Blood of the Dead, page 5
“Is real life better?” she asked, in all apparent sincerity.
“Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, God—forgive me, Lord—Tabitha—Tabby—” he said, as the bed’s creaking reached a fevered pitch.
“Do it in me,” she begged him. “I want it.”
Good girl.
Noah let out grunt after grunt, and I knew he was coming for her, just like she’d asked him. The wave of his passion swept out from their lovemaking and over me, almost as innocent as hers had been, only slightly more heady, with a darker tint, which felt appropriate seeing as his cum was now mixing with her blood.
To be young and in love . . . as opposed to immortal and in pain. I closed my eyes, willed my hard-on down, and pulled my fangs fully in. “Okay, lovebirds,” I said, standing up. “I think you’re on a good course now. See if you can make yourself feel like that on your own, sometime, Tabitha—fingers can be as good as a mouth. And Noah—next time try to rub her while you’re inside her, all right?” I picked up my coat without. “Practice makes perfect, alone or together,” I said and reached the door.
“Mister Jack!” Noah called up from behind me.
“Yeah?” I asked, pausing without turning around.
“Thank you,” he said.
I tugged the brim of an imaginary hat and walked out the door.
I walked back to the front of Fran’s business, where Janice squinted at me. “Your hair’s dry. You didn’t shower.”
“I didn’t need to, trust me.”
She made a sound like that wasn’t happening in this lifetime, and then Fran emerged from the back. “Well?” she asked, her voice rising. “How was it?”
The edge of my hunger was off, for a night. “Not . . . bad?”
She winced a little on my behalf. “But not good, eh?”
“Just weird, mostly.” I shook my head and gave her a warm smile. “Leave those kids alone, if you can. They’ve got a lot of figuring out to do. But as for my first ‘client,’” I said, so Fran could hear the air quotes, “if she comes back, tell her I don’t want any. And neither do you.” I gave Fran a meaningful look, which she clocked. She knew I was a vampire, but her employees did not.
“Gotcha,” she said, with a strong nod. “She said she left you your tip in person?”
“Tickets to a show.”
“Tourists,” Fran said and laughed, then leaned over to give me a sly look. “Well, whatever show it is, want to take me?”
I tapped the pocket where the ballet tickets were. “Sorry, Fran, but I think I already have a date.”
I drove to Dark Ink out of habit, unwilling to be alone at home when in theory I could be “working” the rest of the night. For some reason Luna’s car was still in the parking lot, even though everything was already closed and locked up. That made me a little nervous on her behalf, but if anyone had kidnapped her for ransom, they’d probably change their mind and be ready to pay me to take her off their hands soon enough.
I let myself in, the overhead bell chimed, and the first thing I could smell was him.
Paco.
He’d been here.
Why?
Why not call me—or drop by my place?
Why hadn’t I come in to work tonight of all nights?
But once I’d gotten over my shock at that, I could tell other things had also gone on. I went into the office, which my nose told me was the scene of the crime. It looked like it’d been trashed and the scent of sex was heavy in the air. I leaned past the chair to glance in the trash can and saw two used condoms in it, like shed snakeskins.
I felt a sudden rush of anger. I knew Luna hadn’t done anything with Paco, or everything in this small place would smell vastly different and far more familiar—but we had a business to run—and then I realized this must’ve been exactly what I made Angela feel like, left to my own devices here every night, and her knowing what I’d done the next day.
I rocked back. There was no way I was going to get any real work done—I’d just spend the rest of the evening hoping Paco would return. And as much pain as I could handle physically, it wasn’t worth me torturing myself like that.
I left the office just as I’d found it and turned around.
Chapter Nine
Luna
“So you’ve lived in Vegas your whole life?” Nilesh was asking me, across a cheeseburger and fries at the Lucky Penny. He was eating a burger too, only his patty was vegetarian, which was an ethical option I could never afford with my lifestyle. The way I was living, I needed all the iron I could get.
“Pretty much, except for a stint in Texas some time before I even remember.” We had pictures of it though. My mom had been really good about taking pictures. I used to tease her about it, and then she teased me that my first words had been “put the camera down.”
“Is she still around?” he asked.
I knew he was just making conversation, but it still hurt. “No.” I shook my head and shrugged quickly. She took so many pictures so I’d have them to remember her by, at the end, when things got bad for her. I was glad to have them now, in a storage locker. “Sometimes life is like that though,” I said, sounding tougher than I felt, quickly drawing a fry through a pool of ketchup.
“Yeah. For sure.”
“What about you? Where else have you lived?” I tried to pull our conversation back on track, and it worked; he let me, and told me stories about other places he’d been and other shops he’d worked at, with some additional stories about old coworkers of his doing some stupid things, like tattooing each other drunk. I carefully confessed to having done my prior office work at a strip club—without mentioning vampires, of course—and then the stupid-people-doing-stupid-things story competition was on.
“I dunno, Luna,” he said leaning back, half-an-hour later with a grin. “There was this one night in Nashville—”
“No. I’m putting you out of your misery. I’ve been to porn conventions before. I have seen way more ridiculous things than you,” I said, snapping my teeth around my last fry with a grin. “I saw a dildo on the end of a Sawzall once. Only whoever put it together hadn’t really thought about how fast those things go, right? And they picked a floppy one, it was just like waving all over the place, like the one on that car in that movie—”
“Idiocracy?” he guessed, his eyebrows high.
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
He licked his tongue over his teeth as if testing their edge, and then sucked air in before letting out a tense exhale. “You make me want to ask you bad questions.”
“Ask.” I laughed.
Nilesh shook his head strongly. “Nope. I’m not messing this up.”
I gave him a look—and then realized what kind of shop talk we’d been having for the last thirty minutes. I rolled my eyes. “Oh God. Okay. No, I don’t dance anymore, but I used to—not at a strip club, though. No, I’m not a pro, in any sense of the word. I just like sex is all, all right? And yeah, if you make me feel bad for that, I’m going to throw what remains of my milkshake at you.” I shook the thick old-fashioned milkshake glass mine had come in between us, making its last half inch of contents slosh. “Does that cover it?”
He stared me down with eyes that were too curious for their own good. “No.”
I gave him my most imperious look, learned from years of watching Rosalie, tinged with my current high level of amusement, lifting my chin up. “Don’t make me beg you, ’cause that’s not my style.”
Nilesh rolled his full lips between his teeth like he needed to do that to help him hold back words. “All right then, I won’t.” He jerked his chin at me. “You want to come home with me?”
The waitress chose then to come back and drop our ticket off. I reached for it before he did, and held it down with a fingertip, which I then slowly slid toward him. “Only if you pick up the tab.”
We didn’t hold hands or anything, walking out to his car, because this evening was still well within the realm of the fuck buddy, but I was full now and had essentially been asleep for a week, so I had a lot of catching up to do. Plus, to be honest, I wasn’t in a hurry to go back to give Jack bad news—that would come on its own, given time.
Nilesh kept up a light banter with me while we drove to his side of the city, and we got out in front of an apartment complex a little nicer than Jack’s—it had fountains, and I could see a pool—but everything changed once we got into an elevator alone.
“I kinda can’t believe you’re here,” he told me, crowding me against a wall.
I grinned up at him. “You’re supposed to keep things like that to yourself.”
“Why?” he asked.
“You know how it goes—you sound too into me, and I go and ghost you because I can’t ‘handle commitment’ or whatever it is that dudes do.”
“Oof,” he teased as the doors opened. “Sounds like you’ve been burned.”
“Whatever,” I said, shrugging as I boldly stepped out. Usually it was me doing the ghosting, because up until very recently, there was no way to actually explain my life to anyone. Hi, I live at a vampire’s beck and call, and if she ever thinks I’m getting too close to you, she’ll murder you without a second thought. No part of that would sound good on a dating profile.
He waited inside the elevator, watching me, holding the door open with his hand.
“What?” I asked him, right before it started to beep a soft complaint.
“Well, while we’re living in the land of absolute honesty—I’m torn,” he confessed.
“Between what?”
“Holding out for something real with you, or getting to use my dick again.”
I took a step back, measuring him. I tilted my head, letting my long dark hair sweep to one side. “Why not both?”
He stepped out of the elevator and it finally closed behind him. “In that case—I’m in five-twenty-two.”
By the time we reached his door he was all over me. He reached into his pocket for his keys, at the same time as I reached into his pocket for him, and he muttered an imprecation at having to pull back from kissing me for long enough to open the door.
But then it was open and we were through, dancing backwards, me letting him lead me to his room. The glances I caught of things were tasteful and lush, dark colors, rich fabrics, and I didn’t give a fuck as long as I was about to get some. I felt a bed behind me, he grabbed my waist and picked me up and tossed me on it, where I bounced while he went and pulled the chain on a dim lamp to one side.
Separated for a second, I got a chance to see him smiling, reaching through his nightstand, pulling out condoms and some lube. I wrinkled my nose at him. “Probably not anal tonight,” I said, and he laughed.
“Just trying to be polite.”
“Oh, in that case, do you have any Diet Coke?” I asked. He paused at the side of his bed, one hand on the waistband of his jeans, trapped by my request. I dissolved into laughter. “Oh my God,” I groaned, still giggling. “Sorry, I misspoke, I meant Diet Cock, only like, I’ve seen it it’s not diet—oh, just c’mere and show me that thing,” I said, crawling up to him across his neatly made bedspread to put my hands on his belt.
It was his turn to laugh. “I don’t ever think I’ve been with a girl like you before,” he admitted, watching me work.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I told him, pushing down his boxer briefs to pull his hard-on out.
“It’s not. It’s most definitely not.”
He was thick and warm, and I already knew what he’d feel like between my thighs. The wide head of his penis poked out from his sheath, and I wrapped my hand around it lightly, gently pulling it back, exposing more of its ruddy, eager length.
“I take it you’ve been with uncircumcised guys?” he asked me, looking down at me in wonder.
“I’ve been with creatures you wouldn’t believe,” I told him, as I took the tip of his cock into my mouth to kiss.
I was right, he was a jaw-ful, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try, and I knew other things to do besides. I spent my time investigating the edges of his head with the tip of my tongue, and then working my mouth back and forth on his shaft as I uncovered it, while using his foreskin to stroke him. I listened to him grunt above as he gently rocked his hips, both of his hands lifting my hair up so he could watch me. And then I kissed over his foreskin, all the way down to his sack, and started licking up its rippled skin.
“Oh, fuck, that’s gonna make me cum if you’re not careful.”
“That only makes me want to do it more,” I told him, then pulled one of his balls into my mouth to suck at it.
He made a somewhat pained sound above me, then used my hair to pull me back. “Luna,” he said, staring at me for a moment, before taking off his shirt and kicking off his shoes. My estimation of him in Dark Ink’s office had been correct—he really was beautiful, now that I could see all of him. “Take all that off,” he told me, wanting me to do the same.
I swallowed, and pulled my shirt off, and my skirt, and my underwear, no biggie, just kind of casually being naked in a mostly stranger’s room. And then he sank forward on the bed to be beside me, kissing me again.
It was different from then when we were in the office. Softer . . . and possibly more meaningful. The part of me that Rosalie had trained to trust nothing and be feral wanted to get up, grab my clothes, and bolt . . . but there was a small and growing part of me that liked this. He brought his body alongside mine and kissed down my neck, stroking my waist and breasts, just taking me in. I held his head to my chest and breathed heavy, drawing my inner thigh up the outside of his leg. His lips kissed and sucked my nipples, his teeth softly clacking against their barbells, and I rocked my hips against him without thinking.
“Yeah?” he asked, pushing me onto my back, and holding himself above me.
I reached over and got a condom for him in answer. He gave me a grin and tore it open with his teeth, while balancing on one arm. “Want help?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, offering it over. He reached down and pulled his foreskin back, so I could slide the condom on, while pinching its tip. He then angled himself down, using the base of his cock like a lever to play himself against me, up and down, up and down, nudging my clit and making me open up for him without him pushing in.
I liked it, even as it was tormenting me. “You waiting for an invitation?” I asked. “I’ll, like, run out to a stationary.”
He grinned again, leaving himself lined up, and then lowering himself to his elbows above me. “No,” he said. “I just wanted you looking forward to this,” he murmured, as he began to push in in earnest.
I closed my eyes and moaned, beginning to feel full in all sorts of delicious ways again. His lips traced at my neck, and my nipples felt every brush of his skin. “I’m sure someone’s told you before you’ve got a big dick, right?”
He chuckled against me, stroking steadily. “Yeah.”
“Then . . . where’s the girlfriend? Or the line of girls, out the door?”
“Well, see, the story in Nashville, that you didn’t let me tell you, is that I lost a bar bet, and have the world’s worst tattoo now on my back.” He pulled his head up from my neck and gave me a shit-eating grin, while his hips kept stroking his cock slowly back and forth inside me.
I snickered beneath him. “That is a lie.”
He gave me an innocent look. “How would you know? You haven’t seen it,” he said, and shifted his hips up, locking us tight. I panted as he ground himself against me, hilt deep, the fat head of his cock rubbing places deep inside. “So this is as far as I get. The girls sleep with me, but then afterwards they see that tattoo, and walk right on out.”
I moved to put my fingers in his mouth, and he let me. “Shut up,” I demanded. “Just shut up and fuck me.”
He laughed and did as he was told.
Usually I needed some clit-play to come, but what Nilesh was stirring in me was unholy. If he could only be patient, I felt sure I could manage, and for his part he seemed content to slowly conquer me, one slow and thorough thrust at a time. And he kissed me even slower than that, trailing his mouth down my jaw and out to my shoulder’s point.
How long had it been since someone had kissed my neck and I hadn’t had to worry about being bitten? I ran my hands through his hair and down his back and nuzzled my face into him. He smelled like sweat, and shampoo, and soap, and skin, and I liked all of it against me.
Then he looked up, and smiled, and kissed my lips almost chastely, considering what the rest of our bodies were doing, before running the line of his nose beneath my chin.
It was such a gentle gesture and I was . . . well . . . me. And as much as I liked having his attention now, if this was real, where would we be in fifteen or so years when the genetic disease I carried crashed through my mind like a drunk on a bender, ruining my memories, my ability to speak, and took away my control of my body?
“My beautiful bloodslave,” my Master’s voice echoed from somewhere inside my mind. My eyes rolled wide open and I looked around. Just because I couldn’t see my Master among all the other shadows didn’t mean he wasn’t there. “Make room,” he commanded me.
I felt his presence all across my body, pressing any piece of skin that Nilesh had left free. He needed to be fed, it was up to me to do it . . . and if I didn’t—I didn’t want to know what would happen. I tensed up beneath Nilesh, and he quickly stopped.
“You’re so big I’m sore, from earlier tonight,” I lied, though it wasn’t far from the truth.
He looked pained on my behalf. “Lube?”
“No—position change?”
He smiled at me. “You just want to see my tattoo,” he said, but he let me twist him so that we were lying on our sides. He brushed back a lock of my hair that’d fallen forward. “Better?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I breathed. I could feel my Master’s slow touch across my back now. He was being gentle, and I knew that I was lucky for it.
“You’re sure?” Nilesh checked in again.
