[Vivienne Mary Ramsay]

It was another day, or rather another night. Once more there was a chess board on the table between us, and once again it seemed that Jake was going to win. His pieces outnumbers mine, and the few I had left were not in a position to stretegicly help one another. Whereas his pieces were working together as a unit, moving across the board with a determination to wipe out my remaining men. Two glass tumblers of amber liquid were set on the table, though the alcohol wasn't having much of an effect on either of us really.
"Jake I'm bored of this," I said suddenly, my index finger hovering over the tall ivory head of my king, his crucifix shaped crown marking him as the lord of all he surveyed, which currently wasn't much.
"Of the game?" he asked as he lifted his eyes from the board and looked at me.
"Well, yes. But I meant of this," I waved my hand around. "I'm bored of staying in at nights when I should be out enjoying myself. I'm a creature of the night, and you're keeping me here like some kind of hostage under house arrest."
"Okay, so what do you want to do? Go out?"
"I don't know.. I'm bored, and I'm tired. And I'm hungry."
"Hungry?" His eyes seemed to bore into me then.
I leant across the chess board, my elbows on the black and white surface, and reached to take his hand in mine.
"Yeah... I'm hungry."
I doubt he needed to be psychic to read my mind then, but he did a pretty good job anyway. He pulled his hand out of my grasp and shook his head slowly.
"Believe me Vee, you don't want to go down that avenue."
I pushed back the chair from the table and slowly unfolded myself from the seat, circling around to stand at his side.
"Why not? You said that it was avaliable."
"What I said was that if you wanted my blood, there would be a price. So believe me when I say that the price is too high for you."
My fingertips caressed his cheek and neck as I lowered myself down onto his lap, looking up at him like some star-struck hopeful.
"What price could possibly be too high for little old me?"
"Vee stop trying to seduce me, it's not going to work. You're an amateur compared to some."
I batted my eye lashes once or twice, running a finger down his jawline and into the collar of his shirt. My puppydog eyes were almost sparkling with amusement.
"But all I want is a little taste. Is that too much to ask?"
"it's too much to ask when the price is set as high as it is."
I shuffled myself on his lap a bit, grinding down onto his crotch. "That depends what the price is, of course."
"You have to do what I say, everything I say, for one full day. Everything."
I laughed as I considered his words. "Everything you say? For twenty four hours? That's a little steep isn't it Jake? Just for a taste of your blood, don't you think that's extravagent?"
He looked at me straight, his dark eyes meeting mine.
"You wouldn't say that if you know what you were getting yourself into."
"Ohhh, tell me Jake, tell me what I'm getting into myself?" I smirked as I caressed his cheek again with my fingers. He wasn't reacting to my taunting, and even his body beneath me seemed to be unresponsive to my touch. I wiggled some more, to emphasise my point.
"Have you ever bled a mage, or a wizard? Or a lukoi?"
I must have made a face at the mention of the hated wolves, for Jake displayed a reaction then, smirking at me. I felt a stab of infuriation that he should mock me so.
"Why would I feed from an animal like that. Werewolves are here to be hunted and killed, not eaten."
"Okay... so from a mage, then?"
"No. But Serg told me about it. He said that feeding from a sorcerer was like a mortal eating a five course meal, you were filled up better and for longer. But that the meal was laced with drugs, or like twenty bottles of wine. Dizzy and seeing imaginary things."
He nodded slowly as he accepted my words for truth, and again I was forced to question how this man knew so much about the ways of my kind.
"Now imagine, if you will, how my blood is going to affect you. I'm stronger than a lukoi, more powerful than a sorcerer, and I'm virtually immortal. More so than you, anyway."
He must have seen the skeptisism in my eyes for he reached around my body and took the cut-glass drinks tumbler from the table. I saw his fingertips turning white as he encompassed his palm and fingers around the glass, increasing the pressure on it, until... smash. The tumbler exploded inward with the force of his grip, the jagged edges of the glass and it's shards digging deep into his hand.
"I've told you the risk, and I've told you the price," he said solemnly and evenly, as if the copious amount of blood from the numerous cuts and incisions on his palm were but nothing. "Do you still want to try?"

[Vivienne Mary Ramsay]

My eyes widened perceptibly as I caught sight of the burgundy life's fluid escaping over his palm and down his wrist, the liquid practically luminescent in the candlelight. My eyes flickered from his offering to his face, catching the hint of warning in his expression that was mirrored in his tone of voice. Regardless of how much I wanted to feed from his wound, I couldn't help but notice that he seemed to be daring me to do it.

I had fed from hundreds of men in my life, thousands probably. Most of them had been unknowing participants, too caught up in a whirl of lust and bodily pleasure to appreciate what I was doing to them until it was too late. Some few had been willing slaves to my touch and my tastes, offering themselves to me night after night, knowing that I would reward them highly for their loyalty.

But until now no man had looked at me with such contempt, such mocking arrogance, as if he knew what I was going to do even before I did it. Did he think me such an animal, such a beast, that I would succumb to my instincts without consideration? that made me pause for thought... was I? Was I such a slave to my base desires that I would feed from him, regardless of his warning? Already I could feel my incisors growing sharp against my tongue, saliva coating my mouth as if I were one of Pavlov's canines, perhaps even my pupils were dilated like a love-sick teenager. All this just from looking at the deep, dark red blood sliding down his forearm.

"You don't scare me," I told him archly as I grasped his wrist in my hand, my fingers wrapping around his tanned limb, avoiding the trails of blood that looked like red rivers on a geographic map of Jake's arm.

"Then you're not hearing me right." His reply made me smirk, false bravado giving me a moment of pleasure again. From my position atop his lap, straddling his waist with my dark blue dress bunched up around my hips, I could feel his unconscious reaction to my presence. He might be proclaiming that he was beyond seduction, but his body was protesting otherwise. His unwilling argument was poking at my inner thigh through his pants, hard and hot against me.

"Oh Jake, I think I hear you just fine. You want me to be your slave for a day, and all you have to do to get me like that is feed me a little blood? That's a high price."

"I'm taking into account certain factors that you're not aware of yet. Like having to restrain you once you've taken the first taste, having to fight you off of me. And then, once you've recovered your senses, I'll have to ensure you don't do anything stupid while you're still under the influence of my body's essence. That'll take about twenty-four hours."

"Ahhh.. I see. So you claiming me as your slave for a day has nothing to do with you wanting me to obey your every command? It's all totally altruistic, you are looking after my best interests by keeping me under control while I'm blood-crazy?" Even if he couldn't tell my sarcasm from my tone of voice, I guessed he could tell from the roll of my eyes that I gave him.

His reply was unexpected. At least it would have been unexpected from a normal man. Perhaps for Jake Steel, as I was beginning to realise, it was exactly what I should have realised he would do.
He simply flexed his hand within my grip, extending and closing his fingers into a fist, causing the blood to flow freely from his lacerations again. The deep red blood ran rivulets down the inside of his wrist and down his arm until it reached the crook of his elbow, where it dripped off onto my bared knee.
"Go ahead then, Vivienne," he said to me again, his voice daring and appreciative at the same time. "Bon appetite."

I managed to hold my hunger at bay for all of ten seconds after he said that. What pushed me over the edge was a brief throb of masculinity that I felt between my legs as he raised his hips slightly to meet my straddling legs, pushing his solid manhood against me. The flash of lust that washed over me was enough to override my sense on control; I pulled his wrist towards me, fastening my lips to the wound on his palm, as if kissing the inside of his hand like an adoring lover.

[Vivienne Mary Ramsay]

I pressed my lips to his palm, the nagging yearning for satisfaction driving me to extend my tongue out to touch his lacerated hand and probe his wound with the very tip of my warm tongue. The moment I did, I knew I was trapped. The sensation on my taste buds made bright white light flash before my eyes. I half-closed my eyelids and pressed my mouth harder to his hand, using both of mine to hold his appendage steady against my head.

His blood tasted the same as a normal man’s, yet better. Warmer, yet cooler on my tongue. It was brighter, vivid, intense, dazzling. The more I tasted it, the more I wanted. His blood slipped down my throat like warm sticky syrup, or hot black tar, coating the insides of my mouth with its forceful essence.

I could hear him murmuring something close to my ear, but so intent was I on savouring his life force that I couldn’t hear him. I felt like I wanted to tunnel my tongue right into his wound and suck his blood like through a straw.

And I don’t really like the idea of blood. Whenever possible I use an ability I discovered early in my un-life, that of feeding off emotions. By a close proximity to people who are feeling intense emotions, such as rage, or fear, or lust, I was able to satisfy my own cravings. The idea of biting someone’s neck and sucking out great mouthfuls of coppery-iron flavoured blood…. It just wasn’t my thing.

I’d do it if nothing else was available, but it wasn’t my first choice in activities for a fun and exciting evening. Yet here I was, lips attached to Jake’s hand as if my very life depended on it, draining his blood through a wound that wasn’t even close to an artery or vein, making the job that much less satisfying anyway.

Behind my half closed eyes I could see multi-coloured hues overtaking my vision, the candlelit room becoming darker and brighter in alternations, reds and blues vying for dominance in my sight. All I wanted to do was drain this man dry, not pay attention to the colours of the room.

No, wait, I don’t want to suck him dry, I thought to myself vaguely. He’s trying to help me… I can’t kill him. I don’t kill people. But even as the thought occurred to me, it was banished to the furthest reaches of my brain by the desire for his darkly gratifying blood filling my mouth with it’s flavour. It was like spices and aromatic herbs in my mouth, metallic and salty, yet smooth like whisky on my palatte. And I swear I could taste his emotions through his blood, as if his body chemistry, chemicals and hormones, were infecting my tongue and touching my own mind.

His lust. I felt it, like a sledgehammer in my gut, as soon as the first mouthful of his blood slid down my throat. I could feel his erection pressing against my inner thigh, where I was straddling him. But more than that; through his blood I could taste his eyes on my cleavage, I could taste the thoughts and desires he had about my body, about what he wanted to do to me, and what he wanted me to do to him. I could taste his scent of my body being so close to him, the way he could sense my own arousal in some primal part of his mind that perhaps even he wasn’t aware of possessing. Pheromones filled his nostrils, triggered his own releases, which I could savour through his blood.

And then he was pulling his hand away from my grip. I moaned aloud and tightened my clasp on his wrist, suckling on his blood like a starving baby trying to get every last drop from it’s mothers teat. Brought back from the edge of incognizant thought, the world came back to me with a blast. My eyes flashed open, my gaze seeing the red-hued room with dark tints around the edges, as if a maroon photographic filter had been slid in front of my face.

I felt this other hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me away from his injured arm. I tried to hold tighter as I heard him snarl in my ear. “Don’t make me hurt you Vivienne.”

[Vivienne Mary Ramsay]

I growled something in response, something deep in my throat that was too animalistic to be coherent words, much less a reply. His hand on my shoulder became insistent, as if he knew that I was taking too deeply of his blood, but I had both my hands gripping his wrist and forearm tightly. All the superhuman strength in the world couldn't deny simple rules of physics like leverage and pivotal force. He didn't have enough force on my shoulder to push me away; I knew it and he knew it too.

A tiny trail of blood slipped from the corner of my lips, trickling down my chin and under the line of my jaw. In some part of my mind I could imagine myself covered in his blood, coated in his sanguine liquid like a devouring beast at the site of a slaughter, my face and hands spattered in red gore. I felt the blood droplet slid along the curve of my neck. It brought a chill to my skin to think of his succulent blood covering my flesh.

Abruptly his hand left my shoulder, and for a moment I thought I'd killed him in my bloodlust. My eyes were closed, so I couldn't tell if he was unconscious, comatose, unwilling, or just plain dead. There was no resistance to my suckling for a brief moment in time.
And then he grabbed me forcibly by my throat, his fingers digging furrows into my windpipe, as he bodily lifted me off his lap and slammed me down onto the solid wooden surface of the hardwood table.

The shock of the action broke my concentration, my hands coming away from his wrist and flailing like a wounded beast. I heard the crystal glasses smash on the floor, followed by the pattering of weighted chess pieces proceeding them. As my lips left his wound in a snarl of incandescent rage he pulled his injured hand out of my reach. My eyes flew open once more and regarded him like the piece of meat that he was; the cattle to be fed upon and discarded like trash. Except this cow had horns and was stronger than me.

"I said I'd hurt you if you didn't obey me," he grunted in a tone of annoyance as he held me pinned down on the table. He had lifted and thrown me directly backwards and my legs dangled off the edge of the table, either side of his thighs. Even through the raging anger and frustration at being denied my meal I could feel his fingernails digging into the flesh of my neck, tight enough to pierce the skin and leave five little crescent scars where his nails cut me.

I managed to bring my arms up to struggle against the rock-like grip he had on my throat, but it was like fighting against a solid wall of stone. His grip on me never wavered, even as I heard myself screaming obscenities and cursing everything about him. I couldn't stop the words comin from my lips, even as I couldn't have stopped myself sucking his wound a moment ago, or stopped myself gyrating lewdly on his lap while doing so. It was as if my body was reacting to him in a way that had nothing to do with my conscious concerns of thoughts.