“From the Inside (Part I)”

He hated what he was doing though a deeper, darker part of him knew he would never stop doing it. He rebelled against this knowledge anyway, desperately searching his soul even as he began to doubt that he still owned a soul to search. It was a thought more frightening than the evidence of his weakness.

Yet he was tense with a mixture of dread and anticipation as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Eight days had passed since his last acceptable excuse to work late and the wait was killing him. Pretending to be normal in a crowd was proving more and more difficult, demanding energy he could not spare. Sandy was pressuring him with wedding details; trivial things like colours and where to have the reception. She would be devastated when the marriage did not take place, but she would survive. She was a strong person, strong enough to have got through law school and the deaths of her parents. She would certainly get through a broken engagement. He felt a pang of conscience thinking about her, but he would not let it deter him. He could fool himself into believing her better off without him. The truth was that she was no longer enough for him. He had discovered a driving need for so much more.

The tower where he worked loomed in the hazy distance, jewel-bright against the rainy night sky. He used his key card to gain entry to the underground parkade and stopped his BMW in its reserved space near the elevators. His racing heart did a crazed backflip when he saw the black Jaguar Sovereign sitting in a shadowed corner of the lot.

She was here.

He rode the lift to the thirtieth floor, determined to conceal his excitement. His long raincoat offered some assistance: he was dizzy because most of his blood had gone straight to his groin. But he did not need a sexual purging. There was a greater, more intense form of release that only she could provide.

It was late. The janitors began work at the top of the tower; his office would have been straightened an hour ago. When the lift doors opened, the corridor was dark. He did not bother with the lights; his office was three doors down on the left. He walked toward it in a daze.

The outer office was dark as well. His secretary’s printer hummed quietly in one corner, otherwise all was silent. A soft glow shimmered beneath the door to his private domain. Taking a long breath to steady himself, he reached for the polished brass knob.

Her shape was barely visible beyond the reach of his desk lamp. She sat in the executive chair behind the desk, facing him though her features were lost in the faint light. He saw the gleam of ruby silk and the dazzle of a diamond earring; smelled her vanilla musk perfume, sweetly seductive though there was nothing remotely sweet about the woman herself. She did not stir as he approached, but the circle of light widened with the lessening of distance. He saw her glossy tumble of ebony hair, thickly curling over her shoulders. The ruby silk became a loose shirt that hinted at the curves beneath it. His gaze fastened on the outline of her breasts, heavy and full, ripe for his feverish attention. He felt her eyes on him though he could not see them. Her stare was a physical thing, cold and hard, a glittering, feline grey. She spoke in a smoky alto that wound sensuously around him, caressing his aching erection by way of his ear.

“I was not certain that you would come.”

He wanted to laugh. She was in complete control; she was the boss. As much as he despised himself for it, he knew it was true. And even if he had known how to do it, he doubted he would have turned the tables on her. “Don’t patronize me,” he growled. He stopped in front of the desk and glared down at her. “You knew I would be here.”

“Oh, but I didn’t,” she countered in a deliciously subtle French accent. “Much time has passed.”

“Every day has been torment,” he snapped in a ragged whisper. He threw off his coat, let it fall to the floor. “Give it to me.”

“Oh no, mon amour. Money first, then candy.”

“Get out of my chair!”

She rose and stepped fluidly out from behind the desk. The arteries feeding his crotch constricted when he saw tight leather trousers and knee-high boots with stiletto heels. She was not tall, but her legs were long and shapely. It took a strength of will he had imagined lost to walk calmly away from her. He moved around to take his chair and boot the computer. “How much do you want this time?”

“Fifty thousand should suffice,” she replied.

He did laugh then, shaking his head. “I can’t do fifty thousand. There’s no way. Not all at once.”

“Of course you can,” she said. “With a client base as broad as yours, you could do twice as much and still go unsuspected.” She leaned forward suddenly, fixing him with those deadly cat’s eyes. “Or am I not worth it?”

He tried to stare her down and failed. “All right,” he spat. “Fifty thousand it is. But it’s going to take some time.”

She straightened, folding her arms. “I can wait.”

He couldn’t. He was too strongly aroused to concentrate properly and bungled his password twice before he was able to access the files. Silently cursing his trembling fingers, he focused intently on the computer screen and proceeded to transfer numbers from one client’s account to hers, then another and another. Perspiration broke on his brow and upper lip, but he ignored it as he tried to ignore her pacing to and fro before his desk. He saw her in the corner of his eye, hovering like a malevolent spirit, awaiting the surrender of his soul.

What soul? he asked himself angrily, stabbing fingers at the keyboard. She’s got your soul, you stupid bastard; you handed it over with your reputation, your dignity and your self-respect. If you thought that you loved her or that she loved you, it might be worth it, but you don’t and she doesn’t. You stupid, pathetic sonofabitch … “Done!” he declared, striking the final key with a flourish and swivelling in his chair.

She was behind him, so close that he almost hit her with his knees. As suddenly as they had constricted forty minutes earlier, the arteries feeding his crotch opened up, flooding and filling the erection that had waned with the stress of his work. Paralyzed, he watched her bend forward, bracing her hands on the arms of his chair. Her skin was carved ivory in the soft light, taut over classically sculpted bones—a perfect foil for the tousled mane of rich black hair. She eased astride him, pressing her thighs along his. She wasn’t warm. She was cool, even through the leather of her trousers and the wool of his. She slid forward in his lap, nudging his erection. “Poor fool,” she murmured, leaning close to his face. She plucked off his steel-rimmed spectacles and tossed them onto the desk, then took his head between her hands and covered his mouth with hers.

He moaned helplessly into her, feeling the tips of her nails pricking his scalp. His hands rose to grip her ruby silk shirt, heedless of the expense as he pulled it open. The studs popped in a domino effect, then his hands were inside, scooping her breasts from the black lace brassiere and squeezing them until the nipples stiffened against his clammy palms. She loosened his tie but did not remove it; unbuttoned his collar to bare his neck though she never stopped kissing him. He surrendered to the hunger in her, aware of little more than her cool flesh against his and his pumping need to possess her.

She arched her neck and pulled his head forward between her breasts. They were balm to his flushed face, the flesh like marble despite the softness of the skin. He buried his face in the blissful darkness, inhaling the earthy scent of her perfume. Her agile fingers deftly unbuckled his belt, jerking it from his trousers with a swift, savage motion, then her hand plunged inside to pull his erection free.

He almost sobbed; almost came as she began tugging on it, keeping her grip painfully firm. She knew precisely how to play him, pulling and stroking while he writhed and gasped beneath her. But he was not here for a hand job. He didn’t even do more than think briefly of stripping her naked and fucking her in the conventional fashion. What he wanted, what only she could give him, was the bite.

He understood from their past encounters that his prolonged arousal fuelled her passion. She was turned on by the rise of his temperature and the flush of blood to his skin. She liked toying with him because she found his engorged penis amusing, considering it a weakness though he knew it fascinated her. Right now there was more blood in his groin than in the rest of his body and she would be responsive to that.

Sure enough, her icy fingers squeezed hard and he groaned aloud, throwing himself back in his chair. She loomed above him, her face as pale as the moon in the shadowy corona of her hair. There was triumph in her light grey eyes: triumph, lust, and the focus of a predator closing on the kill. He stared into her face, too desperate for the climax to know fear. God, she was beautiful. Dangerously beautiful. And she alone could relieve his pounding anguish. “Do it,” he rasped, daring her with his eyes. “Suck me.”

Her upper lip drew back. Light glanced off the razor-sharp point of her fangs. His heart froze in mid-beat then began to hammer as she drove toward his throat.

He released a choked cry when her teeth pierced his skin and sank deep into the base of his neck. At the same time, he climaxed in her hand, thrusting upward then falling back.

Suddenly there was peace; peace like he had never known. He relaxed and let his hands fall away from her. She shifted closer, securing him between her thighs, and drew hard on his neck. He felt the blood being sucked from him; heard her wet, languorous swallowing in time with the beat of his heart. He closed his eyes, lost in the scent of her luxurious hair. When she brought a hand to his mouth, he took her fingers under his tongue, sucking as she sucked, tasting smoke and salt as she did. A soaring ecstasy swooped down on him. He longed to follow it, to fly free on the bliss of infinite euphoria, as she did, until the end of time. He would have given his life for it.

As usual, she took a mere pint—as much as the blood bank—then withdrew. Disappointed, he opened his eyes. “Is that all?”

“For tonight,” she replied. She licked a trickle of blood from the wound which he knew was already healing, then she stood up.

“When do I drink from you?”

She was wiping semen from her leather pants with the handkerchief she had taken from his coat pocket. “When I say so,” she said absently.

Which meant never. He would never be given the chance to possess her. He was hers until she was finished with him. They both knew it. He felt suddenly ridiculous, slumped in his chair with his penis lolling like a dog’s tongue from the mouth of his open fly. She was making a fool of him and he was letting her.

She finished with the handkerchief and dropped it on the desk. He watched her straighten her brassiere and refasten her shirt. He wondered what it would be like to penetrate her the only way he knew how. Would she be as cold on the inside as she was on the surface?

“When do we meet again?”

She had picked up a black suede jacket and was slipping into it. “Later this week, perhaps,” she said, pulling her hair free of the jacket’s collar. A ruby stickpin sparkled darkly on one lapel.

“What happens when you get all you need?” he asked, suspicious that he already knew.

She smiled without much warmth. “Then you may drink from me.”

Anger flared so quickly that it made him dizzy. “You lying bitch. You’ll kill me first.”

The smile did not falter. “Good night, Peter.” She walked to the door, then she was gone.

He sat still for what seemed a long while after she left. He was aching and exhausted and sick. For the first time he realized how awful he felt—had felt for weeks. She had turned him into an addict, hooking him on the rapture and making him steal from his clients to support his habit. If she did not kill him, his life was ruined and he might as well be dead.

In a sudden blaze of fury, he swung back and fired up the computer again. He was too late. The funds he had placed in her account had already been transferred out from another source; all of them, a million pounds over the past twelve weeks, gone without a trace.

He’d been had.

He shot out of his chair, grabbing his glasses and his raincoat, remembering at the last minute to zip up his fly. He didn’t know what he would do when he caught her, but he would catch her.

He rode the lift in a lather of excitement, clear-headed for the first time in months. She had used him, lured him with the promise of exquisite sex, appealing to his all-too-human senses; and when that had failed to persuade him, she had revealed herself and seduced him with the bite. The bite, the blood, the rapture. What a fool he had been! And how many other fools had preceded him? Men whose lives were their work; whose affinity for machines and figures eclipsed their personal skills and made them uncomfortable in crowds; men whose women were plain and sensible and merely tolerant of intercourse. To have a stunning, sensuous woman appear in a darkened corner of a well-ordered existence and introduce one to the wildest, most abandoned pleasures of the flesh, of the blood … He wanted to slam his head into the wall of the lift. She wasn’t even a woman. She was a vampire—and still he had allowed himself to fall under her spell.

But the spell was broken, dissolved in the glare of revelation. She was finished with him. If he didn’t catch her tonight, he would never see her again. 

To be continued …