by Ranae Rose
“No,” she gasped breathlessly. How could she be offended when the same, rebellious lust had invaded her?
“Good.” He traced the arch of her neck with his tongue and explored the slopes of her breasts with his free hand before releasing her. “Don’t take too long to get cleaned up, okay?”
A couple of of minutes later, Carrie stood beside the tub, watching the hot water fall in a steamy rush. Taking a shower had seemed like a good idea, but no sooner had the bottom of the tub been dampened than she had realised her freshly sutured and bandaged wound would prevent her from being able to stand in the downpour. She flipped a chrome lever with a sigh, trapping the falling water. When several inches had collected, she shut it off and settled onto the side of the tub, where she began the considerable task of wiping and sponging her body clean.
The bathroom door swung partially open with a creak, and a flash of movement in the mirror caught Carrie’s eye. “Brendan?” she asked, staring at his reflection in mild surprise. He was bare from head to toe except for a few smudges of dirt that hardly lent modesty, and the stiff length of white flesh between his legs suggested that whatever he had come into the bathroom for, it was not to take a shower.
“Oh.” He frowned as he took in the scene of Carrie sitting damply on the side of the tub with a washcloth in her hand and her feet submerged in grey water. “I heard you turn the water off, and I thought you were done showering.”
“So you came in to…what, sweep me off my feet?” Carrie suggested with a smile.
“I thought it might be nice to get ahold of you before you could dry off, while you were still nice and slippery,” he explained with a devious grin.
“Well, I realised after I’d turned on the shower I couldn’t get in it,” she replied, creating tiny waves as she trailed a toe through the water. “So a sponge bath it is.”
“That sounds promising, too, in its own way.” Brendan settled onto the tub wall next to her. His much larger feet splashed beside hers, staining the porcelain grey as the waves his entrance had created lapped against it.
“Well, you could use a scrubbing,” Carrie teased as she attacked a smear of grime that streaked across his chest.
“Hey, I liked looking at that,” he protested. “It reminded me of how it got there.”
Carrie blushed faintly as he eyed her dust-darkened breasts with obvious interest and tugged the washcloth from her hand. He spread the damp square of fabric over his own palm and caressed one of the round swells with it, sending rivulets of dirty water coursing over its slopes and dripping from the nipple. He washed the dust from the top then cupped it from below, as if testing the weight of it in his hand. The washcloth clung to her curve, and her nipple bulged, a round, pink swelling beneath the fabric that had been rendered transparent by water. Carrie sighed as Brendan cupped her other breast in his free hand, massaging the nipple with his thumb so it rose, a twin to the other one. He left a damp print in the grime on her skin, and he dipped his hand into the water then dumped it so it flowed over her breast, sweeping away the shadow-coloured dirt.
“You’re clean,” he said, bending close to Carrie so his lips tickled her ear as he spoke.
Droplets of water slid down Carrie’s sides and thighs as she stood. Brendan remained sitting, which placed his head at approximately the same height as her hips. The fact wasn’t wasted on him. He positioned his hands on the gentle curves of her buttocks and drew her close, burying his tongue in the soft folds of skin between her legs.
She gasped and stumbled, splashing water and gripping his shoulders to avoid tumbling over the side of the tub. “Stop!” she cried. “I’m going to fall!”
Brendan released her reluctantly, allowing her to climb out and stand on the bathmat, where she hastily began to scrub herself with a waiting towel. “I don’t mind if you’re wet,” he said, snatching it away.
“I was going to wash my hair before…before we did anything,” Carrie explained, glancing at her own reflection in the mirror. “It’s a mess.”
“How were you going to do that, if you can’t get your back wet?” he asked.
“I’m just going to bend over the sink.”
Brendan emitted a sound that was half groan and half laughter. “You can bend over the sink if you want,” he said, “but you’re not going to get to wash your hair if you do.” He rose to stand behind her and placed his hands on her hips suggestively. His erection spanned the gap between their bodies, resting against Carrie’s buttocks.
Her eyes went wide, and she gripped the sides of the sink, bracing herself as Brendan pressed her hips against its edge. “Brendan!” she cried.
“We’re doing it now,” he said. “Here or on the bed.”
Carrie scowled at her tousled hair in the mirror. “It would only take me a minute,” she protested.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he replied, watching himself in the mirror as he reached around to cup Carrie’s breasts. “But I didn’t think you’d want to hear it.”
“I meant to wash my hair!” she said.
His hand brushed her buttocks as he drew it back to take hold of his cock and guide it so it hovered on the brink of entering her. “Here or on the bed,” he insisted, flexing his hips slightly and allowing the warm cave of her body to envelop the head of his penis.
“On the bed!” she gasped.
He withdrew slowly and reluctantly, and a small moan of regret escaped his lips. Carrie hurried to the bedroom before he could change his mind.
He followed on her heels, and she stumbled as he seized her wrist and pulled her down onto the bed beside him. She quivered as he traced the curves of her breasts and stomach with his hand, continuing down to the damp cleft between her legs. She spread her thighs a little in invitation, and he pressed his mouth over hers, stifling her moan as he slid his fingers into the space into which she wished he would force his cock. She reached out reflexively to grasp him and settled her hands on his hips, pulling him towards her. His penis skimmed the surface of her belly, bobbing briefly as it passed over the hollow of her navel. She grasped it, warming his cock with the friction her palm created as it slid over the smooth expanse of his skin, which was as soft there as her own was anywhere.
“Mmmm…” Brendan ended the kiss and twisted onto his back, moaning softly in Carrie’s ear as he did so. “On top of me,” he said, grasping her by the hips and beginning to lift her before she could comply on her own.
She straddled him obediently, spreading her legs to accommodate the width of his larger body and the swell of his considerable erection, which loomed hard and ready beneath her.
“I want to be inside you,” he said, raising his hips so his cock met the damp cleft between her legs. The opening into her body was slick with arousal, and his cock slid against it, rising to rub against the swollen form of her clitoris. “Put me in you,” Brendan demanded as she gasped.
She obeyed, wrapping her slender fingers around the thick shaft of his penis, which was slick already with moisture from her own body. It parted the skin between her legs as she guided it inside herself, stretching the warm, waiting muscles that gripped it once it had entered.
“Ahhhh,” he sighed in satisfaction, and she echoed him as he slowly eased himself deep within her body. “I’ve been thinking of this all day,” he said, “and I imagined it so many times over the past year. It feels so good to do it—you feel so good.”
Carrie smiled at Brendan’s admission. He’d been imagining this all day, on today of all days? Vampires really did have two track minds, she decided. “So do you,” she replied, using her inner muscles to grip his cock tightly, urging him to come in farther.
He obliged, arching his hips so he sheathed himself to the root inside her, and she tossed her head back in ecstasy. He reached up to wrap several thick locks of her hair around his fingers and pulled down, tilting her head farther so her body took the form of a ‘C’, crowned by the double-swells of her breasts and the nipples that topped them.
&n
bsp; “That hurts,” Carrie gasped.
Brendan loosened his hold on her hair, and her body sprang halfway back, as supple as a willow branch. “Sorry,” he breathed.
“No, don’t be,” she said. “I don’t want you to stop.”
He bent her backwards again, punctuating the motion with a thrust from below. She gasped while her breasts bounced from the impact but made no request for him to stop. That was just as well. The tightness of her body, the way she gripped him and the way her breasts rose and fell in time to the rhythm of his hips—she knew these things all urged him to continue until he couldn’t stop. It was her shriek that brought him back to himself several minutes later.
“Are you okay?” he asked, releasing her hair and stilling himself. Both acts seemed to require every last scrap of his willpower.
She collapsed onto his chest, and her hair spilt across his shoulders, the ends brushing his throat. “Yes,” she gasped, gripping his shoulders so hard that the ends of her nails were in danger of breaking off in his flesh.
Her ‘yes’ was apparently all the reassurance he needed. He grasped her shoulders, lifted her slightly so he could see her breasts and thrust himself deep into her again and again, testing the tenuous line between pain and pleasure with every stroke. He raised his head from the pillows, pressing his face against her breasts. He opened his mouth to taste them, and one of her nipples touched his fangs. He closed his mouth around it and brushed his tongue over the small, reddened dots that marked where he had drunk from her once before. His fangs dented the flesh on either side of her nipple, and she found herself wishing he would pierce her breast again so she could feel his mouth working powerfully against her body, drinking in the essence of her life.
He released it, and it fell from his mouth as she sighed longingly, only to brush his lips enticingly over it once more as he drove himself into her again. He moaned and threw his head back against the pillows, gazing at her body.
Pain shot through the wound across Carrie’s back, and she leant forward to brace herself by splaying her hands across his chest. Her breasts were pressed together, caught between her arms, and he groaned as he stared at them, shifting his hands from her hips to the rounded curves of her buttocks, a sign of his mounting urge to come. She bent her fingers, driving her nails into his skin in preparation for the final foray of his passion.
He dug his fingertips into the soft flesh of her backside as he cried out in a wordless exclamation of pleasure that spanned the several strokes it took him to finish. She matched his cry with one of her own, her fingers aching as she squeezed him, and the pressure that had been mounting within her for hours released as she came. Each stroke made her shudder and her arms and legs felt weak, as if the energy her climax demanded had been all she had left. She quivered atop him when it was over, and he lifted her off his body, depositing her on the bed sheets where she relaxed and tumbled into his arms, shutting her eyes against the night as his chest cooled her flushed cheek.
* * * *
Carrie awoke the next morning in Brendan’s arms for the first time in over a year. The feel of his body curled around hers and the sensation of being safely sheltered by his hard muscle was euphoria. She let her eyelids flutter shut again as a fountain of contented joy bubbled inside her.
“Morning, Carrie.” Brendan apparently had seen her awaken.
Carrie turned her head to look at him. “I thought you were still asleep,” she admitted.
Brendan shook his head, and an errant lock of hair fell over his left eye. “I didn’t sleep much—I’m too used to sleeping during the day.”
“Oh.” Carrie placed a hand on his chest and traced the subtle curve of his muscle, telling herself she should have realised that. She didn’t like not realising things about Brendan that would have been obvious if she hadn’t spent the past year apart from him. It made her feel alienated from him. There had been a time when she’d known him as well as anyone could know another person.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” he said. “The light is driving me crazy, but I didn’t want to disturb you by getting out of bed.”
Carrie eyed the window, where yellow sunlight made the curtain glow and spilt into the bedroom from around its edges. “How are you going to get away from it altogether?” she asked curiously.
He rose from the bed and exited the room in reply. She followed him to the bathroom, where he plunked down on top of the closed toilet with a sigh of relief. “The sun gives me such a headache,” he said, massaging his temples.
Carrie tried unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle. “Are you planning on staying in here all day?”
Brendan shrugged. “It’s the only room in the apartment that doesn’t have a window.”
“Maybe we could get something to cover the one in the bedroom, like a really thick, dark curtain,” she suggested.
He nodded. “Probably.”
“I could do some shopping today to see what I can find,” she said.
He shook his head. “Wait until after dark. I don’t feel safe letting you go anywhere without me.”
“Do you think Isadora’s still out there?” she asked, her stomach contracting at the thought of the heartless—both figuratively and literally—vampiress and what she’d tried to do to Brendan.
“Well, she’s definitely out there somewhere,” he said, “unless Sophia has managed to track her down and burn her already. My guess is she’s fled Charlotte and probably North Carolina altogether by now, but I don’t want to take any chances.” He reached out suddenly, took one of Carrie’s hands in his and squeezed. “Not after yesterday. I don’t ever want to come so close to losing you again.”
Carrie swallowed, straightened her shoulders and prepared to voice a thought that had been dwelling somewhere in the back of her mind, not fully recognised, for the past several days. She wasn’t likely to get a better opportunity than this. “You wouldn’t really have to worry about it if you turned me into a vampire.”
Brendan jerked upright and stared at her as if she’d struck him. “What?”
“I’d be a lot stronger,” Carrie said, “and we could really be together forever.”
“You don’t want this Carrie, trust me.” Brendan caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror and shot it a disgusted glance.
“Actually, I do,” she insisted. She’d thought about it a great deal during the night, their encounter with Isadora bringing it into sharp focus for her. She wanted to be like Brendan very badly, perhaps more than she had ever wanted anything except his return.
He slapped a hand against the sink counter, creating a surprisingly loud sound. “How could you say that after what you know about me?” he demanded. “How could you want this?”
Carrie recoiled, surprised by his vehemence and slightly frightened, for the first time, by the red gleam in his eyes. “I just want to be with you,” she said quietly. “If you won’t change me, then what will you do a few decades from now when I die? I won’t be twenty-five forever.”
“I’ll cut my heart out and set myself on fire.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you just change me so we could go on living together?”
Brendan buried his head in his hands. “Because I don’t want you to be like me, Carrie. I hate myself. If this hadn’t happened, you would be my wife right now. I wanted that so bad. I—I wanted to be your husband. I can’t go back in time and fix things, but I can at least love you as best as I can and end my life at the proper time.”
Carrie knelt on the tile in front of him and reached up to stroke his hair, letting her fingertips brush against his. She was more aware of their coldness than ever. “Please,” she said.
“I don’t feel like talking about it any more, Carrie. I’m tired. Just bring me some pillows, will you?”
She stepped out of the room quietly and returned with all four of the pillows from the bed. Brendan took them silently and tossed them into the bath before collapsing into it. She suppressed a smile. He looked comical, spr
awled in the tub that was too small for his large body with one each of his arms and legs hanging over the side. She opened her mouth to say something, but he pointedly shut his eyes. She sighed and stepped backwards out of the bathroom, pulling the door softly shut.
* * * *
Carrie’s closet was wide and crowded with clothes, nearly half of which she rarely wore. She only had eyes for one item, though—a long, white gown, elegantly beaded and embroidered, that hung enshrined between half a dozen or so of her softest sweaters. She reached out tentatively and touched the fabric. It was smooth and slightly cool. If Brendan hadn’t been changed, she would have become Mrs Brendan Shepard in the gown nine months ago.
“Carrie.”
She whirled around. Brendan leant in the doorway. His approach had been silent.
“I—I thought you were still sleeping,” she stammered, half wishfully and half accusingly as she struggled to blink back tears. She had regarded these moments as time to be spent in solitude, when she could cry freely—and for the past several days without Brendan knowing, so she could face him with a smile later. Well, that ship has certainly sailed, she thought.
He crossed the room and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders as he peered over the top of her head into the closet. “You never did let me see you in it, but it’s a beautiful dress,” he said.
“It was supposed to be a surprise.” She fought a lump that was forming in her throat. “It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding, you know.” She didn’t want to cry in front of him, though she realised it was inevitable.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bending his head so his jaw rested in her hair.
The invisible dam of her willpower broke, and tears streamed freely down her face. “I want to be your wife.” It was a miserable confession, one that pained her to make and reminded her she was far from over the past. Although she considered Brendan’s recent reappearance to be one of the best things that had ever happened to her, she was not done mourning the future she had lost, though she had regained the man with whom she’d vowed to share it.
