The Fertile Vampire (28 page)

I came, wedged in the corner of the elevator, only half noticing when he lifted me in his arms and carried me down the hall. The sensations were exquisite, the pain pleasure of the climax lingering to touch each separate nerve ending.
 

Nothing had ever felt as good and I wanted it again.
 

One breast was exposed, the air sliding across my wet nipple.
 

A door opened and closed, the sound disturbing me. I felt something soft on my backside and opened my eyes to find him above me, his eyes intent, the points of his fangs indicating he was aroused.
 

I grabbed him around the neck, pulling him down and kissing him, tonguing his fangs, sweeping in and dancing across his tongue with mine. I swallowed him and invited him to partake of me.

Marcie, wet and more than willing.
 

When he reached down and pulled the other half of my dress down, I arched up to give myself more fully to him. I wished he had two mouths - one for kissing and one for sucking my nipples.
 

I moaned when he left my lips and moaned again when the point of a fang nicked my breast.
 

His hand was suddenly below my skirt, tearing at my panties. I widened my legs, wishing them gone, wishing he would hurry.
 

At his touch, I came again, the violent clenching of this climax wrenching a scream from me.
 

He bit down on my breast and I cried out, not in pain but in surrender.
 

He levered himself over me, entered me with both of us still dressed. I didn’t care. I would taste him later. For now, I had to have him. Had to have him in me. The first surge made me scream again. The second drove a third climax through me. I think I fainted somewhere in the next couple of minutes, but I remember it being accompanied by a bliss so sharp the pleasure drove through me like a spear.
 

I heard his name leave my lips in a sigh. “Niccolo.” A benediction. A prayer. A demand for more of him. More of his touch, the dream and promise of it. I wanted him again, even as I fainted.

Twice more, he took me. Twice more, he surged into me, bringing me such rapture I nearly died of it. But I wanted it and him. Only him.
 

My hands slid over his now naked body, marveling at the chiseled perfection of it. He was a statue in marble, come to life for these special hours to seduce and love me. His buttocks were round and firm, a playground for my hands and lips. His cock was long and thick. I think I called it a club, a staff, the Penis of Pleasure, a dozen other names that made him smile even as he impaled me.
 

I danced around the bed, licking and nipping at him, desperate for him. When I tasted blood I didn’t care whose it was, mine or his, only that the taste was part of the sacrifice of sex with him.
 

He kissed me and I came. He mouthed me and I screamed his name to the ceiling. He scratched me with his fingernails and I reciprocated in kind, making him laugh until I sat atop him and mounted him as my prize steed, riding him until he was drained.
 

He had me on my hands and knees, coming into me from behind. He had me on my back, supplicant and suppressed. He had me sitting on him, impaled by a dragon’s staff.
 

He had me any way he wanted me and I was powerless to say no.
 

When I woke, I realized I hated him more than any creature, alive or dead.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
WO

How do I hate thee - let me count the ways

A few hours before dawn, I woke, staring up at the ceiling and feeling empty. No, I felt worse than empty. I felt shamed, as if I’d stolen something, beaten my grandmother, or shot someone. What I’d done was so intrinsically wrong it tasted like bile on the back of my tongue.
 

Sitting up, I tried to hide I was trembling. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling as if my body wanted to split into a thousand pieces, a super nova of Marcie. I’d shoot out into space, to the place where comets form, becoming one with the stars. Having no consciousness, no stomach curdling flashbacks of the past few hours, no wish to scrub the touch of him from my skin.
 

The light on the night stand was on, casting soft, intimate shadows through the room. The walls were covered with a textured brown covering that looked like leather. The space was filled with large mahogany pieces - a triple dresser, an impressively carved armoire and the king size bed on a pedestal, complete with four posts and blue velvet draperies. Maddock must like glass, because two intriguing pieces sat on the dresser, their blue, red, and white swirling stripes reminding me of pieces I’d seen from Murano.
 

I could do a lot of damage with the one that looked like an elongated bottle.
 

“What did you give me?” I asked, when I was in control of my voice enough to speak.
 

He was standing at the window, watching the darkness, his soul as black as the night surrounding him.
 

When he turned, I looked away. At this moment I didn’t want to see him. The look of triumph in his eyes would always be emblazoned on my brain. The chuckle as he’d tucked me up into his bed enough of a memory to hate him for the rest of my life.
 

“What did you give me?” I asked again.
 

“Does it matter?”
 

Yes, damn it, it mattered.
 

I closed my eyes.
 

“Why?” I asked, when I was certain my voice wouldn’t sound like tears. “Why me?”
 

“You’re a very special woman, Marcie,” he said, coming nearer.
 

I wanted to hold up a hand to keep him at bay, shout to him to keep his distance. I did neither, merely kept my eyes closed.
 

A strange time, perhaps, to pray, being in bed in a vampire’s lair. Maybe God would think it akin to the lion’s den. He’d helped Daniel, hadn’t He? I couldn’t remember. Maybe He’d given Daniel some advice: don’t fight it, son. Sooner done, sooner over.
 

“Why me?”
 

Marcie Montgomery, crack investigator, determined adjuster, insistent paper-pusher, obstinate bureaucrat, that was me.
 

“You have had your menstrual cycle. You are fertile.”
 

Not quite yet, but I remained silent, shocked he knew.
 

“Are you going through my garbage?”
 

He didn’t answer, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Just how many of my neighbors were spies for Maddock? What else did he know?
 

“I also know you went to see Miss Renfrew.”

Evidently Maddock really could hear my thoughts. I was going to have to stop thinking around him.
 

I closed my eyes again, grabbing the sheets with both hands. The sense of danger returned in full force, undiluted by whatever drug he’d given me.
 

“You have no sense of your own power, Marcie.”
 

He sat on the edge of the bed. I slid over a few inches until he stopped me by placing his arm on my other side.
 

“You are capable of so many wondrous acts,” he said, his words a breath against my cheek.
 

“Do tell.”
 

His finger stroked down my chin. I flinched and turned my head away.
 

“You are impervious to summoning. You have the ability to bear children. You can place thoughts in the minds of others. You can eat, Marcie.”
 

His fingertip traced my lips.
 

“Do you know how I crave the taste of food? How I long to sip a glass of wine, to taste pasta on my tongue, to eat meat?”
 

I wished he’d move away. I sent him a thought he should do so, now, but all he did was chuckle.
 

I opened my eyes, saw a doorway behind him and one to the left.
 

“Why not drink me dry?” I said. I’ve never been wise when my back was to the wall. I had a tendency to be sarcastic at the wrong time.
 

“It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid,” he said, his hand smoothing the sheet atop me. Instead of being turned on, his touch through the sheet made me feel clammy. “You’re the product of a witch and a vampire. You would only make me sick, which is what happened to poor Doug. But he was a good soldier; he came back time and again before he was able to turn you.”
 

I was suddenly nauseous and I wasn’t sure if it was what he was saying or the effects of whatever he’d given me. Whatever it had been, it had certainly banished any of my inhibitions.
 

“So, Doug was another one of your little minions?” I said. “Did he turn me on your orders?”
 

“Of course. I’ve watched you since you were born. Your father bragged of your birth.”

I was going to be sick. With any luck, I would throw up all over Maddock.
 

“He knew about me?” I shouldn’t have asked the question and wished it back the minute it was voiced.
 

“Indeed he did. He knew your birth would add to his power. No one else had ever been born with witch and vampire blood. You could be a Dirugu.”
 

I wanted to ask about him.
Tell me who he was, beyond being a vampire. Tell me he had some humanity about him, that he loved sunsets and liked something normal like football. Tell me he thought me more than a clump of DNA who might add to his power base.
 

Who was he?
 

Never ask a question unless you know the answer. Who’d told me that? Tom, a friend in pre-law. We’d dated, realized we weren’t as romantically attached as just friends.
 

He was one of those people who’d disappeared once I’d become Marcie Montgomery, Vampire or Something.
 

“You killed him, didn’t you?”
 

“Does it matter, Marcie?”
 

I wasn’t prepared for the surge of rage. I sat up and pushed him away from me.
 

“Yes, damn it, it does. Everything matters, you son of a bitch. What do you want from me?” I scooted closer to the headboard, drawing up my knees and wrapping my arms around them.

“Your womb.”
 

I was stunned.
 

“You want a child?”
 

He nodded. Maddock was even more handsome now. His cheeks were bronzed with color, his eyes sparkling.
 

“Why? You’re feeling a sudden yearning to be a father? You’re immortal, so you don’t need progeny.”
 

“By feeding from our child, I would be healed.”
 

I stared at him, wide-eyed. “You would kill an innocent child just to be able to eat?”
 

“Not just to be able to eat, Marcie. You have powers you have not yet discerned.”
 

He hadn’t mentioned my ability to walk in the sun. Maybe he didn’t know.
 

Reaching out, he placed his hand on my arm. I shivered and moved away.
 

“The child would not be harmed.”
 

I didn’t believe him.
 

Folding my arms, I leaned back against the pillow and wished I could teleport myself back home.
 

“Can a Dirugu fly?”
 

His eyes widened. “Fly? There is no end to your powers, I suspect. We shall have to wait and see what transpires. There’s not much written about the Dirugu.”

I knew that from my own search.
 

My smile felt like a rictus. My neck was welded to my stiff shoulders and my legs felt like steel pipes. I was finding it difficult to breathe. Counter to everything I’d read or seen, vampires do need to breathe a little. If they don’t, their lungs fill up with fluid and they get pneumonia. Pneumonia meant their blood was infected, ergo, death. Again.
 

I would have run if I could have. I would have left Maddock’s home and found someplace, any other place to be. I would have braved the creatures of the darkness, including werewolves.

“I’m an insurance adjuster,” I said.

Maddock had a truly spectacular smile, one crinkling the corners of his eyes and revealed his even teeth.
 

“You are also an aberration.”
 

The same word Nonnie had used to describe me.
 

“Stop saying that!” I held up my hand. “Stop saying that,” I repeated more calmly. “I’m not an aberration.” I’m not a monster. Dear God, if a vampire thought I was weird, how weird was I?
 

“You neither steal energy from mankind nor do you require blood. Yet you do not collapse, faint, or die. You eat like any mortal, only more than most mortals. You are warmer than most. You are not in stasis. You are, instead, thriving.”