He reached around and deftly lifted my skirt with one hand, exposing me. I knew we could get caught at any moment but that just made it all the hotter.
Mindless, wild pleasure.
Exactly what I’d been after.
I let out a groan through gritted teeth as he grabbed my panties and ripped them off me in one motion, tossing them to the ground beside us. He ground his cock against me again, the roughness of his jeans against my bare ass a delicious sensation that sent shivers up my spine.
“How do you want it?” he asked, leaning into my ear and letting the words warm my skin. I was a little torn between wishing that he had just taken me, and the quiet pleasure at being asked - a girl likes her needs to be catered for. I opened and closed my mouth, for a moment not able to find the words to say it.
“Hard,” I gasped at last. I was already soaking wet – something about the way this guy was taking control of me, something about this situation, was intoxicating. Most of the human males I’d been with were too scared of doing something wrong to take risks, frightened that if they made the slightest slip-up, I’d as soon kill them as fuck them.
But not this one.
He reached up beneath my shirt and my jacket to cover my breasts in his big, strong hands; I hadn’t bothered with a bra that day and I was glad for it as he pinched my nipples between his fingers hungrily and drew a groan of pleasure tinged with pain out from between my lips in the process.
I wondered if the reason this guy hung out at vampire bars was because he couldn’t find a human woman who could handle his intensity.
I pushed those thoughts out of my head – I didn’t want to think about him or who he was or what had brought him here. I just wanted him inside me.
I heard the zip of his pants and then, at last, the broad head of his cock pressing up against my soaking wet slit. He placed one hand on my hip to hold me steady, and then he eased himself inside of me, going slow, taking his time, as though he was savoring the feel of my tight channel closing around his throbbing shaft. I pressed my hands into the wall in front of me, using it as leverage to push back against him. I didn’t want slow. I wanted it now.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he growled. Then, again seeming to sense my need, he thrust forward and buried himself up to the hilt inside me, stealing my breath. One hand was still on my breast, tugging at my nipple in a way that sent pain and pleasure spiraling through my system in a mess that I couldn’t sort out.
I growled like an animal as he began to rut into me. His cock was thick, spreading me open, and he fucked me fast and hard and as though he was trying to prove some kind of point – to me or to himself I had no idea, but either way, I was happy to let him try. In the distance, I could hear the noise of a few people leaving the club, the laughter and chatter and excitement, and I gritted my teeth and focused in on the feeling of him inside me.
Nothing else mattered. The entire world could rot and burn at that moment, as long as this man was inside me. The dark, dank alley around me seemed to drop away as I pushed myself back to meet him, arching my back and rocking my hips in time with his, meeting the rhythmic pounding of his hard hips against my ass. I had been having sex for centuries now, of course I was good at it, of course I knew how to get myself there, but damn it was good to meet a man who knew how to get me there. He filled me with long, deep strokes that sent tremors across every inch of my body. Everything that had happened that day dropped away as he thrust into me.
He leaned forward, his whole body against mine for a moment, and took my hand from the wall and pushed it between my legs.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered, and he kissed the back of my neck in a gesture so surprisingly tender that it caught me off-guard, the contrast pushing me closer to the edge. I didn’t need telling twice, and I slipped my hand between my thighs and began to stroke my clit in time with his thrusts. I could feel his body tensing up against mine, his skin against my skin intoxicatingly sexy, my body clenching and pushing and grinding out for anything, for that release, to finally find my way to what I had been looking for this entire night. His hot breath washed over my nape as he closed his blunt teeth tightly, pinching my flesh hard between them, fucking me in deep, even strokes that--
“Jesus,” I moaned as I came, the feeling crashing over me like ice water. It was more a relief than anything else, the pleasure pulsing out over me and seeming to satisfy the parts of me that needed it most; my mind uncurled from the place it had been hiding all this time for a moment, and I closed my eyes and let myself feel.
It overwhelmed me, the release cathartic. My pussy clenched around his cock as he held himself deep inside of me, letting me milk him dry. I felt him bottom out inside of me, his fingers digging into my hip even further, and the shuddering sensation of his cock twitching as he came satisfied me as much as my orgasm had.
For a minute, we stayed that way until our labored breathing returned to normal. Then, I pushed away from the wall, pushing him back and out of me. I said nothing as I adjusted my clothes and turned to leave. I glanced over at my ruined panties, the black cotton soaking in a puddle right next to us, and figured that I would just have to bid farewell to them.
I raked my fingers through my hair and zipped up my jacket, pulling my hands into the sleeves to ward off the cold. I could feel him watching me, and I glanced around to see what the issue was.
“Problem?” I asked him, raising my eyebrows as he stared at me.
“That’s it. You’re out of here?” he asked, a grin kicking up one side of his firm mouth.
My eyes travelled down to see his thick cock straining out the front of his jeans, still hard as rock.
"I thought you..."
He nodded. "I did. Sometimes once isn't enough for the beast."
There was no way he was a vampire. Even if I hadn't been able to spot the signs and smell his humanity on him, he had a wildness, a lack of discipline that vampire males simply don't possess - something I would admit to loving about human men. But I'd never known a human male who could go two rounds with me without even a breather.
No way was I letting a human cock get the best of me - that thing was going down.
I was back on him in a second, kissing him hard and biting - not that kind of biting - along his stubbly chin. As I jumped up to wrap my legs about his strong hips, he caught my weight easily in his big hands, pushing me back against the wall.
"This time," I snarled between bites, "could you try to take it off the pee-wee setting. I want to damn well feel it."
"Oh, you'll feel it," he promised, kissing me back with an intense passion that matched my own. "You're going to be feeling it for days."
I grit my teeth as he thrust back into me, banging me hard against the wall. Our eyes locked - a battle of stamina and wills.
"What are you waiting for?" I snarled.
The first time had been hard, this was practically brutal. Despite my taunts, I wasn't sure this guy could have given any more than he already had - turned out I underestimated him. He pounded me into the wall and I ground myself down on him, my insides already seething into a second furious orgasm. Again, we came together, and this time as he slipped out of me, he stayed down.
"Enough for 'the beast' or are we going again?"
The guy grinned at me, perhaps the sexiest single thing I had seen in my life. "I know when I'm beat."
Just as well, cause he'd got me just as beat.
"Can I ask you a question?"
“No.” I had turned to walk out of the alleyway and start on the long walk back to my place when he reached out to catch my arm.
Wrong move.
I flashed around, my instincts kicking in the way they always did when I felt like I was being threatened. Even though this guy was nothing close to a danger to me, I had still just shared something intimate with him and so felt more vulnerable than I might have otherwise. Sure, he had no idea what was going on in this old head of mine, but I did, and I had no intention of letting him catch on
.
I snatched my arm away from his and stared him down. He met my gaze steadily, not as scared as he probably should have been.
“Don’t touch me like that,” I warned him. I would give this guy one chance and then he would be responsible for whatever happened next - I didn't give him any extra leeway just because he was a good fuck. He held his hands up, looking a little pissed and a little amused all at once.
“You don’t even want to know my name?” he asked, his voice deceptively soft.
I shook my head. “You really think I’d pick someone up in a place like that because I wanted to get to know them?” I replied. “I’m leaving now. Please don’t follow me.”
I turned to walk out of the alleyway and left him behind, standing there in the darkness next to the club. I could distantly hear the throbbing music pulsing below us and couldn’t wait to escape now.
“Kael.”
It took me a moment to figure out what he was doing when he called after me.
His name. Kael.
I swiveled to look at him as I walked away, shaking my head. “I didn’t want to know.”
Which was true. I didn’t want him or anyone else anywhere near me, not when I knew that being around me was likely to land people in serious trouble. But I found myself oddly grateful to know his name. That was a mistake - start thinking of human fuck-toys as people and it's a slippery slope before you start treating them like it.
I saw a flicker of something in his eyes in the distance, something that I couldn’t quite give a name to, but I turned away and continued on my walk home. Just because he’d been inside me didn’t give him the right to know me. He’d only find himself disappointed. Right now, I wished that I didn’t know me either.
Layla.
All the thoughts that being pounded against a wall had made scatter came rushing back in one massive swell and my throat went tight.
I made my way off into the crowded, lonely night once more. I had to get myself together, ready for another day of trying to save the only person I gave a shit about.
Ready to get Layla back, once and for all.
And more than ready to make whoever had taken her from me pay.
Chapter 3
It doesn't matter whether it's gothic castles, grand chateaus or Victorian townhouses, through the centuries, vampires have always known how to live - at least, those of us at the top of our game. I don't know why it is that a species that really only needs dark and silence, has such a taste for the finer things in life, but there we are. However frivolous it is, I love my penthouse apartment, I love the view it affords of the river, and I love that it is spacious enough to house three women in complete comfort. Only two at the moment. And that's the thing, however much I love this place, I'd give it up in a heartbeat if it meant that I could get Layla back. It takes something like this to tell you what really matters in life, and it's not a fancy apartment.
“Hey, honey, I’m home,” I called into the quiet apartment as soon as I was through the door.
A moment later, the bedroom door opened and Max emerged, running a hand through her hair and stretching. She had those dark rings around her eyes and I knew just by looking that she had been getting about as much rest as I had these last few weeks, since Layla had been taken.
Like Layla, Max was a victim I found on the street. However much my hatred for humans runs hot at the moment, I still reserve my ultimate rage for the scum of my own species - people who take the gift we have for granted. It is easy enough to take blood from a human without killing them - some of them even get off on it - it is equally easy to drain a human dry, killing them clean and easy. Those vampires who turn a victim and then leave them starving, confused and helpless make me sick. When a human is first turned vamp, they need to feed, but they don't know how, they don't know anything. So many die like that - turned accidentally by careless vampires who think the easiest way to fix their mistake is let it die, gnawed to death by an unquenchable thirst.
The vamps who did that to Max, I tracked down, and it was nice to see the fear in their eyes when they realized who they had pissed off, just before I killed them. It may sound harsh, but if you do it a few times, word gets about, and it saves lives in the long run.
Max I had found in that pitiful condition only a few years back, while Layla had been my sister for fifty years now. Blood sister, that is - I fed both of them my blood to bring them back from the brink of death and confirm them irrevocably as vampires.
As the memory came upon me, I could not stop my eyes from turning to the door of Layla's room, empty for the last six months.
"I miss her, too." Max noticed where I was looking.
"I'm just tired."
"Who isn't?" She looked at me with an expression of desperate hope that I knew I would soon be squashing. "Any luck?"
I sat down heavily on the couch. "I found Michael Wambach."
"You don't seem happy about it. You've been looking for him for months." Max sat down beside me. "That means either he didn't have information you were looking for, or... Tell me you didn't kill another one."
"Wish I could." I wasn't going to shed any tears for Michael Wambach. He was in this up to his neck, a neck that I had now irreparably damaged. Layla had been arrested under false pretenses for a crime she didn't commit - drinking from unwilling humans. But before she could be officially charged with this nonsense, the police car transporting her was attacked by five men in black, who kidnapped my sister and killed her escort. All except Wambach. He walked away, not just alive, but unhurt. Not just unhurt, but as I had discovered by doing a little digging, considerably better off financially.
No; I wasn't going to shed any tears for him, but allowing him to die before he had told me what he knew had been... careless. More so since it wasn't the first time.
"I forget how fragile human males can be," I admitted.
"You’d think you'd remember, the number of times this has happened. Did he say anything?" asked Max with a hint of reproach. She was about as concerned for Wambach's well-being as I was, but knew as well as I did that I had fucked up.
"He muttered something like 'We all make choices. I made a bad one. But walk away. This goes deeper than you can possibly imagine.'."
"What do you make of that?"
I shrugged. "Maybe he thought he could make me stop."
"Or maybe he was warning you."
Death bed changes of heart make me very uncomfortable. If you are killing someone who has done something wrong then the last thing you need is for them to realize the error of their ways, even if they are only realizing it because you are going to kill them.
"I tried to stop him bleeding but... I guess I let too much go. I was trying to make him easy to control. Took it too far." I could have turned him, of course, but the last thing the vampire species needs is Michael Wambach added to its ranks. We have a bad enough reputation already.
"It's not your fault." Max put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "You can't blame yourself for being careful, Sonja. You could have ended up with a bullet in the chest."
Wambach was not the first man I had hunted down in my search for Layla. The last one had been a fence who had sold some of Layla's jewelry through a pawn shop. I went in perfectly friendly, pretty sure that he had nothing to do with Layla's kidnap, just wanting to know who he had gotten the jewelry from, and the guy shot me in the chest. Maybe it was just because I was a vampire - some people have trust issues where we're concerned. Ordinary bullets cannot kill vampires but they hurt us no less than they do humans, and while it could not kill me, loss of blood makes us weak and helpless. Having hurt me, the man broke a wooden crate to furnish himself with a stake and came at me.
That was when I decapitated him with a knife I keep in my boot.
Vampires don't need knives, but I found that nine times out of ten, using a knife helped me control myself and stop short of killing, because I'm not tasting blood. Unfortunately, that had been the tenth time out of ten.
> "That shit gave us even less," I muttered, rubbing the spot on my chest where the bullet had seared through me.
"It's a bad run," agreed Max.
To a degree, Max was still finding her feet as a vampire, figuring out what kind of vamp she wanted to be, and it was fair to say that she had two very different role models to choose from. I had to admit that Layla would hate some of the stuff I was doing to find her. Even though these were bad people who had blood on their own hands, she would hate that I was hurting and killing for information.
Layla had never wanted to be a vampire, the early years had been very hard on her, and I had coaxed her through as best I could, never trying to turn her into a clone of myself or force her to be something she didn't want to be, but showing her how she could be a vamp, and still be a decent person. Thankfully, she had found her way; she never killed, never drank blood that was not offered, and then only when she had to, living much of her life in hunger. There were some store-bought substitutes that filled the void, but they remain far from ideal. She was the most human vampire I had ever met, and I loved her for that forthright insistence on never losing hold of the person she was.
I, by contrast, was vampire through and through. At my age, I think there is little else that I can be. I sometimes wonder if there was ever a time when I was more like Layla. If there was, I do not remember it, and perhaps that's just as well. Three hundred years is a long time to hang on to memories, I'm no longer sure of who I was before I was turned, but I think I was a pretty rough person then, too. I never took shit from anyone, being a vamp just enabled me to back it up with force.
That difference between us, that attitude of Layla's, was how I knew - how anyone who knew Layla knew - that there was no way she was guilty of what she had been accused of when they arrested her. Drinking from unwilling humans?
Not Layla. No way.
The guy who accused her did so over the phone, saying he'd managed to get away from her but she might be out to hurt someone else. They picked Layla up 'for the safety of the public'. The accuser was a man named Tyler Gray, whom Layla had been dating - they'd been out two or three times - so I knew where to find him and went right over to have a few gentle words in his ear.
Her Deadly Harem Page 2
