Chapter Thirteen
I knocked on the first townhouse door. Mrs. Hinz answered.
The Hinzes were “the new folk”, having moved to Meiers Corners last November. They’d still be the new folk twenty years from now. Ironically, that didn’t stop anyone from considering the Hinzes ours, or for them to consider Meiers Corners home. Strange and distinctly schizophrenic, but that’s the way things were in our small town.
“Hello, Junior,” Mrs. Hinz said. “You’re here for Glynn?”
I wasn’t surprised she knew. Even if Nixie hadn’t blabbed, TV-DBGN (the Dolly Barton Gossip Network) would have told her. Dolly’s network was so efficient, Mrs. Hinz might even know I’d bought the Peppy Peenie brand latex (they came in XXL). “Is he in?”
“Yes. I’m glad you’re here. Perhaps you can ‘cheer’ him up.” She put a strange emphasis on the word.
“I’ll do my best.”
“After the matinee, all four of them dragged in like something left out in the sun too long.” She winked to let me know she was in on the vampire thing. “But while Master Julian and his wife have ways they can ‘cheer’ themselves up and Mishela is too young, Glynn needs a good dose of ‘cheering’ right now.” She winked again, to let me know—aw, heck.
Gossip, okay. Knowing my deepest, darkest secrets, fine. But I draw the line at city-wide mental sex cams. “Um, yeah. Thanks, Mrs. Hinz. If I can just borrow your stairs to the basement?”
“Certainly Junior. This way.” She led me through a cozy living room to the stairs, and I trotted down.
At Glynn’s shut door, I took a deep breath and raised my hand.
The door flew open, to a wild-eyed Glynn.
He was wearing nothing but silken sleep pants. Before I could ogle, he pulled me into his embrace. His naked arms were strong, his muscled torso warm and supple. For a moment I just rested in the haven of his strength.
Then he groaned, “I tried so hard to resist,” and tugged me into his room. When the door swung shut, he kissed me.
Ah, that fresh taste of his, like crisp breezes and clear mountain streams. His skin was warm as a sun-dappled meadow. And pulsing against my belly was the thick branch of his big ol’ redwood. Apparently a checked libido wasn’t the same as a dead one.
This was why I’d come. No one made me feel like Glynn. Made me glow. Made me feel stronger, smarter. Better.
Made me feel loved.
The plain fact was I needed him. For a week or forever, it didn’t matter. I needed him and I needed him now.
I stood on tiptoe to return his kiss. Nipping those luscious lips was like tasting campfires and s’mores, all the best of nature. “More.” I threaded my fingers in his hair and pulled.
He slanted his mouth across mine and one big hand cupped my head, holding me for hard, hot ravishment.
I wanted to ravish him too. I grabbed his ears and launched myself up, wrapping my shorts-bared legs around his lean waist, snugging us skin to skin. My feet found purchase on his muscular behind, my crotch pressed to his washboard belly, my breasts crushed against the hard muscles of his chest.
My mouth landed directly on his.
I tasted and nipped, reveling in summer sky and green grass, biting harder until I bit too hard and he jerked.
I’d forgotten what went with the nature druid—the vampire prince. With a growl, he threw me on the bed. Before I even stopped bouncing, he misted naked, sailed on top of me and started tearing at my jean shorts. I’d released something dangerous—and incredibly hot.
While he ripped open my zipper, I tugged my shirt over my head. Oh, the look on his face when he realized I wasn’t wearing any undies.
There’s a moment of truth when it comes to sex and pants. If the woman wants it, she’ll lift her hips, just enough. Without that subtle aid, it’s harder for the man to remove her last physical barrier to penetration.
It’s the last psychological barrier too. That hip-raise is a vital part of the sexual dance. It’s a nonverbal cue that tells a man how ready the woman is. More important, how the man handles it shouts to a woman whether he’s in tune with her and listening to her needs.
I wasn’t ready for intercourse yet. Oh, I wanted Glynn bad. But there were things I wanted to do before we got to penetration. Kiss him more, bite him, tongue his magnificent torso. Compare the taste of his nipples to the intriguing dent of his navel.
Ah hell, I just wanted to put my face between his pecs and rub.
I looked up to tell him and was shocked.
His eyes were blood red, roving over my naked breasts and belly. When his hot gaze landed on the hint of pubic curls in the V of my open zipper, his eyes actually started glowing.
More than his eyes had gone pure vampire. Fangs split his lips, still lengthening. His breathing was barely controlled. His fingers were tipped by long, sharp claws.
He knelt by my thighs. Putting palms on the sides of my shorts, he tugged, hard. He wanted in now.
The shorts didn’t move. I hadn’t done the assist. Sex would be awesome, but not yet. I half-lay on my elbows and waited to see what he’d do. I had no doubt that if I said stop, he’d stop. But the hip-raise was subtle, and he was aroused enough to miss it and strong enough to yank off the shorts without help. Animal lust rolled off him in waves. I certainly wouldn’t blame him if he went for it.
His fingers curled on my hips. A slight prick through the denim told me just how close to the sexual edge he was. How close he was to, not even pulling my shorts off, but simply ripping them to shreds.
His eyes clamped shut. His nostrils flared white with his effort to control himself. His fingers spasmed a few times, as if they would go on without him to strip me.
But slowly, his fingers loosened. He immediately clenched his hands so they couldn’t return. I only realized he hadn’t retracted his talons when blood slowly dripped from one fist.
I sat up and reached for it. “Glynn—”
He shook his head, that sharp single shake. “Pain…helps me focus.”
“I don’t want you in pain.”
His eyes opened, softened to a violet-blue. “You want time to touch me. This is the only way I can give you that.”
Oh, sweet heavens. He not only knew I wasn’t ready—he knew why. And he was doing everything in his power to give me what I wanted.
He was putting my needs before his. Friends did that. And family.
And true love.
My heart was too full. “A cold shower?”
He smiled, but it was pained. “Junior, we…my kind…we feel everything stronger. Longer. Pain and pleasure are both vivid and they feed each other. This agony…ah, it’s almost sweet.” Another deep breath. Eyes closing, then opening, dark blue. “Pain and pleasure in eternal circle. Our poetry calls it the ouroboros of ecstasy.”
The ouroboros was the dragon that swallowed its own tail. “Um…sounds intense. Vampires have poetry?”
His expression eased to a real smile. His fangs retracted and he sat back on his heels. “We do. Mostly about sex, all very dark and deep. But it isn’t, is it? Truly it’s just sex.”
“Well, sure.” I was relieved to see him not looking so pained. “Unless it’s love.”
His eyes darkened to royal purple.
Me and my big mouth. Even an underwear slip would have been innocent-sounding compared to the “L” word. Although slipping my tongue under Glynn’s wear…yeah, not quite so innocent. But certainly less dangerous.
So I leaned forward to caress the velvet of his skin. Leaned more to press my lips to firm muscle. It was like lipping hot silk.
“Junior. I’m trying to give you a little time. A little space. But…” He gasped when I licked his pectoral. “But I’m still a vampire by nature. A sexual beast.”
He was warning me to back off. But I was doing exactly what I’d wanted to do, exploring his body, and he was holding still for it. I found the puckered nib of his nipple, licked it lightly and enjoyed his shudder.
He cleared his throat. “A beast,” he repeated. “My control won’t last forever.”
“I don’t want it to,” I said and bit his nipple.
He grabbed my head and crushed me to him. I sucked and his nipple tightened even more against my tongue.
He seized my hand and pressed it to his erection, smooth, fat and throbbing. “Ah, babi, feel what you’re doing to me.” In my palm, he swelled even bigger.
Which gave me an idea.
“Unpin my hair.”
“What?”
I squeezed his cock until he gave a sharp groan. “Unpin my hair.”
Pins flew. My braid rolled down my back.
I curled my legs under me and swiveled up on my haunches, sitting knee to knee, mirroring Glynn. Naked but for my open jeans shorts. I combed my fingers through my hair until the braid was gone and kinked tresses rippled from my crown to my butt.
His breathing grew more and more ragged as I worked, his cock bobbing eagerly. A glistening drop appeared at the tip.
I parted my hair at the back of my neck and drew crinkly blue-black veils over my breasts. I leaned forward to kiss his chest again.
As I did, my hair feathered along his thighs, trailed over his erection. His cock jumped. Lusty little beast. Or big beast, actually.
I smiled up at him. Planting a stabilizing palm on his chest, I wrapped a tress around a finger of my free hand. Still smiling, I sucked the tail into my mouth.
Glynn watched me with hot focus, an almost glazed aspect to his stare now.
I released the tress to twist it into a rope, then wrapped it around his shaft, snug. He watched as if this were something he’d never seen before. With another smile, I drew the coiled strand up his erection like a silken noose.
He stiffened sharply and his eyes squeezed shut. Pain or pleasure, I couldn’t tell. Maybe there was something to that vampire poetry.
I stopped just under the crown, drew the hair a little tighter. He grimaced, but his cock got fatter and his fangs slid out from between his lips. He reached for me.
I released my hair and launched myself back along the mattress by thrusting my legs straight, landing on my butt a few feet back. The coil of hair ratcheted around his cock like a motor starter.
He roared, choked it off. Dropping forward onto his fists, his head fell over my thighs, his shoulders heaving as he panted for control.
I pursed my lips, studying the back of his bowed head. Still all that control.
Fisting his hair, I pressed his face into the opening of my shorts.
He snarled wildly and seized the waistband with enormous talons. I laid back and lifted my hips, the only thing that saved the shorts from being shredded. He wrenched them to my knees, threw my bound legs over my head and opened his mouth on my exposed vulva.
I arched into the bed, my hair spilling all around me. His tongue slid into the seam of my sex, a hot lick that ignited me. I gasped, caught between wanting to clench my thighs tighter and burning to spread them wide.
The shorts banding my knees made it impossible to spread. I moaned, rolled my hips against his lapping tongue, my honey-dewed vulva sliding along his smooth fangs. He released me and yanked the shorts off altogether.
I grabbed his head and pulled him down onto my mound. He came obligingly. His mouth opened, his tongue slapped along my slit and his breath heated my entire pussy. His fangs unsheathed—
They sank into my mons. I went haywire with orgasm, full-body spasms that would have shaken bones loose if not for him holding me firmly. He plunged his fangs deeper and roughed up my clit with his tongue.
Heat rushed through me, bursting every cell. I came hard in a flush of fever, fire dilating veins and pores and my very self, transforming me into a phoenix rising brilliant and glowing from the heart of climax.
I lay in the stupor of its aftermath. Until with a flick of foil, Glynn mounted me.
He’d found the XXLs.
A ripple of belly buried him inside me. I felt every inch, every rigid, thick vein run into me, slick and electrifying. My eyes popped wide and I gave a little shriek as another small climax hit me.
Glynn, rising like a sea monster between my legs, smiled. Smug.
I growled, clenched my inner muscles hard. That wiped the smile off his face. Replaced it with a look of savage possession. In his hot eyes, I saw hard thrusts and bouncing bodies. Silky skin and panting breath. Plunging, over and over.
Glynn dropped fists next to my head, trapping my hair, and rode me so hard I thought I would shatter.
And then I did.
I arched into him as I climaxed again. He thrust so deep his balls slapped my butt, contracting hard as bellows. Scorching liquid heat filled me, even as he kept thwacking into me. It flooded me, wave on wave of molten pleasure, until the pieces I’d shattered into burst, an explosion of bright gold.
My muscles relaxed, my mind emptied. I was at peace. Glynn’s fists still trapped my hair, his head bent as he brought his breathing under control. He softened inside me.
I gingerly started to sit up.
Glynn’s cock jerked tight in me. Hardened. “Junior, don’t—”
WTF? I elbowed myself sitting. It drew him from my body. His face seared with intense pleasure/pain as his glistening erection emerged.
Erection, as in fully engorged cock, even bigger than before.
I stared. His controlled breaths weren’t to bring down his heart rate, but to bring down his erection. To meet my human expectations of a single male orgasm.
I touched his cock in wonder.
He groaned. “Babi, please don’t—”
“Glynn, please do. If you can go again, so can I.”
He gave me an incredulous look. I smiled and patted myself in invitation.
It was all he needed. He threw me under him, rolled my thighs up along my ribs, and with a lion’s roar, drove into me. He started thrusting, pounding with almost animal ferocity.
I’d already come three times, so I simply smiled and relaxed. Lying under him, I had no end in mind, no goal, except to enjoy his beautiful body, his rippling muscles, his skin glistening with desire.
He kept thrusting. My enjoyment sharpened. Desire returned, wrenching a little mewl from my throat.
His eyes burned bright red at the sound—he’d been waiting for it. His thrusts slowed. His fangs lengthened and his mouth opened on my neck.
Hot breath steamed bright need onto my skin. Sharp points pricked, focusing desire. I throttled a moan…throbbing fangs sank in, releasing it.
Ultraslow, I burst. A full-body climax, lengthened and extended by slow rolls of his hips. I shuddered, wave after wave quaking from brain to toes and back again, crisscrossing until the crests were ecstasy and the troughs were peace, and I shimmered into a full, flowering being.
I was still shimmering when he wrapped me in his strong arms and rolled, brought me on top, cradled in his warmth.
Time snapped into place and I knew. Not just that I loved him. But that he could be the one. Mine, the male I’d spend the rest of my life with.
I lay panting atop his impressive chest. His erection nestled inside me, not wilted after that orgasm so much as waiting quietly. If I moved again, it would grow. It made me very aware of just how different vampires were, that the males could have multiple orgasms.
Which brought to mind the questions that should have been foremost in my head from the start.
I might want to spend the rest of my life with him, but would he want to spend the rest of his life with me? And even if he would—could he?
Serious considerations for postcoital bliss. But if he was The One, there were things I had better find out.
Breathing slightly less like a bellows, I managed to raise my head, look him in the face and ask my first question. “Are you married?”
“Of course not.”
“With the deal you made about home…girlfriend? Significant other?”
“Junior, no. Not now or in the recent past. I wouldn’t get involved with you even on a temporary basis if I belonged to someone else.”
Not in the recent past. Vampires were both long-lived and highly sexual. In a hundred years Glynn might have had thousands of encounters. How many of those women were still alive? How many still pined for him?
Were there any he pined for?
That pushed me off his hard torso. I jumped off the bed and paced away. “How recent is recent?”
“Years. Decades.” His eyes followed me. “Why?”
I opened my mouth to ask the kicker. How old are you, anyway? But something else caught my eye.
Something new sat on the little round table.
Just above the center tealight was a single bronzed shoe. Small, not much more than a bootie, with a pointy toe. Under the bronzing was evidence of ornamentation, bands of leather or cloth.
“What’s this?” I moved to pick it up.
“Nothing.” He was instantly there, a restraining hand on my arm. “Please don’t.”
“This shoe wasn’t here the other day.”
“I bring it out when I’m considering something.”
“Like a concentration focus?” Despite the bronzing, or maybe preserved by it, I could see scuffing.
“Something like that. Junior, don’t—”
I turned it over. The sole was worn. “It’s been used.” I set it back on the table. “It’s not a doll’s.”
“It’s not.” The bald statement, his flat tone, screamed pain to me.
But I had to know. Not because of Nixie, or because I was curious. But because maybe I could help. “It’s a child’s shoe,” I prompted. “Yours?”
I meant his child’s, and he nodded, but to my surprise he added, “It’s the first thing that I knew was mine.”
I stifled my surprise. “Who owned everything else?”
“My abductor.”
Ice rolled through my system. I just stood there as Glynn returned to the bed and sat with unnatural heaviness.
He clasped his hands between his knees. “You’ll be curious about that too, I suppose.”
For such a strong male to be so sad… That got me moving. I sat on the bed next to him and put an arm around his shoulders, or tried to. My arm wasn’t quite long enough, so I snaked it around his ribs instead. “Kidnapping is traumatic. Something you should talk about.”
He just sat there, staring at his clasped hands.
I rubbed his spine. “You’ll feel better.”
“Will I?” He laughed, not a happy sound at all. “Fine. A vampire took me from my home when I was too young to remember.”
My hand kept moving on his back, patting reassuringly. But my chest froze.
“His name was Fychan.” Glynn shook his head. “I don’t think it was his real name. He didn’t sound Welsh.”
A vampire had kidnapped Glynn as a small child. I breathed past the shock. Kept my tone normal when I said, “Maybe he took a name from someone in the area, to fit in.”
“Perhaps.” He fell silent.
“So your earliest memories are of this vampire Fychan?” I prompted.
He drew a bushel of air, let it out slowly. “Fychan, and the road. Sleeping in hay lofts and open fields, moving at night. Staying a day or two but never very long. Always hungry…for food, but for simple human comfort too.”
I wrapped my other arm around him, an awkward hug. “Why did he keep you?”
“I was his early warning system while he slept. Also a decoy to catch humans unaware. A watcher for witnesses while he drank. And sometimes, when he was particularly inept at the catching, his source of fresh blood.”
I couldn’t help it, I jerked. “That’s…that’s horrible.”
“It was my life.” Glynn’s voice was hollow. “For eight years he dragged me across Wales and England and Scotland, barely one step ahead of the lynch mobs. One night he got drunk on whiskey piss without hunting first. He drank blood from me, too much. It killed me, and I woke like him.”
We sat in silence. I rubbed my cheek against him, giving and seeking comfort. “You were turned as a boy? How did you survive?”
“I found others like me. Young, just turned. We watched out for each other. I grew to manhood with them…vampires become their ideal age, no matter how old they are when they die. My little gang…we did the best we could, but we weren’t a family.” He sighed. “Because of the vampire, I had no family, no home, and no childhood. Except…” He gazed at the table and his face softened. I thought he looked at the cookie press.
The love in his eyes was evident even after all these years. I wished with all my heart that I could inspire such a love. “Who was she?”
“A farm wife. A big woman with an even bigger heart. Her name was Nesta.” His voice warmed from that hollow, distant tone. “We stayed in her barn one of the last summers I was human. Fychan pretended to be a farm hand. He did some work at night and I did the rest during the day.
“It was the best summer of my life. Not only did I get enough to eat, but we stayed in one place long enough for me to get to know people. Nesta made cookies for me. That was her stamp. She gave it to me.”
“And the pipe?”
“Her husband John relaxed with a pipe of the evening. I found the smell soothing.” He swallowed several times. “One night, in the barn, John discovered Fychan drinking from his wife’s neck. John stabbed the fool vampire with a pitchfork. While John went for the axe to sever Fychan’s neck…well, one of my duties was to save the vampire from his own stupidity. I pulled out the pitchfork and we fled.”
“Was Nesta okay?”
“For all his faults, Fychan wasn’t a killer, or not intentionally. Both John and Nesta lived to a ripe old age. They had a small army of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When I went back to Wales as a young vampire, I…watched over them from afar. Helped them as I could.”
He’d watched over them. Despite never having a family, he knew how to care for one. “That was good of you.”
“It felt…right. When the family died out, I bought the holding. I live there two months out of the year as my home.”
He traveled to Wales every year. Called the only place he’d been happy his home.
I could see the yearning for a true home in every tense line of his body, every gesture and word. In the glistening of his eyes. He still felt like he was on the outside, looking in. Vulnerable. So strong, so caring…yet he had no center.
It made my heart ache. He was right—I was lucky to have a home, a center, a base of strength. A place, as a youngster, to push against, safe enough to define not only who I was, but who I wasn’t.
Glynn had none of that. Like his tchotchke table, his center was only a mist of unknown. Although that would make him even more dangerous, because he had no stake in anything at all.
But it would take its toll.
I stared at the mementos on the table, the cookie press, pipe and dragon… “If you wandered all of Great Britain, how do you know you’re Welsh?”
“I had a blanket, long since rags but fresh in my memory, embroidered with a coat of arms bearing three heads. I looked it up later. It’s Ednyfed, who was Welsh. A few half-remembered baby words… I don’t know absolutely that I’m Welsh, but it feels right.”
“But what about the vampire? Couldn’t he tell you your name or where you came from?”
“Fychan claimed he didn’t know. In a drunken stupor he once mentioned that I came from a large Welsh homestead, and that the Ednyfed blanket had come with me. But my family could have been anything from the landowner to a visitor to a peasant who worked the land.”
“So the vampire named you.”
“No.” Glynn barked a laugh. “He called me ‘boy’. I adopted my own names, for people I admired. Rhys for Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd of Deheubarth. Glynn for Prince Owain Glyndwr, though he came later. And Jenkins because…” He took a breath, slightly hitched. “That’s what Nesta called me. It’s…like Johnny, or little John. I guess I hoped one of those names was truly mine.”
How terrible not to even know your own name. “Did you try hiring a detective? I know this happened a while ago, but kidnapping usually makes the papers. Maybe there are records—”
“Junior. I died in 1240.”
I blinked at him. Mishela had alluded to such immense age, but what he was saying was bigger than my brain. “Twelve forty? As in before the Renaissance? As in your life playing out against huge historical events? Queen Elizabeth I, the Inquisition, World Wars I and II—”
“I was there for it all.” Glynn’s smile was tired. “But mostly I just tried to stay alive. Or undead, I guess.”
Now I knew why home was so important to him. And Wales was his home.
Not New York.
I couldn’t ask him to come to New York with me, not now. Not after hearing what Wales meant to him. How could I be so selfish as to ask him to give that up?
Although maybe he would ask me to come with him to Wales.
But no. How would I earn money to send to my parents?
God. Maybe some things were not meant to be. I swallowed my pain and wrapped him in my arms. We sat in silence until it was time for me to go home.
The more I knew him, the less important how he made me feel was, and the more I just wanted him to be happy.
