Succulent

by Zane

  If it weren’t for the halitosis from Hades, I’d have been all over him.

  As it was, my body wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand, a hunky, romantic, intelligent vampire was doing the “forget dinner and a movie; let’s make love” dance while hitting a few of my hot spots. And face it, I’d been deep inside book deadlines for a while. I hadn’t even been hitting my hot spots myself, let alone having a handsome man do it for me.

  On the other hand, that miasma coming from his mouth…

  I extricated myself from his arms, despite messages to the contrary from several body parts that lacked a sense of smell. “Gaston, baby, your breath…”

  “I know, ma chère. It is not minty-fresh.” He gave a shrug, far more French than it should really have been. Under other circumstances, it might have been charming.

  “Not minty-fresh?” I meant to be nicer, but as he spoke, he wafted a goat-choking cloud over me. “Baby, if you breathed on Iraq, the UN would be called in to investigate chemical-weapons violations. Toothbrush. Now.” I pointed toward my bathroom.

  He still moved like a cat as he slunk to the bathroom, but less like a proud panther and more like a housecat who’s been smacked after someone caught him on the kitchen table tearing into the chicken. I felt bad about it, but a girl’s gotta have her limits.

  Unfortunately, when he came back, matters were not much improved. Minty freshness, sure, but underneath was a hint of something darker, something rotten. I could bear to let him kiss me, but it was still more turnoff than turn-on.

  I tried to hide it, but I guess I didn’t do a good job. He pulled away from the clinch, took my hands, and guided me to the sofa.

  “I’m so sorry.” He was angled in a strange way, trying to compromise between wanting to look at me and not wanting to breathe on me. “This has not happened in over a century. I was so excited about our date…”

  I barely suppressed a giggle. He was leading into the same speech one ex used to give about his little personal problem, which had nothing to do with bad breath or immortality, but eventually led to my giving up on the relationship. I can be understanding with an occasional problem with getting a little overexcited, but every damn time we get together? Not so much.

  “I understand,” I said instinctively. It was what I always said to Steve when his hair trigger kicked in.

  Although in this case I really didn’t. Gaston was so excited about seeing me that he forgot to brush his teeth for two weeks? That would sound beyond weird from anyone, and especially from someone as fastidious as he was.

  “No, I do not believe you do. It is part of being what I am. What animates this body of mine, that so long ago should have been in its grave, is the energy of my symbiote. If the symbiote does not get blood and sex daily, it weakens. And you were away. What you smell is the sorry state of my body. I hunger for you, ma chère. My symbiote hungers for you as well. But the result of my hunger is not so attractive, I fear. It will heal itself once I let it have what it needs, but that waits upon you.”

  “Wait a minute! You haven’t seen me in what, seventeen days, and you haven’t fed the whole time?”

  Another expressive shrug. I’d say he practiced them in the mirror, but he couldn’t see his reflection.

  “I have fed, a bit. I took blood here and there, though I have not had much appetite. But I have not had sex, and so I weaken. I had not been fully honest with you about my needs when we talked, that I must share sexual pleasure with someone else each day to stay healthy. I had not told you that there were other women in my life, women who are content being…what is the modern expression?—a booty call. And when the time came, I couldn’t. I thought of you and I couldn’t.”

  “You starved yourself to be faithful to me when we haven’t even slept together yet? That…that’s so sweet.”

  Forget being a cynical New Yorker. (Okay, I may put on the pose with the best of them, but you notice I’m not writing hard-edged, urban chick lit. I write romances—sexy, mushy, over-the-top romances with happy endings—for a living. How cynical can I really be?)

  I felt tears well in my eyes.

  He squeezed my hands, started to lean forward toward me. Then he remembered the bad breath and backed off.

  He smiled weakly. “I have read the books you write. You believe in true love. I do not think that love has served you well, but you’re not like many women I’ve met lately, unwilling to believe it might happen to you. You may be willing to settle for a good time with a friend, but I think deep down you want more.”

  I nodded mutely.

  “It is perhaps too soon to speak of love, but I care for you, and I think you care for me—and I, too, still believe in romance, even after two centuries of taking pleasure where I can, just to stay alive. When our feelings for each other are so new and fragile, I could not risk them by being with someone else. I care too much for you.”

  I found my voice again. “But if I’m understanding you right, for you that’s like not eating for two weeks because I wasn’t around to go out to dinner with you! That’s crazy.”

  “Non, c’est l’amour.”

  Even my rusty French could translate that.

  I admit it, I got all teary.

  If he’d showed his usual sweet-breathed, debonair self and told me he loved me, I’d have read him for a player telling a lady what he figured she wanted to hear and just laughed.

  But seeing him like this, coming about as close to dying for love, or at least lust, as I ever hope to see someone do, made it different.

  Made me trust.

  I still wasn’t going to kiss him on the lips, but that left a lot of other good places.

  I leaned in to him, ran my hands over his chest. I do love a man with sensitive nipples, and he had them, because they puckered under that light touch, making little points inside his silk shirt. I unbuttoned the shirt, planting kisses at each bit of newly bared skin. His skin was cool, but not weirdly so, as if he’d just come in from outside on a winter day and was chilled through. When the shirt was open, I pushed it off his shoulders and sat back for a second to enjoy the view.

  Oh, yeah. One hot, technically dead guy.

  When I reached for his jeans, though, he pushed me back onto the couch. “Oh, no,” he whispered (not too close to my face). “Let me see you.”

  Inspired, I looked at my less than spacious couch and said, “How about we adjourn to the bedroom?”

  I’d never been happy before that I have a typical Manhattan postage-stamp apartment, but it meant the bedroom was just a few steps away.

  I’d dressed up a bit, which of course meant there wasn’t a whole lot to get off me. The chartreuse silk camisole I insisted on taking off myself—I was afraid he’d rip it—but he slithered my short, black suede skirt off himself, making each movement a caress. I had panties on, but the way he was looking at me, I could tell they wouldn’t be for long.

  We sat on the edge of the bed, then lay down, his cooler skin starting to warm from contact with my heated body.

  Then his lips closed around one of my nipples, drawing it in, drawing it out, making it feel fatter and more sensitive than I think it ever had before. Tongue, lips, teeth—and then he opened his mouth wider, drawing more of my breast into his mouth, and I felt his fangs graze my flesh.

  Should have been scary as hell. Instead it was erotic as hell.

  “Will you bite me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to say no or yes. On the one hand, being bitten by a vampire sounded pretty scary. On the other hand, I’ve read some of those sexy vampire books, and if I wasn’t the only writer who’d gotten to do some firsthand research, I might be in for a treat.

  It took him a while to answer, because his mouth was full, and goodness knows I wasn’t complaining about that. My only complaint was that he didn’t have two mouths; my other nipple would have loved some of the same Grade A loving.

  Finally he looked up and smiled at me, the expression tender, but the fangs a little alarming. “O
h, yes,” he said, “but not yet. And not here.”

  As he began to kiss his way down my belly, I had a feeling what he meant and started to get nervous.

  But he stuck with only the lightest of nips and nibbles, the kind any mortal lover might give, as he worked his way to my thighs. There? I knew about the femoral artery…

  Again, the most delicate and teasing of nips, more like firm kisses, making me squirm and sigh and grow slick with anticipation.

  Lips brushing against the damp, silky nothing of my panties, tongue licking at me through the satin until I squirmed, arched, finally begged, “Please. Gaston, please…”

  He nudged aside my panties, suckled my most tender flesh into his mouth, inserted one finger inside me. A rhythm that matched my deepest needs, making me soar higher and higher until I screamed his name.

  Then and only then did he peel off his jeans and pull a condom out of the back pocket. My hands were fumble-fingered, awkward with lust, as I tried to help him put it on.

  “I’m not sure my kind can carry human diseases,” he said, “but best to be safe, since I’ve not exactly been monogamous all these years.”

  He lay over me, and as tears welled in his eyes when he entered me, I felt something inside me break—my last bits of cynicism, crumbling under the onslaught of Gaston.

  We moved together, and if you’ve never really made love as opposed to merely bumping uglies—which is pretty damn fine in its own right—I can’t explain what the difference is, but there definitely is one, and it made my heart dance and my body sing.

  I felt myself starting to tighten around him, felt my abdominal muscles fluttering in a telltale sign, felt the top of my head getting ready to fly off. Gaston put his mouth on my throat, like a movie vamp, but before he bit down, he asked me, “Are you sure, chérie?”

  My answer probably wasn’t coherent, but it got the “Hell, yeah!” idea across pretty well.

  A quick burst of pain, then sweetness like nothing I’d ever felt before. The room got bright, and I was sent into orbit in my own personal Gaston-powered rocket ship. Somewhere along the line, after the bite, probably around the time of the third wave of orgasms, Gaston joined me in outer space.

  When we came back down, he kissed me. His breath had a faint coppery taste, as if I were kissing someone who’d just flossed a little too energetically, but other than that, it was back to normal.

  “Is it always like that with a vampire?” I asked when we stopped kissing long enough. “Or was this just because…you know, you really needed some sex?”

  He paused, then laughed. “Oh, chérie, I was about to apologize to you for being too abrupt in my weakened state! Oh, no, it’s not always like that. Often it’s much better.”

  And he was telling the truth. Was he ever!

  Okay, so after a few weeks of getting proof how much better it could be, I was so behind on my work that my publisher and agent were ready to strangle me.

  But they say the new book’s reached a whole new level of sensuality. And while they hadn’t been expecting a paranormal, they’re happy with that development, too. Readers just eat up vampire romances, they say, and there haven’t been many yet with African-American heroes.

  ’Til Death Do Us Part

  Dangerous Lee

  I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years. Since he had disappeared after finding out the babies weren’t his. Now, here we were at the same bourgeois event; he had a badass chick on his arm and I was dateless. I had never got over him.

  I noticed him first, almost as if I were looking for him. Truth be told I had been looking for him since he’d left without saying so much as a “Fuck you.” For years I had dreamed of running into him so we could be a family, despite mismatching DNA. My heart sank as I hid around corners, stalking him. He was so damn fine and seemed so confident. His wardrobe was flawless and he looked like a millionaire. I wondered if he had ever made it in the music industry like he had planned. If he had, I wondered why I hadn’t heard his name. Maybe he was behind-the-scenes.

  All the memories started to flood through my mind and I began to tear up. Someone had been watching me watching him, and when she saw the tears roll, she decided that I needed a drink.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie? Have a drink,” she commanded me.

  It was her, Sanad’s badass chick. I didn’t even notice that she had left his side. I took a quick peek back at Sanad to make sure I wasn’t trippin’. There he was, being the people person that I never knew all those years ago. He had really changed. He had definitely moved on. I felt like a damn fool, pining for his ass after all these years. He had no idea that I was in the room. He didn’t probably even give a damn that I was alive.

  “I’m alright. Thanks for the drink, sista,” I said, walking away quickly, taking a huge swig of the champagne. I almost choked on it.

  She was beautiful, exactly what he deserved. She was thick, with a nice ass, big legs, cute feet, and I’m not even gonna get into her face. It was a cross between Vanity and, well, hell, I can’t think of anyone fine enough, but you get what I’m saying. She was everything I wasn’t.

  Don’t get me wrong. I was fine, too, but she was jaw-droppin’, State of Shock, Men All Pause kinda fine. I was an eight but she was a ten! I’m woman enough to admit it. I wanted to see her naked and touch her copper skin because I was sure Sanad had done so. With my recent closely cropped cut, I figured that I could be the man in our relationship.

  Before I could get too far, she was after me. I felt her grab my arm. “Listen, I noticed you checking out Sanad, the light-skinned brotha over there. We came in together.”

  “No, I wasn’t looking at him. I have no idea who he is,” I lied as I drank the last of the champagne and gave her the glass. “Thanks!”

  This time I made sure to run away so she couldn’t catch up. My heart was pounding. Is she gonna check me for checking her man? I needed to get outta there. I couldn’t stay at a party with Sanad and his “10” girlfriend. I didn’t really want to be there anyway. I didn’t know anyone, but that was the whole point of the party, to network, right? I felt like I was gonna faint and I couldn’t find the damn exit. How the hell did I get in here? Where’s the exit?

  I must have looked like a damn fool, darting around, trying to find the way out. I was bumping into people without saying “Excuse me” and stepping on toes. I was starting to draw attention to myself. I felt woozy. Did that heffa put something in my drink? I’m trippin’ but I feel high. What the hell?

  The next person I bumped into was Sanad. We locked eyes and my mouth flew open.

  “Lela?” he said.

  I couldn’t say anything. I turned to go in the opposite direction and there she was, Miss 10! My legs gave way and I blacked out on the floor. That trick did put something in my drink.

  As I lay unconscious, it all came back to me. My mind flashed back to ten years ago when I was pregnant. Sanad and I were an on-and-off couple, and when I became pregnant, I wasn’t sure if it was his or from this other guy that I pity-fucked because Sanad didn’t want to commit. Sanad and I had dated for years, even lived together, but it wasn’t working. Though we had broken up, we kept in touch and got together for passionate sex every now and then. When I became pregnant, I assumed it was his, even though I had slept with someone the day after we made love.

  He had informed me that he couldn’t devote his life to me. He asked if it could be someone else’s and I told him the truth. He decided to support me through the pregnancy, but he coldly informed me that if it wasn’t his, he would leave me. I should never have settled for that, and neither should he, but I guess love is a hell of a drug and I’m sure he wanted to do the right thing, just in case the baby was his.

  It was a fucked-up nine months, and even though he was there as the twins were cut from my womb, as soon as the negative test results came back, he left and I had never heard from him again. It was as if he never existed. There I was with two newborn babies and all these emotions, and the m
an that I loved and wished were the father of my children had left, as if the past nine months—hell, five years—meant absolutely nothing. The boys’ real father had died in a car crash during my sixth month of pregnancy, but I never told him that he could be the father, so there was all this shit I had to go through with his family. I was an emotional wreck and decided to check myself into a mental hospital when my twin boys were three years old because I couldn’t handle the mess I had made of my life. Raising twin boys alone was too much for me and I lost it.

  As I came to, I was in a dark room. I could hear music and faint voices in the background somewhere; I assumed I was still at the location of the party in someone’s bedroom. I slowly began to make my way out of the bed.

  “Where are you going?” a voice asked.

  I stopped in my tracks. “Who is that?” I asked, still frozen, knowing full well who it was.

  The room was pitch-black. I was afraid. I began to wonder if I had been fondled in my unconscious state. If I had, I was pissed that I missed it. Hell, I hadn’t been fondled in over two years.

  “It’s Sanad.”

  “Turn on the lights,” I pleaded, feeling comfortable enough to move again as I made my way out of the bed.

  “No, we don’t need lights,” Sanad said, using his best seductive voice.

  I started to walk around, feeling for a light switch or a lamp. You couldn’t see a damn thing. I was afraid and pissed off. I hadn’t seen this man in years and I was in a dark room with him after passing out. Something was wrong with this picture.

  “You won’t find a light switch. This room doesn’t have one. I made sure of that.”

  I was frozen again. What was he gonna do? I thought it best to remain still and prepare for some crazy shit to happen. For all I knew, the room was filled with people that I could not see or hear. At the very least, 10 was probably in there as backup.