Need (7 page)

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Authors: Todd Gregory

BOOK: Need
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The stripper in white had his back to me. I stared at his broad shoulders and the muscles rippling in his back. He was moving his hips and came around in a dance turn until he was facing me. His head was shaved—so was pretty much his entire body except for a goatee. His chest was heavily muscled, and his abs rippled as he moved his hips back and forth. He smiled and his entire face lit up, dimples deepening in his cheeks. His legs were thickly muscled. And when he turned to move down the bar away from me, I got a good look at one of the most incredibly perfect asses I had ever seen. It was thick and perfectly rounded and solid. The white material of his bikini stretched tightly across the muscles as he walked, flexing and contracting.
I felt myself growing hard inside my jeans.
I wanted to fuck him, bury myself inside those beautiful cheeks and tongue his hole until he screamed. I wanted to hold him down while I shoved my cock deep and hard inside his exceptional body.
And I wanted to taste his blood.
I walked up to the bar and ordered a beer from the shirtless bartender. I headed over to the back corner where the stripper was coaxing some dollar bills from an older couple. He was kneeling on the bar, muscles rippling in those amazing legs, and as one of the men stroked his leg, placing a dollar bill into the waistband of his white bikini, he made eye contact with me over the man's head.
I winked back, not sure he could see me in the gloom. That was when I felt . . .
something.
It was strange, and I stopped watching the stripper as I looked around the bar. A shirtless Latino boy carrying several buckets of ice went behind the bar. The other stripper was bouncing his dick inside his yellow bikini for the bemusement of a trio of college girls, who kept squealing and laughing. A guy with tattoos up and down his arms was playing the video poker machine. Five muscular guys were out on the dance floor, their shirts hanging from belt loops as they mindlessly moved their hips to the beat of a song I didn't recognize.
For a brief moment I caught a glimpse of a young woman in the corner by the ATM machine, but as my eyes focused on her, she vanished.
I shook my head and looked around the bar again. I thought I saw her out of the corner of my eye over by the front door, but when I turned my head, she was gone again.
“Looking for someone?” a deep voice purred.
Startled, I turned my head. It was the stripper. Off the bar he was maybe five foot seven, but he was unbelievably sexy. His smile was infectious—he was absolutely adorable. Even with the shaved head, the big smile made him look boyish. I smiled back at him as he got closer to me than he probably needed to for me to be able to hear him. I could smell him—he smelled like a man, like he'd just worked up a sweat in the gym before coming into the club. “I thought I saw someone I know,” I replied, allowing my hand to brush against his muscular shoulder. His firm, hard flesh felt hot, and I could almost hear his heart beating.
“You're really pretty,” he said, taking one of my hands and placing it on his hard ass. He tilted his head to one side, still smiling, and I could see the carotid artery, pulsing in his neck. I looked around and no one was watching—if anyone was looking in our direction, their eyes were focused on his magnificent ass—so I bent my head and slid my teeth into his vein.
He moaned and moved in closer to me, his big strong hands cupping my ass.
“Oh, that feels good, damn, man,” he whispered, going up on his toes and pressing his crotch into mine. His dick was hard, but I didn't care about that.
His blood was delicious, satisfying. I kept drinking, allowing my hands to slide down his muscled torso until I was touching his big round hard butt.
“Do you think that's wise?”
a woman's voice whispered in my head.
His hands gripped my ass tighter and I could feel his throat vibrating as he moaned.
And I could see mountains in the background, in the not so far distance, but they weren't tall mountains, and I knew exactly where we were. Palm Springs. But as I looked around, I didn't recognize the yard, the pool, anything—and then I realized that this wasn't one of my memories but one of the dancer's.
But when I'd fed from Jared, I hadn't seen any of his.
I'd been so blinded by the
need
that I hadn't noticed.
I pulled my mouth away from his neck and quickly nicked my index finger. I rubbed it over the wounds in his neck and they healed, closing until all that was left were two dark spots that could have just been hickeys.
The way Jared's were supposed to but hadn't.
The stripper swayed a bit as he stood there, the smile still on his face. “Dude, that was
intense,
” he said, and I noticed that his dick was hard. A wet spot was spreading where the head rested. He swallowed. “My shift is over at two,” he went on. His weight shifted from one foot to the other. “I mean, if you wanted to meet me here . . .” His voice trailed off.
I reached over and tweaked his right nipple, and his head ducked down a bit as his eyes closed and a low moan escaped from his throat. “I'd like that,” I said. I meant it when I said it. I could keep Jared locked up in the front room. . . .
“Do you really think that's a good idea?”
The same female voice cooed in my ear.
“Isn't it bad enough you've poisoned your fraternity brother? Do you need to compound the error by bringing a stripper back to the house?”
He said something else, but I didn't hear. I was looking for the woman the voice belonged to—but there was no woman in the bar other than the girls who were still giggling and laughing at the dick-bouncing antics of the other stripper.
Maybe I was just going insane.
“Two, you said?” I said.
He winked and nodded before turning and walking away. I watched his oh-so-amazing ass as he headed across the dance floor and down the little hallway where the bathrooms were. He opened a door and disappeared behind it.
I took a deep breath and headed for the front door.
I really should check on Jared,
I thought as I walked back out into the warm night.
“Do you really think that door will hold him if he wants to get out?”
the voice whispered into my ear again.
I bit my lower lip and started walking quickly up Bourbon Street.
C
HAPTER
4
I
leaned against the street sign on the corner and closed my eyes. Who was this woman whose voice I kept hearing in my head?
She had to be a vampire—but why couldn't I sense her presence?
I opened my eyes and looked around. There was a group of young men standing across the street on the corner in front of the pub, all holding plastic cups with alcoholic drinks in their hands as they laughed and joked. I looked down toward the corner at Dumaine Street, but other than a heavy-set man with a beard talking on a cell phone just outside of the Clover Grill, Bourbon Street was deserted as far as I could see in that direction. I looked up at the balconies wrapping around the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, just across St. Ann, but there was no one there. The bar on its first floor was blaring a remix of Kylie Minogue's “All the Lovers,” but that bar, too, was completely empty.
She had to be nearby, I reasoned. I didn't know how far a distance the vampiric telepathy could work across—the only time Jean-Paul had ever communicated that way with me had been at circuit parties, but I never really knew how far away he was from me in those vast spaces.
And come to think of it, only Jean-Paul had ever talked directly to my mind. None of the others in our fraternity ever had.
I'd always assumed it was a connection the two of us shared, as maker and creation, but maybe I was wrong.
I'd never had any contact with a female vampire. Obviously, I knew they existed, but I'd never encountered one.
For that matter, I'd never encountered a vampire outside of our circle.
Maybe I could sense others only if they'd also been created by Jean-Paul.
I just didn't know.
I scanned the crowd on the other side of St. Ann, on the “straight” side of Bourbon Street. There were plenty of women over there, but none of them were looking at me. None of them were alone—they were either with a man or in groups, laughing and drinking and clearly having a good time. I looked up St. Ann, but again, there wasn't anyone to be seen.
I need to get back to the house, make sure Jared's still okay,
I told myself. The stripper's blood had sated my hunger, and I probably shouldn't have left him alone for so long. I'd never witnessed a transition and had no idea what all it entailed.
I'd been incredibly stupid in letting Jared drink from me, infecting him with my blood. I turned and looked back inside the bar. The stripper was moving his hips from side to side on the far side of the bar, his back to me. The cotton of the white bikini clung to that amazing ass, highlighting its extraordinary beauty.
He truly had an exceptional body, but I could see where I'd bitten his neck. And there were no wounds there—nothing to show that just a few moments earlier I'd taken nourishment from him. I hadn't done anything different with him than I had with Jared earlier on the street. So why had the stripper's neck healed, when Jared's had not?
What had I done wrong? What was different about Jared?
It didn't make sense.
Maybe I'd made a huge mistake in leaving Jean-Paul and the others to strike out on my own. Clearly, there were a lot of things about being a vampire I didn't know, didn't understand. Maybe I should call Jean-Paul, swallow my pride and go crawling back to him.
And I could see the smug look he'd have on his face, the sneer on his lips, the triumph in his dark eyes as he made me beg to rejoin the fraternity. I could hear his voice saying,
Why should I take you back, baby vampire boy? So you can defy me, go after the young men I drink from and take their lives like Luis in South Beach—
I shook my head. I'd left Luis alive.
Hadn't I?
Did you leave him alive, boy? Or did you take so much of his blood that he died after you left him?
I took a deep breath.
Stop imagining things,
I lectured myself.
You don't know what will happen if you call Jean-Paul, if you ask him for help.
“You're a fool,” I whispered. “Jean-Paul would never make it easy for you.”
I may have known Jean-Paul for only two years, but I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't make it easy for me to go back. He'd want to humiliate me, debase me and break my spirit to ensure that I'd never go against his will again. Even though I loved him, I knew there was a cruel side to him. And wasn't the reason I left because I knew he'd eventually move on from me? He loved young men, didn't he? Didn't he always choose a young man to feed from? Hadn't he'd turned me into what I had become because I was young, so I would stay young forever, trapped in the body of a twenty-year-old, a body that would never age?
Did I really want to go back to that life, watching him feast upon young men, waiting for the day when he finally tired of me completely and turned some other young man into the newest addition to our brotherhood?
No, I would rather die than sit by while that happened. I would far rather be out on my own in the world, even if I didn't know everything that I should, rather than simply wait for the day when he turned my replacement.
I squared my shoulders and walked up Bourbon Street. I was not going to go back to Jean-Paul. I was not going to ask him for help. Whatever was going on here, whatever had gone wrong with Jared, I would have to figure out for myself. I would solve the problem—even if it meant killing him. It had been weakness to let him feed from me—maybe a sense of loneliness, a need for someone to be my companion so I wouldn't have to be so lonely. Those were human emotions, human needs—and I had to remember I was no longer human.
As I walked down the middle of the street, loud music assailed me from both sides. Harsh, grating, slobbering human voices danced on the air as I passed by groups of them in various stages of inebriation. The couple I'd followed was now standing out in front of the Tropical Isle, each holding a long green cylindrical plastic cup filled with liquor. I could smell the alcohol in the air, the sourness of their breath as I walked past them, turning to go up Orleans Street. Their eyes were glassier than they had been when I'd seen them earlier, and my eyes locked with the young man's for a moment—and I could see curiosity in them.
Desire was there, too, even though he obviously had no intention of ever acting on it.
If I weren't in such a hurry to get back to Jared, I might have played with that young man, gotten him to finally open his mind enough to admit that he had an attraction to other men, set him free from the shame he so clearly felt about those desires—a shame I knew only too well.
There was a young woman standing on the corner of Orleans and Dauphine. She was leaning against the street sign, facing toward Bourbon Street. She wasn't what would be considered classically pretty, but she was definitely an attractive woman. Her thick dark hair was braided, and the braids were coiled around her head. There was a purple streak in one of the braids and a red one in another. Her nose was long and crooked, her lips thick and painted a dark red. Everything about her face was pointed—her chin came to a sharp point, her cheekbones stuck out at a sharp angle, even her lips narrowed to points on either side of her mouth. Her eyes were slanted, dark blue with gold flecks. Her lashes were long. She didn't seem to be wearing much makeup. Her neck was long, and she was wearing a black T-shirt with
Who Dat
written in gold across her chest. Her breasts were small but firm. She was wearing a pair of jeans that rode low on her curved hips, and she was maybe five feet four. There was a mole just under the right corner of her mouth. She'd watched me walk up the block and was still watching as I stepped off the curb. I waited for a black-and-white United cab to drive by before starting across Dauphine.
She tossed the cigarette she was smoking into the street as I stepped up onto the curb. I started to walk past her but was aware something about her wasn't quite right.
She wasn't
human,
I realized as I drew nearer to her. She didn't smell human, and her heartbeat . . .
She was a vampire—and I hadn't sensed her until I was within a few feet of her.
That wasn't a good thing.
“Cord.”
She said my name before I could think of what I should do or how I was supposed to act. If there was a protocol for what to do when encountering an unknown vampire, I sure as hell didn't know what it was. It had never happened during the entire time I was with Jean-Paul and the others, and it had never occurred to me to ask about it. I had never thought that we were the only vampires in the world, but now, confronted with a strange vampire, I wondered why we never had run into other vampires during our travels. What were the odds of that—and what were the odds that I would run into one on the street in the French Quarter? Whenever it had occurred to me to ask about other vampires, my question was either ignored or I was told to not worry about it. When I was inside the cocoon of our little fraternity, it really hadn't been an issue.
But I wasn't with them anymore, and now here was a strange vampire.
A strange vampire who also knew my name.
I stopped walking and turned to face her. “How do you know my name?” I asked, watching her carefully. I didn't sense any danger from her, but that was hardly reassuring. I hadn't, after all, sensed her.
I cursed Jean-Paul in my head for leaving me so ignorant.
She stepped into the pyramid of light cascading down from a streetlamp. I took a closer look at her face but I'd never seen her before. I wondered if she'd been the one communicating with me, and if she had been following me for some time and I'd simply not noticed.
She smiled at me mirthlessly. “Do you
really
think it's wise to feed from a stripper in a gay bar?” Her voice was mocking and contemptuous. She stepped a little closer to me, raising one of her eyebrows. “Do you want to be caught, baby vampire? Is that what you wish? Do you hate being a vampire so much you want to die?” She moved even closer to me. “If that's your wish, there are easier ways to die—ways where you won't endanger the rest of us.” I could feel her breath on my neck, and it made me uncomfortable.
I took a step back. “It was dark and to the others in the bar it looked like we were just hugging each other,” I replied in an equally contemptuous tone. “No one noticed anything out of the ordinary, and—”
“You are a fool, and what's more, you don't even know how big of a fool you are.” She cut me off, sneering. “Oh, you can be forgiven much because you're young. And there are those who would overlook your stupidities because you are beautiful.” She reached out with a cold hand and caressed the side of my face. “And you are quite beautiful, but still, you know nothing.” She pinched my cheek, hard, and involuntarily I cried out. “But for all of those who would forgive you, there are many, many more who won't be as forgiving. Are you aware of that? There are those who could destroy you with a mere snap of their fingers and would think nothing of it—they'd forget you a moment after your body turned to ash.” She laughed. “Surely you aren't so foolish, so stupid, as to think that you are the only vampire in New Orleans? In Louisiana?” She shook her head. “You don't even have guards up. You poor young baby. Every vampire in Louisiana knows about you—they can sense you. You didn't even sense me or where I was, even after I started talking to you back at Oz, did you?”
“Well, n-no,” I stammered, taking another step back. Violence and anger radiated from her body, and I was growing more than a little frightened of her.
“Don't worry, baby vampire, I'm not going to hurt you—no matter how stupid you've acted. That's not why I'm here, although God knows you need some disciplining.” She gestured in the direction of the house. “Care to explain what's going on in your house?” Her smile grew wider. “The pretty young muscular man with marks on his neck, with your blood in his system that is slowly but surely converting him into an incredibly weak vampire—one, I might add, who will be easy prey for the others?” She shook her head. “Did you honestly think no other vampire knew what you were doing in that house?”
“I . . . ,” I whispered, but couldn't think of what else to say. I felt mortified—worse than Jean-Paul had ever made me feel. “Go to hell,” I finally managed to get out, and turned to walk away from her.
“Not so fast.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and bared her upper teeth, exposing long, sharp canines. “I'm here to help you, you idiot.” She grabbed my arm—her strength was amazing—and spun me around so I was facing her again. She sighed heavily. “I've already put up guards around the house and around you, so the least you could do is show me a little bit of gratitude?” When I didn't answer, she shrugged. “All right, then, manners are clearly not your strong suit. Come on, let's go check out the damage.” She started dragging me up the street.
I tried to resist her at first, but she was too strong for me. It was humbling. I'd known the other vampires in our little fraternity were stronger than I was—Jean-Paul could lift me and toss me over his shoulder with little to no effort at all—but to be so much weaker than a woman? Even if she was a vampire . . .

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