She traced a path over his tattooed chest with her fingers until he caught them beneath his own.
“If you touch me like that, I’ll want you again.”
She regarded him seriously. “I don’t mind. You’re not one of these men who only gets it up once a night, are you?”
His body shook with laughter, and he placed her hand over his newly erect cock. “I’m not quite sure what that means but I’m always eager for more. I was trying to be considerate.” She squeezed his shaft quite hard and his ivy green gaze narrowed on her face. “By the gods, touch me like that again.”
“I can do better than that.” Rose shimmied lower until she crouched between his legs and wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft. He shifted up the bed until he could look at her. Slowly, she used her tongue to lick a salacious circle around the crown of his cock. “I dreamed of doing this to you: did you dream it too?”
“Aye,” he whispered. “And much more, and yet still you offer me more than I could ever have imagined.”
She drew him deeper until the crown of his cock filled her mouth like a ripe plum and then deeper still until he groaned her name and tried to ease himself even farther down her throat. She took all of him in and continued to suck until he was thrashing on the sheets and arching his back. With a rough sound he grabbed her around the waist and flipped her around. He entered her from behind, one hand locked around her hips, the other braced on the sheets as he thrust into her.
Rose climaxed with a fierceness that surprised her and then again, until her existence narrowed to the slap of his flesh against hers and the incredible sensations roaring through her body. His movements became shorter and less fluid and he came hard, roaring his triumph as he brought them both down to the bed.
After a little while, he moved off her and gathered her against his chest again. “You are a miracle, my Rose. You are everything I dreamed you would be.”
“Do you dream of many women?”
He stroked her hair. “It is true that I pass through many people’s dreams, but only a few women respond to me and can meet me there.”
“How many?”
His laughter was a slow rumble against her ear. “Over the past ten centuries, maybe half a dozen.”
Rose raised her head to look at him. “Ten centuries? This house is only a hundred years old.”
“But my stone came from a quarry in Eire where my race, the Stone Walkers, came into existence many millennia ago.”
“But why didn’t anyone else see the carving?”
“Because only those we dreamwalk with can do that—and the chances of us meeting are slim. I have been trying to coax you over those walls for three years.”
She snuggled against him. “I was so unhappy tonight. I wanted to escape.”
“And that is why you found me. Your emotions were very strong.” He hesitated. “I wanted to break out of the stone and come to you.”
Rose levered herself up again so that she could look down at his beautiful flushed face, tangled black hair, and compelling green eyes. “Can you ever be free of the stone?”
“Some can merge and leave the stone at will.” A hint of sadness passed over his face. “But it requires a willing sacrifice.”
“What kind of sacrifice?”
He looked at her steadily. “A life. My gods are ancient and believe in blood sacrifice. I am not inclined to ask that of anyone.” He reached up and drew her back down to him. “What I do ask, is that you will share this night with me. It will leave me with many happy memories when I return to the stone.”
Rose stared at his calm face. What could she say? He asked for so little, and yet she wished she could give him so much more.
He smiled and brushed her cheek with his fingertip. “Don’t cry for me, my Rose. You have given me more joy this night than I’ve had in a thousand years.”
She swallowed down her grief that she’d finally met the man of her dreams, and he was unable to stay with her. If they only had the one night, she would enjoy it and take it with her into a new life. With a sigh, she kissed his luscious mouth and allowed him to draw her back into his arms.
Rose woke up to the roar and grind of machinery and leapt out of bed and found her clothes. She grabbed her backpack and ran down the stairs only to find herself surrounded by a lethal mass of mechanical machines and the sound of destruction. She ran up to the first man she saw and tried to shout above the noise.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re knocking this place down, Miss. You shouldn’t be here.”
She grabbed his arm. “You can’t do that! There’s a man up there in the tower!” She pointed up at the small window.
With a curse, the man shook her off and marched over to another group of guys all wearing hardhats. Rose followed on his heels. “Boss. Lady says there’s a man up there in the tower.”
“What?” yelled the oldest and obviously most senior man. He glared at Rose. “There’s no door in that tower. There’s no one up there.” He looked around impatiently. “Find someone to escort this young woman off the premises.”
Rose protested, but no one took any notice. Before anyone could stop her, she ran back toward the tower, but the door had disappeared. Where was Camalus? Behind her, a shout went up and she swallowed down the sobs tearing at her throat. The wrecking ball was slowly winding back and headed straight for the tower. As the tower reeled and crumpled from the impact of the huge weight, Rose heard him whisper good-bye.
Without thought for her safety, she ran toward the now half-ruined tower and scrabbled through the stones, her fingers bleeding from the sharp unforgiving shards. Hard hands descended on her shoulders and she shook them off.
“Miss, get the fuck out of here! Are you nuts?”
She ignored the voice and crawled farther into the damaged tower. “Where are you?”
“Rose?”
She found what she was looking for, folded it into her arms and avoiding the angry looking guy, sprinted for the driveway. No one followed her. When she reached the gates she paused and slowly uncovered the stone face she had pressed to her breasts.
There was nothing on the stone. It was as blank as her future. With a hopeless cry Rose sank down onto her knees and started to cry.
“That was a very dangerous thing to do, my Rose. You could’ve been killed.”
With a gasp, she spun around to see Camalus sitting crosslegged on the grass behind her. The joy in his face was as glorious as the morning sun.
“You…are here?”
“I am, thanks to you.” He touched her bloodied cheek. “You were prepared to sacrifice your life for me. My gods obviously approved.”
“Are you able to go back into the stone at will now?”
His smile died. “Why, do you wish me to leave?”
She studied his muscular body. There were going to be many problems ahead, but she didn’t want to think of them right now. But at least one thing had to be addressed. “You’re naked.”
“And you do not wish to look upon me?”
“I wish to look upon you very much, but I’m not sure everyone else will approve.” She hesitated as he sighed and reluctantly eyed the stone. “You will be able to get out of there again, won’t you?”
“If you kiss me, I’m sure I will.”
“Then let’s go and get my stuff and plan what to do next.”
He winked at her. “Don’t worry, Rose. I have a few abilities you haven’t seen yet. We’ll survive.”
Somehow, she didn’t doubt it.
LUST AS OLD AS US
Madeline Moore
I used to be able to summon him by calling his name: “Zack!” He’d show up; a tall, pale, beautiful youth, wi
th long black hair and twinkling obsidian eyes. That was in the distant past. My distant past, that is. The last time we were together he said he’d leave me to figure things out in my own time, and a lot of that sort of time has passed.
I wanted other things: marriage and children. I wanted sunlight, food and drink. I wanted to age and die and go to heaven. I was young.
We met when I was still a student. He was attracted by my wild spirit and pure blood, also by my yellow hair. Zack liked blondes. He liked to drain the roses from their cheeks. It amused him. My experience with vampires, which is limited to him, is that above all, except blood-satiation, they like to be amused. I suppose after a few hundred years all this Sturm und Drang must get old.
We met and he bought me drinks, and we went to my dorm and had sex. It was fast and dirty, the way I liked it then. I was drunk but not so drunk I didn’t remember to make him wear protection. He laughed, but he did as I asked.
I’d had sex before but not a lot and never like that. It was hallucinogenic. Our shapes were outlined with thin, bright bands, as if our auras were visible. Each sensation was multiplied a hundredfold. His lips, violently red against the pallor of his skin, were soft as petals on mine, but the kisses made my knees quake and my pussy twitch. I half suspected he’d spiked my drinks, yet I knew I wasn’t drugged. I felt sure: sure of myself and him, sure of the passion we were creating with frenzied licks and caresses followed by a hard fuck; this passion that was so strong it was like another entity in the room. I was sure that it was real.
After my orgasm had ripped through me and his had jerked through him, I wanted sleep but he was restless. He said he’d have to go soon. I asked why, and he told me. “I’m a vampire.”
“Oh, ha ha,” followed. And so on. He did a few tricks: made his shadow lurk and leap without moving his body, blew out the candles and reignited them with a flick of his wrist. I wasn’t convinced. He put my hand to his hairless, naked chest so I could feel his lack of heartbeat and bared his teeth to show me how he could make his canines grow huge and pointed at will.
Then I believed. “Oh, my god,” and so on, double takes and gaping.
I covered myself with a sheet.
When I did that, tried to protect myself, his black eyes went dead. “You’re afraid,” he said. “You don’t trust me, even though we just made love.”
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.
“Stupid Lisa.” He put his clothes on, just like a regular guy—jeans and T-shirt and boots. “I don’t kill people. Life kills people.” He mimed a phone receiver with his hand. “Call me,” he mouthed. Whoosh. Gone.
There wasn’t much sleep for me that night, after all. I was a loner, so I didn’t really have anyone to tell, even if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t. I was different, now, really different. I’d had sex with a vampire. No, according to him, I’d made love with a vampire. My world had always seemed lackluster but now it was gray. Zack’s cherry lips seemed the only bright spot in a colorless life.
A few nights later I called his name. When he arrived his lips were scarlet, slick with blood. “I came as soon as I could,” he said. “I had to feed first. For your protection.”
I actually laughed. “Thanks,” I said.
Zack and I made love again. It was huge. I don’t mean his cock was huge, although it was big enough: it was gorgeous, pale and smooth, rising from a patch of black pubic hair; proud, it seemed to me, just as proud as he was. My own shaft, small, pink, soft, seemed to rise to meet his. My clit swelled, before he even took it in his mouth. Eager, we were both so eager for it, wild for each other.
I asked him to wipe his mouth before he went down on me. This was in the mid-eighties, when everyone was scared of AIDS. He laughed. “I don’t drink tainted blood,” he said. He wiped his mouth anyway.
He devoured my cunt but I wasn’t afraid, or at least, not in a way that turned me off. A part of me knew he wouldn’t sink a fang into my defenseless clit. The rest of me feared it and ached for it equally. It made me crazy. I whipped my head from side to side, lashing the pillow with my hair.
“No!” I screamed, “No!” He didn’t hesitate. He knew I didn’t want him to stop. And this was only our second time together. He kept going, keeping a rhythm that was just fast enough to make me come, no faster. It took a long time. The orgasm, when it finally took flight, was so powerful it almost hurt.
Postorgasmically I was usually rubbery all over, so I’d stretch out and revel in a sense of freedom. But this time I curled into a ball, as if to hold myself together. I didn’t feel free. I felt possessed. It was great.
Zack stuck the tip of his penis in my ear, a playful reminder that only one of us was blissed. I laughed. It was so silly.
I said so, although I used Zs to match his name. “Oh, Zack, you are zo zilly.”
He took advantage of my moving lips by nudging them with the head of his cock. I took it in my mouth and reciprocated, blowing him long and slow, toying with his small, tight balls in their smooth-as-suede sack. I massaged the entrance to his ass with the pad of my finger. When he moaned in delight I pushed my finger all the way inside. I’d never met a man who wanted his ass played with. Most vampires are bisexual but I didn’t know that, then. When he came in my mouth there was lots of ejaculate but it was thin, with the consistency of water and the clarity to match: vampire come.
We shared that congratulatory afterglow that is the privilege of couples who are really good in bed. He said he never lied. He said he was sterile, so we needn’t use protection. He said he loved me.
Zack left before dawn, but he was back before midnight. We were lovers, now.
My grades suffered, but I didn’t care. I lived for those wild nights of passion and the shocking, terrible tales he told when we were sated and the sky was still black.
Zack was about a hundred years old when we met; young, for a vampire. He’d been taken as a teenager, without his consent, by a vicious old vamp. “I was raped,” Zack said, calmly. “He fucked me, against my will, sucked my blood, against my will, and made me suck his.”
He looked in his early twenties. He explained that vampires age, but very slowly. His lip curled with contempt when he talked about the vampire who’d taken him. “His nails were long and yellow, he was bald, his skin was like silver birch bark. He was still strong enough to force me, but he was ancient.” Zack seemed to resent the vampire’s advanced years more than the actual attack, or the change that resulted from it.
I asked if he liked being a vampire.
He shrugged. “I’m used to it,” he said. “There are advantages, like my youth and beauty.”
I giggled. He was matter-of-fact about his extreme vanity, the same as he was, I’d come to learn, about everything.
“I’ve never taken anyone, by force or otherwise,” he continued. “I believe it comes with responsibility, which I haven’t wanted. Until now.”
I shuddered. He loved to make me shudder, running his long, elegant fingers down my spine or blowing on my neck or saying scary, undead things.
Little by little I found out everything about him. How he fed, a nibble here and a nibble there. Where he’d lived, which was everywhere in the world, and what he had seen, which was a lot. Sometimes, when he talked of human beings, his eyelids would hood with contempt. He didn’t like us much. I was the exception.
One night, he said, “I want you as my mate.” It was a simple statement. He said everything, however horrible or wonderful, in the same manner. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said. My green eyes glittered with tears. “But I love my family, too. I love life.”
“Do you?” He glanced around my dorm room, smirking. “This little room, your classes with your small-minded teachers. I can give you the world.”
To prove it he brought me gifts, jewelry and art. I made him stop. I didn’t know where they’d come from, how he’d acquired them. I was afraid of the consequences, should I be caught with them.
“Zil
ly.” He gathered me in his arms. He was slender but he was tremendously strong. “No one can hurt you now.”
Time passed. I wore black. I didn’t eat much. My appetite was for Zack, not food. I hungered for his love. I avoided looking in the mirror, fearful that some day my reflection would be gone.
He hungered for my blood. I knew it. Sometimes I’d fall asleep in his arms and when I’d awaken he’d be watching me, his nostrils flared. I became jealous of the women he fed on. I wanted their names, I wanted to know why her? And her? He rarely fed on men. He fed every night, before he came to me.
Word got out. Questions were asked. My parents came to visit and found me, wan and distracted, dripping with gold. More questions.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t come to my graduation. Or meet my parents or spend the night or share a meal. When I left the dorm, diploma in hand, I decided to leave him, too. As if a vampire can be left by a flight home or forgotten as one forgets what one learned in class.
He came to my parents’ house in Chicago, unbidden. I looked out the window and there he was, in the oak tree, like a long, skinny, wingless bat. His eyes were dull with despair. Still, I shook my head. He mimed a phone call. “Call me.” He didn’t sprout wings and fly away, but he was gone.
I got a job in a goth nightclub, the kind of place Zack would hate. I drank too much and tried a few drugs, which didn’t seem to have the effect on me that they had on other people. I didn’t want to hallucinate; it wasn’t the same as sex with Zack. Drugs made me nervous, not happy. Profound discontent settled in, which was the general attitude of my contemporaries. I envied the hippies and the radicals but not enough to get involved in peace or revolution. I wanted my vampire back.
One night, a bunch of us built a campfire on Albion Beach. It was the end of summer. Lake Michigan is big and cold but a few brave souls waded in. Not me. I stood close to the fire and watched the partiers and the stars and wailed, inwardly, for my man, or my creature, for Zack, whatever he was.
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