He raised his face up from my chest, and his mouth and jaw were crimson with my blood. He spilled my legs to either side, and jerked me up, off the desk, so that I was suddenly pressed to the front of his body, my legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed me, kissed me with the taste of my own blood like metallic candy in his mouth.
He was making low sounds in his throat, and he drove us into the wall hard enough that my back slapped against it, hard enough that if he hadn't cradled my head, it would have hit the wall. He drove himself into me again and again and again, as hard and as fast as he could. I wasn't tight anymore, I was wet and loose, and it didn't matter.
His chest and stomach were decorated with my blood. Startling crimson splashes against the white of his body. He pressed his entire body against me as tight and close as he could, so that the slickness of blood began to flow between us, as he pinned me against the wall. I held him with my legs locked around his body, my arms locked around his shoulders, I held him, and he f**ked me. It was like he was trying to put a hole in the wall behind me, so that every thrust felt like it was pounding me into the wall, crushing me against his body. I almost said, enough, almost said stop, but as I drew breath for it, the orgasm came like a huge overwhelming wave. It engulfed me, and I clawed at him, and screamed, and bucked against the weight and strength of him so that the orgasm became another kind of struggle, another kind of fight. My teeth dug into his shoulder, my nails tried to find a way through his back, and my body rode his, while he pounded me into the wall, and somewhere in all of that I felt his body convulse, felt his h*ps drive in one powerful effort up and inside me.
He screamed as he came, and I felt him pour himself inside me, felt it as he put his hand against the wall and tried to steady us as his knees collapsed, and we ended on the floor with my legs still wrapped around his waist, him still inside my body.
His breathing was ragged, and his eyes unfocused, as he stared into my face. "Mon Dieu."
"'Wow' seems too junior high, but 'amazing' doesn't cover it," I said. I tried to touch his face, but found that my arms weren't working that well yet. "Just promise me we can do it again some night."
He smiled, and it was a tired smile, but it held an absolute delight in it. "That is one promise, ma petite, that I will happily make."
"I'll hold you to it," I said.
"Oh, no," he said, and found that he had enough strength left to lean in against me, "I will most certainly hold it against you."
45
We'd made our plan for the rest of the night. When we'd recovered enough to walk, we'd throw on our clothes. Pick up Nathaniel and drive to the Circus of the Damned. We'd tuck Nathaniel in somewhere, and Jean-Claude and I planned on a nice, hot bath. But before we'd even gotten to the throwing the clothes on part, my cell phone rang.
I almost didn't answer it, because no one calls at three in the morning with good news. The number blinking in the little window was Detective Sergeant Zerbrowki. "Shit," I said.
"What is it, ma petite?"
"Police." I flipped the phone open and said, "Hey, Zerbrowski, what's up?"
"Hey back at you. I'm across the river in Illinois, guess what I'm looking at?"
"Another dead stripper," I said.
"How'd you guess?"
"I'm psychic. I assume you want me to come down and look at the body."
"Never assume anything, but in this case, yeah."
I looked down at my blood-covered chest and the wound that was still seeping. "I'll be there as soon as I get cleaned up."
"You covered in chicken blood?"
"Something like that."
"Well, the body isn't going anywhere, but the witnesses are getting restless."
"Witnesses," I said, "we have witnesses?"
"Witnesses or suspects," he said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Come down to the Sapphire Club and find out."
"The Sapphire, isn't that the high end club, the one that calls itself a gentlemen's club?"
"Anita, I'm shocked, I didn't know you frequented the titty bars."
"They wanted to use vampire strippers, and I got to go talk to them about it."
"I didn't know that was part of your official job description," he said.
If it had been Dolph, I would have let it go, but it was Zerbrowski, and he was okay. "The Church of Eternal Life doesn't allow its members to strip, or do anything else the church considers morally questionable. So the club needed Jean-Claude's permission to import vamps from the next territory over."
"He gave it?"
"No."
"And you went with him to help decide?"
"No."
"You went alone?" he asked.
"No."
He sighed. "Oh, hell, just get down here. If you said vampires were supposed to stay away from this place, your boyfriend isn't going to be happy."
"Just no vamps on stage," I said, "other than that, not our business."
"Not on stage, at least not paid," Zerbrowski said.
"You said witnesses or suspects, and now you say no vamps paid on stage. Shit, are you sitting on some vamps that were in the audience?"
"Come and see, but I'd hurry, dawn's coming." He hung up.
I cursed softly.
"I take it a languorous bath is not going to be happening tonight," Jean-Claude said.
"No, unfortunately."
"If not a bath for you, then may I offer a quick shower here."
I sighed. "Yeah, I can't go see the police like this."
He looked down at his own blood-spattered body and smiled. "Perhaps for me, as well, tonight."
"We could conserve water, and share," I said.
He raised an eyebrow at me and smiled again. The smile said worlds.
"Okay, okay, I guess we'd get distracted."
"I am not sure I have the strength to be, as you put it, distracted quite so soon."
"Sorry, I keep forgetting boys don't recover as quick as girls."
"I am not human, ma petite, with another blood donation I could indeed recover."
"Really?" I said. My pulse sped just a little bit at the thought. Shit, I was too tired and too sore to be thinking of it again.
"Truly," he said.
"I think if I donate any more blood to anything tonight, it would be bad."
"It does not have to be your blood," he said.
I stared at him, and he stared at me. I said what I was thinking, which I'd almost broken myself of. "So what, you take blood from me, then we f**k, and you have a blood donor standing by, and we f**k. We could like, what, have a room full of donors and just screw until we were so sore, or so tired, we couldn't move?" I was sort of kidding. The look on his face wasn't. The look on his face, the expression in his eyes, made me blush.
I had a sudden image so strong, if I hadn't already been on the floor, it would have put me there. I saw Belle Morte stretched in the big bed, surrounded by candlelight. Asher and Jean-Claude were on the bed, too. There were men tied to the big posts of the bed, nude and pale, they were. Blood glittered in thin lines on their bodies, from neck, chest, the inside of their arms, down their legs. Not one bite apiece, or even two, but more than I could count. One man's head had slumped forward onto his chest, and he sagged against his bonds. If he breathed, I could not see it.
Jean-Claude pushed me out of his memory, it was almost a physical shove. I came back to myself, on the floor of his office, covered in my blood, the phone still in my hand.
"I would not have had you see that."
"I'll bet."
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "We were young and knew no better. Belle Morte was our God."
"You bled them to death so you guys could have some marathon sex session," I said it, and my voice wasn't horrified, in fact, it sounded empty. Because I could still see the memory, not in livid detail like it had been, but now it was in my head, too. God, I did not need someone else's nightmares.
"There are many things I have done, ma petite, that I would not have you know. Things I am ashamed of. Things that burn inside of me like bile."
"It was your memory, remember. I felt what you were feeling. There was no regret."
"Then I pushed you out too soon." He didn't pull me in, he simply stopped pushing me out, and I was back in that room. Back in that bed. I was inside Jean-Claude's head when he noticed the man on the bed that wasn't moving. He crawled across the bed and touched the cooling flesh. I felt his sorrow, felt his shame. Had his knowledge that these were humans that trusted us. Humans that we had promised to protect. Give us your blood and your bodies, and we will keep you safe. I looked back at Belle Morte stretched nude and luscious, under Asher's body. Asher's body before the human church had scarred him. I watched Asher's face lift up, meet our eyes, and in the middle of what Belle thought was the most sensuous of nights, the seed was sown that we must escape. That there were things that you did not do, and lines you did not cross, and she was not a god.