Christian is still nibbling, light little bites with flat teeth. One of his hands cradles the back of my neck in a proprietary way. His other hand trails down the side of my cheek, then over my neck, then onward until he’s stroking underneath the satin chemise I slept in, caressing my breast through the slippery fabric
I know I’m wet. I’m only usually this wet right after an orgasm brought by my own fingers. My whole body feels like it’s on fire, and I realize it’s shame: shame that he’s having this effect on me after how he’s scared me, taken my life away, locked me up, killed someone right in front of me without remorse. But my body can’t be reasoned with. It wants nothing more than to be filled in every way by this man, no matter what he’s done to me or to others.
His demeanor is different than how he was with the prostitute. There is nothing rough in the way he’s stroking me, nothing demanding in his kiss as his lips move to caress over mine. I suck in a breath at the unexpected entry of his tongue. My brain has gone all fuzzy. I wonder if his effect on me is a vampire thing, but he already said he can’t control my mind. Maybe my body isn’t so immune. Every nerve ending fires in response to him, as if he can crook a finger and make the whole of me arch closer, begging for more of his touch.
I don’t want to feel this. It was bad enough to crave his bite after the pain ebbed, and to crave his blood out of a basic need for survival. But to crave his hands and mouth on me. It’s just not right. I wish it was already morning so he’d leave me to my confused and troubled thoughts. But it won’t be that way.
This isn’t Devon, a man I can put off for months. I know it’s happening right here and right now. Whatever charming nod to foreplay he’s making shouldn’t confuse me that he’s a gentleman. The arousal flares brighter as the image of him taking the prostitute from behind rises in my mind. I squeeze my eyes closed to try to shut that image out. It shouldn’t make me hotter for him. Whatever this is, it isn’t me. I repeat this mantra over and over in my mind because this can’t be who I am.
To give in so readily to his darkness surely makes me just as bad. Is it lack of power or opportunity that has left me innocent? I can no longer delude myself into believing everything inside me is clean and pure. As his hand leaves my breast, skims over my belly, and moves beneath my panties, my hips jerk in response to him, and I know I’m not so sweet.
“That’s it, pet. I knew it would be this way,” he murmurs against my skin.
My friends would be disturbed by what’s going on in my head right now, but when you see the depth of danger and depravity Christian has shown he’s capable of, when you’re with a creature that shouldn’t exist that could so easily snuff out your life, anything not horrible and painful is welcome and appreciated. Good food. Nice accommodations. A gentle kind of molestation.
No one with any sense in their head chooses to undergo any degree of torture if the only thing they have to do is spread their legs to make it stop. I don’t care how much self-worth they think they have or how much of a fighter they think they are. Real life doesn’t work that way.
At least this is what I tell myself as I whimper and spread my legs a little wider, giving him better access. Some switch inside him flips and he goes from considerate lover to primal beast in a millisecond. He shoves the chemise up over my hips and pulls my panties aside, then I’m on my hands and knees on the bed, and I don’t know how I got there. The room turns a burning cold. I’m not sure if it’s my own fear coming to life, or Christian, or an overactive imagination.
He’s behind me now. The room is silent except for his heaving breaths. For a moment I experience a touch of vertigo and have the brief sensation that the room is breathing. I can almost feel the expanding and contraction of the walls. But no, that’s my own breath I’m feeling. I’m grateful to be feeling it. It means I’m still here, still alive.
Christian grips my shoulder and with one sharp thrust, he’s inside me. I cry out at the pain and the shame of losing my virginity to a monster that only seconds ago my body welcomed and coaxed closer with each undulation of my hips.
He pulls me off the bed, bending me back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, his head buried in my neck, breathing me in. Our breath starts to blend into one thing. I don’t know if he’s matching my pace or if I’m matching his, but we are in sync. Despite everything, I have a moment of transcendence. I feel one with everything, and my logical brain isn’t active to tell me how wrong it all is. The pain flowers out like a lotus blossom and then transforms into a deep yearning.
He is both the disease and the cure.
With that thought, the transcendent moment fades as quickly as it came on and I spend the next several minutes berating myself for feeling that way with him. He didn’t give me any choices. It’s a cruel joke of the universe that the one person who makes me come alive is himself dead. And evil. His very existence defies all moral laws and all known laws of physics. Yet here he is and here I am, and our bodies keep grinding together. And despite my best efforts not to feel more, a pleasurable sensation is growing inside me. I feel unmade, remade, desecrated, reborn. And I can’t think which of those I wish was untrue the most.
Despite convincing myself anyone chooses pleasure—at least with pain I don’t have to feel guilt. If I love him inside me then is it still against my will? Does my will exist in even the most abstract sense in this vampire’s home?
As if in answer, offering me penance for my sins, fangs dig into my throat, taking my breath from me, searing me with another wave of agony. Then it all transforms and I come so hard I nearly pass out. I shout out “Christian” without meaning to. I wonder if I’m going to get in trouble for calling him by his first name, but he only chuckles against my throat as he spills into me.
Now that the orgasm has passed, I’m scared again. I think about the prostitute, and it’s not an inappropriate moment of arousal, because the moment that aroused me was punctuated later by her death. I hover in limbo, terrified he won’t stop drinking, and I’ll be just like her, just another cold body that served a vampire’s purpose. But he does stop, and a moment later his bleeding wrist is in front of my mouth.
“Drink.” That word again. In the space of a day it has become the best and worst word in the English language. A word I fear I won’t hear and at the same time fear I’ll hear too often.
I’m scared about what daily vampire blood will do to me. It doesn’t seem like he took as much as last time, so is it really necessary? I don’t feel weak. Nothing hurts now. Maybe I shouldn’t.
“C-can’t I just drink every other day? Or when you take too much?”
He pulls away and spins me to face him, his eyes narrowing. “It’s a gift. You’ll deny me the pleasure of giving my pet gifts?”
This could go very bad very fast, so I backtrack. “N-no. I’m sorry. Please, that’s not what I meant. I’m just... ” I’m afraid to tell him. The only ace I have to play is the thoughts bound tightly inside my own head. The only thing in me that he can’t get to.
“Just... ” he prods. His eyes look so angry and black that I can’t think of an appropriate lie, so the truth spills forth in its absence.
“I’m afraid of what so much vampire blood will do to me.”
I look away because he knows I’m rejecting what he is. He knows it disgusts me, and in his place, I might be angry about it, too. He can’t help his nature. It’s instinctive. It’s not personal.
It’s like a tiger or a wolf. Humans don’t moralize those creatures for their instincts. So why should I judge Christian that way? But I knew the answer even before the question formed in my mind—because he’s shaped too human and my moral code for anything that looks human is bound up in what humanity considers right and wrong. I can’t help feeling that way, and I don’t expect the sentiment to ever change.
His look mirrors my own disgust, and I don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot. My mind screams that I’m the good one. The last thing I deserve is his scorn.
“It will do nothing but heal you and make you feel good. It won’t make you a vampire. It won’t make you evil. And you will drink it when I give it to you. Or have you already forgotten this morning when I withheld? I should think you’d be happy to be offered such a gift instead of the pain and terror I offered you this morning. Or did a few hours of sleep wipe that reality away?”
I don’t say anything because the last thing I want is a frequent repeat of this morning. Instead, I put my mouth against his wrist and take the offering he’s presented. He pets my hair with his other hand.
Maybe everything I know about vampires is wrong. Maybe he was never human. Maybe he’s a god, instead. Or a demon. I have a feeling our human words for things: god, angel, demon, vampire... they’re just words. They don’t really mean anything because we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.
“Good girl,” he whispers against my hair.
He pulls his wrist away and I lay my forehead against the satin pillows, exhausted. I’m still not used to this schedule shift. Despite frequent insomnia, my body is confused by the changes.
I think again about my mom and the bakery and I start crying.
“What is it?” His voice isn’t quite cold, but it’s not warm either. I’m not sure if he cares at all. Probably not. It seems more an affectation of humanity that he’s learned in order to blend in and stalk prey better.
“This will destroy my mother. She’ll think I’m dead.” I look up, my eyes imploring him to comprehend a single human emotion just this once. “Don’t you understand? It’s not just me. You’re making others suffer, too.”
“Perhaps I should kill them, then? Far be it from me to let anybody be sad.”
I’m not going to respond to the bait. He wants me to lash out so he can do another lesson of
here’s why I’m almighty and you are property.
The chemise has stayed on through all of this, my panties pulled aside for his convenience. It makes me feel dirtier than if I’d been naked. I hate him. I hate him with a depth that scares me almost as much as the emotions I felt only a few moments before in his arms. But hate and anger are normal in this situation. More comfortable. Hate I can deal with. The desire I felt with him... the pleasure I felt with him... I cannot.
He crosses to my closet where all my new clothes are now hanging. The space is immense and deep. Even though we bought a lot last night, the closet still looks empty. He paws through the clothing and tosses some black boots, black leather pants, and a red halter top at me. He’s dressing me up like a slutty superhero. But I don’t say anything. I just take the clothes and begin to put them on.
“No.”
I stop at his voice, rooted to the spot in a way that would have been comical if I were a cartoon character.
He points to the bathroom. “Shower first.”
This embarrasses me. I haven’t showered since getting here. That’s been over a day. I’ve been too scared to think about mundane things like hygiene, but it’s embarrassing because I know how good his sense of smell is. He must think I’m dirty.
As if he can still read my thoughts he says, “Don’t worry. You just smell like food and sex to me. You need to shower because where we’re going, you’ll need to be extra clean. It’ll be safer.”
What the hell does
that
mean? I don’t question him or say anything, feeling silence is safer than speech. I imagine at his age, too much talking is tiresome. I don’t want to do anything to flip his crazy trigger, and I need the privacy of my own thoughts right now anyway.
I scurry off to the bathroom. The shower head is one of those massaging shower heads that women often buy for reasons other than cleanliness. There are several scented bath gels to choose from. I pick a coconut and lime scent because it reminds me of the beach. I’m not sure I’m ever going to see the beach again.
I push back the tears because I don’t have time to break down over stupid shit. I need to prepare myself mentally. I need to think. I have no idea what he means about needing to be clean, but I take him very seriously and wash my hair and scrub all over with a loofah twice.
More than sad and scared, right now I’m disgusted. Why didn’t the idea of showering cross my mind before he ordered it? Sure, I’m scared, but isn’t the normal response to unwanted sexual contact, a strong desire to shower, to scrub yourself until you bleed to get the stain off your soul? Maybe I didn’t have that reaction because the contact wasn’t unwanted. This is the hardest thing to admit to myself because my consent didn’t matter to him. It’s just a coincidence—a blessing of fate—that my body wanted him in such a primal way.
I’m scared for my life and of the pain he will deliver. It’s not even a question of if he’ll deliver it. I’ve seen the way his eyes light with pleasure when he does something that hurts me. I’ve seen the way he sucks up my fear as if it’s an appetizer to my blood. I have no illusions that a decent man lurks inside, just waiting for true love and my goodness to activate him. This isn’t a fairy-tale.
But beyond my fear of pain and death, my body screams for his in every way possible. I crave him like he craves my blood. I want his hands and mouth on me. I want to feel that transcendent merging again. I worry that what I felt with him won’t happen the next time, that the feeling will be like sand slipping through my fingers.
This small mental admission has me scrubbing a third time, and this time I do penetrate skin. I let out a shriek at the way the loofah tears off a thin layer of flesh, causing everything to burn. I feel blood pooling. My senses are so acute right now. I’m still not convinced his blood won’t make me a vampire, trapping me in an inferior immortality on a far from perfect plane.
I don’t notice when Christian enters the room in his typical blurring fashion, so I jump when the shower door opens and the water shuts off.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Showering. Like you asked.”
He surveys my raw and torn skin, then he pulls me close. I shudder in his arms as his tongue runs over me. I feel wounds closing, so it’s not only his blood that heals. Maybe his blood is just quicker or more effective. It seems all vampiric bodily fluids have the power to heal, which makes little sense to me. This sends my mind somewhere I don’t want to go as I mentally catalog all the common bodily fluids.