The Last Girl

by Kitty Thomas

  I feel a moment of panic, knowing that if we need stronger music, it’s because something extreme is about to happen to me, but the panic is followed by relief that he doesn’t want what he’s planned to hurt. He continues to comfort me, then the music changes. It still has an electronica feel, but it’s slower, deeper, the pulsing closer to that of a human heartbeat.

  It pulls me under and everything inside me relaxes. The only equivalent feeling I can express is that it’s like a drug, similar to the feeling of being fed on, but slightly different and infinitely more powerful. My mind is filled with thoughts of compliance. I’ll happily let him do anything. The music is so intense that this private admission doesn’t even frighten me.

  He removes the glass toy and begins to work a finger inside me, then two, then three. As each additional finger is added, I easily and willingly accommodate him.

  “You’re going to be a good girl for me and take my whole fist inside you, aren’t you, pet?”

  “Yes, Master.” Not even a moment’s hesitation. My voice comes out a breathy sigh as I give him my verbal acquiescence. The idea sounds great to me. I’m not sure if it shouldn’t.

  “So you will relax and accept me, yes pet?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  His verbal command is needless. The music has taken me so far under that I’m riding it like a wave, flowing with it, interweaving, becoming one thing. The music is me and I am the music. Every muscle inside me relaxes. I’m vaguely aware that the most difficult part of this is relaxation, a job Christian has done for me by simply changing the music.

  I imagine a thousand vampires at once staring into my eyes, ordering me to relax and accept. My body can do nothing but follow that command. There is too much power to resist.

  A fourth finger finds its way into me, stretching me impossibly wider.

  “This will be easy with you so relaxed, pet. Don’t think about it, just let me inside you.”

  I feel a cold wetness as lubricant is liberally added. Some dark corner of my mind thinks this should hurt, but even if I tried, I don’t think I could manage to physically tense up. I’m completely open and vulnerable.

  “Does anything burn or hurt, pet?”

  “No, Master.”

  “Good girl. If it does, tell me. It shouldn’t with you so relaxed.”

  There is a quiet kind of reverence among those who are watching. Some are engaged in their own sexual activities and are paying no heed to us, but many are riveted by the intimate act we’re engaged in.

  He presses the rest of his palm inside me, and then his thumb. I feel his hand close into a fist and I gasp at the sensation and the shock that he’s really managed this feat. In my mind, all the relaxation, hypnotism, and lube in the world shouldn’t make this possible.

  His fist works inside me, drawing a whimper and then a low moan.

  “That’s it, pet. Come for me. You filthy little slut. You love this, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Master.” And I do, at least right now while all my inhibitions are silenced and I’m just his pleasure doll. I jerk in my restraints as the orgasm pulses through me, then he very slowly eases out of me.

  Someone nearby hands him a towel and he dries his hand, then he’s beside me feeding me his blood again. “We don’t want to stretch you out, do we?”

  I shake my head and take the offered blood. It hasn’t escaped me that he has yet to drink from me once tonight. He unbinds me, then gathers my naked form in his arms and carries me back to the office.

  Once inside, he settles me on the couch and wraps a blanket around my shoulders. Without the music to guide me, I feel bereft and too vulnerable when he leaves the room. But he returns a couple of minutes later with a cold bottled water.

  He sits beside me and rubs my back as I drink the water and cry. I can’t stop crying. When the water is gone, I put the bottle on the floor and turn into him, burying my head against his chest, sobbing. He just strokes my back and lets me get it all out.

  I think about what we just did and how differently it could have gone. He could have chosen less hypnotic music. He could have chosen to turn the music off, leaving me with my fear and tension. He could have ripped me open and healed me right after, but he chose to make it a pleasurable experience, to be gentle and soothing. I know the level of self-control that had to have taken.

  “I want you,” he murmurs against my hair. “I want you alone, at our place.”

  He stands. There is purpose in his gaze and in the way his hand is stretched out to me. He smiles at me, the smile that melts me and makes me forget what he is, but tonight something dangerous and wild lurks beneath the surface. Even after what just happened, this feels unsafe, like we’ve unleashed something he can’t keep in a cage once we’re alone in his big empty house.

  I’m trembling as I take his hand. He notices. My fear seems to thrill and excite him even more. I try deep breathing exercises to calm down. Never excite a predator. Ever. It’s the number one rule. When you run, when you scream... they like it. I don’t want Christian to like it because it could mean the end of me if he loses control.

  We arrive home in record time. Instead of the hour it normally takes, we’re back in forty minutes. I was counting on that hour to mentally prepare for whatever is coming next, but such preparation isn’t on Christian’s agenda.

  He takes me to his room and leaves me. I don’t recall ever being left alone in his room. I pace the floor and attempt to distract myself with anything and everything. I’ve never explored his room before, and I’m afraid he’ll count it as disobedience, but every part of me needs to stay busy, moving, cataloging, thinking about stupid, mundane things.

  I absently open the drawer of the night table beside the bed. It’s empty except for a very old, handmade book. The book is small, but it feels like it contains all the vast secrets of the universe. My hand shakes as I pull it out, and against my better judgment, I open it.

  I was right about the age. The pages feel fragile and ancient. In the first pages it’s clear the ink is old, with little drips consistent with a quill. There is a slight unevenness to the ink flow across the page. The book is filled with lines that are numbered. A woman’s name is scrawled beside each number.

  I assume this is Christian’s handwriting. Next to the name is a date. The first date is March 3, 1362. For the second name, the date is August 16, 1363. Over the pages that follow, the dates spread out more. Sometimes there are a few years in between names, sometimes decades.

  The list goes for several pages and numbers to one hundred. One hundred women’s names and the cryptic date beside them. The last entry is for a woman named Marlene Simmons and the date is approximately seventy years ago.

  “So, you found the list.”

  I startle at Christian’s voice and drop the book. I scramble to pick it up and place it back in the drawer, afraid I’ve damaged it in some way.

  “Who are these women?” I already know. It’s not hard to guess, but I have to hear him say it. I’m a masochist that way.

  “My previous pets,” he says, his voice far too smooth and honeyed.

  One hundred women before me, dating back over six hundred years. Christian is still dressed in the nice dark suit he wore when we went out. He loosens his tie and seems to melt into the room.

  “The first century or so I didn’t keep pets. I just fucked and fed. Then I met a vampire in Italy who showed me the pleasures a pet can bring. He taught me how to keep one alive, healthy, and pleasing. In the early days, I didn’t have much control. Most pets lasted a year or less, but as I gained control, they lasted longer. One lasted twenty years; that’s the record.”

  “And the date? That’s when they died?”

  I’ve sugarcoated it. But Christian will have none of that. He smiles. “That’s when I killed them, yes.”

  I’m glad I’ve put the book in the drawer again. It feels like a malevolent object that could burn my skin if I were to hold it for too long, looking at the names of all those
lonely girls before me, because surely they were lonely separated from everything that had made them human, living out the rest of their lives in the dark with their eventual killer.

  “Did you mourn them?” I ask.

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “Toward the end, the dates get a lot farther between.” I’m not sure whether I’m asking a question or making a statement of observation. Christian doesn’t acknowledge it as a question so I don’t push the issue.

  “I’ve tried many times to stop taking pets. It’s always hard for me when they die. I was doing well with my self-control until I met you.”

  My voice shakes with my next question. “Does that mean I’ll last longer? Or the opposite?”

  He shrugs. “It’s hard to tell. I am out of practice.”

  I don’t like the idea that I’m such an experiment, such a different case for him. There is no predictable pattern; his six year tracking and obsession could go either way. But even if it would be more likely to lengthen my life under normal circumstances, the fact that he hasn’t had a pet in close to a century makes it even odds I could be like one of the first girls and only last a year.

  “Are you finished snooping and pawing through my things?”

  There is no anger or irritation in his voice—more like amusement—so I let out a slow breath and nod. I know I had no business touching his things, but his reminder was gentle. Still, it puts me on edge because I’m afraid of the state of maniacal glee he arrived at the house in, and I don’t think drawing more attention to my ill manners is a wonderful idea right now.

  He extends a hand. “Come, pet. I’m afraid it’s time to escalate the nature of our relationship. You knew this was coming.”

  I still don’t know what’s coming. I just know it will be scary and painful. He’s got that eerie look in his eyes. His fangs have already come out as if in his excitement he can’t contain them within his gums.

  He takes me down one flight of stairs to the main floor, and then down another, and I know the type of room I’ll be faced with when we get to the bottom.

  I’m a curious sort of girl. I’ve watched a lot of BDSM films. As I said, my body may have been innocent before Christian took me, but my mind was far from it. In my fantasies, I’d explored every possible permutation of the sex act, had masturbated to things I’d never want to try out in real life, but for some reason I couldn’t help thinking about it when I touched myself.

  Christian’s dungeon is everything a dungeon should be, even better than the club. I’m ashamed I recognize every object and piece of equipment. This is the culmination of every film I’ve ever watched, as if he peered inside my head and took the best parts and put them together in a room just for my debasement.

  I’m suddenly ashamed of my history with films and some of my fantasies because if Christian has been watching me all this time, he knows. He knows the darkest things I’ve thought about while lying in bed with my legs spread and my fingers buried deep inside my pussy. He knows the things I’ve watched and read, and how they’ve excited me. This may have led him to the wrong conclusions about my desires. But I need to make sure that it’s not all a coincidence.

  “Christian, I... What do you know about me?”

  A riding crop smacks across my ass. Even through my pants, it stings. I wince and bite my lip to stifle a cry.

  “I’m sorry, who were you speaking to?”

  “Master,” I correct. I’m too caught off guard by the dungeon to think about things like formal address, but I know those excuses won’t fly with the vampire.

  “I’ve been in your head for six years. Everything, of course.”

  That’s what I was afraid of. The fantasies started soon after Christian and his crew broke into my house. I’ve never linked the two events before. Could he have planted these desires in me? Maybe his very presence so near that night... that taste of absolute power over me combined with unexpected mercy, set me on this collision course with dark perversion.

  “I don’t really… I mean… what I fantasize about… it’s just fantasy. I mean, I don’t really want to do it.” Not that my wanting to or not wanting to matters in the grand scheme. Seeing inside my mind all the dirty things I’ve thought has probably been like a carrot bringing him closer to me.

  He laughs. If I wasn’t so scared, it would be funny because this is the most hearty and non-evil sounding laugh I’ve ever heard out of him.

  “I think you’ll be surprised by what you want. You’re afraid of it, but it doesn’t mean you don’t desire it. Many humans are attracted to scary things. It’s in your nature.”

  I don’t bother asking where he’s arrived at this insight into my or any other human being’s nature. I’m too afraid of taking him out of this jovial mood he seems to have found himself in.

  As he guides me to a bench, the fear that consumes me revolves around his self-control. If he could, I know he would keep me literally forever, but at some point he’ll play too rough and break me beyond repair.

  It’s terrifying to think with his blood’s healing ability that he could ever do enough damage that he couldn’t heal it or fix it in time, or that he might be so caught up in his blood lust that it wouldn’t occur to him to repair the damage until it was too late. I’m afraid of the primal haze overtaking him to the point he can’t see me anymore—or the consequences of his actions.

  My eyes dart around the room, taking in the various whipping implements. Even a human male would have to moderate his strength to not cause true damage. I feel the reality of my vulnerability at his hands. How much more does he have to hold back with me? How much more will he hold back with me?

  He pulls me to him and presses his lips to my forehead. “Such busy thoughts twirling around in that head of yours. I wish they were happier.”

  This startles me. I think he’s reading my mind, but he’s only reading my face. It’s another one of those odd human things where we seem like a parody of a real couple, a parody trying to take itself seriously, trying to be real.

  I want it to be real. It’s only been a few weeks, but part of me wants to be his forever. I know love isn’t supposed to hurt like this or be filled with this much fear. It’s an abusive relationship from start to finish, and Christian’s few redeeming qualities and magnetism can never make up for that. I never thought I was the type of woman who would write love letters to a serial killer in prison, but if my attachment to the vampire is any indication, I seem to fit that profile.

  My mind flashes to the tattered list in the drawer upstairs. One hundred. I may seem special for now, but in the big picture I’m not. Someday I’ll be one hundred and one. How long will the list go? How long until I get buried in the names, becoming nothing more than a footnote in his bloody conquests? I don’t want to think about that right now.

  I don’t want to think about what will happen when I die. Will I go someplace better or will everything just stop forever for me? All I want to think about right now is Christian’s hands on me, the heady see-saw from fear and pain to arousal and pleasure.

  “Undress, pet.”

  I wish he could hypnotize me. I wish he could make me into his mindless zombie, feeling pleasure while he doles out pain. I wish there was a place I could hide. But there isn’t. His no-zombie preference is a double-edged sword, both for him and for me.

  My fingers are unsteady as they move over the buttons of the corset he’s dressed me in.

  “Seduce me.”

  To say I’m excited when he gives me these demeaning little commands is an understatement. The curt way with which he delivers his orders somehow heightens everything. It’s exactly as it used to play out in my head. But of course he knows that. He knows everything that pushes my buttons without me having to say a word.

  In my fantasies, verbal demands played a large role, the more entitled and demeaning the better. It didn’t even have to be particularly crass, just powerful and self-assured.

  Christian is nothing if not self-assured.
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  I put a sway in my hips and run my hands over my still-covered breasts and then between my legs where I can feel myself heating up even through the leather. I wonder if he will immolate when he touches that heat.

  Soon the corset is a memory on the floor, and he smiles as I pinch my nipples into hard points. This act is for his amusement because the slight chill in the dungeon is enough to do that work for me.

  My hair has been up in a clip. I turn away from him and release it, letting the hair he loves so much fall from its prison. It reaches mid-back, just at the curve of my waist. The clip joins the corset and I dance for him in only high-heeled boots and red leather pants.

  I look at him over my shoulder as he backs a few feet into an overstuffed chair, never taking his eyes from me. He crooks a finger. “Come, Juliette.”

  Short, brusque commands, like I’m some dog that can only understand short phrases and single-word sentences. I turn and drop to my hands and knees and crawl to him. I know he loves watching me crawl. It’s possibly one of his favorite things. It’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t have to suggest it. If he says come, I arrive on all fours. By this point I’m his little bitch in heat. I’ve almost forgotten he plans to hurt me first, so intent am I on getting him inside me. It’s the single-minded thought that overrides all other thoughts and concerns, to be filled by his fingers, or prick, or some random object shaped just right.

  There are so many objects like that. Sometimes I think when men design household utensils, something glitches in their brains, they imagine shoving it up some woman’s pussy, and it affects the final design of the product.

  When I reach him, I rub my cheek against the inside of his thigh and chance a look into his eyes. I don’t have to verbalize the question—he knows what this behavior is about. He nods once, an imperial gesture it probably took him over a century to get to just the right level of condescending. It sends another bolt of excitement through me as I undo his pants.

  A part of me is delaying the inevitable, trying to placate him and buy myself some mercy. I want to remind him why he wants to keep me alive so he won’t lose control later. I want to suck some of the power right out of him and then look up at him to innocently bat my eyelashes.