“Only at the beginning, Claudius. Once he is aroused, Sex is like another person,” Marcus explained as he knelt at the head of the bed, ducking underneath my arms, and unchaining them from the headboard.
He looked down at me and carefully examined my face. His own red flame was burning deep in his eyes. His finger came up and traced my throat, pausing at the faint scars that were still there from his bite. His eyes flickered remorse for a mere instant, and then his finger moved up to trace my lower lip. He ran the fingertip around my entire mouth.
“I liked my reward earlier today. Would you do it again? Would you climb me?”
Just this simple touch of his was enough to start up the burning feeling inside of me again, and I closed my eyes and allowed my tongue to come out and touch his caressing digit. Hearing his sharp intake of breath, I narrowly opened my eyes and watched him as he lowered his hand down to my chest, and he began to pinch and rub. I pushed my hard and begging nipples up against his hand.
That feels really good.
His red flame got brighter, and I felt his erection leaking pre-cum on my skin where his cock brushed up against me.
Pretty likes, hm?
“Pretty likes, very much. Ride me, Sex.” I swung my leg over his waist, keeping eye contact with him, but he must have seen me glance furtively at his throat. “You can’t bite me right now, Sex. You know that,” he chastised.
I turned my head and offered up my throat.
“It’s another form of release, Marcus. Drink deep.” Claudius ran his palm over my sweaty flesh.
Claudius reached beneath us and positioned Marcus at my portal. I was so well used that I slipped easily down his shaft, to settle on his thighs. I tossed back my head and groaned at the sensation of being filled, and then Marcus bit me.
Huuhhh.
I barely let a whimper of pain out when Claudius fanged me from the opposite side. I shuddered internally as Marcus bit deeper, and involuntarily I milked his cock with my inner muscles, shuddering again as Claudius began to pulse suck on the other side of my neck. I was going to come just from both of them drinking me.
Every muscle spasm sent my erection higher and higher, and I rubbed the weeping head against Marcus’s stomach as I pulled him along with me to orgasm. I was making a weird keening at the back of my throat, and when I did come, a cry that just seemed to get louder and louder filled the chamber. I swear I saw a blue aurora dancing on my skin, shooting from my fingers as well as from my ejaculating cock. My first Flame had burnt itself out, and I just collapsed forward like so much dead weight.
As soon as I swooned, Claudius let me go. Marcus withdrew his fangs as well, and rolling me onto my back, still keeping himself pressed deeply in my portal, he hoisted my knees over his shoulders, cupped my ass in support, and just started ramming hard into me. The crystal vision was gone. The searing fleshy sensation was gone. The desire for sex was burnt out of me. Now, I was just tormented by the pain of an overused portal.
Tears began leaking out of my eyes, and I started crying. “Stop…please, stop…Marcus.” He shifted his hold and hit my prostate. I cried out louder. It was agony. Pure agony. But he just kept rocking into me.
“Stop…”
“Marcus…Marcus!”
Claudius grabbed him from behind and pulled him off me. My legs fell from Marcus’s shoulders and I curled up on the bed, not caring that I was laying in my own filth. Every part of me ached, some parts of me screamed, while the dual bite marks throbbed.
“Open your eyes, Sex.”
I stared up at Claudius, wondering if he could see the pain I was in. His face swam before my eyes as tears burnt their way out past my lashes and trickled down my cheeks. He took my chin in his hand and looked deeply at me.
“Touch him, Marcus.”
I winced as Marcus did as he was told, passing his hand over my portal and patting my ass. I closed my eyes and tried to pull away from them both, but Claudius’s hold was too strong. He pulled down my lower eye lids, leaned forward, and pressed a chaste kiss to my forehead.
“We did it. We got rid of that excess.”
What was this “we” crap? I was the one with the sore ass and neck. I was the one laying here, clutching at the soiled sheets. I couldn’t remember hurting like this since the beginning. There was a lingering pain deep inside of me, and I started to whisper.
“Don’t touch me…please don’t touch me.”
“What is that, my Little One?”
“Please don’t touch me anymore.”
I’d just had two men in my body. No, not men—things. Christ, I couldn’t even call them that, because now I was one of them. Oh, my God, I’d begged them to fuck me. No, I’d dared them to.
“Don’t touch me…don’t touch me.”
The bed shifted as Claudius climbed off of it. “Be kind, Marcus. Your little fledgling has gone through a lot in less than a twelve-hour period. It would have been hard for him even if he did not get an eighty the first day out. I also find him to be very fragile emotionally; too much more stress and he’ll break on you. Pamper him now. He deserves it.”
“Sex…give me your hands,” Marcus urged gently, reaching for me. “We need to shower.”
My wrists were still bound together. I shook my head and shifted away from his touch. “You said I didn’t have to be your fuck toy. You said you wouldn’t fuck me if I didn’t want it. You lied to me. You said you wouldn’t. Don’t touch me.” I curled in on myself, the epitome of self woe.
“You gave me your consent, Sex.” His voice was calm and reasoning. I wanted to punch him in the face.
“You held a knife to me! That is not consent.”
“You simply made assumptions,” he replied, sweeping my red hair off my sweaty brow and anchoring it back behind my ears. I shook my head hard, letting it fall back into disarray. My breathing was shallow and fast, and as he reached out for me again, I smacked his hands away with a double-fisted block.
“You held a knife to my face! What the fuck kind of assumption can you draw from that?” Anger was something I could hold onto, the despair and pity that had swamped me just moments before being swept away by a tide of fury and irritation. I might well be a captive, but I wasn’t a slave, and I certainly wasn’t a wimp, thank God. “Take these off,” I demanded, holding out my cuffed wrists.
“No. You will have another Flame in a couple of hours.”
The horror I felt must have shown clearly on my face. Marcus moved to gather me up in his arms, but I scrambled back and hit the headboard hard with my shoulders. He quit trying to corral me.
“Your next Flame will be nothing like this past one,” he promised. “It should be smaller, more manageable, and closer to the Flame you will get from just a regular feeding. You will get nothing but pleasure from it.”
I tried to blend with the wood of the headboard that I was pressed against. My bound wrists were held tight against my stomach as I crouched in a tightly clenched ball.
“Again? It’s going to happen again? I don’t want it happening again. This one hurt. I’m torn inside. I can feel it. I can’t do this again.”
I panicked. I babbled. The edge of hysteria that was coloring my voice was taking over. I’d just had sex with two men. No—two vampires. They’d both fucked me. They’d both drank from my neck. And now I was being told that they were going to do it again in a couple of hours. But the worst part of it was; I had begged them to. And I was terrified I would do so again.
“I can’t do this!”
I jerked wildly on the leather cuffs holding me prisoner until Claudius took pity on me and pressed upon a pressure point on my throat. I felt his strong fingers push at the crotch of my neck and shoulder and then, nothing.
Sweet, sweet nothing.
Nine
Xavier Emerges
I awoke plastered to Marcus’s side. His arms were wrapped around me, with one leg crossed possessively over my thigh, pressing his groin up into my butt cheeks. At my neck, his breath
was even and slow. I hadn’t realized vampires breathed, which was stupid of me because how many times had I listened to Marcus panting over me during the eight hundred rapes I’d endured. Excuse me, eight hundred and one.
I also hadn’t realized that Claudius was currently my pillow. I had my head resting on his upper arm as he slept facing me. His other arm was draped loosely over my waist, and his groin was pushed up against mine. What a hell of a way to wake up. I was trapped between them. Still, I needed to go to the bathroom. Apparently, vampires need to pee. How the hell was I going to untangle myself?
“Marcus, move,” I whispered, pushing at him. The brown haired lump of a vampire hardly shifted. Hmmm, okay. “Claudius, roll over.” Without even opening his eyes, he did so, and I crawled over him and slipped out of the bed. I was surprised at how easy that had been. I’d thought I was going to have more of a fight on my hands, escaping their duel embrace.
Going into the bathroom and relieving myself, I thought momentarily about taking a shower but then, realising that I didn’t reek of orgy sex and felt clean, I guessed Marcus must have washed me when I’d been unconscious. The throbbing stinging in my backside was gone too. I couldn’t have been as badly ripped up as I thought, but I couldn’t reach my portal to check things out with my hands cuffed together the way they were, so I did an experimental buttocks muscle squeeze, and was glad not to feel any residual pain. I wobbled my head from right to left, but there were no sharp stabbing pains there either, and the dual bite zones on my throat were sealed over too. I guess vampires do heal quickly.
Thinking of the bites I’d received made me run my tongue along my own teeth, and I was happy to find them all even and non-stabbing.
Walking back into the playroom, I stood at the end of the bed and stared at it. There was no way I was willingly crawling back on it while Marcus and Claudius slept there. I didn’t care that they had already done to me what I kind of feared would happen, I still wasn’t crawling back between those two men…er vampires. I was in my right head now, and I was no dummy.
Snagging up my leather pants off the bench at the end of the bed, I headed for the Great Room, where I stood with my mouth hanging open. It hadn’t been just the bedroom that had changed in the concrete bunker, for in this room too there were now plush pillows in jewel tones, lush greenery and small trees in big ceramic pots, with ferns and plants I couldn’t name, potted all over the place. My eyes skimmed over crystal lamps, wrought iron candle stands and items of furniture in rich, soft leather.
I struggled into my tight pants, cursing Marcus because I couldn’t do them up with my hands cuffed together, but at least after much wriggling and tugging, everything was decently covered for a change.
There was a huge painting on the wall which caught my eye, and I headed over to it. It was a portrait of Claudius, and was obviously very old as the pigment and varnish had a crackle to it. He still looked the same as in the picture, except his taste in clothes had gotten better. There was a signature in one corner, and I leaned forward and squinted at it. Even though the room was quite dark, I could still clearly make out that it had been signed by…Marcus.
My rapist had painted this? Straightening up, I continued to stare at it. Yep, that very same brown-haired vampire, who was at this moment, coming out of the playroom. My hearing must have been enhanced as well as my eyesight, because I actually heard him approaching behind me before his hand even touched me.
“Don’t pull on my neck,” I said quickly before he could grab around my throat and use it as a handle for pulling me closer to him. His hand stopped in mid-air, shifted down to my chest, and reaching around to my back, he pulled me against his own naked chest.
“What are you doing out of bed, Sex? You should still be resting.”
He buried his face in my shoulder-length hair and rubbed his cheek against mine. He’d done this before, and now there would be a faint smell of apples around me all day. As a human, I hadn’t picked up this odor as well, but now, it was intensified. I tried to pull away from him and his scent, but nope, I was still weaker than he was.
“Who is he? What is he to you?” I asked him, gesturing with my bound hands towards the painting.
Lifting his face out of my hair, Marcus reached forward and touched a spot on the wall, and a single spotlight illuminated the darkness. I could really see the detail in the painting now, and Marcus pulled me back a few steps so I was at the right distance to enjoy it.
“Claudius is the one who made me. He is my Sire. As I am yours,” he explained.
I frowned. “But you’re not his mate?”
“No, I was made to be a companion, a friend. Just as you are my friend.”
I tried to turn around to face him, but it was just another useless gesture in a long line of useless gestures against him, and when I spoke next, my voice held more bitterness than I thought it was capable of.
“There is no way you can call us friends. You’ve terrorized me for a year. You’ve taught me nothing but fear and pain. The little I know about you is that you like to bite from the right, and you love to hand-feed me like I’m a dog or some sort of pet. You won’t let me sit on furniture; I have to sit on you. Oh yeah, and you love to fuck me when I’m crying. That’s all I’ve learned about you from one full year of your company; that, and the fact that Claudius told me you’re a pale Crimson Flame.”
He arms tightened around me. “You are being cruel.”
I raised my hands up, shaking them so the links locking them together rattled. “This is cruel. Waking up for the first time in this place with blood seeping out of my raped ass because you had to have me—that was cruel. You’ve taken everything I have ever known from me, and in return you’ve given me…this, whatever this is. You have stripped away everything I was. You won’t let me have my own identity. Sex? What kind of name is that? It’s a pet’s name.”
His hold on me tightened, and I had to gasp for breath because it felt like he was crushing my lungs.
“Is this all there is for me, Marcus? You’ve turned me into some kind of a vampire, but I’m not even right as that. I’m a monster, and I’m still locked in this horror show you dragged me into one year ago. If you can’t let me go, it might be kinder just to kill me.”
Marcus crushed me harder. He was strong. I think he forgot exactly how strong he was most of the time, but since I was the one on the end of it half the time, I remembered. I should be able to use that one day.
Now though, he hugged me back to his body, and it felt like he was trying to merge us into one space. He hunched over my shoulder and whispered into my ear.
“You are mine. You have always been mine. From the first moment that I saw you, I wanted to protect you. And I will protect you, with my very life if need be. I will be your guide as you learn your new Vampiric powers. I want to be your friend, Sigmund. More than just your friend, I want to be your lover. I want you to give me your heart freely, and I will cherish it like nothing has ever been cherished before.”
I bowed my head. “I’m not answering to Sigmund.”
The death grip lessened. “I do not like Edward.”
“How about Xavier? It could be my first name, or a last name. I’ve been called it before,” I bartered.
“Xavier, it is.”
Marcus released me, but caught my shoulder as I listed to one side. I took a few deep breathes, turned, and stared up at him. His face seemed more…expressive, well his eyes were speaking volumes to me now, especially with that hint of burning red around his irises.
I flinched as he raised his hand towards me. He saw this, and his lips narrowed into a thin line as he swept my hair back behind one ear and ran his fingers down the shell to my lobe. Lightly pressing on it, feeling the canal where it was pierced, he let go of me and pulled out a stud from his own ear.
“Xavier, I would ask that you wear this, even though you are not ready to become my mate—this is a sign that you might consider it one day.” He held a single ruby stud between hi
s fingers.
I eyed the gleaming red earring. “Like a promise ring?”
“Would you wear it, if I say that it was more of a friendship gesture?”
“But is it, really?”
“It is what you make it out to be, Xavier,” Markus anwered. “I will abide by your decision. You are a vampire now. You are my equal. I wish you no harm. I never did wish you hurt or injury. I just wanted you, Little One.”
I contemplated it for all of three seconds. “Put it in.”
Marcus’s face broke out into a true, beaming smile. I say true, because even his eyes lit up. I blinked at him. I had never seen someone’s eyes smile before, ever. Just agreeing to this one little thing had made him so happy.
He worked his fingers at the small loop currently hanging off my left ear. I’d had the piercing done on a whim with my sister, Shayne, a few years back. It was more of an “I got your back/don’t be a wimp” kind of gesture. She’d been so pissed when her ears had gotten infected, and she had to let the holes close up. I had no such problems with mine at all…much to Marcus’s delight.
He leaned down and kissed me, and I turned my head away from him. I wasn’t ready for any more of that. As I’d moved, the muscles in my neck gave me a kick of pain, and I groaned.
“Are you injured?” he asked, his voice concerned.
“No, just stiff,” I admitted. “I thought I would be in more pain when I woke up, but I must have healed while I was sleeping.”
Marcus brought his hand up, and cupping my cheek, he turned my head to one side, looking at what should have been a bruised mess from where Claudius had been sitting on my face. His thumb swept along my jaw line, stroking gently.
“I…assisted the healing process. I did not want you to be in any more agony than necessary. Your first Flame was more intense than either Claudius or I anticipated.”
I stiffened and blinked. Surely he didn’t mean what I thought he meant, did he?
“It was nothing,” he insisted.
Cake: A Blood Nation Novel (Volume 1) Page 10
