Unbitten (15 page)

She surprised herself with that thought, because when she
had been in the forest, even when the woman had been
plucking at her shirt, she had not felt like her life was
in danger. Or she hadn’t allowed herself to feel it
until now.

Jo bowed her head for a moment and tried to still the
chattering of her mind. She looked up to see David looking
intently into her eyes. He reached his hand out and stroked
her arm, and she could read the questions in his
face–may I continue? Do you like this?

She had never experienced physical desire as a conversation
like this. She felt another wall of defenses crumbling.

Without a word, he took her hand and led her inside. Albert
was lurking around the entryway and David nodded to him.
“Drinks in the second salon,” he said as they
went by. He had his arm around Jo now, and she leaned into
him just a little.

They sat on a velvet-cushioned settee and looked into each
other’s eyes. Gently he pulled a bit of leaf out of
her hair. She increased the pressure of her hand, holding
his. They were in that best of all moments, the moment when
they both knew they were going to be making love that night
for the first time. Without saying a word, they agreed to
prolong it, to wait until they could not stand to wait
another second.

Albert brought drinks: another cognac for David, and a hot
toddy for Jo to help with the chill. Albert generally
disapproved of David’s English predilections,
considering them to be a few steps too many in the wrong
direction, but in the case of a woman cold from a moped
ride at dusk in October, he agreed that a hot toddy was the
correct choice.

Jo sipped her hot drink and looked at David over the edge
of her cup. He smiled slowly at her.

“I want you to talk horses again,” he said,
wanting only to hear her talk about something she was
passionate about.

“Ha,” she said. “Ungrateful beasts! They
leave you out in the woods just to get home for a few
oats,” she said.

“Those oats must be extremely tasty,” he said,
looking at her mouth, then back at her eyes, then back at
her mouth.

It felt to Jo as though he were flicking her, teasing her,
with his tongue, even though they had not yet kissed.

“And Drogo must be deranged. How he could willingly
decline to have you on his back, with your legs around him?
Unimaginable,” he said softly, letting a few fingers
drift up to her neck, and pushing her hair back, stroking
her skin.

“What time is dinner,” asked Jo.

“Eight. Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Very,” she said.

“And what do you want?” he asked, letting one
hand fall to her leg, just above the knee, and rubbing with
his thumb the patch of suede on the inside thigh of her
jodhpurs, lightly, just hard enough not to tickle.

“I want everything,” she said, her eyes
gleaming. “But maybe, I would start with
some…berries in cream?” she said. She put her
arms around his broad shoulders, feeling amazed by his
size, his touch.

“Berries in cream are very good,” he said. He
continued to stroke her neck with one hand, and with the
other he reached up and slowly unbuttoned the top button of
her shirt. “Delectable,” he said, looking down
her shirt and licking his lips.

“And juicy,” she said. “I would like to
eat them one by one, and feel them bursting in my
mouth,” she said, her voice turning almost to a
whisper as he unbuttoned another button, and another,
infinitely slowly, as though they could spend the rest of
their lives on the velvet settee, touching, and looking
into each other’s eyes.

Finally her shirt was open to her waist. David moved the
flaps of shirt to either side so he could see her fully.

Jo loved watching him look at her. She loved seeing his
face become greedier, hungrier. His upper lip was seeming
to enlarge, become engorged.

“And what about you?” she said. “What do
you want?”

“Blood sausage,” he said. “The fresher,
the better.” A little more roughly, starting to
breathe more heavily, he undid her bra in front, pushing it
out of the way, and could not hold back a moan.
“Jo,” he said, pulling her up to straddle him,
her breasts moving delectably near his mouth, “I
think we should leave the salon and go upstairs.” He
took one nipple into his mouth, very very slowly, and
sucked it.

“We are in a public room, and guests could come in at
any moment,” he said, giving the other nipple his
attention, then putting his face in between her breasts and
kissing her.

Jo could barely hear him. It felt like her groin was on
fire, her insides melting for him, her nipples giving her
thundering jolts of exquisite pleasure. She could feel his
cock under her and she rocked herself against it. He wanted
her to get up and
walk
? She wasn’t sure she
could.

Just as she had that thought, he stood up, and powerfully
built vampire that he was, he held her against him with one
arm, scooped up her legs with the other, and carried her
through the first salon and towards the grand staircase
that ascended from the main foyer.

“Good night, sir,” said Albert.

Jo was positive she saw him smirking.

“We got her back,” David said, sounding so
happy, so relieved. “Good night, Albert,” said
David, his eyes on Jo, moving from her eyes down her body
and back again as he effortlessly climbed the stairs.

Jo didn’t think she had ever been picked up and
carried like that before. She had had no idea how excited
it would make her. It was all she could do to stop herself
from jumping out of his arms and mounting him on the
staircase.

David held her body so close he could hear her heart
beating, could see the arteries and veins in her neck,
could feel how her excitement was causing her blood to rush
around her body, whooshing faster and faster the more
aroused she got. At the landing he buried his face in her
hair, his mouth on her neck. He wanted to bite her more
than he had ever wanted to bite any woman in his two
hundred and four years as a vampire.

Jo had resisted longer than any other woman, and now that
she was giving in–more than giving in, now that she
wanted
him–he wanted to ravage her, suck
her, make her scream for more of him.

But he held himself back.

He took a deep breath, with his cheek by her neck, in her
hair; he ran his tongue over his throbbing fangs, and then
lifted his head up, met her eyes, and said, “I am
looking forward to being inside you more than anything I
have ever done in my life.”

Jo nearly passed out when she heard that.

David took her up to her tower room and laid her on her
bed, neatly made by the Château staff. She was rather
grimy from the long ride and tumbling around in the forest,
but to David, that only added to her wonderful earthy
perfume–and he especially appreciated that she was so
hot for him that she was not stopping to fuss about her
hair or a little mud.

He grabbed one boot and pulled while Jo stared at his
massive erection. Then the other. Then David kneeled beside
the bed and peeled off her jodhpurs, her socks, her shirt,
and her bra. And he kissed all that skin he had uncovered,
he went over her body kissing and nipping as though he
wanted to consume her, and with every kiss, Jo felt herself
closer to the edge, to losing control completely.

He lay beside her and with his big hands he stroked her all
over, petting her really, getting to know her body, his
eyes taking in every detail of her nakedness.

Jo’s cell phone rang, making them jump, but of course
their attention stayed right on each other, David nuzzling,
tongue tasting now, looking up at Jo and then tasting some
more, licking, and all the while their hands were all over
each other, trying to cover every millimeter.

Eventually, the waiting, the prolonging, had gone as far as
it could go. David stood up on Jo’s bed and
unbuttoned his jeans. He wrenched off his shirt and dove
down beside her, wriggling out of his underwear.

Jo grabbed his cock and felt it spring into her hand. She
gripped him firmly with both hands, making David moan, and
then he flipped onto his back and pulled her on top of him,
sliding his cock inside her, thrusting, thrusting, Jo
calling his name, then kissing him, and their hands were
everywhere so that they knew nothing except an intensity of
pleasure in which every touch was equally surging them on
to climax, whether it was on a nipple or the ass or a
tongue or a neck or a lip.

David suddenly brought his hands up on either side of her
face and looked into her eyes, said her name, and they came
together in floods of tears and juiciness and sounds they
had never made before.

It was, all in all, an epic fuck.

The Marquis de la Motte walked briskly out of the
Montparnasse train station, glad for once to be in Paris,
looking forward to dinner and his meeting with Claudine and
the crew at Polylabs. Henri had a lithe, muscular grace,
and moved nimbly through the crowds despite the light rain
and umbrellas and people stopping suddenly to consult maps
and dragging suitcases on wheels and shouting in languages
other than French while gesticulating at eye-level.

He did not mind the rain. Vampire skin, though it feels to
the touch just like human skin, has some special
qualities–extremely fast healing, for one, and water
resistance, for another. They carry umbrellas only to keep
their clothing dry.

Henri had forgotten to bring one, as he usually did, and he
almost bought a cheap one from a vendor by the taxi stand.
But Henri abhorred the cheap, the throwaway, the
one-use-only. Even though Polylabs was quite a ways away,
he decided to walk, and let his clothes get wet, and enjoy
the night.

He pictured a map of Paris in his mind, and stabbed an
imaginary pin into the address, and let his legs follow. He
did his best to blend in with the crowd, which did not work
especially well because his looks were so striking.
Parisians and tourists saw a tall, very well-built man,
with a mane of sandy hair curling down, nearly to his
shoulders. Full lips, a strong nose, the planes in his face
sharp and masculine.

But unlike his brother, when Henri was around people, he
had no particular wish for attention. His thoughts and
words had no edge of demand to them, no urge for domination
just for domination’s sake. Usually, he was thinking
about one of his projects, turning a problem over and
upside down in his mind, and then got a little jolt of
surprise when he realized that he was not alone, and
possibly someone was expecting him to say something.

Sometimes, the people we are the most easily attracted to
are the ones who flatter us, one way or another, and Henri
was too honest to be capable of flattery.

Because it was Paris, where he had been many times but was
still not home, not his everyday routine, he was paying
more attention to what was in front of him than to thoughts
of his work. He watched human mothers with their children
in strollers, adjusting vinyl rain-covers over them. He
watched twenty year olds working very hard at nonchalance.
He saw a young girl in her apartment, reading a book in a
window seat. Nothing very big-city, he thought. I might as
well be in Mourency, for all the thrill on the streets.

Henri did not see–or feel, or sense–any vampire
presence at all. This was curious. Paris is home not only
to a large population of vampires and their not-quite-human
friends, but part of that population is exceedingly rich,
unsurprising since vampires often are quite talented when
it comes to making and holding on to money. The Paris group
was well-known for its fondness for hard partying,
shape-shifting, drug-taking, and all kinds of things in
that line that did not interest Henri very much.

He was sort of a reactionary, when you got right down to
it. He liked things the way they had been when he was a
child, in the early 1800s. As much as he worked tirelessly
to make products and inventions that would improve the
vampires’ lot, at the same time, he was sorry anyone
had ever thought of the automobile. Much, much better to
still be riding in carriages, he thought.

He felt his cell phone buzzing in his pocket. It was
Claudine.

“Just checking your whereabouts, Henri,” she
said. “We’re very excited to see your
presentation. Will you be here soon?”

“I don’t know,” Henri said. “Not
sure where I am, I’m coming by foot. Still in the
14th, I believe.”

“I’d be happy to send a car for you, if
you’d like,” she said.

“Oh no, not–oh!”

“Change your mind?”

“Quite a coincidence,” said Henri in a low
voice. “I’m walking down a street, not a very
crowded one, you see,” he said, “and coming the
other way is the
gendarme
from my village!”

“And…what sort is he?” asked Claudine.
Meaning, the sort who knows your status, or the sort we
don’t have to bother about?