Sin on the rocks . . .
Far away, in the cold, cold North, in a mansion called Horror, Jasper, king of the Lucipires, was watching CNN. It was a breaking news story on the latest “atrocities” being committed by the terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria.
Jasper loved a good atrocity. And he loved terrorists, too, especially when they were so creative in their tortures and random in their killings. Of course, many of them were his very own demon vampires, who were increasing their ranks within the organization day by day. This world didn’t know how bad terror could become. Yet.
With him was the powerful Arab haakai Haroun al Rashid, one of his council members, who was in charge of infiltrating terrorist networks in his part of the world. They sat on reclining leather chairs called La-Z-Devils, not unlike the human La-Z-Boys, except these were specially designed with holes in the posterior region to accommodate a Lucipire’s massive tail. They were in humanoid form at the moment, though, so they could enjoy the special almas caviar that Haroun had brought with him, knowing of Jasper’s passion for the rare delicacy. It was hard to eat fish eggs on toast points with claws and mung from their scales dripping onto the food. Alma translated to diamond in Persian, but in the case of caviar, referred to the eggs taken from white sturgeon that were a hundred years old. Expensive, to say the least.
“That’s him. That’s the American I told you about,” Haroun exclaimed, pointing at the TV screen. “David Baxter, from Denver. I recruited him myself.”
Jasper looked at the screen where a balaclava-clad man had just beheaded two missionaries from Khartoum. With the knitted black hood covering his entire head, except for the eyes, it would be difficult for the average viewer to determine his nationality, but those damn CIA forensics experts in the United States were getting too good at gaining information from the smallest detail, like height, and posture, and accent if the terrorist spoke.
Jasper chewed the last of his appetizer and followed it with a long swallow of Blood on the Rocks . . . vodka, seltzer, and human blood over crushed ice. Yum! “I am well pleased with the work you are doing with the terrorists,” he told Haroun.
“Thank you, master. It was your suggestion that we bring in more foreign sympathizers. We have so many volunteers now, we cannot train them all, or turn those ready into Lucipires.”
“I understand. Really, the world is in such chaos now—thanks be to Satan—that people, especially vulnerable, young, extremist Muslim men, jump at the chance to be part of a greater cause.”
“Yes, yes.” Haroun wrung his hands with glee. “Fighting against democracy appeals to those wanting a return to the old ways. Of course, it is a ruse, this recruitment process. What we really want is evil men to become Lucipires who in turn recruit more men to join the cause who in turn become Lucipires.”
“Be careful that in the midst of this influx of new members there are not vangels trying to undermine your efforts.”
“Of course. They are sneaky angels, ha, ha, ha.”
Jasper smiled at Haroun’s jest, although it wasn’t all that funny. Haroun had been a Silk Road merchant at one time, best known for his ruthless slave trading. In many ways, he had not caught up with the twenty-first century. Unlike Jasper who prided himself on being a modern man . . . rather demon. He even carried a cell phone these days and played Dungeons and Dragons on the Internet, and, yes, he’d been known to check out some of the porno sites. And people thought demons were depraved!
“Now, tell me about this upcoming event,” Jasper encouraged Haroun.
“We would love nothing more than a terrorist attack on American soil, but hiding any young people we would kidnap would be difficult there. The next best thing will be an attack on one of those Global Schools in Nigeria, housing children of Americans and Europeans who work there. Perhaps the one in Kamertoon. It is not that far from the Sambisa Forest which BK has found to be a particularly good hiding place.”
Jasper was familiar with the Sambisa Forest, once a nature preserve. It was now a neglected, overgrown jungle.
Jasper nodded and listened attentively as Haroun outlined the details of the new mission.
“Here is the best part,” Haroun said. “The Kamertoon facility is a boarding school for girls, ages ten to fifteen. We will take the children, but we will lock the teachers in the building and set it afire with explosives.”
“I love it!” Jasper said, licking his lips. Not that he had any interest in innocent children. So sickeningly sweet! Yuck! But the evil ones who would capture and torture them? Yes, yes, yes!
“As appalled as the world has been with young African girls being kidnapped and sold into forced marriages or prostitution, imagine the horror at these mostly white girls facing such fates! Such is the bigotry of the world. Don’t you love it, master?”
“Just don’t go overboard,” Jasper cautioned. “We have learned, to our regret, to make our missions short and unremarkable. In and out, like we did on the casino project. Greed is a sin, and who doesn’t love a good sin? But greed is also a weakness we cannot afford. It could make the difference between a successful mission and utter failure.”
“Agreed.”
There was a loud, agonizing scream then.
Jasper and Haroun jerked to attention, almost spilling their drinks.
The screaming continued, joined in with others.
Beltane, Jasper’s hordling assistant, ducked his head inside the open doorway and said, “Forgive my intrusion, master, but they have just begun torture on the latest arrivals. You have to see this. Craven has invented a new tool called the Wire Impaler.”
Jasper stood and set his glass aside. “Will you join me?” he asked Haroun. “This should be fun.”
Caviar, bloody cocktails, and torture . . . could life get any better than this?
A funny thing happened on the way to . . .
Camille was lying on the top of her coverlet in her old high school nightshirt. On it was Snoopy wearing a tutu and the logo, “I’m a Smart Person, I Just Do Stupid Things.” The story of her life.
She’d been listening for a long time for her father and Harek to come upstairs so that she could find out what had happened with the cleansing, or whatever the hell it was called, but she must have fallen asleep. Checking her bedside clock, she saw that it was 1:10 a.m., an hour since she’d come upstairs.
She got out of bed and tiptoed downstairs and went toward the library, where a lamp still burned, but no one was there. Backtracking upstairs, she heard the light murmur of voices from the master suite. Her mother and father? Wow! That must mean something. They hadn’t slept in the same room since she was a child, as far as she knew.
Moving barefoot over the Oriental carpet, she made her way to the guest room at the end of the hall. She thought she heard movement, maybe water running, but then silence. She considered knocking but didn’t want to alert her parents to her whereabouts. How silly was that for an almost thirty-year-old woman? Worrying that she’d be caught in the sack with a boy? Jeesh!
Opening the door slowly, she sidled inside the room. The bed was empty, although the covers had been turned down. A light emanated from the adjoining bathroom, where the door was half open. And then, there stood Harek with a towel wrapped around his middle, low down. He was using another towel to dry his hair.
Startled, he just gaped at her, but then he took in her nightshirt and bare legs, from mid-thigh downward, and smiled, adding his own Snoopy-ism, “Good grief!”
“You were supposed to stop at my bedroom and tell me what happened,” she said quickly, trying to hide her embarrassment. All her good parts were covered, but she somehow felt naked under his perusal.
“I was?”
She nodded. Then she added her own “Good grief!” when she noticed how tan he was, more so than earlier this evening. How could that be? Surely he wasn’t using a self-tanning product, along with mousse. On the other hand, men could be so vain that way, sometimes more so than women. “Been out in the sun since I saw you an hour ago?”
“Oh,” he said, and put a hand to his face, realizing to what her “Good grief!” had been directed. He’d probably thought it was because of his hot body, which, incidentally, was very hot, what she could see of it, which was a lot. Even his muscled calves and narrow feet were kind of sexy. And his blond happy trail? She would fan herself if it wouldn’t be too obvious. And chocolate! She could gain five pounds just inhaling the air in this room. Sinfully sweet!
“A vangel tans after killing a Lucie or removing a sinner’s blood taint.”
Damn! The vangel nonsense again! “Did you talk to my father?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He won’t be harming your mother, and, if my guess is correct, I believe he will be recommitting himself to his marriage.”
“Really? Just like that? Twenty years of cheating and he’s suddenly a changed man?”
Harek shrugged. “God works in wondrous ways.”
“Oh good Lord!”
“Exactly.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“You asked and I told you. ’Tis up to you to believe or not.”
Great! Make me feel like the bad guy. “And Sonja?”
“A thing of the past.”
What? Is he serious? Yes, he looks serious. This is amazing. Unbelievable. But amazing, if true. “And his children with Sonja?”
“Do not push it, Camille. They will always be his daughters.”
Camille sank down to the side of the bed, trying to take in these new happenings, including the events of the day.
“Do you really think that is a good idea?” he asked in a choked voice.
She glanced up to see what he meant.
“Sitting on my bed, wearing naught but a wanton shirt, smelling like roses.”
“Huh? This shirt is not naughty.”
“I didn’t say naughty. I said wanton.”
“Same thing.”
She realized that he’d meant naught, as in “nothing but.” “How did you know I’m not wearing a bra or panties? Do you have Superman vision or something on top of everything else?”
“Super . . . super . . . ?” An odd gurgling noise came from his throat. “You’re not wearing undergarments? Oh, I am lost. Fifty years of celibacy, and I am felled by roses and a Snoopy dog.”
Fifty years . . . How could he be celibate for fifty years if he was only thirty? Oh, wait, there was that thousand-year-old stuff. She felt a giggle of hysteria bubble up in her, which she quickly stifled. Good thing, too, because while she’d been distracted, Harek had dropped his towel, and not just the one he’d been using to dry his hair.
Holy.
Mother.
Of.
God!
Camille had seen a few erections in her time, but this was different. Harek was different. Magnificent seemed too small a word—ha, ha, ha, small, hardly!—for the way he looked to her. Like the statue of David, but better. All well-defined muscles and bones, from wide shoulders, to narrow hips, to lean-sinewed thighs, all a framework for his penis that was veined marble, standing out from his body, signaling his attraction—his need—for her.
How heady a compliment was that?
She didn’t look down, but there was a good chance Snoopy was doing the happy dance, just looking at Harek.
Or should she be insulted? No, she was the one who’d come, uninvited, into his bedroom in the middle of the night. But that’s not why she’d come. Was it? No, of course not.
“I’m feeling kind of lonely, standing here naked,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Lose Snoopy.”
Oh. “Oh.” Yikes!
“No, wait. Let me unwrap you. Like a present.” Before she could guess what he meant, he knelt before her and placed a palm on each of her thighs, under the hem of her nightshirt. The tips of his fingers almost, but not quite, touched her pubic hair.
Blood rushed to that region, and the pleasure was so intense she felt herself sway.
Harek righted her and then somehow got his hands under her bottom and lifted the shirt, but only waist-high. At the same time, he spread her knees wider so that she was fully exposed to him.
“So pretty!” he said, sitting back on his heels and staring at her there. “Look at yourself, Camille. See how pretty you are.”
She didn’t want to, but she did. And what she saw was not herself. Correction, she saw herself, all right, wide open for business and practically waving a welcome sign, but what she homed in on, instead, was that part of Harek, big and hard, and pointing at her like a heat-seeking missile, and, boy, did she have the heat, or was that the hots, for him.
My brain is melting from hormone overload.
“Are you wet for me, Camille?” he asked silkily.
How did she answer a question like that? “Probably.”
“You better check.”
Huh? “Could we just get on with it, Harek. I’m not good at games.”
“Lucky for you, I am. Touch yourself, Camille,” he ordered.
She bristled. Camille was in the military. She was accustomed to taking orders, but not from men in her personal life.
“Do not try to deny that you know how.”
Of course she knew how. She was almost thirty years old. She had read Cosmo as a teenager. She’d read Fifty Shades as an adult. She put a finger, just one, her middle finger, to herself. And, yes, there was dampness. “Are you satisfied?”
“Not even a little,” he said with a laugh. “I am a greedy bastard.”
But when she looked at him, she saw that his silvery blue eyes were half slitted with passion, and his lips were parted, showing the pointy incisors. So, he likes looking at me there, and he likes watching me touch myself. She did it again, this time going deep, just as a test, and he barely caught the gasp of surprise that escaped his lips. Oh yeah, he likes it. He likes it!
“Witch,” he murmured, and kissed the fingertip she’d just put to herself. “Roses. More bloody roses!”
Women had a thing about body odor, especially down there. And she knew for a fact that she didn’t smell like roses there. Even so, she took a surreptitious sniff, and holy hell! She did detect a slight scent of roses.
But Harek had moved on to something else. “Take off the garment, sweetling. Slowly.” Meanwhile he was running his fingertips up the backs of her legs, from her ankles to her butt, then back again. If she hadn’t just shaved her legs that day, she would have guessed that every hair follicle was standing on end, waving, Me, me, me! Her pubic hairs definitely were.
“Sweetling? That’s a new one,” she said with horny irrelevance. “Well, since you ask you so nicely . . .” She crisscrossed her arms and tugged at the hem by her waist, raising it higher. And higher. And higher. Then over her head, tossing it to the floor.
He studied her body in infuriating silence. “You’ve been hiding a lot, Camille,” he told her then. “A lot.”
She did have a good body. A healthy metabolism and hard exercise guaranteed that. Her breasts weren’t big, but they were proportional to the rest of her body, and, since she’d never had children, the nipples were pink and smallish.
He touched her nipples, lightly, and smiled when her lower body jolted in reaction. Her dampness was becoming a flood.
“We are going to have such fun,” he promised then, and put both hands on her waist, lifted and tossed her onto the middle of the bed, following after her. With a sensual hum of approval he arranged himself over her with his hard part pressed into the V of her widespread thighs. If she was the violin and he was the bow (She’d moved on from rockets to musical instruments. So, sue her!), they were already making sweet music, down there. In the pit (Don’t have a dirty mind!) . . . the orchestra pit.
Holy frickin’ cow! I didn’t know I could move from inside out, without actually trying.
Move over Beethoven. Mama’s got a brand-new song, she thought, then giggled at the idiocy of her musing.
“You think my agony is funny, do you, wench?”
She opened her eyes, which she hadn’t realized were scrunched tightly closed. Harek was arched over her on braced arms, and he actually did appear to be in agony. The best possible kind. Good! Welcome to the club. Even knowing, she asked with mock innocence, “What’s wrong?”
“I want you so bloody damn much, I’m having trouble controlling my enthusiasm, that is what is wrong.”
“Enthusiasm?”
He shrugged. “Viking for arousal.”
She smiled.
“You are enjoying my discomfort!”
“No. I like that you’re attracted to me.”
“Attracted! Any more attracted and I will be plowing a furrow in this mattress.”
“You have a charming way with words.” She put a hand to his chest, just to see if his skin was as warm as it appeared. It was. “Do you know that your eyes have turned silvery, and you have blue wispy wings coming out of your shoulders?”
“Not wings. No wings! Not when I am feeling so unangelic.”
“They sure look like wings.”
“ ’Tis probably smoke coming out of my ears from all the heat you are stoking in me.”
“Are we going to make love?”
“I do not know about making love, but I intend to sate my lust on you fifty ways to Valhalla.”
“You believe in Valhalla?”
“No, but I didn’t want to say that other word.”
“Heaven?”
“Hell.”
“You think you’re going to Hell for making love.”
“No, but I will be punished.”
“I don’t underst—”
He put his fingertips to her lips. “Enough talking.” Then he replaced his fingertips with his mouth, and she felt herself melting into a kiss so chocolaty sweet and sexually explicit that she was drowning in sensuality. Every erotic spot on her body was connected by thin threads of sensitivity to her lips. She vibrated with each brush of his lips, each lick of his tongue, each nip of his teeth. When she tasted him with her own tongue, brushing against his pointed incisors, he groaned low and deep in his throat.
A sudden alarming thought occurred to her. “Do you fang during sex?”
“I can, but I won’t, unless you want me to.” He was still braced over her body, but he was rubbing his silky chest hairs over her nipples, causing them to be engorged and aching for more. She arched up and did her own abrading, harder.
He chuckled.
“Why would I want that? Fanging?” she gasped out.
“It enhances the sexual pleasure for the woman a hundredfold, I have heard.”
“And for the man?”
He grinned. “A thousandfold.”
Of course, the idea was planted in her fool head now. “I don’t want to,” she lied.
“You don’t have to,” he replied. “There are plenty of other things we can do. Like . . .” He proceeded to do the most incredible things to her ears, first one, then the other. Using his lips and wet tongue and teeth and warm breaths, he aroused every nerve ending in her body, just by making love to her ears. And in between, he whispered words of encouragement to her, some of them wicked, not usually spoken aloud.
She used her hands to explore his shoulders and back and buttocks, but she couldn’t move her lower body, as she wanted to, because he had her pinioned to the bed with his hips. “I’m ready,” she finally said with exasperation.
“For what?”
“You.”
“Where?”
“Inside me.”
“It’s too soon.”
“Screw soon. I want you. Now. There are condoms in the bedside drawer in my bedroom. Oh damn, I wasn’t planning this when I came to your room.”
He arched a brow at her. “Condoms? You have condoms?”
“I wasn’t anticipating this. But the Navy makes us WEALS put protection in our toiletry kits. Just in case.”
“I don’t need a condom. Vangels are sterile.”
“Your brother . . .”
“Except for Ivak.”
In a momentary lapse from talking, Harek had raised himself slightly and Camille managed one quick thrust of her hips, causing him to slide inside her, to his surprise. It was always good to surprise a man in bed. But, truth to tell, slide wasn’t the right word. Because he was big, and she hadn’t had sex in a while, her slick channel was welcoming him with fierce spasms that moved him higher, inch by blissful inch. Holy frickin’ sex machine! A wave of orgasms swept over her, so intense she might have blacked out for a moment. Her eyes were probably rolling back in her head.
When she was able to glance up—he was still embedded in her, unmoving—she saw that his teeth were gritted and sweat beaded his forehead. He was clearly fighting his own climax. A strange haze seemed to surround them, like a cocoon, and it smelled, surprise, surprise, like chocolate roses. She was going to bottle the scent and make a million dollars, if she ever survived this awful/wonderful sexual experience.
Harek seemed to be watching her, waiting for something. “Are you ready?”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as a gasp.
“I take that for yes,” he said with a smile, and began to slowly, very sloooooooowly, draw himself out of her body until only the head of his penis was inside her. The friction was pleasure and torture so intense that she let out a long moan and raised her knees, spreading herself even wider.
He took his time going back in again, too. She wanted to beat his back with her fists and scream, Faster! But her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth as she panted for breath. She did put her hands on his hard butt cheeks, though, trying to encourage him.
The stubborn man took his slow good time.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Innnnnnn.
Ouuuuuut.
She was dying and having dozens of mini orgasms while he stroked her inner walls with frustrating slowness. Once he stopped when he was in her fully and rubbed his pubic bone against her clitoris, back and forth, back and forth, ’til she exploded in a full-blown climax of shuddering spasms.
“Are you done now?” she asked, though she couldn’t see for the exploding stars that blinded her. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but not by much. Down below, she was one shattering mess of sensations. Hard to tell what was going on in sex central, too many things at one time.
He laughed. “I’ve barely begun.”
That cleared her vision fast.
“Hold on to the headboard, sweetling,” he advised then. “This is going to be a rough ride.”
What a corny cliché, she thought as she grabbed for the wood spindles. Almost immediately, she revised her thinking to Go, cowboy, go!
He slammed into her, over and over and over. And each time he hit her clitoris, just so, only for a brief second, but more arousing because it was so brief. In and out, he stroked her, long and hard. ’Til she barely stifled a scream.
Looping her legs over his shoulders, he hit her from a different angle, and the inner convulsions started all over again. She was grasping and ungrasping him in a rhythmic dance as old as time, but unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
She almost screamed again, and this time he reared his head back and gritted out his own climax before falling heavily onto her body. Only belatedly, she worried that her parents might have heard her, but there appeared to be silence in the house. Thank God she hadn’t actually screamed. But a loud whimper could be heard in the quiet, couldn’t it? She listened some more. Just silence, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs. Whew!
Like a rag doll, she lay splayed out, with him still semisoft inside her body, his face resting against her neck. She could feel his fangs pressing against her skin, but he made no move to bite her. Thank God! She wouldn’t have the strength to fight him off. Nor would she want to.
“Sorry I am, Camille,” he said against her ear.
“Why?”
“I did not spend nearly enough time in foreplay. Next time I will do better.”
“Next time?” she choked out.
“Did I not mention that I am a greedy man?”
She began to laugh then. The man had that effect on her. Better? That was impossible. That was the best sex she’d ever had. The best sex anyone had ever had. With an angel, yet! She doubted Adam and Eve had had such good sex. Or Samson and Delilah. As for his vampire half—and wasn’t that an interesting question, which part of Harek was vampirish?—good ol’ Drac had nothing on him, Impaler or not!
Unfortunately, or fortunately, her laughter extended to all parts of her body. Even down below. And that semisoft part of his body was clearly enjoying the humor with growing—what was it Harek had called it?—enthusiasm.