Dreams, Dreams Series Book 1 - J. A. Brown

Dreams Dreams Series Book 1

J.A. Brown

Dreams – Copyright © 2016 by J.A. Brown Cover art by Christi Carlson ISBN-13: 978-1537105642 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the storyteller’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblances to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental. Contact me at jabrownstoryteller.com

For my muse.

Table of Contents 1. A Christmas Wish 2. More Than a Man 3. Her Secret Heart 4. Do You Trust Me? 5. Never Enough Time 6. This Side of Paradise 7. New & Fragile 8. A Night in Heaven 9. My Dark Little Heart 10. To Serve the Regent 11. The Magic of a Woman 12. Intimate Things 13. Love Stories 14. Soon 15. Distance 16. This Is Love Bonus * Excerpt from the Dreams sequel, Nightmares*

Chapter 1 -A Christmas Wish

December 24th

“I wish vampires were real.” I froze beside Sara as she lay next to me across the bed in her dorm room at NYU. She had already drunk half a bottle of wine when this quite tipsy, and very unexpected wish fell from her lips, hitting me like a roundhouse to the gut. We were celebrating our victory at the NYPA 2015 Dance Competition where we had just won the Grand prize of ten thousand dollars. Money that she assured me we would split, and use to keep ourselves in cheap beer and Ramen noodles for the next two semesters, easily. It was Christmas Eve, snow was coming down outside in large fluffy flakes, and the power had gone out in her dorm about an hour before. She had lit several candles, which were unnecessary for me, or so I had thought at first. However, once I saw her red sweater, now matching the color of blood bathed in the flickering golden light, it was suddenly very necessary that I see her like this tonight. Perhaps, that I always see her like this, because it made something inside me feel warm, alive and insatiable. I had first seen her in the harsh unforgiving light of the NYU library almost two months before, with her long blonde hair pulled back, and her nose buried in a book. Her dreary study clothes could not hide her luscious form. I could feel my body respond as she shifted in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and wiping her eyes with her small delicately boned hands. I had watched her from the stacks for almost an hour before she felt my gaze. When she looked up I had moved away at vampire speed, leaving an empty space for her human eyes to see. Circling around, I came up on the other side of her, and resumed my perusal. From this angle I could see her soft pouty lips, and her luminescent blue eyes that were a little bloodshot from hours of reading. I was captivated when she had glanced at her watch and then took a drink of coffee from her tall silver travel cup, letting out a sigh of pleasure that made me clasp the bookcase in dangerous tension. I had released it when she placed the cup back on the table of dark synthetic wood, and returned her full attention to her studies. Three sugars and three creams, my vampire senses told me, as I caught of a whiff of her coffee laced exhalation from over a dozen feet away. I had never tasted the beverage directly, but I was familiar with it on the tongues of those I invited to briefly dance with me in the shadows. It was also always laced with the owner’s scent and flavor. I forced myself to remain completely still as I wrestled with my desire to see what this beverage would taste like on her lips, finally managing to harness my desires. That night I only observed this woman who called to me in a language I had never known. It was the next night that I followed her to the coffee shop that, I was soon to discover, was her second favorite refuge from her life as a student at the university, the library being the first. I had arranged to bump into her in line for coffee as a chance to introduce myself. I let the

impact of our meeting spill the coffee I could not drink on my shirt, and then I let her apologize to me as she frantically pressed napkins to the stain while offering to buy me another coffee. I had agreed on the condition that she sit with me for a few moments. I found out quickly that her name was Sara Siler, and that she had been here for two years on scholarship. She was studying psychology, planning to be a child therapist when she was done with school. Before that conversation, where she looked at me with her sincere blue eyes and offered me the truths of her freely with no guile, I had been planning to take her will and her body for the night. By the end of those precious few minutes I had no plan at all, just some formless wish that I could not face let alone embrace. I was in New York on a sabbatical of sorts. All vampires took them from time to time. It was necessary to maintain our sanity as the weight of our lives and times closed in on us. We would slip away, and find someone else to be for a while. I had been pretending to be a student here, enjoying the parties, and the wide options of free range partners for sex and blood. I was careful to never hurt them, and of course that they never retain anything other than the memory of an excellent time when I claimed them for a night. It wasn’t that I was above killing for pleasure. I had done it frequently in my long undead life. I just didn’t want to spoil my sabbatical with unnecessary attention. Being near the young always instilled something of that feeling into my old bones as well. I wanted to stay here for a while. I was fortunate that my visage allowed me to pass among them with ease. I had been made young, and retained the appearance of a six foot four youth, whose blonde hair and blue eyes had allowed me to blend in seamlessly for many life times. Of course, you could go to school at any age in this wondrous time, so it was even less of hardship than it might have been. Even as I wanted to get closer to her, I knew that if I had found Sara in my regular existence as the Commander of Tennessee, Zone 3, I would probably have killed her immediately. She left me unsettled, but here in this dream I was experiencing as Eli Solomon, college student, she was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. That she influenced me so completely was meaningful, if only for its newness, but it escaped even dream logic comprehension. No doubt, it would be something I would seek in the endless nights before me, when I slipped back into my skin and resumed my post as Commander to a vampire Regent. For now, I was here, and for this brief breath of time I could be someone else with her that my true existence would never let me be. Over the next few weeks we became friends, at least that is how she saw us, and I must admit that I did as well. She was smart and funny, strong and capable, and determined that she would achieve her goals going on to help disadvantaged and abused children. She was very passionate about this, and though I was not able to understand why this was so important to her, it was, and so it became important to me as well. She might out like a brief candle compared to myself, but imagining the brightness and warmth of her during her brief time in turn warmed me. When she asked me to partner with her for the dance competition I had immediately said yes. I enjoyed dancing tremendously. I looked forward to winning with her, especially when she told me she needed the prize money for groceries. “Coffee, you mean?” I had teased her when she told me her plans for the cash, her blue eyes wide and earnest.

“That, too!” She assured me, taking my hands, and dancing around me, jumping up and down outside the library in the cold November night air. She had a scarf around her neck, and her coat buttoned as high as it would go to keep the chill out, but right then she was so high on her excitement nothing could dampen her spirits. Money was always a concern for her which made this something I could give her before I left New York to return to Tennessee at the beginning of the New Year. I couldn’t help being pulled into her joy. Over the next weeks, we had practiced our routine countless times, in every available moment she had between classes. She was a natural dancer, her body lithe, and responsive to my slightest touch. We had practiced just a few days when she told me that she had never had a partner as good as she was before. “Not that I am that great, don’t get me wrong.” Actually, she was. It was a shame she didn’t know it. “In competition, it’s the women who do most of the work. The man can be barely mediocre, but if he has a good female partner then they can still be a winning team.” “You have done this before then?” I asked, as I pretended to stretch and warm up beside her. We had been working on some ‘wow steps’ as she called them for the free style competition. She was good at choreography, too, knowing how to play my height, and her petite frame to advantage in every move we made. I offered suggestions here and there, but this was her show, and it would be her full ten thousand when we won. She just didn’t know it yet. “Yeah, I had dance for my PE credit the first year I was here. My teacher recommended I compete. I partnered with Jack Samms, the best guy in the dance class. He’s a nice enough guy, but not that great of a dancer.” She stood then, and held her hand out to me, reminding me of the elegance of a prima ballerina that I had known once in France a long time ago. Sara was incredibly graceful. It showed at the most unexpected times, leaving me in quiet awe of her when she did something as simple as wrap her scarf around her neck before we headed out the of her dorm. I pushed past gawping like the college boy I was pretending to be, took her hand, and pulled her to me, spinning her as I did, wrapping her in my arms so that she finished pressed tightly against my side with her back. Caught up in the momentum I had leaned down and kissed her neck softly. Her head fell back onto my shoulder as she pressed her hands down on my arms to bring me closer. “You are so good at this, Eli. You make this all so easy that I forgot sometimes that…” she stopped. “What?” I asked, reluctantly letting her go so she could step away and our practice could finally begin. She dropped her head a moment before coming back up with a smile. “Nothing,” she said shrugging, and smiling her sweet Sara smile. “Let’s dance.” Sabbaticals by their very nature were like dreams. See things, do things, behave in ways that were contrary to our everyday controlling natures. I had taken many sabbaticals; none had been more like a dream than the time I spent with Sara practicing for the dance competition. I craved her touch on my skin, her laugh in my ears. I wanted my hands on her at all times, and tried my best to get her to change her mind about the moves that broke our contact. She always held her ground, using words of flattery about my strength to lift, and toss her nearly effortlessly. I pretended to let her flatter me to her will. It felt nice when she complimented me. I returned the same to her, curious to see to see if she reacted in a similar fashion. “You are quite easy to toss Miss Siler, light as a feather.” She blushed at that, a pleasant rosy tone covered her

skin from her head to the V of her cleavage. I wanted follow her blush down between her breasts with my tongue, to better enjoy the warmth of her skin. “You hush now!” She chastised me, her flush growing a delightfully deeper shade of rose. “I know I could shed a few pounds. You don’t need to tease me about it. I’m sure I will be lighter the night of the dance with all this exercise we are getting.” Refusing to be seen in such an unflattering way, I placed myself directly in her path, and bringing my hand up under her chin. “You misunderstand, Sara. I meant it as a compliment. I wanted to see if my saying something nice to you brought you the same pleasure that your words give me. I meant no disrespect, or disparagement for your lovely backside.” She swallowed. “My lovely b-backside?” I smiled. “Oh, yes. I am very fond of it. I like looking at it, and best of all I like it when one of our moves lets me rest my hand on it as it tightens and releases when you move.” She wanted to be scandalized. I saw it in her eyes for just a second, and then it gave way to giggles. She rested her head on my chest as she laughed, lingering until I started to feel offended myself. What exactly was so funny about me appreciating her physical beauty? When she flung her arms around me, pulling me full against her I forgot that I was starting to be offended. She was so soft, and warm, and her laughter was rubbing her body against mine in the most delicious way. “Oh, Eli, I do love the way you talk!” “The way I tal-?” but before I could finish her hand gave me a rousing crack on my own backside, just as she pulled back from me with a look of mischief in her eyes that delighted me immeasurably. “Yer’s, ain’t so bad either,” she said with a wink, letting her hide and seek southern accent dominate her flirty words. She flipped around and away as I stood there torn between grabbing her and kissing her mad, and in continuing to build this flirtatious ember between us. Instead, we danced, which in its own way, was both. I spun her, flipped her, and pulled her against me at every opportunity. I rubbed myself against her shamelessly until she was breathless. I told myself it was more than the dancing that did that to her. As we moved, I thought of how until this woman I had never doubted my prowess, or that I could make any one desire me. She was different. While it felt like most women throw themselves at me, something kept her at a distance from me. Her rousing smack on my backside was the first time she had come close to letting herself indulge in me. Did she not know? Could she not tell I was hers for the asking? Was she only interested in me for my dancing skills? These were new and disquieting notions for me, far away from the places I wanted to be with my dream girl. I had been with her in the library the night before last when she consumed something called chocolate, all smiles and quiet moans of satisfaction as she used her finger to pick up tiny morsels of the treat left behind on the paper when the candy itself had been consumed. I wanted her to experience me with the same hedonistic decadence she had spent on the candy. Tonight, the dance behind us, the trophy shining in the candlelight on her small dresser, I had planned at long last to finish the real dance that had been happening since we met in the coffee shop. I had been just about to make my move when she trumped me with her unexpected holiday wish. “I wish vampires were real.”

I opened my mouth, channeling Keaton in Batman, about to say ‘I’m a vampire’, but I shut it again. The fact that I was about to reveal myself told me that I had sunk too deeply into this innocent college boy persona I had adapted to be near her. When I said nothing, she went on in the same mildly inebriated fashion. “It would just be so neat if they were real. I mean, not like sparkly, ‘I can’t touch you because I might hurt you,’ but instead, in the intense driving passionate way I imagine a dark immortal creature to be.” She turned toward me on the bed her face serious and open like it usually was. “You know what I mean, right? Or did I just embarrass myself, and now you will be looking for your coat to leave?” Intense, driving, passionate…what? I closed my mouth tighter, and cleared my throat, an unnecessary, necessary human affectation to hide that I was indeed an intense driving passionate dark immortal creature. “What do you mean, Sara? What if they were real, what then?” She flopped back boneless on the bed, jarring me slightly. “I dunno, I just think it would be…the cat’s meow if they were.” “The cat’s…meow?” “Yes, as in awesome, wonderful, amazing, completely and totally incredible!” I am, and it was everything I could do to stop from shouting it out to her. I should go now, and never come back. Instead I dug us both a little deeper. “What would you do if they were real?” “I would ask him out for coffee.” I smiled in spite of myself. “And if he couldn’t drink coffee?” She frowned slightly. “Then I would…ask him for a walk in the park, and talk to him about his long life. I would offer to be his friend, if he wanted one. I’m a good friend, don’t you think, Eli?” “Yes,” I said, and made myself stop there. “See, the vampire would want to be my friend, you could recommend me.” She turned back to me then. “You would give me a recommendation, right?” “Yes,” I got out again, that and only that, my jaw aching from the strain as she giggled. “Tell me, what would you say?” Her blue eyes focused on me in total innocent seriousness. “I would tell him all the wonderful things about you that I know.” “And then he would be my friend?” she pressed, her eyes starting to droop from the wine and the exhaustion of our performance. Focused on her now, instead of my desire for her, I saw that she was shivering, having lost the heat with lights. Quickly, I rearranged us on the bed, removing her shoes, and tucking her into the covers. I remained on the outside, but folded my tall frame around hers, pulling her back to my chest to snuggle my tipsy partner. She accepted me with a sweet sigh of drunken contentment that did indeed make me feel a bit like that erstwhile candy bar. I was suddenly struck with the truth that if another vampire found her I would kill him just for being near her. “I would not share you,” I said in the quiet room, unable to stop myself. She turned her head to look at me. “Silly, Eli. You’re not a vampire!” As if tricks were just for kids, and I hadn’t been pulling one here with her for weeks. “But, and I will deny this if you bring it up again, I swear I will!” She paused before going on. “Sometimes, I pretend you are.” She pulled the covers over her head then. I was uncertain what to say, so I said what I wanted to say for the first time since this unexpected conversation had started.

“What do you pretend, Sara?” She moaned under the covers, it went straight to my pretentions of being made by Mars, where my label promised to melt in her mouth not in her hands. “You’ll make fun of me!” she moaned again. “No, you have my word, I will not make fun of you if you tell me, Sara. You can trust me.” She pulled the covers down slowly, peeping out at me with narrowed and suspicious eyes, “I can?” she asked me, clearly unsure. “Yes, you can trust me with anything.” She looked at me a long time before she settled the covers just under her neck. “Get under here with me?” I toed off my shoes, and slipped under the covers. She had already warmed the bed. When I was wrapped around her again, she turned in my arms to face me. The candlelight danced on her golden hair like liquid moonlight. Between the nervous fluttering of her lashes, I could see myself reflected to me from the ponds of her eyes. “Sometimes,” she started slowly, her palm coming up to rest on my chest. “I imagine that you come into my room at night, and float above my bed.” I had thought of that, and was startled that she should be so close to the secret heart of me. “What then?” I asked, sounding strained and breathless. “Then you wake me up with baby kisses on my face and neck.” Her other hand moved to caress her face, making her tipsy eyes go shut from the imagined delight of my lips on her soft skin. My mind was racing as I watched her, wanting it be my hand that made her eyes flutter like that. “And then when I wake up, and I pull back the covers,” she licked her lips slowly, looking into my eyes. “And I invite you in, Mr. Solomon.” “You do?” I asked, sounding as dreamy and lost in that imagery as she did. “What then?” “Then I get to put my hands, and my…lips on that fabulous backside of yours, until all you can say is my name.” “Sara,” I whispered, shaking with restraint from her provocative words. “Just like that, ‘Sara’,” she said imitating my gravelly tones of strung out desire. “You say it all night while you show me what it is to be possessed by a creature of the dark as large, and powerful as yourself. Every time you say my name the only thing I say is yes, because I never want you to stop showing me. It’s your fault,” she told me in the same dreamy tone she used to describe our union. “It is?” I asked. “Yes, when we were dancing there was always this look on your face. It was like you claimed me with every touch in some primal way that I couldn’t shake when practice ended. Even the first night I wanted to bring you back here, and do unspeakable things to you.” “Speak them.” “I couldn’t, they are too…intimate.” “Be intimate.” Rather than speaking, she unbuttoned the dress shirt I had worn with my suit for the dance competition, and kissed my bare chest with her soft lips. “I start here, undressing you slowly,” she continued to unbutton me along with my shirt, with her hands as her lips followed. I fell back, letting her do as she would with me. My hand came up to the back of her head tangling loosely in hair as she burned me with her kisses. When she reached the waistband

of my dress pants, she hesitated. My hips moved restlessly to encourage her on, but she rested her head on my stomach, and looked up at me. “I really like you, Eli. I really, really, do.” “I really like you, too. I really, really do, Sara.” She closed her eyes and sighed. Her breath hitting my skin was like a revelation. “And that’s why this is wrong. I’m sorry, Eli. I can’t do this. It’s not fair to you.” My addled brain was slow to hear her, and slower still to comprehend her words. “What? What do you mean?” “I know how this sounds, believe me, I know, but the truth is you are just a man, and I want something…extraordinary. I want a lover who more than just a man. I want a lover who can show me things that no one else has or can. I want him to fly me away, and love me all night. I want to be the one who tames the savage beast inside him, the only one who can.” She sat up then, putting her feet on the floor, with her back to me as she rested her hands on her knees, and her chin in her palms. “I’m a psychology student, I know how messed up this is, but it’s the truth. I want those things, all of those things. You are a great guy, a fabulous dancer, and the best friend I’ve had since grade school, so, no, I won’t use this you this way when you are not what my heart and soul tell me I truly want and need. I’m sorry.” “But, Sara,” I said half undressed, and totally undone in her bed, I was everything she wanted, I just had to tell her! I opened my mouth, and then I stopped. I could tell her that I was the creature that she dreamed of, but I would have to take that memory from her come first light. I could tell her vampires weren’t real, but that would be a lie. I could tell her that I wanted her, as I had never wanted another, but it would change nothing. She only wanted me to be what I was, and I could not do that. My kind survived on secrecy and shadows. I could not have her for one night and walk away with truths spoken and erased. She would forget, but the memory would slowly torture me to insanity. Nor could I be her creature of the night and reveal the existence of supernaturals to her. She might think it was what she wanted, but the truth was not the dream. It would turn her entire world completely upside down and bring her into danger for the rest of her mortal existence Slowly, I stood and picked up my shoes and jacket. She was still sitting on the bed with her head down when I rested my hand on the doorknob and hesitated. “I’m glad I met you, Sara Siler.” I went out the door, but not before I heard her sob behind me. It almost covered the sound of my breaking heart. I took two humanly slow steps down her hall before I stopped. I was covered in her scent, more deeply than I had been on any night before. My cock was hard from her touch and the words that she had whispered to me. It would be easier if I made myself take the next step, and the one after until they led me out of her life, but as I saw myself, centuries down the path of not savoring the experience of Sara Siler to the fullest possible extent, the sensation of regret felt like it was choking the very life from me. I was not the college boy I had been pretending to be. I was Eli Solomon, the vampire Commander of Zone 3, and I was not going to pass up this chance to know her in this new way. Chances like this were too rare to be wasted. Decision made, I stood taller in the pitch black hall and turned around. Moving at vampire speed, I blew through her door, slamming it back against the wall of her room, only stopping when she was pinned to the bed beneath me.

Her face was covered in tears, and her eyes were wide in surprise. The thundering of her heart finished unleashing the part of my nature that I had nearly convinced myself didn’t exist while I had been on this year of sabbatical. I shivered in pleasure as my long fangs burst forth, I let them come all the way down to their full savage length. Her mouth formed a perfect bee stung O of surprise as I growled above her. “Merry Christmas, Miss Siler. Wish granted.”

Chapter 2- More Than A Man

“Wh-what?” she breathed out her quiet question of surprise as she stared at the vampire who was going to grant all her wishes this night. “Eli?” When she said my name I shifted my body again at vampire speed to work my hips between her soft welcoming thighs, rocking against her in her a commanding way that revealed not only my true nature, but my true desire. She opened her mouth again to speak, to reconcile this strange turn of events, but I was done talking. I took her lips in the kiss that I had wanted from the moment I saw her in the library. When her tongue slipped into my mouth, caressing my fangs, perhaps attempting to prove that they were fake, she slashed her tongue open. She tried to pull back from the unexpected pain, but the taste of her blood in my mouth made me kiss her deeper, and rock my aching cock against her warmth. I overwhelmed her. She surrendered to my dominance, reassuring me that she did want this, which despite my commanding attitude, I did need. I wanted her enough to risk both our lives by revealing the truth, but only if she still wanted me, too. When she ripped my dress shirt off my shoulders, frantic to touch my skin, I was sure she did want me. I ripped her clothes to shreds in a gesture that took less than a heartbeat. The scent of her approval filled my senses. I moved down her body, worshipping her with kisses and caresses on her beautiful skin until I was at the entrance of the hot wet world she was preparing just for me. I growled, loudly, seeking to up her desire in the most primal way possible. I was rewarded for my efforts as she writhed beneath me calling my name as she thrust her hips up in her animal desire for my touch. To show my appreciation I licked through her dewy folds, and then focused on vibrating her clit, using vampire speed to give her maximum pleasure. She orgasmed in under a minute, screaming loudly as I pleased her. It was almost as satisfying to me as it was to her. Before she caught her breath I kissed her again. Then I moved to her neck, peppering her skin with the kisses, and the words that she had begged me for just moments before. “I am more than a man, Sara. I am the lover that will show things you have never seen before. I can take you to heights you have never imagined. I am what you have longed for, what you pretended I was in this room when your hand satisfied you in place of my body.” I stopped with my mouth right next to her ear, and my cock right at the edge of her entrance. “Tell me, did you come hard when you pretended it was me filling you over and over again?” She moaned, and held me tighter. Not good enough. “Say the words!” I commanded, as I wrapped her hair around my fist, tugging gently to break her wordless responses. “Tell me the things that are too intimate to speak.” She moaned and gasped as I pressed into her just a little more, wanting her to know what pleasure awaited her when she answered me. “Yes!” she moaned before she attacked my neck with her lips, and ran her fingers through my hair making my scalp tingle with her touch. “Like this…so hard…need you,” She was incoherent, but trying to find the higher part of her mind, as her thighs spread wider, welcoming me in the unmistakable language of need. I growled again, a pure vampire animal sound that made her sob as she moved against me.

Before she could take another breath, I pushed into her with both my cock and my fangs. She came again from the combined sensation of my double penetration. I thrust in time with my sucking on her neck, keeping both slow and deep. Her hips rose to meet me in the same rhythm as we rocked together. Her blood was laced with passion, drugging me with her heavy desire. “It had to be you, Eli,” she whispered to me as I thrust into her over and over again. “Nothing but you would do from the moment I saw you.” I released her neck, licking her wounds to stop the blood before I pulled back to look into her eyes again. I stilled my body as well as her words sank into my ancient flesh. “Nothing?” I repeated roughly, tugging her hair gently again to make her focus on me. “Nothing but you,” she said again, pulling her legs up to cross over my hips letting me sink just that much deeper into her welcoming body. I pulled back, almost all the way out and then went all the way into her again. Her eyes rolled back in her head from the intensity of pleasure. I stopped teasing her. I needed her as much as she needed me. “Fuck!” I gasped out as I started a fast rhythm, determined to feel her come for me again. “Yes, fuck!” she gasped out and hung on to me tighter. I smiled and moved harder and faster, filling her completely. The sound of our flesh smacking together filled the room, along with the wet sounds of her body opening itself to me again and again, played like music in my ears. I kissed her rough and hard, then I arched to flick her nipple with my cool tongue, never missing a beat of the frantic rhythm I had set to satisfy her. “You will come for me again, Sara,” I told her with absolute confidence as my body worked to take her there. “I want to feel your heat squeeze me again as you say my name.” She groaned her head thrashing back and forth on the pillow. “I want you to give me everything that you have been holding back from your mortal lovers. I want you to give me everything that you have saved for this night when the creature of your dreams spread your lovely thighs wide, and made your wishes come true.” My words were undoing her as much as my body pounding hers. She was so close; I could feel it. “Only you can tame this beast inside me, Sara. Only you.” She came so hard around me that I was lost to it with her, releasing deep in her, her name on my lips as I buried my face in her neck and licked the wounds I had made there again. Her back arched so high that she raised us both on the bed at the height of her pleasure. She was amazing and she was mine. Not slowing, I took her again, flipping her over onto her hands and knees on the bed as I sank into her from behind. I was inexhaustible and merciless in loving that night. When she came for me twice like that, I moved up behind her on the bed, and pulled her back flush to my chest as I continued to fuck her with my cock and love her with my words. “When we danced together I wanted you like this, spread out over me, riding me.” Her hand came back to wrap around my neck as she turned her head to rub her cheek against mine. When her head darted back, and she bit me with her blunt human teeth it spurred me on. Still pounding into her I reached down and rubbed her clit in quick circles, loving the feeling of my hard slick cock right there. I paused to bring her own hand down so that her fingers caressed me in the scant moments I wasn’t completely buried inside her. It shook me when I felt her flutter at the deep sounds of my pleasure. When I resumed massaging her clit she came for me again, shaking uncontrollably before going limp in my arms. I let her have a moment before I pulled

out of her a long slow drawn out motion, reveling in the feel of her caressing me, and her whimpers of denial from the loss of our connection. Gently, I turned her over, raising her legs on my arms, folding her as I let myself sink into her welcoming embrace again. “Tell me what your immortal lover does to please you,” I commanded in her ear as I fucked her slowly, barely thrusting my hips, because I didn’t want it to end. “Everything you’ve done. Everything,” she tried again. Even though her words were breathless, her sentences incomplete, what she said thrilled me, running through me like an electrical charge, making me shiver. Her words every bit as powerful in my ears as mine had been in hers. “Come for me, Eli,” she whispered hotly into my ear as she tugged gently on my hair. “Show me that it’s only me.” I was helpless do anything other than as she commanded. I thrust a handful of times, and filled her, roaring my pleasure at her adeptness in picking up how I wanted to be fucked by her, and how I wanted to be loved by her. ****** After I had wrung every ounce of pleasure from her that her human body could take, I held her as she slept in my arms. I soothed her when she stirred by kissing her forehead softly, and pressing my body closer to hers. As I felt dawn approaching I was loathe to leave her, but there was no choice in that action. I left my marks on her neck to assure her that the sweet ache she would feel between her thighs was because her Christmas wish had been granted. I knew there would be a thousand questions, some predictable and some not, when I returned to her at sunset. I did not question that she would be there, waiting, or that my secret would be safe with her for the brief time we had. When I left her in the bed she whined in her sleep reaching for me, but did not awaken. I wrote a quick note of promises yet to be fulfilled. I will come to you again tonight. Be ready, my lover. Eli

Chapter 3- Her Secret Heart

December 25th

In their private thoughts people believe they want many things. Sometimes, those private thoughts stumble off the edge of their lips, blinded by fancy. Time has shown me that rarely do they understand, or truly want what they ask for, in these wanton decadent demands of the universe to satisfy their secret hearts. I believed that Sara was different. I believed she had spoken only truth to me, both before, and after I had revealed my true nature to her. However, even with that utter certainty, I was still surprised when I returned to her room, and found her waiting for me in a short satin gown that matched the blue of her glowing eyes. It was snowing again, but the heat and the power had been restored to her dorm, still she had the lights off, and the candles lit again. She was radiant as she had been the night before. When I opened the door, and came in without knocking she turned slowly to face me. I closed the door gently, waiting to see what she would say. She said nothing. Instead she smiled at me, then moved to the bed where she lay down on her back, and looked up at the ceiling, with the smile still on her lips. Dropping my coat on the floor, I levitated up, coming to hover just above her prone figure. She opened her arms to me, and I leaned down to place baby kisses on her face and neck. She reached up to pull me down fully flush to her body, opening for me to rest against her as I granted another secret wish of her heart. “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up,” she whispered in my ear as I reverently kissed my marks from the night before. I ripped her gown right down the middle, delighted to see she was nude beneath it. In the candlelight, I saw the bruises on her in the shape of my hands. I groaned, partly in desire from remembering how they got there, and partly in remorse for marking her. She pulled my gaze back to hers, and smiled again, telling me that I was forgiven, if there was anything I needed to be forgiven for. I was wearing a grey shirt tonight and jeans. Her look told me she would shred them as I had her gown if she had the strength. Instead she slid her hands up the back of my shirt, her small warm palms resting on the small of my back. She held my gaze as she slid her hands down the back of my jeans, cupping my ass tightly before squeezing it, as she pulled my hips into hers. Then she granted my wish, by making the sound that made me feel like candy. My eyes rolled back in intense pleasure, and gratitude for her appreciation of me. Suddenly, she used her hands to jerk my hips hard into the open V of her thighs. It was a startling change of pace that made me anxious to feel and taste her again. Her bed was small, just a single. I let her maneuver us so that I was on the bottom, and she was sitting on my thighs her bare breasts resplendent in the candle light. Her puckered nipples made my mouth water to suckle them. Seeing the desire in my eyes she used her hands

to cup them gently, then plucked her nipples causing them to stand out even more, practically begging me to kiss them. When I tried to rise, she placed a palm on my chest to stop me. “Tonight, I want to show you all the intimate dreams that have sustained me while I have waited to find you,” she told me in a tone that begged me to abandon my intentions and acquiesce to her. I let myself fall back on the bed, rising only when she slowly pushed my shirt up, and lifted it over my head. She was leaning close to get it off, and as soon as my mouth was free I claimed a nipple for own. I ran my tongue around the hard peak, and took a hard tug against it. Immediately, her arousal bloomed into the realm of my senses. She rocked against my cock as my hands came up to rest on the smooth skin of her hips. She kissed me, boldly seeking my fangs with her tongue. I pulled back to release them, before opening my mouth to accept her kiss. As she had the night before, she slashed her tongue, but this time she didn’t pull back in surprise. I knew then she was deliberately feeding me her blood. Her actions amazed and humbled me as I swallowed those few precious drops of her. It was the rarest and most impossible of gifts for a creature like myself to be willingly fed by a human who knew my secret. It was an intimacy that made the very foundations of who I was tremble. Shaken to the core from her gesture, I pressed the kiss deeper, wanting more than ever to make all her dreams come true in the short time we had together. When she ended the kiss, she held my face in her hands adding one more of exquisite softness to my forehead that was filled with something other than our mutual desire. It was pure affection; telling me that I had touched the heart of her. When she slid her body down, and unbuttoned my jeans, I sprang free and ready into her waiting warm hands. She stopped to admire my body for a moment before she completely removed my jeans. When she settled back between my legs, she stretched out, laying her head on my thigh, next to my straining cock. “In my fantasies, you were always the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” she whispered admiringly as she moved to kiss my thighs, rubbing her hands on them sensuously. “I didn’t do you justice.” She followed the declaration by wrapping her mouth around the tip of me, swirling her tongue. She sucked my hard eager flesh with unintelligible sounds, and moans that came all the way up from the bottom of her, emitting small secret whispers that blew across my sensitive tip when she breathed out. I twitched in her hands, dripping as she worked me between the heat of her lips and the steady pressure of her hand. My hips came up off the bed, wanting to let her continue, while needing to flip her over and fuck her fast and hard to relieve the ache she had made in me. My hand came to the back of her head, tangling in her hair, loving the slightly distracting feel of her tresses. Looking down, I saw her lips stretched wide as she tried to work all of me into her like this. I was near mad from the feel of her, but the sight of her finished the journey. Just when I was going to beg her to stop, or to never stop she pulled back, sucking me hard in a long drawn out motion that made my balls draw up tight. When her mouth released me, her tongue launched a verbal assault every bit as seductive as the one it had waged when it was licking and sucking my throbbing cock. “In my dreams, I could pleasure you like this for hours, drinking you again and again, because you are more than a man. You could satisfy me in every way. Was I right, Eli?”

“I will.” I swore to her as I writhed under her. “I will satisfy your every desire,” thrusting into her hand as I spoke. “Any pleasure you want, any need you have, you have but to ask it.” “Yes,” she hissed out as her head dropped, as if my vow was one she had waited a lifetime to hear. When her desire drugged eyes met mine, again, I could see my words seduced her as much as the part of me she held captive in her hand. Slowly, she shifted on the bed turning until her lovely wet heaven was right above my lips. “Show me,” she ground out, before she leaned down to swallow my cock again, taking me even deeper than she had before. My hands gripped her hips, pulling her down to me. When I had her where I needed her, I sucked her clit as I slipped two of my long thick fingers deep inside. She gasped around my shaft, losing her rhythm for a moment. She used the moment to pull free, and speak one more time. “Make me come for you,” she told me, and then she went back to making sure that I was pleasing her in other ways. I let her suck, and play with me while I thrust my fingers gently into her slickness, teasing her. She pressed her hips down, seeking more friction, as she reached down to cup my balls, rolling them gently in her hand, before letting her fingers slip lower. I felt a single probing finger sliding into my backside to massage my prostate. She quickly found a rhythm between her mouth and her fingers, showing me clearly how any thoughts I had about letting her play with me were an illusion. The way she worked me broke me in record time, making me explode down her throat in mindless waves of pleasure as she continued her intimate massage. As intense as my pleasure was, I wanted to hear her in it with me. I pressed deep inside her with my fingers, looking for the spot inside her that would give her the same pleasure. She bucked against me when I brushed it. I rubbed it harder, vibrating my fingers at supernatural speed, as I turned my face into her thigh, and pierced her femoral artery with my fangs. She gave herself to me then. Her sounds going straight to the heart of me. Before she finished her orgasm I sealed her wound, and flipped her around to impale her on my still rock hard cock. I sat up to hold her closer, making her gasp and quiver from all the sensations that were coming at her faster than her human mind could process. She was reduced to pure animal magnificence, shifting on my cock, rocking only a few times before I felt another orgasm bloom inside her from the pressure of me filling her up and caressing all her secret curves. Her eyes rolled back as her body shook uncontrollably. I held her tighter, sucking on the warm sweat that covered skin of her neck, as I thrust up into her deep and slow to prolong her pleasure. I tongued her nipple again, piercing her breast with my fangs. She screamed for me, calling my name in a garbled jumble of intense inarticulate sounds that are felt more than understood. I suckled her a briefly as I fucked her, my skin tingling as she pulsed around me and I worked to touch all the places that had been waiting for me to find them. I refused her respite. She had asked for a dark immortal lover to take her to places she had never been. I would not let her down. When I felt her orgasm easing I sucked the fang marks I had left on her neck the night before, while sliding my hand down to massage her clit in slow smooth circles. Immediately, her orgasm returned full force. “You will hold nothing back from me, Sara!” I told her as she moaned in ecstasy. “You will give me everything. Everything!” I told her, pinching her clit to make her peak again. She was so wet that I could feel it coating my thighs as I took her with more force, my hips thrusting up pressing me into her as far as I could go. “Feel me. Is this what you wanted? Is this what you dreamed?”

“Yes.” “Say it!” “God, yes! This is what I wanted with you, Eli, oh, God, please!” “Please what, lover? Stop?” “No!” she clutched at me with her hands, fighting her pleasure jellied muscles. My hands came to her hips again pulling her down as I pushed up. “No!” She said again, still afraid as her passion addled brain stumbled around the idea that I could stop, and leave her like this. “Then come for me again,” I demanded as I fucked us toward oblivion. She responded immediately, as she had when we danced. Lithe and tight around me she spasmed again, her whole body shaking as she called my name again and again. Despite her trancelike euphoria, the deepest sounds of her satisfaction came when she felt me come inside her. She rocked down on me to make sure she missed nothing that she had conjured from deep inside me with her body and her words. I had asked her for everything, and I had given it in return. ****** Several hours later she was recovered enough to respond to my suggestion that we dress and go out. I was still waiting for questions, but if she had them she was not ready to speak them. I helped her dress, kneeling at her feet to slide her boots on. Before assisting her with her coat and scarf. Her lips were still swollen from my kisses, her cheeks flushed with sated desire. I knelt again to let her climb on my back, settling her before moving with supernatural speed out the door of her room, and down the empty halls. I heard her gasp in delight when we burst outside into the snowy evening. Immediately, I left the ground launching myself into the air like Superman, faster than any human eye could have followed, if there had been any to see. However, it was Christmas night, and most humans were tucked in because of the holiday, or the snow storm. I had helped her dress in her warmest clothing, but still I knew her delicate human constitution would mean that this would have to be a fast flight. Too soon, I brought us down in an alley beside a convenience store that was open even with the holiday, and took her inside for coffee. She stood beside me as I made it for her, just as she liked it, three creams and three sugars. The look on her face from this small gesture warmed me as if I had drunk a pot of the hot beverage. Back outside in the alley, I held the coffee as she climbed onto my back again. When we landed at the library I took her hand, and we broke into the quiet dark building. Immediately, I found the security guard, and glamoured him to leave us in peace. Then I led her up the stairs to the study table. “This is where I first saw you,” I told her as I slowly unwound her scarf, and unbuttoned her coat. “I watched you for nearly an hour planning to seduce you, and take you for the night.” She picked up her coffee and took a sip. “What changed your mind?” she asked, speaking for the first time since our outing began. “I’m a pleasure delayer.” She smiled at me over her coffee. “Then I met you, and I found that I wanted more than a night.” “You did?” She sounded surprised despite everything that had passed between us.

“Yes, I wanted to know you.” She hummed a purr of pleasure. I stopped, captivated by how easy it was to please this enchanting woman before me. “Is that all you wanted?” she asked me, a secret half smile on her face. “You act as though you are the only one with fantasies.” Her eyes grew darker. “Tell me your fantasies, Eli. Every one of them.” “Oh, I’ll do better than that.” I took her coffee, and placed it on the table far from her reach. “I watched you from over there,” I said, nodding with my head toward where I had stood as I turned her to face the table, gently bending her over it so that her chest rested on the table top. I moved behind her, pressing my already hard cock to her soft ass. She moaned for me as her hips pushed back against me seeking more of me. Quickly, I slid our clothes down freeing my cock to nudge it against her warm wet center. “I wanted you like this.” As I pushed into her, I pulled her hands up to the table, and stretched her arms out fully to each side, before pinioning her hands there with mine. Her head came up as she took me into her completely. I placed my mouth next to her ear. “I wanted to feel your hot little pussy sucking my cock, begging me to fill you up.” She pushed back, taking me fast and hard, spurred on by my confession. “I wanted to sweep all the books off the table, lay myself out before you so that you could worship me with the same intensity you gave them.” I punctuated each word my fantasy with a thrust of my hips, grunting deeply before tossing all my cards out in a rush of gravelly words. “Make me come inside you, Sara, here like this.” She wriggled, unable to get her hands free. “I can’t. Let me loose to touch you,” she begged, panting. “Not with your hands. Use your tight little pussy to make me yours.” She moaned in frustration that changed to pleasure as I hit that sensitive spot inside her again. I paused my thrusts to rub over it slowly back and forth with the head of my cock. She became impossibly wet from my intimate caress, hanging on the edge of her orgasm again as I pumped into her slowly. When I began thrusting in and out of her again, she took a breath, and I felt her internal muscles shut down on me like a vise. “Yes!” I barked out. “Like that, lover. Squeeze me like that.” She reveled in her power over me even as I lost control from the sensations of having my fantasies come true. She was squeezing me so tight when I pulled out that I was gritting my teeth to delay my own orgasm. Just when I got the rhythm, she changed it up, letting me slide out of her smoothly, only to clamp down when I tried to enter her again. “Fuck, Sara,” I growled in her ear, knowing she was about to break me, I slid my hand to her clit to make sure she came with me when she did exactly as I had asked her to do. “In my fantasy you would have welcomed me that night, into your body like this, and let me pleasure you.” She broke then, and so did I. The feel of her overwhelmed me as her orgasm took her. I fell against her, reveling in all the sounds of her satisfaction that filled my senses. She flipped her head toward me, closing her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. I was reminded again of how tender my feelings were for this woman, and I was grateful that this was a secret I could keep to myself. ******

I assisted her in straightening her clothing, kneeling again to tie her shoes that come undone. I could feel her gaze on the back of my neck as I worked the laces. Looking up, I found her watching me intently. “What is it?” I asked her finally, remaining a supplicant to her from her perch on the table, where we had just made my fantasies come true. “You do that with such ease and grace that every time I find myself…humbled that one such as you should kneel, and care for me as you do.” Her right hand rose to brush back the hair from my eyes as I looked at her. I let my eyes close at her touch, leaning into it, and turning my head slightly to chase it, like a kitten with a string. My eyes snapped open when she gasped only to find that strange look intensified on her face. I captured her hovering hand in mine, and brought it to my lips in a slow gesture as I held her gaze before letting my eyes slip shut at the pleasure of her skin on mine again. When I opened them, I was captivated by her. “Tell me all your dreams, Sara,” I commanded her, while still kneeling at her feet. My stance a reminder of my promise that I would fulfill them all without question or hesitation. She looked at me, tilting her head to the side with a faint smile on her lips. I wondered what words would finally pass her luscious lips. “May I see where you stay in the day?” I blinked. That was the last thing I would have expected. Rising slowly, I placed a hand flat on the table on either side of her, and kissed her lightly at first, then deeper as the warmth of her drew me in again. “Finish your coffee, beautiful Sara. Then I will show you.” Her hand grasped my face gently. She rested her forehead against mine for a moment, and then leaned over around my arm to retrieve her drink. She took a deep slow swallow of the still warm beverage before placing the cup back on the table. Then she pulled my lips to hers again, letting me taste the coffee as I had dreamed that first night. How could she know, I wondered for a moment before her tongue tangled with mine causing all my thoughts to wander away, drugged and distracted as the rest of me was under her touch. “I want to worship you there, where you spend your days hidden from the sun,” she whispered in my ear as her kissed a trail up my neck. “Worship me?” I managed to get out, as I turned my head to allow her more access. “Oh, yes, there is no other word for what I want to do to you.” Her dangling legs wrapped themselves around me, pulling me closer to her as she sat on the table. “Long endless hours of you saying only my name as I adore you.” “Sara,” I moaned as her teeth gently tugged at my earlobe. She hummed her pleasure in my ear as my hands came up around her back to hold her closer to me. She was intoxicating and delightful as no one else had been in my entire existence. This woman held me in the palm of her hand. That as a new experience for me. That I wanted to be held that way had been, until this moment, completely unimaginable for me. We abandoned her unfinished coffee on the table where I had first seen her, and where I just loved her. It was alluring that she wanted me more than her precious beloved coffee.

Chapter 4- Do You Trust Me?

I had a small house in the suburbs of New York. I could have flown her there, but I feared the distance with her in the cold, so, we took a cab. She rode snuggled into my body, her fingers tangled with mine. I felt my thumb caress her palm, was a little startled to know it was a purely instinctive reaction to her. I let the sensation take me as I placed a soft kiss in her hair, smiling at either my own odd behavior, or the quiet contented sigh that escaped the warm bundle in my arms. I was completely in the moment with her. The Dead End sign, indicating the imminent termination of this wondrous time, blinking far in the distance of my mind. I let myself pretend that we would have forever together. The thought filled me with anticipation, and joy. I could see us through all the nights that would ever be, tangled together, laughing and fucking as time itself fell to pieces around us. Was this why I was made? To come to this time, and find her here? Everything in me screamed yes to that question asked in fancy and distracted desire. I felt myself purr deep in my chest at the notion. The sound made her turn into me, and place a soft kiss on my chest through my clothing. I pulled her closer and kissed her hair again. What would she say if I asked her to ride time beside me? My hand caressed her back gently in soothing motions as our taxi sped through the night. I imagined turning her to be mine forever, feeling her rise in my arms through the damp earth hungry, and needing only me, as she did now, but with the intensity of emotion that only a newborn vampire can know. Would she fly as I did? Not all had the gift of flight. What would it be like to fly with another? I thought of her on my back, and how that had been a new experience I had never thought to have just a few hours before. To share flight with her under her own power was almost too much to consider. Would she let me love her deep and hard as the clouds caressed our cool immortal skin? My body responded to that image causing me to shift in the backseat. Ever attuned to me, her free hand slipped down to caress me through my jeans. My head fell back, mouth slightly open as she traced the outline of my cock with a light teasing caress. How the fuck did she know just how to touch me? Or was it just that she was the one touching me? Was anything she did perfect for only me? My hand caught in the back of her hair pulling her lips up to mine as I kissed her passionately. I had dreamed of many things as we danced, but she had already exceeded even the wildest of them. I had never known a lover like my Sara. My Sara. Before I started to think of ways to make that happen, we arrived at our destination. She followed me to the door, still silent as she held my hand. I flipped on the lights, and closed the door, thinking that now she would start her questions. She looked around at the average room with average furniture, and removed her coat and scarf. I hung them by the door, and turned back to her, ready to answer her with complete truths that could be stolen back later. She launched herself into my arms, pulling my lips to hers.

If I were a wiser man I could read kisses, I thought. If I were a stronger man I could gently extricate myself from her arms and ask my own. I was neither of those things. When she finally spoke, it was a question that caused my body to ache, and my undead heart to flip flop in my chest. “Where do you sleep?” ****** Much later, when we found ourselves in the large tub that I had redone the entire bathroom to make fit. It was my favorite place in the entire house. I was leaning back, with her resting between my thighs, the warm scented water nearly spilling the tub was so full. “Why do you like it in the tub so much?” Her question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?” I asked her, not letting her know that once again she had struck right to the heart of me. “You are so relaxed here. I can tell you like it. Is it because the water is warm, and it warms you? Makes you feel alive?” “You make me feel alive,” I told her, pulling her back tighter to me, kissing her neck softly between the wispy pieces of her long hair that she had pulled into a messy bun on her, head just before we climbed in here together. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Her question was so quiet that the sizzling of the burning candles around us was almost louder to my supernatural hearing. I hesitated, wanting to tell her the truth, but anything I could say would likely open the door for more questions that would interrupt our golden time. “I wasn’t sure I could trust you.” “What changed your mind?” “Your Christmas wish.” “But people say things all the time. How did you know I was serious?” “I’ve gotten to know you pretty well since we met.” I almost stopped there. I should have stopped there, “And because when I weighed it out, the risk versus the reward, I just needed you to be serious.” “So, you trusted me?” Her heart was hammering under my hand where it rested beneath her breasts. For the first time since this has started she was scared. “Yes,” I told her, rubbing her slick skin in small gentle circles to soothe her worry. “I’m glad you did,” she said finally. “You can you know? Trust me, I mean. Just like I believe I can trust you, Eli.” “And how do you know you can trust me?” I asked her, not wanting to scare her, but needing to understand what she driving at. Her heart calmed unexpectedly. “Because since the moment I saw you, I just knew I could. I felt it here.” She placed her hand on top of mine over her heart, then rested her head against my chest. Her racing heart stilled, and just like that, she felt safe and comfortable in my arms again. ******

“Can I stay here today?” She asked me as I dried her from the bath. I stopped to look up at her. “Why would you want to do that?” “To be close to you.” “But, I am dead once the sun rises.” She shrugged irreverently at my words. I tried again. “Vampires are completely vulnerable during the day, Sara. It is unheard of to let one such as you stay near us, when we can do nothing to defend ourselves.” “I trust you when I am vulnerable.” I looked at her sharply. She took quick breath, and rushed on. “I mean if you wanted to hurt me you could do it now, or at any time, and there would be nothing I could do to stop you. But that is not just a vampire human thing. Humans hurt each other all the time, with weapons and words. No one is safe. The best we can hope is to be alive.” She knelt down beside me. “You make me feel alive, Eli. I would protect you. Keep you safe. Do you trust me?” “What would you do all day here alone?” She yawned, raising a graceful hand to hide behind. “Sleep for one. It’s been a long hard night.” I couldn’t stop the smirk that spread slowly across my face. Yes, it had been a long hard night. “You want to sleep beside a dead thing?” Her eyes were filled with some emotion I could not name as she looked at me. She leaned in closer, pressing her warm soft body to mine. “No. I want to sleep beside the dark driving immortal creature who has made me his, just as I dreamed he would.” When she kissed me any chance of denying her floated away on the high warm passion that filled me as though I all I had ever been was an empty vessel waiting to hold her. “My Eli,” she called me, whispering it like a prayer. I could do nothing, but grant her yet another wish. ****** “I don’t know what happens when I die for the day,” I told her, sounding every bit as unsure as I felt. “What’s it like from your side?” She asked snuggling against me. I let my arm hold her loosely as I pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. This was a conversation I had never had. A conversation I never dreamed I would have. When I hesitated to answer she looked at me, her fingers running lightly through my hair. “When I close my eyes it’s like a split second for me before I open them again. I know that a day has passed, but like all time for me it is meaningless.” She tilted her head to the side considering my words. As they registered her lips parted allowing a soft breath to escape. Her heart beat was strong and steady, assuring me of her calm. I remembered how I had thought she would react if she discovered my true nature. I could not have been more wrong, or more delighted in my error. She looked down at my body, allowing her fingers to follow the trail of her gaze. “A Time Lord,” she mused, a smile on her face as she touched me. “This is much, much better than any old blue box,” she said as she pressed her palm flat to my stomach. My muscles clenched

under her hand. I caught her hand bringing it slowly to my lips. I kissed each finger slowly, ending with a kiss on her soft palm. When she thought I was human, she had told me once of her crush on The Doctor. It amused me now more than it had then, because she did have a point. Her other hand slipped down beneath the sheet that was covering us, to wrap around my hardening cock. “And this is much, much better than any sonic screwdriver.” Her hand pumped me slowly up and down. “Is there time to love you to death?” Her voice was breathy as she watched me grow in her hand. “Just barely,” I told her. “If you hurry.” She released me, jerking the sheet back, causing it to balloon up, before releasing it to float back down on the bed, and the floor like a wayward parachute as she moved on top of me. She closed her eyes, savoring me as her mouth closed over me, stroking me with her tongue as had done with her hand. Releasing me, she looked up at me, her eyes burning into my brain. “Then don’t hold back, Eli.” Dawn was coming, but within moments I was, too. The sounds of our pleasure following me down into the dark accompanied by the pure bliss that she conjured effortlessly with her warm lips and solid affections. ****** December 26th I opened my eyes to find her gone. I sat up quickly, extending my supernatural senses to search my house. I could smell her. She was everywhere, and nowhere all at once. My fangs came down hard, aching like the rest of me. I was ready to continue what he had started when the day took me away. The sound of my growl filled the room as my frustration at her missing continued to rise. Had she left me? Had I frightened her away? It felt like a hole opened up in my chest replacing my frustration with, what was that? Fear? I growled again, pushing that useless emotion away. It was then that I saw the note on the bed beside me. I jerked it up, nearly destroying it in my anxiousness to read her precious missive. I kissed you from head to toe as you rested beside me. I paused, and closed my eyes, breathing deeply, as I searched my skin for evidence of her confessed trespass. I felt a ghost of her lips on me as I followed the trail she had left, starting at my head. A dozen kisses on my face, their barest traces left behind. My hand followed the trail down my chest, coming to rest on my thighs where she split her efforts, before doubling back to take my other long leg into the web of her adoration. I wiggled my toes, laughing as I felt the remnants of her kissing and sucking my big toes. That vixen! Opening my eyes, I went back to the note. Then I investigated your house. I rose from the bed, following the ghost of her footsteps through my bedroom, out into the living room. I paused, kneeling by the sofa breathing deeply. She had sat here, naked! I fell down into the spot she had used, and looked at my world through her eyes. My living room was decorated in soft tones of brown, gray and teal. In the corner there was a large pottery vase that held a bouquet of peacock feathers. I could almost hear her

giggling as she made her way over to them. Leaning down, I inhaled deeply again. Oh! She had taken a feather out, and rubbed it over her soft skin before putting it back. Turning, I looked again at the room, my focus coming to the bookshelf in the corner where I kept some of my favorite reading material. Following her steps, I found one of my Dickens first editions pulled partly from the shelf. I could smell her on the book. Pulling it down, I saw another note sticking out. Everything about you fascinates me. Did you know Dickens? Trash talk with him by a fire before you tasted his thick literary blood? Did the words it made on your tongue feel like a revelation? I growled again, enchanted with this game whose rules were unknown to me. I turned to examine the room again from this vantage point. Closing my eyes, I took another breath. She had left within the hour! My eyes fell to where I had removed her clothes the night before spying another slip of paper. Moving at vampire speed I grabbed it up, anticipating her next words. My dark immortal lover could find me anywhere. He would follow the scent of me to the place where my heart dances. Can you find me, Eli? I want you to find me…I want you. Five seconds later I was dressed, and out the door, moving a top speed to make her wish come true. ****** I followed her down the street, catching her scent on the wall where she had let her fingers drag along the hard brick. She had twirled around the stop sign at the end of my street, her hair flying out, touching the ground as she spun in joy. She moved further down the street, her steps dancing haphazardly back and forth as she moved to a rhythm only she could hear at the time, but I heard it now. It was the sound of perfection locked in her every move. Every move she made sent out another wave of this glorious music that called me to follow her. A block away she had gotten into a taxi. I paused unsure, then I closed my eyes again and focused on finding her in a city of millions. After a moment, I caught the faint scent of her again, using all my honed senses to pull only her out of the masses. She had ridden in the taxi with the window down, her hand trailing out in the cold night air. I followed her. ****** Where my heart dances, she had said. I found the end of her trail at a dance club that had been converted from a warehouse. 911 was etched above the door in red neon. I took a moment to collect myself. The excitement of the hunt and chase had made me savage and hard. I needed to control that before I entered into this throng of warm human bodies. The pulsing beat from the walls called to me. I wanted to enter and drain them all, hundreds of them as she danced around me swaying her luscious hips in time to this beat. Would she worship me if she saw this face? It was far less pleasing than the handsome school boy I had

pretended to be. I had killed this many dozens of times over, glutting myself on the pure predatory satisfaction that filled me as their bones cracked like sticks under my hard old hands. I pushed the images down, and took another deep pull of air into my lungs, mugging her scent from it, then I glamoured the door man and entered 911. I stalked her through the crowd, finding her at the heart of it, dancing to the beat surrounded by half a dozen men as in love with her sensual nature as I was. I let her glimpse me before I moved away. I caught the smile on her lips before I disappeared in the bodies. I also noted the extra sway she placed in her hips when she knew I was watching. I moved up to the balcony, leaning down to watch as her adoring fans assumed her new enthusiasm was for them. I saw her head turn, eyes casually seeking me. I let her find me, then I moved again. Back down in the crowd, I let the beat take me as I moved toward her. Coming up close to her ear I leaned down, not touching her. “You smell like me,” I told her in a dark sensuous whisper, before moving away again, out of sight before she could turn her head to me. I let her glimpse me in the crowd. Come to me, I thought at her, calling to her. I was infused with primal passion when she started dancing in my direction, leaving her throng of fans behind. I stopped still in the middle of the dance floor, radiating a dangerous desire that caused the other dancers to respond by moving away from me, ever so slightly. She danced into my circle, her eyes refusing to meet mine as she came closer, winding her hands around my chest as she moved behind me. I felt her body drop to the floor, swaying as she let her fingers run down my back taking a slow sensuous path across my ass. I turned, and pulled her up, spinning her out harder than when we had danced behind our masks. I heard her breath catch as I took her body of out her control, and brought it fully under mine. I put her in front of me, and with my eyes commanded that she dance, just for me, as Fetty Wap’s 679 filled my ears, the bass so loud it felt like my heart was beating again. Slowly, in time with the music she arched her body, letting the waves flow through her from head to toe. When her lower back arched, I felt my fangs come down revealing my own loss of control. There was a moment of undiluted fear when I realized that I could, and might truly hurt her. She must has seen it on my face because she stepped into me, turning around pressing her back to my front, and my hands around her middle. Never missing a beat, she reached back and pulled my mouth to her neck. I pressed my lips together, denying my fangs the soft warm flesh that she offered me so recklessly, so fucking fearlessly that my own fears and desires wilted nothing; making way for genuine affection for this woman. “You play dangerous games,” I said darkly, aroused further when I felt her shiver in my arms. She turned to face me, pulling my lips down to hers for a searing kiss. The feel of her hands in my hair took away the crowd around us. There was only her, and how she made me feel. By offering my dark beast his every wish she had lulled him into retreat. As her kiss deepened, I was shocked to feel my fangs gently retreat. “Those are only for me,” she said breathlessly in my ear when she moved to kiss my neck. “No one else,” she added, with the same confidence I had used when I commanded her body to respond to me. “Yesss,” I agreed, helpless to deny her as she pressed herself to me. My head was spinning, high on Sara and her touch. When we started to move again it was as one, letting the

music guide us as we rubbed against each other, fucking with our clothes on, in a crowd of ignorant strangers.

Chapter 5- Never Enough Time

We danced for hours, entangled in each other in a world where only we, and the music existed. The scent of her, and the crowd around us spiking my hunger and desire to a level I had not experienced in centuries. Despite the physical impossibility, I was totally stoned, addicted and strung out all at once. She had said my fangs were only for her, and they agreed, retreating at her gentle whisper, and then descending again as her lovely hips caressed mine in perfect rhythm to whatever music the DJ spun. Before I realized it, I was doing geography in my head calculating the distance to her dorm versus the distance to my house. Both were too far when all I really needed to do was pop the button on my jeans, and slide into her right here. I took a deep breath, intending to inhale her scent, and drive myself a little further from the truth of this reality, but what I got instead was a like a cold bucket of water down my back. Malik! Instinctively, I pulled her closer to me, pressing her against me as my eyes started searching the crowd for the vampire whose scent reminded me that I was living a dream here with her, and I was getting far too caught up in it. Malik was the vampire Commander of New York City, and the right hand emissary of Brandon, the vampire Regent of New York. Physically, neither were a threat to me. Politically, they were deadly adders who could make life complicated in the extreme for me, with one call to my Regent. I had informed them of my intention to spend my sabbatical here, and had seen neither of them since. Of course, that was due to my keeping almost exclusively to the campus. The point of sabbatical was to be away from everything that I had to deal with in my every night life. I got enough of vampire machinations in my regular world, they were unwanted here. Still, I realized my reaction to finding him here was more about the woman in my arms. As my mind raced around that fact, I further realized I was leaving in just a few days. I would not be here to protect her from Malik’s attention if he discovered her this night, or any other. Sara picked up on the tension in my body, and turned toward me, her face a mask of questions. I pulled her close to me, and whispered to her, hoping the music was loud enough to mask my warning. “There’s another vampire here,” I told her quickly, still dancing without missing a beat. To her credit she also held the beat, continuing to move with me as though nothing were amiss. “Whatever happens next, please, just follow my lead!” I felt her nod before turning back around to resume her dancing, exactly as she had before. I was uncertain which would be more attention grabbing. If we left now that might make him more interested, but if we stayed, and he really got a look at her, a feel of her, there would be no stopping his seeking her out when she was alone and vulnerable. “Let’s go,” I finally decided, taking her by the hand to retrieve her coat and scarf. She was buttoning the last button when Malik slid in next to us at the coat check counter.

“Eli Solomon! Leaving so soon? And just when we were enjoying the show so much, too.” I fucking bet you were, I thought even as I masked my emotion completely before turning to face him. “Malik,” I greeted him with a flat even tone. “Who’s your friend?” he asked, leaning toward Sara taking a deep breath. I knew what that one breath had told him, there was no choice now. “This is Tina. She is mine.” To her credit, Sara’s expression was bland, and almost as unemotional as mine. Again, her heartbeat was rock steady. Inside, I marveled at her trust, and confidence in me to keep her safe. “Evidently,” Malik oozed charm beside me. He was an attractive man with short, dark curly hair, and large deep blue eyes that held glamour like puddles after a summer storm. To Sara’s credit she looked down at her feet, playing the role of submissive pet as though she had done it before. Not one to be put off, Malik held out his hand to her, trying to force her touch, and her gaze to him. Awed, I watched her pull a gloved hand from her pocket, and offer him a limp wristed shake while she scrunched her eyes shut, and she smiled widely, flushing delightfully in apparent embarrassment as she accepted his greeting flawlessly. “Pleased to meet ya,” she said, sounding much more southern than normal, before resuming her close study of her shoes, even going so far as kneel down, and retie the laces. Fuck, she was good. From the corner of my eye I watched Malik frown at being foiled. “Imported pet?” Malik asked, assuming from her accent that she was from Tennessee, as well. I inclined my head offering as little as possible while avoiding rudeness that could delay us further if I provoked him into flexing. “Little out of the ordinary, Solomon since you are leaving soon, or have your plans changed?” Sara’s heart did a double beat as she stood beside me, and she started searching through her pockets to maintain her refusal to meet Malik’s gaze. Malik was an excellent Commander, and a decent vampire. We had been acquainted for a few centuries. Despite that, and his political connections, I wanted to kill him. Just put my fist through his chest, and rip his fucking heart out for ruining my spectacular evening, and for the danger he would pose to Sara once I was forced to leave. As my mind raced, for a second, I wished I had kept walking down that dark hall, and never turned back to her. Then, I realized that I would rather kill him, and run with her in my arms than give up one moment of what had happened when I turned around. Was it really just a few minutes ago that I had been a happy vampire, wrapped around the girl of his dreams lost in the dance? “No change,” I answered noting that Sara was running out of pockets to stall with. I almost smiled when she triumphantly, pulled a piece of gum out, and slowly unwrapped it before popping it into her mouth. As she hunted for a trash can for the wrapper, I turned to face Malik raising an eyebrow at him indicating I was ready for this conversation to terminate, if there was nothing else required of me. He smiled and he stepped back. “Enjoy the rest of your sabbatical, Solomon.” He eye fucked Sara one last time, his tongue caressing where he his fangs lay hidden, as his thoughts took him into dangerous desire, before disappearing as suddenly as he had appeared. I took

Sara’s arm, and led her out to the cold night. Looking around, I flagged a taxi and gave the driver my address. “Can we go by my place? I need some clothes.” “No.” I answered her curtly. She blinked at me through a frown. “We’ll take care of it later,” I said in a softer tone. There was no way I was going to risk leading Malik to her dorm. Sara glanced at the driver frowning, but said nothing. She really was completely fucking amazing. I would find some way to let her know that once she was safe. ****** I slammed the door to my house, and pulled her into a kiss while I trained my supernatural hearing on the outside, listening for proof that Malik had shadowed us back. Pulling back, I rested my forehead against hers while pressing a finger to her lips, begging her for silence a bit longer. Turning, I opened my front door, and inhaled the night air deeply, looking not for my lover this time, but dangers that might take her from my arms sooner than I had expected. I could detect nothing of other vampires in the air. I slumped in the doorway, a weight the size of the world coming off me unexpectedly, as I confirmed her safety. If he were there, if any vampire was there, I would have smelled them. Closing the door, I turned back to her, picking her up from beneath her hips encouraging her legs to wrap around my hips. Giggling, she leaned down, cupped my face and kissed me as I walked us to my bedroom. My emotions, torrential, and frightening even to me, were swirling through my hollowed-out center. They tore everything in me loose as they hurtled through me. This was the problem with feeling. It was impossible to contain and control. I remembered now the control emotion exerted over me if I did not keep it in check, but it was so much like closing the window after the rain had passed. I was here. I did feel. I was overwhelmed by that feeling. I sat on the bed with her spread on my lap facing me. Her intense gaze was more than I could take on top of everything else, so I let my eyes go closed in a desperate attempt to hide from her. She scooted closer to me, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me tight. I felt my chest pump full of air as I realized she was consoling me! I fought to not lose control of my beast who still howled for Malik’s blood, clawing at the insides of me to get free and end him, consequences be damned. When she placed a soft kiss on my neck, pressing her breasts into my chest, the beast stopped clawing to get out, and purred to be receiving her attention once again. What was this woman doing to me? When I opened my eyes again she was right there in my face, her brow slightly frowning as she thought her mysterious thoughts. I let out the breath I had been holding as I ran my hands down her back gently, soothing us both. I was sure she was going to ask me something now. I had so many questions about her actions, I could only imagine hers for me. I saw her come to some decision just before she kissed me again. A kiss that started softly at first, but shifted as her hands tangled in my hair, with a passion that rivaled my own inner blood lust.

I crushed her to me, finally setting my hands free to assure me that she was here, and that she was untouched by Malik, or any other vampire other than myself. When she released my lips I looked into her beautiful blue eyes and told her, “I’m sorry.” “For what?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. “That I didn’t kill him for just being near you. I had vowed that I would, that first night in your bed.” She smiled a small sad smile running her hand along the side of my face. “I think it’s more complicated than you going all Tarzan, and pounding your chest.” I rested my forehead against hers, and let out another long breath. “Yes, it is.” I was about to say more but she cut me off. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I’ll listen if you want me to, but I don’t want to spend the time we have together on wasted words.” Holding her closer, I felt my face betray the pain I felt at the confirmation that she had heard Malik speak of my imminent departure. “There is much you need to know, Sara.” “We have some time, don’t we?” “Not enough,” I admitted to myself for the first time. “There would never be enough, at least not for me,” she said, pulling my lips back to hers and claiming them again. Her kiss prevented me from having to agree, but it didn’t change the fact that I did with everything that was in me. There would never be enough time with Sara. Still kissing her, I rose with her in my arms and placed her on her feet at the side of the bed we had shared that day. I began to undress her slowly, keeping my eyes on hers as my hands removed each piece of her clothing until she stood before me with the dim bedside lamp playing shadows on her face and smooth skin. I removed my clothes at supernatural speed, clothed one second, naked as she the next. She smiled up at me, but didn’t move, she was waiting for her dark immortal to come to her. I knew then she had a stronger will than my own. That knowledge chipped another piece of armor from my long dead heart, and I welcomed the release, daring to hope that I might live again in the sun of her smile. Before our evening had been interrupted I had been sure that I would take her roughly sweet in some alley half way between 911, and either her dorm or my house, but here with her now, I could imagine nothing like that. I wanted it slow. I wanted it to last the rest of the night. It was just possible I wanted it to last forever. I tangled my hands in her long hair, and put everything I was feeling into my kiss. My desire telegraphed itself to her, and as it had been when we danced another kind of dance, she stepped into my arms and gave herself to me, completely. ****** I left her in bed asleep to gather her clothes, and wash them in my machine. Dawn was an hour away when I put them in the dryer, and felt her behind me in the doorway to my laundry room. I turned slowly, dreading and wanting to see her in equal measure. When the sun rose I would no longer be able to deny December 27th. There were so few chances to see her like this again. I wanted to absorb everything down to the finest detail. Her hair was mussed, standing up, and out in places from our bedroom interlude.

She was wearing my grey t-shirt. I wanted at once to gift it to her, and to remove it immediately, so that I could take her scent back to Tennessee with me. She was leaning against the doorframe, the heel of one foot resting atop the other. The bend of her soft knee made my hands clench to touch her, my mouth watered to lick slowly around that curve, and kiss her softly on the back of her knee. Her arms were crossed beneath her breasts in a protective gesture that told me she was feeling unsure about something. I frowned, wanting her to feel nothing but safety, calm and peace when she was with me. When my eyes moved to her lovely face, noting her swollen well kissed lips, and that she was chewing softly on the bottom one, I heard myself make a sound that I had never heard before. It was halfway between a groan and a sigh. It was a sound that spoke of how much I wanted to kiss that lip, and how good I knew it would taste if I did. I watched captivated as her teeth released her lip, and it curved into a sensual smile. Finally, I let myself look into her eyes, pushing back the worry of time to embrace the magic of now. She was here now, and so was I. The next second might fail to fall. Some trick of time might leave me here with her, looking at this amazing woman forever. If I had been a praying man, I would have fallen to my knees, and asked for that gift shamelessly, but I was a pragmatic man instead. I knew that time would stand still for me forever, but for us, it would march forward toward a terminus I no longer wanted to reach. Her enchanting beauty etched itself on my heart in that moment, making a profound impact on me as she simply stood still in that doorway. My supernatural hearing picked up the double beat of her heart, and an intake of breath that would precede some question, or statement that would shatter this moment. Refusing to accept that, I moved toward her in two large steps picking her up, and pressing her back to the laundry room door. Her breath came out in a sigh of pleasure as my lips found her neck, and I pressed my throbbing needy cock into her slowly. She was ready for me, so slick that for a moment I let my beast free to fuck her fast and hard against the door, transmogrifying her nearly spoken words to gasps and sighs of contentment as I stretched her around me in this intimate act of flesh and fantasy. She locked her legs around my naked hips, moving her body as best she could to please me in this strange unfettered position. When her pussy squeezed me as she had in the library, my fangs came down. Her sounds of pleasure increased, her legs tightening around me as she offered her neck to me fearlessly. I ran my fangs along her skin reveling in her full body shiver as she anticipated my bite. I placed my hands beneath her hips, angling her body up, allowing me to completely bury myself inside her. She screamed then, her whole body locking with such intense pleasure, as she arched against the door. Her pussy trembled around me, massaging and begging me to fuck her. I stilled completely as she writhed against the door, impaled on my cock. “Why wouldn’t you look him in the eyes?” I growled savagely in her ear, my words sounding as broken, and rasping as my soul felt in that glorious moment. It wasn’t fair to interrogate her like this. I knew that, but I couldn’t stop. My need for her had removed what

small reason her presence had left me. She gasped, clutching at my shoulders, tearing my flesh with her short nails while she pulsed around me. “Because,” she sighed, her head falling back to the door, her eyes shut tight in ecstasy. “Because why?” I thrust hard into her again, pressing her with my body as much as my words. My fangs we fully extended, causing my speech to slur when I spoke. She hit the door again in frustration at my deep stillness that held her right on the edge of release. “Because…I’m YOURS!” she screamed, her head twisting back and forth in denial of her own words. Words that burned through me, leaving me blistered, and screaming her name as I fucked her blissfully hard, granting us both the oblivion we needed. “Sara…Sara!” My fangs pierced her warm skin, and her blood filled my mouth as I came into her so intensely that my knees gave way. I sat down hard, still inside her as we fell into our orgasm together. She jarred in my lap, and went off like a rocket around me holding on as tightly to me as I was to her.

Chapter 6- This Side of Paradise

We were still on the floor the laundry room, my only anchor to this reality was my still hard cock nestled inside her. Her body was limp in my arms, her breathing slowly returning to normal. My hands roamed her back, reassuring me that she was fine despite her intense orgasm, and my reckless treatment of her vulnerable body. I kissed her hair as I chastised myself, promising to be more careful with her. It would damage me irreparably if I lost control, and hurt her when my only intention was to cherish her. “Fuck, you feel so good,” she said, her breathing changing again as she rocked her hips in my lap, massaging my cock in a slow rhythmic motion that made me want to fuck her hard again, now, forever. My hands pressed her closer responding instinctively to her efforts to arouse my passion again, even as I tried to press the need for her back. “Did I hurt you?” “No,” she reassured me, but she was lost in endorphins, and other pleasant post coital hormones. When the haze passed, I was sure there would be more bruising. Sighing with resignation, I gently lifted her off me, freezing when I heard her sharp intake of breath confirming my fears. Holding her to me, I rose from the floor, and carried her back to the bed. I removed my shirt from her body, pausing to sniff it as I looked at her. The mix of our scent was beyond intoxicating. She watched my every move, thinking thoughts that would likely lead to more bruising, if I let them take me away. In my mind, I saw Malik looking at her again, and fury rushed through me, followed by possessiveness and something else I refused to give a name. She held her hand out, beckoning me to join her, to join with her again. I dropped the shirt on the floor, and lay down beside her, taking her lips in a kiss that told her how much I wanted her again. When I released her lips I moved down her body, kissing her as she had me when I rested today. She shifted restlessly beneath me, her hands tangled in my hair as I slid between her legs, raising them, up placing her feet flat on the mattress. My palms slid slowly up her legs, treasuring her. I leaned over, and angled my head to lick the side of her bent knee as I had wanted to when I saw her standing the doorway of the laundry room. She made a sound that satisfied me in new ways. When I placed a dreamy soft kiss on the back of her knee she moved restlessly to get closer to my lips. Every touch, every caress was an act of adoration that passed back and forth between us wrapped in sighs of contentment like gifts we made just for each other. My hands slid up her legs, gently pressing her thighs open, flat to the bed. Pleasure ripped through every fiber of my being when I took a long deep breath of us mixed together, there between her long lovely legs. I pressed my tongue deep into her wetness, reveling in the taste of our passion. I moaned when I caught the faintest trace of blood there from my roughness with her. Automatically, I dropped fang, and pierced my tongue to bathe her in my healing blood. I pressed my tongue deep inside her, moving it in sensual circles to touch her walls for pleasure and for healing. “Eli,” her tortured whisper cut through me, settling around my cock

making it jerk against the bed beneath me. My hips moved in answer, thrusting down slowly into the mattress. When I felt my tongue heal I brought my hand up, and ripped open my fingers before sliding them into her, reaching deeper, healing her as I sought out the place inside her that would bring her the most pleasure. She jerked when I found it, crying out as she tugged my hair roughly in her clenched hands. I blew across her swollen clit, loving the feel of her trembling beneath me, a chord just struck, echoing through flesh and bone to the tune of me. When I sealed my lips around her, sucking gently, her body came off the bed as she exploded into tremors. Every muscle going hard before she fell back, and started grinding her hips in my face in mindless pleasure. As she came down, I gently withdrew my fingers, satisfied that my blood had done its work by paying penance for my reckless passion. I rose up to my knees looking down at the beautiful wreck of her, shattered in my bed, still spread open before me. When her eyes opened slowly and focused on me, I brought my fingers to my lips sucking them between my fangs. letting her see my eyes go shut as I enjoyed the taste of her. When I opened them again her pouty lips were slightly opened, her pupils dilated out almost completely obscuring the blue. She looked feral, beautiful and needy. I felt her gaze caress me as she looked at me, down my chest stopping at the massive erection standing up between my thighs. She licked her lips, wiping my mind of all my promises and selfrecriminations about being too rough. I wanted to bury myself in her again, but I was frozen, transfixed by the indelible image of her flaxen hair fanned out across my pillows, her black eyes, her soft open mouth and wet pussy laid out for me. Yes, frozen on the outside, burning up on the inside locked in place, just this side of paradise. She broke the spell when she brought her hands up to her breasts to cup them sensuously, moaning as she massaged them slowly, plucking her nipples, rolling them between her fingers making them as hard as I was. She kept her eyes on me as she did this, her tongue slipping out to circle her lips slowly. Then she held her hand out to me, still holding her breast with the other. I moved up her body slowly until I was straddling her chest. Never taking her eyes from mine she reached around me and down between her legs, sighing restlessly as she stroked her pussy collecting the moisture that was gathered there. When she wrapped her slick little hand around my cock my chest seized in desperate need. She pumped me a few times, her teeth worrying her bottom lip again as she held my gaze. Then she tugged me down by my cock placing it between her breasts which she cupped together with her hands again, pressing her flesh tight against me. Groaning, baptized in her slickness, I thrust between her breasts. When she raised her head to run her tongue around the tip of my cock as I moved against her, I felt my balls go tight. I needed her with me. I reached back as she held my cock between her breasts, and found her clit with my fingers rubbing her slowly at first in time with my thrusts. She was still caressing my tip with her tongue when I pushed up between her breasts, and the sensation was unbearable.

I called her name, making my fingers move faster against her swollen slick bud. I felt the heat of her mouth envelope the head of my cock as we exploded together, her swallowing my come as she groaned, causing some of me to splash down her chin. Removing my hand, I pressed her down to the bed and kissed her, licking me from her lips and jaw. Tasting her skin along with the come she had coaxed from me. I knew I had made it through to the right side of paradise. It rocked me to realize I never wanted to leave. When the day came to take me away, I fought it as hard as I could to stay with her, but it pulled me away like the unyielding tide of the sea. ******* December 27th I awoke a moment of a day later, alone, covered again in ghost kisses. I reached out, and heard her steady heart beat coming from the living room. Pulling on my jeans, unable to keep the smile from my face I followed the thumping sound to her side. She was curled on the sofa, reading the Dickens she had left the note for me in last night. I slid in beside her, pulling her to me for a good evening kiss. The book fell from her hands as they reached for me. “You’re dressed,” I scolded gently, running my hands over her possessively. “Didn’t want the pizza man to think this was his boom-chica-mow-mow moment.” She sat back, her lips curving into a cat like smile as she stared at me, her hand smoothing my hair back from my forehead. I laughed out loud at the imagery her words inspired, and pulled her hand from my hair to my lips, where I kissed each of her fingers as I looked deeply into her eyes. “So, you wanted to talk?” she asked, even as her breath deepened from my finger kisses. “You must have questions?” “Millions of them, but they are disorganized, and probably not important. Maybe you should tell me the things I need to know?” Still holding her hand, I looked for the words to start. “Malik, the man who greeted me as we were leaving the club was a vampire.” She nodded, her eyes focused on mine, waiting. “I didn’t know he would be there, and by the time I realized he was, I was unable to get you away before he found us. You followed my lead perfectly, exceeding even my wildest expectations with your behavior. How did you know what to do?” She shook her head, shrugging slightly. “I just read what you wanted from your body language.” I raised a brow in surprise. I had thought myself as impassive as a stone when we confronted Malik. If I was giving things away this would never do. “Explain, please.” “Well, when you tensed up behind me before you told me about the other vampire, I knew you were upset. This told me that you did not want to see or deal with this vampire. When you told me to follow your lead, I knew that you wanted me to behave a certain way.” I nodded shocked more with every word that fell from her lips. “You pulled me back against you, protectively on the dance floor, and I felt you scanning the room as we danced. You were worried about me.” The other brow went up now, too. “At

least I thought you were worried about me, because I figured you dealt with vampires all the time, and I must be the wild card that had you on edge.” She sounded unsure. “You are correct. I was very concerned for you, Sara.” “When he found us, your face blanked, and you went…away.” She hesitated. “I don’t know how else to say that. It was like you flipped a switch, and the man I had known was gone. So, I knew that you wanted to hide from Malik.” “Very astute,” I said, caressing her fingers with my thumb, encouraging her to go on. “When you introduced me by another name I knew that you were trying to hide me, too.” “Why did you put the gloves on, and refuse to meet his gaze?” “You are very…sensitive about touch and smells. I assumed that was a vampire thing, and not an Eli thing. I…” she paused dropping her eyes from mine. I pulled her chin back up making her look me in the eye again. She swallowed and bravely pressed on. “I didn’t want him to touch me. Only you.” “And his eyes?” “I was afraid he would see how fucking scared I was, and that we were totally bullshitting him.” She smiled then, blowing air nervously through her lips. “Did I do the right thing?” “You were perfect, Sara. Fucking perfect, like you always are.” She relaxed next to me, unspooling hidden tensions from her muscles that she had been holding since our confrontation. I should have reassured her last night instead of fucking her senseless. Again, I promised myself to be more careful and more attentive to her needs. “He said you were leaving.” It wasn’t asked as a question. That came next along with a sensation that felt like a stake in my heart. “When?” I wanted very badly to lie. To tell her never. To let her continue to just enjoy the time we had left without this shadow over her head. I opened my mouth to do just that, and failed utterly. “January 1st.” She gasped, the stake plainly now in her heart as well. “So soon,” she breathed out, dropping her eyes again. “That’s only four days from today.” She looked up again, as a single tear escaped her long lashes to tumble down her cheek. “Why do you have to go?” “I’ve been on what humans call vacation. I have to return to my job at the beginning of the New Year.” “Your job? What do you do?” Now her eyebrows were up, her curiosity ebbing the flow of her sorrow for the moment. “I am a Commander in Tennessee.” “Commander? Like a human Commander in the military?” “More like your police force than the military. I enforce our laws by capturing and punishing those who transgress against the rules that protect us from discovery.” “Wow. I’m dating a cop.” I smiled at her summation which was not wrong, just inaccurate. “Do you have a badge?” My lips parted, and my fangs snapped down in answer to her question. “Just these.” “Way more intimidating than a tin plate star.” Her fingers came up slowly to touch them. I let her, surprised at her audacity less than my compliance. Lost in a passionate moment I had let her

rule my nature, but in this stark lit world of conversation and revelation, her touch had different meaning. I tilted my head back opening my mouth wide for her curious attention. When she sat back, taking a deep breath to get her thoughts back on track, I missed her close attentions. She was very aroused from her perusal of my fangs, but fighting to reign it under control. I was grateful for her efforts and tried to do the same. The slightest move would have unleashed me on her again, equally aroused by her words of wanting only my touch. I forced my fangs to retreat, and took her hand again to soothe me as much as her. After several deep breaths, she looked at me, waiting for me to tell her what she needed to know. What did she need to know? I had planned from the beginning to take all her memories of me, but Malik had not been part of that plan. I could share things that might help her, but if I wiped her memory would she understand the danger? What if I left her with her memories? Did that make her dangerous to me, and my kind then? And then there was the tear. She would be broken hearted when I left her with memories of me. Could I do that to her? “Do you think Malik will look for me when you are gone?” “I don’t know. We lied about your name, and he thinks you are from Tennessee, so perhaps not.” “I am from Tennessee.” “What?” In all our talks before she had made her wish, she had never told me that. I knew she was from the south because of her accent that came through sometimes, but I had no idea she was actually from there. She nodded at me her eyes wide. “I was born there in a small town called Davidson.” My jaw went slack. Davidson was in my fucking Zone! “My parents died when I was small. I was raised by my Granny and my mother’s brother until I was ten. Then I was sent away to an orphanage in Knoxville. I was there until I turned eighteen. My grades were good enough for a scholarship. When I was accepted at NYU, I moved here two years ago.” “And your family? What happened to them?” She shrugged then, not looking me in the eye again. “I don’t know. After I went to the orphanage I never saw them, or heard from them again.” Her heart was racing now. What the fuck? This woman had faced down vampires, and not once had she been scared like this. “Sara? What’s wrong?” She shook her head taking a deep calming breath before she looked up again her face serene, and heart settling into its customary rhythm. “I don’t like to talk about my family,” she said with a finality that told me there was definitely more to this story. “It was all a long time ago. None of it matters now.” None of what? I wanted to know. Or did I? Yes, I did, but I didn’t want to force her. She had been nothing but considerate of my boundaries since I had revealed myself to her. The difference was I was opportunistic bastard. If I got the chance I would make her tell me. It bothered me too much that she had some secret that scared her to leave her all alone to carry it. “What about you? What’s your story?” She attempted to redirect me, but it brought me back to my own dilemma of what to share with her. Sensing my hesitancy as she had my concern in the club she changed tactics with me again. “It’s all right. You just tell me what you want to tell me, and I will accept it.” I nodded. “I could ask you some questions, and you can answer

them if you like, or tell me they are out of bounds and we will move on, all right?” I nodded again. “How old are you?” I took her hand again, pulling her closer to me on the plush sofa, ready to soothe her when she got this answer. “Four thousand years.” Her heart sped up again, and her face went blank in shock. “Four…” her voice trailed off as she stared at me. She sat there for a long time, her mouth slightly open as her heart pounded in her chest. “Thousand,” she finally said closing her mouth when she was finished speaking. “I can’t…” she tried again, stopping, shaking her head in shocked denial of my words. “Oh, my God! Eli, the things you have seen!” She was scared of me now. I hated how that felt. Did she no longer see me as a man? As the man who had bedded and worshipped her these last few nights? Had I made a mistake in answering her question? She read my silent reaction flawlessly once again. “No!” she said, moving closer to me and flinging her arms around my shoulders burying her face in my neck. “Don’t be sorry you told me, please.” My arms came up around her, to soothe my fears not hers. “I’m still the same, Sara. I am still the Eli you spilled coffee on, and who won the dance competition with you. I am still the same man you held last night, and covered in kisses when you rose today. I am, I promise,” I said into her hair, cupping the back of her head as I held her to me. It terrified me how much I needed her to accept me. I couldn’t bear to think of what it would feel like if she didn’t. “Say something, Sara. Please,” I begged her. She sobbed as she clutched me tighter, still hiding her face in my neck. “Do you have any friends?” she asked me, her voice muffled in my shoulder. I let out a sigh of relief, and thought of how to answer that. “I have had many, but as with humans we change, people come and go from our lives. Right now, I have one friend. She asked me if I could give her a recommendation to a vampire once. I told her she would be an excellent friend, and she has been since that night. Before even, when she danced with me.” My words drained the tension from her again. Finally, she sat back, swiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “You must think I am an idiot!” she exclaimed, bringing her hands up to hide her tearstained face from me. “What? No! Why would you even think that?” “That stupid speech I made about vampires being the cat’s meow!” “No, not at all. You were being open and honest with me about your thoughts and feelings. There is nothing that has greater value to me. There is so little honesty in my world. You saw the posturing first hand last night with Malik. Sometimes, I despair that being a vampire is like playing an unending hand of poker. All we do is bluff and protect ourselves while we wait for someone to fuck up, and show a tell.” “That sounds terrible,” she said pulling her hands down from her face to place them on mine. Her tears sank into my skin, innocently marking me as hers. I let her, making sure I didn’t miss a drop of her salty affection. “Isn’t there anyone you can be yourself with?” “There is you, isn’t there?” I hated how much of me hung on her answer.

“Yes! You can always be honest with me!” She hugged me again, pressing me tightly to her, erasing all my fears, and doubts about how she saw me now that she knew my true age. I had to make her understand what an important piece of information that was to me. “Sara, listen. We don’t tell each other how old we are, so no one else knows what I have just told you.” “What? Why not?” “As we age we become stronger, more powerful. To know the true age of another vampire is to know his level of weakness. This is information I guard viciously.” “But surely, wait, are there others older than you? Can they hurt you?” Her concern for my well-being was disarming. “I think there probably are at least a few older than me, but that isn’t the point. If they knew my age I would become a target for many reasons. I would be forced to kill many that I have no desire to harm. They would seek me out from fear, come after me in groups hunting me. Not even my…boss knows my age. She may suspect, but she doesn’t know for sure, and there are none that can tell her, except me and now you.” “Your boss? You work for a woman?” “Yes. I work for the Regent of Tennessee.” “There’s a Regent?” “A vampire Regent, yes.” “What’s she like?” “She has an excellent poker face, and a keen mind. For her to suddenly fear me would not bode well.” “So, you are older? You could hurt her…kill her?” “Easily.” “But you won’t?” “I have no desire to.” “But you have killed before?” “Many, many times, Sara.” “Is Malik younger, too?” “Yes. Most everyone is younger than me.” “So, it was me you were worried about.” She cupped my face, and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Is he dangerous?” She asked, her eyes wide and serious. I was still reeling from her soft kiss. I had expected rejection not affection for my admission of being a killer. “He’s a vampire,” I shrugged. There was nothing more dangerous. She frowned. “So are you.” “Yes, but they are not all like me. They would not treat you as I do.” She sat back processing. I tried again to explain. I wanted her to be cautious, but not terrified. “Most vampire see humans as cattle, as things, inferior creatures good only for pleasure and feeding.” “Why are you different?” “I wasn’t always.” “You mean there was a time you would have seen me as a thing, an object?” “Yes.” “What changed?”

“I was on vacation when I met you. I was pretending to be someone else. A young college boy.” “So, if you had met me as the Commander you would have…killed me?” Her voice was low and uncertain now. “Yes.” Her heart sped up again. She moved further back from me on the sofa, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them rocking slightly. “I don’t understand.” Neither did I, now. “Sara, I told you the night I found you that I had planned to seduce you for a single night, and that changed when we spoke at the coffee shop, because I wanted to know you. Remember?” She nodded her head, still rocking. “And now I do, and I would do anything to keep you safe.” “Why?” I shook my head slowly. “I honestly have no idea. I only know how I feel when I am with you and now…” She stopped rocking, turning to face me again, but keeping her distance. She was on the edge of running from me. I tried again to find the words. “You said you wanted a dark immortal lover whose beast only you could tame, whose heart was only for you. I am that lover, Sara and you have tamed my beast. I am truly what you wished for that night.” Her lips parted in a small gasp as my words sank into her. Slowly, she shook her head in denial again. “I never said ‘whose heart was only for me’.” Slowly, I slid closer to her on the sofa, giving her time to pull back from me, if that was what she truly wanted. She held her ground letting me place my arms around her, and put my face right next to hers. “You weren’t the only one who was wishing that night.” I told her before I kissed her lips, telling her without words that she did indeed hold my heart in her small graceful hands. I pulled back slightly, sounding as though I was praying man after all. “Sara…” She ended my prayer with the amen of her lips crashing into mine.

Chapter 7- New & Fragile

Her kisses usually sparked a fire inside me that could not be denied, making me behave in bold and dangerous ways that left us both vulnerable to this thing between us. This kiss was different. She was as giving as ever, but this time it was as though she was truly tasting me for the first time. In a way, she was. She had welcomed the college boy vampire lover, with acceptance and passion, but now she was facing the truer me. A four-thousand-year old immortal who had owned his crimes, and his planned trespasses against her, as well his confessions of how that was no longer what he wanted. Truth tasted like peace on my lips; she drank it with caution, and need in equal measure. Would she have accepted me the night I blew back into her room, and claimed her if she had known these truths of me? I recalled thinking that people asked for things all the time without truly knowing, or wanting what they demanded the universe to deliver. Where was the line? Where was I in relation to it in her mind? “You feel different, and the same,” she told me quietly when she pulled back from our true first kiss. I looked into her eyes, trying to decipher her meaning, as I tucked a stand of hair behind her ear. “Good different?” I asked, needing to know her thoughts. She hesitated, her face frowning a little as she looked at me. “Yes, but when I think of you now it’s…overwhelming…in a different way.” “I overwhelmed you before?” She nodded slowly. I raised a brow, still not sure of her meaning. Looking into my eyes she worked to find the words to share with me. “The day after you revealed yourself to me I woke up in my bed alone, still feeling you on my skin. I was sore from the things we’d done, but also aching and wet, needing you again. I stared at the marks on my neck for hours in the mirror, feeling elated and terrified by turn.” I touched her face with the back of my hand, lost in the images her words conjured in my mind. “You were gone, but still all around me. I felt like I was drowning, but I didn’t want to stop. I had wished for you for so long, arguing with myself about how crazy I must be to even have such thoughts. How twisted I must be to long for a life of such dark desires, and then you were there. I had imagined how it would be thousands of times, but I failed to realize how it would feel when my wish came true.” “How did it feel, lover?” “Like Moses must have felt when he saw the Burning Bush.” I felt my eyes widen in surprise. “You were real, and you were here with me, and it was too much to hope for, but all I had ever dreamed of at the same time. It was a revelation. Your existence was a fucking revelation so big and wide…you were breathtaking! The things you said that night, the things you did, it was like you had read the walls of my mind, where all the secrets of me were scribbled in blood.” “You were so calm that night when I returned. So accepting.” I could hear the wonder in my tone at her words.

“I decided that if I was crazy, it was a good crazy. It was a necessary crazy to put aside my doubt, and open myself to the experience of you.” “You are so brave, Sara. I never imagined I would meet someone like you, or if I did it was so long ago that hope had abandoned me completely.” She turned her head to the side, smiling slightly as she looked at me. “What?” I asked her, hanging on her every word. “It’s not bravery, so much as me realizing that if I denied this, if I tried to reason my way through it, and ignore the possibility of what might happen, I would not be able to live with myself. I had to know what would happen. I couldn’t stand not knowing.” She touched my face then, the warmth of her hand spreading through me warming me all over. “It wasn’t bravery, Eli, it was self-preservation.” I recalled how I had felt in the hall as I walked away from her, and the realization that I could not stand passing up on a chance to truly know her “I understand,” I pulled her into my arms, and hugged her close to me. “It was the same for me,” I said into her hair, feeling her arms pull me tighter to her warm soft body. A sense of peace and rightness filled me as her warmth had a moment before. Was this love at long last? I felt affection for her, this I already knew, but the wide warm reassuring emotion that unfurled in me now felt like the kind of thing that might inspire and heal. Was that love? How was I to know? I let the feeling take me, erasing the questions that would distract me from this moment in her arms. I felt my entire body tingle from her touch, endless waves of contentment and satisfaction rolling through me. It felt so different from the desire that usually held me to her, and yet it was the same. I wanted to lose myself in her completely, emotionally as much as I did physically. I had wanted her from the moment I first saw her. Now, I needed her here like this more than I wanted her with my body, I wanted her with my heart. I felt so naked in her arms that I held her tighter afraid of her gaze when she pulled back from me. As always, she sensed me, knew me. “I feel it, too,” she whispered into my neck, reassuring me in a way I never dreamed she could. A sound like a cross between a sob and a groan escaped me as I started to shake, cupping the back of her head in my hand holding her to me as these new sensations sliced me to the bone. Without speaking she brought the rest of her body closer to me, placing herself in my lap while keeping her face in my neck. It felt like a missing part of me had finally been found when she settled around me, her legs embracing my hips squeezing me as her arms did. She had given herself to me before, but never like this, or was this me finally giving myself to her? “Shhh,” she soothed, her hands tangling in my hair, soothing me. “It’s ok, Eli. I got you.” My eyes drifted shut as I marveled at her once again. How did she always know? From the moment she had made her wish, from the moment she had entered my dream, she had known me. Now, she knew truths that no other being on the face of this earth knew, and she was still accepting, loving and open. “How do you always know, Sara?” She was quiet for a long time still wrapped around me, all warmth and comfort. When she finally spoke her words landed on me like a hammer on glass. I shattered into countless fragments of monster and man, my sanity tinkling down around us flickering in the light of my mind’s eye.

“I just look inside myself, and find you there. I know what you need because it’s what I need, too.” I closed my eyes and kissed her, for the second time, with all my masks on the floor around us. I heard them crack as they fell, as I fell, into her arms, into her kiss, into her love. ****** I pulled back from her, afraid of these new feelings. I rested my forehead against hers, and took a deep breath to center myself again. I still could not look at her, because I had no idea what would happen if I did. I needed distance to think, but thinking of leaving her was too painful to truly consider. “Let’s go out,” I said, somewhat desperately, still not looking at her. “OK.” I helped her stand, placing a soft kiss on her forehead before I turned away, finally opening my eyes to walk to the bedroom and dress. I did it at human speed, stalling for time. When I came back, she was buttoned up in her coat smiling at me shyly. I chuckled at her, finding my feeling mirrored back to me again. It was so strange that I should be shy with any creature, let alone one that I had known as intimately as the woman before me. I had tasted her, reveled in her and, now it was all I could do the find the strength to look upon her. That feeling came back to the center of me again, the warmth and depth of it causing my knees to weaken. I meant to take her hand, only that, but I fell into her arms pulling her to me to steady, and reassure myself. I wanted to be angry at this weakness, but it was beyond me to feel anything other than the warmth she evoked in me. “Where are we going?” she asked turning a delicious shade of pink and looking down at her shoes again. She was hiding from me, too. “It’s a surprise, but first we are going to get those clothes you requested.” I saw her smile, and knew it was for me, though she gave it to her feet. Possessed by something I could not comprehend I pulled her face up to mine, and looked down at her trying with everything in me to show her what I was feeling. “It’s ok, Sara. I’ve got you.” Her slow smile at my use of her words made my toes curl in delight inside my shoes. She was so very easy to please. When we went out, I paused on the porch to take a deep breath of wet night air. It was snowing again, big fluffy flakes like the ones that had been coming down that first night outside her dorm room. I felt my jaw clench as images of that night replayed in my mind. I wanted…what? Shaking my head, I took another breath to determine if any dangers were present. Finally, sure that there was nothing dangerous out here in the dark but the vampire who held her hand, I knelt down, and let her climb onto my back. When we touched down at her dorm we walked in hand in hand. She opened the door, and pulled me inside, surprising me with her sudden moves as she slammed it shut, and shoved me against it, using the weight of her whole body against mine, and as she kissed me. She shrugged off her coat, and removed my jacket. Before I realized what she was doing, she pulled the button down shirt I had slipped on, ripping it open. The buttons rained down on her floor, bouncing into the secret places of her room never to be seen again. Her nimble fingers undressed us both, as our feet walked us toward her bed, leaving a trail of clothes between it and the door.

When we finally got there, she pushed me down the bed, and leaped onto me. Her hands pressed mine down to the bed as she hovered above me, her face right in front of mine. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Solomon,” she purred at me, “Wish granted.” I opened my mouth in shock as her words registered. “This is what you were thinking on the porch, wasn’t it? When you saw the snow falling like it had that first night?” I nodded, unable to speak. She smiled a secret knowing smile as she guided me into her ready wet warmth. She hummed her pleasure as she moved on me, taking me as I had her that first night. When she was sure she had my attention, she leaned down, still pressing my hands to the bed as I had done hers, and took a long hot slow lick up my neck. “You will give me everything,” she whispered hotly in my ear, flexing her body on my cock. “You will hold nothing back from me! Do you understand?” “Yess,”I hissed through my fangs that had snapped down when she said ‘everything’. She bit me with her blunt teeth then, exactly where I had bitten her that first night. She did not break the skin, and I growled my disappointment loudly into the quiet room where the only other sound was her heavy breathing. I had never in all my long life shared my blood with another. It floored me that suddenly I wanted desperately to give it to her. Turning my head, I gave her better access, and willed her to take it from me, but she did not. Instead she sat up, and started slamming her hips down, taking my cock so deeply into her that she whimpered and moaned as she did it again and again. Her hands were now resting on my chest, using it to push her body up before she crashed into me again. In that moment, she totally owned me body and soul. She wrapped her hands around my neck, pulling me up to her, never breaking her rhythm. “You will come for me, Eli,” her mouth at my ear, as hot and warm as her pussy clenching around me. A tremor went through my body as I exploded at her command. I felt her a moment later fluttering tightly around me, her voice calling out my name as she came, too. I watched her beautiful face, unable to look away from all the things I saw there. When her head fell back, I bit her neck, sending her back into orgasm around me as she rolled over my tongue. I gulped her as though I were starving, and I was, though not for blood. I flipped us over, maintaining our connection, and started moving in her slowly, running my nose up her neck breathing deeply. The warm confusing sensation in my chest unfurled again, taking wing. This was new and fragile. It made me feel new and fragile. I looked down into her eyes in time to see a single tear slip down her cheek. I stopped moving immediately, afraid that she was in pain. “You look so young right now,” she whispered, her hand coming up to touch my face. “So beautiful.” I closed my eyes again turning my face into her hand. “Do I please you, Eli?” “Yes,” I told her, opening my eyes to look at her again. The thing in my chest beat harder. It was nearly painful. How could she not know what she did to me? How could she doubt? She was…? Everything, the thing in my chest finished for me, whispering the words to my brain that it could not generate on its own. Groaning, I buried my face in her sweet neck, kissing her softly, reverently. Then I fucked us both over the edge of oblivion, to the place where words held no meaning, and I did not have to say the ones that were in my heart.

Chapter 8- A Night In Heaven

We dressed, and gathered her things to return to my house. She only took a small bag, demonstrating without words her acceptance of the limited time before us. We dropped her bag off, got a new shirt for me, and I flew us again out into the night. After making the world new again the snow had stopped. The temperature was rising, the air thick with wet humidity as it melted, washing away the city’s scars. She was laughing, her head next to mine, her arms around my neck, her legs wrapped around me from behind. Feeling adrenaline surge through me I turned my head, and told her to hold on tight as I slowly rolled us over in the air as we moved. She squealed in fear, and excitement as I came completely around loving the feel of her clinging to me. I took us into the heart of the city, approaching a skyscraper, and landing on the top of the building. I knelt slightly, letting her slide down to stand behind me before I immediately turned and kissed her, caught up in the moment as I always seemed to be with her. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes twinkling as she met me with equal measure. I took her hand, and led her to the door pulling the keys from my pocket. She smiled up at me curiosity clear in her eyes as I took her inside and down the flight of emergency stairs to come out on the top floor. “Welcome to Heaven,” I said swinging my arm out wide. She gasped in surprise as she stepped inside. “What is this place?” she asked, moving further into the large room to touch one of the tables that were draped in white tablecloths. There were dozens them, set up all around us; the ghosts of future good times to come. The room was open, covering the entire top floor of the building, and offering a 360degree view of the city with floor to ceiling windows. The city lights below twinkled like stars reflecting back to us even as they beckoned. “This is my bar. I bought it six months ago.” She turned to me her eyes wide with surprise. “You bought a bar? This is yours?” “The whole building is mine, but I bought it for this view, and to create this place.” I let her have a minute for that to sink in, and went to find the temperature controls. I wanted her to be warm and comfortable for what I had mind. When I returned a few moments later, I found her deeper in Heaven, standing by a window looking out. I stepped up behind her pulling her against me, folding her in my arms taking in the view with her. “This is amazing, Eli.” “I think it will be yes.” “Do you often buy buildings and open bars?” “If the mood strikes.” “So, you’re well off then?” I chuckled. I knew money was a struggle for her, so her reaction did not surprise me. “I get by.” Truth was, I had more money than I could ever spend, but other than providing creature comforts it meant almost nothing to me. It was a byproduct of my lifespan,

nothing more. I remembered it had not always been that way, that once having money and things made me feel something. It was long ago. “They were going to tear it down. It was old and they considered it obsolete.” “You sound offended,” she said, letting her head fall back on my shoulder. “I suppose I was. Just because something is old doesn’t mean that is has no value.” “Eli Solomon, historical preservationist,” she mused. I shrugged. “Who better?” She shook her head slightly as she turned in my arms, away from the spectacular view. “Tell me, what kind of place this is going to be?” “A piano bar.” She lit up from the inside practically glowing in my arms. She had told me once that she played, that it was a solace to her in dark times. Now, with the little I knew of her childhood I suspected those times were dark indeed. I turned her back to the center of the room, and moved to the raised dais. With a flourish, I pulled the cover off the grand piano that had been delivered just a few days ago. Her hands came up to her mouth, attempting to contain her delight, and failing utterly. Her reaction was so much better than I had hoped. “Will you play for me?” Smiling infectiously, she nodded as she removed her coat. The room was warming as she laid it across the nearest table, and stepped up to take a seat at the piano. I zipped into the kitchen grabbing candles that were supposed to be for opening night. I placed them on the piano recreating the effect that she had produced when the snow storm had taken the power that first night in her dorm room. When I was done lighting them, I stepped back, and removed my own jacket awaiting her to begin. For a long moment she sat there blazing in the faint light, her face frozen with a haunting smile as she looked at me. Then she moved, her fingers confident as she stroked the keys. I experienced a moment of irrational envy that I was not the object of her attention in this moment, but it faded quickly, and was replaced with joy and wonder when she unexpectedly began to sing to me as she played. Her voice was pleasant enough, but her true gift was in the way she conjured the notes, swaying her body gently as she played. My lover always wanted to dance. As I watched her, felt her passion for the words and the music she made for me, her power left my feet feeling nailed to the floor, with me burning along the edges, like a love letter that wanted to stay hidden from the eyes of all but its receiver. Throughout her haunting refrain, I was pulled one slow step at time closer to her circle of light. I hadn’t even realized I was moving until I found myself beside her at the piano. The smile on her face told me that she had been aware the entire time of the impact she had on me with her musical spell. As the last sounds of Fade Into You echoed through the empty bar, I fell down on the dais beside her. My head came to rest on her leg, as my arm wound around it, squeezing in gentle affection. I looked up, worshipping her. There is no other word for what I want to do you, her words came back to me. She touched me lightly, running her fingers through my hair before going back and beginning to play again, this time What Am I To You? Her musical offerings were sassy, playful and soulful, her southern accent loving the lyrics in gentle twang and questioning affection. I was spellbound knowing that that she was talking to me in her choice of notes as much as words. It was an extension of the musical

language in which we had bonded through dance. Still wrapped around her leg, looking up at her with the same honesty she always given me, I hoped she could see the answer in my eyes. I felt the bottom fall out of me as she concluded with a fancy flourish of keys and racing heartbeats, her eyes closed in reverie. I consciously moved then, unable to be so far away from her for another moment. I slid my body around hers on the piano bench, my legs on either side of hers, my chest pressed to her back as close as I could get as long we were clothed, and living in two separate skins. My arms came around her as I buried my face in her neck, taking deep galloping breaths of air that fed her to me unsatisfactorily. I felt her tremble, and heard her sigh with deep contentment to find me wrapped completely around her. “Continue, please,” I begged, my voice ragged, drugged from feeding on her magic. She took a deep breath of her own, and resumed slowly drawing out the intro as she worked to calm her breath for singing. I had been hard since I had seen her in the memory summoning candle light. Now, with my body pressed to hers I was thrumming with aching need. As she held back, tickling the tune, I recognized what she was going to play. My body jerked, under her control again, making my hips thrust softly against her luscious ass in need, her words filling my head again, echoing. Like Moses must have felt when he saw the Burning Bush…the image igniting in my mind until I not only saw, but accepted that she was a holy experience for me as well. When she started to sing I did, too, delighted in this new way to join with her. Our voices met and complimented each other as effortlessly as our bodies did. It filled me with a sense of complacency and pleasure as our sound bled out into the room. She had chosen Hozier’s, Take Me to Church to play for me. It was the loving lament of a young Irishman who equated the love of a woman to a religious experience, offering her everything in return for the ‘little death’ in her arms. It was like she was looking into my soul, scaring me with what she might find its long dark corners, even as she excited me with her expedition. Never losing the words or the beat, my hands left her middle to love her better. One came up to gently move her hair to one side so that my lips could touch her skin. The other sought the button on her jeans, opening it slowly before sliding down between her legs. She was soaking wet, as caught up in her spell as I was. Her steady fingers held their place as mine found theirs, sliding deep into her hot wetness, massaging her in slow circles. Together our voices sang out again as she worked the miracle of proving me a praying man once again. Amen. Amen. Amen. In the pause of the song’s worshipping words, I sucked the skin of her neck, caressing her with my long fangs as my fingers began to circle around her clit, pressing in hard before moving back and circling again. My hips were rocking continuously, loving the soft give of her flesh that met each thrust. The feeling was sublime. She was panting softly, but still she continued the words that I knew, but had lost the will to speak, in my adoration of her. Her voice popped and cracked with unfulfilled need as I stroked her. She was poised on the edge release, rocking into my hand, and then back against my cock in a rhythm that hypnotized me. I groaned, as the words of Hozier’s haunting love song, and her reason for choosing it, hit me full force.

My mouth opened against her neck, my breath out of control, and my hand speeding up between her thighs. When she repeated the words of the song again, I heard her echo in the marrow of my bones. I made her come, my hand unrelenting in the pleasure it was providing her as my fangs sank into her neck. I exploded against her back in long wet shuddering groans as the doors of me were blown off their hinges, because, here in Heaven, the woman in my arms had just asked me to turn her into a vampire.

Chapter 9- My Dark Little Heart

I had marked her again. She was covered in scars from my brief possession of her fragile human form. Her neck, breasts and inner thighs, each a silent accusation of where I had pierced her, cut me now in the wake of her exposed desire. I pierced my tongue and healed her neck from just now; from before in her room. She was limp in my arms, her hands resting on my thighs that there were still stretched over the piano bench alongside hers. I licked her skin clean once the healing was done, causing her to shiver in my arms. A need to finish healing her pushed at me again. I moved slowly to kneel in front of her, between her and the piano where I pulled at her jeans. She rose slightly allowing me to slip them from her hips. I spread her legs wide, and pressed a kiss against her warm center, lingering over where my fingers had pleased her moments before. I pierced my tongue, and healed the marks on her thigh. They were faint, but haunting against her smooth skin. I obliterated them, as their owner did to me. I pushed her shirt up, and pulled the cup of her bra down exposing her breast wounds to my gaze. Again, I kissed her with my blood. Caught in the sensations of my cool tongue on her, she had no idea, what I was doing or why. I only knew that I no longer wanted her marked in any way by what had transpired between us. What had been possession was now something else that I could not name. Had she really just asked me to turn her? I had thought of it on the taxi ride, fantasized about it there in the dark before I took her to my home, disturbing myself with my own unusual thoughts. I had pushed it away though, refusing to look at it, too closely. I could feel her gaze on me, waiting and wanting an answer to the question that she posed in hide and seek borrowed words, that were covered in reverence and emotion. Perhaps, even though she thought this was her true wish, it was not something she could look directly at either. I rose and kissed her then, so softly that even I could barely feel it on my supernaturally sensitized skin. Before she could deepen the kiss, I pulled back to look at her again. I had wrecked her, as she had me. She was half clothed, but totally naked in the warm flickering light, and I was overcome by her. “You are so beautiful,” my voice sounded strange in my ears. I pulled her jeans back up, and then set her bra and shirt to rights. “I need to clean up,” I told her, heading to the bathroom to put myself back together physically and mentally. I was lost in my own head, her question shoving me back into myself, putting me into freefall through an archive of four thousand years of collected memories. I had never shared my blood with anyone. I had certainly never considered making a vampire. At least I had not before I met her, and not even with her seriously, until this moment. Was I considering it? I caught a glimpse of my face in the washroom mirror, and saw with clarity that I was indeed seriously considering her request. She knew almost nothing about me. This was a dream, nothing like my real life, the life she was asking to share. I took a painful breath when I realized that if she had met the cold

calculating Commander of Zone 3, she likely would have never made such a request, and he was who she was asking to do this. That part of myself would never even entertain this idea. For a moment I wished he were here now, but of course he would never find himself in a position like this. No, the Commander would have killed her by now. Then, I was glad the he wasn’t here, or at least not in charge. Of course, he would be here, and in charge in just a few days. I was lost in my thoughts staring in the mirror not seeing anything other than the pieces of my life, each that now held her indelible mark, and seemed no longer to fit together, when the bathroom door flew open, slamming against the wall with a loud crack that broke my reverie. “You took my marks!” I spun to face her, shocked at her angry accusing tone. If she wanted to spend eternity with me then she needed to know what she was getting was more than some winsome college boy who danced to her tune at every side and turn. Calling the Commander to the forefront, I felt my face turn cold, reacting to her righteous indignation at my actions. If she were truly mine, then I would do as I pleased with her. If I were to be her maker, then she would have no choice, but to accept my word as law. I stood, arms at my sides, rising to my full imperious height, radiating my favorite flavors, cold and haughty. “I did.” “Why and how?” she pressed, her eyes narrowing as she took a step toward me, clearly not liking what she was seeing on my face. “Because I chose to. They offended me.” Her mouth twisted in a sneer. “I liked them, and I don’t like that you took them without asking.” I took a menacing step toward her, expecting her to retreat. Instead, she took a step toward me, her hands bunched in fists at her sides. It was hysterical, but I found no humor in it. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered to me, her tone every bit as cold as mine. I raised an eyebrow, the only expression of shock I allowed her to see at her reaction to the Commander. She took a deep calming breath, forcing her hands to unclench, then she dropped her face, which was covered in anguish, before coming up just as blank as I was. “You need to ask yourself something, Eli. Before you try and intimidate me because you are scared, you need to ask yourself what I might have seen, and done in my short life that made me wish with all my dark little heart for one such as yourself.” I was a wheel, and she had spun me again. I had expected fear, deserved rejection, but what I got was challenge. Fuck me, she did know how to handle the Commander, every bit as adroitly as she did the college boy. “It would be more productive to ask you this, rather than myself.” She blinked. “Tell me.” It was a command, imperious and domineering. “No. I won’t tell you anything until the flip the fucking switch, and come back to me again.” She jerked her chin up, daring me to respond. Her words came back to me then, I look inside myself, and see you there. She knew I was scared because she was. Ironically, I was sure it wasn’t the cold Commander that she feared. It was the loss of her lover. Whatever had replaced him was irrelevant to her. We stared at one other for a long time, each of us seeing something new in the other. I still found her intoxicating, but if her expression was any indication, she found me less so. Her heart was beating hard, but it was fury, and not fear that accented her scent in my nostrils. Glorious was the only word for her, but then it always was.

Could I turn her? Yes, I was capable. No, more than that, I was desirous of that act. It was the reason I would do it that gave me pause. I would be her master, but from the beginning she had been the one in control of me. While my words were dark, and demanding that first night, I required her to consent to the demands I placed on her body. This made me hers as much as she would ever be mine, and made this all much more dangerous for us both. What she asked of me now was the most dangerous undertaking I could imagine. It would be like putting a nuclear warhead at the control of tiny human child. She had no idea how strong I was, what I could do, would do if she were threatened once we were truly one. There was there was no way I could tell her that, and achieve her true understanding. I would be vulnerable in a way that I had never been as I walked this world alone. I was dizzy with the weight of possibility. Then, I considered walking away from this, glamouring her now, and leaving this night once and for all, ending this maddening sensation she conjured inside me. I imagined my life in Tennessee once I returned. Alone. It would be like trying to wear shoes that no longer fit, or clothes that were made for someone else; too small, pinching and uncomfortable. I was…more. More than I had been. More than I could ever pretend to be again. I felt my shoulders slump in defeat as I let out a long breath. I looked at her from behind the face she knew, and held my arms out to her. She moved into them without hesitation or fear, her angry heart subsiding as I held her close. “Let’s go home.” She nodded against my chest, and we walked out with our arms around each other. ****** We stopped for coffee. It was an apology, and a stall for time. I made it for her again just as she liked it, and then bought her a sandwich to go with it, adding a chocolate bar at the checkout counter. Back at home, I took a quick shower while she ate, and then joined her on the sofa that seemed to double as a confessional. She was sipping at her coffee when I asked her again to tell me of what she had seen in her short life to make her wish for one such as me. She took another drink of coffee, and sat back, still holding the cup between both hands warming herself, perhaps stalling in her own way. She pulled her legs up on the sofa, and placed her naked feet in my lap, wanting contact with me, but also to keep me at a distance. She cleared her throat, and looked at me with an expression that caused the thing in my chest to twist and roll over dangerously. Not knowing why, I pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa, and covered her legs and feet, keeping my hands on her underneath the soft material. “I told you that when I was small I went to live with my Granny and my mother’s brother.” I nodded, rubbing her foot gently to encourage her words. “His name was Eddie. He had moved in with Granny when her husband passed away to help her pay the bills. I was six when I went to stay there, too, and at first everything was fine. But he liked to drink, and when he was drinking he liked to touch.” She took another sip of coffee, and picked at the lid nervously, chewing her lip as she thoughts took her mind away.

“At first it was tickles. I mean, every kid likes tickles, right?” She chuckled without humor, still focused on her cup. “I didn’t like tickles. Not his anyway. They made me feel wrong. The way he lingered too long in some places with his hard grubby fingers, and refused to let me go no matter how much I begged him to. Then,” she swallowed hard, stolen away from me by the dark alleys of her memory that this Eddie still lived in. “He started ‘accidentally’ walking in on me when I was bathing. At first he would pretend it was a mistake, and leave after he got an eyeful, but then he started staying a little longer, staring at me longer.” She ran her hand through her hair her face twisted as she felt those stained emotions again. I wanted to beg her stop, but I knew she needed to tell me this. In as much as I would eventually try and offer the same understanding of who I was soon as well, this was her paying for her ticket to ride immortality at my side. “By the time I was ten he would wait for Granny to leave, and then come and find me.” Her voice broke then, a tear slipping down her cheek. I wanted to console her, but when I reached for her she pulled back, her eyes wide with emotion. She shook her head swiping a tear away angrily with the back of her hand. “Stay there, please,” she said not looking at me. She did not pull her feet away, so I went back to rubbing them gently, this time through the blanket to soothe her. “I tried to tell Granny, but she smacked me, and called me a liar. I think that hurt worse than anything. She was so angry with me. Oh, God, she screamed at me! She told me that I was going to Hell for telling lies, and no one would ever believe me. She told me that we needed Eddie to keep a roof over our heads, and that my lies would leave us starving in a ditch somewhere. Then she told me that since I had so little gratitude for the food on my plate I could go to bed without dinner. She locked me in and left me there for two days. No food, or water, no bathroom, just me and my thoughts. “I thought about yelling for help, but I was afraid Eddie would come if he heard me, so I stayed as quiet as I could, and waited for her to let me out.” She looked me, her eyes cold and removed from this room that we sat in. “Something happened to me in that room as I waited for the people who were supposed to care for me to remember how. I realized that when it came to people, I was alone, that I always would be, and that the only person I could count on to solve my problems was me.” She had stopped crying on the outside, but I could see the angry furious screams in her eyes. Part of her was still locked in that room starving, and waiting for someone to love her. The magnitude of her honesty, and trust in me suddenly took on a deeper rich dimension. She had held this to her for over a decade, and still found it in her to sit down with me after she spilled coffee on my shirt, and talk to me openly, unafraid. It was like I had never seen her before. In that coffee shop we had taken the risk to be the best of ourselves with each other in a moment when the heart ruled over reason. “When they let me out a week went by without incident, and then she left to go a meeting of her church club,” her tone dripped with sarcasm as she spoke. “Too bad she wasn’t more interested in being that good fine upstanding woman at home.” “The car was barely out of the drive when he dragged me to his room. Granny had told him what I had said. He was not happy with me.” Her hands clenched then. She sat the coffee down on the table in front of the sofa, allowing them to bunch into tight fists. I could smell the blood that leaked out from her nails digging into her palms. “He had this shop in the barn where

he liked to work on lawnmowers and things. When he was done with me he went out back. He was drinking again. I still can’t stand the smell of whiskey.” She shuddered then wrapping her arms around herself squeezing tightly. “So, I went out there, blocked the door with some old rain barrels, and set the fucking building on fire with him inside.” She smiled, a look that the Commander of Zone 3 would have worshipped for its cold malice. “The sounds of his screams when he realized the building was on fire, and the door was blocked were…gratifying.” Her cold smile slowly faded. “Unfortunately, he managed to get out mostly intact. He had some third degree burns, and the smoke had damaged his lungs, but he survived. When Granny got home the fire department and ambulance were there taking him away. She took one look at me, and she knew that no matter how much she starved me, I would do it again, and that I wouldn’t stop until one of us was dead.” She laughed again, tears spilling down her cheeks. “She wouldn’t believe he was molesting me, but she never doubted that I would kill him. How fucked up is that?” The dimes dropped in my brain in a torrential storm. Child psychology, her attitude about money, but there was still one question. She shook her head, clearing away the old unwelcome memories. “Anyway, she sent me to the orphanage the next day, claiming financial distress with him out of commission. I never saw or heard from either of them again. In the orphanage, I realized that it was ‘a eat or be eaten’ kind of world all over the place, not just in Davidson. So, I kept to myself, but if anyone tried to fuck with me, I put them down, fast. If I wasn’t strong enough to take them, then I found other ways to make them leave me alone, and that was my life until I moved here two years ago.” She let out a long shaky breath, clearly glad that was over. That made two of us, but I still didn’t understand. “I would like very much to hold you right now, Sara.” She shook her head, not looking at me. “Not while I am covered in this. I don’t want to stain you with this part of me.” She reached for her cup, again refusing my gaze. “Besides, I haven’t gotten to the meat on the bone yet.” She set her cup back down, and laid her hands on her lap, rubbing her legs a moment in a soothing motion that she denied me granting her. “At first, when I was free here in New York, I thought I could leave that all behind me, and be someone else. I met some nice guys, and tried to find it in me to feel something other than mild amusement when they tried to cajole, trick or seduce me into their beds. They did nothing for me. I couldn’t imagine ever letting any one of them see the survivor at the heart of me. The part of me that would burn a man alive because he took advantage of me. The part of me that would fight until my fists were bloody because some bully tried to step on me. “I was more than a girl who could be won with pretty words or shiny trinkets. I was never going to be blind, or accepting of meaningless things like mortgages, and the compromises we make to pay them. I would never be able to trust someone who had not seen the truth of life, and made a choice like the one I had made. “I think most people are asleep, either lulled there by complacency, or by horrible circumstances, perhaps like mine, which left them with what seemed no choice, but I am awake. I am alive. I wanted someone who could match that, maybe even surpass me, and to offer me something to work for.

“Most people are nice enough, but they live in a world that I abandoned when I struck that match.” “So, you wished for me?” She smiled, a small genuine smile, the first since her story had begun. “I wished for a dark immortal lover who could take me to places I had never been. Who would fly me away, and love me all night. That it happened to be you who answered that wish, well, that was more than I ever could have hoped for.” With that, the last piece came into place for me. “You asked me to turn you into a vampire tonight.” “And it scared the shit out of you.” “Yes.” “Why?” “I have never made a vampire.” Her eyes rounded in surprise, and then she chuckled. “God, ain’t we a pair?” I smiled. “We really are.” “Do you think I would make a bad vampire?” “No, I think you would be amazing. I am afraid of what it would mean for me more than I am for you. Maybe it should be other way around, but that’s the truth.” “What would it mean for you?” “In the bathroom, when you slammed in and showed me your ire because I removed my marks, I was thinking about how having you at my side would make me vulnerable for the first time…ever. If I made you, and someone threatened you, I am unsure what I would do, and I can do many things at my age.” “You think someone would try and hurt me?” “Or me through you.” “Why?” “It is the nature of what vampires are to try and take advantage whenever they can.” “You are not like that, here with me now, and no matter what you say about what you were pretending, I know you can choose to be different. I would be different as well.” “I believe you would. That alone would make you a target.” “Been there, done that. I refuse to believe that any vampire can be more vicious than a thirteen-year-old girl.” “There are degrees,” I said, smiling at her comment. “Not really. You are alive, or you are dead. A pulse does not make that decision, the spirit does.” I took a sharp breath at her words. Her experiences had indeed made her wiser than her few years. I understood now why the Commander, nor likely his Regent, would intimidate this woman. “Are you considering my request?” she asked me boldly. “Yes.” She sighed in relief, her muscles relaxing again. “Why did you take my marks?” “Why did you want to keep them?” “They reminded me that you had touched me, and of all the things we did together. When you were dead for the day I could touch them, and feel you with me.” Her words rubbed

the aching thing in my chest that was still screaming in rage from the story she had shared this night. I was sure it would keep screaming until she consented to let me hold her finally. “They bothered me; diminished you in my eyes.” “You need to get your eyes checked then. They were precious to me, like the dark immortal that gave them to me.” I growled low in my throat, and closed my eyes, delighted, when I felt her slide toward me, taking her feet down, to fold her leg to sit next to me. “My vision is perfect, Sara,” I told her, forcing myself to remain still, afraid she would pull back again from me. “Must be your head then. Good thing I am going to be psychologist. I got all the books that tell all the stories of what might be wrong in there.” She ran her hand through my hair as she spoke teasingly of my potentially damaged mind. “It’s nearly dawn, will you come with me to bed? Sleep beside me for a while? Be here when the day frees me again?” “Yes. Yes. Yes.” “May I hold you now?” “You better.”

Chapter 10- To Serve the Regent

December 28th

She was asleep on her stomach next to me when I awoke, her head to the side, gentle puffs of her sleeping breath stirring an errant strand of wheat colored hair. I lay there for a longtime marveling that I had never woken up beside someone before. It was odd, and yet not all at the same time. Odd that someone should be here, but not that it would be her; of course, it would be her. There could be no one else this bold, or this brave. I wanted very much to touch her, and though she had consented to let me hold her finally last night I was hesitant to reach out now. Slowly, I realized that if I didn’t touch her after everything that had passed between us, she might draw the wrong conclusions. Rejection if she were not ready for my touch would be so much better than letting her think that I, too, would leave her locked in that room that now existed only in her mind. Decision made, I moved nearer to her, letting my fingers trail down her body, hugging her curves with intent. I wanted to map her in my mind, to be able to recall how each dip and valley resonated under my fingers, how smooth her skin, how dangerous and luscious each curve was. When my hand disturbed the sheet tangled loosely around her she sighed, rolling over on her back as her unconscious mind reassured me that my touch was welcome. My hand was still wandering when I added my lips to the efforts of memorizing her. Her jaw, slowly, softly and then her neck, well-traveled, but most beloved of all her secret places. This one nourished my body and my soul. Her breasts, soft and wondrous in their mountainous display. They had loved me well, and I held them in my hand, covering them in soft kisses of gratitude. She stirred again when my breath passed over a nipple, causing it to peak, and extend out as though trying to reach my lips. The thought made me smile as I granted its desire by taking it into my cool mouth, tugging and caressing it in slow circles with my inexhaustible tongue. Her arms came up, flopping on the bed over her head, offering herself to me. My chest tightened as I saw more clearly than ever how much trust she placed in me. I knew now what her life had been, and to see her so open with me, in this vulnerable position made me ache all over to be worthy of that trust. The completeness of what she had offered me from the moment we met was overwhelming. I stopped, lost again in the quandary of whether I could care for her best at my side forever, or if I let her go, and set her free again to live a normal human life. I was excellent at taking care of myself, but did that mean I would be good at caring for another? As if to answer me she shifted again, restless in her sleep, frustrated that my attention had drifted from her. In answer, I caressed her other breast, and took that nipple into my mouth offering the same devotion I had to the first. Her sleeping sigh of contentment drove me a little wild.

I ran my hand down her belly, my lips following again, with my tongue dancing out for a small cool lick in the center of each kiss. She sighed again, her body shivering. “Eli,” she called to me from her dream world, transferring that full body shiver to me. I slid down her, unwrapping her from the sheet completely, like a gift made just for me. Gently, I spread her open before me, amazed to see that she was ready for me. As I settled between her thighs, I looked up once again. My gaze was met with sleepy blue eyes, and a sensuous smile that cut me apart and healed me all at once. Neither of us spoke. We just looked at each other for a long moment as I hovered over her hot core. In her I saw the girl with matches and bloody fists, as well as the woman who loved coffee and had wished that vampires were real; superimposed over each other in glorious Technicolor. I wondered if she saw the sands of ancient Egypt in my hair, and the water of the Danube in my eyes, or was I covered in the blood of thousands walking on a road of bones that led to this very bed? Somehow, I suspected it was both and neither for her. She was still feeling along the edges of me, cutting her fingers sometimes, but never letting go. Watching her bleed for me was a sensation like no other. Again, it made me want to bleed for her, an unsettling confusing sensation that was growing with each passing day. Because I was what I was, I let my fangs come down as she looked at me hovering above her vulnerable beckoning body. I opened my mouth wide, tilting my head to the side so that she could see me plainly in the dim bedside light. I did not want to scare her. I needed to be accepted again with all my ancient baggage as the dark immortal lover that she had conjured to her side in a modern coffee house, one cold November night. “Come to me,” she said, breaking the silence of ages that had filled our room. Slowly, I moved back up her body, fangs on display as I came to rest my hips between her legs. Never taking her eyes from mine, she reached between us and guided me into her, gasping as I stretched her slowly, not stopping until I was buried completely inside her. Her hands came down on my ass, caressing me, kneading my flesh gently at first, and then more firmly before she pulled me against her. She kissed me, eyes open, her tongue dancing with mine through razor fangs, pulling sighs from me that spurred her own. “Move, please,” she pulled back just enough to say, before her hands left my body and came up to tangle in my hair, tugging slightly. My body, ever at her demand, began to move in deep, slow, rolling strokes as I filled her again and again. Her legs came up to the sides of my chest causing new driving sensations to bloom inside me. I wanted this to last forever. Here with her, rolling into her like the tide, I loved her like the sun would never rise. I felt her body respond, her walls pulsing around me, and I knew I was just about to break her. I refused to speed up, even though my flesh demanded it. I was completely in control, and completely out of it as I fucked her; my body at peace as it burned up inside her. When I felt her right on the edge she pulled my head down to her lips, and said three little words that ripped the world away from me, leaving only her for me to cling to. “Come for me.” My body answered her demands, gleeful in its unending ability to pleasure and grant her every wish. ******

“Describe a night in the life of Commander Solomon.” I had pulled the sheet back over us as she was rested on top of me, a knee on either side, as she placed her chin on my chest and looked up at me. “On a good night, I read, paint or listen to music. Sometimes I write my own or I paint. Sometimes, I train with weapons to stay sharp. Some evenings I think only of a past I will never see again, but can’t quite let go. Sometimes, I hunt for law breakers, reveling in my own nature and intent.” “And on a bad night?” My hand came up to play with a strand of her hair. As I twirled it around my finger I thought of how to explain my world to her. “I go to court, and serve at the whim of my Regent.” “What sort of whims does this Regent have?” I hesitated. This conversation was going to happen from the moment she asked me to turn her, but I had deluded myself into thinking it would not be so soon. “Sometimes, she requires that I pleasure her.” I felt Sara stiffen on top of me. “Do you want to do this?” she asked, sounding angry. “It is not relevant. She is the Regent. If it is her desire, I am hers to command.” “So, she rapes you?” She was growing angrier. “No. You don’t understand.” “Make me understand then.” “With our kind, it is different. It is only about pleasure, and the broken moments of endless time. It is…something to do.” I sounded lame even to my own ears. I sighed in frustration at how poorly I was explaining this, but I was not surprised since I had instinctively wanted to avoid this conversation entirely with her. “So, you fuck, and it means nothing?” She was sitting up now, still astride my waist, but I could feel her muscles tensing to move her further from me. I struggled to find the words that would make her understand, make her stay with me. “I’ve never had this conversation. I can tell I am doing it poorly. Please, Sara, give me a moment to find the right words.” Her muscles relaxed slightly, but she did not curl into my chest again. It was disturbing how disappointing that was to me. “When a vampire agrees to work in service of a Regent, they sign a contract outlining what will be expected for an agreed upon time. In my contract, it was stated that the Regent desired me to bed her, and I saw no reason not to acquiesce to her wishes.” “What else does this contract say?” She asked in a slightly less belligerent tone, but she crossed her arms over her breasts in a defensive gesture. “That if she has need, I will fight for her to maintain her Regency from all trespasses, and that I will hunt and punish all transgressors with impunity in her name.” “Why would you need to fight for her?” “Against other Regents.” “There’s more than one?” “Oh, yes. Vampires have divided the world into Regencies that they use to increase their coffers, and rule over the vampires that reside within those Regencies that are called Zones.” “How many Regents?” “In the world? Twenty-three.” She chewed her lip, considering her next her question. “How many vampires in the world?”

“There is no exact count. The Regencies are in constant upheaval; take overs are common, and so are wars.” “How can there be wars happening that the human world knows nothing about?” “There are many things in this world that humans know nothing about. There are also many worlds that humans know nothing about.” She gasped then, shocked. I was relieved that I had pulled her mind away from the aspect of my contract with the Regent that required I service her sexually. “Like what worlds? You mean like other planets?” “No, though in time, who could say? Now, I speak of alternate dimensions that house different kinds of beings.” “Like what kinds of beings?” “All the legends that have become fairy tale or myth are based on some actual species that accidentally or purposefully wandered into this dimension at some time.” “Werewolves?” I nodded. She was shocked again. “Are they still here?” “Yes, they walk among you daily.” “But how can we not know this?” She was reeling, and I had barely touched the tip of the supernatural world around us. The part of me that cared most deeply for her wondered again if this was a mistake. “They are seen, and people do sometimes speak of it, but they are more often than not labeled as crazy, and either carted away to a mental facility or drugged into disbelieving themselves. They are labeled with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or some other mental disorder.” I shrugged. “People don’t want to know the truth if it disturbs their own complacency. You have seen this for yourself.” I hated to remind her of her Granny’s horrible behavior, but there was no better example of willing human blindness that I could offer. I regretted it even more when her face twisted into a grimace before she slid off me to sit with her back to me, and her feet on the floor. “How long are you committed to serve the Regent of Tennessee?” Her voice was sad and empty, causing the same feeling inside me. We had not moved so far away from this upsetting topic as I had thought. “Two hundred years.” A tremor ran through her body followed a moment later by the scent of her tears. “Sara,” I called to her, reaching out to touch her shoulder. I was relieved when she did not pull away, but unsure how to proceed when she kept her back to me still. “I’ll be dead by the time you are free.” I gasped at her quiet sad words. I had known this, yes but when she said it out loud, it became a very painful reality to me. My dream was ending here, perforated by her words, like a slow leak in a balloon. I could not accept the image of her dead. The idea of world without her was a dead world to me. “No,” I said, my horror coming through clearly in that tiny single denial. She chuckled as she had when she spoke of her past the previous night. The sound, and knowing that I was the cause of it hurt me even more. “Yes,” she said coldly, still refusing to look at me. “Unless you turn me, I will be dead before you are done servicing the Regent.” “What I do with her, it means nothing to me, Sara.” I wanted desperately to reassure her, make her understand that this was at worst a small bump that we could overcome if she could

find it in her to understand that I was not human, and the world she was asking to enter was not a human world. “Well, it sure means something to me, goddamnit!” She jumped up then turning on me, her face a mask of your fury. “How the fuck would you feel if I had signed a contract to service Malik?” I couldn’t stop the growl that issued from the depths of me, nor my fangs that appeared with the visual of what she described. In my mind, I saw her as she was with me when she had awakened, wrapped around him, commanding his body to please her rather than mine. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not giving you a big happy, is it?” “I haven’t… I didn’t…That was before I knew you!” I roared back at her, trying to erase the image of her and Malik from my mind. “There was no way I could have known that it would ever matter to me, or anyone else, who I fucked!” “So, it does matter to you then?” “Of course, it does, Sara. Of course, it does.” I buried my face in my hands, and willed my fangs away. “Before you it was…a job, sometimes a pleasant distraction, nothing more. It never really touched me. She never really touched me, not in the ways that matter; not as you have. It was just the way things were.” “Sounds like you were busy paying your own mortgage,” she sneered at me. It hurt me, and I was tired of being hurt, I chose to be angry instead. Jumping off the bed I glared down at her, getting right in her face. “Little girl, when you have traveled as far as I have, and watched the stars turn to dust under your gaze, you can speak to me in that tone. Until that time, I would appreciate you adopting a more civil tongue. You asked. If you weren’t ready, you should have shut the fuck up!” “How could you not know?” she asked, looking up at me in horrified wonder. “How can you have lived so long, and know so much, and still not have known?” Her reaction spun me again. I had expected her to be angry, but this was something else entirely. It tasted strongly of pity. My skin crawled under her gaze. Pity was unacceptable! She raised her hand to my face, I coiled back from her touch. She stopped, her hand hanging in the air. Then, after a few seconds, she slowly raised it to my face. Like the hateful pitiable thing I was, I turned into her touch, rubbing my face on her hand, feeling may rage evaporate to nothingness. “This. What you are feeling right now, this is mine! This means something, Eli. It means everything to be touched by someone you care for, and even more if they care for you in return. “The ability to feel this, to share this with someone I care for, is what that monster Eddie tried to take from me. Can’t you see that to give yourself away in pieces, and meaningless gestures to people who can never truly reach you, is to waste the greatest part of yourself? Can’t you see that selling yourself to anyone, for any price, is to risk the loss of yourself? How can you not have known?” Her soft words, and gentle caresses took my knees out from beneath me. I slowly knelt at her feet, bringing my hand up to hold hers in place on my face. “I know that now, Sara, but I didn’t before.” She knelt in front of me her eyes seeking mine. “Do you want her to touch you now?” “No,” my answer was gruff, filled with the emotions her touch caused in me. I had barely spoken when she launched herself at me, rocking me back with the force of her body.

“Then I will kill her myself if she tries!” she growled in my neck clutching me tightly to her. My arms came up around her, holding her to me as I kissed every part of her my lips could reach. I pulled her face back, cupping it in my hands and kissed her lips softly. “I doubt it will come to that, dearest Sara. I have some ideas that are…less violent.” “Oh?” she asked, her fingers caressing my face softly. “What might they be?” “Well, there is one thing the Regent loves more than having me at her beck and call.” “What would that be?” I smiled a little. “Money.” Sara groaned, and rolled her eyes. “She really is a dumb bitch then isn’t she?” “What do you mean?” “Because you are absolutely priceless.” In that moment, kneeling on the floor with her, I truly felt priceless, and blessed in ways I had never imagined. When she kissed me, it opened wide the hidden places I had used while I had waited four thousand years for her to find me.

Chapter 11- The Magic of a Woman

December 29th

When I awakened the next night, I was greeted by a pair of seriously dark blue eyes that seemed to hold all the mysteries of the universe in their depths. She kissed me, intensely, her passion unstoppable. Then she took my hand, and led me into the shower. We had never been in here together before, which excited me to share this new experience with her. When the water was at the perfect temperature she reached for the sponge and the shower gel, speaking as she worked it into a thick lather. “I have read that some men consider all women to be witches. That they believe we have some inherent feminine magic naturally inside us that attracts and frightens them at the same time.” “I have heard this as well,” I told her, waiting to see where she was going with this. “I have never put much stock in it before, but I was thinking today.” “Oh?” I raised an eyebrow, and felt a small smile curve my lips. “Yes. I thought, if I have any magic in me at all, I know what I want to do with it.” She reached out with the soapy sponge, and ran it down the length of my chest slowly, before she started rubbing me in slow small circles that traveled right to my hardening cock. “I want to use whatever I have to remove the Regent’s marks from you. No, I want to remove all the marks on your beautiful body that everyone has left before me.” She looked up at me, running the sponge down my arms, causing tingles that expanded out over my entire body with her words. “I want to mark you as mine.” Her words conjured endless nights of lovers that had touched me, making them spin before my eyes as they disappeared like soap down the drain. “To touch you they should have cared for you as I do. They should have inspired you to care for them, to be worthy of your touch.” She turned me around, standing on the tip of her toes to wash my shoulders in the same mystical patterns she had used on my front. “A man like you should be only be touched with reverence.” I had seen witches in my time, real magical ones, and their workings in the dark moonless nights of time. None of them had been as powerful as she felt to me in this moment; my back to her, I felt my jaw go slack in awe at her bold righteousness. If she had told me her intent before she started I would have thought this an impossible task, but experiencing it did feel as though her spell was erasing the touch of anyone who had come before her. The past swirled around my mind, faceless, countless bodies that I had pleasured and been pleasured by, with less than a handful ever truly touching me. I saw the face of Senaya, my maker, with her flaming red hair, and emerald green eyes before me, clearer than it had been since the time of the one called Christ. “Cry not for me child,” she had said to me the night before she met the sun. I had knelt beside her until she commanded me to seek shelter. I would have gone with her, but she forbade it. I had only been

a vampire three hundred years when she left me. The hole she left in me pulled at me even now, crushing my will as it had thousands of years ago. I never looked at these empty places inside me anymore. I kept them closed off, refusing to remember the good lest the empty ache come with it as well. “Let it go,” Sara said behind me, as she wove her magic in bubbles and soft caresses. I heard me take a hitching breath, and felt my eyes burn for a maker that I would never see again. As she faded, Alareon’s face came next before me, haloed with memories of dark starry nights on the sands of Babylon. Had I thought once that I cared for him, he for me? It was so long ago, I had not thought of him or his touch in thousands of years. In a breath I tasted him again, remembered the pain of our time when it was happening, and when it had ended. “I do this for your protection,” he had told me as he told me to go, setting me free to wander the endless nights alone again. “Let it go,” her soft voice sounded from where she now knelt at my feet behind me. “Whatever has haunted you, held you, marked you, let it go now. Be here with me.” The sound of her voice, the feel of her caressing my skin swept his memory away. I felt it go with the sense of weight I had not known I carried. “Turn around,” she said. When I did she was still kneeling. Slowly, she washed my feet, careful not to tickle me, as her hands massaged my calves, the soapy sponge never slowing as she worked her way back up my legs. When she reached my cock she washed it first with the sponge, and then took me in her hands massaging me in slow pumping soapy caresses. “Wherever you had been, whatever you have done, or had done to you, that is over now. Now, from this moment on you are here with me and you are mine.” When the warm water had removed the soap from me she took the head of my shaft between her wet warm lips, swallowing me until I hit the back of her throat. Seeing this woman on her knees before me, her hands holding my tired old dead heart as her soft pink lips stretched around my cock made my knees weak. I grabbed the slick wall of the shower to remain standing as she started to move her mouth on me, her eyes locked on mine. For a moment, it seemed I could still hear her in my mind. Mine! I came in her mouth in thick hard jets accompanied by garbled moans of her name like a chant from deep in my chest. I slipped from her lips as I sat down in the shower, my release so intense I could no longer stand. I pulled her into my arms, kissing her deeply as she still worked to swallow my seed. I slid into her welcoming body with my still hard cock as I kissed her, loving the taste of me on her lips as my tongue touched hers in demanding strokes. “I still want more, Eli,” she said in my ear as she rocked on me. “I want everything.” My hands came down on her hips, holding her as I rocked up into her fast and hard. “I will protect your secrets,” she swore, panting in my ear as I fucked her harder, fighting to get deeper into her, as the definition of everything asserted itself in my psyche. “I will adore you until time stops in wonder of something it cannot diminish or destroy.” She screamed as I finally got into her up to my balls, angling her hips to take me all the way with some faint hope I might stay there. I touched something inside her, making her clutch at me while slamming her hips down to meet my thrusts.

“What the fuck are you doing to me, Sara?” I whispered, my as I moved beneath her. Her hand tangled in my hair, jerking it hard to bring my eyes to hers. “I’m making you mine, forever,” she growled. Her words made me explode inside her so intensely that my vision went dim as my muscles locked, straining to stay in this state forever. She screamed as she came hard, squeezing me deep inside her. “Forever,” I gasped, I felt my back touch the floor of the shower, just as the world went black. ****** When I came to my senses I felt her still draped over me, holding me inside her. The water was still warm, which told me that I had not been here for long. Still, I marveled at the magic she had worked on me. My hand came up to rest on her back causing her to stir. Gently, I raised her up, and was shocked to see that I was covered in her blood. She was still dazed from what had happened between us, but the fear that shot through me that I had hurt her was invigorating for me. “Sara!” I called her name, shaking her gently to make her focus. “Are you hurt?” She blinked trying to focus. “I don’t think so, why?” “You’re bleeding.” She glanced down and frowned. “What?” she asked reaching down to check with her hand, which came back with more blood. She looked at me, still not understanding what had happened. She watched as I dropped my fangs and ripped my fingers open, wounds so deep that my ancient blood spilled like a river into the shallow water around us. Carefully, I placed my fingers inside her, moving them slowly to spread the blood around, to heal her. Her breath caught as I caressed her from the inside. At first her face showed pain, but before she could move or speak her expression changed, replaced by one of pleasure. Her eyes fluttered shut, “What are you doing?” “Healing you,” I assured her, as I kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth, never stopping my deep internal caresses. When my self-inflicted wounds healed, I removed them gently, tore them open again, and repeated the entire process. By the time I was done she was right on the edge of another orgasm. Pulling her into a deep tongue tangling kiss, I took her over the edge hoping to bring her the same pleasure that she gave to me. ****** After I dried her off, I carried a very worn out Sara back to bed, and spooned her from behind. I had the sense that her exhaustion had more to do with her attempted magical efforts than our sexual ones. She was not a witch, at least as far as I could tell, but what she had done with her words, and her hands had been potent indeed. Maybe every woman did have some magic at the heart of them, and if so, she had elected to spend it on claiming me, and promising to protect and care for me. It sounded almost like marriage. The thought warmed me from the inside out as I lay curved around her.

It was December 29th. We had tonight, and two more before I was to return to Tennessee. I had still been uncertain about her request when the day had taken me away, but her spell had removed any doubts I had about our future together. I was hers now, completely. I would find a way to make this work, and keep her with me forever. “That’s how you took my marks, wasn’t it? Your blood?” Her sleepy voice pulled me from my reverie. “Yes.” “I still don’t like that you did that without asking me, but thank you for what you did just now.” “I’m sorry it was necessary. I had promised myself to be gentler with you.” “Pfft. That was all me in there, Eli. It wasn’t your fault.” “Your fragility weighs heavily on me. I know what I am capable of, I should have controlled the situation better, and not let you be hurt.” “I was determined. I knew what I wanted, and I was going to get it.” I closed my eyes and shook my head at her. She didn’t understand the level of responsibility I felt for her wellbeing. “You think I don’t understand, but you are wrong.” My eyes popped open to look at her. “You feel responsible for me, you want to take care of me, and you feel bad that I was hurt tonight, but it wasn’t your fault. Think about what I said to you in that shower, and tell me then that I don’t understand.” Wherever you had been, whatever you have done or has been done to you, that is over now. Now, from this moment on you are here with me, and you are mine. She read the acceptance on my face. “That’s what I thought.” I shook my head again, this time with a small smile. She was breathtaking. Perhaps I could take hers as well. “I have decided to grant your request, and make you a vampire, Sara.” “About damned time.” She smiled at me, her hand coming up to ruffle my hair again. “So, how does that work?” “Well, the process is simple. First, I drain you, and then I feed you my blood. We go to ground for the night in the earth. When the sun sets the next evening if the transformation is successful, you rise an immortal.” “What do you mean ‘if’?” “Not all children rise. The transformation is not always successful. We don’t know why.” She frowned. “What are my chances?” “I would estimate a seventy to eighty percent chance of success.” I let that sink in. “There is more that we need to discuss.” “All right.” She turned in my arms to face me. “If I am to be your maker, then you should know that as my child you will be mine to command. My word will be law to you, Sara.” “So, we can’t fight, and then have make up sex?” I laughed out loud at that. “I don’t doubt that we will fight, it seems to be in our natures, but when I command you as your maker you must bend to my will or you will die.” “Seriously?” Her face was a mask of disbelieving shock. “Seriously. It is this way with all makers and their children.”

“Why would you use the command on me?” “Because you will be very young, and with my blood very, very powerful. It will take you centuries to be able to prevent your emotions from controlling you. It is my job to protect you, provide for you, and care for you until that time comes.” “And what happens then?” “Some vampires choose to leave their makers.” She frowned again. “I can’t imagine ever leaving you, Eli.” I took her hand in mine. “I know, but you are so very young right now. Who can say with all of time before you that you would choose to spend it with me?” The idea of her leaving me was like a spike in the chest, but it was the way of things, as I had observed with others of my kind. “What happened to your maker? Did you leave him? Her?” “Her name was Senaya. She met the sun when I was three hundred.” “You mean she killed herself?” “Yes.” “Why?” I shrugged. “Some do. She was very old, nearly two thousand, and the world…overwhelmed her.” “But she left you!” Her concern was endearing. “That is the way of our kind, Sara. She cared for me until I was ready to stand alone, and then she met the sun. I have been close to few since.” My time with Alareon rose before me again, but I pushed it back. My time held captive to as a demon’s slave was not something she needed to know about. “Will I have to leave you, Eli?” her voice was small, and filled with worry pulling me back to her in the here and now. “No, I will not command you to leave, but I will not hold you if you choose to leave.” She shrugged. “Then we don’t have anything to worry about. What else?” “My contract with the Regent would place my child under her dominion if I made you while I was in her service.” “So, if you turned me before you buy out your contract she could boss me around, and I would have to let you service her?” “Yes.” “No fucking way.” I moved quickly to reassure her. “That is why, before I turn you, I will return to Tennessee, and finish my business with the Regent.” “You’re leaving me?” “Just for a moment.” Clearly, she did not like that. Truth be told, neither did I, but it was the best way to keep her safe until my business was concluded. “Then I will return here, and take you away with me.” “Just us? Where?” “I have residences in many places around the world where a young vampire can stretch her fangs safely.” Now, I needed to know her plans. “What about school, and your dreams of helping children. Will you be able to leave that behind?” “I can study on line, can’t I?” “Yes, we could arrange that.”

“Then I will finish my degree on line, and once you think I am ready I will figure out how to proceed from there.” “You still plan to work with children?” “Yes. If I can’t control myself around them, you can command me not to harm them. Even if it takes me a hundred years there will always be someone I can help.” I braced myself for the next question, terrified that once spoken aloud, this fantasy would crumble at my feet. “What about children of your own? I can’t give you children, and if you are turned you will never have any of your own.” She moved into my arms, burying her face in my chest. If I had heartbeat it would have stopped as I waited for her answer. “I can’t have them anyway. I was…my experiences left me…unable.” I did have a heart after all, and it just broke right in half. Fuck! I pulled her close to me. “I’m so sorry, Sara.” She shook her head, sniffling softly. “It’s ok. I am not sure I would have wanted them anyway. I have seen too much to think it’s a good idea.” It became crystal clear to me then why her dreams of helping others children were something she planned take with her across the veil. It also became clear to me that I would be taking a trip to Davidson while was in Tennessee. I blamed that rush of protective homicide that filled me for the words I heard next from my lips. “In time, if you wish it, you, we could adopt, Sara?” “Maybe. I don’t know. I think I might be a crap mother even if I were human. I have no idea what I will be as a vampire.” “I do, and we can do whatever you wish, but never doubt for a moment that you have a heart that was made to love.” She looked up at me then, her face a mask of swirling emotions. “I love you, Eli.” “I love you, too,” I said for the first time ever to anyone, and I knew it to be an absolute truth. I had loved her since I saw her in the library, and loved her when she told me that she wanted a lover who was more than a man. I had loved her when I turned back in that dark hallway, and every night since. I would always love her. “Forever,” I added, feeling it resonate in my old bones like a hammer blow. She smiled at me. “Toldja, I put a spell on you.” I was laughing when she kissed me, making me happy in so many other ways. ****** “I need coffee!” she shouted an hour later. My head was resting on the bed at her feet, the covers in a tangled knot on the floor from our loving affirmation. “Then put your clothes on, woman! I will buy you a coffee store!” She giggled at me. “A very large mocha cappuccino will do.” “I’ve never tried that on your lips before,” I said pulling my jeans on, and looking for my shoes in the shambles of our bedroom. “Then you’re in for a treat! It’s the best of coffee and chocolate.” My cock hardened slightly thinking of the sounds she made when she consumed chocolate. This might be a quick trip. I wondered briefly if I could get her to wait naked, here in the bed for me to go out to get this wondrous beverage of decadence.

When she appeared beside me dressed, having found her shoes with no problem, I resigned myself to undressing her again after I had fed her coffee addiction. Maybe she would strip for me to music? Unable to stop smiling, I asked her to help me find my shoes. “Hrphm, sounds like we are married already,” she teased getting down on her knees to look under the bed. The pose took my mind off her comment, and put it back on stripteases and coffee in bed. “Would that be so bad?” I asked dreamily, as I stared at her luscious backside. “Do vampires get married?” she asked, leaning down further to reach under the bed. “If they find someone like you they do,” I said thinking out loud. She turned around with my errant shoe in her hand. “Are you proposing to me?” She was smiling wickedly at me, having noticed my eyes lasered on her hips. “If you have to ask, I will say no. When I ask a question like that it will be very evident, and clear to you what I am asking.” She bit her lip, standing to hand me my shoe. “Good to know,” she tossed over her shoulder as she sashayed by me, a little extra wiggle in her hips. When she was out of sight, and no longer a distraction what we had actually said registered with me. Did she want to get married? Turning her was a far more intimate act in my mind, but she had no frame of reference for what that meant to a vampire or the bond we would share. Would asking her to be my wife make her happy? “Coooooffffffeeeeeee!” she sang out from the other room, spurring me to move. ****** We went to the coffee shop where we had met for the first time, taking a table there so she could sip her mocha cappuccino as she ate a muffin that she had selected spur of the moment. “Save some of that coffee for me,” I growled at her, holding her hand in mine as she took small bites of her muffin, and looked at me with come hither eyes. She took a sip of coffee, and leaned across the table with her lips puckered in exaggeration of a pending kiss. Unable to stop myself I growled in my chest, and leaned up to meet her, taking her lips in a slow tender kiss, my tongue darting out to swipe the taste from her. It was quite good, though not as good to my tongue as the woman offering it to me. I playfully captured her bottom lip with mine, tugging on it before letting it go with a sigh. “Hey, Sara! Long time no see!” We turned our heads slowly, still close together, almost resting cheek to cheek, toward the sound of this very unwelcome intrusion. I felt her tense up, which brought my protective instincts bubbling to the surface. She plopped back in her chair, her hand reaching for mine, even as I sought hers; our fingers wrapping around each other instinctively. I used the time to assess the young man with dark hair, and eyes who stood before us. “Hey, Luke. How’ve you been?” Her tone sounded friendly, but I knew her well enough to sense the underlying tension. “Good, good,” he said nodding, and glancing at me pointedly. “This is Eli. Eli, this is Luke. We had some classes together last semester.” I nodded, but felt my eyes narrow as I looked at him. His eyes were all for Sara.

“So, I was hoping you would call after we went out,” Luke said to her, not the least bit put off that that he had interrupted a very nice kiss, or that our hands were tangled together now, completely at home with each other. “I met someone else,” she said, her cheeks flushing as she smiled at me. My thumb caressed her hand while I wondered how fast I could snap this rude man child’s neck. I was sure that if he didn’t stop looking at her like a Christmas present he longed to open, we were about to find out. “You’re working here now?” she asked. I glanced down at the apron he wore over his t-shirt and jeans with the The Coffee House stenciled on it. “Yeah, for about a month now. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you before now. I know this is your favorite hangout spot. Well, besides the library, I mean.” He smiled, shifting from foot to foot as he fucking blushed at her! “Yeah, I’ve been busy with finals, and the dance competition this year, and with Eli.” “Right, congratulations! I saw you perform. You guys were amazing! You totally deserved to win!” I felt my eyebrow go up. I was liking this less by the minute. “I had the best partner this year,” she said smiling at me again. “There was no way we could have lost.” “Well, listen, I’ve got to get back to work, but I’ll see you around. If you need a partner for next year, just say the word!” He shuffled away before I lost complete control of my desire to kill him. I turned back to her, eyebrow still raised. “Something you want to tell me, lover?” I asked her. “We went out, once, about a month before I met you. He was one of the guys I told you I thought I could be someone else with.” One of the nice guys who did not inspire her to open her heart, but she had certainly opened his. He was stalking her. I recognized the predatory action even if she did not. He had all but confessed it to her here just now. I hoped you would call… I know this is your favorite hangout, well, besides the library… I saw you perform… What were his intentions for my Sara? Was he just a love sick fool, or did he have more nefarious plans for her as he dogged her every step? “Don’t let him spoil our time, Eli. We have so little left, I want to spend it on happier things,” she said, rubbing my hand between hers. I smiled at her, and brought her hand to my lips. “Finish your muffin. We will take the coffee to go. I have plans for you back at home.” “Oh, really?” she smiled at me with come hither eyes again. “Yes,” I assured her, thoughts of more coffee flavored kisses, and stripping came to the front of my mind, while quietly I considered how best to proceed with the Luke situation.

Chapter 12- Intimate Things

December 30th

When I rose for the night I made some phone calls while Sara read on the sofa. I was planning a surprise for her for tomorrow night, and I wanted it to be just right. Afterward, I went to join her. “What are you reading?” I kissed her forehead when she moved closer to me, as she wrapped her arms around my chest, and leaned comfortably against me. “Pride and Prejudice, another of your first editions.” “’In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’” I quoted Austen from memory to tease her. She smiled as she snuggled further into me. “I suppose you know the whole book by heart, huh?” Her hand roaming my chest on the outside of my shirt in slow soothing circles. “A good memory serves a vampire well, Sara.” “I bet it does, still though,” she went on sounding more serious. “I guess it would be difficult as well to have so many memories from so much time.” “Knowing you makes the world lighter on my back.” I had meant to keep my tone light and teasing, but the truth of my words brought them down to the ground where she could touch them. “Does it?” she asked, her face coming up so she could look in my eyes. “You have made the night into day,” I told her, now very serious as I admired her. “That’s very fucking hot when you say it like that,” she said, her tongue slipping out to touch her bottom lip, her tone going right to all the places in me that only she knew. “Tell me more.” Quickly, I searched my memory for words to appease her. Suddenly, I seized on one that would take us back to the subject we had touched on the night before. “’It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’” “Do you think that is universally true?” she asked me, her face unreadable. “Even I dare not speak for the universe, but if it would make you happy, I can tell you that this man, in possession of a good fortune, would find a wife most welcome.” She studied me intently, her eyes focused on mine as she sought truths there that I could not name. Slowly, her lips curved. “That is much better, if you are proposing to me Mr. Solomon. Still not quite there, but much better than ‘hand me my shoes’.” Oh, she made me laugh. I held her to me as the sound of my happiness filled the room. She was always exactly right on time with her wit and grace. “Then I shall try again, and do better still,” I assured her. As I held her, something occurred to me that I had not considered before. “Sara, there is something else that vampires do aside from marrying.”

“What’s that?” she asked, placing the book on the table in front of the sofa to give me her full attention. “Sometimes, rarely, we bond together in blood.” “What does that mean?” “We would exchange blood at the same time, three times, and be bound together, forever. You could feel me, and know me completely. Forever.” “Forever?” she repeated. “Yes, it can’t be broken as long we both live.” “And if one of us were to die?” “Then the other would likely as well. The bonding is quite intricate, once in place we would be one, apart a half cannot live on its own.” “How would that work with you also being my maker?” “The two could complement each other, I think. I have never known a vampire who did this. We value our lives tremendously, in most cases. To risk our entire existence on another is…unnatural for us, I think.” “But you are offering this to me?” “I…think I would like to consider it. The benefits would be worth the risk, to feel you in that strong connected way sounds…divine.” “Yes, it does. I can only imagine how much more intense it would be to fuck you while I feel you feeling me.” My body responded to her words, shifting beneath her. “You know, don’t you, Eli that you are the only lover I have ever chosen?” My gaze snapped down to hers. “What?” “I told you I went out with some guys, but I never went to bed with any of them. You are the only one I have ever willingly shared myself with. You knew, didn’t you?” “No, my lover, I did not know.” She smiled then, a secret womanly smile that I had last glimpsed in the shower. It’s meaning as mystifying as the words that followed. “That first night, when you flew back into the room, and told me that you were the dark lover I had dreamed of, and that you were going to take me places I had never been, God, I was so excited! The things you did, the words you said to me, were like lightening on my skin. You were so fucking perfect, Eli. Every night you have been so fucking perfect. The way you touch me, the way you please me, the way you make me feel so vital, so important to you. It makes me feel special, and that was exactly what I needed. “When I told you that I couldn’t use you like that because you were not what my heart and soul told me I needed it was hard, because I had come to care for you so much. I wanted you to be that dark lover for me. It broke me to think that I would lose you because of my dark little heart.” “I love your dark little heart, Sara! If it is that, and I am not sure it is. I find only light there myself. I love that you spoke truth, and be damned to the consequences. I loved that you embraced me when I spoke truth to you in turn. It’s you that has been perfect that night, and every other!” Her words were settling into me. The images of the things we had shared, the things she had done to me, how was I ever to know that she was such an innocent?

“How did you know how to love me so well, Sara?” I asked her, my tone conveying my absolute awe of her. She smiled at me. “I told you, I just look inside myself, and find you there. I kiss you the way I want to be kissed. I love you the way I want to be loved. I give you all of me, because I want all of you.” I kissed her, soft at first, and demanding more as I heard her echo through me. “Show me,” I told her in dangerous whispers. “Show me the things that were too intimate to speak that night, Sara. Please. I need you to show me now.” She hesitated a moment. “Please,” I begged her again. I watched her decision lock in through her beautiful blue eyes, just before she sat back from me and stood. Slowly, she removed her top and her jeans. She had no shoes on, allowing them to slide right off. She unclasped her bra, letting it slide from her shoulders to land on the floor beside her jeans. Then she slid her panties down, stepping out of them gracefully, before bending to pick them up. A devilish look crossed her face a second before she flung them at me. I caught them in a blur of speed, holding her gaze as I brought them up to my face, taking a deep breath, letting the scent of her wash over me. I was rock hard now; my jeans were painful. Seeing me shift, seeking relief, she stepped toward me, placed one hand on the arm of the sofa beside me the other on the back before she leaned in to kiss me. It was a hard demanding kiss in the beginning; she conquered me, before she pulled back to make it feather light, her tongue licking my lips softly as her hand reached down to unbutton my jeans. She unzipped them slowly, sliding them down my hips just enough for my cock to spring free. Her hand pumped me, with her thumb rubbing the tip of me lovingly, catching the fluid that was leaking out, using it to lubricate her hand. My hips flexed, needing her touch more than anything else in the world in that moment. Reverently, she knelt beside me, and kissed my cock, making me twitch in her hand. Then she brought her hand to her lips, slowly licking me from each finger as her eyes held mine. “The first night we danced,” she said, her voice husky with desire, “I felt something I had never felt before. Your touch set me on fire deep inside. I was melting every time you touched me. At first, I was terrified. I had no idea what it meant to feel this way, but as we danced, and you wound me tighter with each spin, the melting turned to burning. Right here,” still kneeling she spread her legs wide letting me see all of her as she touched herself in the most intimate of caresses. When she brought her hand up she pressed her fingers to my lips, rubbing them with her slickness before she popped one in between my fangs that were now all the way down throbbing in time with my cock. I sucked her finger hard, my tongue swirling slowly around it. She growled. My desire doubled as she made that incredibly sexy sound deep in her chest. My hand wrapped around my cock massaging it, as I tried to find some relief for the dangerous need she was causing inside me. She pulled her finger from my mouth, and stood, pressing into my space. I felt her hands on the side of my face guiding me toward a nipple. Carefully, I suckled her, not wanting my fangs to pierce her yet. When she pulled back I held on, stretching the sensitive skin of her nipple before I released her. Her gasp of pleasure made my cock jerk. I was dripping again, coating my hand. “Sometimes when we danced, you would pull me close, and I could see there was a beast in your eyes that I wanted to play with, just bury his face between my thighs, and let him eat…me…alive.”

Her voice was so thick with need I could feel her words, sticky on my skin. I tried to reach for her, but she moved back, seating herself on the opposite end of the sofa. She brought her feet up, crossing them at the ankles, which tragically blocked my view of what I most wanted to see in that moment. She lay her upper body back over the arm of the sofa, her head falling back, her breasts rising like mountains before my eyes. “When I got back to my room, I was panting. I wanted…something, but I didn’t know what. Every time I saw that look in your eyes again, it made me need whatever it was more and more. Eventually, I realized that I wanted you, Eli.” She raised her head, her hands came up to cup her beautiful breasts as she teased her nipples slowly between her fingers, making my mouth water to taste them as I pumped my cock a little faster, trying to maintain control. “I imagined your hands touching me like this, and I felt myself burning again, as I had been in your arms. I slid my hand inside my jeans to touch myself, pretending it was you.” She put word to action then, letting her legs fall open completely, showing me now how very wet and ready she was for what I had in my hand. “Imagining your lips on my skin, sucking me, leaving marks because you were so desperate to taste me.” Her hand came slowly down, rubbing her soft skin sensuously as she moved. I groaned when I saw her fingers dip inside her wet pussy, but my sound was lost to hers as her soft whimpers filled the room. Her hips came off the sofa as she pushed her fingers in and out slowly. “I imagined what it would be like to feel your big… hard… cock…right here.” Her finger slid in again as she said ‘here’ driving me mad to be there, to make her wishes come true again. “Feeling your kisses on my skin, your body next to mine as you moved in me…deeper…harder.” Her hand came up to circle her clit, rubbing it as she got wetter. “Oh, Eli!” she said, sounding out of breath, her eyes going shut as her head fell back while she worked to make herself come. Her eyes opened again, watching me as I stroked my cock in perfect time with her own intimate caresses. “In my mind, I saw your fangs come down, long and sharp, needing me as I needed you. I only imagined them then. They are so much more savage, and beautiful than my fantasies.” My mouth opened at her words putting them on full display for her. Her hand sped up between her thighs. “I felt you fill me, stretch me open as you took me. Then when I imagined the feel of your fangs in my neck, and your mouth sucking my… and I came…so…fucking…HARD!” Her entire body convulsed, her screams of pleasure undoing me as I watched her come now, open and wanton for me. I was inside her before I knew I had moved, fucking her fast and deep, losing myself to the sensation of her still coming around me. She turned her head offering me her neck. My hands tangled in her hair as I gasped her name, coming deep inside her as my whole body seized, and my fangs pierced her neck. “Fuck, I love you so much!” she screamed as I drank her, lost in ecstasy, a dazed and happy resident in her intimate world. ******

Later, I carried a sleepy and sated Sara to bed. I climbed in next to her, replaying what had just transpired between us. I felt shocked and raw, in all the best ways there are to feel those things. I had wanted to know her intimate thoughts since she had teased me with them that night. I had been wholly unprepared for how primal, and beautiful she would be when she let me into her fantasies. My entire body thrummed with excitement from what she had shown me. Her words thick like honey in my ears, still winding around my body, possessing me. Not even Senaya had owned me as wholly as this woman did. It was seductive beyond words to be a part of her like this. There was nothing that I could compare this experience to in my whole long existence. Nothing would keep me from this woman. My sweet dark hearted Sara. Fuck, I love you so much! She had screamed at me from her world of ecstasy. I love you, too, sweet girl, I thought as I went to find my clothes. I left her a quick note letting her know that I would be back soon, in case she awakened before I could return. I needed to find out what Luke’s story was, and what he thought he was going to do with the lovely woman sleeping in my bed.

Chapter 13- Love Stories

December 31st

I was just stepping from the shower when the doorbell rang. Wrapped in a towel, I sped through the living room. Sara was just getting up to answer when I waved her off. “Mr. Solomon?” the delivery man asked, holding out something for me to sign. Hastily, I scribbled a barely legible signature, I took the packages from him, handed him a tip, and shut the door. Taking a deep breath, I turned back to Sara. I looked down at the packages in my hand, and then back at her, at a loss as to how to say what was on my mind. She rose up on her knees, placing her arms on the back of the sofa looking at me. “Whatcha got there?” “A gift. For you.” I told her, finding my voice at last. I moved over to sit beside her, passing the large gold box with a red bow on it to her. Her eyes were wide, her breath a little fast as she looked at the box in her hands. “Eli, I…” she stopped, looking at me again. “Open it, please.” Taking a breath, she nodded, and pulled at the bow, letting it fall to the floor. Inside the box was a midnight blue ball gown, full length with one strap to go over her shoulder. The material was soft and would cling to her curves comfortably once she had it on. When she lifted it out she saw a pair of strappy silver heels to go with it, with under garments. “Eli!” she gasped, standing to place the box on the sofa, freeing her to hold the dress up in front of her. “This is beautiful!” I was relieved that she liked it. I sat back on the sofa as she ran to the bedroom to look at it in the full-length mirror. A moment later her squeals of delight filled the room, spilling out to me. Then she was back in the doorway, quick as a flash. “Are we going somewhere? Somewhere that I can wear this?” “Yes, so shower and get ready. The car will be here in an hour to pick us up.” “Where are we going?” “Tonight, is the grand opening for Heaven. I would like you to accompany me there.” More squeals of girlish delight filled the air, before she ran for the bathroom leaving a trail of clothing behind her. Her enthusiasm delighted me. It was a constant wonder to me that something as small as a dress and some shoes, or me making her coffee could make her so happy. I followed the trail of clothing, gathering it for the hamper in the laundry room while my mind chewed at my unsuccessful hunt for Luke the night before. He had not been working when I arrived at The Coffee House. I glamoured the manger, and discovered it was his night off. I got his address, but when I arrived at his small off campus apartment, he wasn’t there either. I picked his lock entering smoothly and leaving no trace of my visit. I loved that cinema had taught humans that we could not enter without an invitation. Often, that kind of misinformation only served to make them easier prey.

I found no evidence of anything that looked untoward, though I was unsure what I had been expecting. An obsessive wall covered in her photos? A shrine of some kind to Sara that would explain what he was doing following her around? It was, as far as I could tell, like every other college boy’s abode that I had frequented in this past year. It was full of disgusting smells, and ill-used objects, but nothing that immediately raised an alarm for me. On his desk, I found an application for Gloriana Chemical Company, GCC, partially filled out. They were one of the world’s biggest pharma producers, known to me by reputation only. I had not dealt with them through any of my shell corporations that I was aware of, though I made a mental note to check. I also noted his social security number, already planning to have him vetted for criminal behavior that might offer further insight into his nature. The whole venture had been wildly unsatisfactory. Something about this boy kept nagging at me, but I could find no reason to legitimize this feeling. Was it just jealousy that had my mind paint him a villain? I stopped outside the laundry room, wondering if indeed I was jealous. Shaking my head, I went back to the living room and gathered the rest of Sara’s gifts. She had missed the small box inside the bigger one entirely. Smiling, I took that out and went to await her in the bedroom. When she came out her hair was already dried, and brushed into long shiny waves that fell down her shoulder and across her breasts. She had a towel around her hips, but was topless, backlit from the bathroom like Diana herself rising from the moon. I was captivated when she stopped before me. Her eyes were glowing in the darkened room, calling to me to do things that would make us late for the opening. Looking hard, I could not find it in myself to care. This was our last night together, somehow in these next few desperate hours of dark I wanted to love her enough to sustain us both for the empty nights to come, until I returned to her side once and for all. Rising from the bed I moved to her. “Will you wear your hair up for me tonight?” I asked her as I placed a soft kiss on skin. “Anything for you,” she sighed, turning her head to the side to let me kiss her again. Opening the small box, I removed the hair clips I had ordered for her. Then I moved behind her to gather and fasten her hair up, leaving wisps of it to kiss face and neck. Then I pulled out the matching necklace in diamond and sapphires that were the same shade as her dress and eyes. I placed it around her neck with a soft kiss that made her shiver before her hand came up to touch it. “What’s this?” “Just a small token. Nothing more. There are earrings to match it here.” When she saw the diamonds and sapphires for the first time, her mouth fell open slightly. They reflected fire with every small piece of light they could capture. Her eyes flew to mine, and I heard her heartbeat pick up again, hammering as she beheld the small jewels that I wanted her to have. It was a simple necklace, woven in white gold and diamonds with a small sapphire set at each bent link, a half circle shape. I wanted something to compliment her, not overwhelm her. She was the true beauty, not these useless facile stones. “Do you not like them?” I asked her softly. “You don’t have to wear them if you don’t.” “No,” she said, quickly trying to reassure me, I thought. “I just…I’ve never had a dress like this or a fancy jewelry before, and it’s all so…unexpected.” My hands came up to her shoulders, massaging her.

“The party is black tie. I wanted you to feel that you fit in. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to wear them. My only true wish is that you be comfortable and at ease tonight.” She looked up at me, her eyes filled with unshed tears. “I never even told you this wish,” she said softly as a tear escaped, tumbling down her cheek. “What wish, lover?” She bit her lip, and rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly, before sighing. “New Years has always seemed like a magical time to me. A time to be…new, different. I had always dreamed of being with someone I love on that night, in his arms in a fancy dress, dancing the night away. At midnight, he leans me back and kisses me like I have never been kissed before because everything is just…magic.” I leaned down to her, thrilled when her eyes went shut anticipating my lips on hers. “Then, allow me to make another wish come true for you, Miss Siler.” “Yes,” she agreed before I kissed her to seal the offering. I moved from her lips to her neck, kissing and sucking her skin gently above the necklace I had placed there, before I moved around behind her. I dropped her towel on the floor, and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Tonight, we will be in a crowd of hundreds of people, and I will not be able to touch you then. Not the way I want to touch you.” My hands cupped her breasts, flicking her nipples with my thumbs, loving each sweet sound I pulled from her. “When we are there, we will appear like everyone else anxiously waiting for the ball to drop, and the New Year to begin, but we will know that we are different.” One of my hands slipped down between her thighs, finding her slick and ready, though I had barely even begun to seduce her. “Different?” she asked, her voice strained as I slipped a finger slowly insider her. “Yes. We will know that when the New Year begins we are going to fly away into the night, together, and I that I will love you until the sun rises. You will come for me again and again.” “Yes,” she whispered as her eyes slipped shut under my caress. “You will come on my tongue, twice I think, while my fingers massage you deep inside.” “Hmmm.” “Then I will fuck you slowly, until you come on my cock, so I can feel you squeeze me inside you.” “Yesss.” “Then I will let you fuck me, let you roll your beautiful hips over mine, as I am nestled inside you, bringing you more pleasure as I touch you like no other can.” “Oh, God, please, Eli!” She reached back, bring her arm up to encircle my neck, using my body to steady her as my words aroused her. “But I can’t wait that long to feel you, lover.” My voice was filled with dark promise as I slipped a second finger inside her, massaging her in slow rhythmic thrusts. “You can’t?” she gasped out, her head falling to my shoulder. “No. I am still lost in the spell you wove last night when you opened the door to your intimate world for me. How you took me in, welcoming me. I know, Sara, I know you have never done anything like that before, and you were so brave, so beautiful!”

“Anything for you. Anything,” she whispered as she rubbed herself against me, setting me on fire again with the feel of her soft hips against my cock, even as her warm pussy squeezed my fingers inside her. For a moment, the time that we would be apart yawned like a chasm before me. How could I survive a single night without hearing her call my name as I moved inside her? “Anything?” I asked, brushing her G-spot with dark intent. “Yes!” she said turning her head, and pulling my lips to hers in a move that happened so fast I did not see it coming. Her desire for me tasted like victory. It gave me some small comfort to know that we were in this together now. That whatever was burning me also nipped at her inside and out. It was a union of the greatest safety, and the most terrible danger. She could kill me now, surer than the sun, or a wooden stake. One flick of her hand to send me away would turn me to ash at her feet. It was the price to feel her completely, filling me up inside, and one that I was more than willing to pay. Homage, debts, and gifts, the markers by which we measure reverence and love; bought in time, in pain and in blood that ran like a river through us both. I knew then that I would bond with her. I wanted her in every way that I could have her. Moving at supernatural speed I flipped us around, my back on the bed with her legs spread wide above my face. When I ran my tongue along her wet slit she pressed down, grinding in my face as she whimpered. I fucked her with my tongue in slow wet shallow thrusts that did nothing to satisfy her. She was wild with need for me, her juices dripping down to cover my cheeks as I teased her on the edge. I pulled back to speak to her again. “Think of this tonight, Sara. When I smile at you across the room as I get you a glass of champagne. Think of my tongue sliding in and out of your welcoming body, how good it feels, and how much you want to come right now.” She grunted in frustration, pressing my mouth back into her wetness, demanding release. Effortlessly, I lifted her again, wanting to tease her more with my words. “Think of this tonight when I hold you close, and press your body to mine as we dance. Think of my soft wet tongue giving you pleasure.” “Fuck!” she screamed out in the room sounding, almost angry she was so full of need. Finally, I let her down, and took her nub between my lips, sucking hard as I vibrated my tongue against her. Her screams of release made my balls go tight with need for her. I pushed my own desires down as I gently slid her back to my lap, rising to hold her as she caught her breath. I was still wearing my towel when her hips came to rest against my very hard cock beneath her. She rocked herself against me, making me hiss as my fangs dropped down. I heard an evil chuckle escape her. Rising, she jerked the towel away from me, laying me open, and naked beneath her. I caught her as she started to settle herself on me. “I only wanted to please you tonight, Sara. I wanted you to know how beautiful you are to me.” The evil look faded, replaced with a tenderness I had never imagined a face would wear as it looked at me. “This is about pleasing me. Please, let me?” How could I say no to that? My head fell against her shoulder as she slipped down me, slowly, so slowly. When she moved the first time, I was nearly undone, pushed closer still when her hot mouth came up next to my ear, making my entire body shiver.

“While I am wet with memories of your tongue tonight, baby, I want you to think about this. What it feels like to be inside me. How good it feels when I move like this,” she rocked her hips in a clockwise motion that made me grab them to help her. “I want you think about how this looks,” she said as she arched her back, offering me her breasts while bending back and placing her palms on my thighs letting me see where we joined. The view of my cock sliding in and out of her as she moved on me was spine tingling. “Ssssara,” I hissed through my fangs as I beheld perfection before me, and felt it within her. She let her head fall back as she rode me. I could not look away. “Tonight, when I dance with you in my fancy dress, and my shiny jewels, I want you to see this, and know that nothing means anything to me without you.” She rolled up then, kissing me. Purposefully, she sliced her tongue on my fang, offering me her blood as she squeezed me tighter inside her. Then she turned her head offering her neck to me. “Think about how I feel on your tongue, around your fangs as you taste me, Eli.” She was panting now, on the edge of coming again. I sank into her above and below one last time, orgasaming in a chain of explosions from her words, her body and her blood. ****** I healed her before I helped her dress, a sensuous experience that almost made me abandon it to become lost in her again. If she had not told me that this party, on this night was a wish for her I might have done just that. When she was ready I vamped my tuxedo on, and slicked back my hair as she put her earrings in. She looked at the finished product so intensely I could see the time bomb of my intimate words to her starting to tick. “You look good enough to eat,” she said, licking her lips. “We’ll do that later,” she promised me, setting off her hot words from before inside me as well. I satisfied myself with a kiss, for now. The doorbell rang just as I released her lips. We ran out holding hands, our laughter rushing ahead through the chilly night air to greet the New Year. ****** In Heaven, no one knew my name. Not even the manager knew I was the owner. We were completely anonymous in this crowd of upscale New Yorkers looking for something new to crack the jade around their eyes. I loved that. I could observe and direct changes for things I didn’t like through my intermediary. I had made sure that Sara and I received the VIP treatment though, by passing word down that we were close personal friends of the owner himself, and we were to be treated like royalty. We had the best table, close to the piano, and the dancefloor that surrounded it. Our wait staff was impeccable when I ordered dinner for my beautiful woman. I ordered for me as well. Something light to eat, and a drink that I could not consume. Keeping up appearances was tedious at times. “Is there something on the menu that you would like try? A drink or some food?” she asked me, offering to allow me to taste it on her lips. I smiled at her, taking her hand.

“I once spent an interesting night in a bar talking to a woman who was completely hammered on Singapore Slings. Could we try one of those together? It has cherries.” “Cherries are good. Yes, let’s try one together.” I flagged the waiter, and ordered the drink for her. “Extra cherries,” she told him as he turned away. He smiled at her before nodding with a wink. “So, what made the night so interesting?” she asked as she placed her elbows on the table and leaned toward me, knowing it pressed her breasts together, enhancing the V of her cleavage for me. I laughed. “My, you are wicked, woman!” She turned her head to the side, looking at me coquettishly as she tried not to smile. “Only a little,” she assured me. “The woman had just parted ways with what she described as, ‘the love of her life’. She was quite broken hearted about it.” “How did she wind up talking to you?” I shrugged. “I was there; the place was packed. When I took the only seat at the bar she turned to me, took a long hard look and said, ‘You are so fucking pretty that I am absolutely sure that somewhere out there in another bar, another woman is sitting on a stool crying about you.’ I was intrigued.” “You liked being called pretty,” she said arching a brow at me. “Who doesn’t?” She smiled at me. “And you stayed with her, and listened because…?” “I like love stories. I find them strange and foreign to me; contrary to everything that I understand about the world. People meet, something clicks they feel so many strange things, experience so many things.” “Less strange and foreign now, I hope?” she asked as the waiter placed our drink on the table. She smiled her thanks at him, and he winked at her again. He was starting to irk me. That cleavage he was ogling is mine, damn it! “Yes, much less now that it was even a week ago.” That won me another smile. She reached for the Singapore Sling, and took a cautious sip. Her eyes widened as she swallowed. “I can see why she was hammered,” she gasped as she blinked a few times, and tried to catch her breath. “Let me taste,” I said rising slightly, and leaning toward her. When her lips brushed mine, I caught the sweet taste of sugared cherries, and then my lips burned from the alcohol in the drink. It stirred some memory deep inside me, something warm and good from my human days. I pressed my lips to hers tighter, slipping my tongue between her lips. I sat back I experienced a rare moment of regret that I could not drink one of these myself. She toyed with one of the cherry stems as she looked at me. “So, what happened with this woman in the bar? You didn’t taste this on her lips?” “No, I did not. Despite my beauty, her heart belonged to another.” “And he didn’t want her?” “She didn’t think so, no. I thought it quite a pity. Even intoxicated she was funny, smart and memorable in all the best ways.” “That happens sometimes,” she said shrugging, looking at the drink.

“Yes, it does,” I agreed wondering what was on her mind. I doubted it was that woman in the bar. “Dance with me?” I asked her standing and offering her my hand. She was quiet as we moved, our bodies pressed tightly together, her head on my chest. I thought about that night with Mads, in the bar. I had not known it when we met, but she was a demon hunter. Not that night, no. Then she had just been a broken-hearted woman. It was only much later that I learned what she did for a living when I met her again, while we hunted for the same demon. We had found him together. I let her have the bounty, and she let me have his head. That had been over a decade ago, and I had not seen her since, had not thought of her in all this time. Now, in the arms of my lover, I wondered if she had ever reconciled with hers, or perhaps she had found another to capture her heart. I hoped so. Everyone should feel what I was feeling right now with her in my arms. I had thought this evening would be fraught with sexual tension from the games we played before leaving the house, but here with her it did not feel like fun and games. It was starting to feel dangerously like goodbye. “I love you,” I leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I love you, too, Eli.” “What are you thinking about?” I asked her, hoping we could get past this melancholy air, and enjoy ourselves together tonight. She looked up at me, I thought for a second she was going to cry, but the moment passed when she blinked and smiled instead. She was filled with some emotion that she wanted to hide from me. “I am thinking about how different we are from all these people around us.” It brought a smirk to my lips. “And how is that?” I wanted to tease her. “Because, I am wet and aching for you right now, remembering how your tongue felt inside me. I want it again.” Her serious dark whisper, perhaps meant to tease, had instead crossed the line into torture. “I think I want to find out what questions you might still have about love stories, and answer them for you, completely.” “You have. Everything you do is an answer to a question, some of them I have not even thought to ask before.” “Close your eyes,” she whispered to me. I did. “See me moving on you. Feel what it feels like to be so deep inside me that you can’t tell where you end and I begin.” I held her tighter, burying my face in her naked neck. “Fuck, I love you, Sara!” It just bubbled up out of me while my mind was filled with the memories of our union before the party. “I know, Eli. I can feel it, all the time. Not just when we are fucking, but when you hold me, when you touch me. I can feel it when we are here in this crowd of hundreds who are so different from us. I love, you, too.” I was lost to her again. How did she always manage to do this to me? I wanted her, here, now. “I feel you hard against me, right now baby, and all I can think is how much I want you,” I purred, rubbing my face against hers, marking her, though she did not know that. I wanted her to smell like me until the fucking sun burned from the sky. I wanted to be buried

inside her when the stars all winked out, and the universe was remade or faded to nothing around us. I let that feeling slowly seep into every part of me, tempered by the knowledge that soon she would be mine in every way. I danced with her, as we had from the beginning, as we always would because to move with her, to be near her, was the only thing I needed in the world. ****** We shared her dinner, flavor by flavor, kiss by kiss. She sipped the Singapore Sling again, and then buried her tongue in my mouth, letting the sweet burn settle on my tongue. She caressed my face with her small graceful hand as I rubbed against her, so intoxicated on her alone that I lost myself. The small increments of eternity that humans called minutes and hours, used to keep them moving forward, passed beyond me entirely. When midnight came, my haze was disturbed by the sounds of revelry. Small pieces of colored paper fell around us while people turned, and kissed each other to mark the occasion. “Happy New Year,” she whispered to me before her lips touched mine. It was a gentle kiss, not at all like the ones we had shared through the night. There was a question in it, something that slipped through my fingers as she pressed her soft lips to mine, but she did not speak it when the kiss ended. I was grateful that I would have all the nights ahead of me to solve the mystery of Sara. “Go, get me a glass of champagne.” I raised a brow at her, a smirk on my lips again. “I want to watch you walk away from me, so I can watch you come back.” When I got to the bar and placed her order, I turned back to her. She was looking at me, sitting with her legs crossed, her foot tucked behind her other leg. I knew she was pressing her thighs as tightly together as she could to ease the ache in her. Her face lit in candlelight, her jewels catching the light like small galaxies exploding to life around her neck. I would always see her like that, perfect, waiting for me to come and ease her desire, something that only my touch could do for her. As I returned to her through the crowd, my eyes only for her, her mouth opened slightly, a look of pleasure and awe on her face that went right to my cock and my heart. She stood when I got back to the table, unwinding her legs slowly, sensuously, before taking the glass from my hand. She took a long cool drink before placing it on the table. She shared it with me as she had everything else tonight, and then she said what I needed to hear more than anything else in that moment. “Fly me away into the night, lover. Take me home and make me come for you until the sun rises.”

Chapter 14- Soon

January 1st

She was still sleeping when the receding sun freed me by her side. The reality of my looming departure was a weight on my heart that I could not shake. It’s only for a moment, I told myself as I looked at her beautiful sleeping face. A small increment of time that would not even register on the scale of my timeline. I frowned as I listened to my thoughts echo into the empty space inside me, space that would be cavernous when I left her side. If I could not convince myself of this, how would I ever convince her? My thoughts raced as I kept my body stone still so I would not rouse her from slumber. It felt as though waking her would start us toward parting. I could take her with me. For a moment, I considered this, let it bloom inside me like midnight sunshine, but the reality of what I was returning to waded in too soon, blocking hopes pale light. The Regent had spies everywhere. She would know if I returned with Sara. It would be enough of a challenge to convince her to let me buy out the contract already. If Isadora thought for one second that my wish to leave her service, and her bed was tied to this small, frail, human woman…no. The risk was too great. Until she released me, agreed to the amount of money it would take to end our agreement, she could, and would likely force me to her bed again. I could not bear to have Sara know about that, or even be near me when it happened. As if thousands of miles would make it any less of a betrayal in my heart to touch another. No, it would not change that in the least, but I knew the Regent. She had my sword and my cock at her command, but what she truly wanted was my ancient blood. Blood that I had refused to share with her. Blood that for all her power she could not cajole, seduce or force me into sharing with her. I shuddered inside when I imagined the rage Isadora would direct at Sara when she learned that I planned to share my blood with her willingly, make her my child, and my bonded mate. It was good that I planned to take Sara to my private island off the coast of Nova Scotia. No one knew of that place. I could keep her hidden, secret and safe there until I taught her to defend herself against all attacks that we might face from the supernatural world. Looking forward to the moment that she would truly be mine was the only thing that could make me leave her side tonight. It was the only way to do this. If I ran with Sara I would be hunted, and forced to stand before The Council for breaking my contract with the Regent. I could not protect a precious fledgling on the run. I would do this right, and I would do it with honor. I would not let her see me break, or how very much I already knew I was going to miss her as soon I left her side. She had been amazing last night when we returned from the party, setting aside her own sadness to love me with everything she was. My body responded to the memory as though her small

graceful hands were touching me again. I let my eyes drift closed as my memories of her in the throes of high passion came forth. But it was more than last night I saw, it was her every night. The first night when I had pinned her to the bed, awash in candlelight, tears and surprise beneath me when I blew back in and proclaiming myself her dream lover. The second night by the window, snow coming down behind her outside as she turned to me, and smiled before moving to the bed. The way she looked in the laundry room before I took her hard against the door, demanding her to reassure me that Malik did not interest her. The way she had looked at me last night when I crossed a sea of strangers to bring her champagne. I felt her stir beside me, moving closer to press her body to mine. My insides warmed when she placed her arms around me, and her lips to my chest. The small sound of contentment that escaped her at touching me traveled to the heart of me, making me ache in ways I did not know I could. I took a deep shuddering breath, seeking to calm myself, and to capture enough of her scent to sustain me for the nights to come. I pulled her close to me and kissed her forehead before I moved myself up to sit against the headboard, maneuvering her between my long legs, my arms around her. “Close your eyes, Sara,” I whispered to her in the dark room. “Do you feel me here with you now?” “Yes,” she answered, her voice breathy as my touch aroused her. “You can’t see me; how do you know?” She hesitated. “I can hear your voice,” she finally said. “I can feel your arms around me, your body next to mine.” “Yes,” I assured her, pleased that she understood. “Until I return to you, if you need me, I am but a phone call away. My voice will come to you, as my body longs to. I will be with you, in my heart every moment of every night that we are apart.” She clasped my hands tightly in hers. She was shaking. “And I will be with you, Eli. Close your eyes and feel me, too. My heart will go with you into the dark, through whatever comes, I am yours. Always.” I smelled a tear come down her cheek in the dark, the only sign she let show of her sorrow. It killed me as it tumbled down her cheek to land wet and warm on the back of my hand. “Oh, Sara,” I managed to say before she turned in my arms, kissing me to stifle her pain. I let her pull me down with her as she turned, rolling my full weight down on top of her. I fought to remember how I would not break before we parted as she held my head tenderly to her breasts, stroking my hair to soothe me. “The night before we met, when I was studying in the library, my mind kept wandering,” she spoke quietly in the dark. “I was supposed to be studying, but I kept thinking, what would happen if I ever met a man who could understand me? A man who could show me all the things that my dark little heart wished for with its every beat? I imagined so many things as I stared at the pages, but I never, ever imagined anything as wonderful as you, my love. I had no idea I could feel this way about someone.” I placed a soft kiss between her breasts, trying really fucking hard to keep it together. I wanted her to stop, but I needed her words now. I thought of her in her chair at the library, her hair pulled back as she moved, crossing and uncrossing her legs under my gaze. I would never have guessed that she her mind was full of anything but her school books. I had wished that night that I had her attention as they did, not knowing that she was dreaming of me even then. I looked up at her in the dark, seeing her perfectly with my vampire eyes.

“Come and love me now, Eli. One last time. Please.” Her words set me on fire with desire and with denial. I moved up fast, pinning her down, my hands coming to the sides of her face as I worked to hold my strength back and not crush her in my angry denial of her words. “This will not be the last time, Sara!” I said shaking her gently. “I swear it!” Her answer was a kiss that stole me away from myself, and into her keeping. She opened herself to me, and I moved inside her to get closer, to stay closer, and to give all of myself to her in those few stolen moments. “Bite me,” she whispered to me, offering her breast to my mouth as she moved beneath me, “And leave the marks this time. I want something to remind in the cold light of day that this was not a dream.” As I tasted her, my orgasm rolled through me and with her blood in my mouth nurturing me, I came into her again and again; wanting to leave her filled with my come, dripping with my with scent, so that everyone who saw her would know that she was mine as surely as I did. Oh, Sara, please forgive me for having to leave you, my heart begged her silently as she came around me, clutching me to her desperately, letting her body say the words that she denied her lips to ever form. I rolled us over, keeping myself inside her, and held her to me as I kissed her face in dozens of baby kisses. I pressed her to me, rocking my hips gently, savoring the feel of her around me as I told myself again how fleeting our parting would be. Much later, as late as I could make it be, we dressed without showering. We both wanted to keep what we had of each other on our skin as long as we could. I helped her gather her things. “I want to leave my dress and jewelry here, is that all right?” she asked me as she packed the things she had brought with her from her dorm. As I watched it felt like an impossibly small bag to hold all the things that she was taking with her from our time. “Of course,” I assured her. “This is your house, too now.” I held up a key for her in my hand. “I want you feel free to come here whenever you like. In fact, if you like, you can move in here until I return.” “It’s pretty far from campus.” “I can get you a car if you wish it.” She shook her head, but she took the key. “No, thank you. I may visit here, but I will wait at my dorm for you to come to me as you did that first night.” I nodded, glad that she felt she could come here with me gone at all. “How…how long do you think you will be gone?” “No longer than I have to be. I will be here as soon as I am free, and the sun has set.” She nodded then, not pressing me, and I hoped it was because she knew that if I could tell her the exact minute of the exact day I would do so. I handed her a mobile phone that had my number programmed in, and placed the charger in her bag. “I will call you every night as soon I rise until I can return to you, and tonight as soon as I make it home to Tennessee.” She nodded, taking the phone. “You may use it for other business, but please keep it close. It will soothe me to hear your voice when I rise.” “Will you call me just before sunrise, too? I’d like to be with you before you rest for the day.” “Of course,” I assured her, taking her hand in mine. “You will be watchful for Malik, and stay away from 911 while I am gone?” I begged her, my hand coming up to touch her face. She closed her eyes, and hummed her agreement to my question. “Also, please be careful with Luke.”

“Luke?” her eyes came open filled with questions. “Yes, lover. There is something about him that makes me…cautious.” “Eli, you don’t think that I would…?” “No, of course not, Sara. Not even for a second!” I rushed to reassure her. “I trust you. You must know this?” Her eyes told me how much my reassurances gratified her. “I recognize a predator when I see one. I have many, many years of practice. Trust me?” “Yes.” She frowned then, this line of thought opening something for her. Please don’t ask me about the Regent, Sara, please, I begged her in mind. “What about you, and the Regent, Eli? Will you…?” “My heart is yours, sweet Sara.” Her probing gaze held mine, and I prayed that my deflection would be enough. There were things that were hers, and then there were things that belonged to the Regent, signed to her by right of a blood contract. For a moment, I wondered what I had kept for myself in all my promises to the women in my life, but it was fleeting, burned away by the realization that I wanted nothing for myself, but the woman before me. If she recognized my deflection, she accepted it as gracefully as she danced. “I love you, Eli.” I held her again before we moved as one to the door. I buttoned her coat, and gently wrapped her in her scarf before we turned off the lights and locked the door behind us. I flew with her that night in my arms, needing to keep her close to me for as long as possible. She buried her face in my neck, refusing to look at the wondrous view of our flight. I was what she wanted to see more than anything else. It was the slowest I had flown since I had mastered the gift thousands of years before. When we reached her door, the hall still quiet and empty since most of her dorm mates were still away on holiday. I took her key, opened the door, and turned to her one last time. “Soon,” I told her, and kissed her one final time. “Soon,” she echoed as I released her. She walked into her room and closed the door. I stood there for a long time before I found the strength to walk away. Finally, it was the sound of the sobs that I could not console that drove me away, my fists clenched in futile anger as I rushed away, only so that I might return that much more quickly to her side.

Chapter 15- Distance

I flew toward what had been my home for over one hundred years at near supersonic speed. I landed at my compound at just after 4AM, and placed a call to the Regent. She answered her private line almost immediately. “I have returned, my Regent.” “Welcome home, Commander. Did you enjoy your sabbatical?” “Yes. I would like to meet with you as soon as possible.” “Tomorrow, 8:00.” “Yes.” The line went dead from her end. I called Sara. “Eli?” her voice sounded small, and sad from so far away. “Yes, love. Are you well?” She sniffed. It cut through the heart of me, causing me to fall into the nearest chair, pressing the phone to my ear so hard I heard the plastic creak in my hand. “Yeah, I’m OK. I miss you.” I closed my eyes with a sigh. “And I you, my love.” “Did you get home OK?” she asked me. “Just now, yes.” There was so much I wanted to say to her, but the distance between us was more than geographical, and could not be breached in a wireless connection. “Good. I’m glad you’re OK.” OK? I couldn’t be further from OK. I wanted to go back to her. I wanted…to make her feel better. Nothing else mattered to me. Pushing my own sorrow down, I focused on how to make her pain more bearable. “Are you in bed now, Sara?” “Yes,” her tone had a catch in it that told me my planned distraction had the tiniest hope of working. “I need to hear you come, angel. Will you do that for me?” Her quick intake of breath told me that I had surprised her, and also that I had shifted her mind to more pleasant things. “Yes, Eli.” “Lay back on the bed. What are you wearing? Describe it to me.” “Just a t-shirt.” She hesitated, but I heard a small smile in next words. “Your t-shirt. I kind of borrowed it.” It made me smile, too. “Everything of mine is yours.” “Yes, but this smells like you. It makes it feel like you are here with me.” “I am.” I closed my eyes a moment, trying to keep the pain I was feeling out of my voice. “Do you feel me with you? My hands touching you?” She made a small sound of sad pleasure that doubled the ache in my chest. “Let your hands be mine, Sara. Move them on your beautiful body as you listen to the sound of my voice, and let me feel you.” “Yes,” her voice growing heavier with desire, filled my ear. “Slide them up over your breasts for me, slowly. Massage them gently as I like to do. I love your breasts, Sara. The way they feel in my hands, so soft and warm.” She made a sound that I had heard before when I touched her like this, and I knew she was doing as I asked. “Roll

your nipple in between your fingers. Feel it harden for me, extending out, as the tingles pass through your body.” She moaned again, making me hard for her. When I spoke again, I let her hear the pleasure in my voice that the images of her spread out before me wet and wanting were creating in my own body. “Feel me kiss your gorgeous neck now, slow, trailing kisses that start below your ear. Then around the curve of your jaw where I would nip your skin gently kissing you.” “Angh!” she gasped in my ear. “Eli,” she called my name with such longing, and reverence I was ready to explode. “Eli, let your fangs come down, please. I love to hear you speak when they down.” At her command my fangs dropped, coming down to slur my speech slightly, and reassure her of my desire even from so far away. “Sara, put my hand between your legs, and let me feel you.” “Oh, Eli!” she sighed a moment later, “I’m so wet for you.” “I feel it, my love. I feel you.” I did feel her body, partially from memory during our handful of nights tangled in darkest passion, and partially because I had injected myself so completely into this fantasy that I felt like I was truly there with her. I closed my eyes, focusing only on the sound of her voice, her pleasure heavy breaths, each one echoing in my ear like forever opening up around me. “I’m sliding a finger inside you now, Sara. Gently massaging your sweet wet pussy to take me inside you.” She groaned again. “But before I do, I need you to come for me.” “Yes.” “My fingers are massaging your clit, now, in slow, slick circles as I hover above you. Only my hand is touching you, but you can feel me right here, hear me in your ear as I bury my face in your neck and whisper to you, how very much I want to hear you scream my name when you come for me, beloved.” Her breath was picking up now. Her moans unending as she touched herself for me. In my mind, I saw her as she had been when she took me into her intimate world, laid wide, and touching herself as she talked me through what had been her first orgasm. My hand slipped down to free my cock, the imagery in my mind too much for me to ignore. I was dripping with need, and even harder than I had been that night when I lost myself inside her as she came for me. “I’m so hard for you right now,” I told her, my voice laden with the desire her soft feminine sounds of pleasure had conjured in me. “When you come for me, baby, I’m going to fuck you deep and slow while you roll your hips for me, moaning as I please you. I love the way you feel around me when you hold me inside you, Sara.” She was close now, as I was I. One little push was going to topple her over the edge taking me with her as though I were truly beside her. “Let me feel you come, baby,” I whispered to her and was rewarded by her loud scream of release, my name mangled in her strained gasps for oxygen as she pulsed under her hand, my hand, between her beautiful thighs. My own body erupted in my hand, semen jetting out of me as I rolled inside her in my mind. “I love you, Sara,” I cried out as I was completely undone by the images we had conjured together. She took a deep breath at my words, still coming in hard waves as she answered me. “I love you, too!” Her words a balm to the empty place inside me that held her image, making my arms ache to do the same.

“Oh, my sweet Sara,” I whispered in her ear as she started to come down. “Thank you.” A moment later she moaned a slow soft sensuous moan. I could see her in my mind stretching her legs out in her small bed as she let the pleasant after effects of her orgasm relax her. It was everything I could do to stay where I was, and not take flight immediately to return to her side. I shoved the desire away with the cold rational realization that if I did, we would never have the life that I wanted to give her. Me staying here, and severing my ties to Isadora was the best way to ensure that I could spend the rest of eternity seeing the world through her new eyes, and reveling in everything about her, and about us that made me feel whole for the first time. “Can you sleep now, Sara?” I asked her softly. “I think so,” came her drowsy reply. “Then rest, my love. I shall speak to you soon.” “Soon,” she said to me as she had when I left her, ending the tenuous connection between our voices, but not our souls. I sat there for a long time thinking of her, seeing her sleeping softly in her single bed, her hair fanned out like gold on her pillow dreaming of the life we would have together. ****** “The Regent will see you now.” Her lackey, James, opened the door to her library, and ushered me in. Isadora Bellasandros, former handmaiden to Queen Isabella of Spain, had been made in Andalusia in 1495. I wasn’t supposed to know her age, but I made it habit to know everything I could about those around me. Her true age had not been easy to come by, but I had friends in high places who did low things for the right fees. History did not speak of it, but Isadora had been the one to encourage the Queen of Spain to finance Columbus’ journey to the New World. She had always been a woman of strength and vision in a time when such things were not encouraged or accepted in women. I had not been able to ascertain who had brought Isadora across the veil. It was rumored to have been one nearly as old as myself, but I did not feel that from her. She was strong, but nothing indicated that she had ever accessed blood as old as mine. She all but confirmed this when she tried to write it into the contract that I would share my blood with her. It was the one thing I had denied her. The anger in her eyes had been obvious when I negotiated my contract, and in how she took my body once I signed that into her domain. Truth was, it was not out of the ordinary that the Regent insist her subordinates service her, should she desire it. All the Commanders in her Regency performed similarly at her request. Few were called to do so as often as I had been. As I entered her library, the five hundred and twenty-year-old vampire Regent stood to greet me. Her hair was the color of moonlight, almost white in its purity, reaching down past her waist. She was barely over five and half feet tall, her eyes the deepest of brown, almost black. She was beautiful, smart and deadly, and she ruled Tennessee with an iron grip in the vampire world. She was frugal when it came to money, too, she did not spend on lavish trinkets, preferring instead to surround herself with knowledge and power, which is why she met her guests in her large library filled with books, and weaponry that she had mastered the use of centuries before.

Isadora might look like she was waiting for some party to begin so that she could play the part of princess or damsel, but looks are often deceiving, especially when it comes to vampires. She was wearing jeans and sweater tonight, her hair braided in a long single braid down her back. Her boots were flat, leaving her at her own natural height, showing her comfort in her own body, she did not need to wear heels that lifted her taller. She was what she was, and she saw no need to change or obfuscate that fact. I wanted with everything that was in me to be released from her service, but I still found myself admiring her as I had from the beginning. She was a great leader, and the perfect embodiment of what it meant to be a vampire. “Majesty,” I intoned deeply, kneeling on one knee before her. “Eli,” she greeted me warmly. “Rise. Take a seat,” she said motioning to a large leather wingback chair that sat across from the one she had been using. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace behind them. I had often wondered if it was the small death wish in all immortals that made fire so attractive, or if it was simply that most of us came from a time when the lack of fire had meant death. “Majesty, thank you for agreeing to see me soon.” Vampires were big on decorum, but not small talk, so I cut right to the point. “I would like to open negotiations with you to terminate my contract as your Commander, immediately.” She looked at me with a stone face, and emotionless dark eyes, coiled around herself in the leather chair. I kept my face as blank as hers while I waited for her first volley. I barely contained my surprise when she finally spoke. “We have heard rumors of vampires disappearing in Florida over the past year. At first, it was low level baby vampires, and we wrote it off as carelessness, and dismissed the concerns. Two nights ago, Commander Andres disappeared. You will leave immediately, investigate and return with information about what is happening in that Zone.” “What of Florida’s Regent, Stephen?” “I am now the Regent of Florida.” I blinked then, I couldn’t help it. “I also acquired Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia in the year you have been gone.” I considered the ways she might have pulled off this coup, claiming the entire southeastern portion of the United States for herself. It would have been a massive undertaking that could not have been accomplished without some serious backing. Who had she formed an alliance with in my absence? “You will meet with Commander Barclay when you arrive in Miami. He will be your contact for the investigation. You can find him at a bar called Montrose on Fifth and Rialto. He is expecting you.” She turned from me to face the fire again, dismissing me. “And my request?” I could not leave without an answer. “I will consider it,” she said, never taking her eyes from the fire. “Please do my, Regent. I have grown weary of this life as a Commander, and long to pursue other interests.” I saw her face tick slightly, but she did not speak, or look at me as I rose to leave. Perhaps when I had solved this mystery in her new holdings she would be more amenable to dissolution of our agreement. She did have much more on her plate now than she did before. Surely, an unhappy vassal was something she had no time or interest in pursuing. ******

I touched down in Miami less than an hour later, and made contact with Barclay immediately. Montrose was a dance club. As I stood with Barclay at the bar my mind went back to when I had teased Sara in 911, seducing her through the crowd of warm human bodies to come dance with me. I pushed the memory down by asking Commander Barclay to fill me in what was happening here in Miami. “At first,” he said leaning toward me to keep his voice low, “We didn’t think much of it. Young vamps fuck up all the time, and get themselves killed. They move on to other digs, but when we lost a Commander that got the new Regent’s attention. I think she fears rebel resistance to her takeover in a land far from home.” Fuck me, a Star Wars fan. I suppressed an eye roll at his drama, and asked him to take me to the Commander’s last known whereabouts. When we arrived at his house it struck me as odd that he would have been taken out of his own home. We safeguarded our sleeping places with almost maniacal secrecy. I saw Sara in my bed again, and amended my thoughts to most of the time we maintained maniacal secrecy. “Did the Commander have a human thrall?” “Not for a while. He dumped her six months ago, for being too clingy or some shit. Glamoured her so bad she couldn’t remember her own fucking name when he cut her lose. Last I heard, she was living at some homeless shelter downtown. Couldn’t hold a job or something like that.” “What was her name?” “Susan something.” He thought a minute. “Susan Blackwell.” “Anyone else?” I asked as we entered the house. “Nah, Andres was strictly a 3F’s kind of vamp after that.” “3F’s?” “Feed on ‘em, fuck ’em, and forget ‘em.” I knew the type. I had once been the poster boy for it. I pressed on, needing to complete this investigation, and get back to Sara as soon as the Regent released me. The room in which we stood showed signs that Barclay had not gone quietly. I could smell half a dozen weapons, and the faintest traces of silver from their bullets. The hunters had known their quarry when they entered his den. I closed my eyes as I took a deeper breath, peeling away the dominant scents to get at what might be hidden beneath. Under the vampire, the humans, and a great deal of magic, I found a trace of something else. A demon had been with them. Not one whose scent I recognized, but since they were our natural enemies, and tended not to socialize with vampires, that was not surprising. I waited until we had left the house to ask if there had been any demon activity of note in Miami recently. He stiffened beside me as he drove. It was interesting to see a vampire squirm. They so rarely allowed themselves to indulge in that kind of reaction. Whatever he knew made him uncomfortable in the extreme. “Not that I know of for sure,” he finally said. He was a liar. If he did not confess his knowledge to me before I was ready to leave I would kill him. For now, I needed him. We parted ways back at Montrose, after planning to meet there at 9PM the following night.

Chapter 16- This Is Love

I did not have a residence in Miami, but in times of travel I would select a suitable human domicile, and glamour the residents to take me in for the day. There were rules to this, and certainly some risk, but if done correctly it allowed the diversity of location I needed to protect my dead body when I was at my most vulnerable. I usually selected a home in an upscale neighborhood. Something with a basement, and a single owner, preferably female. Before Sara, I would use my glamour, and good looks to procure a meal, and a fuck. Tonight, all I wanted was a quick meal, and place of relative safety to rest today. I found a suitable location, entered through the sliding glass door beside the pool, and glamoured my hostess. I took a quick feed from her before sending her back to bed with the event wiped from her memory. I also inserted the compulsion to avoid her basement until late next evening. Sitting on an expensive leather sofa, I took my phone out, and called Sara before the sun rose. Had it only been last night that I had left her side? It seemed like a century at least since I had held her in my arms. “Eli?” her sleepy voice greeted me. “Hello, my love.” “What time is it?” I could hear the covers rustle as she turned in bed to see her clock. “Nearly dawn.” She settled again, yawning adorably. “How was your night?” she asked me. I smiled at the normalcy of it all. It was like the sitcoms I watched some nights when I wanted to dull my mind and slow my thoughts. “Did you talk to the Regent about your contract?” She was more alert now. “Yes, I told her tonight that I wanted to terminate our agreement.” “What did she say?” “She is considering it.” “Oh,” her disappointment was clear. “ This is the way of such things, Sara. Don’t worry. She will see me again when I return, and we will move to the next step of the process.” “Return? Where are you?” “Miami.” “Really? What the heck are you doing there?” “I am on assignment, as Commander for the Regent.” “Are you all right? Safe for the day?” Her concern warmed me. “Yes, don’t worry. I have done this before.” She sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you have. Do you have any idea how long the negotiations will last?” “No, but I think it will be a slow process.” I hated having to tell her that, but I did not want her to be disappointed when I did not return to her as immediately as both would have liked. “But you are still confident that she will release you?”

“Yes, I am.” She was quiet, as I listened to her breathe in my ear. I closed my eyes, focused only on the sounds of her that I could hear through our connection. I could hear the faint beat of her heart as well, and all of it gave me a sense of calm I had not felt the entire night. “So, what kind of case are you on? Can you tell me?” I hesitated. Was there any reason not to tell her? Any risk in sharing with her, to let her feel closer to me as well? “There was a vampire here in Miami that went missing. I was sent to find out what happened to him.” She laughed, the pleasant sound traveling to the heart of me, making me feel light enough to float off the sofa without the need for levitation. “What?” I asked, my own smile coming through to her plainly in my tone. “It’s just kind of cool. I can just see you being all Commander-y, and questioning the witnesses at the crime scene. I like imagining you that way.” “You do?” “Yeah,” she said kind of breathlessly. The idea of me being Commander-y seemed to be turning her on. “I mean, you taking charge, telling others what to do. I can see your face, so serious and intent on solving the case. That, um, well it’s…hot.” I heard her shift in the bed as she re-settled herself, made restless by her own imagination. Fuck, I missed her so much. “Did you dream of me tonight, my Sara?” “Yes,” she said. I could practically hear her blush over the phone. “Tell me about it.” I heard her stretch again, a soft moan coming into my ear, making my skin prickle and my cock swell. “We were in the Old West.” “Really?” I was intrigued. “Yeah,” she laughed again. “Before I fell asleep I was thinking of you being a Commander, a man of the law, and I guess that carried over into my dreams.” “Tell me,” I said again, my voice deep with sexual tension as I wondered what fantasies her subconscious had shown her. “I came into your office, and told you that someone had stolen my cattle.” I bit my lip as I imagined her playing the role of settler woman whose beef had been rustled in the night. “You listened to my complaint, and told me that you would help me for a kiss.” “I like this dream.” “Yeah, it was some kiss.” She took a deep breath before she went on. “As soon as your lips touched mine I was swept off my feet. Your hands, the way they touched me, holding me to you. My knees became weak, only your strong arms were holding me up as you kissed me. It was daylight outside, but I felt your fangs come down as we kissed, and I wanted you bite me right there in the office.” “Did I?” Now I sounded breathless. “Not right away. First you moved me back to your desk, walking me one step at a time, almost like we were dancing again.” “I like dancing with you.” “Me, too.” She was quiet a moment, no doubt remembering our dance sessions, before she went on. “Then you lifted me up on your desk, and flipped up my frilly petticoats. There was so many that it felt like you would never reach my skin, and I really wanted you to reach my skin.” My hand slipped down to my hard cock, massaging as I listened to her tell me of our Wild West Adventure. “Then you ripped the top of my dress. My breasts spilling out into your big gentle

hands.” She sighed, and I knew that she was caressing her body exactly as I would be doing if I were there. “I love it when you touch me, so much. The way you tug my nipples, and suck them with just the right amount of pressure. It’s like you want to eat me, and worship me all at the same time.” I groaned. “Yes, that is exactly what I am thinking when I touch your beautiful breasts, my love,” I purred to her, snapping the button my jeans and taking my cock into my hand, stroking myself slowly. “Go on, please. I need to hear this. Tell me the rest of the dream.” She groaned under the weight of my words, telling me that her hand was now between her legs. My fangs came down when I remembered the sweet taste she kept there between her lovely thighs just for me.“I ripped your pants open, and took you in my hand. You were so hard for me, baby.” “I am, yes,” I answered, lost in the image of my hand being hers. I felt my cock twitch, and start leaking from my need to feel her touch. “I wanted to taste you, so much. I begged you to let me. We switched places, and you leaned back on the desk, and let me take you in my mouth. I swirled my tongue around you, before swallowing you deeply, and sucking hard. You tasted so good, Eli.” Her breath was picking up now as she worked herself toward coming for me. “You fucked my mouth. Deep slow strokes that touched the back of my throat before you would pull back, and do it all over again. You felt so good, Eli.” I moaned her name, to let her know that I was with her. “Then,” she started again, her voice getting deeper as she brought herself closer to the edge. I was stroking my cock faster, imagining her lips swallowing me deeply as her eyes looked into mine, “You pulled out of my mouth in a long slow stroke that made me want to come just from the feel of you.” My hips were thrusting into my hand now, her imagery so vivid and erotic that I was totally lost in it with her. “You flipped me around, leaned me over the desk, and buried yourself inside me in one…long…hard…stroke.” “Fuck, yes!” I whispered to her, stroking myself faster. “Your fingers found their way through my petticoats again so you could rub my clit while you fucked me fast and hard over your desk. Fucked me so hard, so good, Eli. Then, I felt your fangs…in my…in my…oh, in my neck!” I was so close now and she was, too. Her pants and moans so loud, and needy that she almost could not speak. “Come for me, Sara!” I growled at her, struggling to get the words out as I came in hard long pulses along with her, her sounds of completion at once fulfilling, and an aching reminder of the miles that separated us. When she caught her breath, she giggled at me. “You were wearing a cowboy hat, and spurs,” she told me before I could ask what was so funny. “It was so fucking hot!” I smiled, and promised myself I would get that hat and those spurs so that I could make another dream come true for my beautiful, Sara. “I love you,” I told her as I let myself imagine an infinity of nights ahead of us to make all her wishes a reality. She purred my ear making me hard for her again. I never dreamed before her that I would want to be possessed by another being. “I love your dreams, Sara. Promise me that you will always share them with me?” I felt a sense of desperation for her promise that did not make sense to me. All I knew was that I was hanging on some emotional precipice waiting for her to make that promise to me.

“I promise, Eli. I will always share everything with you.” My eyes floated shut in perfect peace at her words. Something in me that had become twisted needing her words, loosened, and let me go from its tortuous grasp. “The sun is nearly up,” I told her, my voice filled with regret. “I love you, Eli. Always. Forever. I promise.” When the sun took me, I was riding a horse across a flat plain in desert moonlight, looking for my Sara, promising myself that if I ever found her again, I would never let her go. ****** I called her again when I rose, but the call went to voicemail. I had a moment of disquiet that she did not answer. I tried again ten minutes later, but still got no answer. Anxious to complete my investigation, I vowed to call her again after I visited Susan Blackwell at the homeless shelter. It took me nearly an hour to find the Miami Mission Center, but less than five minutes to ascertain that Susan was no longer there. “She was here off and on for a few months,” Jeff the mission manager told me, “Then she was taken in by Reverend Gardner at the Church of Sunlight and Hope over on Fifth and Coronado.” I stepped out onto the street, and tried Sara again. When there was still no answer, my anxiety reached new heights. I stood there, fighting with everything I had to not take to the skies, and fly back to New York. There could be any number of reasons she wasn’t answering. Perhaps she had stepped out, and forgotten the phone? Maybe for coffee? I thought of Luke at The Coffee House, and growled in fury. No, I had asked her to avoid him. Surely, she would seek her precious coffee somewhere else, and not risk running into Luke? Of course, she would. I forced myself to calm down, and headed toward the Church of Sunlight and Hope. When I arrived, the place was a beehive of activity, with people going in and out. There was a smell of food, and unwashed bodies hanging heavily in the air. Holding the door open for a woman and small child who were exiting, I entered, pausing to look around for someone in charge. Before I could move deeper into the building, a man in his fifties with snow white hair stepped toward me, holding out his hand. “I’m Reverend Gardner,” he said introducing himself to me with a smile that did not reach his eyes. I put on my best human face, and smiled my best fangless smile in return. “I’m Travis Blackwell. I’m looking for my cousin, Susan Blackwell? The mission manager told me she was staying here now?” Reverend Gardner stood back, raising his hand to his mouth as he thought a moment. “Susan, Susan Blackwell.” He shuffled from foot to foot for a moment. Then his face lit up as he remembered. Before he could answer my question, another man approached him needing his attention. The Reverend listened to him before nodding and clasping his arm. “Oh, by the way, Randy, I just remembered, that package we’ve been expecting arrived today. Will you call Mr. Sands, and let him know it’s here to be picked up now?” Randy nodded before scurrying away. “Now, Mr. Blackwell, I do recall a Susan Blackwell, who came here a few months ago. She stayed here for a few weeks, and then left us one day. She never came back.”

“Where did she go? As I understand it she is not capable of caring for herself.” He shook his head, sadly. “She was in a terrible state, that is true enough. Do you know what happened to her? We tried to find out while she was here with us, but the poor child was not able to tell us much. It was like she had just forgotten who she was before she came to us.” I shook my head. “No, I don’t know, and no one in the family has been able to help me piece it all together. I only recently found out about her condition. I came here to take her home. We were close as children, and she is very special to me. Anything you could tell me would be most appreciated.” He shook his head again. “I’m sorry Mr. Blackwell. When she did not return after forty-eight hours, I filed a missing person’s report with the police department, but a homeless woman with questionable mental capacity was not high on their list of priorities.” Tired of playing this role, I captured his eyes, and hit him with the full strength of my glamour. For just a moment I felt him jerk under my possession of his mind, resisting me almost, which was impossible. Then I felt his mind smooth out, and his face go blank under my mental command. “Tell me about when she left. Did she have any friends here? Did someone pick her up?” “She left one day, and did not return. She had no friends. I never saw her with anyone.” His tone was detached and distant, as a person glamoured normally responded, but his heart beat was faster than normal. I leaned closer, looking to see if I could drive it up another notch, and prove that he was not truly under my command. “What are you afraid of, Reverend Gardner?” “Not being able to pay the electric bill. We are short this month. I don’t know how I will keep the power on.” I leaned closer, but his heartbeat remained elevated but consistent. I saw Randy, from the corner of my eye, headed back toward us. I broke eye contact with Gardner, and slipped back into my concerned cousin face. “Thank you, for your time, Reverend.” He blinked, and then smiled at me again. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Mr. Blackwell. Perhaps in time you will find what you are looking for.” I looked at him again, unable to shake the feeling that I was missing something. He smiled again, a different kind of smile than the one before. This one hinted at some secret that he really wanted to tell me, but also one that he enjoyed having all to himself a little too much to share. If I were human, it would have given me what Sara called the ‘heebies’, since I wasn’t, it just pissed me off. I made myself leave before I vented my frustration, and worry over Sara not answering the phone on this human. When I came out of the church I immediately tried her again, moving toward the alley beside the church, so that we could speak privately. “Hello, Eli?” she answered on the third ring, just as I heard a footstep behind me. I turned quickly toward the sound, but the world around me shifted; my vision clouding over as I felt myself go completely limp. “Eli?” I heard Sara call out to me again as her voice faded away. The black at the edge of my perfect vision closed in around me, shutting out the world. ****** I was floating in dark formless void, with someone whispering into my ear.

This is love. Images of Isadora flashed before me, her face a mask of ecstasy as she came on my cock, clawing at my chest. No! I shouted, back to the voice, denying the words and the image. I already knew what love was. I thought of Sara in her golden dress as she danced in my arms during the competition. Her smile was brighter than the Northern Star as she spun toward me. This is love, I heard again. Sara faded, replaced with another image of Isadora, dressed in leather as she whipped my back with a cat-o-nine tails, flaying my flesh to the bone as she cooed at me. You are mine, Eli, to do with as I please. NO! I shouted, pushing the image away, calling Sara back to me as she had been that first night, tipsy on her bed telling me all her secret desires. This is love, the disembodied voice insisted again. Isadora’s image returning, this time sparring with me in her practice room, trading sword blows in perfect sync with me. Her face alight with pleasure as we fought. NO! I said again, calling back Sara as she had been on New Year’s Eve, waiting for me to bring her champagne. She had been so beautiful that night in her blue dress, her jewels that I had given her, sparkling around her neck in the candlelight of Heaven. THIS IS LOVE! The voice thundered through the black void around me, so loud that I grabbed for my head that wasn’t there, as more images of Isadora passed before me again. Isadora naked coming toward me with passion on her face. Isadora at her desk talking to me of her plans for Tennessee. Isadora…Isadora…Isadora…Isadora. NO! THIS IS LOVE! I screamed, and called for the memory of Sara the night I pinned her to the bed, after blowing back into her room. Sara the night I came back to her, finding her in her gown waiting for me. Sara on the sofa that doubled as a confessional, holding me when I told her my true age. Sara in the shower with me when she showed me the magic of a woman. Sara…Sara…Sara…Sara Light exploded into the void, cracking the darkness before shattering it like a broken mirror into sharp cutting shards around me. I sat up, gasping for air I shouldn’t need. “Whoa there, Commander. You’re fine. Just take a moment to gather your wits. Everything is fine.” I looked at the vampire before me. I knew his face. What was his name? Barclay. Miami Commander Barclay. I looked around me, the place was unfamiliar, though it smelled heavily of the vampire before me. I was in his nest. I was in the Commander of Miami’s nest.

Fuck! My head was splitting open! “Here, drink this.” Barclay shoved a bag of donor blood at me. I was ravenous. I drank it quickly, and he handed me another. “What the fuck happened?” I growled, after I emptied the second bag. “You were supposed to meet me at Montrose at 9PM. You were an hour late, when you came staggering in, unable to speak, and collapsed at my feet. I brought you to my home to keep you safe.” I checked my body for injury, but other than the pain in my head there was nothing. I rose to my feet, my knees shaking. I growled at this weak feeling inside me. I took a tentative step, and then another, feeling my equilibrium restore itself slowly. “What time is it now?” “Just after midnight.” “I have been incapacitated for two hours?” I turned to him so quickly, that I felt myself nearly collapse again. I grabbed the back of the nearest chair to right myself. Two hours at night was unheard of for a vampire. “No, you’ve been out for five days.” “WHAT?” I roared, my fangs coming down to their full length. I usually took great pains to hide my strength and age from other vampires, but in that moment I was beyond subterfuge. Barclay took one look at me, felt the power rolling off me in endless waves, and immediately fell to his knees before me, with his head down. He was terrified. That made two of us. “It’s been a week, Commander. I kept you here hidden, and safe until you could recover.” My mind was working faster now. I was about to ask him if he had investigated the last known place I had been to determine what had happened to me, but he had not known that I planned to visit the mission or the church afterward. “My phone, where is my phone?” I was frantic now. Sara had not heard from me in a week. Before that she had not been answering my calls. Had she answered that last time? I thought she had. “You had no phone when you came into Montrose, Commander. Would you like to use mine?” I almost said yes, and then I remembered something from the darkness. Sara…Sara was love. I had to see her. I blew out of the Commander’s nest, taking to the sky, moving faster than I ever had before in my determination her as soon as possible ****** I touched down outside her dorm at NYU, and blasted through her door, cracking the frame in my desperation. I stopped, disbelieving my immortal eyes. The room was empty. All trace of her was gone, as if she had never been there. I roared so loud the windows shook with my rage. Where the fuck was she at? I turned to go, hoping that she had moved to my house. On my way out my foot hit something small, kicking it across the room. I chased it, moving at supernatural speed. It was button from my shirt, abandoned there when she had ripped it open as she loved me. “Sara,” I whispered her name as I turned the button in my fingers, watching it catch the light, as if the reflective patterns could tell me what had happened to my beautiful lover.

“Is everything ok, in here?” I turned to find a dorm mate of Sara’s in the doorway. I caught her eyes, and her mind in my snare. “Where is Sara Siler?” I demanded. “I don’t know. When I got back from vacation she was gone. All her stuff was gone, and the room empty.” “Did she leave a message or a note? Anything?” I screamed, forcing my hands to stay still and not kill this useless human. “No. Nothing. She was just gone.” Growling, I sped by the girl, and headed for my house, praying she was there and safe, but I knew before I opened the door that she was not. Her scent was old, and I could tell that no one had been here since we had left a week ago. A fucking week ago. I fell on the sofa where we had shared so much, covering my face with my hands. “Sara,” I whispered. “Where are you, lover?”

The story of EIi and Sara continues in Dreams Series, Book 2- Nightmares. As a special thank you, I have included a sneak preview of the dreams to come…. J.A. Brown Nightmares Dreams Series, Book 2 *Prologue* Sara- The Missing Week “Eli?” I could barely hear my voice over the sand in my head and rocks in my chest. “Yes, that’s right Miss Siler, tell us about Eli.” I felt my face frown as the sand shifted in my brain, passing through an hourglass I could not see, but only feel. How long had I been here? Where the fuck was here? “Miss Siler?” The sharp prick in my neck hurt, the liquid it delivered, stinging, as my heart pumped it through. Fuck, The Needle, again. They always put it in my neck, making the sands of me shift on the inside; their grains becoming smaller, passing through the cracks of me to pour on the ground, by now there were piles of me beneath the chair. Maybe when they shine The Light I will see. The Needle. The Chair. The Light. I heard myself laugh, because I did that. I laughed like that when things weren’t funny. The Needle, The Light and The Chair. It was like some fucked up psychedelic version Narnia without a Mr. Tumnus to greet me, and of course, there was no snow, only sand in my mind. “Eli?” I called again, begging him to come and get me before The Light came on again. Eli would save me. Eli always saved me. I imagined I saw him, rising from the sand to come to me, tall, beautiful, powerful. He was mine, and I was his, and he would kill these fuckers for taking me. He would find me. Eli would always find me. “Yes, Eli, Miss Siler. Tell us about him.” The sand was running faster now, and I bit my lip to keep the words inside. I would never betray him. No Needle could ever make me betray my lover. I felt my head fall to the side, felt the sand run out of me leaving me empty and hollow. They were talking without me now. Good, let them make up the answers they were so desperate to find. “You say that this Eli she keeps calling for was her boyfriend?” “Yes, they seemed close.” “We need more information. Did she love him?” They were far away now, as I poured out my secrets in the grainy patterns that would keep my Eli safe; their voices strange and familiar all at once. “I think so. When I saw them together, she was, well, glowing when she looked at him.” “And you are sure that convincing her that her boyfriend was murdered by a vampire will be the key to her allegiance?” “Yes.” My Eli was murdered by a vampire? Not possible. He was ancient. He told me his true age. He trusted me. I’ll protect you, I promised him, again.

“The connection must be powerful to make the trauma real enough to bend her mind.” There was loud crash, the sound of a punch on metal, and a voice I was sure I knew growled. “She fucking loved him, all right. She wanted nothing more to do with me, and we had a connection. She would not have abandoned that if she didn’t love him!” “Calm down! I am just explaining- “ “Stop fucking explaining, and wipe her fucking memories! Make her believe that her precious Eli was murdered by vampires. Make her believe she saw it happen. Make her one of us!” “You seem personally involved in this situation.” “That is not your concern.” “No, but you must understand that all of the others have actually lost loved ones to vampires. Their need for vengeance is real, not manufactured. If this isn’t done correctly she will never believe. This entire procedure is highly unorthodox.” “It’s been authorized from the top command. You will do this.” “The chair has never been used like this!” “You use it unlock glamoured memories! You can fucking well use it to change them.” There was a long drawn out silence. “DO IT!” The Light came on, and The Chair started to vibrate beneath me. I moaned, hating myself for sounding so afraid, and for feeling such fear as the sands shifted again. They were going to take Eli from me! My thoughts were disorganized and chaotic, adrenaline roaring through me as I fought the restraints. “NO!” I shouted at these faceless men who spoke of me as if I wasn’t there. I felt someone jerk my head, and force my eyes open. “Look into The Light, Miss Siler.” “Sara. Call her Sara.” “Look into The Light, Sara. See the pretty colors.” I had to protect Eli. I made my eyes go unfocused as I ran through my mind, slogging through the hip deep sand of drugs, and voices that filled me. As I ran deeper into myself my mind became a long hallway filled with doors. Before I could open one, The Light beat me there, exploding the door from the hinges. “Sara. You lost Eli. He died in your arms, bleeding, and screaming for you to help him, but you couldn’t.” As the words were spoken I saw it happening. I couldn’t close my eyes! I couldn’t look away! “Sara,” Eli called to me touching my face in that way he had, before his hand slipped from mine, and his eyes turned cold and dead. “NO!” I screamed again, making the scene change, making Eli live again, dragging him behind me as I slogged through the sand looking for a door that nothing could open. A secret door that no one could find. I saw it distantly, at the end of the corridor of my mind. That fucking door that I never opened, the door that held my most secret dark self. Holding tightly to Eli’s hand, I pulled him behind me, fighting the sand and the voices. “He loved you, Sara. Eli loved you. If the vampires hadn’t taken him from you, he would have married you, and raised a family with you.”

“No,” I said again, still trying to not see The Light that was making it harder to run through the sand. “Yes. You had plans to spend the rest of your lives together. You were going to be together, but he was stolen from you by vampires one night. You saw him die, begging you to save him. Begging you Sara, but you were weak, and you couldn’t save him.” I was almost to the door, Eli’s hand still in mine as all the other doors in the corridor of my mind exploded around us, and that fucking Light, God that fucking light it was killing me! “You wanted vengeance for the loss of Eli, Sara. You wanted to make the vampires pay! You would do anything to make the vampires pay for what they took from you when they murdered Eli. Vampires murdered him, Sara, right in front of you.” My hand turned the door knob, and I pulled Eli toward it as it swung open, hurling him inside with the last bit of strength I had left. I glimpsed a child huddled on the floor, her blonde hair and haunted eyes cutting through me. She would keep him safe in the secret room at the center of my dark little heart. I looked at my beautiful Eli one last time, before I slammed the door with all my might, setting the lock so that only one who knew the combination could open it. So that only my lover could find himself deep inside me. I will always protect you, I promised again, my palm resting on the door as it disappeared, fading as if it had never been. When all trace of it was gone, I turned, and walked into The Light. The story of Eli and Sara continues in Nightmares. Available for purchase October 1st, 2016. *Please take a minute to show some love for Dreams by leaving a review on Amazon & Goodreads! Encourage new readers to fall in love, and dream with us. * Visit me at jabrownstoryteller.com for a complete list of locations to leave a comment and get your own copy of Dreams Series Book 2- Nightmares

Special thanks to… Christi Carlson and Golden Designs for cover design, and website support. And to Jane Austen for the quotes from Pride and Prejudice. She gets full credit for her words; I only dream of writing that way. And to Mazzy Star for Fade Into You, And to Norah Jones for What Am I To You? And to Fetty Wap for 679 And to Hozier for Take Me to Church