Loving the Man Read online

  “Only the ones who want to drink my blood while I do it.”

  “You want me to drink your blood, human?”

  “No, I want you to come for me.”

  “I couldn’t if I tried!”

  He only smiled. Slowly, he lowered his mouth to her left breast and took her hard nipple into his mouth. He sucked it, flicking it with his tongue. Despite her protestations, moisture pooled in her pussy. Somehow, it seemed permissible to feel desire when there was nothing she could do about it. Christ, she liked having no choice… His hands roamed around her body at will, plundering her until her cold flesh heated like a furnace. Unhurriedly he moved his mouth to her other breast while his fingers slid up her thigh to her pussy.

  “Oh so wet, and hot,” he whispered, spreading her labia wide for his invasion. “I think you’ll come very quickly when I push my cock in there.”

  “I’ll bite it off!” she panted, tugging at her chains, but he only laughed.

  “Promises, promises.”

  He stood and with slow deliberation unbuttoned his jeans. His cock sprang free, huge and rigid, its swollen purple veins standing out like ribs. Seeing her fascinated gaze, he moved nearer to her, closing his fist around the shaft, swirling his fingers once around its dark head to wipe the drops of moisture gathering there. His breath caught with the sensation. So did hers. Trying not to pant, she acknowledged that she wanted that cock buried deep within her right now. She wanted to know what he could do with it. She wanted him to take her helpless body and fuck her to insanity while she lay chained and physically incapable of preventing him.

  He moved between her legs, and at the exquisite feel of his weight on her, of his hard cock at the juncture of her thighs, she closed her eyes tight, trying not to moan. She felt his cock nudge at her pussy and her eyes flew open without permission. He was already totally naked, muscles bunching at his broad shoulders. Supporting himself on his elbows, he kept his throat well out of reach of her teeth. He was smiling, his eyes clouded and hot with desire as he slowly, deliberately pushed his cock into her desperate pussy. Just as she wanted.

  God, it felt so good. His cock filled her, already bringing her orgasm galloping.

  “Come,” he commanded, withdrawing his cock almost entirely and pushing in again. “Come.”

  She came, wildly, arching into him, writhing as far as her bonds would permit. They broke while the orgasm still battered her but he didn’t notice. He just went on and on fucking her. She wept as she brought her freed hands down to strangle him. At her first touch on his throat he looked at her and smiled through his passion.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “Don’t cry…”

  Gasping, Katia woke and stared into the darkness. Her heart was pumping like a rabbit’s. Her skin was hot and damp with sweat. Between her legs lurked the afterglow of orgasm; in her mouth, the salty taste of her own tears.

  * * *

  When David woke, he had the feeling that the argument in the next room had been going on for a long time. All was not well in his brother’s love life. Like most men, David didn’t dwell on other people’s relationships, but he was vaguely unsurprised that there were a few teething problems there. They had gone almost instantaneously from strangers to couple, and whatever bonds of love and constancy existed between them, they were both strong characters and still had to learn to live with each other.

  However, with perfect faith in his brother’s ability to sort it out, and no desire whatever to hear any of the details, David pulled on his jeans, shirt and coat and left the room.

  In the gutted lab where they’d parked all the stuff last night, he found Max, seated in the middle of it, a book open on the rebuilt bench. For a moment David watched him reading with total concentration. Max was serious about this. On the other hand, David knew the vampire was aware of his presence. He simply chose not to acknowledge it.

  David stirred. “It’s useful to you then?” he said mildly.

  “Might be,” the vampire admitted, glancing up at him. “But totally pointless unless we can get this stuff up into the atmosphere. I don’t suppose you know of any old missile silos?”

  David leaned his head against the door frame. “There is one, less than a hundred miles south of here. It’s already been done over, though. I brought some stuff from there…”

  “Is the structure intact?” Max interrupted.

  David shrugged. “It looks pretty damaged to me, but I don’t know what needs to work. I can take you there. But for what it’s worth, I found nothing that looked like solid fuel.”

  Max gave a slightly twisted smile. “Sounds like you knew what to look for. We may have to go there, if we can’t discover anything better.”

  “Which would be?”

  “The tether.”

  “The what?”

  “Tether,” Max repeated impatiently. “Like a space-lift, an elevator that stretches beyond the Earth’s gravity and therefore moves with the Earth. It’s the ideal way to release ionized gasses into the atmosphere, which would punch holes in the cloud to let the sun through… They were building one during the war, on the advice of myself and my colleagues. Up north. I don’t suppose you’ve traveled in the north?”

  David frowned, thinking, dredging up old conversations as well as places he’d been. “A bit, but I never found much. Not many people either.”

  “It was always largely rural. Which was what I pinned my hopes on, then as now. The north was never bombarded like the rest of the country… Do you think you could find the tether if it still exists?”

  “Difficult.” David nodded at the books and papers scattered across the bench. “Would there be some clues in there to narrow the search?”

  “It’s possible,” Max admitted. For a moment he regarded David in silence. Then: “Will says you can read and write.”

  “Our parents were funny that way.”

  Max pushed his book across the bench to join the others. “These books and papers you brought -- they were well chosen.”

  “I aim to please.”

  “You have some sort of understanding of this material?”

  David shrugged. “Hardly. I can classify and collate. I’m just a finder.”

  “I’ll need help with that. Lots of help. And not just with finding the tether.”

  “All right. I’ll do what I can.”

  “There’s more,” said Max, apparently unable to stop now he’d made the difficult start. “Letting the sun in is only the beginning. The ozone layer may be damaged. The soil is certainly contaminated, so is the water, above and below ground. I don’t suppose you know any scientists, technical experts in the Dome or wherever, who could be enticed here?”

  “You’d be struggling,” David said frankly. “Safe people don’t want to travel. Don’t you have contacts here in the city… among your own people?”

  The vampire closed his mouth, an arrested expression in his eyes.

  David smiled slightly. “As to the rest… I’ll think about it.” Turning away, he left the den. He had his own fish to fry.

  It had been hopeless trying to look for his beautiful vampiress among the crowds of the club. April claimed to have found Max there, which astonished David almost as much as the fact that April, who’d barely acknowledged her own species until recently, had now committed herself to a vampire to the point where she carried his child.

  “It will be the first ever cross-species child,” she had said, so proudly that David knew a pang of grief. He rather thought her chances of carrying this child to full term were slim. But then, only days ago he’d thought the chances of surviving an encounter with a vampire even slimmer. Now he appeared to be working with one, and searching for another.

  David was born curious. He had grown up knowing the darkest haunts of the city, the hang-outs of the mutants, the alleyways and wrecked streets most popular for preying on the weak, the buildings that attracted the solitary lifestyle of the vampire.

  As he walked, he saw some of those ruined hou
ses being rebuilt and repaired. He even saw a couple of stalls bartering pretty crafted things -- candles, lace, knitted blankets. Will’s Council was beginning an economy, a building program, and perhaps most importantly -- hope.

  But he didn’t see her. He tried asking a few casual questions, of both humans and mutants. But no one gave him very helpful answers. One man said, “Yes, I’ve seen her around. Wouldn’t get too close if I were you.”

  Another said, “Of course I don’t know where she lives! I don’t want to know!”

  One old man got vitriolic on the subject of vampires in general, and in particular on an imagined conspiracy between vampires and lupi to steal his grandchild from him. Something terrible had clearly happened to him, but since it was impossible to get much sense out of him, David did little more than pat him on the shoulder and promise to look out for the child.

  Then, turning away, he caught sight of her.

  A glimpse of a swirling cloak, of hip-length raven hair flowing behind as she swept round the corner and out of his vision.

  Chapter Four

  David ran. At the corner, he saw her walking up the next ruined street. A few people at work on their houses paused to stare at her. Passersby pushed themselves into the wall so as not to touch her. They knew what she was, so she probably lived round here, hunted round here.

  David strode after her. His heart hammering like a teenager’s on a first date, he could only admire her incomparable grace. She appeared to glide more than walk, held herself with a pride that totally ignored the people around her. She didn’t deign to acknowledge any of their reactions.

  David was fit, well used to traveling long distances over difficult terrain. Yet the vampire had no difficulty keeping ahead. However fast he walked, he never seemed to gain on her. At least he managed to keep her in sight as she swept up alleyways, slipped down narrow passageways, and crossed waste ground with quite astonishing speed. Once, she simply jumped over an impossibly high wall.

  David had to throw himself at it to grasp the loose stone at the top of it and haul himself over. Even then, there was a hell of a drop on the other side, but since she was disappearing into the doorway of a building, he had no choice but to drop down. He turned his ankle on the rough ground, and cut his hands on the rubble as he tried to save himself. Ignoring these, he hurried after his quarry.

  At first, he thought she was somewhere in the building. There was no lighter shade of dark inside, to warn him about another exit. So, he pushed forward through the blackness, feeling for stairs or inner doors.

  It was the faintest creak that gave the truth away. Turning toward the sound, David stumbled down some steps and found the chink of paler dark. The door led out to some more steps and more waste ground, off which led three highly dilapidated streets. And some trampled, twisted railings into an area of dead parkland.

  He almost missed her. Then he saw her, a distant figure flitting between boulders. It could have been anyone, the glimpse was so slight. But something, whether the grace of movement or the shape of the figure revealed so briefly, told him it was his quarry.

  He hurried after her into the park, up the hill among dead trees and sticks, and huge, carved boulders, mostly broken or at least chipped. That was when he realized where he was.

  One of the city’s oldest graveyards. From the old books he’d found over the years, he even knew this one’s name. The Necropolis. Once it had been full of shrines to the dead, tall gravestones and impressive family crypts guarded by statues of men and angels carved by the city’s finest artists.

  Even now, you could make some of them out, tumbled and broken and semi-covered up as they were. Later, he might come back to admire. Now, he pursued his quarry around the hill until she disappeared down some steps leading into a stone crypt.

  He had time, as he ran the last few yards, to realize the stupidity of his own actions. But he couldn’t stop now.

  He retained enough sense to approach the crypt warily, allowing himself to recover some breath. He descended the crumbling steps slowly, resigning himself to chasing her through this building too. The sense of humor he had glimpsed at their previous meeting had probably made her lead him here, to this traditional vampire’s resting place. No doubt she was already out the other side and halfway back down the hill to the road.

  Reaching the solid iron door, David reached out and tugged it open. Within, he could make out a mass of rubble blocking the way in. No one could live here. There had to be another way out. David took a step inside.

  She flew at him out of nowhere. It was sheer reflex to pull back, ducking to the floor. Her feet whooshed past him like the air through his car windows, missing him by millimeters, and she came to land with incomparable grace in the doorway.

  David rose quickly, choosing for some reason to take his medicine standing up. Yet she stood still, her back against the open door.

  “You,” she said. “I knew it would be you. What do you want?”

  “To talk to you.”

  “You’re a creep, a stalker and a pervert,” she said matter-of-factly.

  David grinned. “Only through necessity.”

  A sound that might have been laughter squeezed out of her lips. “So what do you want to talk about? Survivor’s guilt?”

  “Can we talk outside?” David asked. Once again she hadn’t killed him, but he wasn’t counting his chickens, and right here, he felt a shade too vulnerable.

  She waved her arm gracefully toward the outside step. David moved slowly. As many times before, he had acted from instinct in his pursuit of the vampiress, but he was hardly blind to the consequences. She could take him easily as he passed her in the doorway. As before, he sensed no murder in her, but that didn’t preclude her hurting him quite a lot, draining his blood until he was weaker than a kitten -- and even, if the rumors were true, changing him into one of her own kind by her bite.

  She kept her amazing eyes on him as he moved, as if searching for his fear, or his true intentions. For the first time, it struck him that she was uncertain, that despite her strength, she felt somehow threatened by him.

  He got a whiff of her body scent, faint spice and musk and something elusive he already associated only with her. She made no effort to stand back, so his arm brushed her body as he passed. He felt her heat, felt his own sudden desire. But she stood perfectly still, letting him pass. He took one step up the stairs, two. Then, relieved that she wasn’t going to molest him, he turned back to her -- and saw the door swing shut in his face.

  Instinctively he reached out to prevent it slamming the whole way. Too late and pointless anyway. It banged home.

  Laying his hand flat against it, as if this would somehow bring him closer to her, he bumped his forehead deliberately on his fingers.

  He said, “I’ll wait out here, then.” And found himself smiling. Because she’d fooled him so easily. Because she’d chosen to do so rather than to attack him.

  * * *

  Katia thought at first that he’d get bored, that she just had to out-sit him, as it were -- and then move her home elsewhere when he finally left. She didn’t think that would be very long.

  Then she heard him climbing up on to the roof of the crypt, from where he would be able to see if she left by either exit -- the one he could see, or the one he couldn’t, or not yet… Well, if he was foolhardy enough he’d fall asleep. If he wasn’t, he’d take fright as the darkness deepened and run home to his woman and kids. Or to Max’s lupi woman, whom he’d been with last night.

  So she went about her usual home life. She lit the candles of her comfortable room, washed a few clothes in the bucket and hung them up. Then she plumped the cushions on her couch, and lay down with an old novel she couldn’t remember reading before.

  Weirdly, she rather liked the idea of him being there above her. It made her curiously, elusively… warm. She realized she would actually be disappointed when he finally gave up and left.

  When the darkness began to deepen into night, and sti
ll he made no move to go, the thought came to her that she could go out there to him. And warn him of the night creatures who haunted this place. He wouldn’t know that no one would be stupid enough to attack him while he sat on her roof. Except the odd ignorant human thug, and for some reason she felt he could take care of those himself.

  For a few moments she sat very still on the couch, letting the ideas and the fears flow through her. Her heart beat too fast, making her breathless, like some poor human girl in the throes of first lust. Katia’s heartbeat should be slow, because she was a vampire. She could barely remember her last human lust let alone her first one. Until this man.

  Something about him moved her. She wanted him to want her, to see beyond what she had become to what was hidden and buried inside her. She was afraid that he would, terrified that he couldn’t. In truth, her real fear was that there was no longer anything for him to find.

  It had all got suddenly out of proportion. The changing of the city had depressed her, reminding her too much of what couldn’t be changed. And now this man was here, churning her up with hopes she couldn’t form properly even in her head. She wanted to scare him off forever, she wanted to know his name, who he was… She wanted to sit beside him in a pre-war bar, knees almost touching while they talked and drank wine and anticipated a delicious ending to the evening.

  Her breath caught on a laugh.

  She stood up and went to the wooden trunk in the corner, hastily removing the silken cover that usually lay over it. From inside, she took out two glasses, tall, delicate wine glasses with kissing doves woven around the stems. She’d found them in a house shortly after she’d changed. There had been no one to drink from there except a sick and dying old woman. So Katia had fed from her and put her out of her misery. The old woman had died with a smile on her face, and afterwards, Katia had let the remaining blood flow in this glass and toasted her in a macabre token of respect and compassion.

  Back in the days when she’d still known compassion.