Eyes of Ice (Eyes of Ice Erotica Series) (12 page)

“He does like her. Very much. They’ve been dating for six months, now? But commitment doesn’t come easily to us. Usually, there’
s so much loss – of ourselves, who we used to be, of others – necessitated by infection, of course. By the time that we are at a stable and sufficiently capable state, it’s difficult to be willing to trust and love.” He frowned, and belatedly added: “I suppose.” He then quickly looked away from Cecelia and out at the darkened street, at the yellowed windows across the way.

There it is again
, Cecelia mused, remembering the restaurant and his far-off gaze.

“Do you trust me?” Cecelia asked. It seemed like the safest question
to
ask, given all the others that were still burning behind her lips – questions about him and his past, to be extrapolated to the existence of all vampires. And that nagging thought at the back of her mind that an interview with Andrew would make her career.

Andrew blinked
, though he did not look at her. “People, all people, have a tendency to consider trust as a binary choice of yes or no, when it exists on a spectrum of experience. Like sex.”

If it hadn’t been so eloquently worded, Cecelia would have thought his answer was a brush-off. As it was, she was inclin
ed to believe it was a brush-off nonetheless, merely an elegant therefore deft one.
So you’ve brought me here to tell me that you don’t trust me, but want me to trust you, a bloodthirsty monster, to … to fuck me.

“I don’t understand,” she said, knowing that her eyes were narrowed in frustration and not minding.
I don’t care if he knows when he upsets me. I don’t want to encourage the whole hiding-emotions thing he has going on. Like that’s healthy. Like that’s good for journalism.

“The spectrum of experience? Think of it in terms of yourself. To you, now, sex is very much a question of yes or no, just like trust.
You either have it, or you don’t. You are a virgin, or you are not. A good girl, or a bad girl.” He smiled, obviously pleased by his ability to apply his explanation to Cecelia’s personal experience, and Cecelia couldn’t help but smile a little too. She momentarily hated herself for the admission – but his smile alone was infectious. “However, with more experience, the further you have travelled and the more time you have spent on what you imagined to be the “yes” side of that delineation, you will realize that it is not in fact a question of yes or no, as you had previously thought, but in fact a multitude of questions, like
how
and
how much
and
where
, and
in what way
and
with whom
.”

Cecelia gaped at him, half
in indignation and half in mounting anger. “You can’t just simplify my outlook toward sexuality, a complicated combination of like, my parent’s views and my views and society’s views in a couple wordy sentences about how I don’t have any experience!”

He grinned
, raising his eyebrows. “Can’t I? What got you to this apartment tonight? A yes to sex.”

Cecelia had no answer to the devastating accuracy of that statement, so she focused on the content of his theory instead, her hands twisting in her lap in aggravation.
Andrew spoke again.

“Do you feel as if I’m picking on you?”

“Yes!” she replied hotly.

“Recall, then, my answer wasn’t just about you,” he encouraged.

“It was about you, and trust,” Cecelia recalled. “So…” she struggled, feeling like a particularly slow student after all, “so you’re saying that your experience is limited, too. With trust.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

Perhaps knowi
ng that a silence would follow his confession, Andrew stood. “Would you like a drink?” he inquired, and without waiting for an answer, strode towards the kitchen. Cecelia followed him, so lost in her thoughts that she only managed to respond to his question when he paused, his expression expectant, by an open cupboard packed with gleaming liquor bottles.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

She watched as he moved fluidly about the small kitchen, knowing that his grace was the result of his heightened senses of vampirism and not a particular familiarity with the space. But in spite of that asterisk, she still enjoyed watching him, and curiously looked on as he took down a glass tumbler, and used what looked like a silver pestle to grind a sugar cube at its bottom. Then he filled the tumbler halfway with an amber liquid, skinned a curling section of peel from an orange with a paring knife, and dropped it into the drink.

“Would you like to try?” he asked
, holding the glass out to her and bridging the distance across the counter in an easy gesture. She did, and couldn’t help making a face at the ashy taste. He laughed gently at this, and took the glass from her, saying: “I don’t make a habit of mixing fruity, girly drinks, but for you  I might make an exception.”

“No, I’m okay,” Cecelia protested, her mouth still bitter, midway through a resolution to never, ever try whiskey again. Andrew moved to stand next to her at the counter, leaning easily against the marble countertop and gazing at her once more. He didn’t take his eyes from her once as he
raised the glass to his lips and drank. Cecelia found herself unable to take her eyes off his lips.

“You never answered my question,” Cecelia said, moving away and walking back towards the living room.
Let him follow me now.

He did. “What question is that?” He settled easily onto his couch once more, and Cecelia, standing by the window, whirled, and glared at him.

“You remember,” she accused.

“I do,” he admitted, taking another sip. From her place by the window, she wasn’t sure whether he was still looking at her, or out at the other apartments across the street again. “I think you’ll have to rephrase it, now, though.”

It was like a game of cat and mouse.
Who’s the cat?
Cecelia dismissed this thought.
It doesn’t matter who the cat is. Either way, it’s a game, and two can play it.

“Fine. On this spectrum of experience, what is it –
how
and
how much
and
in what way
do you trust me?”

Andrew grinned, and as Cecelia was allowing herself a smile of satisfaction at successfully creating a counterpoint, she thought it must appear, if anyone was watching, that they were having a delightful conversation or sharing an innocent joke. Still, Andrew dropped his smile before answering, and Cecelia knew that he had taken her question seriously and to whatever heart he had.

Looking down, he replied: “How much? I trust you a great deal, Cecelia. How? I’ve told you before; you are good, and kind, and there is a rarity of that in people which I think you are too good and kind to be fully aware of. People say we’re blind to our own beauty, and that’s usually true, but sometimes our beauty blinds us to others, even if we don’t know it by name.” He let out a long sigh and ran a long finger around the rim of the tumbler. “I’m straying from your question. But you must remember; my experience with trust is lacking.”

“Like my experience with sexuality,” Cecelia told him
. Unwilling to be distracted by his eloquence again and resolving to think about much of his statement later, she asserted: “But that’s no excuse.”

“I hadn’t finished answering your question,” Andrew said,
draining the last of his drink and setting the empty glass on the coffee table. “You asked
in what way.
Well. You trust me. You trust me with your body, and with much of your mind. And like your goodness, that inspires me. The more you have given yourself to me, the more that I have taken, the more I have come to trust you. And so, our spectrums of trust and sexuality align, as you say.”

Cecelia felt that she was gaping again, and could only reply: “Oh.”

“Indeed.” He rose again, walked to the kitchen, and she still sat on the couch, thinking. She heard him place the glass on the counter, and then he returned to his own couch. “So. I see a way that we can continue to grow in a mutually beneficial manner.”

“I want to see you duri
ng the daytime,” Cecelia said. “You can go out in the daytime, can’t you?”

Andrew blinked. “
Yes. Why?”

“I don’t know.” This answer would not placate anybody, so she added: “Because it’s what people do.”

“When they trust each other?” Andrew guessed.

“Yes. When they trust each other, they don’t always meet in the dead of night to take their clothes off.”

“But you want to take your clothes off,” Andrew pointed out. “You want to see what else I can do to you. What I can teach you. How far you can be pushed.”

There’s a farther?
Cecelia wondered to herself.
Is that even possible? Haven’t I experienced all there is to experience out of sex? And: what more could you want?
But she couldn’t pretend that these protests were just that, a desperate attempt to keep herself from falling over to the side of lust and longing that ached, white-hot, inside her. So, not knowing what to say, she said nothing.

Andrew stood. “I can show you more,” he said. “I …
want
to show you more. Tell me how much you want it, Cecelia.”

He stood before her now, inches away. A single half-step would close the distance between them, but Cecelia did not dare take it herself.
She looked into his icy blue eyes and said, as honestly as anyone had said
I do
or
I promise
: “I want it.”

“This will be difficult,” he warned as he leaned closer, moving a hand over her shoulder. He placed a palm on the glass as if it was a wall to press her against.

“For whom?” she asked, hardly able to think as she stared into his darkening eyes.

“For both of us. The more extreme the act, the more attracted I am, the more difficult it is to restrain … the bad part of myself. Do you understand?” He was not looking at her eyes now, but somewhere over her head, and Cecelia recognized this as him straining at the bonds of his past and his trust once more.
He means it’s harder for him not to become violent
, she realized.
But he’s trying not to say it in a way that will frighten me. Or himself.

“I understand. And for me?”

He looked back to her, and moved in for a lingering kiss. When he broke away, he said: “This is all new for you. This is the start of your spectrum. Some acts will be painful, or uncomfortable, or even alarming at first. You have already felt this.”

Drunk from his single
kiss, though, Cecelia felt as if she would agree to anything, and the words tumbled out of her mouth without a second thought. “I’m not afraid.”

   When he laid her on the bed this time, he jerked her panties down over her knees and to the floor, slipping her out of her heels as he did so. He then removed his shirt and pants, dropping them to the floor as well, his gaze never leaving her. Fluidly, he knelt before her on the bedspread, knees spread wide. Cecelia tensed, expecting his hands upon her once again, and caught sight of his member straining against the thin material of his boxers. Cecelia stared in confusion when he placed his hands on her knees, and lowered his head to her pubis, a smile playing across his lips.

He’s not going to –
she opened her mouth to protest, overwhelmed by shyness, but it was too late.

Cecelia arched her back in shock as his
mouth touched that most sensitive part of her body, and squirmed still more as, with her neck craned down, she saw his tongue skillfully glided over the partition of her vaginal lips. One of his hands moved possessively and commandingly to lay flat upon her stomach, pressing her down.

“Stop wriggling,” he ordered,
his eyes lowered on his task and a hint of humor in his voice. “Lay still.”

At first, all Cecelia felt was nauseated by fear and shame. She wanted nothing more than to slam her legs together, jump away, and pretend that this had never happened. But his mouth was so insistent on her still-sore flesh. And when Andrew’s
tongue began to circle teasingly around her clitoris, Cecelia felt as if she was melting like ice to his burning tongue, would soon be nothing more than a pool of quivering liquid before his touch.

A
cry surprised delight was wrenched from her as Andrew’s lips touched her now, soft and tenderly exploring their way with his tongue, but becoming more insistent as he alternately sucked and licked her, his head rolling slowly on his neck as he did so. Through a daze of pleasure, Cecelia saw that his eyes were half-closed, like he was enjoying some delicacy beyond compare.

A
familiar yet somehow different pressure began to build in her lower stomach and while Andrew continued his tasting of her, contrasting sharply with the actual sensations Andrew himself was creating – her vagina throbbed with a kind of rawness, her skin there was now so sensitive to Andrew’s determined torment.

“Ahh,” Cecelia whined. Wanting still more of the indefinable sensation,
Cecelia kept arching her back, but Andrew would, without ceasing his pleasuring of her, firmly press her down again with one hand to her lower stomach. Gasping out as his tongue flicked over her clitoris, she felt a sweat coming to her forehead, her neck aching as she twisted it against his pillow, unable to help her movement or control her body any more – the pleasure Andrew created was too intense, and it felt like she was on fire, his tongue the literally licking flame.

She couldn’t help it – her legs started to close and her hips began to rotate against Andrew’s face, she wanted him
inside
her, she thought she had never wanted him more – and she began bucking ever so slightly against him, moaning and pulsing, all previous embarrassment the vaguest of memories.

Just when she thought she the repetition of his tongue circling around her could not possibly stop,
Andrew abruptly altered his teasing. Lengthwise, he brushed his tongue lightly from her lower inner lips to crest powerfully at her clitoris, and a scream caught in her throat. His teeth slid over her on the way down, a cold contrast, and then his burning tongue performed the same upward motion again.

“Andrew!” she gasped, her hips jerking – she lowered her hands to twist in his dark hair, and a release tore through her, shaking her entire body.
  

It was as if he had read her wild mind for the single thought that she was as yet too shy to say:
I need you.

As strong as her desire had been for him inside of her once more, his swiftness to the point was a surprise. A rush of movement and he was at his knees again, a sharp jab of pain at her sex causing her to scream in shock and delight.

“You were ready for me,” he breathed, tilting her below him as if she weighed nothing. “You were ready for me to fuck you.”

It was true. He slid into her easily, his tonguing of her had excited her so, yet the walls of her burned he was filling her so, stretching her to what she was sure was her breaking point.

His pupils burned sapphire as he cradled her beneath him, his hands at the small of her back. This time, it seemed as if he was aware of her soreness, his thrusts slow and measured, as tantalizing as his mouth had been. While Cecelia turned her pelvis up to meet him, wanting him deeper, he guided his member to its hilt and then drew out to the tip, then guided it in once more. He repeated the technique a half-dozen times, letting her feel the entire length of him coursing inside her.

“Don’t stop,” Cecelia whispered into his downturned face.

“I’ll do what I like to you,” he breathed. He gripped one of her ankles and drew it up to his neck, resting it upon his collarbone, then did the same with the other. He held them there firmly, pounding into her more quickly and possessively, giving evidence to his ownership.

“Yes,” was all Cecelia could think to reply, overwhelmed by the size and pleasure of him, her fingers twisted in the sheets at her side.

Then his hand had dropped below his member to press, hard, at her anus. Cecelia jerked back in shock, her previous embarrassment resurfacing – but he had her at her ankles and refused to let her go, did not even pause in his thrusting.

“I want to fuck you here,” he murmured, and Cecelia’s choked on her own gasp of surprise as his index finger pressed against the spot. “You’re tight everywhere, Cecelia, but there ....”

He drew out of her again, just as suddenly as he had pushed into her, and spread her legs beneath him. There, he paused, the warm tip of his member resting at that what was now Cecelia was sure was her most forbidden and inaccessible of places.

“Remember what I said earlier,” he said softly, and he pinched one of her nipples delicately between his thumb and forefinger. Another new sensation, one that made Cecelia cry out in pleasure. “About the spectrum, and how there may be pain?”

She nodded, breathless, as much from anticipation and fear as from activity.

“This may hurt. But I will fuck you. I will go as far into your ass as I may,” he told her matter-of-factly.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

He grinned that feral smile in response, and was atop her in one easy motion, surging against her sphincter.

At first Cecelia thought he would be unable to enter. Her hips locked in anxiety, the wondered if he would be able to fit even an inch of his impressive length inside her. But then he grimaced in slight frustration and pushed against her harder.

He did not enter her anus as he had her vagina the night before – this was not an inch by inch, tender and gradual ushering into sexuality. As soon as he had breached the small resistance, he ripped all the way into her in a solitary jolt of force.

The pain was blinding at first
, causing pinpricks of lights to appear in Cecelia’s vision. She screamed unintelligibly, her entire body narrowing to that one point of stabbing agony, and her hands were balled into fists at the base of Andrew’s spine.

“Wait,” he commanded. “You’ll like this.”