Chapter 2: Emilia

I couldn’t stop thinking about the vampire I had met at the bar that night. When I closed my eyes to go to sleep, his piercing red ones were there, studying my face with interest. He had been so sexy, so tempting to me even while I tried to close off my feelings and make my curiosity objective and emotionally distant. But there was something about him, that long, dark hair, those red eyes and heavy brow that made him look intense and sexy and brooding. The bar, too, had gotten to me. Though I’d tried not to show it, seeing the people performing their sex games, the BDSM rituals, made me hotter than anything I had experienced before. It had been an interesting night, for sure, and was one that I wanted to repeat.

I went back the next night, hoping to run into Eli there. He said he frequented the place a few times a week, and though we hadn’t made set plans to meet up there today, I figured I would go in and try to find him anyway. He was where I had found him the day before, and he gave me one of those low, seductive smiles when he saw me. My body reacted by flushing from top to bottom, and I bit my lip to try to suppress the feeling of desire that flowed through me just having met his eye.

“Hello, Emilia,” he said, gesturing for me to sit down. I didn’t, instead just looking at him.

“Is there somewhere else we can go?” I asked, lowering my voice and leaning into his ear. “A private room?”

He cast a look at me, his red eyes swirling with heat, then nodded. I followed him into a side room that was dark and unlocked. He flipped the light on, though it was just a dim pale glow that barely illuminated anything. What I did see, however, was a wall covered in various toys and implements of pleasure or pain. I looked at him and raised my eyebrows, but he just chuckled and gestured for me to have a seat on one of the overstuffed chairs in the room.

“I have a plan for you,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked, my heart pounding steadily in my chest. Just being in the same room with him, alone, surrounded by sex toys in a dark bar, was making my body respond distractingly.

“I’ll answer your questions,” he said, then leaned forward to brush his lips over my cheek. “But in exchange for answers, you have to let me do what I want to you.”

I almost couldn’t speak with his proximity. He had leaned in and was just inches away from my face, from my lips. I could have kissed him had I just moved forward a couple of inches. Instead, I pulled back to look him in his eyes.

“What kinds of things?”

He smiled wickedly, then shrugged. “A touch,” he said, bringing his hand to my throat and tracing it with his finger. “Or a kiss. A bite if I’m lucky.”

I felt my heart race in my chest. Interviewing him was one thing, letting him touch me, alone, in the dark, was dangerous in more ways than one. Still, the feeling of his skin on my neck had sent a whole shock through my body, and if I was honest with myself, I wanted more of his touch. I also wanted his answers. It only took me a second to consider it before I nodded, swallowing.

“Okay,” I said. He grinned at me, giving me a hot look through half-lidded eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he wanted to devour me whole. And maybe he did. I closed my eyes when he moved closer to me, kneeling in front of me while I sat in my chair.

“Go on then,” he said softly, “ask away.”

“Okay,” I said breathlessly, looking down at his face, at his wolfish grin and those hypnotizing eyes. I was squirming in the chair and he knew it. I could tell this was going to be interesting, to say the least. “How old are you?”

He thought about it for a moment, then decided to reach his hand up to touch my face, barely touching my lip with his thumb. He stroked it fully again and I parted my lips for him automatically. He leaned in to kiss me but stopped an inch or so away, looking into my eyes instead.

“I am over seven-thousand years old,” he said, brushing his lips over mine. Then he pulled back and looked at me with a soft smirk on his face. I knew my mouth was still open, still waiting, and I closed my lips and held his eye. “Next question.”

“Where are you originally from?” I asked. He dipped his hand from my face to my neck, then to my shoulder, which he traced with his finger as he spoke.

“I am a Native,” he said, and even those words, just the way he spoke them, seduced me. “My people were from many places.”

“I see,” I said, my voice trembling. He brought his lips to my neck then and pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to it, then sank just the tips of his long fangs into the sensitive skin there, just enough so that I could feel it. My heart sped up with something between fear and desire, the second overpowering the first. Instead of biting into me though, he brought his lips to my ear.

“I want to taste you,” he growled softly, sending a shiver through my body. “Your mouth, your sex, your blood…”

My reply was a deep sigh that I could feel in every part of my body. I was squirming, hot and wet and swollen between the legs. I was desperate for him to kiss me, to touch me further. But that wasn’t the game we were playing. He got to do what he wanted while I got the answers to my questions. I got no say in what he did.

“Do you have any other questions?” he asked, looking at me and grinning. “Or are you going to let me do this for free?”

I licked my lips, gazing into his eyes.

“How old were you when you became a vampire?” I asked. He kissed me softly then, barely touching his lips to mine.

“I was twenty-eight,” he said. “Another question. Quickly.”

“Who turned you?” I asked. He pressed his mouth to mine, then, kissing me slowly but with fervor. I allowed his tongue in to taste mine, to tease my mouth while I kissed him back. I wrapped my hands in his long, dark hair and held him close to me while he ravaged my mouth. He pulled away after a long moment, smiling at me.

“An old friend,” he said, but that was the only answer he gave to that question. I decided to ask him about it again another time. For now, I wanted more of his mouth on mine. I lifted my face to captured his lips again and he kissed me hotly before moving back, crouching in front of me again so that his face was just above my lap.

“Pull your dress up,” he commanded, and my first instinct was to tell him no, to say that this was going too far. But I did what he said, unable to help myself, and shifted my body so that I could lift the dress above my hips.

“Next question,” he prompted, looking into my eyes. His fangs were bared, sticking down over his bottom lip. He looked completely sexy and somehow monstrous at the same time. I wondered what he was going to do to me. His voice was in my head, telling me he wanted to taste me, my sex, my blood.

“Do you ever--” I had to pause, losing my voice when he parted my legs and brushed his lips just on the inside of my knee. When my voice faltered, he looked up at me and raised an eyebrow, smirking.

“Do you ever do this? When you come here?” I asked, suddenly wanting to know. “How many women have you played this game with?”

“This game in particular?” he said, nipping at my inner thigh. “Just you, Emilia. I wish I would have known how fun this was.”

I shivered, because at that moment he nuzzled his face between my thighs, spreading them wider open. His mouth was near my mound; all he had to do was turn his head and he’d be able to kiss me there. Instead, he licked the inside of my thigh just a couple of inches below the juncture between my legs. Then he sank his teeth into it, and there was only a pinch of delicious pain before I couldn’t feel anything but pleasure coursing toward me. It didn’t feel like being drained, like being fed from. It felt more like he was doing the opposite, releasing energy into my body that tingled my skin from head to toe. When he was finished, he lapped at the small wounds he had made with his teeth, then stood up slowly.

“I think that’s all for the questions tonight,” he said, smiling at me, a gleam in his eye. I felt breathless and on edge and was close to begging for more from him, but my pride wouldn’t let me.

“Okay,” I breathed. “Thank you for answering my questions.”

He grinned at me irresistibly and I wanted to kiss him again. I was so full of desire I thought I’d erupt with it.

“No, Emilia, thank you,” he said. I cast one last glance at him before leaving the room, knowing I was walking out of the bar flushed and red and obviously agitated. I got to my car before anybody noticed me, and pulled away still shaking, wondering when and if I’d see the vampire again, and wondering if it was a good idea.