Need (22 page)

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Authors: Todd Gregory

BOOK: Need

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He looked at me, his wet green eyes alive with hope. “Do you really mean that? Will you stay here with us?”

“Of course I will.” I stood up and reached my hand out for him. “Come lie down with us.”

I turned my back so he couldn't see my smirk.

C
HAPTER
13

N
ico slipped into the bed behind me, placing his arm over me. I pressed his hand to my lips, and I felt him sigh. His touch sent an electric current through my body, and again, I felt like I was on a drug of some kind, but it was a better drug than anything Jean-Paul had given me.

I closed my eyes and tried to keep my breathing even, focusing on each breath going in and holding it for a second before releasing it completely, blowing out until my lungs were empty. I could hear my heart racing, pounding in my ears, so powerful I could see it pulsing in my eyelids. My mind was alive with consciousnessâI was aware of a multitude of different voices besides my own inside my head. I tried to push all the noise aside and wondered again what was happening to me. I could hear birds rustling in trees outside the house, the whisper of the grass moving in the wind, the gentle lapping of the river against the shore, the slight noise the current made as it moved out in the center, the intense playing of hands on the piano downstairs.

My skin was so hot it was like being on fire, and heat was radiating out of my veins. And my heart kept pounding, so loud I wondered that neither Lorenzo nor Nico could hear it. I focused on my breath, not wanting to start panting, not wanting to let either one of them know anything was different with me. I didn't know why I didn't want them to know, but somehow I knew it was important.

Something was happening to meâand not just to my physical self, but to my mind.

I was changing, and in the deep recesses of memory, I knew that my conversion from human to vampire had been something similar to this, several days of this burning fever, of doors inside of my mind opening.

What had these twin witches done to me? I wondered as I opened my eyes and realized I could see every individual strand of hair on Lorenzo's head, that I could feel every soft, downy, almost invisible hair on Nico's arm brushing against my skin, and it took all of my willpower and self-control not to tremble.

Whatever was happening to me wasn't over, and I didn't know how long this was going to last, but there wasn't any point to panicking, so I allowed myself to relax a bit. The first time I had done Ecstasy had been something similar to thisâthe feeling had been so overwhelming I'd tried to resist it, which had only made it worse. Jean-Paul and Clint had talked me through that brief scary moment, convinced me to let go and ride the waves. And even though this was so much more intense, resisting it wasn't going to make it stop.

So I let myself go, gave myself to the fire burning in my veins, and when the sensations and noises and voices crowded back into my mind, I didn't try to fight them.

And as I'd figured, eventually they faded until my own consciousness, my own self, was the most clear and more powerful.

I nestled up closer against Lorenzo, just to see if my body felt hot to the touch. He didn't move, didn't adjust at all, didn't even shift or try to move away from me. He simply relaxed his muscles more so that some of his weight was now pressed against my chest. Clearly, this burning feeling was for me alone. I wasn't radiating heat to either of the twin witches. Although I still felt as if I were burning alive, their skin remained pressed to mine on both sides of me. Their skin felt deliciously cool, and I could feel Nico's even breathing behind me, and as soon as I thought about his breath on my skin, my skin began to tingle and I allowed my entire body to go into an involuntary shudder of pleasure. Their breathing was even and gentle, not labored, so they were both slumberingâand I could sense their minds at peace, not dreaming, just images dancing through their brains without any coherence. I didn't know how it was possible, but whatever was happening to me and my body and my mind, the vampiric powers that Rachel had told me I would gradually develop over time were now developing and very quickly, at that.

I listened again, and heard the sound of the wind moving the grass on the lawn, then limbs and leaves in the trees on the far side of the lawn being kissed by the same wind.

And as they were both deep in slumber, I wondered if I could ease myself out from between them and escape.

But whenever I shifted, even the slightest bit, I sensed their consciousness swimming up from the darkness of sleep and knew they'd be awake in a moment if I tried to get out of the bed.

But as my veins continued to burn inside of my skin, I felt my muscles getting strongerâthe feeling I remembered from when I used to go to the gym and work out, that tiredness and soreness of muscle tissue being torn down and rebuilt. I opened my eyes and looked at my shoulder, and as I looked at it, it seemed like I was able to see through the skin down to the muscle fibers themselves, and they were growing, getting stronger, bigger, storing power.

When this was over, whatever it was, I suspected neither Nico nor Lorenzo would be able to stop me from leaving, even with their magic.

And I no sooner thought that than a voice whispered inside my head,
“Why do you want to get away? You have two gorgeous studs right here, ready to service you whenever you need it. And they're witchesâpowerful creatures who can work magic. What do you have to go back to? What have the vampires ever done for you? Jean-Paul didn't love you, remember? He loved you being young, not you. You could have been anyone. So what's out there for you, Cord? All there is for you is that lonely, musty old house on Orleans Street! And do you really think the old man and the bitch give two shits about you? It's not like they've come looking for you or anything. That should tell you all you need to know about them. . . .”

Jared. There's Jared.

Could I really just leave him there with those two?

Didn't I owe him something?

I closed my eyes and concentrated on him, wondering if he was all right.

And a window in my mind opened, and I could see him just as clearly as if I were standing in the front bedroom of the old house, next to the bed he was stretched out on. Once again he had shrugged the covers aside, pushing them down to the foot of the bed. His eyes were still closed but were moving beneath the lids, his mouth slightly open, a spot of drool in the right corner. His chest was moving up and down with each breath he drew in and blew out. His beautiful chest, flat stomach, and of course, the enormous erection just above the heavy balls, straining and aching for release . . . it was like being there. I could smell the mustiness of the house, the dust, and the strong man scent coming from him, the mustiness from his damp armpits. Drops of water nestled in his underarm hair and dotted his hair along the hairline. As I looked down at his beautiful body, I wanted him, wanted to straddle his massive cock and ride it, let him fill me up andâ

And I closed the window in my mind firmly, and I was no longer in the room with him but back in this bedroom in this weird mansion of the twin witches.

I wouldn't allow myself to think about Jared that way. I only could hope he didn't remember what had already happened, and I felt guilt bubbling up inside of me.
Had I taken advantage of him when he was clearly not in his right mind? What was it my women's studies professor had saidâoh, yes, if someone can't think clearly enough to give informed consent, it is rape.

I'd raped him.

I pushed that thought out of my mind. I'd deal with that some other time.

I wondered if I should try to communicate with Nigel or Rachel, but another voice whispered,
You don't know if any of this is true, or if they've given you some kind of drug that's making you imagine all of these things. Can you trust what you're feeling? Jean-Paul used to give you drugs that made you imagine all kinds of things, didn't he? And you loved them . . . you loved them so much you would have taken them all the time if he would have let you. It's no wonder you don't know anything about being a vampire, about what's happening to you now. All you wanted to do was take drugs, drink some blood, and fuck. Shame on you!

That voice in my head sounded like my father's.

I pushed that voice aside, realizing my cock was hardening again as it pressed against Lorenzo's hard, hairy ass. He shifted in his sleep slightly and pulled my arm tighter across his chest. Again, a tingle went through my body, and I felt the heat coming back, even hotter and more intense than before, and I wondered if I could slip inside of him, ride him, make him my little bitch the way he'd branded me as his earlier.

What is wrong with me? What have they done to me, these brother witches ?

A memory of him riding me as we floated up in the air, him driving deep inside of me and me beggingâno,
demandingâ
that he keep pounding away made me blush a bit, but my asshole also twitched, and I realized that not only was my hard-on pressing tight against the crack of Lorenzo's ass but also I could feel my ass pressing against Nico's crotch behind me.

Rachel's voice echoed in my head:
“You're really just a disgusting whore, aren't you?”

“Go to hell,”
I responded.
“There's nothing wrong with sex, you prude.”

That was the Church of Christ way. Sex was dirty, wrong, something you had to keep secret and never talk about, even though obviously members of the church did have sexâsome of them had as many as eight children. Our high school had plenty of teen mothers, and the county was full of married couples whose oldest child was born less than nine months after the wedding. Everyone pretended those babies had been premature, but if that were true, someone from the CDC or EPA would surely have done a study on Fayette County to find out why there was such a high rate of premature births there.

Every last one of them was a fucking hypocrite. But the indoctrination of “sex is sin” was so strong and powerful, I still couldn't completely break free of it, and I wasn't even a human anymore.

And since escaping from my prison and coming into this big house, I'd been sexually obsessedâalmost perpetually horny. I slid my hand down to my aching erection. I had already come several times within the past hour, yet somehow my cock wanted more, and I felt the heat burning inside of me.
Fuck him, you know he wants it,
my cock seemed to be urging me on.
If not Lorenzo, you know Nico doesâhe's a nasty little pig who can't get enough of your cock. They both want you. That's why they brought you here, really, to be their sex slave. They'd wear a human out too soon, so they needed a vampire, someone superhuman, who can get hard again and again and get off again and never be completely satisfied and what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with it, Church of Christ boy, and isn't having all this gay sex the ultimate fuck you to the church and your parents and the way you were raised? So do it, just go ahead and do it, you know . . .

I shook my head to clear it.

Something was happening to me, all right.

Sure, back when I'd only been human, I'd been horny a lot. At the time, I thought there was something wrong with meâsurely no one else was so driven to jack off as much as I was? The fear of sin I'd been raised with, the belief that sex was sin, made me feel dirty, perverted, and disgusting, but no matter how much I prayed, I'd had to jack off several times a dayâwhich wasn't easy in the fraternity house, since I was always afraid Jared might come back to the room unexpectedly. It had been much easier in my parents' house, when I could lock my bedroom door or go into the bathroom and lock the door behind me and know I was safe and secure from being walked in on. But the fraternity was a nightmare of almost-discovery. There were always guys around, I shared my room with Jared, and you never knew when some wasted brother would confuse your room with his and use his student ID to pop the door open when his key failed to work and his mind was too addled with drink or drugs or both to realize it wasn't working because it was the wrong door.

And there had been times I'd woken up in the middle of the night with a hard-on so intense I had to do something about it, so I'd slipped down to the communal bathroom and gone into a stall, hoping none of the other brothers would wake up and need to relieve themselves.

I was always scared about something at Beta Kappaâscared someone would catch me beating off, scared someone would catch me watching them in the showers, scared someone would figure out that I was gay.

But as a vampire, the need for sex wasn't quite as strong. Not that I didn't enjoy the hell out of itânothing could really compare to the feeling of shooting your loadâbut it wasn't the same. While I slept or rested, I never woke up with the aching need to be inside someone or have someone inside of me. I would feel desire when I saw a man to whom I was attracted, and of course I responded to touch, and the feedings. . .

And it hit me at that moment.

I'd fed from Nico.

He had cut his wrist and held it to my mouth, and I drank his sweet witch blood.

Before I drank his blood, I couldn't break free from the restraints.

After I drank his blood, they snapped like twigs when I tried to free myself.

Sebastian had wanted my blood to convert himself into a witch-vampire hybrid, to become a god.