Love on the Dark Side

Blondie by the bar has been flashing his eyes at me all evening. He’s cute in a seedy pimpy sort of way, dressed in a Lycra T-shirt that’s torn at the neck and offers just a tantalising glimpse of what’s below. My palms itch at the prospect of sliding them up his snake-skin-covered thighs to his tight behind.

Snow-blond hair shrouds most of his face and falls in a ragged line along his jaw, but through that veil his eyes are piercing and intense. Sex with him I anticipate as an edgy place, full of surprises and riddles. It will absolutely not be straight and vanilla, which I guess makes us a match, because, while I’m not exactly far out, I am here for escapism, and I like to take risks.

So, when I catch him staring again, I return his gaze and lick my lips.

Instead of sauntering straight over, he just breaks eye contact and looks away, leaving me in a predicament over whether to be just a bit more pushy.

I can do it, but it’s not something I like doing, because I want them to make the first move. Mostly they do, so tanked up that a brush-off will barely dent their soporific shells. Maybe that’s how I know he really is different. He’s not drinking.

I mull him over, stealing glances while he lounges against the bar, his tight arse barely on the stool, one booted foot hooked around the metal rungs. Just the way he poses makes me want him, but it’s obvious that he’s worlds away from me. I’m a dull little secretary with Tippex on my fingertips, and he looks as if he’s fallen from a stage, or maybe a constellation.

Then, just when I’m finally drunk enough to go over and introduce myself, somebody smashes a glass on someone else, spilling first one liquid, then another. There is screaming and shoving, and I lose him in the ensuing panic.

To avoid getting dragged into the fight, I run for the loos. Which is where bad goes from bad to fucking diabolical.

In I dive, and I’m thinking pee, phone, powder nose, by which time the drama outside will be all over and security will have done their thing. I did mention I’m stupid when I’m drunk, didn’t I? OK, so I’m not exactly a genius sober, hence my dead-end job at Boredom Inc. This is my idea of a safe place while people outside are scheduled for plastic surgery.

Anyway, I pee . . . I hear moans . . . seems that, despite the commotion, some lucky girl has managed to pull and is not far off her very own crisis just a few doors down. My head automatically turns that way as I exit from my own cubicle.

The door to the end stall is open, enough for the reflection in the mirror to tell me that I have things seriously wrong. For starters, she’s alone.

I watch her writhe, both appalled and aroused by her lascivious display. Her ‘Hello Kitty’ T-shirt is pulled up above her bare breasts and her sparkly hipsters are undone, showing flashes of pussy hair. What’s she playing at? I wonder. Putting on a show? Trying to attract an offer? Or, worst of all, is she having a bleeding fit?

One of my classmates once had one during a really heavy physics practical. She flopped on the floor like a drowning fish, her eyes rolled up in terror, the same terror that freezes Hello Kitty and holds her fast against the chipboard, gasping for air. Her mouth goes slack. She starts to gurgle, like there’s something sticky in her throat.

Abandoning my lipstick, I scoot along the line of basins, my phone already in hand, ready to dial whatever number presents itself. If I’m lucky, she’ll have one of those medical bracelets that say diabetic, epileptic or celiac. If I’m even luckier, I’ll just end up watching her puke the remains of some euphoric or a recent blow job, while I reassuringly pat her on the back.

Except . . .

I’m wrong on all scores, because, contrary to what the mirror is telling me, she’s not alone.

‘Shit!’

I back away with my hands raised.

His eyes are feral, wild green and slit like a cat’s – my Mr Blond. He’s done something to the girl.

I realise that this could’ve been me. If it hadn’t been for the fight outside and my weak bladder, it would have been. Might still be.

Blood soaks him. It splashes his face, giving the illusion of tears while it bubbles from her throat. He releases her and she stands for maybe a second before her legs crumple and she falls like a rag doll.

Shocked, I just stand there.

What are you? What have you done? The questions echo inside my skull. I know what I am seeing, but my mind doesn’t want to comprehend it. It refuses to accept it. I have to break the image into pieces. His arctic fringe. Cat’s eyes. Hello Kitty disappearing into a red stain.

And he advances.

Perversely, he’s prettier now than he was on the edge of the dance floor. It’s an ethereal otherworldly sort of beauty, frighteningly cold and horribly arousing. A montage of images enters my mind from somewhere outside: licking the blood from his face, smearing it across his chest, him going down on me while I bleed. I can see his tongue delving between my pussy lips, and somehow that seems horribly wrong.

There’s a girl dying, right now, because of him.

My sensible self fights its way through the fog in my brain, yelling, ‘Run! Run! You stupid bitch.’ But I don’t run. I’m numbed. I just shuffle backwards until I hit the sinks, which dig into my back, cold and impossibly real.

‘What are you doing to me? Don’t come any closer!’

My fist tightens around my phone and I wish for the nineties and something a bit heavier. This slender silver shell won’t cause more than a slight bruise before it snaps.

‘What am I doing to you?’ His voice is in my head. His eyebrow asks the question. ‘I’m not the one with these fantasies.’

He slips into my personal space and entwines himself around my body like some exotic snake. He sways as if he’s scenting me, and closes his hypnotic eyes. His breath is wet and cloyingly iron scented. He rubs his nose and his cheek against my neck. Then licks the sweat from my skin.

That touch sends a shiver right through me. I burn, anticipating darkness, but the sharp-sweet pain doesn’t come.

‘Oh, no,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘I’m saving you. Are you frightened? I can smell it on you. You reek of it.’

His hand slithers up my arm and takes the phone from my fingers. It falls, skittering off under the sink.

‘I’m already sated. Lucky for you.’ He cups my cheek with his other hand, and paints my lips with his thumb. ‘But I’ve a mind to take you home . . .’

A midnight snack, the ever irreverent part of me thinks, though this is no joke. I’m in serious danger. ‘I can’t. You just . . . to that girl,’ I say.

‘To satisfy a different kind of hunger.’

He pushes my hand down between our bodies to where his cock lies hard, trapped beneath his snakeskin. It’s my dance-floor fantasy come true, with a horrid twist. I guess it’s true that you should be careful what you wish for.

‘You want me,’ he says. ‘I can feel it in the rhythm of your pulse.’

‘No!’ I shake my head and try to pull my hand away but he holds me firm.

‘You can’t resist. It didn’t save her, it won’t save you.’ His gaze flicks towards the girl.

Kick him and run. Put as much distance between you as you can.

‘Try. You won’t get further than four paces.’

And I know he’s right, so I don’t even try. Instead, I let his erection bruise my palm, and I try to ignore the fantasy that plays out in my head, of me taking this velvet-dressed rod and slipping it inside me, of riding it hard and making it weep. My fingers curl around him. Oblivion looms, as I see us coupled at the point of orgasm with his lips pressed to my throat.

My lips part, ready for a kiss, but, though he’s close, he doesn’t press into me, and he doesn’t share the blood smeared across his lips.

‘Let’s go,’ he says instead. ‘I hate fucking in toilets, it’s so crude.’

‘Help me,’ I mouth to a tramp on a bench, before the car door closes.

I stare at the rain-streaked windows and the shimmering lights reflected endlessly in the windscreen. The multi-tones of traffic lights blur into a kaleidoscopic haze, but all I see are blue, blue eyes so full of terror. Was it really too late to save her? Is it too late to save myself?

Up front the driver’s radio crackles and cuts between static and late-night radio. It’s easy to drift between the music and white noise, to remain entranced and still, and not to think too deeply, but slowly the fog rolls back from my mind.

The taxi driver is slumped over the wheel, although the car is still moving. I wonder if he was alive when we got in. The rear-view mirror is cracked and there’s a crimson smear across the dashboard. I wonder how long it will be before I’m broken too.

I stare at my captor’s hand where it lies beside me on the scuffed upholstery. His fingernails are black, not with nail polish or grime, but because he is something born out of a nightmare. Still, it’s significant, for it means he’s no longer touching me.

I realise this little freedom is probably my one chance to escape. I need only open the door, jump out and it’ll all be over, or would be if I had the courage. But I’ve seen the films. If I run, I’ll die. It’s a given.

I feel his gaze on me, then, but when I look his head is turned away. Another image floats between us: I’m laid out across the road. Sirens scream. All around us blue lights brighten the sky. He’s cradling me like a child. The onlookers think he is mourning a lover and give him space though they stare, while really he’s supping from my injuries.

I find I am staring at him, and without movement, he is staring back.

The angles of his face are sharp, and his eyes glow an unearthly green. He has wiped away most of the blood splatter, but a smear still stains his lips. Hesitantly, I touch a finger to it.

He clasps my hand and sucks my finger into the heat of his mouth.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Home,’ he says cryptically.

I feel a stab like a needle, then his tongue massages the pad of my finger, and he starts to suckle.

His eyes glaze, and he seems lost in the moment. Gradually, his sucking deepens and slows. I feel the caress of his tongue not on my finger but between my thighs.

‘Mmm . . . It’s so good. You taste sweet.’ His voice is a low mellifluous burr inside my head. ‘I want you, Kristy.’ He sighs, looks me deep in the eyes, and the effect is magnetic. ‘I want all of you.’

And I want nothing more than to clamp myself around him and merge our bodies into one. It already feels like he’s supping down my soul.

‘Kristy . . . Kristy,’ he murmurs. How does he know my name?

Panic paints a chill sheen down my back. I pull away, though he still holds my hand tight.

‘How do you know me?’

‘It’s written in your blood,’ he says. ‘Every tiny detail of you runs through your veins, all your memories and all your thoughts.’

‘No.’

There are too many things I don’t want anyone to know about me to take this admission calmly. There are things I’ve been thinking while he’s sucked my finger that I don’t want him to know.

‘Too late,’ he says, and he keeps on licking. ‘I know all your dirty secrets now.’

‘No.’

Light from a streetlamp streams in the window and lights up his eyes like reflectors.

‘Like how you want your handsome but dull boss to lean you over his desk and chastise your pert little arse.’

‘Stop it! I don’t.’

‘No use denying it, the longing is written across every bead.’

I shake my head. ‘You’re wrong.’

It’s just his hands. Mr Cox has the most beautiful hands, with long tapering fingers and baby-soft palms. I want to see them flushed with the pain of punishing me.

‘No more,’ I beg. ‘Don’t tell me anything else.’

He scratches his nail down my cheek where the skin is now burning. ‘But, Kristy, that spoils all the fun.’ He licks at the stinging red line he’s made. ‘Besides, I think you’ll stomach a little indulgence. It’s what we all do for . . . our lovers.’

He tilts his head to one side and brushes his fingertips down the pale white expanse of his own throat, then peels back the torn collar of his T-shirt. I don’t understand what he is showing me at first. Then I see it, a red impression just over his jugular – a bite mark. He tears away the T-shirt, and there are many more marks spread across his torso.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Once is rarely, if ever, enough,’ he says.

He leans over me and opens the car door. It’s only then that I realise we’ve been stationary for several minutes.

‘Run, Kristy, run. Run until your heart’s fit to burst.’

I bolt on to the verge, but I don’t run. I don’t run because he wants me to, and there is no hope in being chased. Better I accept my fate now.

‘Fool,’ he hisses, and strides past me to a wrought-iron gate, beyond which steps lead up through a tangle of briars to a redbrick house.

He disappears along the path of thorns, and I find myself drawn along behind as if the thread of destiny is tugging me. I can’t escape him any more than I can escape the images in my head. I see him naked, his chest smooth, his two nipples pointed. Blood trickles in tiny rivulets down his thighs, and his cock juts proudly towards my mouth.

I lick at the offering, suck him deep. I know what I’m doing is crazy, that I’m not in control, but I want what he’s offering. I want it, the whole fantastic dreamscape.

I’m not disappointed. The room is airy and dark, lit by a single bubbling lava lamp that paints inky-blue colour on to the thick swathes of velvet on the bed.

He’s waiting for me just inside the door, where he stops me with the icy press of his hand against my chest.

‘What?’

He presses a finger to my lips, but too late, apparently . . .

An ear-splitting shriek breaks the silence. From out of nowhere, a man lurches towards us. There’s a sharp clink and he jerks to an unsteady halt in the middle of the room, and only then do I realise he is shackled.

‘Show her to me, Lucius. Free me.’

I cling to my date as if he’s going to protect me. Crazy really, all things considered, but, of the two men in the room, he seems the tamer option. The prisoner is naked, with skin as pale as porcelain and hair so black it betrays obvious Eastern ancestry. Even chained, heexudespower.

I tremble under his gaze, but still allow myself to feast upon his form. He’s cut like an athlete, all pecs and abs and triceps. His legs are long and broad across the thighs. It’s just a peek from there to where his cock slumbers in a nest of dark curls. He’s beautiful, but in a different way to Lucius, who is all hipbones and wiry perkiness. And my capricious body responds to him, warming my cheeks yet again.

‘Lucius,’ he demands.

Lucius takes my hand and twirls me before him, showing off all my most obvious assets – bottom, thighs and bust, all of which fail to soften his gaze.

‘Raffe,’ Lucius drawls. ‘Go easy on her. You can’t say she’s not what you want.’ He pulls back my hair and reveals the unblemished buttermilk expanse of my throat.

Raffe’s eyes immediately blaze with hunger. ‘You haven’t tasted her!’ His voice sounds as choked as I feel.

‘Just a drop.’ Lucius offers up my hand for inspection. He squeezes the incision until blood beads in the wound again. This he then smears across Raffe’s tongue.

The effect is startling; he swallows and groans, writhes as if tormented. ‘More,’ he demands. ‘Release me. Give her to me.’

‘No!’ I struggle but Lucius’s fingers bite hard into my wrist.

‘Soon,’ he promises Raffe. ‘I just need to decorate her a little first.

He strokes my neck, runs his hands all over my body and finally settles his attention on my breasts. My nipples grow tight and tingly. I lean into his body, and a hand delves lower, under my skirt to exactly the spot I need to feel him.

‘The chains,’ Raffe demands.

‘A little precaution first.’ Lucius fastens a spiked collar around my throat then throws him the key.

Far from pouncing, Raffe stalks me like a panther, slowly circling and showing his teeth.

There are no boltholes in the room for me to run for, no place to hide except the bed or in Lucius’s arms. Except his attention is now all on Raffe.

He drapes a silk kimono around Raffe’s shoulders, which falls away moments later when he closes in for the kill.

In desperation, I scuttle backwards until I hit the bedpost.

Raffe’s hands land upon my shoulders, pinning me. ‘Do you have a name, girl?’

‘Kristy.’ I look up into his face like a frightened rabbit. His eyes are fathomless pools of deep magenta, not feline like Lucius’s but infinitely more knowing and, if not wiser, definitely older. ‘Please,’ I beg. I’m not ready to die.

His lips curl. He strokes away the tears that are forming in my eyes. ‘Do you enjoy pain, little Kristy?’ he asks.

‘No!’

‘Liar!’ says Lucius.

He entwines his arms around Raffe’s neck, and presses an idle kiss to his jaw. Suddenly, I understand where all the bite marks have come from and at least part of their significance. They are lovers, of sorts, and the marks denote just how much they have shared.

Lucius watches my reaction to the kiss, then slides his hand down Raffe’s front to his crotch. He teases Raffe’s slumbering cock, massaging it in a fashion that is both dirty and deliciously crude, but fails to rouse its full attention.

‘Not enough blood,’ says Raffe.

He turns so that their bodies press together from shoulder to knees and kiss aggressively. The lamplight plays across their skin, shading the contours of their bodies in tones of ink and frost. I try to slip around them, but I am also mesmerised by them.

When they part, I’m no more than five paces away, and Lucius’s lip is torn and bloody.

‘Come,’ he says to me and holds out his hand.

My heart flutters. I look to the door, to the bed, the window. In the end, Raffe simply grabs me and hoists me on to the bed. He covers me, and his lips skim over mine. His kiss is smoking hot. It invades and penetrates. It is so much more than a melding of mouths and tongues. And I love it, and I loathe it. I struggle beneath him, trying to push him away, while my pussy grows wet and my body aches for more of him.

The first bite is more painful and more exquisitely sensual than I could ever have anticipated. I drown in its intimacy; my treacherous body alight with hurt as Raffe’s teeth dig deep into my breast.

The second bite lances into the tender flesh of my inner thigh, and is a thousand times more painful. It is bitter and sharp, and makes me feel dizzy.

Like decadent twins, they cover me. I kick and whimper, but cannot push them off. Raffe alone is easily twice my weight and far more muscled, and, so pinned, I stare up into the canopy only to find its darkness chased with silver. My reflection stares back at me; spread alone and naked on a bed apart from a bunched-up skirt that hugs my hips like a girdle.

Lucius finds my clit, and I writhe like a whore, but his touch is flighty and teasing, not insistent, as I want it. He toys with me, pushing a thumb inside me while Raffe takes possession of my mouth again.

This time, he tastes of fresh blood, my blood. His lips are flushed crimson, and his cock has risen. It brands my hip, pushes eagerly against me seeking admittance.

‘Yes . . .’ he murmurs, ‘yes . . .’

Then he straddles my head, and pushes into my mouth.

His hands weave themselves into my hair. The taste of blood in my mouth grows stronger, and I realise he’s weeping tears of it from his cock.

‘Take it. Take it all. Drink me down,’ he urges.

Above me, his eyes glow red. His hips buck faster. He begins to pant. His rhythm almost chokes me.

‘Stop it!’ Lucius drags him from me. ‘Not yet.’ They roll on to the sheets beside me, spitting and hissing like cats, and tearing at each other with sharp black claws.

‘I need to possess her!’

‘Stop it!’

‘A few love bites won’t hurt.’

‘Control it, Raffe.’

‘Ow!’

‘Fuck! Get off.’

They fall still with Lucius on top, one hand wrapped around Raffe’s balls and his other pressing into his eye socket.

‘Be calm. Don’t spoil it. Concentrate and you can salve both thirsts at once.’

‘The burn’s too strong,’ Raffe’s voice is husky and choked. ‘We’ve left it too long this time. You should have let me out days ago. I warned you it would be like this.’

‘It’s not too long.’ Lucius strokes his hair and brow. He bites into his wrist and offers it to Raffe, who latches on like a babe and sucks greedily.

Watching them together like that makes my cheeks burn. I feel I am spying on something desperately intimate. I pull myself up on to the mound of pillows and draw my knees up to my chest. They are beautiful, frightening and strong. I want to watch them forever. The bond between them is so strong. Lucius’s eyes glaze with pain, but still he lets Raffe greedily quench his thirst.

‘Are you still here, Kristy?’ he asks.

I nod and shuffle forwards a fraction so that I can touch him.

‘You’re not very good at escaping.’

‘No,’ I admit.

‘She likes what she sees too much,’ says Raffe.

He offers Lucius’s wrist to me, but I shake my head. Then he offers his own, and I’m forced to shake my head again. I don’t want to be like them. I just want to watch them.

‘Next best thing, then,’ he growls. ‘Let’s fuck.’

He pushes Lucius on to his back and peels off his snakeskin trousers. Bite marks cover the whole of his body. He focuses on me next, and pulls me astride Lucius, whose hands warm my thighs, then mould my breasts.

Raffe straddles him too and presses up close against my back. His erection slides between my cheeks and brands me with promises. They are both too near and too far. Everything grows slippery and warm as we writhe together, tongues and fingers exploring each other’s flesh. My muscles flutter as Lucius massages my clit with his cock. I want them inside me now – together.

‘Together?’ Raffe whispers into my ear as he teases the lobe with his tongue. ‘Do you think you’ll fit us both in your cunt?’

I know he knows that wasn’t what I meant.

How can they know my every thought?

Lucius’s eyes are black with hunger and his breathing is heavy. Raffe licks incessantly around the edge of the spiked collar.

Is it even possible, outside of extreme pornography? I’m in unknown territory being explored by ghostly fingers. Raffe’s tongue creeps up beneath the collar, as he releases the buckles. Lucius urges me forwards for a kiss. He slips inside me. He urges my hips down on to his, over and over. Raffe massages my back. He rubs circles into my arse, then scissors his finger down around Lucius’s cock as he slides in and out of me. It’s pure magic. I feel like I’m glowing, but I know that the best and worst is still to come.

As I rise and writhe, Raffe holds me still. He clasps their cocks together and when I fall it is on to both of them.

They are like iron twinned inside me. Stretching me so the pleasure is intense. But it’s still not enough for them. They sink sharp teeth into either side of my neck. And I’m lost in a world of cocks and claws, of teeth and hair and light-headedness. My heart is beating three rhythms at once. They know everything about me now, what every little touch will do, how to make me sing and weep. I can’t fight the inevitable. They’ve drunk down more than just my blood – part of my psyche too.

When my orgasm breaks, I’m weeping ruby tears of my own.

They won’t let me eat. They just feed me constant bags of saline via a drip.

Everything is very white.

Why is the room full of lilies?

I wish I could remember. Then I do and wish I couldn’t.

Messers Cox, Cooks & Evans let me go. I’m not sure they can do that, but I don’t care enough to fight, because I’ve a burning thirst that the ice cubes they bring me to suck won’t quench.

It’s a lust for the pale skin of the two dark angels who led me along this path.

A lust for blood . . .