Chapter Nine

Ivory

“You probably shouldn’t be bitten again tonight,” Ivory said. She kissed his shoulder. “No matter how delicious you look or smell or how well you order it of me. You don’t replenish as fast as I do.”

As Fletch returned to himself, he moved his lips across her sternum, tasting his blood and her skin beneath it. “I am terribly wicked, aren’t I?” he said.

“Wicked as a whip-crack in June, darlin’, but there’s nothing wrong with that,” Ivory replied. “You’ve got a lot of odd notions to unlearn, gravedigger.”

“You’re not a monster,” Fletch said. Ivory could have told him that—had told him that several times. It helped that he punctuated his declaration with an unhurried swirl of tongue around her nipple before kissing down lower. She squirmed in sultry pleasure, ruffling his hair as he explored her more thoroughly now that he had slaked his needs.

Ivory hummed in appreciation when he found her labia with his fingers, hesitantly stroking the folds in curiosity. She swiped her tongue across her ripped wrist to savor the moment.

“May I?” Fletch asked, his attention between her legs momentarily distracted by her wrist.

Ivory almost came again just from the sight of him prostrate before her, his mouth so close to her folds and her cunt, which oozed her juices and his cum. He was asking her to give him the gift that he had taken from her men over the last two months.

“I would very much like for you to drink that sweet nectar, Fletch, but it isn’t for you,” Ivory said, easing her arm away. She had to admit, she was reluctant to do so. None of her other men had been given the choice—any more than she had when her sire had turned her—but it seemed rude to turn Fletch against his will when he knew what she was.

“Not unless you want to become a vampire yourself,” she said, caressing his cheek. “I would gladly take you as a mate, my dear boy, but a man of your lionheart and courage—to submit to and overtake a vampire—has earned the right not to be turned at my whim. If you want something to drink, look at what’s right in front of you. Have a go at pleasuring a woman, Fletch. Let’s see if you take to it like you take to everything else.”

Ivory lay back against the pillows. At this point, trying not to get blood all over everything had become impossible. She stretched luxuriously as Fletch returned to his inspection of the ‘strange womanly parts’ that he’d never seen before her. Lord, but she loved to teach new men the ways, wiles and wetness of a woman, and Fletch was no exception. In fact, she thought he had a real knack for the game. He’d make a wife very lucky one day. That white-clad bride wouldn’t get out of her marriage bed for days. Ivory knew she wouldn’t if she were in that position.

Although her marriage bed would hardly be anything close to white.

She hissed as he slid two fingers into her grasping cunt then pulled them out, glistening with their combined moisture.

“Taste it,” Ivory whispered. She pressed her tongue to the tip of her left fang as he did so, her hips canting off the bed. He tentatively licked his fingers first, dipping his toe in the water—so to speak—before sliding them into his mouth to suck at the digits as though they were covered in maple syrup. When he’d cleaned his fingers of their mixed fluids, he dipped his head down and laved and licked at the source, prodding deep inside her with his tongue and sucking the juices out.

Ivory crooned in encouragement, rubbing his tacky blood furiously into the wavy folds of skin around her swollen clit.

Engaged as he was, he eventually noticed what she was doing and pulled back to watch.

He stilled her hand. She clenched her fist in the bedsheets when he closed his mouth over her clit, flicking his tongue against and around it and pressing down on the places she had been rubbing herself. He sucked at the folds around her clit, her moans his guide to what she liked and what she loved. He slipped his fingers into her cunt again, freshly wet with a new draft of her arousal. She bucked against his mouth, urging him to suck, suck now. Take me for the sake of all that’s holy.

He obediently worked his mouth on her until she arched off the bed and cried out in climax, clamping her cunt down around his fingers and swirling them with the moisture of her climax.

“Oh, yes, that’s so good, darlin’,” Ivory said with satisfaction.

He slowed and softened his tongue until she tugged him back up her body to kiss him as thoroughly as he had consumed her.

Fletch was everything she could have ever asked for, right down to the stake to her heart, which had nearly killed her—just as much as it did to not to roll them over, poise her wrist over his mouth, and open the veins again. Making him hers. With no meddling gravedigger getting in the way of his resurrection. Her wishful thinking translated into the kiss, and Fletch pushed himself up on his elbows, his eyebrows cocked at the sudden desperation that had nothing to do with appetite. Her fangs had even retracted.

She thirsted for something so much more than blood. She wouldn’t have stopped all those other men’s hearts if she hadn’t needed that elusive something. Ivory was just like any other person. She needed companionship. Real companionship, not just a tumble for a fiver or a tenner.

Ivory supposed she could still have that now that she knew Fletch wasn’t going to hunt her for it. She could find another man and request that Fletch just let him alone and not bother the corpse in the ground until it bothered itself back up to the surface.

Or she could let herself be content with this, a vampire with an earnest, eager human who bled for her willingly. Not just willingly. She thought that in time he might come to crave it.

Fletch lay in her arms, head pillowed on her breast, their bodies sticky with his sweat and blood. They stayed like that for a long while, long enough for the moon to traverse the sky and the approaching sun behind the snow clouds to scent the air with the slightest hint of unsweetened citrus. A few hours yet, but the nocturnals knew to finish up their business and return to their dens and caves and tree knots before dawn.

The fire had since died down. Fletch shivered from the cold that marbled his skin. He pulled his blankets over them and held her close, although she could give him no heat that he hadn’t given her first.

She thought he’d finally fallen asleep, and she prepared to slip from his arms to leave before dawn so she could sleep through the day in safety. But Fletch whispered, “I want to know your world.”

If she was unsure what he meant when he’d said it, the way he took her now-healed wrist confirmed her suspicions. Ivory stopped him before he could do anything.

“No. If you did, you could never go back,” she replied.

“No. I can never go back,” he said. He peered up at her, all dark and solemn and as resolute as ever he was.

Nothing he’d been the day before would rise again with the sun. Ivory knew that his life would now forever be obscure dawn and twilight, if not outright darkness—none of the easy clarity of the sun’s rays. She’d single-handedly shattered all his dim illusions, and no matter how much adhesive he used, the mirrors would never return to their seamless glory. Perhaps he wouldn’t want them to.

“We couldn’t stay here,” she said.

“I don’t want to stay. Not anymore.”

There were options. And what the hell, it was part of the frontier spirit to keep moving. Maybe north, maybe west. She could always be a piece of skirt no matter where she went, even if no one wanted Fletch’s late-night labor. However, vampires usually found a way to fit in. As oddities, yes, but every town needed a splash of color, and many people traveling west were looking for a little freedom. Oddity wasn’t in short supply.

“No regrets,” Ivory murmured, stroking his hair.

“Too many,” he said. “But not you.”

“Fletch,” she whispered. She pulled him up into one last kiss in which the heat of his lips could scorch hers.

“Lay back,” she finally said. She crawled over him, straddling his stomach. She briefly wished she could have known him as a human for a little longer, but she turned her thoughts instead to the humans that they could share.

“Will it hurt?” he asked.

“Not at all, love,” Ivory said. “It’s like falling asleep on the best liquor in town.”

She brought her wrist to her mouth again and called out her fangs. She didn’t have her knife or his, so she just did what she’d done while they’d made love. Once she’d coaxed out a decent flow, she brought her wrist to his mouth. At his first taste, he groaned in abject ecstasy.

Just wait until you taste human blood as a vampire, Ivory thought.

Vampire blood intoxicated humans in the same way that human blood intoxicated vampires. Ivory remembered the vivid significance of her sire’s blood at the time he turned her. A body never forgot the first taste. She was glad she could give Fletch this experience as well.

The head of his cock pressed against her ass, fully aroused just from the taste. He would truly die a happy man. She was more than willing to satiate his sexual hunger when he woke up again.

Fletch drank from her until he could no longer move, but Ivory felt complete, a part of her in his belly the way a part of him rocked warm in hers. She closed his eyes for him, then went out into the cold in all her bloody nakedness.

She held his shovel in hand.

* * * *

With the sun racing to the horizon, it had to be a shallow grave. But any grave would do, as long as he arose from the great womb of the earth. Ivory read him no rites and cast no spells, and naturally, she did not consecrate his resting place with holy water. By the time she finished, snow was falling again. That was good. It would hide the mound of his fresh grave outside the house, and it would also conceal any trace of their blood outside the cemetery.

She couldn’t make it to her room at the whorehouse in time to beat the sun, so she wrapped herself in blankets like a cocoon and crawled under the bed. It would be a restless sleep for her out of her soil, but at least the sun wouldn’t reach her, and if anyone broke into the house, they were not likely to look for her there. She cleaned up the mess of Fletch’s weapons and her hairpins. There was nowhere better to hide her dress than in the rafters, although it wasn’t much of a hiding spot.

Ivory closed her eyes in a haze of anxiety that someone would find her when looking for Fletch. If they found her, they could bring her out in the light. Even behind the clouds, the sun would singe her skin.

But it seemed no one had died that day and Fletch’s services hadn’t been needed, because Ivory opened her eyes to the underside of the mattress as the sun’s rays slipped below the horizon once more. She unwrapped herself from the blankets, then drew a bath to clean Fletch’s blood from her body.

She left the soapy water in the basin. Fletch would need it after he emerged.

Ivory dressed herself in her maroon dress once more and went to greet her mate.

In spite of her reservations and worries that she really had gone about the process all wrong, she sighed in relief as something disturbed the ground beneath her boots.

Ivory clasped his filthy hand when he reached for purchase. Fletch accepted her help gratefully. Dirt clung to his body from head to toe, even his erect cock. Unconcerned about a silly thing like dirt at a time like this, Ivory threw her arms around him with every ounce of strength she carried in her delicate-looking body. With a flash of fangs, he met her kiss. He was hungry.

She’d kept hers retracted to avoid awkwardness in their kiss, but she thrilled at the insistent press of his against her lips and his unashamed cock thrusting against the fabric of her dress.

We have eternity, she thought to convince herself to release him. Her mate. Who still wanted her in spite of the siren song of fresh blood in the town.

“A bath is ready in your house,” Ivory said. She stroked his cock, wringing the flesh firmly until he grunted with need and ducked down to kiss her again. She nipped at his chin instead. Then she turned her back on him and strutted away, enticingly swaying her hips. Let him learn the virtue of patience. She smiled as he growled behind her.

“I’ll go get you someone good to eat,” she purred.