A Very Alpha Christmas

by Anthology

Val then pressed the button to restart the elevator’s assent. Her eyes remained fixed on him, watching him watching her, unsure really, what she was looking for. Deceit? Sincerity? What he just offered her was pretty much a deal with the Devil. There was no way she could walk away with that juicy morsel dangling only a step away from her reach. She just had to take that last step. Easy, right?

  So what if the price ended up being half her blood volume. She had donated blood lots of times. She could just think of it in those terms.

  The elevator dinged, and the door slid open. For a few, eternal seconds, neither one of them moved. Then as the door began to slide shut, Ellie shot forward and grabbed Val’s hand. She felt him momentarily stiffen before his hand tightened around hers. They left the elevator together without another word, Ellie tugging him slightly behind her.

  Ellie’s hands shook a bit as she slipped her keycard into the slot above the brass door handle. As soon as they had both entered her room, she dropped his hand and whirled around to face him. “So tell me, why do you really find me familiar?” she demanded.

  Val grinned as he closed the door behind them. “Right to the heart of the matter. I like that.” He gestured towards the bed. “You might want to sit down for this.”

  She silently did as he asked, settling herself down stiffly on the edge of the closest corner of the bed. Val walked over to the small table in front of the window and pulled out one of the chairs. He turned it around to face her before settling down into it, his posture stiff and formal and his hands fisted on his legs as though he was facing an inquisition.

  “Before I can answer that question, I’ll need to answers the ones you didn’t ask, first. A few years back, I was walking the streets of a neighborhood along the northern edge of this city. It was fairly early in the night, so I wasn’t in any particular hurry.”

  Ellie instantly stiffened. It couldn’t be…! “I thought—when you said that you would ‘finish healing’ the wound on my neck, I thought you were just teasing me…”

  “I was,” Val admitted readily, “but I was also quite serious. It’s bothered me all this time, you know, that I wasn’t able to completely heal that little girl.”

  Her eyes widened. “But—the man who was licking my wound—he was old,” she protested. “I remember seeing silver in his hair…”

  “And one day my ‘father’ is seen here in the hotel. The next, he’s suddenly gone with rumors of his imminent demise due to cancer, and a son no one had ever seen who looks remarkably like the old man when he was younger shows up to take up the ownership of the hotel.”

  Ellie found herself shaking her head, and to her horror, she felt her eyes beginning to well up with tears. She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to allow them to fall.

  Suddenly she felt a hand lay comfortingly on her shoulder. She opened her eyes to see Val now kneeling before her, his eyes glittering with sadness.

  “I had heard about him before,” Val said, “a rogue vampire that traveled from city-to-city that liked to prey on children. The killing of any human is forbidden among what we call the Vampire Underground. It’s a society of vampires living in various ‘vampire cities’ throughout the world, interconnected through the vampire king that rules over each city. That this vampire was thumbing his nose at the kings as well as risking revealing our existence to humans by killing children—well, let’s just say that we were all hunting him.”

  Val slowly moved his hand from her shoulder and gently brushed his fingertips over the scar on her neck. Ellie shivered.

  “I’m sorry for this,” he said. “When I saw him feeding on you under that tree out in the open where anyone could have seen as bold as can be, I saw red, and I was already pulling him off you before I had even realized I had moved. It’s my fault that your throat was ripped open so terribly. Then to make matters worse, that young couple out walking their dog credited with finding you managed to come up behind me while I was distracted with trying to save your life.”

  He let out a frustrated sigh. “They had already seen me crouching over you. Your blood was all over the sidewalk, as well as my hands and mouth. All vampires can slowly seduce humans until they fall into a kind of trance. We do this when we feed so that we can feed at our leisure, the human remembering nothing of our encounter, but the trick is that the person must be directly, willingly, looking into our eyes. That obviously couldn’t happen in that scenario. Plus their dog had begun to snap and bark at me, adding to their alarm.

  “The only option left to me was to forcefully take their memories of me, an ability that very few of my kind have and me as one of the few, barely at that. Unfortunately, once I had hold of their minds and had erased any trace of me, the moment I released them, I had to disappear. I couldn’t finish healing you. I imagine both had monster headaches for a few days after.”

  “Disappear how?” Ellie asked, remembering how she had suddenly found herself pinned between the elevator wall and Val’s body literally between one blink and the next.

  His playful grin returned. “At times, I can move faster than the human eye can perceive.”

  “Of course you can,” she said with a sigh. “So, what did you do to the asshole that tore open my throat? Kill him?” She winced internally, hating the hopefulness in her voice.

  Val shook his head. “He was older, stronger, than me. He managed to slip my grip almost immediately and run off. You were bleeding out fast, so there was never any question of me pursuing him. He must have left the city right then and there because we never found him. We think he’s either gone to ground or changed his prey since there hasn’t been any vampire attacks on children since that night.”

  He slid a strand of her hair between two fingers. “From the moment I walked by you last night as you were checking into the hotel, I could smell my essence on you faintly. A day, a year, a hundred, it doesn’t matter. Once a vampire bites another, whether human or another vampire, an enzyme in our saliva unique to every vampire will remain behind. I didn’t bite you that night, but my saliva did enter your body through your wound as I used its healing properties to close the wound.”

  “So you really didn’t recognize me at all, just that I had been your ‘prey’ at some point in the past,” Ellie stated rather matter-of-factly.

  Val surprised her by shaking his head. “As I told you before, it’s rare for me to forget a face. The fact that you weren’t familiar even a little bit, yet were carrying my scent was rather perplexing. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how it could’ve happened.”

  “As much as it disgusts me to say this, given what you said about biting, shouldn’t the fact that I was carrying the scent of that other vampire, too, have tipped you off, Mr. Photographic Memory?”

  He laughed, the sound skirting pleasantly over her despite the seriousness of their conversation. “My memory isn’t exactly photographic, but no. You aren’t carrying his scent at all. I negated it when I healed you.” His eyes suddenly darkened with anger. “I would not leave him an easy way to find you again.”

  The strand of her hair he still held fell from his fingers as he rose to his feet. “Your hair was a shade of auburn then, not this lovely shade of chestnut. Your eyes, as well, were not so gray.”

  Ellie blinked at the complete one-eighty their conversation had suddenly taken. “Yes. I guess I can see why it wouldn’t have even occurred to you that I was the little girl you saved.”

  Then, even though she thought she was absolutely mad to do it, she stood up and wrapped her arms around his body in a hug. As she expected, Val immediately stiffened, but he didn’t try to push her away. His body was pleasantly warm. She could even hear the steady beating of his heart as her ear pressed against his chest. This was a living being, not the undead monster of the myths.

  “Thank you,” she murmured softly into his sweater, giving him another squeeze before she released him and sat back down onto the bed. The smile she gave him was a little tremulous. “That’s three times you’ve saved me now.
”

  “Three?”

  “I thought I had started to put that whole horrible incident behind me.” She laughed bitterly. “Then last night’s assault showed me how stupid I was to think that. I nearly broke down completely right after you saved me. I think if that would’ve happened, I would’ve been right back at square one. But then you were there, and your voice was like a soothing balm. I don’t even care if you were doing that vampire seduction thing you mentioned earlier even though I should be mad that you messed with my head.”

  “Then should we make it four?”

  “Huh?”

  “My offer still stands,” he explained. “Do you trust my fangs near your neck again so that I may finish what I began so many years ago?”

  5

  Ellie automatically raised a hand to her scar. “Will it hurt?” she asked cautiously. “Will you have to draw my blood again for it to work?”

  His eyes filled with sudden amusement. “I do believe I mentioned it would involve licking.”

  She couldn’t help it. Warmth flooded her cheeks, but she forced herself not to look away.

  “Then I think I’ve lived with this ugly reminder long enough.”

  Val sat down on the bed beside her and gently grasped her chin, turning her head slightly away and bushing her hair over her shoulder until her throat was bared to him. She closed her eyes as she saw him dip his head down to her neck out of the corner of her eye, his warm exhales against her skin giving her goose bumps.

  “I hope you’re ticklish,” he murmured.

  “What—!” was all Ellie managed before she drew in a sharp breath as Val ran his tongue firmly over the raised skin of the scar.

  She immediately felt her skin began to tingle like a limb that had gone to sleep before going completely numb as he continued to lap at it as though licking an ice cream cone. Soon she was squirming as her entire body became both hypersensitive and too warm at the same time.

  “I feel—” Ellie clenched her hands into fists in her lap and tried again, “Am I supposed to feel—um—”

  “Aroused?” Val finished with a chuckle, the vibrations against her damp neck skirting down her spine and making her shudder. “It happens.”

  Then, as if to further tease her, he deliberately licked a slow, sensual wet path across a dry patch of skin that most definitely didn’t have any scar tissue. She gasped and instinctually clutched at his sweater.

  “Touch me,” he invited, placing a soft kiss at a sensitive spot just beneath her chin.

  Her pulse instantly sped up. It was scary, how much the thought of running her hands along his naked skin made very real arousal wash through her.

  He’s a vampire.

  Maybe that thought had been meant as an admonishment, to remind her of the danger of playing with this being, but instead of fear, she began to imagine what it would feel like to have his fangs scrape along her skin, across her nipples…

  Ellie squeezed her legs together tightly as her core began to throb. Her eyes popped open, and she stared across the room for a long moment. Did she dare?

  Suddenly, Val was kissing along her chin, then the corner of her mouth, and her control shattered. She turned her head and deliberately pressed her lips against his. She felt him smile against her lips, the smug bastard, before his mouth began to devour her own. Her arms found their way around his neck, and her fingers began to absently card through his silky locks.

  He made a soft sound of approval low in his throat before a hot tongue licked across the seal of her lips. She immediately opened her mouth to him, meeting his tongue with her own as it plunged inside.

  God, she had missed this! It had been so long since she had last felt that sensual slide against her tongue, and Val seemed to know where and how to lick slowly along the roof of her mouth just so that always made her shudder with pleasure.

  Hesitantly, Ellie ran her tongue over his teeth until she felt the sharp point of one of his fangs before quickly retreating, half out of curiosity and half just wanting to assure herself that they really were there, that she really was kissing a vampire, and that fact wasn’t something her messed-up mind had made up.

  Breaking apart for air, Val scooted her back towards the middle of the bed and pushed her onto her back before moving over her and settling his own body between her legs. The skirt of her dress had ridden up, and she could feel his hardness well through the thin material of his pants and her satin panties. Eyes darkened by lust stared down intently at her as he ground down against her groin, making her flush hotter and moan.

  Ellie threw her head back and closed her eyes. She wrapped her legs around his thighs and pressed him closer against her throbbing center as he continued to thrust teasingly against her. She felt his lips at her throat again, but this time, instead of his tongue, Val’s mouth latched onto her pulse point and began to suck so hard that she cried out.

  This was new for her—the licking, the sucking of her neck. Self-conscious about the scar on her neck, she had never, well, necked with any of her partners. She was almost shocked at how good it felt, of how her entire body seemed to come alive.

  Now moaning more loudly, her hands began to blindly pull at the hem of his sweater, then the button-up shirt he wore underneath until she finally felt the incredibly silky skin beneath. She felt him twitch as she traced her fingers teasingly up his back along his spine, and both his mouth and his hips seemed to increase their voracity for a few glorious moments before his hips stilled. He raised his mouth to her lips for a kiss that left her gasping for breath when it ended.

  Flashing her a mischievous smile, Val sat up and pulled off his sweater. She giggled in surprised delight when he yanked open the black button-down with one effortless tug of both halves and a half-dozen buttons went flying. A second later, that shirt joined the sweater over the side of the bed, and Ellie couldn’t take her eyes off the pale, deliciously muscled chest that was revealed.

  She sat up and immediately began to run her hands over all those smooth hills and valleys while Val reached around her back to unzip her dress. Within seconds, he had removed both her dress and bra. He pushed her back down onto the bed before he bent his head and licked at one of her nipples while he lighted brushed his thumb over the other. It wasn’t his teeth, but the skillful swirl of his tongue over the sensitive nub had her arching up into his mouth, her fingers entangled in his hair and tugging in encouragement.

  Then without warning, Val sank his fangs into the soft skin of her breast just above her areola, and Ellie shrieked as an intense mixture of pain and pleasure she had never even remotely experienced before shot through her entire body. Her world instantly shrunk down to only the feeling of that hot mouth sucking hard at the hot warmth spilling from the twin wounds as she dug her fingernails into the vampire’s shoulders, overwhelmed and sobbing with pleasure. Another second and she was rocked by a sudden, powerful climax that inundated her entire body and nearly caused her to black out. The sound of her heartbeat amidst the roaring of her blood flowing through her ears was almost deafening as the heart, itself, threatened to tear out of her chest.

  All too soon, Val was licking at the two punctures he had made in the delicate skin, and the throbbing and stinging gradually disappeared. Through blurry eyes and still shaking from her orgasm, Ellie watched as he lifted his head, his pupils blown so wide with lust that his eyes were almost completely black. In contrast, his lips were still stained crimson with the remnants of her blood. He slowly, sensually ran his tongue over them until not even a trace of blood was left.

  It probably should’ve completely grossed her out, but she had never seen anything more erotic in her life.

  Ellie slipped her badly trembling hand between their bodies, and after a few fumbles, managed to unbutton his pants and draw his sizeable, though thankfully completely manageable member out. Suddenly it was as though the air around them had doubled in density as her sense of Val’s presence expanded. Figuring it was probably a vampire thing, she did her best to
just breathe slowly and concentrate on working him up into a frenzy.

  As she stroked him, Val did his damndest to try to suck her breath completely from her lungs, one of his hands leisurely caressing and kneading one of her breasts. Soon, he was kicking off his pants completely and ridding her of her panties, all without once breaking their kiss. It was as though he couldn’t get enough of her lips.

  “I have a secret to confess,” he said against her lips as Ellie felt the head of his member press against her opening.

  “A secret?” she echoed dumbly, her mind so drunk on pleasure that she could barely understand his words.

  “I’ve wanted you like this from that first, shy glance at me yesterday, spread wide and wet for me. The beauty with the long, dark hair. That I could smell myself on you just gave me the excuse to pursue what I should have left alone.”

  Then before his words could really sink in, Val thrust forward, filling her throbbing passage completely with his hard warmth, and Ellie lost the ability to think at all. He rolled his hips into her with a deep, powerful rhythm that had her writhing beneath him, alternating between shouts and moans of his name.

  At a point beyond thinking about the consequences, Ellie tilted her head back and begged, “Bite me.”

  The nearly unbearable pressure building within her groin exploded in a flash of brilliant, white light behind her eyelids and a never-before-experienced ecstasy that shot up her spine the moment Val’s fangs sank into her neck. This, she realized. This was what she had been waiting to experience, probably from the moment she had learned Valerio was a vampire. More than the mind-blowing climax it had triggered, there was just no comparing the utterly intimate feeling of those teeth, that mouth, drawing life from her.

  Even as her mind was blacking out, Ellie could feel more than hear Val groan against her neck as with one last, heavy thrust, he spilled himself deep within her while his mouth continued to suckle at her neck.

  “Val,” she whispered, clutching weakly at his back.