Dark Surrender Read online

  Her hands ran smoothly up his sides then down his back, until they slid down the back of his pants, cupping his bottom like she owned it. Infuriating…as if she thinks me already her possession!

  She moved her lips up from his chest, over his clavicle and then up the side of his throat, licking and kissing him until she had his earlobe between her lips, her tongue and teeth working it, causing tiny sparks of pleasure to run like electricity through his body.

  An instant later she was out of his arms and across the room, sitting on her loveseat, her legs crossed enticingly, sipping her glass of wine. Luca felt inexplicably drawn to her. That standing there half naked, all alone, was too excruciating a fate to live with.

  She smiled with those luscious lips, setting her wine down and beckoned him with the crick of a finger.

  The vampire moved to her, ready to hit his knees, to ravish her there and then on the little sofa, but the witch leaned up and took hold of his belt buckle, pulled it open and unzipped his fly.

  He gasped and moaned as Min pushed her warm hand into his pants and took him into her grasp, gently tugging his turgid manhood out into the open, stroking it lightly and fondling it with her nimble fingers.

  “You are beautiful, vampire.” She looked up the length of him, a wicked smile warm on her lips. “Every bit of you.” She ducked her head downward and he felt her take him into her mouth, warm and tight and wet. His body jerked, and his hips came forward as she took more and more of him past her pretty lips.

  He knew he could not last long if she was going to do this to him. He was not accustomed to such a pleasure. Sure, he could fuck a woman—be it human or vampire—until she begged for him to stop, but he had never become used to a woman’s mouth feasting so hungrily on his sex. It was too much to bear, too much to last through.

  He pulled the witch up from her position on the loveseat and pulled her lips from his cock. That barely stopped his impending climax. He held her out from him by the shoulders.

  Her lips were the red of rubies, the flesh around them bruised and puffy. Those lips moved to ask a question, but he captured them with his own. He pulled her to him, her body pressed against him through its silk covering. His erection pressed tightly between his stomach and the bottom of her sternum. Each breath she took stroked his agitation all the more.

  Luca plucked at the simple silk tie that kept the robe around her and pushed it from her shoulders. It fluttered to the floor. He roughed the straps of her lacy gown from her shoulders, and it crashed silkily to the floor as well.

  *****

  Standing naked before the vampire, Min felt his gaze caress down her body like the touch of an autumn breeze, cool just like his flesh. Even his manhood was cool to the touch. She’d been surprised that even that part of him was just room temperature. But once her tongue had tasted his exquisite flesh she’d been powerless not to feast on him. She’d never enjoyed that certain act as much as she had doing it to the vampire. Yet he had ended it so soon.

  Must be a vampire thing…

  Funny…and ironic…the vampire doesn’t like to be sucked…

  Luca pressed against her with his entire body and made her fall backwards onto the loveseat. The velvet upholstery caressed her back and bottom as he moved his smooth, broad body over the aching flesh of her front. She shuddered as he kissed her mouth and rubbed his tongue ardently against her own. Then he copied her technique and moved his mouth over her jaw and lingered over her neck—she held her breath, certain the spell she’d cast would hold, but still anxious having the vampire’s lips on her throat—then finally moved lower.

  His lips kissed over the flesh of her breasts and his cold tongue worried her burning flesh, roughed at her hardening nipples.

  “Oh goddess,” she whispered as he sucked on her ravenously. “Yes…yes…”

  A heartbeat later his hands and mouth traversed down her ribcage, playing her very bones like a harp. He licked and flicked her bellybutton with his tongue, and then dropped his attentions to the fleshy mound of her sex. Min shivered as she felt his breath, cool and rough, pass over her hungry opening.

  The vampire grasped Min from beneath. His cold hands squeezed her sensitive, bare bottom. His tongue ran slippery up into the soft folds of her sex and teased at her clitoris and her feminine lips.

  Min gasped and felt a shocking wave of pleasure ripple through her body. Every muscle in her being was clenched. Her hips rolled as her thighs closed around the vampire’s head. His unruly hair tickled those thighs as his tongue and mouth brought her fully to orgasm not once but twice before he finally released her writhing sex from his rapturous torture.

  He smiled as he cupped her breast with one hand, the other moving up from where it held the cheek of her ass. He thumbed the still wet entrance of her vagina. His lips were splotched red from effort, and shiny with her feminine juices.

  The vampire had somehow removed his boots and slipped out of his pants. He leaned in and kissed Min—she could taste herself on his lips—then wrapped her arms and legs about him as he picked her up off the loveseat and carried her to the bed.

  My bed, Min thought as he laid her gently onto the satin covers. A vampire in my bed...

  The thought was as disturbing as it was titillating.

  She looked into his eyes—they weren’t green anymore, they were blood red. The hunger for her blood must have been overwhelming. Surely if she hadn’t cast such a powerful spell that hunger would have broken through and she’d be his midnight snack. But she could feel that her magic was holding strong, and already the vampire was pushing his blood lust back…or maybe the blood lust was just leaking into his regular lust. Either way, he was shaking as he pulled her thighs apart again and pressed his naked, muscular body into the space her spread legs afforded. The vampire’s hardness pressed against the inside of her thigh, and then his weight shifted and it dug against her quivering sex.

  Min’s body shuddered as it anticipated him pushing into her. Her entire body tingled with that prospect.

  The vampire brought his hand to his lips and licked his palm with long, lingering licks, leaving it glistening with his spit. Reaching down he smeared his saliva over his thick endowment, stroking himself even harder as he stared hungrily into Min’s eyes.

  What a gentleman…

  He moved upon her and speared her mercilessly straight through with his fleshy spike. She moaned hoarsely as she felt the searing pain having something that large pushed into her caused. It had been a while since her last lover…a sliver of a memory of him flashed in her mind. How his hulking, muscular body had surged over hers, and how his thick manhood had made her cry out in ecstasy.

  And as swiftly as the memory of him had invaded her thoughts, it turned cold—the fact that he’d chosen The Hunt over her had cut her to the core. Min closed her eyes and pushed hard at the thought and forced it back to the dark corner it always inhabited. She forced herself back to the present, the moment, the sensations the vampire’s body had caused to wash over her, stoking the fire within her back to life again.

  When she opened her eyes again the vampire’s face look absolute blissful, his gorgeous young face imbued with an angelic quality. But when he opened those eyes they were still blood red, the beauty of the jade green eyes only a memory.

  The vampire pulled himself in and out of her. Min gasped and moaned with rapture. And even as he stared into her eyes, his demonic red orbs burned into her like branding irons. She felt herself surrender as her body opened up and gave itself to him completely—monster or not.

  Make me forget everything...

  She reached out and grabbed the vampire by his face, her hands making a smacking sound, and pulled him to her. His expression flashed with surprise, but the moment she planted her kiss on his lips he moaned eagerly and began to feast upon her lips.

  Min’s hands traveled over his body. She gripped the fleshy, tensing orbs of his buttocks as the vampire pumped in and out of her with renewed vigor. His body trembled as h
is hips rocked back and forth, stabbing his manhood into her with increasing force, and at desperate angles. He was losing control.

  He cried out as he came, punching his hardness into her with the heat of his release. Min felt herself break apart with violent shudders. Her final climax welled up inside her and washed over her like a tidal wave.

  The vampire broke off their kiss. His eyes were still stained the color of blood, and his expression was not of a man who’d just climaxed during sex. The vampire was still hungry. The mind blowing sex had done nothing to slake his appetite.

  Min could tell he was trying desperately to make his fangs come out. If he could he would drink her dry, leaving nothing left. But Min’s spell held fast, and he soon realized how futile it was—which seemed to thoroughly piss the vampire off.

  “Damn it to hell!” he hissed as he pulled himself from inside her and rolled away off the bed. Standing there completely naked, he threw his fist up in the air and cursed god and the heavens for their treachery. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

  Min was enjoying the view. Ancient corpse or not, his fine young body jiggled in all the right places. The sight of him made her wish he were a mortal lover, not an undead homicidal demon.

  But that is exactly what he is! A fierce voice thundered in her head. She knew exactly who it was, and she refused to see her grandmother’s spirit, or to acknowledge her. A filthy, soulless demon!

  She communed with her grandmother on special occasions, even more often since her mother was in stasis. She was the reason Min knew that Katarina was not in the spirit realms.

  That will be quite enough, she thought back at her grandmother’s ghostly voice.

  “It’s time for you to take your leave, vampire.” Min gathered the bed-sheet about her and padded across her bed room and stopped for a brief moment to touch his bare shoulder. His eyes flickered with red fire, but his face seemed confused.

  Min moved to the window and pulled it up with one hand. Smiling she said, “I’m revoking your invitation. Get out.”

  As if something invisible were pulling him, the vampire awkwardly staggered to the window and ducked on through it, stepping onto the roof outside. Min gathered up his clothes and tossed them through the threshold of the window.

  “Thank you, vampire…I needed that.” She slid the window closed, threw the latch and locked it. She looked one last time at the naked, seething vampire before pulling the drapes shut.

  *****

  Chapter 7

  Luca stood on the shingled roof and stared, incensed, at the point where the witch had disappeared behind her curtain. The show was over, he was naked and still starving, and she was no doubt laughing in her bedroom—laughing at him!

  Filthy gypsy whore! He thought as he pulled his clothes on. I’ll rip her pretty throat out…gorge on her blood and snap every bone in her…in her luscious, beautiful body…starting with her neck!

  His mind raced with all the things he wanted to do to her. Torture her, kill her, strangle her until she was at death’s door, then let her lovely neck go so she could revive…then do it all over again.

  How dare any human think she could use me—a vampire—as a sex toy!

  She will pay…I will kill her and every living thing in her retched life.

  He was so angry, teeth gritted so hard, he could have broken a fang! Luca pulled on his boots and then his shirt, and plotted his revenge.

  First her mother, and her grandmother (if the hag still lives), then any siblings or friends…her dog if she has one, and her physician…her pharmacist and lawyer…and most assuredly her boyfriend!

  The thought of the witch…of Min, having a lover, a man you slept in her bed and fucked her in that bed…

  He punched the stone wall of the house with the sudden fury that thought elicited in him. Another man having her? He would not allow it. She is mine now…

  Below, a young man passed by across the street, practically the very spot Luca had been occupying before the witch had invited him in…and began her little game.

  Luca dropped from the roof and crossed the street without making a sound, and with such speed he fell into step beside the young man in an instant. The man was younger than Luca had been when he’d been changed, no more than a boy of eighteen. His flaxen hair was shaggy, and his flesh still moist from a shower. Though some scents lingered: the rum he’d drunk, the girl he’d just been with. He too had just had sex, undoubtedly now on his way home to pass out in his own bed.

  The freshness of the blood that pumped through his veins was irresistible. The young man turned and looked at Luca. A small confused smile pulled at the sides of his mouth right before Luca reached out and pulled him into the shadow of a building, then sank his fangs into the boy’s straining throat. Luca held his victim with one hand against his heaving chest—he could feel the terrified flutter of his heart—one hand clamped over the boy’s mouth to muffle his screams. The glut of the boy’s blood rushed sweet and smooth over his tongue and quenched the hellish thirst the witch had ignited in him.

  The boy tried to push Luca away, but Luca grabbed his arm and wrenched it away until it snapped.

  As Luca drank, the boy’s body grew limp and his heart pounded out its final beats. He released his hold on him and let him crumple to the unforgiving pavement. Luca licked his lips and breathed in deep gulps of the night air. Though he didn’t need it, breathing had always given him solace, an almost physical comfort.

  The boy was dead now, his body drained nearly completely of blood, his skin cold and grayish blue. Usually Luca would have already surged away through the city on the hunt for another kill. He always killed two or three a night. But for some unfathomable reason he stood there in the shadows and stared down at the boy he’d just killed. The endless possibilities the man he could have become…all snuffed out by Luca’s hunger.

  He did not feel badly for what he’d done—he never did. If anything he was always filled with the desire to go off and do it again, like an adrenaline rush, but so much the sweeter. Yet somehow he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the boy he’d murdered. Something was different, something was wrong. But whatever it was, be it emotion or something more mentally alarming, Luca could not guess.

  But a compulsion emerged above everything else: the need to hide the body. To move it somewhere the witch would not learn of it.

  Senseless…

  Luca reluctantly leaned down and drew the boy’s corpse into his arms and slung him haphazardly over his shoulder, then moved with preternatural speed until he was on the other side of the city before he dropped the young man’s remains in the river. He stood on the shore and watched as the black waters churned the body around in its wake and the current ushered it off. The body finally sunk about a hundred feet from shore.

  Why should I care if the witch found out?

  The vampire stood there by the shore, staring out into the night, pondering with great discomfort that very question.

  *****

  Min woke to the sound of rain on her window pane. She loved the sound of rain, always had. She could remember sitting on the front porch with her mother and little sister, all three of them silently rocking on the swing. The pattering of raindrops and the sounds of passing cars sluicing the rain-slicked streets were like a comforting symphony to them. It had been one of the few things in life that they all shared a love for.

  Min rolled over on her back and stretch out her arms, back arched, she groaned contentedly—she was sore, but in a very good way. It had been far too long since she’d indulged in her physical desires. A voice deep inside growled that it wouldn’t be the last. His scent hit her then—she’d slept the whole night in it, a sweet, rich aroma that she would have associated with death, with vampire, but after last night it made her body heat up in pleasurable anticipation.

  She clenched her mouth closed, as well as her eyes, and held her hands over them in horror. She’d invited a vampire into her house! Into her very bed! She cried out in frust
ration and rolled onto her side. Pangs of regret and guilt coincided with every little ache and pain her body told her about.

  “I can never do that again,” she groaned.

  But you can…but you will…

  Min shot upright in bed, rubbed her eyes and then pulled her long hair back out of her face. She caught her reflection in the vanity across the room. She was naked, which she hadn’t been when she went to bed. She remembered slipping into a new, not nearly seductive nightgown before she shambled herself into her bed.

  She looked down over the edge of the bed and found her discarded gown. She had the rawest of memories slide into place, dreams about the vampire, dreams in bathtubs and in haylofts, and one in a public restroom as others moved unsuspectingly outside the stall they occupied, as Min and the vampire silently pushed each other through climax after climax. It was no wonder, since she’d spent the night rolling around in his scent like a…it was just too humiliating to think of what it was like.

  She pulled on her bathrobe and then bound her hair back in a ponytail with a hair band. She padded to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, and then made her way down stairs. On automatic pilot she started a pot of coffee. Feeling guilty or not, her stomach was rumbling obscenely, telling her she was starving. She got out some grapes and pre-sliced apples, and looked up to the box of bran flakes that she ate every morning without fail. They looked like little pieces of cardboard to her today.

  She rejected them and opened the freezer. It was full of things Min would never ordinarily eat, but today she needed a treat, and a sugar fix, so she riffled through the gleaming boxes of frozen foods and pulled out waffles you cooked in the toaster, and a decadent egg, sausage and potato bowl that boasted sausage gravy and cheddar cheese. She decided she’d butter and syrup one waffle and then slather the second with the egg and sausage mix. She set out two plates, poured herself a glass of coffee, and waited for the toaster to pop, and the microwave to beep her breakfast’s readiness.