Red Grow the Roses (19 page)

With one step he was three foot up, standing on the table.

‘Oh, are you going to hurt me?' Naylor whined, somehow both craven and mocking. ‘That's just mean of you, Old Man. All I want to do is have a good time and mind my own –' He never finished the sentence. There was a blur and suddenly the two figures were one, moving at incredible speed as they struck at each other, shadows whirling and shredding about them. I blinked and suddenly Naylor was face down on the table with one arm twisted up between his shoulders, his nose and cheek mashed to the hard wood, and Reynauld's fist locked in his hair.

Naylor made a strange gasping noise, and I was disturbed to realise he was laughing.

‘You just don't get it, do you?' Reynauld snarled, his weight on Naylor's arm and back. ‘This matters! We leave them alone so they will leave us alone. Accommodation. Symbiosis. That's why there are rules!'

‘I get it,' he hissed. ‘You get off on being their daddy; I get that. Just like you get off on slamming me. I can feel your cock, Reynauld. You going to do something with that? I can feel it poking my asshole like a sweep trying to get his brush up the flue, you horny old fucker. Like a pig with its snout up my trough.'

Naylor wasn't lying: they'd both worn shadows rather than real clothes and now that these were reduced to whipping shreds both men's bodies were only too visible to those of us watching. Reynauld had a full erection and inevitably given their relative positions he was jabbing the man beneath him. I'll tell you something else: Naylor's cock was just as stiff. You could see it as he humped his butt up, heaving his hips from the table in an attempt to connect with the man behind him. His cock was slimmer and more curved than Reynauld's; it jutted beneath his belly like the share of a plough, and a strand of clear pre-cum was drooling from the tip, connecting flesh and tabletop. It was the blood, see. I knew the inevitable effect it had on them. Blood shed, blood drunk: they were both high on the taste, the smell, the violence.

‘You pissant little crab-louse,' Reynauld snarled, wrenching Naylor's head to the side. Whoa, I thought – he's not going for the neck, is he?

‘Go on,' Naylor gasped, wriggling frantically and pushing up on to his elbow, trying to impale his behind on the jut of Reynauld's tool. ‘Go on, you cocksucker, you want it, you want to fuck me bad, you want to fuck my ass, you want to shove that big hard cock up my hole and make me your whore, you dirty fucking shit-shoveller, make me scream, there it is, yes, there, right up there where you want it –'

Then he roared, because Reynauld did exactly what he was begging for and rammed his cock deep into his anus. I saw three white pennants of ejaculate shoot out of Naylor's prick and spatter the polished oak. And I saw the look on Naylor's face.

Reynauld let go of his hammerlocked arm so he could get purchase on his hip: I was surprised the limb wasn't dislocated. ‘Clean that up,' he said hoarsely, pulling him back on to his knees and jabbing deeper into his rear passage. ‘You're not fit to leave a stain in my house: lick it all up.' He pushed Naylor face-down across the tabletop. What choice did Naylor have? Groaning, he put out his tongue and lapped the gobbets of his own cum off the wood until Reynauld heaved himself upright, his thighs straddling the younger man's ass, and began to fuck him.

I've never felt the slightest sympathy for Naylor, but my eyes watered on his behalf then. I'd had that cock up my own backside many a time, but not like that: Reynauld was always so careful with me. With Naylor he was merciless. He thrust like a machine, like he was trying to turn Naylor's insides to pulp, and Naylor soon gave up any idea of licking anything; eyes staring and fists clenched, he was simply trying to ride the waves of the invasion and not drown.

‘Do let me know if this hurts,' snarled Reynauld, and Naylor groaned.

Oh, that cock, pounding away in that narrow ass; those hard thighs, braced like steel; the look of implacable retribution on his face. It scared the hell out of me, and it made my pussy run with juice.

But he was nearly finished: I could tell. This was going to be quick. Pausing in his rut, Reynauld caught Naylor's long hair and pulled him upright as he knelt back. Naylor, dazed, seemed to sag; it was only Reynauld's arms holding him in place. But the youth still – astonishingly – had an erection. His cock jerked as Reynauld bent to growl in his ear.

‘You're not going to forget the rules again, are you?'

Then Reynauld bit him. In the neck. The vampires watching gasped and surged forward. Naylor's eyes flashed wide and then he came again – not hard, no jets, but frothy spunk spilling out down his cock on to his balls, blobbing in his pubic hair – as Reynauld rammed home and shot his own semen up that abused anal hole, drinking deep from his throat.

For a moment they held, shuddering, together. Then Reynauld thrust the other man off and dropped him on the table. Blood crawled down Naylor's neck and chest and the others shifted tensely. The room had a pulse now: I could feel it hammering at my skull. If Reynauld let them off the leash they would drain Naylor dry.

‘Get out,' said Reynauld, standing. Jizz dripped from his cock on to the other man's buttocks. ‘All of you, get out. Naylor: final warning. There won't be another.'

The vampires withdrew in silence, one at a time. Naylor, last of all, had to crawl off the table.

As soon as they were gone Reynauld stalked from the room, his robe of shadows gathering anew and swirling around him like spilled ink in water. I let out a ragged breath and sagged against the door frame, catching myself trembling. Under my suit I was wet with perspiration. Between my legs I was wet with something else, and though I was horribly ashamed at my response to the violence I couldn't deny it. I could feel my pulse at my throat and groin: I was lucky none of them had turned on me in the middle of all that and torn me open.

‘Double the security detail this week, Colin,' I said, my voice unsteady, as I returned to the foyer. The man behind the desk stared at me, nervous but unable to ask. Fumbling a little, I bolted the front door and cast salt across the threshold, then went back to draw the velvet over Roisin's mirror.

‘Amanda.'

Reynauld's voice, in my head. My heart thumped.

‘The bathroom.'

Moving quickly, I walked through the house. The marble-clad master bathroom was warm with steam as I entered, and the lights low. He stood with his back to me behind the layered arms of the glass screens, his head bowed and shoulders set angrily, outstretched fingertips on the polished black marble and the water running full-blast at the back of his neck. I watched the water swirl around his dark feet, running into the drain between them and carrying away the grime and the tension and the lust. I saw the way he rolled his shoulders under the flow, working each stubborn muscle. Inside me something clenched with an exquisite, tender pain.

How could my heart not melt for a man who craved a long hot shower?

I didn't say anything. He knew I was there, and he would instruct me if he wished to. Instead I withdrew a fresh white towel from the cupboard and waited, watching him. I could follow the ebb of his anger by the way his shoulders slowly sagged, the way he finally moved to rub his neck and scalp, playing the water through his dark hair and then across his chest and down his torso. He soaped himself and I wished they were my hands massaging that body, my fingers chasing the suds cascading down his skin.

At last he turned off the water and stood there dripping, still facing the wall. I kicked off my heels and stepped between the arms of glass to hand him the towel, my eyes lingering on the water drops clinging to his skin, on the wet curls at the back of his head, on the runnels licking their way down his back and thighs. Reynauld wrapped the towel about his hips and tucked it in, then turned and set his back to the corner of the shower, leaning against the angled marble. His expression was haunted; he looked so weary and despairing that my heart felt like it would crack.

‘I handled that badly, didn't I?'

What? I wanted to ask. You mean humiliating Naylor in front of everyone like that? Yes, I'd call that badly handled.

I shrugged one shoulder.

‘I shouldn't have lost my temper. He just makes me so angry. Why won't he listen? Is it so difficult to understand, what I'm trying to say?'

‘I think you should have killed him, to be honest. He's a psychopath.'

Reynauld's mouth tugged into an unhappy smile as he admitted, ‘He's a little short on empathy, certainly.' Then, with a sudden change of tack, he was ruefully defending the man he'd just beaten down. ‘But that doesn't come naturally to haemivores. We have to learn it.'

Why couldn't Reynauld be as cynical as me? I had the distinct feeling that empathy was something the others had learned to fake. ‘He's a killer.'

‘We're all killers.' His voice was ragged.

That wasn't what I'd meant, but I couldn't argue with him. How can you possibly make a man twelve centuries older than you listen to a word you say? It's bad enough with ordinary men – can you imagine a forty-year-old taking advice from a teenager of sixteen? Now try and grasp the gap between Reynauld and me. If I were like him, if I were knit of strength and night and savage need, then he might hear me. But I wasn't, and never would be. I just looked at the water beaded on his bare chest and wanted in my frustration to strike him, to bruise him, to pin him to the wall and kiss him until he realised how much I loved him.

I think he saw the pain in my eyes, mirroring his own. With a curl of his fingers he gestured me closer and I dared to lay a hand on his bare chest. The feet of my stockings were soaked from the shower tray.

‘Oh, Amanda,' he whispered. He took my face tenderly in both hands, brushing his knuckles across my cheek, using his thumbs to stroke the paths of my bones. His eyes narrowed, his lips parting. I trembled, knowing that he could sense my desire: he'd be able to feel the race of my blood beneath his fingertips, hear my painfully pounding heart – and to smell the heat of my sex.

Oh, to hell with it: why try to pretend? After all these years he still made me as wildly horny as an eighteen-year-old, as desperate as a smackhead craving a fix. Try as I might there was nothing I could do to hide it, not from him. Reynauld dipped his face to mine and I felt the brush of his lashes on my temple, the caress of his breath on my cheek as he nuzzled me. It was almost like he was searching for something. It was almost like he was scared to tell me what it was. How crazy was I, imagining that? But I could read something in his eyes as he lifted his face from mine: something wrong, something new and uncertain of itself, even as he acknowledged my lust. Gently he reached a hand down to the heat between my legs. My wraparound skirt was secured by a row of poppers angled across my right thigh – formal propriety combined with ease of access – and the serial click of their surrender sounded loud in the shower chamber. He had to stoop a little to reach between my legs in their dove-grey hold-up stockings. My knickers were grey gauze too, the shaved mound of my sex overlaid with appliquéd white lace flowers like a moonlit garden. Panties so beautiful I'd been almost nervous to put them on, wondering if I really deserved anything so lovely at my age.

As his fingers explored the garden a sigh escaped my lips and he caught it in his own. His eyes threatened to drown me in their darkness. Delicately he slipped the lace aside and I lifted my hips to grant him access to my sex, placing both hands on his ribs as I shifted my balance. He was hot from the shower and thrillingly wet. Pearls of water burst at my fingertips as he found my own wetness, my own pearl, and rolled his finger delicately around that tiny mound, finding it engorged.

I nearly fell to the floor.

‘Oh, God,' I whispered, losing my all sense of danger, rubbing my hands over his flanks and arching my spine. My heart was racing. Lust and joy: I had him to myself for the moment, I had his complete attention. He threatened me with little biting kisses, on my face, my lips, my ear – his teeth never brought into play but every touch sending a jolt through me – yet he kept pulling away to try and look me in the face, watching the flow of my reactions as he fingered my clit, stealing my sex juices to roll it slippery between two fingers. I couldn't do it: I couldn't look him in the eye. I rubbed against him like a cat and writhed and then it became almost a game of chase, him trying to catch my gaze, kiss my lips, force me to acknowledge what he was doing to me as his fingers drove me further and further along the road of my arousal.

I could resist only so long, and then I surrendered.

I was almost dancing against him now, thrusting my hips and making dark damp patches on my top as I pressed my breasts against his wet chest. Abandoning caution I reached to his crotch, to the layers of thick soft towelling and the unmistakable bulge of his hardening cock beneath. As I grabbed it he vented a groan, stopped merely massaging my clit and began to flick with that staccato vibration that he knew worked so well for me. The towel began to slip from about his hips as I lost all self-control, all dignity: panting and blaspheming I fell against him and came on his hand, my legs nearly falling from under me, Reynauld catching me round the waist with his other arm to hold me up.

‘Oh, God,' I mumbled into his skin. ‘Oh, God.'

When I lifted my burning face from his chest, the towel was no longer wrapped around his bare hips but hung from the erect baton of his cock, held there by my tight right hand. We both looked down at it, and I gave it a slow hard squeeze through the heavy towelling before letting the fabric slip to the floor. That turgid flesh didn't yield at all. His cock was stiff once more, his balls riding high in a scrotum no longer soft and velvety but now tight and bulging. I brushed cock and balls with unsteady fingertips: he would take me now, before I had time to come down from the afterglow of my climax. He would take me and fuck me and bite me and that was exactly what I wanted.