SIXTEEN
Excerpt from Chapter 17 of Making Love to Humans in the Twenty-First Century: A Definitive Guide for the Modern Vampire (Author Unknown)
If you have read this far, you now understand the full extent to which sexual mores and expectations have changed since the era when everyone simply pretended to wait until marriage to have sexual intercourse. There are certain acts your twenty-first-century human lover will likely expect that may catch you by surprise if you have not engaged in sexual congress in some decades.
This chapter describes several of the most popular modern methods for bringing a human to orgasm using one’s mouth. The key, as we will discuss in more detail below, is to obscure your fangs. At the end of this chapter, you will be guided step-by-step through a series of practice exercises that, when implemented in bed, will leave your human lover immensely satisfied.
Frederick convinced me to take an Uber with him back to the apartment. Though convincing was an overstatement; I’d agreed as soon as he’d suggested it. After all, he’d done amazingly well picking up the public transportation basics on our earlier El adventure. If he felt uncomfortable with the process of riding the train, we could try again another time.
More to the point: Uber would get us home faster than the train. After what had just happened at Sam’s party, I was eager to get home as quickly as possible.
It was obvious Frederick felt the same way. Once we were in our seat belts and our driver pulled away from the curb, Frederick’s hands were on me again—touching my shoulders, in my hair. He looked at me with a guarded, hopeful expression.
I was only too ready to pick up again right where we left off. But first, I had some questions.
“Taylor Swift, huh?” I smirked at him, enjoying the way he fidgeted in his seat. “You’re a Swiftie?”
He winced a little at the term. “No. It’s like I said earlier. I just studied before the party.”
“I guess you did.”
He nodded. His fingers played idly with the hair at the nape of my neck, sending shivers of pleasure down my spine. “I wanted to be certain I’d have something to say to people at the party, and my research indicated she was particularly famous among people between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-eight.”
“She is,” I agreed.
His eyes fell to my lips, pupils dilated. His arm left his side and wrapped around me, pulling me closer. I could sense he was quickly losing interest in this conversation.
“It only took me two hours after you were in bed last night to memorize everything I could about her. Easy cheesy.”
I smiled, and was about to tell him that the expression he was looking for was easy peasy—but before I could form the words he was kissing me again, his lips achingly soft against mine.
“Wait.” I pulled back a little, trying to catch my breath. I inclined my head towards our driver. “Maybe we should wait until we get home.”
“Why?”
“We have an audience.”
“Ah.” His eyes twinkled with mischief, a smug smile playing on his lips. Now it was my turn to stare at his mouth. Our faces were so close. “The driver can’t see what we’re doing.”
I glanced at the driver. His eyes were on the road in front of him, not in his rearview mirror—which plainly showed me and Frederick tangled up in each other in his back seat.
“He doesn’t see what we’re doing?”
“No.”
An uneasy chill crept down my spine. “Why not?”
Frederick sighed, then pulled away from me, flopping back in his seat. My body protested at the sudden loss of physical contact.
“Vampires have . . . a certain degree of magical ability.” He pulled a face, then made a seesawing motion with his hand. “No. Calling it magical ability isn’t quite it. Suffice it to say that I have the ability to do some things humans can’t. The vast majority of vampires can use some degree of glamour on humans to make things appear different from how they are in reality.”
“Really?”
Frederick nodded. “Our driver thinks we’re each absorbed in our respective cell phones, keeping hands and all other body parts to ourselves.”
I paused, processing this. What he was telling me—that vampires had the ability to make people see things that weren’t there—was more or less in keeping with vampire stories I’d heard over the years. Then, suddenly, something occurred to me.
The prominent fangs I’d never noticed before I kissed him at Sam’s party.
“Is that why I never noticed your . . . your teeth until tonight?” I raised an accusatory eyebrow. “Were you glamouring me, before?”
He looked surprised. “I didn’t realize you noticed my fangs at the party.”
I huffed. “Kind of impossible to miss them with my tongue in your mouth. Those things are . . . I mean, they’re massive. And really pointy.”
Frederick fidgeted with his seat belt. “It wasn’t intentional, hiding them from you before. Generally speaking, humans are simultaneously a threat to us and our next meal. Using glamour to hide our fangs from humans in our midst is a self-defense mechanism. A reflex, really. When that particular glamour drops into place it’s usually as involuntary as breathing.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, adding, “The glamour only falls away again once we are completely comfortable in our surroundings. With people we trust.”
He looked at me then, his gaze so open and guileless I understood at once the implication of his words.
He trusted me.
I could see, from my peripheral vision, that we were nearly at the apartment. A few minutes without a seat belt would be okay, right?
Before I could talk myself out of doing it, I unbuckled my seat belt and crawled onto his lap, straddling him, as the Uber guy continued driving us home, oblivious. Frederick’s entire body went rigid, his thigh muscles flexing and tensing beneath me as I situated myself.
His large hands slid up to clutch at my hips, his eyes so wide with surprise I couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since he’d last been intimate with someone. He’d certainly picked up kissing quickly enough, but the little I knew about the era before he’d fallen asleep suggested he might not be used to doing much more than kissing.
Would this be an opportunity for me to teach him some of the other modern skills he may have missed during his long coma?
There’d be plenty of time to figure that out later.
For now, I simply leaned forward until my mouth was at his ear, our torsos pressed together. Frederick’s breath hitched, his fingertips now digging into the soft flesh at either side of my waist.
“Do you have any other magic powers?” I pressed a lingering kiss to his earlobe, my right hand trailing down his chest until it rested over his long-dormant heart. “Or is glamouring people the only one?”
He chuckled, the reverberations of his laughter warm and gentle against my palm. “There’s one more,” he admitted.
“What is it?” The car was parallel parking now, coming to a complete stop in front of our apartment. I pressed a kiss to Frederick’s lips; a promise of what was to come when I got him inside. “Tell me.”
Frederick shook his head. “It’s . . . a rather stupid ability, as these things go. But if you really want to know I’ll tell you what it is when we get upstairs.”
When we got back to the apartment Frederick grabbed my hand and tugged me along after him until we were standing in front of the hall closet. The same closet he’d made abundantly clear was off-limits to me when I’d first toured the apartment.
“The answer to your what other powers do you have question can be found in here.” He looked at me, gauging my reaction. “If you still want to know.”
He put his hand on the doorknob and a stab of panic went through me. I’d built up all kinds of possibilities for what might be inside this forbidden closet. A lot had already happened that night; I wasn’t sure I was ready to find out the truth.
I put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
“You told me before there weren’t dead bodies in there,” I reminded him, my words coming out a little too fast.
“I did.”
“Was that the truth?”
He nodded. “Yes. There’s no blood in here, either. Or severed heads. Nothing that you will find unpleasant or frightening. I promise. In fact . . .” He trailed off, scratching his chin. “Maybe you’ll even like what you see.”
The note of hopefulness in his voice—the fact that he wanted to share something about himself he’d previously felt the need to hide—melted the last of my reservations.
“Okay,” I said, nodding, bracing myself. “Open the door.”
I held my breath—only to blow it out in surprised laughter a moment later when he opened the closet door and I saw what was inside.
“Frederick,” I breathed, incredulous.
“I know,” he agreed.
“Why are there so many pineapples in here?”
“Not just pineapples.”
He pushed the pineapples—there had to be at least a dozen of them—over to one side of the shelf they rested on. Behind them were rows of persimmons, kumquats, and other brightly colored fruits I didn’t even recognize.
“Some vampires have impressive abilities like turning wine into blood, or being able to fly, or turning back time,” he continued ruefully. “Unfortunately, all I can do is somewhat involuntarily conjure fruit when I’m nervous.”
I reached inside the closet and picked up a small, rather squashy thing that looked like a pear but smelled like an orange. “This is what you’ve been hiding in here all this time?”
“Yes,” he said. “You can eat it, in case you were wondering.”
“I can?”
He nodded. “It should be perfectly edible. Every week I bring whatever I’ve conjured to a local food pantry. Or else gift them to you.”
I thought back to the basket of kumquats he gave me the day I moved in. The bowl of various citrus fruits he kept on the kitchen counter.
“Oh,” I said.
“My rate of production has skyrocketed since you moved in. I seem to be nervous all the time, these days.”
The idea I made him nervous was hard to believe, but I decided to let it go.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” His eyes widened, and I quickly added, “Not that it’s a huge deal, your not telling me. I’m just curious.”
“It’s one of the most ridiculous vampire powers in recorded history. And a pointless one, given that vampires cannot eat fruit.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, averting his eyes. “By the time you knew what I really was, I wanted you to think I was impressive. Not just some clueless accidental kumquat conjurer.”
A rush of warmth went through me. “You wanted to impress me?”
He nodded. “I still do.”
I couldn’t make sense of this. He wanted to impress me? Frederick was a three-hundred-and-twenty-year-old immortal. I was just . . . me.
I leaned back against the wall behind me for support. “But . . . why? I’m nobody.”
His eyes snapped to mine, his gaze so intense it was like looking directly into the sun. “How can you say such a thing?”
My eyes fell to my shoes. “Because it’s true.”
All at once he was pressing me up against the wall, forearms bracketing my head, his gaze furious. His face was mere inches from mine. “I have never heard something less true in my life.”
“But—”
He cut me off with his lips, kissing me with a ferocity I hadn’t seen from him before. I parted my lips reflexively and he wasted no time, tongue plunging into my mouth as though he’d never be able to get enough of my taste. He kissed me like his life depended on it, like a man possessed, and I was helpless to do anything but kiss him back, wrapping my arms around him, nearly swooning at the feeling of every part of his long, hard body pressing needfully against mine.
“You. Are. Amazing,” he murmured, each word punctuated with hard, feverish kisses to my lips, my jaw, my throat. I melted against him, feeling in danger at any moment of slipping down the wall at my back and falling into a puddle on the floor.
“Frederick,” I breathed. His hands roamed my body possessively, leaving behind trails of heat despite the chill of his touch. I felt fever-bright and lighter than air.
But he wasn’t finished. “You are kind, and generous,” he continued. “Even after you found out what I was you didn’t abandon me, because you knew I needed your help. In all my years I have never met anyone more committed to remaining true to who they are than you are.” He pulled back, looking directly into my eyes. The heated look he gave me could have melted an iceberg. “Do you have any idea how precious that is, Cassie? How rare?”
His eyes were dark, incandescent pools, pleading with me to understand.
But I didn’t.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about me at all.”
His jaw clenched. “Then please,” he began, his voice hoarse and dripping with promise, “please allow me to show you how wrong you are.”
His bedroom was different from how I’d imagined it. There wasn’t a coffin, or anything else that might suggest that its occupant was anything other than a perfectly ordinary wealthy human with questionable taste in decorating.
It was much bigger than my bedroom, with a lake-facing floor-to-ceiling window that matched the one in the living room. Like the living room, it was also rather dark. Brass wall sconces ringed the room, their dim light playing with the subtle contoured colors of Frederick’s hair. I wanted to bury my hands in that hair and feel the silky-soft tresses as they sifted through my fingers.
The bed was king-sized, with a thick mattress and a blood-red canopy that matched both the duvet covering the bed and the curtains covering the window. When Frederick laid me down on the mattress, as carefully as he might handle a porcelain doll, I realized the red duvet cover was made of velvet.
This part is a bit cliché, I thought, running my fingers over the impossibly soft material. Right from Interview with the Vampire. But my body was alight with anticipation and nerves, and the tender, heated way he was looking at me as he stood at the foot of the bed made it almost impossible to think clearly.
Constructive feedback on his bedroom stylings could wait.
I reached up for him, excited for the next part to begin.
The sight of my outstretched arms, however, seemed to cause the raw desire that had propelled him to bring me into his bedroom to grind to a screeching halt. He was no longer staring at me like he wanted to fuck me into the middle of next week. His entire demeanor changed, his dark eyes drifting to the wooden floorboards, the fingers of his right hand drumming a nervous staccato beat against his thigh.
I propped myself up on my elbows, concerned. “Frederick?”
“Perhaps . . .” he began, sounding pained. He sat beside me on a loud exhalation of breath, bending forward until his elbows were on his knees. He buried his face in his hands. “Perhaps we should not do this.”
My heart stuttered as I tried to reconcile what he was saying now with what had just happened moments before. I pushed up on the bed until I was sitting beside him and then, hesitantly, I slid my hand up and across his broad chest, flattening my palm over the place where his heart once beat.
Every time I’d touched him in the past it had elicited an immediate, kinetic response from him. This time, he held himself almost preternaturally still.
It was like touching a statue.
“Do you . . . do you not want to do this?”
His breath hitched. He shifted closer to me on the bed and then, hesitantly, he wrapped an arm around me by way of wordless response.
“That is not what I said.” His voice was raw gravel, and he shifted even closer, the taut muscles of his arm flexing against my lower back. “I do want to do this. You have no idea how badly I want to do this. I simply said perhaps we shouldn’t.”
We were sitting so close it would have been nothing at all to turn my head and press my lips to his cheek. With difficulty, I stayed put.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I didn’t plan to drag you into a romantic entanglement with . . . someone like me.”
“No one is dragging me into anything.”
“But—”
“I want to have a romantic entanglement with you.”
The look on his face when he met my eyes was heartbreaking. “You couldn’t possibly.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, you are human.” He shook his head. “For another, I am not.”
This, of course, was what had held me back until now. But none of it mattered. Frederick was kind and compassionate. He bought out an entire cookware section when I said I needed a saucepan, and said insightful, kind things about my art even though he didn’t understand it.
He knew me, with an intuitive kind of sensitivity that took my breath away.
And, yes, okay, he was a vampire. That did present some legitimate challenges. But that didn’t change how good he was—or the fact that I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anyone in my life.
“I don’t care,” I said flatly. I gently took his hand and laced our fingers together.
“You should care,” he murmured. But he didn’t drop my hand. He was holding me so closely he could probably feel the rapid beating of my heart against his own rib cage. “You don’t want the kind of half life I live, Cassie. You cannot possibly want to be what I am. For us to be together, really together—the changes you would have to undergo . . .”
I raised our joined hands until my lips met the cool, smooth solidity of his wrist, letting my mouth linger there. His lips parted, and oh, they had been so soft, pressed against my own lips. Even when his kisses had grown desperate. I wanted to taste them again, wanted to tease them apart with my tongue.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” I admitted. “All I know is that right now, I want to be as close to you as I can.” At some point, perhaps I’d want to imagine what a long-term future with Frederick would require of me.
But not just yet.
We hadn’t even been on an official date yet.
Giving in to temptation, I pressed a chaste, closed-mouth kiss to his collarbone, reveling in the feel of marble-like skin against my lips.
“Cassie,” he murmured, his voice thick.
Moving a little, I touched my lips to the underside of his jaw, and then kissed my way down his neck to a spot where, many years ago, there had been a pulse. To the place I suspected another vampire once had bitten him, centuries before I was born.
“Frederick,” I murmured. I opened my mouth, letting my tongue dart out to taste him. His skin was salt and musk, desire and cool night air.
He whimpered.
“If you want to do this and I want to do this, why shouldn’t we?” I asked, though he wasn’t protesting anymore. I nuzzled at the sensitive spot where his neck met his shoulder, reveling in his sharp intake of breath, in the way his arm tightened around me, the way his fingertips dug into my side.
“Cassie.” His tone was half warning, half promise. On a shuddering breath his free hand came up to cup my cheek.
I sighed and leaned into his touch. Every nerve in my body was alight, sparking with anticipation. He had large, beautiful hands. Dexterous and strong. The thought of what they could do to me if he’d only let go . . .
It was a delicious torture.
“Please,” I whispered.
With that single word it was like a switch flipped inside of him. I could see it in his eyes as the remnants of his resolve cracked and crumbled away, and then all at once his lips were on mine again, his kisses as eager and as needful as they’d been at Sam’s party. He moved quickly, wordlessly, one hand at the small of my back and the other on my shoulder, gently guiding me backwards until I lay prone on the mattress once more.
“Oh, Cassie,” he breathed against my lips. He loomed over me, bracing his weight on his elbows, his forearms on either side of my head. He leaned in, pressing a kiss to my temple. Then he chuckled quietly, the sound so happy and full of relief it broke my heart. “I will never be able to deny you anything you want.”
When I’d imagined this happening, alone in my bedroom, I’d imagined Frederick as a quiet and tentative lover, as polite and refined with sex as he was in everyday life. But there was nothing quiet or tentative about him now. Now that I was lying beneath him atop his lush four-poster bed, his passion was a dam bursting in flood, as though until this moment he’d been holding himself back only with extreme effort. His relentless kisses left me breathless and reeling—and I welcomed it, my arms going around him as he kissed me, trying to pull him even closer.
“Cassie.” This time my name on his lips was a plea. He didn’t need oxygen, but he was breathing hard and fast against my neck like he’d just run a mile. Maybe it was muscle memory from the man he’d once been kicking in, now that we were here. His body lay almost entirely on top of me now, a welcome weight pressing me into the mattress. The feel of his breath on my sensitized skin made me shiver.
I wriggled beneath him, eager to feel him everywhere.
“Can I touch you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper, without lifting his head from where it rested in the crook of my neck.
I nodded, feeling like I might burst with anticipation.
His hand slid down the front of my shirt until he found my breast. I arched into his touch, and he squeezed—gently at first, and then, when he saw what his touch was doing to me, with firmer pressure. My breasts were a respectable size, but I fit easily and entirely within his large palm. My nostrils flared, my breathing coming hot and quick as sensation coursed through me.
“Frederick,” I murmured, intending only to encourage him to keep going. The sound of his name must have done something to him because he growled his response. All his formidable powers of speech seemed to have fled as his free hand came down and cupped my other breast. He thumbed roughly at my nipples through my shirt and bra until they pebbled up into hard little sensitized buds against his palms, and then he kept going, and going, and going, until I was nothing but pure sensation.
“Oh,” I said, incapable of articulate speech. The soft velvet duvet underneath me served as delicious contrast to the sharp spikes of pleasure coursing through my bloodstream, the placid and even ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway a stark accompaniment to my uneven, rapid breaths. Frederick tore off my shirt and bra impatiently, tossing them to the floor like the hindrances they’d become. His low, desperate groan when he saw my bare chest ratcheted the coil of desire in the pit of my stomach to nearly unbearable heights.
“I want to taste you,” he rasped, raising his head. His pupils were fat with desire as he continued thumbing at my pink and straining nipples. “Everywhere.”
My incoherent moan was apparently all he needed by way of consent. He shoved my skirt up to my waist and then, with excruciatingly slow and careful movements, slid my underwear down my legs. Suddenly, I was half naked and splayed out before him, exposed and vulnerable. His eyes darkened further as he regarded me, his eyes trailing so hot and eagerly along my bare flesh I could feel his gaze.
“I’ve imagined this moment more often than is strictly decent.” His voice was low and deadly urgent, his fingers tracing invisible patterns along my inner thigh. His touch was purposeful, moving closer to where I wanted him with every pass—but his movements were maddeningly slow.
And I was tired of waiting.
“Frederick,” I urged, wriggling on the bed to spur him on. “Please.”
But he seemed determined to take his time. “I’ve touched myself in my bedroom, thinking of you, just like this,” he confessed against the sensitive skin behind my right knee. “I’ve even gone to your bed in my dreams.” His hand slid higher, and higher, until he reached my aching center. He cupped me gently, reverently. I nearly arched off the bed with clawing, desperate need.
“Frederick . . .”
“Can I tell you what I do to you in my dreams?”
Finally, at last, he parted my drenched folds with one thick finger. My head fell back onto the pillow as he gently circled the place where every nerve ending in my body was centered. My jaw fell open as stars burst behind my closed eyelids, my body taut as a bowstring.
“Oh.” I was panting now, any pride or dignity I might have once had long gone. I needed him to touch me. Now. “Please.”
Frederick chuckled a little as the mattress at the foot of the bed shifted beneath his weight. I could almost hear his satisfied smirk when he said, “Perhaps I’ll just show you instead.”
He slid his large hands down my body until he reached my hips. He left them there, gripping my flesh, spreading me open as his eyes feasted on my bare flesh. I shivered at how vulnerable this position left me. The open, heated longing I saw in Frederick’s eyes was almost too much to bear.
“You,” he murmured against my inner thigh, nostrils flared as he breathed me in, “are magnificent beyond my wildest imaginings.”
I’d done this a few times before. Mostly with my college boyfriend, someone who viewed oral sex as an obligation to be dispensed with as quickly as possible before he could move on to more pleasurable activities.
But the moment Frederick buried his face between my legs it was clear there was nothing in the world he would rather be doing than this. He tasted and licked, breathing me in as he took his sweet, deliberate time. My fingertips found purchase on his shoulders, and I clung to them for dear life as he teased me, the wool of the sweater he still wore deliciously smooth against my bare legs.
My head fell back against the pillow again and I writhed on the mattress, bucking up towards his mouth in search of greater friction, needing more. But he wouldn’t be rushed. His hands gripped my hips harder as my body sought to move against him, keeping me pinned helplessly to the mattress in the exact spot he wanted me. I whined in delicious agony as he traced the shape of my clit with the achingly soft flat of his tongue, dancing around the direct contact my body was screaming for. I could feel how wet I was growing, could hear the sharp keening sounds I was making as if from a distance. But he would not be rushed by my desperation as he kissed, and lapped, and tasted.
“Frederick.” I tangled my fingers in his soft hair and tugged, moaning. I was going to pieces. I was out of my head with need. “Please.”
At my naked plea something must have broken inside him. He groaned, long and loud, the reverberations from it sending sparks of sensation rocketing down my spine—
And then, at last, his tongue was right there, licking me senseless as his lips closed around my clit. He sucked gently, then with greater pressure, and the room, the bed beneath us, fell away. The world collapsed down to a pinprick, nothing existing anymore outside of Frederick and the exquisite, cresting pleasure.
“Oh, god,” I moaned, bucking against his mouth. I was outside of myself, outside of reason. “Please—”
My orgasm came upon me like a tidal wave—devastating, and all-consuming, my toes curling with the spine-melting pleasure of it. Distantly, I could feel Frederick shifting on the bed, kissing his way up my body, whispering praise to my bare legs, my stomach, my breasts.
After what might have been a few seconds, or thirty minutes, he stretched out to his full length beside me on the bed, a crooked, self-satisfied smile on his lips.
“I want to do that to you every day for as long as you’ll let me,” he murmured against the top of my head.
I giggled, feeling utterly spent and lighter than air.
I rolled over and burrowed my face into his chest. “I’m so glad you’ve come around.”
He chuckled, then wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close. “Me, too.”
I startled awake sometime later, not having realized I’d dozed off. Frederick was walking towards me with a glass of water, a small smile on his lips.
He sat beside me on his bed. “Here,” he said, offering me the glass. “In case you’re thirsty.”
I was. “Thanks.” I took the water from him, taking a sip before setting it on the bedside table. “How long was I sleeping?”
“Not long. Maybe fifteen minutes.”
I shifted a little beneath the duvet. The last thing I remembered before drifting off was using his chest as a pillow, his arms wrapped around me. He must have covered me with the duvet when he left the room.
Tenderness flooded me. I reached up and cupped his face in my hand. He sighed, his stubble rough against my palm as he leaned into my touch.
Only then did I notice that his jeans were tented with what must have been an extremely uncomfortable—and massive—erection.
Given his recent confession about his relationship to fruit, I was tempted to make a wildly inappropriate Is that a conjured banana in your pocket? joke. But I didn’t. Because for one thing, he’d just given me one of the most mind-meltingly incredible orgasms of my life, and teasing him felt like a mean way to repay him. For another, I knew full well that his pants situation was due entirely to the fact that, yes—he was happy to see me.
I trailed my hand slowly down his chest, not stopping until I reached the waistband of his jeans. His stomach muscles rippled, tensing and flexing beneath my palm.
“Cassie,” he said, hoarsely, quickly covering my hand with his own to stop me. “Wait.”
Sitting up, I pressed a kiss to each corner of his mouth. He shuddered and let his head droop forward onto my shoulder.
“What is it?”
“I’ve never done . . . the rest of this before without . . .” He closed his eyes, unable or unwilling to look at me for what he was about to say. “Without blood being involved.”
My heart skipped, like, five beats.
“Oh.”
“Indeed.” He lifted his head and met my gaze. “It’s been over a hundred years since I’ve been intimate with someone. I’m out of practice, and I want you so badly. If you touch me, if we . . . continue this, I don’t know if I’ll have the self-control to go without once I’m . . . close to the end.” He fell back onto the pillows and let out an anguished breath. “I don’t know if I can do this without hurting you.”
From this vantage point I could now easily see the outline of his cock, fully erect and straining hard against the front of his jeans. I wanted to peel those jeans off and get a good look at him so badly I could taste it. I felt certain he could do this without hurting me. If he was going to lose control and take a bite when he shouldn’t, it would have happened long before now.
Suddenly, I had an idea.
“I know what I can do to help you stay in control.”
He cracked one eye and looked at me.
“What?”
Wordlessly, I began to undo the button of his jeans. His hands clamped down on mine like a vise.
“Cassie, wait—”
“Shhh,” I murmured, willing his panic to abate and nudging his hands away. I reached inside and gripped him in my hand, reveling in the way his breath caught and his head fell back on the pillow.
My heartbeat quickened. He was big—which, yes, I’d already anticipated. But it was one thing to see the outline and general shape of a guy’s dick when he was still wearing clothes—and entirely another when you had it in your hands.
“What are you doing?” His voice was low, his dark eyes dazed and incredulous.
He was so beautiful, and vulnerable, in that moment. I wanted to make him feel as good as he’d just made me feel.
“This,” I said, before leaning over and taking him into my mouth.
I half expected him to protest again, but he didn’t. He fell back against the pillows with a rough groan, hands balled up into fists and pressed into his eyes.
If he was worried about losing control and biting me once he was inside me, what better way to dial things down a bit than to give him a take-the-edge-off orgasm before we did that? A pregame blow job usually helped guys I’d been with in the past last longer. And, okay, Frederick wasn’t like other guys—but in this department I was willing to bet he wasn’t that different from anyone else.
On instinct, I took him deeper into my mouth, enjoying the heady combination of salt and musk and Frederick on my tongue. The helpless, pleasured sounds he made as I worked him spurred me on, encouraging me to take him deeper. Grip him tighter.
When I glanced up at his face his jaw was slack and his eyes were glazed over in pleasure. He met my gaze with a reverence and a desperation that made me eager to have him inside me, and soon.
“Is this . . . is this okay?” he murmured. He cupped my face in unsteady hands, eyes holding mine as he gently stroked my cheeks with his thumbs.
God, he was beautiful.
By way of response I snaked a hand around his body and squeezed his ass.
He gave an inhuman groan I felt more than heard as whatever fragile grip he’d still had on his self-control snapped and fell away. One large hand found its way to the top of my head, pushing me down just a little as his hips began to jerk upward in a rhythmic motion beneath me. It was hard, it was fast—and it was glorious. If the incomprehensible sounds he was making, and the way his head thrashed back and forth on the pillow, were any guide, Frederick was incapacitated from the pleasure of me taking him as deeply as I could.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned. Both of his hands were on my head now, guiding my movements as he trembled and fought for control. And for release. His thrusts were already becoming more erratic and picking up speed. My hands were growing slippery with my saliva and his own secretions. “Cassie, oh god, Cassie, I can’t, I . . . I can’t finish without—”
He cut himself off, clamping a hand over his mouth to keep from saying anything else. I looked up at his face as we moved in tandem, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his chest heaving.
He’d said he’d never done this before without blood being involved. Was it possible that he actually needed blood for this?
If so, how long was he planning to deprive himself—to let me drive him to the edge like this—without asking for what he needed for release?
On instinct, I slid a hand up his chest and slipped my index finger between his lips. His body jerked beneath me. His eyes shot down to mine. As desperate with need as he was, Frederick still retained enough of his wits to know what I was offering.
“Cassie,” he breathed, my name on his lips a question.
I nodded, letting him know that, yes—I was okay with it.
He made a sound that was half groan, half snarl. He bit down, and—
It didn’t hurt. Not really. I’d donated blood before, and while the tip of my finger had more nerve endings than my forearm did, the bite wasn’t bad.
Frederick lapped at the little wound like his life depended on it, licking and suckling me and . . . it was surprisingly sexy. His face was contorted into the same ecstatic, blissful expression he’d worn when he’d buried his face between my legs earlier that evening, and fuck if I couldn’t have spent the rest of my life looking at him when he was mindless with pleasure like this.
“Cassie,” he groaned, utterly wrecked by what I was doing to him. My finger slipped from his mouth; he greedily sucked it back in.
And then he flipped us with an inhuman speed that made me breathless, leaving me flat on my back before I’d realized it had even happened. I’d seen hints of his more-than-human strength before, but there was something primal, wild about the way he climbed atop me now.
He leaned over me, his dark hair falling into his eyes.
“Please,” he rasped, his voice thick with his fraying restraint. His forearms were all corded muscle and shaking tension as he held himself perfectly still above me. My finger was still between his lips. He looked like he might die if I withdrew it. “I want to feel you.”
I nodded, understanding from the desperate look in his eyes what he was asking me.
“Please,” I whispered.
With a grunt and one delicious thrust of his hips he was fully seated inside me. I gasped, stunned, the sheer enormity of him stealing the breath from my lungs. My body clenched and unclenched involuntarily, struggling to adjust to his size as he tried to hold himself back.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him down into a searing kiss. I’d never been with someone this big before, and the delicious way my body had to stretch to accommodate him felt incredible. He was everywhere, all at once, and I wanted him to move, to feel the glorious sensual pleasure of him sliding in and out of my body. I wanted to have him in my arms as we moved together, to fall apart in ecstasy as I held him close.
On a shaky exhale he slowly pulled out, and then thrust back into me with so much force the headboard knocked against the wall. I slid my hands down his backside, gripping the hard muscle beneath my fingertips as I tried to pull him even deeper inside me.
“Is this okay?” The cords in his neck stood out in sharp relief as he fought to hold on.
“Yes.”
He groaned, feral, his lips so close to the overly sensitive skin of my neck I felt it more than heard it. Whatever thin filament of restraint he’d been clinging to seemed to snap with another sharp thrust of his hips. And then another. And another.
“Mine,” he growled, the speed of his thrusts increasing, his voice taking on a deep rumbling timbre I’d never heard from him before. I answered with an incoherent moan, writhing beneath him, pinned to the mattress by his strong hands and the relentless pace of his hips.
He’d been a patient and giving lover earlier. Now, he was using me, my body—my blood—for his own pleasure. The realization that he wasn’t going to let me out of this bed until he’d thoroughly had his way with me thrilled me. A desperate cry tore from his throat, nearly sending me spiraling straight into another orgasm.
“Please,” I begged breathlessly, not even knowing what I was begging for. I canted my hips upward, matching his thrusts, mindless in my desperate, urgent need. My lungs couldn’t pull in enough air. My body couldn’t get enough friction. There was nothing in the world but his breath in my ear, the pounding, relentless thrusts of his body into mine, and the shimmering orgasm he was about to give me that still remained frustratingly out of reach.
“Frederick—”
“I . . . want . . . to . . . feel . . . you . . . ,” he gritted out. I was nothing but mindless sensation. “Cassie, come for me.”
When I came, Frederick quickly drew another finger between his lips, biting down and then sucking on it desperately. I was still in the throes of pleasure when his hips slammed into me one final time, my blood on his tongue, my name falling feverishly from his lips. His whole body went rigid above me, his back arching, his hands fisting the sheets on either side of my head so tightly his knuckles were white.
We were silent for a long moment after that as we lay side by side on his mattress. My head lolled on his chest, the gentle designs he was drawing on my arm with his fingertips making me drowsy. The only sounds in the room, aside from the steady rhythm of our breathing, drifted up to us from the street below. Cars honked, and people carried on, just like it was any other Friday night—even as my life had suddenly and irrevocably changed.