by Cate Corvin
The thought was sickening. I couldn’t fathom being the kind of person who was so desperate for a vampire they’d willingly open a vein for them. It was disgusting.
“So, this is what we do for fun? Go to a vampire club and watch humans bleed themselves?”
“And drink, and dance,” Sura said. “And make room, because this taxi is tight as fuck.”
The huskiness of his voice when he said ‘tight as fuck’ did absolutely nothing for my nerves.
Especially when he picked me up and pulled me onto his lap, making my dress ride up even higher, and I felt the hard, thick ridge of his cock right against my mostly-naked ass.
Sura stretched his legs out with a groan. “So much better.”
Will’s face had gone tight, his dark-lashed eyes narrow and cold, but a second later it was impossible to tell if he’d been glaring at all. “Interesting choice of clothes,” he said, stretching out to fill up the rest of the taxi. There was no escaping Sura’s lap now. “You look like a bleeder.”
“You look delicious,” Sura growled.
Good god, I was soaking right through the useless thong.
“It was Sura’s genius idea.” I was terrified that the slightest movement would rub me against Sura’s cock even more, and that I’d like it way more than was good for me. “I would’ve been fine with pants.”
“Will’s just jealous he doesn’t look as good in a mini dress. Let the vampires see what they’re missing out on.” Sura’s fingers ran up my thighs brazenly now. “They like to go for the femoral artery when they’re performing.”
“Performing,” I repeated, my heart in my throat and sex aching.
“They do blood-shows.” Will’s eyes followed the progress of Sura’s fingers along my leg. “Spread a woman’s legs and feed from her onstage.”
“Ew,” I said, utterly revolted. Let something with fangs get that close to your lady bits? Hell no! The humans in those shows must’ve been clinically insane.
Sura reached the edge of the skirt, caressed my hips, and found my forearms. “The bleeders usually just open their wrists, but if it’s mouth-to-skin, the vamps will drink from the brachial.” His hands moved upwards, just gliding along the curves of my breasts. I couldn’t breathe, every fiber in my body frozen.
“But if a vampire really takes a shine to someone, they want the carotid artery.” His hot, calloused palm covered my throat, pulling me back against him. His thumb skimmed the thin skin above my fluttering pulse. “It’s as intimate as the femoral is for a human, as close as they come to showing true love. Then their marks are there for everyone to see.”
He paused, his hand resting on my chest, fingers dimpling my throat. My nipples were tight and hard, tenting the thin silk.
The taxi passed under a bright building, and for a moment the light played across Will’s face. He looked furious, face drawn and eyes like jade fire.
Then the shadows fell again and the anger was gone, replaced with neutrality.
I forced myself to grip Sura’s hand and pull him away from my throat. “Good thing I have no interest in being marked by a Shadowed Worlder.”
Sura’s body went rigid under me, but a second later the taxi pulled to a halt and the sudden motion slid me forward several inches, and he gripped my hips to stop me from colliding with the back of the cacodemon’s seat.
For a moment, time seemed to slow to a stop. He jerked me back against his iron-hard shaft, sliding all the way along the soaked thong and my wet, swollen center, pushing up at the same time.
I bit back a gasp, my body almost convulsing with the need to thrust against him, to unbutton his jeans with shaking hands-
“Whenever you two are done groping each other, we’re here.” Will’s voice was more clipped than usual as he got out and slammed the door behind him.
I swallowed hard, fumbling for the handle while trying to pull the treacherous dress back down.
“Let me get it,” Sura said, his deep voice ragged.
I slid out on shaky legs, feeling like I was about to melt into a puddle of mush, and I hadn’t even come.
Before Sura closed the door, I could’ve sworn I heard a riot of cruel little giggles from the front of the taxi.
“Nosy little bastards,” I muttered.
Sura slid his hand around my waist and I turned to look up at a tall brownstone on a corner, illuminated with scarlet lights. Even the door was painted a vivid, bloody crimson that both warned and beckoned potential entrants. Fellow Tenebris students were already walking in, some tottering on heels, others with a naturally suspicious set to their shoulders.
Sura grinned at me, his smile ominous in the scarlet light.
“Welcome to Club Bathory.”
CHAPTER FIVE
________
TORI
Bodies writhed against me like eels, fragile humans glistening with sweat, slayers in leather and silver crosses, moonspawn in their human forms, wild-haired and half-feral. Several odd shapes in dark corners had my skin prickling; I was pretty sure there was an infernal Legionnaire in the corner, his rack of horns forming a natural crown, with a girl writhing in his lap.
The vampires of the Clouded Court mixed in with the dancers, flawless and pale-skinned, their eyes gleaming with nightshine, fangs glistening. Under the pulsing strobe lights and the glitter of magic in the air, they seemed almost as ethereal as Fae.
A female vampire eyed Tenebris as we passed, snaking past the crush of dancers to the next floor up a set of metal stairs. She licked blood-red lips, her gaze lingering on Will even as she danced with a rapt human man.
Club Bathory wasn’t a single club. The first level was populated mostly by humans, the walls black as pitch and the lighting low, so they wouldn’t see the finer details of the club’s owners… and if they did, the fangs and flawless features could be brushed off as makeup and special effects.
The second floor was the club for the more adventurous humans, lost in the deep, pulsing bass of the music, where the special effects no longer looked so fake… and someone might leave with a bite or two.
On the third floor, the moonspawn started to grow in number, weaving their way in as the humans grew scarcer. By this point, most of them would’ve figured out that something was a little off and gone home, where they could pretend they’d imagined everything they’d seen.
Level four was a quiet cocktail bar, sandwiched between clubs. Any human who’d made it this far was a dedicated bleeder, holding their wrists over cut-crystal glasses for their vampire patrons, and slayers who were in town for a quiet drink sat at the bar in clusters.
By the sixth floor, glamours had been done away with completely. The vampires let their fangs flash, the moonspawn howled over the music, glittering with claws and jewels, and the odd demon slipped through the crowd. I even saw a pack of pixies dancing over a group of humans’ open mouths, tongues stretched out to catch the glittering sand falling from the Fae.
One of the elfstruck women grinned, and slowly peeled off her clothes to writhe naked against the nearest moonspawn.
There were laws being broken left and right, inflicted against humankind… and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Tenebris took over a group of tables in the back and a moment later, Sura handed me a beer. I tried to sniff it surreptitiously before I took a swallow.
“I promise there’s no pixie dust in it,” he shouted over the music.
Didn’t pay to be careless, now did it?
I drained half the beer in a gulp, hoping to steady my nerves. I needed to chill. None of these poor, idiot humans had been coerced here. They were allowed free will, even if that meant bleeding out for a vampire or throwing themselves off a bridge while elfstruck.
Fucking vampires. No respect for the sanctity of life, since they didn’t have lives of their own.
But I wasn’t going to be a killjoy, not when it just now seemed like Tenebris might actually be starting to accept me.
Selena and Apolline came back t
o the tables, cradling their neon-pink cocktails, and Apolline snatched a pixie out of the air with a practiced hand and shook the little Faerie over the drinks.
“Cheers, bitch,” she said, and the girls downed them in one practiced motion.
Within thirty seconds, both of them were giggling, their pupils eating their irises. Selena slumped against Will, peeling the tiny strap of her dress over her shoulder like she was moving through syrup.
Will turned his head when she flopped back against him, his eyes catching the strobing lights as they met mine. I raised the bottle to my lips, wondering why I cared that his hand was on her thigh, or that he was tilting his face towards her neck, his mouth moving against her ear…
“Let’s dance,” I said suddenly, draining the last of the beer and grabbing a Blood Bomb shot from the silver tray Pheric had brought over. It was cherry vodka, tinted red with food coloring with bits of muddled maraschino floating in it. Cute.
“Ugh, not that one.” Apolline snatched the Blood Bomb from my hand and put it back on the tray. “This one.” She pulled over a different tray and handed me two.
“What’s the difference?” I asked, immediately suspicious. They looked identical.
Apolline raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. Her pupils had swallowed her irises entirely. “The pixies shook their asses over those ones. Duh, Trailer Trash.”
What a bitch. I sniffed the shots, but all I caught was the powerful scent of cherry, none of the ethereal summer scent of pixies.
I slammed two and dragged Sura into the crush of bodies.
It was like being swept away on a heated tide, my body automatically responding to the movements around me like we were one collective conscious. Sura’s hands ran over my shoulders, and then I was pulled out to sea.
Hands gripped my waist, ran through my hair, and everything shimmered with pulsing red and violet. I laughed as I fell into a moonspawn’s sculpted arms, his eyes flashing yellow as he ground against me.
My stomach felt superheated, spreading through my veins until my lips and arms were numb. I felt like I was moving through water, every eddy of air, every breath tangible on my skin.
I blinked and there was a blonde vampire in my arms, slinking around me and running her fingers down my arms. She took a deep breath, her tongue tickling my neck. The sensation sent sparks coursing through me.
Her male companion moved behind me, the two vamps carrying me away on an undulating wave. In the back of my head, a tiny voice was screaming that something wasn’t right, that it wasn’t me in my body anymore.
I looked at my arms, wrapped around the female vampire’s neck. My skin glittered like I’d rolled in gold dust.
Elfstruck. The shots had been laced with pixie dust. Bitch wasn’t a strong enough word for Apolline.
Knowing I was fucked up on dust should’ve horrified me, but instead I found myself melting against the male vamp, my breath hitching when he pushed his hips against my ass, fingers gouging into my hips. Despite the numbness in my limbs, everything felt warm and liquid inside me, my nerve endings pulsing with a low, constant hum.
The vamp ran her tongue over my collarbone, moving downwards, and lightning shot into my lower abdomen like I’d touched a livewire.
Before she could pull down the collar of my dress, another pair of hands tugged me away from the vamps. The blonde hissed but fell silent when she caught sight of the intruder.
Sura spun me around and tilted my chin up, taking in what must’ve been blown-out pupils and a blank expression. “I’m elfstruck,” I said thickly. Even my tongue was numb. “Apolline did it.”
“Yeah.” The crush continued around us, never slowing, and I needed to go with them. Sura’s black eyes bored into me and I found myself falling into their abyss. “She likes her jokes. You’re high as fuck, Tori.”
“I need to dance.” Every moment that I held still was painful, my muscles jittering to move, to release the build-up of energy. I needed release.
He spun me around without releasing me, giving me a place to dance and let the pixie dust work through me. My skin felt like it was going to crawl right off my body, hot, sticky, glittering.
Everything was beautiful. Why’d I ever think they were ugly? The vampires moved like silk and lightning, the moonspawn with primal carnality. Something reverberated through my chest as I danced, and I realized Sura was growling, his cock harder than iron while I ground against him.
I reached behind my head and laced my fingers around Sura’s neck, every inch of me aching to feel more of him.
A moonspawn with long dreads pushed a human up against the wall, sliding into her with one powerful thrust. I needed that. From Sura. Now.
The blonde vampire who’d danced with me earlier crept in, catching the human’s face in a long, sharp kiss.
My center clenched, swamping my stomach with waves of want.
“Sura,” I rasped, leaning my head and looking up at him. He was taut, his lower lip shining where he’d licked it, leaving a trail of gold glitter behind.
Finally, after what felt like a tormented eternity, he pushed me towards the wall, out of the crush of violent dancers, shielding me with his body.
His fingers slid just under the hem of my dress. My heart was in my throat, every beat rippling through my body on an endless red sea. I was the heartbeat, the need, and the desperation all wrapped into one incandescent body.
“I need you,” I whispered, resting my forehead on the back of his hand, which was splayed on the wall. His breath tickled my ear, but his fingers didn’t move any further.
“You’re not yourself, Victoria the Elfstruck.” I heard him swallow, even over the bass that thumped in my bones, like the pixie dust had given me super-hearing. “Would you want this without pixie dust?”
Elfstruck Tori was truthful. “I want this all the time.” I wriggled against him, biting back a gasp. He was still hard, sending little electric zings through me.
Sura’s fingers moved a centimeter higher and I tried not to moan at how good that tiny bit of his skin felt against mine. “Would you want one of them, too? A Shadowed Worlder?”
“What is this, Twenty Questions?” It didn’t come out as sharp as I wanted, my voice still thick. “I want you, Sura.”
He pushed harder. “Would you fuck a demon if it came up to you right now?”
I bit back a laugh. “Of course not. I’m not that fucked up.” Which was a little untruthful, considering how easily I’d fallen into the vampire’s arms. They just felt so beautiful. “So you know I want you for you.”
Sura had gone tense, his fingers just brushing the tiny slip of fabric between us. “Remember you said that,” he said, so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard it at all.
I turned, the brick wall scraping my bare shoulder blades, and found how fully trapped I was by his size. We were so close there was barely room to slide a sheet of paper between us. “I will remember this, Sura.” I rose on my tiptoes, but only the fact that he was bent over me made it possible for me to get close enough to kiss him.
My lips had barely brushed his when he dipped his head and found my ear instead, nipping the lobe before working his way down my neck. He ran the tip of his tongue over the tendon of my neck, sending a jolt straight through me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, goosebumps rising everywhere and nipples hardening to tight, aching points.
He finally slipped his fingers under the thin fabric between us, groaning when he found me already soaking wet.
My head lolled back as he licked my neck, nipping me here and there and drawing shivers that seemed to ripple and echo inside me, each sensation mirrored and amplified by the pixie dust. His fingertips kneaded my clit, making my hips buck forward, and like he knew I couldn’t take the teasing any longer, he cupped my entire sex, slipping a finger inside me.
If Sura was the storm, I was the sea. The pounding music slammed the breath right out of my lungs, and I had no choice but to ride out the waves that threatened to dr
own me. His breath was ragged, heavy, rasping as he made me ride his hand.
My left hand moved like it had a mind of its own, trailing over the broad chest and barrel-like abdomen, finding dense muscle under his shirt. His cock was massive, straining against his jeans. Disquiet flickered through me for a moment; how could I take him without hurting? I’d never had sex with anyone that big before.
The disquiet faded away a second later. The pixie dust whispered to me that anything was possible. It was all greed and desire.
I squeezed him and he let out the kind of noise he made from the room next door, sending my heartbeat skyrocketing.
He raised his head, lips swollen from kissing me, dark eyes shimmering like a night sky full of stars, and pushed into me harder, watching my face as I tightened around him.
“Don’t be greedy, Sura.” Will leaned on the wall next to me, blocking the view of Sura’s fingers between my legs from the rest of the club. The gold shine of pixie dust was smeared across his cheek. “I haven’t danced with her yet.”
Sura sucked in a hissing breath, drawing his finger out of me. The part of me that watched from a distant shore thought that maybe I should be feeling shame, getting fingered in a vampire club in plain view, but the part of me still riding the Faerie high didn’t care, entranced by how pretty Will was, his sharp features limned with the crimson-and-violet lights.
“Not the time, Will,” Sura snarled.
Will slid his hand around my waist, raising a dark eyebrow. “The night’s still young. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Was it? It felt like a hundred years had passed since we’d walked in through the blood-red doors.
The two glared at each other for a moment, and I felt like I was missing something important, a subtext that only they understood.
