Inhuman Heritage (4 page)

“Take out your hair,” he said and his voice had gone deeper and husky. I fumbled in the elaborate style to pull the clips out of it and watched his reaction as it tumbled down my back. I stepped out of the heels and rounded the post to lie back on the bed. Aram slithered towards me, crawling over the top of me, sliding one of his legs between my thighs and I could see now that his feet were bare. I’d missed him taking off his shoes but it didn’t matter once he started kissing me again.

His mouth and tongue were wet on my skin. He kissed my collar bone and then spent ample time between each of my breasts trying to decide which one he liked the best. I was moaning quite heavily when he settled on the left one and gasped when his eager mouth caused his fangs to graze my breast. His knee between my thighs began to rub against me in a way that made my lower body contract and my eyes fluttered open and closed. When his hands found the edge of my panties and tore them too, I realized I was really going to do this. I was going to have sex with a vampire, with Aram.
God help me, what would my mother think?
I thought, stunned at my own lust and daring. My mother would have probably told me to have at it and make sure I had a wonderful time. She’d always been cool like that.

Aram’s hands were now on my inner thighs and he was pushing his body further down the bed and all thoughts of my mother whooshed out of my mind with the feel of his mouth on me. I squirmed and gasped which only seemed to delight him, it drove him onwards to do more and different things, each of which made me writhe in ecstasy. His lips and tongue were so skilled and slowly I began to feel something building, a growing weight somewhere just above where Aram was currently sucking. I had never had an orgasm before although I had read about it, mostly from romance novels I would never admit to reading out loud for fear of titters and giggles from my friends. But reading about it and experiencing it were undoubtedly two different things. All of Aram’s preamble and teasing to ready me for this over the past few weeks had never quite gotten that far but had its desired effect, it made me hungry for more. I dug my fingers into Aram’s curls gripping them tight when he turned away from my core to nuzzle my thigh.

I felt his fangs a second before he bit down and screamed as the orgasm broke over me in a wave that sent me crashing back to the bed in blinded euphoria. My body kept shaking with littler waves as he sucked at the wound, then I felt his tongue slide out over the skin, gently licking till the two tiny fang marks closed off.

He looked up at me, licking blood and other things from his lips and by the time I could focus on his face, his pants, the nice black ones he’d been in all night, were gone. I looked down his back as he leaned over me to lick circles around my belly; Aram’s butt was pale, high and tight. It was a fabulous bottom and I wanted him to move closer so I could get my hands on it. I looked towards his face to ask him just that and I saw another part of his anatomy that was a lot more interesting.

Erect, Aram stood out from his body by what must have been about eight inches. It was pale like the rest of him but flushed by the blood he had just taken giving it a pink almost mother of pearl look. The hair around it was light brown, very fine and looked like it might be soft under the touch. Aram stroked my face and I turned to look up at him realizing I’d been staring at it.

“Do you want me to?” I looked down again involuntary so he would get my meaning. He smiled but shook his head.

“Not this night although sometime I would very much enjoy that.”

He pressed his mouth to mine and he tasted metallic and sweet. I reached down while he was focused on our kiss and ran my hand into the hair above his erection. It was soft and as I slid my hand up along the length of him, I was so into the new sensation of touching him so intimately, he shuddered and moaned. I kept stroking him till he forced my hand away from him and forced them up to the top of the bed. I looked at him with a naughty smile which he returned. He nibbled my ear which at the moment happened to really do it for me and whispered into it.

“Are you ready my darling?”

I couldn’t speak, I could feel him pressing against my flesh, demanding permission, demanding entrance and it stole all the loving and sweet words I had dreamed up to use at this moment. Instead I just nodded. He held my hips in both his hands and–with a talent he must have developed over years-he slid into me in one, long, smooth line. I cried out, only a little from pain but mostly from pleasure and wrapped my arms around him. I felt one little tear roll down my cheek as he drew his hips back and thrust into me again. Aram kissed the little tear and with a smile decided to tease me just a little.

“Why the tear my Andra? Do I feel that good?”

I smacked his shoulder with my fist, groaned when he thrust into me and ran my hands down his back finally gripping hold of that award winning butt. He liked that, I could tell, he liked it even more when I dug my fingernails in. Then I leaned up close to his neck and I bit him. He bit me, it seemed only fair that I should be allowed to bite him back. That however really did it for him. He grabbed my leg at the knee, wrapped it around his waist and drove into me again and again and again till my body was flying and I was screaming out into the dark wonder of the night.

Chapter Three

Our dates of late had started the same and now they were ending the same, not that I minded as I threw my head back against the pillows, holding on to him for dear life and screaming till my lungs gave out. Aram was the most fantastic lover. He had started me on a thorough education and awoken a side of me I’d never been sure I’d possessed.

Aram shook above me, lowering down on top of me, hot, sweaty and glowing as he slid those velvety rich lips over mine. We lay still joined in the comfort of his bed for a little while. I was perfectly happy. Aram apparently was not. He rolled onto his back, sat up, ran his fingers back through his hair and headed for the bathroom. I watched him go admiring the red rivets my nails had made down his buttocks.

Aram and I had been officially dating for a month if you didn’t count the time between my agreeing to go out with him and our first official date. If you did it was more like six or seven weeks. I let my lungs and heart both slow down. Sex with Aram was beyond fantastic and it was almost like having a bi-daily workout which was pretty much how often we saw each other. When I could, I sat up wrapping the sheet around me modestly and took a book from the nightstand. It was one of Aram’s first editions and he permitted me to read it as long as it did not leave his room. I removed my bookmark and joined Elizabeth Bennett in her world.

Aram came back out of the bathroom, he was wearing some tight black trousers that I used to like very much because they had made his butt look wonderful, but then I had seen him naked and preferred his bottom au natural.

“Pride and Prejudice, pet? Shall I be your Mister Darcy?”

“Mmm,” I said just to acknowledge that he was speaking to me. I didn’t get until a few minutes later that he was suggesting some sort of role-playing.

“You would perhaps like to see me walk out of a lake dripping with water.”

“Wouldn’t that require both a lake and going outside during the day?” I asked ever practical.

“Aww, pet, you spoil yet another of my fantasies.” I looked at him lowering the book into my lap. There was something brewing in those eyes of his, I could tell. It hurt me a little too much just to sit there and let the silence between us go on.

“What’s wrong?”

“This is, pet, you and me.”

I put the bookmark back in the book, put it back on the table and grabbed a pillow wrapping my arms around it. We were going to have a talk, one of those relationship talks that I dreaded. Usually it was the woman that gave this talk but with me, it had always been the man who had sat me down to have a word.

“I thought we did just fine, you did, well, enjoy it didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said and his eyes softened when he saw the doubt on my face, “but that is not the point. It is just that this is all we do, Andra, we do not go out, we do nothing, just fuck.” I winced at the coarse word. I knew he was stressed because usually he would call it making love.

“I suppose that’s my fault is it? You were the one who pursued me and now you’re disappointed because I fall short? Do you want me to apologize?”

“You refused me for so long, now we are together, do you not want to make more of our relationship? I am beginning to think that you are ashamed to be seen with me in public?”

Jesus!
I thought.
Where was that coming from?

“It’s nothing like that. Don’t think that. I’m not bothered at all by what other people think of you and me. There’s just bugger all for us to go out and do.”

“We could go to dinner!”

“With only me eating, it’s a little weird.”

“The theatre?”

“I don’t like going to the Swan because you know why and you only want to take me there because you like rubbing it in his face. I would be happy to go to Birmingham to see something but you were against going so far in case you were needed here. And when I suggested the cinema you turned your nose up at it.”

“I do not care for modern theatre, all bangs and explosions and ludicrous stories about vampires who do not drink blood. How about we just go for a walk? Or talk?”

“We’re talking now aren’t we?”

“That is not what I meant, Cassandra, and you know it. I want us to have a love that is known to the world, not just hidden here in this tiny little room.”

“I’m not hiding,” I said softly knowing that when he got really cross was when he started to call me Cassandra. He glared at me. “I’m not! This is just what it’s like to be with me, to be with a human, we’re boring!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be together then,” he said snorting a laugh like it was funny. “I’ve got to close up so you’d probably be best off going home like usual now.” He walked out.

I sat in awed silence with the sheet wrapped tightly around me; then I was abruptly enraged. How dare he? How dare he pursue me for years, to get exactly what he wanted only to declare that I was boring and unsuited to him? I was mad, madder than I had ever been. The only problem was that when I got mad my power tended to flex and things caught fire. It took me a minute before I smelt the burning and saw the edge of the bed canopy was on fire. I swore and started trying to pat out the flames with my bare hand. Fire didn’t burn me, it never had. A whoosh of white foam startled me and I jumped back. Jareth stood by the edge of the bed, a fire extinguisher in his hands. I made sure I had the sheet tightly hiding my body.

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically. He didn’t say anything so I started to ramble. “I’ve gotten better control over it than I used to but it’s still got its own pros and cons, I no longer get starbursts over my eyes but I still seem to set things on fire when my mood gets really...dark.”

“It is okay,” he said setting the extinguisher down. “I understand how what my brother said might make you feel.” When Jareth said brother he didn’t mean in a vampire solidarity way, Aram and Jareth when alive had been brothers. Jareth was the elder and had in fact been the one who had turned Aram.

“Of course you would.” I had to admit that my voice sounded just a little bit snippy. Vampires have talents and Jareth’s particular talent was empathy. He could feel my emotions and even make me feel his. Aram had told me. It made sense of his long glances at people, that he would study their body language more carefully when he felt their emotional state shift. He was the vampire equivalent of a mood ring. He took a seat on the edge of the bed and I naturally shifted away from him-because I was naked-but unable to go too far as he had sat on the sheet and it was straining to both cover me and be held down by him.

“I do not think my brother knows how to be in a modern relationship. In our day when you cared for a woman you either married her or made her your mistress. He wants you to be his bride; brides must be courted in his mind. However, mistresses you just buy the occasional gift for and have sex with. They were often secret and neither party acknowledge each other in public.”

“So I’ve fallen into the wrong end of his outdated spectrum,” I said gruffly not really having anything to say to that. Jareth chuckled.

“He loves you and he is an old fashioned romantic. He does not know how to adjust.”

“So, his solution is to break up with me?”

Jareth said nothing although it looked like a challenge for him not to speak his mind. The only problem I had was Aram was a five hundred-year-old vampire, not that I was ashamed of that fact, but you couldn’t just do things with him that you could do with a normal guy. He was nowhere near normal. Magnus and I-although I hated to think of him-used to be just able to curl up and watch a DVD together. I couldn’t imagine doing that with Aram and I had to stop myself every time I went to suggest it. The creepy thing about eating out together was that he didn’t eat and I felt like I was torturing him with forgotten sensations when I ate in front of him. What I had said about the theatre was true; he only wanted to go if we went to the Swan so he could rub having me on his arm into Magnus’s face. Aram was a tiny bit petty. Sex was the one activity for couples that had not changed in a millennium, and even there we kind of stuck to the basics because I was too ill experienced to attempt something risky.

“Your lack of need for open display would not bother me.” Jareth’s words made my head snap up and I looked at him like I had never seen him before. His eyes were dark. I swallowed hard as he crawled closer to me.