by Maren Smith
Her expressive face flinched, and she swallowed hard. Shaking her head once, she nevertheless said nothing.
“I offered to take her home,” I say, and with slightly more reluctance admit, “She refused. She begged me to give her more, but as I’ve said, I never play with the same partner twice, and she… well, she did not look well. She was still sitting there when I left. A few days later I heard she died.”
She gazes back at me, with wide, unblinking, unconvinced eyes. “You were the last to see her.”
My poor puzzle. She needs someone to be responsible, and in her mind, I am it.
So be it.
“Have I upheld my part of our bargain? Is there anything more you want to ask?”
Her hands squeeze her arms. She looks away, but always her gaze comes back to mine. She shakes her head.
Gathering the curtain in my hand, I pull it aside for her. She sweeps past me on a caress of air that smells tantalizingly of apple lotion and the wound on her neck.
Two steps outside this room, she stops so abruptly that I almost run into her back. She’s staring, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out at what. Lucy, a club regular, is still bound with her hands to the wall high above her head, but now instead of facing the wall, her back is to it. Her legs are wrapped around Dimitri’s waist. He grips her by the ass, fingers digging into the welts he put there. She’s grinding on him, and in that flash, I think I detect a whiff of arousal from Merris, even as I feel the sudden thump of her startled heart picking up its beat. She’s afraid, not because Lucy is grinding, humping, moaning as she gyrates in the helpless wanting of more, but because Dimitri is feeding. He’s bit her. Not once, but several times, and in the red recessed lighting that illuminates them in its devilish glow, her sweet blood flows from multiple punctures for him to lick, kiss and suck.
Merris touches the side of her own neck, her fingers following the edges of the bandage tape I used.
Dimitri is aroused, and while I’m sure Lucy’s ass grinding against him might play a part in that, it’s the blood trickling from her wounds that’s sparked that dim red glow in his eyes. Something more than just a reflection of the lights above us. He isn’t being subtle. It isn’t his first time feeding from that particular vessel. I fear something more than just personal preference might be at play here, but that’s his heartbreak to endure. It only becomes an additional concern of mine when he suddenly senses Merris watching—or perhaps it’s her fresh blood he smells. Either way, his head snaps up and that devilish glow as his eyes lock on her is as obvious as the fangs he licks while staring.
Jumping back, Merris slams into me, but I already have her. My hand grabs her arm, the other coming to rest on her throat, forcing her head all the way back onto my shoulder.
“Oh my God,” she gasps, but it’s all happened so fast, she’s still staring at Dimitri. It’s several panicked heartbeats later before she notices my hold, and by then my lips are at her ear. My eyes stay locked on Dimitri, making sure he comes no closer. He doesn’t, but I can hear the hungry growl rumbling low in the back of his throat as he eyes Merris.
“Wh-why did you stop?” his supper whimpers, dazed.
Licking her blood from his lips, he smiles at Merris before turning back to his willing meal and taking another vicious bite.
One that makes his dinner gasp, then moan, and which would no doubt keep her in turtlenecks for days so no one saw the marks.
Swine.
I let him see my disapproval, but he only laughs. His eyes are still very much on Merris as he feeds, and Merris, poor Merris, her shaking grows more pronounced by the second. She knows what she is seeing, but she doesn’t want to believe it. Not any more than she wants to believe I am innocent… at least of Jez’s murder.
Then suddenly she notices me. My hand on her throat. My chest against her back and arm gripped tight around her waist, hugging her securely to me.
She twists before I can lock my grip upon her, but she’s not trying to break away. Not yet. No, she’s staring up at me, open horror beautifying her already lovely face as she searches my mouth. She’s looking for the fangs, and God help me, I am enthralled. Once upon a time, we vampires lived on the horror of humans. We lived for the pain, the fear. That BDSM has come so openly to the world has given us an outlet to continue to feed in the manner that suits us best—sweetening the feast with every stroke and cry, our victims becoming supple and willing, well-marinated steaks just waiting for that next bite to be taken. We no longer leave large body counts in our wake, but we aren’t half as civilized as we like to appear. And never could that have been clearer to me than in those seconds as her eyes lock on my lips and everything in me suddenly aches to show her exactly what I am.
Why not?
I have already fed tonight. On her, no less, but suddenly it isn’t enough.
For just one powerfully primal second, I feel newly-sired. The sharpness of my hunger for her is raw, but perfectly paralleled by a secondary hunger, and that one is as shocking to identify as it is unexpected.
Lust.
My cock is hard as hell, sandwiched between her hip and my thigh, and that does not happen for just anyone.
“No fucking way,” she breathes, and I smell the aphrodisiac of her fear. If I bit her now, she would probably scream—that lovely, warbling cry of terror I haven’t heard in far too long.
No, we aren’t very civilized at all.
And I, with my riotous near-adolescent inner lusts all combating one another for supremacy of me, am in this moment, the King of Incivility.
Merris knows what she has seen. I see it in her eyes, the horror that is only sparked by the most unlikely of words—vampire. Modern film culture lied to her. We are not the creatures of myth and fantasy that she was led to believe.
“It’s all right,” I tell her, my pretty puzzle, as I let my mind invade past the delicious panic in her own. “Forget,” I whisper, my grip around her waist becoming the only thing that keeps her from falling as I fill her consciousness with my will.
She sucks a deep breath, her eyes widening only an instant before I wipe her mind.
“Need help with that?” Dimitri asks. Lucy looks comatose in his arms, her body has gone limp, her eyes are open, unfixed and staring. She looks drugged, but she isn’t. She’s flying, soaring in subspace from the combination of orgasm, pain, and the endorphins his aggressive gnawing has inspired.
“Only if you want to die,” I reply. He thinks I’m joking. I’m not.
“Next time,” he laughs.
There won’t be one, not with my Merris.
My will digs in and her mind opens to me like a flower. I love the softness, the lack of multilayered petals created by that well-learned skill called deception. She could not conceal a thought from me if she tried, and locked as she is in my thrall, she doesn’t even make an attempt.
I see her memories like flashes of bright color that feel good when I touch them. I do my best to caress them all, identifying them by the varying degrees of emotion and distress attached to each one. Her suspicions are the easiest to find. With a psychic touch, I soothe them. I find her anger and let that go as well. Now she may grieve in peace. I find that shadowy recess that harbors all she has seen, felt and thought throughout this night. It’s all so fresh in her mind. So fresh, that I can almost see it, like snippets of a movie reel running in her head. With a bit of reluctance, I erase every trace of me that I can find.
I find the grief and the void that losing her sister has left behind, and I fill it with the only thing I can think of. I tell her there is nothing for her to learn at Club Toxic. I tell her there are no questions left to be answered. I tell her it is a terrible tragedy, but one that Jez would not want her to dwell on. I tell her to go home, grieve and, when she is ready, to move on in her life.
And then, as I withdraw my will from her mind, I tell myself it is time for me to let go too. Tonight has been an unexpected pleasure in so many ways, but I never repeat my play with the sa
me partner twice, and this place is not safe for one such as Merris.
She comes out of the stupor I’ve put her in as if she’s drunk. Incredibly drunk. But, at least she does come out of it. That’s always a risk when one goes mind-wiping.
I help her to the stairs, supporting her weight until she wakes enough to get her feet under her again. Her legs grow gradually steadier as up the stairs we go, until by the time we reach the top, she is starting to notice there’s an arm around her waist and that I am attached to that arm.
“I don’t think you’re quite used to whatever you’ve been drinking,” I tell her gently.
“No, I—” She touches her head, looking about the coat closet before twisting in an attempt to see back down the stairs. “I-I guess not.”
“I think you were looking for the exit,” I suggest. “You found our broom closet instead.”
“Oh.” She looks down at my arm around her waist again, and then once more back up at me. “Sorry, I—” She stops, her eyes going strange. The pupils expand and her breath catches. Her nipples instantly pebble, thrusting against the fabric of her all-too revealing dress, and the softest, most alluring blush rises to stain not just her face but her chest.
It doesn’t take a vampire to detect the gush of wet arousal that would have soaked the gusset of her panties, if only they weren’t still lying in a neglected puddle on the floor in the dungeon.
Coming back to herself with a start, she pushes out of my arms. Her mouth opens, only to close again without a word. She takes another hasty step back, but her blush deepens and the peak of her nipples becomes that much more obvious. As if they are reaching out for me, eager to feel the flick of my tongue, or the sharp graze of my teeth as I make my feast of first one and then the other.
It’s shocking how easily I can see this woman lying naked before me—beneath me—her pale body covered in the marks of my claiming bite.
Her breath catches again. “I-I have to go,” she stammers, just before fleeing both me and the coat closet.
The need to go after her is as appalling as it is irresistible, but after only a few steps, my rebel feet root me to the floor. I watch her go, ducking and pushing her way through the thinning crowd that stubbornly occupies the dance floor. Despite it being well past the 4:00 a.m. closing hour, they haven’t shut off the music yet and until they do, the revelers will remain. So will the hunters who prey on them, and there are more than a few.
I watch heads turn, following her as she fights her way to the door, vampire noses and heightened senses pursuing her every step of the way. It’s that, I tell myself, not my dissident urges that send me chasing after her. I want only to make sure no one else does. Once I see her safely tucked into the back of a cab and speeding away from here, then and only then will I be satisfied.
Then, I will let her go.
Merris
What’s happening to me?
My legs are unsteady. My nerves are vibrating, like the wall I use for balance as I hurry for the exit as fast as I can in so thick a crush of people as are in this place. They’re all mashed up together, laughing, dancing, jumping, having a great time. The music is throbbing. So am I, but the tension in my chest says this should be panic, not arousal.
I’ve got to get out of here.
My heart is pounding harder than the steady thumping bass reverberating through the floor beneath me. Prickles dance across the back of my neck, whispering urgency. I feel watched. I feel followed. I feel horny as hell, and when I look back over my shoulder, all I see are the visions that swept my mind when I looked up into that handsome stranger’s face and saw him with more than just an arm around my waist.
It was the strangest amalgamation of eroticism and fright. His hands were all over me, peeling the dress—this dress, the one I’m in—from my… m-my sister’s… no, no I think it’s my body. He’s undressing me like a treasure, his mouth never far from my skin. I feel the caress of his kiss following the arch of my neck… the nuzzle that precedes the bite… the sting of his sweet suckling followed by the rush of euphoria. It’s like an orgasm that sings through my veins before we fall backwards against a wall that is not like any wall in this club.
I can’t see him behind me, but God how I can still feel his kiss on my neck.
I crash into someone, not watching where I am going.
“Sorry… I’m sorry…” I keep pushing, barely glancing up into eyes as blue as they are cold. He’s blond, not much taller than I am, on the verge of being just a little too heavy for his frame and he hasn’t shaved in days. I used to like that scruffy-rugged look on a guy. Now it seems my type runs to dark-haired, dark-eyed, and handsome as the devil.
Is he still behind me? I twist to look, already dismissing the blond man just as he grabs my arm. My own momentum to get past him swings us both around.
“How the fuck are you still ali—” he says, but after that there’s nothing. No sound, although his mouth keeps moving.
It’s like time slowing to the crawl of cold winter molasses. Everything I see, everything I hear—it fades away until what’s in my mind isn’t the dancers in the background or even the grip on my arm tightening until it hurts. It’s my sister hunched in an alley somewhere with her deeply clawed arms hugging her knees and tears tracking mascara down her face as this man lowers himself onto his haunches beside her.
“Come on,” he says in words that echo like they’re underwater. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
The vision breaks abruptly, and so does the blond man’s grip on my arm when my dark-eyed devil grabs his wrist and yanks him around like a doll. I almost fall. It’s like my legs have no strength left at all and I can’t think.
I have to get out of here.
I have to go home.
I break into a run and slam out the exit. The smell and sounds of the nightclub recede in the background the instant I feel that first rush of cool air wash over me.
I think I must have startled the doorman. He gives me a dark look, but all I know is the freedom of the city sidewalk, no longer cluttered with hopefuls still seeking to get inside, but with those now leaving. They line up just outside the door, waiting for their turn at the taxis constantly arriving and departing. I have to go home. It’s the only thought in my head. There’s nothing for me here. I have to go home.
I’ve got my arm raised and I’m running toward the busy street, trying to distance myself from the club so I can steal a cab before it gets into line with the others. If not, it’ll be twenty minutes at least before I reach the head of the line and can leave. And that’s when I hear it, the sudden pop-poppop of fireworks. Or the rapid backfires of a really messed up car. That’s what it sounds like to me, right up until the rear and back passenger windows of the taxi that’s slowing down to pick me both shatter.
A slice of red-hot pain rakes the left side of my body from front to back. At first, I think I’ve been cut by flying glass. Then everyone starts screaming, and running, and I’m hit from behind, knocked almost flat to the pavement behind the cab for all of the two seconds it takes the startled driver to realize now might not be the best time or place to stop.
Tires squealing, he peels back into traffic, leaving me burning, sliced around the ribs, lying face down on the pavement, and half squashed under the weight of none other than the dark-eyed devil who makes my body sing.
Well… when it isn’t bleeding, anyway.
“What—” I try to get my head up off the concrete, but his hand on the back of my scalp makes that impossible.
“We are not a whack-a-mole,” he says, forcing my head all the way down onto the ground. It’s not until I feel twin jerks of his body, followed by a low growling exhale that I realize what’s happening. He’s protecting me with his body, and he’s just been shot.
Twice.
“Oh my God!” I freeze, grabbing on to his arm with both hands, the one he’s using to force me down. I can’t see anything except the sidewalk my cheek is crushed up to, the street an
d the whizzing of tires as cars go racing by a whole lot faster than the thirty-five m.p.h. this part of the city is zoned for.
“I’d pray too if I were you,” the stranger atop me growls. “Because if I am still alive when this ends, my darling, you are going to receive one hell of a talking-to.”
I don’t know why what he just said should evoke such a reaction, but for just a moment, the burning between my legs pulses hotter and harder than the pain in my cut ribs.
He’s hit again, and then suddenly it stops. Everything goes silent—but not really. The shooting stops, but the screaming continues. All those people who weren’t able to get back into the club before the doorman shut and locked the door, are out here, cowering behind whatever might offer them shelter. The city sounds are still very much all around me. Weirdly, I think I hear the baying of wolves, but also, I hear cars, honking, police sirens in the distance, but coming closer with every shaky breath I take and second that passes. We’re practically in downtown Tucson, after all. Nothing is ever fully quiet here, not even in the dead of night.
And yet, in the sudden absence of all that gunfire, everything seems so eerily still. I can hear my breathing; I can hear my heartbeat. I hear nothing from the man lying on top of me. I’m actually starting to fear he might be dead when, slowly, he lifts his head. He pauses, but when no further shots are fired, the weight of him eases back off me, and at last I can move. His is a highly-irritated glare, one that he casts down the street in the direction the shots had come from, then up the other way, toward the wail of approaching sirens, before finally he turns it on me.
