Sundown Inc.: She Who Dares Read online

  This time I wasn’t going to be satisfied until he was inside me.

  I reached for his fly and found him hot and hard under the leather. Found him even harder in my hand. His cock was long and elegant, dark with blood and pulsing in my grip.

  I looked up at Dare, and found his eyes closed. I stroked his cock gently, and he exhaled.

  “Masika,” he breathed.

  “I want you inside me,” I said.

  His eyes opened, warm blue pools in his cool face. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I smiled and wrapped my arm around his neck to kiss him again as I stroked him. His mouth really was a miracle, so hot and wet, his tongue stroking all the sensitive places in my own mouth.

  I started unfastening my own pants, but Dare stopped me with a hand on my wrist.

  “Not here,” he said, his voice ragged. Tattered silk. “Not like this.”

  “Bed,” I said, and he nodded gratefully.

  I grabbed his hand in mine and we flew across the floor to the stairs, into my bedroom with its reinforced steel door, and I slammed it shut, the bolt falling closed as we tumbled to the bed together. My mind was totally gone by now, and all I wanted was him inside me, his cock sliding deep, that glorious friction, his skin against mine, his lips and his hands on my body. I couldn’t breathe with wanting him.

  The rest of our clothes vanished. Maybe we took them off, or maybe they were just ripped away. I don’t remember. I was halfway to orgasm before I was even naked. I don’t know why I wanted him so much but I did, I craved him, I was wet and swollen and needy for him.

  Dare held back for a second as he saw me naked, skin glistening, nipples standing up proud, naked pussy beckoning him.

  His fingers traced the lines of dots and dashes tattooed on my lower abdomen.

  “Priestess marks,” he said in wonder.

  “Fertility marks,” I corrected. Back in the days when a child might have been possible, and the pharaoh’s child would have secured my future forever.

  Forever. Who remembers the pharaohs now?

  He kissed them, kissed the line of dots that curved between my hipbones, sweeping half an inch from my dampened pussy.

  Then his lips moved lower, he was between my legs, sucking my clit into his mouth. I writhed and panted and shook as he licked me slowly all the way along my cunt, dipped his tongue inside and tasted me.

  “Dare,” I cried, my voice breaking, drawing him to me. I was so hot, melting, burning for him. I’d never felt like this before with anyone, vampire or human. Was it love? I didn’t know. All I wanted was his cock inside me, moving, never stopping. I never wanted this to end.

  His hand cupped my face, fingers traced my scars, and then his lips brushed mine in the tenderest of kisses before he slid inside me, slowly, stretching me, and a gasp escaped me at the pure beauty of it.

  “Masika.” My name was a whisper of silk on his lips, and I was undone at the sound of it.

  “It’s never been like this,” I choked out, and then Dare was pushed fully inside me and I lost all capability for speech.

  He moved, slowly at first, testing me, then faster, harder, as my body urged him on. He filled me completely, not just his cock thrusting into my cunt, but something more, something deeper. I felt him inside me like a fist in a glove, and as he flexed and thrust ever deeper into me I convulsed and cried out, coming. Lights flashed, heat flared, and somewhere in my brain I knew he was coming too, but I was too far gone to really feel it.

  I felt sand under my back, the burning heat of it, desert sand, and the smell of it. The hot dry smell of the desert. I opened my eyes to the flickering stars, stars I hadn’t seen in two thousand years, and the hot kiss of the desert wind caressed my naked skin.

  I felt Dare still inside me, and like a zoetrope of images I saw his thoughts. I was in his thoughts. Reclining naked upon a chaise while the pharaoh licked cream from my body. I was his woman, his concubine, jeweled and perfumed, pampered, kept.

  The loss of my humanity hit me like a fist, but in Dare’s memory I was still perfect. Still that gorgeous creature with no concerns but how to please herself that day. I saw Djoser, forgotten lover. Though how I forgot him I have no idea. It was Djoser who brought me to this.

  Such a lover, the pharaoh’s guard. Such a liar, denying all knowledge of the love bite on my breast. Such disgust in his eyes as I was led away to die. Adultery, treachery, betrayal of my god-king.

  I felt Dare’s despair at my fate. Who was he? How did he even know? But know he did. He knew everything, even about the woman who had come to me the night before my death. The small, strange woman who had filled my mind with peace, then left. I didn’t know what she was or what she’d done until I awoke in some shallow grave, spitting sand, still alive even after my body had been held under the waters of the Nile and left for the crocodiles. Left without proper burial, without a chance at after-life. The ultimate insult.

  I came back to myself choking and spluttering, sweat-soaked silk under my back, Dare’s arms holding me. His voice called me, anchored me, his soft voice, caressing me.

  “Masika. Masika. It’s all right… come back now… it’s all right.”

  I stared at him, breathing hard, panicking. “She t-turned me, didn’t she? She sired me and I -- I don’t remember. I woke and I didn’t know, Dare, I didn’t know what I was.”

  He cradled me in his arms, moved back against the headboard and gathered me in his lap like a child. His touch soothed me, calmed my heartbeat, and I pressed up against him, needing his heat and his solidity.

  “It’s all right now,” he said, stroking my hair. “It’s all right.”

  I calmed enough to relax, and when I felt a little better I realized I was being held by the most delicious naked vampire I’d ever seen. Dare’s skin was hot to touch, his body firm with muscle. He wasn’t hugely muscled, which doesn’t do a lot for me, and he had beautiful curved pecs and the most delightful abs I’d ever seen.

  I dipped my head and kissed his nipple, and his body tensed.

  “You recover quickly,” he said.

  “It’s a skill of mine,” I replied, and tried not to make a face. But I failed, and Dare saw it, and lifted my head.

  “Was it really so bad?” he asked. “With the pharaoh?”

  I drew back a little. “You know about that?”

  “I know.”

  I let out a shaky breath. No, it hadn’t been that bad with the pharaoh. It was after that when things got bad. After I woke, the weakest vampire in a pack of hundreds, needing protection. All my life, human and vampire, I’d traded sex for safety. Sharing the pharaoh’s bed meant security for my whole family. Finding a strong vampire protector meant I wasn’t meat for the whole pack.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I said.

  “But it’s still made a definite impression on you.”

  I shrugged. “What we are in life shapes us in death. My soul was never weighed against a feather, but who I was made me who I am now.”

  “You’re no one’s slave.”

  I closed my eyes, because it had taken me a long time to realize I was strong on my own. Djoser had cured me of sex for love, and as I became stronger I didn’t need to use my body as collateral anymore.

  Which did leave me sort of nowhere on the sex front.

  Dare was cuddling me to him, stroking my hair, and even though I knew I should have been thinking about the contract Johann had more or less obliged me to fulfill, I didn’t. I should have been thinking about the memories Dare had shared with me -- who was he, and why did he know so much about me when I didn’t know him? -- but I didn’t. I breathed in his scent, and slept, his words in my ear.

  Chapter Five

  I dreamt of my music box. It was a treasure back then, a treasured toy when I was a child. The tune it made was haunting, beautiful. I still remembered it now, could hear it now, as I dreamed myself turning the handle, playing the tune and dancing to it, skipping across the precious green lawn in the royal
gardens. I was naked, a child again, running free just for the joy of it, the sun warming my bare scalp as I ran, dry grass under my feet.

  The smell of sand, the heat of the desert…

  I tripped and fell, but there were warm hands to catch me. And although I didn’t care, because all I saw was my music box smashed and broken on the grass, I knew now who’d caught me.

  A Greek boy, a soldier, blond hair curling about his shoulders, blue eyes deeper than the sky.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I broke it,” I said, and we both looked at the sad remains of my cherished toy. A tear rolled down my cheek.

  “It can be mended. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” Aware he was holding me, sure I shouldn’t be letting him see me cry, I shook myself away from him. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  His eyes were so blue. “I saw you fall.”

  “You should go now.” My voice became stronger. He was older than me, but he was just a soldier, and I was to be married to the pharaoh.

  “But your toy…”

  I tried not to look at it, tried not to let him see how upset I was. “I don’t care about that.”

  He looked at me, and I knew he wasn’t fooled. But he bowed his head to me, and he retreated, but although I knew he was gone I felt his eyes on me all the way back into the palace.

  Darkness, the stars above me, stars I haven’t seen since I left my homeland, and as I entered my chamber I saw the light from the lamp falling over my music box.

  It was whole again, and when I turned the handle, the music spilled out.

  The air was heavy with perfumed oil as I listened to the tune, perplexed but not unhappy, wondering why he’d done it. I hadn’t even been nice to him.

  He stood under an archway in the pharaoh’s throne room, watching the candlelight on my bare body. If my father hadn’t got me into court I’d have been a dancing girl, bare but for a belt of beads, twining my body to music for the pleasure of men. Here I did the same, but it was for the pharaoh and his court, and it was an idle entertainment, just some fun for the bearded men. I was younger than their daughters. Older now, but so young still.

  The soldier watched me. I’d never seen him then, but I saw him now, in my dream, his eyes burning blue fire. The heat of his gaze seared my skin, tightened my nipples, and I danced closer, hotter, lifted my arms and grazed my breasts across his chest.

  He was naked, and so was I. I felt the hardness of his cock against my hip and writhed against it, the music pounding a beat in my veins, hot and dark, everything fading but for this one man, his eyes burning and his teeth sharpening.

  “Will you hurt me?” I asked, running my tongue over his fangs.

  “Never,” he swore. I ran my hands over his biceps, felt the rock hard strength that went down to his core.

  “You could break me like a reed,” I said.

  “Am I strong enough?”

  “I think you are.”

  “Strong enough for you,” he said urgently. “How can I be what you need?”

  “Touch me,” I said, and he did, touched my hips and my breasts, pulled me to him and kissed me, deep and wonderful, that kiss I loved so much from the first time I tasted it in Willie’s bar.

  If only I’d kissed him then. If only I’d known. But after the music box, I never saw that boy again. Never saw him grow, never saw him watching me, never saw his desperate search to be better than he was, to do what he should never have done, to be better for me, to be what I needed.

  His arms went around me and I felt the total safety of his strength. No harm could come to me while I was here. I didn’t fear the court, the politics, I didn’t fear anything. His sharp teeth nipped my lip and I tasted blood.

  He made a growling sound that vibrated straight through me to my cunt, and my body shuddered with the pleasure of it.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  “What do you want, meu?”

  Meu. It meant kitten in Egyptian. My father used to call me that as a child.

  “I want you,” I said, looking up at his drowning blue eyes, and he pulled me closer, pressing my body against his, soft against hard, weak against strong. His hot cock pressed into me, my nipples rubbed against his chest, and the temperature rose as he kissed me, long and deep, and turned me against the wall so that it was supporting me as he lifted my legs around his waist.

  “I have always wanted you,” he said, his eyes on mine as his cock rubbed against me. “Always loved you. I wanted you to see me.”

  “I see you,” I said, writhing, desperate to have him inside me.

  “There’s nobody but you,” he breathed as he slid into me, filling me, completing me. I let out a cry: he was so hot inside me, so thick, stretching me. Tears came to my eyes at the beauty of it, and he kissed them away, my Greek soldier, the boy who loved me, touching me and stroking me and building the fires higher inside me until I couldn’t breathe with the perfection of it, the rightness of it, and as I came I knew there was nobody for me but him.

  I dreamed of my Greek making love to me all night, I dreamed I was loved, and I loved him for it.

  Chapter Six

  When I woke the sun was rising -- I could feel it, even if I couldn’t see it -- and I was alone. Where Dare had lain next to me, keeping me warm as I slept, there was now a bronze mask, and a note, written in the most beautiful script. It contained an address in Paris, and the message “She holds an annual masquerade ball. Wear this.”

  I picked up the mask, which would cover half my face, and had a cat’s eyes and nose. One side fell lower on the cheek than the other, like the Phantom of the Opera’s mask, and I realized it would completely cover the scars on my face.

  On my dresser was a pile of shimmering things, and when I padded over to them I saw that it was a collection of heavy bracelets for my upper arm, a golden belt, and a jeweled collar. It was the sort of thing I might have worn when I was human. And it too would almost cover my scars.

  I looked at my scars in the mirror, remembered the zealot who’d caused them. He was long dead, but I’d survived, fed on the blood of my Master, strengthened until all that remained of my near fatality were these bumps and lines of rigid tissue. It had made me realize my own strength; realize that although I wasn’t the Childe of my Master, neither was I beholden to her. I’d left her court, and made my own life. Or death, whichever way you want to look at it.

  I looked again at Dare’s brief note. Who was ‘she’? His Master? The vampire who’d commissioned his death?

  I showered, ripped open a bag of blood, and booted up my computer. Some vampires, who seem to think the march of time stopped dead when they did, absolutely hate technology. Me, I love it. I sent out feelers to all the vampires I’m in contact with, as well as a few occultists, Wiccans, demons, and the odd human, like Willie, who always knew what was going on.

  They all replied with the same thing: the masked ball was given by the oldest vampire Master in Europe for all her own vampires, of which there were thousands, if not millions; and for her friends and guests. This year it was in Paris. Guest invites were scarce, but no one seemed to doubt that I’d get in.

  I guess I had a ticket with the whole Sundown thing. Whatever.

  I booked my flights and carefully wrapped up against the sun. Travelling can be a bitch when you’re extremely photosensitive. Direct sunlight burns vampires to a crisp, even strong ones. Indirect light leaves me weak and lethargic, but I can live through it.

  I packed the jewelery and some choice anti-vampire weapons of the sort that wouldn’t get picked up by customs. Wood for stakes, holy water (kept in a locked box, of course), crosses and the like. Although I wear a holy symbol on my skin, it doesn’t trouble me, I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s a symbol of something I still believe in.

  I told the airline staff I was allergic to sunlight, and made it to Paris just as dusk was falling. Paris is a beautiful city, and I spent a lot of time here before the Revolution. I came back durin
g the Belle Epoque and hung around in nightclubs, drinking absinthe, but then all those stupid world wars started, and I moved to America. Isolationism can be handy.

  It took a long while to prepare myself, because I was remembering rituals I hadn’t used in over two thousand years. Oiled, painted, and jeweled, I walked unseen to the venue, and was admitted by an expressionless Renfield.

  He never questioned my right to be there. He simply ushered me into the ballroom, where I stood for a moment, staring.

  The palace was one of the rare places that had escaped both the Revolution and the world wars. Or perhaps the Master’s presence had scared both of them away. Every surface glittered and shone as if it wasn’t just veneered with gold, but with jewels and sequins too. Even the floor shone a highly polished gold, reflecting the glow of hundreds of candles. Vampires of every age and color whirled across the floor in a beautifully choreographed waltz, like puppets or dolls, beautiful but hardly real.

  But it was the music that unnerved me. It was just this side of discordant, like a merry-go-round broken down. It had no source -- there were no wires, no speakers, not even any electric lights, and no orchestra either -- but it twinkled on, warped and sinister, leaking from the walls.

  It was the music from my music box, and it chilled me.

  I lifted my head and stepped into the room, and every vampire stopped and turned a masked face toward me. I felt the weight of thousands of years watching me as I walked through the parting crowd wearing my cat mask, belt, jeweled collar and armlets. The rest of me was naked but for a coat of bronze paint, my scars covered by the mask and jewelery, the tattoos on my back and belly left bare and visible. I had dressed as Bast, a silent plea for her protection as I walked into this nest of potential enemies.

  I was the disowned vampire of a distant Master. I could be killed on sight.

  I walked on bare feet, and as the crowd parted silently ahead of me I saw Dare standing at the far end of the ballroom. He was dressed in the Greek style, his face covered by a traditional helmet, his arms bare but for leather vambraces. His beautiful torso was covered by leather and straps, original armour, I was betting. The short leather kilt showed his strong legs, his handsome feet in their leather sandals. He carried a sword and a shield on his back. Nice touch.