Darkened Days (5 page)

Her rage-filled shriek nearly split the eardrum in his right ear.  It took a lot more than painful injury to phase
him.  Using his superior vampire strength, he contained her twisting body and flying fists long enough to carry her into an adjacent room that was probably the manager’s office.  He  dumped her on the carpeted floor quickly when he felt blunt human teeth rip into his hand.

“What the fuck?  You
bit
me!”

Starla scrambled off the floor and faced him grinning.

“Vampire.  Look it up.”

“Not the same thing.  That fucking hurts!”

“Poor baby.  Like you haven’t been bitten before!  I get bitten every time someone mounts me!”

Jacob wasn’t missing the theme.  She didn’t say “every time I have sex.”  She said “every time someone mounts me.”  It wasn’t entirely consensual.  He knew it wasn’t rape, she was too strong to allow that, but they were using her for sex.  That made it abusive.  He was furious.  No wonder she was so angry.  She thought she’d been abandoned in a brutal world.  So far, it had been true.

Calmly, he pulled two chairs out and faced them toward each other.  He sat in one and waited for her to take the other.  She didn’t move.

“Starla…”

“Star.  That’s what they call me.  I haven’t  been that mewling little virgin from Alaska for a long time now.”

That sort of shocked him.  “Virgin?”

She snorted on a bitter laugh.  “Close as.  Might as well have been.  Missionary style one or two times each with only two inexperienced boys.  Vampire life changed
that!
”

“Starla.  Sorry, Star. Please sit down.  I need to speak with you about your cadre of vamps.  What they are doing is against protocol in the vampire community.”

“You guys have rules?  I’ve never heard of that.”

“Informal.  More a code of conduct.  It’s to protect us all.  You do know we live amongst our human brothers undetected, don’t you?”

Jacob pushed the seat towards her with his foot.  She looked at it as if he’d shoved a rotting corpse against her.  But she pushed it back against the desk, slipped up to sit on the desktop, and rested her feet against the chair back.

Jacob averted his eyes since her left foot was raised high and gave him a perfect shot beneath the skirt.  She was not wearing underwear.

Starla smiled and leaned toward him, both breasts in danger of complete escape from the stressed C cups.

“Hm. Why aren’t you looking at me?  Don’t you like what you see?”

He kept his eyes averted until she laughed again.

“Big, bad,
old
vampire…don’t you think you can handle me?”   Her fingers wandered down to caress herself, just to get a rise out of him.  It worked.  He shook his head as he glanced there.

His eyes shot back up to her face.

“It’s Jacob.  And I may have been around a lot longer than you, but don’t make the mistake that I’m too old or any less virile.  I could teach you things.  Do things to you that would make you scream for more.  You think those boys know how to make love to a woman?  One night in my bed and you would beg me to fuck you every night.”  He released a long slow breath.  “But I won’t.”

Her finger slipped deeper and she laid her head back.  When she opened her eyes a moment later, she watched as his eyes darted back to her hand again.

He’d had enough.  She should know better than to tease and tempt him.  A whoosh of air and he was on her, pulling her hands up and away from her crotch.  Starla leaned into him and pushed up on her knees to wrap her arms around his neck.

He turned his head aside.

“Starla, no.  I’m your protector.  I was sent here to bring you safely back to the villa where Eillia is waiting for you.  You can stop right now.  I won’t take advantage of you.”

She grabbed his head and forced it around to face her breasts within inches of his tongue.

“Sorry, protector.  It’s too late for safe.  And everyone else has taken a piece of me.  Come on.  You vampires love sex.  I’m not too bad for a novice.  I can give you a great hard-on and orgasm.  Been told I have a wicked tongue.  If I do that for you, will you show me what you meant?   About making a woman scream?”

He looked up at her just as she surged forward to press herself against him again.  Her nipples grazed his forehead and he felt the rush of hot blood fill him. 
This could not happen
.  No matter how enticing, he would not become just another man who forced himself inside her to use her young body.  It made him sick that he had not been able to find her sooner. Now that he had, she was going back to Koen’s if he had to carry her the entire way on his back.  He smiled as he thought that it was probably exactly how it would go.

Starla found him a challenge.   Every vampire and human man she’d met the past few months wanted inside her.  Jacob was the first one she thought she might
want
there.  And he was telling her no.  Pushing her away.  It was a rejection she couldn’t accept.  What made him different?  Because he thought of himself as some sort of hero? 
Fuck that!

He made a move to step back just as she lunged at him, her long legs curled around his waist, her arms wrapped tightly around his broad shoulders
.  She could feel heavily muscled arms catch her before they both fell to the ground.  He was so much
bigger
than the cadre.  Why did she find that so stimulating?   And why the hell did she wonder if he would feel different inside her than the others?  The last thing she ever thought she’d want was to encourage a vampire to fuck her.

Wrapped so close, his scent overwhelmed her.  Her lips were nearly touching his neck.  She shot her tongue out to taste his skin and felt his body jerk.  With no warning to either of them, Starla suddenly buried her fangs in his neck and began to draw.  It wasn’t her intention; she knew it was considered rude to draw blood from a vampire without consent.  Just suddenly she wanted to taste him so intensely, she didn’t even think about what she was doing.  She barely heard his deep groan of protest.  Funny, she thought, as she drew hard and fast on blood that tasted better than anything
in her life.  Funny, how his groan of protest was more erotic than protesting.   She was stunned and thrilled when his arms tightened around her and he pulled her against his fully engorged cock as it strained against his jeans.  His hands moved up to encircle her head, his fingers twisted into her hair as he nudged her back against the wall and then licked all the way down her neck as she sucked from his.

Was this what it was supposed to be like?
  Starla felt intoxicated and so turned on she wanted him inside her immediately.  His tongue couldn’t be doing anything much different than the boys had done, right?  But it electrified her skin every place he touched.

Starla pulled her fangs and leaned back to give him full access.  His tongue became more aggressive, twisting down her neck, nipping, and stopped suddenly only when she snapped the bra loose and her breasts were free for him to continue his taste test.

Jacob held her close and stared at the perfect rose tipped breasts with nothing at all between him and those nipples.  It was obvious she wanted him to continue.  He desperately did, too.  But he lifted her off him, ignored the straining penis that already missed her against it, and pushed her gently back away from him.  It was a struggle to stand upright as he pushed himself back from her to gain more distance.  Every neuron in his brain told him he needed to get back on her and bury himself in her until he
did
make her scream. 
In ecstasy
.  Right now, he wanted nothing more than to taste every inch of her.

His voice was deep as he spoke, desperate to sound normal.

“You need to get anything you want to keep from the cadre’s lair.  I’m taking you to Eillia as soon as I can.”

With her hair wild and her breasts exposed, the nipples still erect,
Jacob almost said to hell with it, and took her right there on that dirty carpet. 

Starla stood proudly in front of him, no need to cover herself.

She knew she turned him on.  She knew she was making this harder for him.  Just to punish him, she ran her tongue around her lips and moved her hand caressingly across her taut stomach.

“You think the cadre will let you take me?”

“You think they can stop me?”

“I think you’re a lot bigger than they are.  But there are a lot more of them
.  So, yeah.  I think they’ll stop you.”

“What about you?  Do you want to stay with them?”

She was silent.  And turned away.  She moved at vampire high speed toward the front of the market and just cleared the entrance when he grabbed her.

A struggle began, but Starla realized she’d never win, so she stopped and went slack in his arms.

“What the hell do you want from me?  I offered you sex, but you refused.  I told you I won’t go back with you.  So what is it you want?”

“I want to make sure they aren’t abusing you.  I want to get you back to the Orientales safely.  Back to Eillia who really does care for you.  These asshole baby vamps don’t.”  He hesitated, then decided to push forward.  “Are they abusing you?  Sexually?  You have to tell me.  I’ll kill every one of them permanently.”

“Look. I’ve reconciled with this.  I know what I am.  They made it clear.  So you can stop taking responsibility for me.  I doubt I ever had a grand future anyway.  Beats carving up fish and fryin
g it in whale lard for six kids in a shack. Anyway.  You don’t even know me.  I sure the hell don’t know you.  Tell Eillia I’m fine and she can stop worrying.  The time to have given a shit was before I fell into this steaming pile of vampire crap.  But she didn’t trust me enough. Oh, well.  Some of us are predators and some of us are prey.  Luckily, I’m not just prey anymore.  Goodbye, Hero.”

Once again, she tried to speed from him, but Jacob could move much faster than a new vampire.  Age brought more strength and power, not less, in a vampire.

He caught her easily again, took her wrists firmly in his hands, and held her loosely enough to avoid hurting her, but tight enough she couldn’t even begin to pull free.  And she tried.  Minutes later, she looked up at him.

“There’s no point in this, old man.  I’m where I belong now. There’s no way to make me human again, right?   Just…”  She sighed deeply, her uncovered breasts pushed into him. 
Then she glanced away and back at him.  “Just let me alone.  Go home, Jacob.”

He looked into her eyes and saw defeat.  Pain. 
Shame?
   Nothing in this world would convince him now to leave her behind.   He unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it off, and gave it to her.

“Cover yourself.  We’
re out in public.”

She took the big shirt, buttoned up two of the buttons, and hugged her arms close to her body as she inhaled his scent from the soft f
abric.  He really did have the sexiest scent.  Her eyes moved across his body, now partially unclothed, and studied the tight muscled chest, arms and beautifully defined abs.  Warring instincts attacked her.  She wanted to keep the shirt close so she could always smell him.  And she wanted to throw it off to press against his naked skin.  One look at his face made the decision for her.  She kept wrapped tight inside his shirt. 

S
tarla wasn’t sure she’d ever felt as safe as she did right at that moment.  Because she was beginning to believe he might actually be some kind of hero.

“Is there anything at the cadre’s lair you want?”  Jacob asked again.

Starla shook her head.  “Nothing.  Except I want to say goodbye to someone.  I’ll go with you without resistance if you let me tell someone I’m leaving.  He’s been a good friend.”

“He?”

“Yes.  The only one of the lot who’s been kind all this time.  Most of the others are complete assholes.  I figure it comes with the territory.”

“It doesn’t.”  Jacob captured her face in his hands and forced her to look at him.

“It doesn’t.  Vampires are not assholes.  We’re human just as we have always been.   It’s just that some asshole humans become asshole vampires.  And some humans think that our special abilities make them gods.  That’s why we have rules.  That’s why your cadre of youth are riding for a fall.  I want you gone when that happens.  You don’t belong there.  So, I agree to those terms.   But make it quick.”

Starla nodded and followed him to a car he’d “borrowed” from a man back in Paris.

Once back in the city, she took him into the basement of a long-abandoned warehouse.  As she led him through the hallways and down the narrow stairwell, she realized she’d never really noticed how bad it smelled.   She was embarrassed to have him know she’d been living like this for two months.  When they hit the bottom of the stairs, she turned to him and pressed him back with her hands.

“Stay here.  I’ll be right back.”

“No.  I’m coming with you.”

“It won’t go well.  They’re likely to consider you a threat.  You might get hurt.”

Jacob tilted his head.