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lockefanfic · 9 months ago

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City of Light

The following is Chapter 10 in the Toy series, but it can (mostly) be read on its own. 🙂

15,477 words.

---

Even in the darkness of near-midnight, Paris was still beautiful.

The sparkling lights contrasted sharply against the decades and sometimes centuries-old buildings they illuminated. Even as you flew by them in the hired van, the weight of history was nonetheless impressed upon you by almost every structure you passed on your way to the hotel.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Hirai Momo says, softly, as though she were talking to herself. You turn to find her similarly entranced by Paris’ lights, even as they painted her soft features in blue and white.

“It is,” you agree, as you return to watching large, particularly ornate buildings fly by your window.

“Some of these buildings must be centuries old,” she continues, her voice surprising you with its depth and thoughtfulness. “How many people have been inside them? How many stories have started and ended in their walls? Kind of crazy to think about. Feels like history is right there outside this window, passing us by.”

It was the kind of statement you’d expected from one of the more introspective members of Twice, but admittedly not from Momo, whom you’d assumed didn’t really give much thought to things like the histories of cities and the stories of the people within them. When she turns to give you a look she lets a slim smile play across her lips, as though she were proud of herself for having surprised you the way she did.

“What?” she prods.

“Nothing,” you answer, “It’s just…”

“Just that that was something you’d expect one of the other girls to say? One of the… smarter ones? Mina or Jeongyeon or… Chaeyoung?”

You are taken aback by how forward she was being - your conversations with her over the past few months were casual at best, and rare outside of the bedroom. Truth be told, though, she wasn’t too far off from the truth.

“Well, yes,” you admit.

“Figured,” she says. There is the slightest hint of disappointment in her tone as she turns back towards the glittering lights flying by the vehicle. “You’re not the only one that would think so.”

She doesn’t seem open to continuing the conversation, and so you leave her be. You ponder her words in silence for the rest of the trip, feeling suddenly guilty for having assumed so much about the young woman next to you.

---

The check-in process at the hotel was relatively painless, much to your relief. You’d come to realize that many of the high-end hotels the girls regularly stayed in had staff on hand that were fluent in English, saving you from having to rely on your high-school level French and a translator app.

The elevator you occupied with Momo opens its doors on the fifth floor, where your room was located. The company had splurged on a penthouse suite for Momo, as it often did with its performers. Despite this, the hotel as a whole was still one of the higher-end ones in Paris, and you were looking forward to grabbing some room service and much-needed sleep in a fancier room than you were accustomed to.

“The makeup people will be here early,” you say with a sigh as you grab your wheeled luggage and get ready to vacate the elevator. It was well past midnight now, and you both had a long, important day ahead of yourselves with Momo’s appearance at a fashion show. “I can give you a call around six, make sure you’re awake-”

Momo stops you, her hand grasping your forearm while you are halfway out of the elevator.

“You’re the only manager here,” she says, matter-of-factly. “So you’re all mine for this trip, aren’t you?”

You find a smile on her lips, and you quickly return it. You knew what she meant, both with her words and the look that accompanied it.

Truth be told, you had settled more into the managerial side of your “job” in the past month or two, and this week-long trip and Momo’s appearances at two fashion shows, five days apart, was your first time as the sole on-site manager with one of the girls. While you were still on-call for the girls’ more physical needs, you also knew this trip was an opportunity to really make something of yourself at the company beyond just being entertainment for the girls. As such, you found that you were more focused than usual at making sure it went off without a hitch.

But as serious as you were about making sure the trip went smoothly from a corporate point of view, you weren’t one to turn down an invitation, particularly when it was shaped like Hirai Momo.

“Of course, Momo,” you relent, stepping back into the elevator and hitting the button for the top floor.

---

Jetlag was a bitch, though.

Momo had decided to take a shower after you’d both entered the luxurious penthouse suite - and you were powerless to resist the call of the luxurious, expensive-looking couch that dominated the suite’s living area. A short nap while Momo unpacked and undressed, you thought, just a quick rest for your eyes, then you’d get up, sneak into the shower with her and give her the pounding of a lifetime-

The alarm on your smartwatch jerks you awake four hours later.

You wipe the sleep from your eyes as you groggily swing your legs down from the couch. The light emanating from the open bathroom door informed you of Momo’s presence in it, and so you drag yourself from the soft, warm, comforting couch to check on her.

“Have a good nap?” she says, even before you fully enter the ridiculously large bathroom. She shoots you a small smile in the oversized vanity mirror, and you manage to return it despite the sleep still lingering in the corners of your eyes.

The smile lingers on her lips as she watches you for a moment longer before returning her attention to the bathroom counter. Before her are an array of cosmetics that made up her daily skincare routine, and she fiddles with the small plastic containers and vials, apparently searching for something.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” you admit, rubbing your face with both palms as you lean against the bathroom’s doorframe. “I just can’t get any sleep on planes.” Your first-class seats meant you were admittedly more comfortable than you’d ever been on a flight, but your inability to sleep on planes still resulted in fifteen hours of restlessness. Momo, being well-used to such luxuries, slept like a baby, which explained her high energy levels despite dawn being an hour or so away.

“I even left the bathroom and shower door open,” she admits, smile turning sly even as the elusive cosmetic continues to evade her. “Didn’t think you’d miss the invitation.”

The implication underlying her words stir something in you, and you step into the bathroom, drawing close to her. She smells softly like vanilla, and the sweet scent of her still-damp hair finally shakes the last cobwebs of sleep from your brain.

She loosens the neckline of her white bathrobe slightly to dab something against the soft skin of her neck and upper chest. The generous cleavage she reveals is unmissable in the mirror, still moist from the shower. Rivulets of water stream down her perfect, creamy skin. You reach around her torso, placing a hand softly on the knot of her bathrobe.

“Is this another invitation?”

Her gaze remains locked on herself in the mirror as she continues to dab the small cotton pad against the soft skin of her neck, although the smile curls into a mischievous one. You both linger there for a moment in silence - she must’ve taken pleasure in leaving you in suspense - until she finally decides she’d teased you enough. She places the cotton pad back on the counter, finding your gaze in the reflection of the mirror.

Without breaking your gaze, she undoes the bathrobe’s knot at her waist, pulling its folds apart to reveal her nakedness beneath. Round breasts, toned stomach, long, perfect legs - but it’s her eyes that draw you in. Round, full, somewhere between cute and lustful. Irresistible, either way.

You step close, planting your first soft kiss on the newly revealed skin of her neck. Your arms wrap around her body, your fingers finding her flat, toned stomach, and placing your palm flat against it, enjoying the feel of the slightly quickened pace of her breathing at this first intimate touch between you. Her scent, the feel of her skin beneath your palms, the small gasp she makes as you place a kiss behind her ear - it’s all so alluring, so intoxicating.

Her skin is warm, moist beneath your lips and your hands. Beads of water from her shower trace a path down her neck, past the round curves of her naked breasts, and onto the flat plane of her stomach.

“You’re still wet, Momo,” you whisper into her ear. She sighs softly. You drink in the sight of her closing her eyes in the mirror, canting her head to the side slightly to reveal more of her neck to your lips.

“You have no idea,” she whispers, softly. After a few more kisses on her neck, she turns her head so she is looking over her shoulder at you. You share a kiss, and the touch of her lips on yours is pure electricity.

She grasps the hand you’d placed atop her stomach, and drags it down her body. Your kiss deepens when your fingertips brush against the wet, warm heat between her legs.

She was right - she was dripping.

She lets a low, slow moan escape her lips as your fingertips graze the soft, warm flesh between her thighs, your middle finger tracing a slow path upward from the base of her opening to its tip, collecting her plentiful juices on the way.

“Since you refrained from joining me in the shower, I had to get myself started,” she says, softly, eyes still shut softly. Her lips have parted slightly, warm breaths of pleasure leaving them with each soft stroke your fingertips make between her legs.

“Sorry, Momo. Let me take care of you.”

She smiles to herself.

“You’re all mine this trip,” she says, softly, as her eyes slowly drift open, finding you staring at her reflection over her shoulder. Between her legs, your ring finger joins your middle one, tracing slow, careful strokes up and down her opening - barely penetrating, carefully spreading the lips of her pussy apart, preparing her for what was to come.

“All yours,” you say against the back of her ear, breathlessly.

“No other toys, no other girls. Just you and me. All mine, just mine.”

“Yes, Momo,” you gasp, suddenly short of breath. The feel of her slick pussy on your fingertips, that tight, hot body pressed against yours - it was so much to take in. “I’m yours,” you say, “whenever, however you want.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I am, Momo. I’m yours.”

She grasps your other hand from where it is clutching her hip, and draws it up her torso until it is cupping a full, round breast. Almost on reflex, you capture her taut nipple between your index finger and thumb. She sighs in your arms as you squeeze her breast and tease the nipple atop it, enjoying the heavy weight of it in your hand.

“I don’t believe it,” she repeats, turning her head again to kiss you. Your lips find each other, tongues not long after. Her body writhes like liquid in your arms. Her cunt leaks her juices onto your fingers and between them.

“I am,” you manage to say, between kisses that were quickly becoming heated, more intense. “I’m yours.”

The kiss continues. You’d kissed her before, of course, but never this passionately, never with this much intensity or intimacy behind it.

“Prove it, then,” she says, breaking the kiss just long enough to get the words out from between your mouths. For the first time since you’d entered the bathroom you look directly into her eyes, and not through the reflection.

Dark brown, round, filled with an intensity that takes you by surprise with its depth.

“Momo,” you say, unable to really conjure up more than her name. You can feel yourself being lost to her, feel yourself losing your higher faculties and becoming a simple-minded slave to your base needs. “I’m yours,” you repeat.

“We’ll see,” she relents, even as she brushes her nose and then her lips against yours, teasing a kiss that never comes. “But I still have my doubts. I think you’ll have to fuck them out of me.”

That’s it - that’s what snaps the last vestiges of your self control. You crush her lips with yours, driving them against hers with so much force that it might have hurt her - not that she cared, not when she wanted the same thing.

Your fingers tighten around her nipple, pulling and twisting, squeezing the soft flesh of her breast in your palm. Lower, your fingertips slide inside her.

She moans into your kiss, lips breaking contact for just a second to fill the bathroom with the sound of her pleasure. The kiss continues for a moment more, but she breaks it again when your fingers slide inside her to the hilt.

Her eyes drift slowly open, holding your gaze, even though your faces are touching, your noses and lips brushing against each other as you finger her slowly, sliding your fingers in and out of her slick, hot cunt. Your eyes remained locked on each other as you continue to finger fuck the young woman in your arms.

You’d fucked her before, roughly, sometimes with one or more others sharing the same bed, or couch, or shower. You’d seen her in the throes of orgasm as she’d cum on your cock, heard her spit filth into your ears, watched her as she’d lain there a sweaty, cum-filled mess after one of your sessions - but you’ve never seen her like this. Those were rushed, hard, messy sessions driven entirely by basic lust; this was something else entirely. Momo had never looked so soft, never looked so vulnerable.

It never felt so intimate.

“Mmm, fuck,” she gasps, “that feels so good.”

“I’ll take care of you, Momo,” you say, the words leaving your mouth almost faster than you knew you were saying them, your desires working faster than your brain. “I’ll take care of you this trip. I’m yours. I’ll make you cum, as much as you want.”

“Do it, please,” she replies, eyes fluttering, body writhing in your grasp. The hand over yours on her breast tightens. She begins to quiver, legs losing their strength as the pleasure builds between her legs.

“Please,” she continues. “Make me cum.”

Your hand leaves her breast, wrapping around her torso, pressing her back against your chest. Her eyes dart open for a moment, finding yours in the mirror’s reflection. Her lower lip curls under a tooth as your fingers move inside her.

Her eyes shut again when they find the right spot.

She moans, and the warm, lovely sound that leaves her throat bounces off the hard marble and glass of the bathroom, filling your ears with her pleasure. It increases in pitch and frequency as your fingers work between her legs - slowly building in pace, not too fast, not too much all at once. Just a slow, steady increase.

Her legs are jelly now, the arm you’d wrapped beneath her breasts doing more and more to hold her up against you than her limbs did. She reaches back with a hand to grasp your scalp. She arches her back, throws the back of her head against your shoulder as you pleasure her.

Her reflection in the mirror is sex - that perfect body of hers, perfectly shaped, perfectly fit, just perfect - writhing and quivering in your arms. And her face - my god, her face - wracked with pleasure, eyes shut and brow furrowed, mouth agape as it spills a chorus of moans and sighs from her lips.

Between her legs, she is so wet, so slick that her juices are running between your fingers, staining your palm the back of your hand, some of it dripping down to the cold marble in heavy drops as she makes a mess of you and the floor beneath her.

“Cum for me, Momo,” you hiss. Your lips are pressed against the soft skin behind her ear and while your words weren’t very loud, the effect they have on her is obvious. She tightens around your fingers, begins to pulsate. Her moans reach a new pitch.

“Cum for me, Momo,” you repeat, fingers merciless between her legs. You maintain your pace, no longer moving any faster inside her, simply staying at that speed and tempo. You knew she was right there, right on that delicious edge when building pleasure threatened to become an orgasm. You wanted her to stay there, even as your words tease her, tempt her into throwing herself over it.

“Mmm, no, don’t want to yet,” she says, the words tumbling from her drooling lips in a half-drunken slur, “no, don’t want to cum yet, want, oh fuck, want to, fuck, want to stay here, it feels so good, just like this, just like that-”

“Cum for me,” you snap. “Cum on my hand.”

“No, please, fuck, just a little longer please, don’t want to cum yet-”

You let her have her way - for a few moments more. You savor the sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her entire body is trembling. Her fingers are claws - one digging into your scalp behind her, the other on your forearm. What a sight; you want to freeze it, want to sear it into your memory for a lonely day.

“Yes, yes, so good,” she pants. Saliva drips from the corner of a slack mouth. She is a slave to the pleasure emanating from her cunt. She’s helpless, teetering on the precipice of a pit she wasn’t sure she wanted to fall into, not when the simple danger of it was so wonderful, when the threat of cumming so hard was so hard felt almost as good as actually cumming, when she felt so close to something she wasn’t sure she wanted, not yet, not when she felt so utterly-

“Cum for me, Momo.”

When she cums it is almost violent, the way the entirety of her body shakes and quivers and trembles in your arms. Her legs give way, until only your arm around her torso and fingers inside her cunt keep her upright. She tightens almost unbearably around your fingers. Her moans cut out momentarily, but only for a second, because when she finds her voice again the sound that leaves her throat is nothing short of a shriek.

You hold her close through it all, not moving your fingers inside her, simply holding her upright and letting her ride the waves of pleasure as they crash against her.

It takes a few minutes for her to recover. Longer than usual, not that you minded watching the unbearably beautiful, near-naked woman in your arms recover from one of the strongest orgasms you’d ever given her. She is wet, sweaty, slick. Flushed and pink, breathing heavily. Dripping sex, figuratively and literally.

While she is still recovering, you push forward slightly with your upper body until she finds the strength to brace herself against the counter with quivering arms. Then, placing soft kisses on the back of her neck, you slip your fingers from inside her. They emerge wet and sticky from her cunt.

You bring them to her mouth.

She begins to lick them clean. Eyes still drunk with pleasure, they manage to find yours in the mirror’s reflection. Her tongue gathers her own slick juices, slurps them up as best she can, licking up and down the length of your fingers and between them. She gets her juices onto her chin and cheeks, making them glisten with her wetness. Her eyes never leave yours.

“Fuck me now,” she says, half-moan, half-sigh as the last vestiges of her orgasm course through her veins. She swipes one last time at the juices that stain your fingers. “Fuck me like I want. Like you want. Fuck your cum into me.”

You slip your hand from her mouth, and she sighs at the absence of them. You strip the bathrobe from her shoulders, finally leaving her naked. Perfection in female form, all curves and perfect skin, marred only by sweat and spit and her own juices. Her eyes have never once left yours, locked on yours in the mirror’s reflection, until she turns over her shoulder to look at you directly.

She leans over the counter, arches her back, spreads her legs slightly. Her leaking cunt drips her juices onto the floor between you.

No further words. A few moments pass as you quickly undo the knot at your joggers and pull them down to your knees, revealing your aching, stiffened cock. You step forward, pressing her against the counter. One of your hands reaches out and squeezes a firm cheek of her ass, before sliding up her spine, fingertips tracing a path along the delicious curve there and resting on her shoulder.

Your free hand brings your tip to her dripping cunt. A stroke forward with your hips, and you’re inside Hirai Momo to the hilt.

Her pussy is tight, wet, slick - the feel of her body wrapped around your cock is sublime. Her ass is wide and full, her waist tiny, spine delightfully arched and shoulders possessing the right amount of tone - the sight of her bent over the bathroom counter, fully impaled on your cock, was enthralling, made you shiver with pleasure.

But it’s her face, her reflection in the bathroom mirror, that takes the cake. Her eyes, shut to relish the feel of being filled with your stiffness, slowly drift open before finding and holding your gaze. Her mouth opens to sigh at the feeling of fullness, that wonderful stretch inside her, before her tongue darts out to lick her lips. She says something, and you don’t hear it, but the message on her lips is easy to read, undeniable.

“Fuck me,” she mouths.

You slip your cock out of her halfway. The lips of her pussy clutch tightly to your shaft, not wanting to let it go. You glisten with her slick juices.

One stroke, then two. A third, a fourth. A slow build up of pace and depth and force. She takes it, letting small grunts and sighs punctuate each thrust you make into her body. Her arms brace herself against the counter. Her upper arms bring her breasts together, creating a delicious looking cleavage as they begin to be rocked back and forth with each impact of your hips on hers.

You tighten your grip on her, fixing her, keeping her still, rendering her unable to do anything else other than simply take each thrust you give her tight, wet little cunt.

You reach the rhythm you want, where you are fucking her, giving her long, smooth strokes of your cock. Her sighs turn into soft moans as she settles into your rhythm, matches it with her own with small movements of her hips, driving herself back at you, making each thrust that much more pleasurable for both of you.

You let your gaze wander. Everywhere you look is something you want to never forget - the round cheeks of her ass, her slim waist, even the soft curls and waves in her hair as they are plastered to her neck and upper back with sweat. And in the mirror, more; the dangling, bouncing mounds of her breasts and the tight nipples atop them, that lovely face of hers, soft features twisted and contorted with pleasure in the most beautiful way possible.

“Harder,” she says, softly. You oblige.

You reach forward, grasp her upper arms in your palms. You pull backward, lifting her upper body up off the counter, arching her back.

You resume fucking her.

She yelps at the first few thrusts in this position. She’s truly helpless now, fingers turning into claws as they helplessly search for something to hold on to and find nothing. Her breasts bounce wildly in the mirror, the large, round mounds impacted forcefully with each thrust you make into her cunt. They would be sore later, but she wouldn’t care, not if future soreness was the price to be paid for immediate pleasure.

She throws her hair back, sending sable hair flying. Her eyes roll to the back of her head. Her mouth slackens, able to do no more than moan and sigh. Saliva drips from the corner of her mouth, down her chin as she is fucked, hard, stretched cunt filled again and again with your cock.

You tighten your grip on her upper arms, pulling back slightly until she is almost upright. Throughout it all you are fucking her, pounding her tight little pussy, making her feel everything, giving her everything. Your brow furrows with the effort, your teeth grit.

“You’re so fucking tight, Momo,” you grunt, “such a tight little cunt.”

“Mmmmm, fuck--!” is the response from a breathless mouth. You up the pace. She takes it all, and every wordless moan that leaves her mouth at the peak of each thrust is proof that she loved each one. You fuck her hard, roughly. You take liberties with her body, using her cunt as you wanted, momentarily forgetting that you were there to serve her - and she loves every moment of it.

You’re the first to relent - as much as you wanted to fuck the young woman into oblivion in that position your arms simply couldn’t take much more. You release her upper arms, leaving clear marks on her fair skin, before sliding them up her torso. You cup her tender breasts in each hand, squeezing the heavy mounds, caressing and pinching her taut nipples. She cups her hands over yours.

“Mmmm, so fucking big,” she gasps. “So fucking big inside me, fucking me so good - and all for me, all mine.”

You bury your mouth in the side of her neck.

“All yours, Momo. I’m gonna fuck this little cunt, your mouth, your ass - all your holes, whenever you want. This cock belongs to you. I’ll take care of you, baby girl. I’ll take care of this body of yours.”

“Yes!” she gasps. “Yes. All mine. Fuck, fuck, fuck, you’re all mine, gonna, gonna fucking cum on your cock.”

You up your pace, but only slightly, just enough to make your impending orgasms that much more wonderful. The slap of wet skin on wet skin fills the bathroom. You let go of her breasts, but your hands don’t leave her, wandering to her hips, her ass, her shoulders - anywhere that let you hold her, grip her, tie her down. Anywhere that you could touch and squeeze.

“Gonna cum, baby,” Momo says to your reflection in the mirror. “Gonna cum on your cock.”

“Fuck, me too, Momo.”

“Cum in me, okay? Give me your cum. I want-”

Her sentence is interrupted with a long, drawn out moan as she nears her orgasm.

“What do you want, Momo? Tell me. Tell me what you want. I’ll give it to you.”

“I want, I want-”

You continue to fuck her. She’s so close, right on the edge once more, and you’re not far off. Your cock fills her cunt again and again and again and she’s losing her grip, and you’re losing yours, and the whole world means nothing aside from the pussy wrapped around your cock, her perfect body and bouncing breasts, the words leaving the girl’s mouth-

“I want- oh fuck, I want---”

“Fuck, Momo-”

“I want your cum inside me,” she spits, finally, right on the edge of cumming. “Cum inside me. Just for me.”

She cums, and you do too.

You have to hold her down, lest the full-body spasm that wracks her pulls you off your cock before you’d had the chance to fill her with cum. With one hand on her hip and the other on her shoulder you pin her down, pushing her over the bathroom counter until her head and upper chest are pressed against the mirror. One, two more thrusts and you bury yourself inside her, your cock spasming, filling her hot, messy cunt with warm, thick cum.

Your world explodes. Her world shatters into a million pieces. Either way, for a few beautiful seconds you’re both powerless. There is only the pleasure coursing through your bodies.

You grip her hip and shoulder so tightly you are afraid for a moment that you’ll bruise her delicate skin. And for a moment, you didn’t care if you did. All you wanted was to hold her spasming, quivering body still while you filled it with cum.

You both lie there, frozen, for a while - whatever a ‘while’ meant when your respective orgasms rendered your mutual concept of time meaningless. Your hands caress her body, sliding up and down her sides, squeezing a firm ass cheek or round, flushed breast, enjoying the feel of shower water and sweat and other juices beneath your hands. You feel hazy, drunk on pleasure, and everything takes on a blurred, unreal appearance, as though you were still asleep on the couch, and this was the sweetest dream you’d ever had.

A knock on the door is what brings reality crashing back into existence.

You both freeze - you’re still hilt deep inside her creamy, messy pussy. You find her eyes, still filled with a post-orgasm haze, in the reflection.

“The makeup staff,” you say, with a surprising, odd amount of clarity. “They’re here,” you add, as though it were some new bit of information that could shed further light on the ridiculous situation you’d both found yourselves in.

Momo squirms beneath you, but doesn’t move any further. She makes a small whimpering sound. It’s you that moves first when the second knock comes, easing yourself out of her cunt. Thick drops of cum and her juices drip onto the floor, and her whimper turns into a soft, low moan as she feels your cock leave her.

“I need to take another shower,” Momo says, softly, the pleasure still coursing through her body still making her feel high, feel drunk. “Tell them I woke up late. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

“Okay,” you agree, taking a moment to grab one of the hand towels off the rack and giving yourself a quick clean before bending to wipe the evidence of your act from the marble floor.

You pull your pants back up, and Momo sheepishly steps toward the shower on wobbly legs.

You are turning to make your way to answer the door when she stops you with a hand on your upper arm. When you turn, she plants a kiss on your lips.

“Thanks,” she says, before flashing you that smile of hers and hopping back into the shower. Her cheeks are flushed, and she looks like a mess, but she is glowing.

You find a smile making its way onto your face as you turn to deal with the makeup artists.

---

She was bathed in light again.

This time the lights came from dozens of photographer flashes, each one belonging to a competitor vying for the best shot, the perfect visual capture of the young woman at the center of everyone’s attention. She relishes the moment, doing her best to pose the way they want, the way she knows will show off the best sides of her - not that there was any particular side that outweighed the others, because truth be told, Hirai Momo looked amazing from all angles.

“Fuck she’s hot,” Minnie says.

“Yeah,” you agree, your eyes not leaving the girl who was the center of attention of almost everyone else at the party.

“That fit - damn, not just anyone can pull that off.”

“I think you’d look fine in it.”

“Please,” Minnie scoffs, “don’t patronize me. There’s a reason why the cameras are pointed at her, and not me.”

“Yeah, you look like a real three day old bag of garbage,” you tease. You turn to her for the first time to flash her a smile, and she rewards you with a soft punch to the upper arm. In a similarly all-denim fit, Minnie looked pretty captivating in her own right, albeit in a more subdued, cute school classmate kind of way.

“I’m no slouch,” she admits as she takes a sip from her champagne flute, “but I look like a cardboard cutout compared to those curves.”

As much as you liked Minnie - she was close friends with several of the girls and thus you saw and interacted with her frequently - you couldn’t disagree with her. Momo’s all-denim fit, consisting of wide cut jeans and a halter top that was essentially a triangle of denim strapped to her chest that left her back bare, certainly put all those curves on full display.

You are both admiring Momo from afar when an older, well-dressed gentleman approaches you. Next to you Minnie straightens up and puts on her best smile, but she receives only a courtesy nod of the head from the newcomer.

“Excuse me,” he begins, in British-accented english that reminded you a bit of the way noblemen spoke in period pieces. “Am I correct in assuming that you’re Miss Hirai’s company handler?”

“Yes,” you answer, wondering for the millionth time at the series of ridiculous events that led to you being able to answer ‘yes’ to such a question.

The gentleman reaches into his jacket pocket to retrieve a business card, on which he scribbles something onto the back with a fancy looking fountain pen. He passes it to you, and you take a note of the company logo on the front of it - one of the higher-end brands in the fashion industry, that was for sure.

“I’d welcome the opportunity to meet with someone in your company regarding a business arrangement with Miss Hirai,” he begins. “My personal number is on the back of the card, should she wish to conduct that meeting… personally.”

Out of the corner of your eye you notice Minnie give a scoff under her breath before turning away and taking another sip of her champagne. You succeed a little better than her in hiding your disgust behind a smile.

You’d had your suspicions about the man from the second he approached, and his words only confirm them to be accurate. You had no doubt he did indeed represent the company he claimed to work for, but the generally slimy, greasy aura about him rubbed you the wrong way.

“I’ll make sure someone at the company contacts you,” you respond. “Have a good night, sir.”

He seems a little surprised at your curt reply and abrupt dismissal - this was a man not used to being rejected. Regardless, he manages a tart nod towards both you and Minnie before he scurries off into the crowd.

“What a piece of shit,” Minnie says under her breath, the second his back is turned - perhaps she’d wanted him to hear it. She was nothing if not honest with her feelings.

You nod in agreement as you turn the business card over in your hand, glossing over the number scribbled onto the back.

“Still,” Minnie continues, “that’s a fucking top-tier brand. She’d look pretty good in their stuff, not to mention what it’ll do for her career.”

“I’m not going to-”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she says, cutting you off. “There’s no way in hell I’d let her anywhere near that guy. But if you take it to the company maybe they can work something out - something that doesn’t involve slimeball execs luring models back to their hotel rooms in exchange for promises.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” you agree, your gaze returning to Momo, who was beginning to signal to her audience of admirers that she was ready to end the little impromptu photo session. If the photographers picked up on her hints, they didn’t show it - the lights continue to flash, and they continue to call her name in hopes that she’d turn to give them the angle they were looking for.

“Anyway, since there aren’t any high-end brand slimeballs hitting on me, I’ll be in the corner getting wasted on free champagne,” Minnie says with a sarcastic but warm smile. You return it - she was a sweetheart, and you hoped to see more of her.

“See you around, Minnie.”

She gives your upper arm a squeeze and shoots you a smile and a wink before heading towards another corner of the room, where several other idols and celebrities in attendance were congregating.

You stand there alone for a few more minutes while Momo wraps up. She gives everyone small, polite bows and waves as she slowly makes her way towards you, having finally broken free of the throng of admirers and the incessantly flashing lights that accompanied them.

“Who was the creepy old dude?” she asks.

“This guy,” you answer, handing her the card. She makes an intrigued face at the logo on the front before flipping it over and noticing the number on the back. Her curiosity turns into an unamused smirk.

“If you want,” you begin, “we can pretend we never got that card.”

“No, the company will want to know about this,” she answers, with more than a hint of disappointment. “This could be a pretty cool opportunity.”

“I suppose. But you’re sure as hell not dialling that number and meeting with him alone.”

She smiles up at you. Her eyes glimmer in the light of some far-off camera flash.

“Really? Are you going to protect an innocent, naive little girl like me from creepy old execs that want to take advantage of her?”

You smile, and she covers her mouth for a moment to hide her giggle.

“He wouldn’t be the first geezer to think I’d suck his dick and spread my legs just because one of his assistants sends me a bag with a fancy logo on it,” she admits, her giggle fading quickly and turning into a forlorn glance at the card in her hand. “Probably won’t be the last. One of the drawbacks of being super hot, y’know?”

Despite the sarcasm in her tone and the weak smile on her lips, there is a sadness in her eyes that breaks your heart a little.

“Here,” she says, handing you the card with a dispirited look. “You should probably make sure someone in Business Development at the company gets that.”

You draw closer to her and take the card from her hands. You tear it in half.

She looks up at you, the surprise on her face becoming a sweet smile. There is genuine appreciation there, along with something else you couldn’t quite name.

“I appreciate it, I really do,” she says, softly, before returning to a sarcastic tone. “But, like, they’re a pretty big brand. I never want to see that dude ever again, but I like their stuff, so maybe someone from the company can call their company…”

“I can probably… tape it back together?” you say, sheepishly fiddling with the two halves of the card and making a show of trying to piece the two parts together.

Momo giggles again, and amidst the loudness of the event, it sounds like music. “You’re too sweet,” she says, with a warm smile, before she draws close to whisper into your ear.

“And just for the record,” she says, “it’s your cum inside me, your cum that’s dripping down my leg. I don’t want anyone else’s. I just want more of yours.”

She leaves you there, speechless, for a moment that seems longer than it really was. She bites her lip, the slightest bit of ivory poking into soft pink, before sliding her tongue across it.

“C’mon,” she says, finally, motioning towards a corner of the room where Minnie is flagging down another flute of champagne from a passing server. “Can’t let Minnie get wasted all on her own. She’s tiny - so she doesn’t hold her alcohol very well.”

“Right,” you answer, slipping the two halves of the card into your jacket pocket. You’d make sure the guys in Business Development knew to avoid that particular executive when approaching their company.

On your way to Minnie, Momo tugs at your jacket sleeve.

“Hey,” she says, eyes locked on yours, thoughtful look on her features. “Thanks. Again.”

“You’re welcome. I’m yours this week, remember?”

She pulls away, gives you a thoughtful look over her shoulder, and leads you both to where her friend is polishing off her fourth flute.

---

The Eiffel Tower shone like a golden spear, a beacon against the darkness, a monument to man’s mastery over light.

Unlike other monumental towers in other world-class cities, which were often nestled amidst downtown skyscrapers and other buildings, the Eiffel Tower stands alone and unchallenged against the Paris skyline. That made it difficult to miss, and impossible to ignore.

It is a fact you were thankful for. It gave you something to focus on, something to distract you, if even from a moment, from the woman between your knees.

The simple deck chair you are sitting on squeaks in protest as the pleasure slowly building in your body causes you to squirm atop it. Between your spread legs, Momo smiles around a mouthful of your cock as she slowly eases it from between her wet lips.

“Does that feel good, baby?” she asks, knowing full well what your answer would be. But she asks it anyway, because she wants to hear the answer, wants to hear your praise, wants to hear just how much every little move she made was affecting your body.

“It feels fucking amazing, Momo,” you answer, knowing that no amount of profanity could possible emphasize enough how you felt in that moment.

“Good,” she replies, returning her attention to your cock, planting small, soft, almost chaste kisses along its length. She cradles it with her left hand as she continues her kisses down your shaft, placing a few softer ones on each of your dangling balls.

You reach out, run your fingers through her hair. She raises her head from under your shaft and nuzzles against your palm. Her eyes drift closed for a moment and a smile perks up the corners of her mouth as she enjoys the feel of your skin on hers. The hand on your cock begins to pump slowly up and down your length.

“Just enjoy it, okay babe?” she says, softly, eyes drifting open to lock onto yours. “Let me know when you get close - pinch my arm - and I’ll slow down. I’ll go slow. I want it to last. I want it to feel good.”

“Okay,” you answer. Momo gives you a sultry smile before returning to her work.

Her mouth is sublime - warm, wet, tight - that skilled tongue of hers playing around your head at the apex of each movement, pressed against the underside of your cock on the downstroke. Her hand matches her movements, pumping up and down in time with the movements of her lips and tongue.

You feel the pleasure building, and so you return your attention to the Eiffel Tower.

You wonder for a moment at the sheer scale of it, and how such an impressive structure was created without the construction technology of today. You weren’t really sure when it was built - perhaps early in the 1900s? The late 1800s? Regardless of its actual date of construction you knew it must’ve been a long and difficult process without today’s cranes and Momo’s tongue sliding along the underside of the head of your cock, sending another spike of pleasure coursing up your spine-

That deserved a pinch on her arm.

You can almost feel her smile around your cock as she slows down her pace significantly. Her tongue doesn’t pressed as tightly against your shaft, having momentarily retreated from the offensive it was waging on the tip of your cock. You let a sigh escape your lips.

Back to the Eiffel Tower - gee, the electricity bill on it must be staggering. You were a few kilometers away from it, but from here it seemed like every inch of it was illuminated in some way. It glimmered as though it were made of fine gold and brilliant silver.

It must’ve cost quite a bit to have it lit up like it was, every night. But it was probably a cost that the residents of Paris bore proudly - it was the fucking Eiffel Tower, after all. If you’d had something as iconic in your backyard you’d bet you’d be lighting it up as much as you could.

The very tip of the tower contained some sort of slowly rotating searchlight that sent parallel spears of light out into the darkness, as though being a giant lit-up tower of solid gold wasn’t enough to draw your attention to it and Momo’s doing it again, capturing the head of your cock between her lips before swirling the very tip of her tongue around its head and under the sensitive ridge where it met the rest of your shaft. With her right hand she begins to fondle your balls with a light touch; her left hand continues to pump up and down your length and oh my god-

Yeah, a definite pinch on her arm.

She lets your cock leave her lips, and you look down to find an amused smile on her lips. Her tongue darts out, sweeping the spit and pre-cum from them. She can feel that you’re closer now than she’d like, so her hands leave your cock, and she returns to placing soft kisses against your shaft. She nuzzles her face against it, grazing it with her soft cheeks and nose.

The Eiffel Tower, though - wow, what a monument. It was, like, big and stuff, and lit up and it’s so tall and Momo’s reaching behind her now, fingers working quickly at the buckle that held up the ridiculous triangle of denim that was strapped to her chest and now it’s off, and those large, round, perfectly shaped breasts of hers are bare naked, tits you and half the population of Paris had had their eyes glued to for most of the day and now she’s topless and looking at you with lust in her eyes and her hands are cupping her own tits and her fingers are playing with her stiff nipples and and the Eiffel Tower is definitely a thing.

“Jesus, Momo,” you spit, almost on reaction, as the young woman straightens up her back, giving you a full view of her topless form in the low light of the hotel room balcony. You were thankful, not for the first time, that the balcony walls were made of plaster and thus limited any chance of prying eyes witnessing what was happening on it.

Momo’s response is to bring her breasts to your cock, capturing it between the full, warm mounds. She looks up at you, making sure your eyes were locked on her, before she bends her head to spit on the tip of your cock.

Her saliva lands on your tip, before dripping down your already spit-slick shaft. She squeezes her tits around your cock, and begins to slide them up and down your length.

Your head tilts back and you let a sharp, breathless gasp leave your mouth at the feeling of it. There was no relying on the Eiffel Tower, now, not that any monument in the world stood any chance of distracting you from what was happening between your legs.

“Does that feel good?” she asks, another question she knew full well the answer to.

“Yes, Momo. Fuck.”

“Do you want to cum on my tits?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

“Mmmm,” she responds, continuing to slide her warm, full tits up and down your shaft. Warm, wet, slick. “I like you here, though, like this. Right on the edge…”

“Fuck, Momo, please.”

By way of response, she bends her head, does her best to swipe the tip of her tongue across the head of your cock as it appears from between her tits with each slide down your length. You’re getting close now, your limbs beginning to quiver, the pleasure building-

Momo lets your cock slip from between her tits. You sigh at the loss of that warm softness around your shaft. She returns to placing soft, simple kisses on its length.

“I didn’t pinch your arm,” you state, frustrated. You were right there, just a few seconds away, one or two more thrusts between her tits.

“I know,” she replies, a mischievous smile on her lips, before her tongue darts out and gives you a slow, careful lick from the base of your shaft to its tip. “But you look so good like this, all antsy, wanting so bad to cum all over me. So fucking hot.”

“Momo,” you say, her name almost a plea.

She relents - quicker than you were expecting, and saving you from having to beg - perhaps she’d been looking forward to your orgasm just as much as you were.

“Alright,” she says. “I’m not a monster. Don’t hold back, okay? Just cum. Cum for me.”

She straightens her back, slides your aching cock between those full, round, perfect breasts of hers once again. You don’t miss the way she captures her nipples between her thumbs and index fingers as she squeezes the full mounds around your shaft.

She spits on your cock again. Then she slides her breasts up and down your cock.

For a moment your mind flashes back to that very first night with her and Chaeyoung - the night that, without exaggeration, changed your life. The blowjob they’d started with was amazing, of course, but when you started fucking Momo’s tits for the first time - that was when it really sunk it. Before then it had felt like a dream. With her breasts around your cock, and that look of utter pleasure on her face as you fucked her tits - it suddenly felt very real.

And now here you were, in Paris, no less, with that same, beautiful woman on her knees before, your cock between her breasts again as she pumps them up and down your length. But you were alone, now, just you and her, and it somehow felt more intense than even than the first time. Was it the city? The fact that you were alone with her, with no other girls or toys to get in the way? The fact that there was something in the way she’d been acting in the past few days that made you think, for a moment, that this all meant more to her than a simple appearance at a fashion show?

The thought flees your head quickly amidst the pleasure coursing through your veins. It chases almost everything else away, leaving only the feel of her soft, warm tits wrapped around your cock. It feels amazing. It feels sublime.

Momo is sighing now, the pleasure she was giving you inspiring a similar pleasure in her. She continues to tease her nipples, even as she slips your cock in and out between her breasts. She wishes she were naked, that she could slide a hand down her body to the wetness between her legs - but the thought of it, that delicious itch that she wasn’t quite able to scratch - brought her almost as much pleasure.

“Fuck, Momo, I’m gonna cum,” you hiss, between gritted teeth. You are watching her now, hand tight on her bicep and the other woven into her hair. She raises her head to look at you, eyes glazed with almost as much pleasure as yours.

“Fucking cum all over me.”

Almost as if on command, your orgasm hits you - hard, intense, overwhelming. Your cock spasms in the soft warmth of her tits as it spurts thick, warm semen, thick ropes of it landing on her neck and chin, her upper chest, those perfect breasts. You want to shut your eyes, want to relish the pleasure overtaking your brain, but you force your eyes open, force yourself to watch as you paint Momo with your cum.

She lets a long, soft moan leave her mouth from the moment your cum lands on her skin. She continues to slide her breasts up and down your shaft, but at a slower pace now, the added lubrication of your cum making her feel even more slick and wet around your still-spasming cock.

You quiver at the pleasure in a way that you didn’t often during sex. The environment, the circumstances, the utter sexuality of the perfect young woman pleasuring you - it was almost too much to handle.

Your hands leave her body, and you slump backward in your chair as the orgasm finally winds down. Momo finally stops moving, settling her breasts down until they are wrapped around the base of your cock. Her tongue darts out playfully, sliding across your tip. You shudder, completely at her mercy.

Eventually she raises her head, releases your spent cock from between her reddened, cum-slick breasts. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes half-lidded with lust. Thick ropes of your cum paint her body, the white streaks contrasting against her perfect creamy skin, dripping down her chest in slow paths of glistening wetness.

She stands, and without a further word she steps inside the hotel room.

Just beyond her the Eiffel Tower stood proudly, a monument to humanity and everything it was capable of - not that you gave it a shred of your attention as you follow her into the room.

You watch, dumbfounded, brain hazy, as she undoes the buckle at her belt and lets the thick denim fall down her long, perfect legs. The small black lace thong she wore beneath it follows suit as she bends to slide it from her body, leaving her naked.

When she reaches the bed, she turns around and sits on its edge, beckoning you toward her with her eyes. You follow, slave to her, a thrall to her whims.

She lies back on the bed. She spreads her legs as you approach the edge of the bed, allowing you between them.

You reach out, caressing her warm, full thighs. They are flushed and pink, wet with the juices freely flowing from her opening. The slick wetness of her cunt glistens in the low light of the hotel room.

“I should be getting you back from what you just did to me,” you say.

She smiles - a sensual, sultry curve of her lips. “I’d say we’re even, considering what you did to me this morning in the bathroom. And besides,” she says, eyes locked on yours as she captures a rope of your cum from her upper chest with her fingertips, “you liked it.”

She slips her glistening fingers into her mouth, sucking your cum from them.

In response, you place your newly stiffened shaft on her body - the length of it lying atop her shaven mound. She gasps at the feel of it on her.

“What if I want to leave you like this, Momo? Look at my cock. Look at how deep inside you I’d be.”

She glances down between your bodies, to where your aching, stiff cock is lying atop her mound. She bites her lip, reaching down to caress its wet length, imagining it thrusting mercilessly inside her, comparing its length to her body and seeing how deep inside her it would end up.

“You won’t leave me like this. You don’t have the guts. You want to fuck me. You want to ruin this little cunt of mine, leave me here on this bed a little cum-stained, cum-filled thing.”

“Maybe I want to. Maybe I don’t.”

“You do,” she snaps. “And besides, it doesn’t matter what you want. You’re mine, remember? You do what I want - and what I want is your cum in me.”

You feel yourself giving in. How could anyone resist such a sight, such words? She’s perfect - hot, wet, legs spread, your cum is on her chest and she’s irresistible, in every possible way a woman could be.

“Fuck, Momo,” you sigh, defeated.

Her free hand continues to caress your cock, forming a ring with her index finger and thumb and pumping it up and down your aching length. She captures another rope of your semen from her upper chest with her fingers, before capturing the nipple atop her right breast and teasing it with cum-stained fingertips. She moans at her own touch, you gasp at the sight of her. Your hands, caressing her thighs, tighten around the soft, yielding flesh, holding on to the last vestiges of self-control remaining inside you.

“Do you like me like this?” she asks, breathless.

You grasp your cock with your right hand, bringing your tip to her dripping lips before sliding inside her. It rips a sharp moan from her lungs. You linger there for a moment, hilt-deep inside Hirai Momo’s tight, slick cunt.

“I like you like this.”

You begin to fuck her - as much as a part of you wanted to get back at her for the way she’d edged you out on the balcony, the tight, slick heat you were pumping in and out of did much to dissolve any thoughts of revenge from your head. The session in the bathroom this morning, the teasing at the fashion show, the way she’d pleasured you on the balcony - it had all boiled over, leaving no room for things like teasing or taking things slow.

There was only pleasure, now, and the hard, firm pace you set puts you both on the path to achieving it as quickly as possible.

At first she gasps and sighs as you fill her again and again, her body adjusting to the way you were taking her, her cunt stretching around you. She was still so slick and so very wet - perhaps some remnant of the cum you’d left in her this morning contributed to how messy she felt, or perhaps it was mostly her own juices. Either way, she was dripping even before you’d entered her, and now, as you hammer in and out of that juicy pussy, she was almost drenched.

“Fuck, fuck,” she hisses, between gritted teeth. She raises her upper body on her elbows, giving her a better look between her own spread legs where you are pistoning in and out of her body. She looks up at you, and for a few long minutes you stay like that, eyes holding each other's gaze as you fuck.

Her breasts are given a delightful bounce with each thrust into her body. The streaks of your cum begin to flow down their curves, leaving glistening trails behind them. You rip your eyes from hers to watch them bounce, hypnotically, mesmerized by their perfect shape and the way they moved on her body.

She gets the hint - returns her back to the bed, reaches and cups her tits with both her hands, squeezing their cum-streaked flesh, teasing her nipples again with needy fingers, giving you a show even as she pleasured herself.

It works, and the sight of her spurs you. You up your pace slightly.

“Fuck, yes, right there, just like that,” she spits, as you reach a new tempo. “Fuck me like that, fuck me like this.”

She continues to play with her tits, pinching and teasing her nipples, but you want to see them free, want to see them bounce wildly with every stroke into her cunt. You reach forward. Trapping her wrists in yours, you pull back towards yourself.

She is helpless now, her upper arms bringing her tits together and creating a delicious looking cleavage as they are rocked by each thrust into her tight little cunt. Her heels dig into your butt. She wants more, needs more. She’s moaning and sighing wordless little sounds of pleasure, of need. Your cum is on her bouncing, jiggling breasts and her perfect abs clench and her thighs are flushed and she’s so much, all at once, all for you, she’s made of sex and she’s yours to take.

But that’s not enough - you want more, want to see her lose herself to the pleasure, want to see her cum around your cock. You let go of one of her wrists. With your hand free, you reach down and begin to thumb her clit.

The moan that is halfway out her mouth turns into a shriek, a scream, at your touch. Her arm, free of your grip, finds your forearm as it works at her wet, slick flesh. Her nails dig into your skin, and the pain is a delicious spice to the pleasure you find in her cunt.

“Fuck, that feels so good,” she says, words falling from her lips in a tumble. “Fuck, keep fucking me.”

You do just that - hammering in and out of her tight, juicy little cunt as you thumb at her clit. She clenches and pulsates around you and you know you’re building her up to an orgasm that you hoped would be as powerful as the one she gave you on the balcony.

“Oh god,” she sighs, a sign that your hopes had a chance of being fulfilled. “Gonna cum so hard. Gonna cum on your cock.”

“Do it, Momo. Cum.”

“No, I don’t want to,” she says - a theme, now, with her, a kink you hadn’t known she’d had, discovered and out here in the open. She loved it here, right on the precipice. Loved the threat of orgasm, almost as much as when it actually came, for you and for her. She loved being teased about it, loved being goaded into an orgasm she pretended to resist, pretended not to want. Faux-resistance. Pretend. In reality she wanted, needed the orgasm - but every denial of it made it so much sweeter when it finally came.

“Momo, cum. Cum on my cock like a good little girl.”

Her free hand darts up to capture a cum-stained, bouncing breast. She squeezes herself, hard. Her free, bouncing tit glistens in the light with sweat and cum.

“No, no no,” she insists, eyes shut and head shaking no, even as her cunt tightens around your thrusting cock, mercilessly pounding into her, spreading her apart, making her yours. Her pulsating pussy betrays her needs, even as her mouth spits defiance. “Don’t want to cum yet. Don’t let me cum, I’ll be good, I promise-”

Your thumb works against her clit. It brings her right to the edge-

“No, no, I don’t want, fuck, you’re gonna make me cum. You cum first, cum in my cunt, please, cum in me first then I’ll cum on your cock I promise, I swear, fuck, fill me with cum please-”

It hits you all at once. You’d thought you were a ways from your own orgasm, especially since you’d cum on her chest just minutes before, but the sight, the sound, the feel of Hirai Momo is too much. It hits you like a thunderbolt, and it feels like lightning coursing through your veins. You bury yourself inside her and fill her, your cock pulsating with each rope of hot, thick semen it leaves inside her messy, tight cunt.

“Keep fucking me, keep fucking me, please, don’t stop-”

You are struggling to remain at least somewhat coherent given the pleasure coursing through even inch of your body, but her words still reach you, and you still find it in you to obey them. You keep thrusting, keep fucking her tight, cum-filled mess of a cunt, and she loves it, loves each entry and exit you make in and out of her body.

After a brief pause as your orgasm overtakes your senses for a moment, your thumb continues its work on her clit, slowly sliding from side to side across the slick, taut bud.

You open eyes you hadn’t known you’d closed and there she is, Hirai Momo, object of desire and beauty and captured with a million megapixels and bathed in flashing lights mere hours before - now a cum-filled, cum-stained mess, legs spread, skin flushed, moaning and sighing around a cunt filled with hot semen, being fucked into an orgasm she resisted and wanted at the same time.

What any one of her admirers from hours before have given to be you at this moment, see what you see, feel what you feel. But no one else is here - there’s only you, and her, and this sublime, intensely intimate moment between you.

There is only one thing left for you to ask, one thing left for you to say.

“Cum for me, Momo.”

She quivers and shakes when she cums, body submitting completely to the pleasure overtaking her. Her thighs close around your hips. Inside her, her cunt clenches down on your cock so tightly it is almost painful. You let out a groan of pleasure, but it is drowned out by the long, loud moan that leaves her.

The moan ends, and she lies there - quivering, trembling. Her juices and your cum overflow from her filled cunt, dripping onto the bedsheets, ruining them. You release her right wrist and your thumb leaves her clit, and you brace yourself atop her. You’re both breathing heavily, chests heaving, lungs empty.

She’s dirty now, filthy - a far cry from the perfectly dressed, perfectly made-up model beneath the flashing lights of mere hours ago. Your cum stains her body, fills her cock-filled cunt. Sweat glues her once perfectly-styled hair to her flushed face. She is a mess and utterly, completely perfect, somehow all at the same time.

Her eyes glimmer in the darkness of the bedroom. She manages a smile, through the utter exhaustion.

You return it, and bend to kiss her.

---

“Y’know how people call Paris the City of Light? It’s because it was one of the first European cities to use gas street lamps, in, like, the 1860s. So it was, like, literally, a city of light.”

For not the first time on the trip, you are taken aback by the knowledge Momo liked to drop at her whim, at random times, as though she could have told you these facts at any time but was waiting for the right moment to do so. She wanted to catch you off guard with them, at a time you least expected, right when you’d convinced yourself that there really wasn’t much going on in that head of hers aside from wondering what delightful culinary treat awaited her at her next meal.

She is leaning on a railing of the many bridges that traversed the French capital. Overly ornate gas lamps formed a part of the railing every twenty or so feet, and you follow her gaze up to one of them. You wonder, briefly, how many men and women had looked up at it and wondered about its history over the decades, just as you now did. The history of the city around you weighed heavily on you at the moment, as it often did as you wandered its streets.

It was the fourth day of your trip - after recovering from the exhausting travel and her appearance at the first fashion show, you’d both spent the last few days taking in Paris’ sights and sounds. She had another scheduled appearance in a couple of days before you both returned to Korea the day after, but until then you were both free to wander the French capital.

You’d hit most of the usual tourist traps first, of course - seeing the Eiffel Tower up close, visiting the popular museums and art galleries, eating at upscale restaurants and casual cafes. The sex was wonderful, of course, but so was the company of the young woman next to you.

You’d thought you’d figured her out long ago. Every day you spent with her proved you more wrong. Every day you spent with her convinced you that you never really knew her at all.

After a moment you return your eyes to Momo, who is still staring with a mix of wonder and amusement at the lamp, a small smile of amusement on her lips. She notices you looking at her and she gives you a quick look, her smile turning warm. You share that moment for a while.

Eventually your gazes drift down to the river below you, and the banks on either side of it. Despite it being the middle of a weekday, there is no shortage of crowds. Citizens and tourists both have taken up spots on the grassy banks, many enjoying the cool shade under the trees lining the walkways that offered some respite from the late summer heat. Some are enjoying a quick lunch, some are sitting and chatting idly, still others are simply sitting in silence, enjoying the sights and sounds of the city around them.

Many of them are couples. Many are flirting - feeding each other bites of cake or salad, whispering sweet nothings in ears, laughing and smiling at every little thing their partner did in the way young people in love did.

“Paris is the City of Love, too,” Momo says, as though reading your mind.

“I can see why,” you answer, looking around you at the green spaces and blooming flowers, the benches and walkways seemingly built for two, the cute restaurants and cafes. Everywhere you looked there was a place ripe for romance, a place for it to bloom, a place for sparks to turn into fires. Falling in love here would be easy. The city itself seemed to encourage it.

Momo slips her arm in yours, her hand giving your bicep a squeeze.

You are instantly on alert. All it took was one random fan with a phone and an image of one of Korea’s most popular stars would be on screens everywhere, accompanied by the salacious rumors and comments that often came part and parcel with such images. Given your recent experience with the photos someone had taken outside Nayeon’s apartment, you knew full well about what could happen when images of you and one of the girls popped up on the internet.

“Momo,” you say, softly, beginning to slide your arm away. But her grasp on you is stronger than you were anticipating, and she holds on to you.

“You’re mine, aren’t you?” she says to you, a soft look in her eyes and in the smile on her lips. “Let me have my day.”

She pulls you away from the railing, and you continue your stroll down Paris’ alleys and streets, her arm still locked with yours.

---

The crowds were much thinner here, on this random, relatively secluded park somewhere in Paris, some distance from the tourist traps and busy main streets. You and Momo are lying on your sides on a navy blue blanket she’d bought from a nearby craft fair, having just finished off what were probably the best sandwiches you’d ever had in your entire life. Momo had ordered them for the both of you at a local shop, displaying a rudimentary but adorable French accent as she did so.

You are lying on a slope facing a small wooded area, and the trees, greenery, and fading sunlight of late afternoon provided you some privacy. But you could still hear people chatting faintly some distance away, and nothing was stopping an errant child or curious couple from cresting the small hill and finding you both on its other side. Not that that stopped Momo from playing with the waistband of your pants.

“We really shouldn’t,” you say, as her fingers trace the outline of the belt at your waist, both of you knowing your resistance wouldn’t last long. “I can hear people-”

“Mmm?” she hums, as though she weren’t quite listening to what you were saying, or was simply dismissing it. “Want me to stop?”

“If they see us-”

“I see that you’re not saying no.”

You smirk. “Let’s go back to the hotel. We can-”

“I want you here,” she says, eyes suddenly intense. “Now.”

“We can’t - we’ll make too much noise-”

“Then be quiet,” she responds, her hand having undone your belt, the top button soon following suit.

“And will you?” you tease.

“I won’t be the one cumming at a public park.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she says, drawing her body closer to you on the blanket. With her hand she pulls down your pants only low enough to reveal the bulge in your boxers. With a delicate touch, she slides your underwear down to reveal your cock. You shiver as she touches you, her soft fingers closing around your girth.

“So what, you’re just going to lie there and give me a handjob, and that’s it?”

“Well, no,” she admits, that sultry, sly smile on her lips as she bends forward slightly to give you a short, soft kiss. “I fully expect you to fuck me the way I like back at the hotel. I expect you to leave me dripping. But here…”

“-but here?”

“Here, well, I wore this dress for a reason.”

She’s wearing a loose, floral pattern sundress, one that leaves the perfect, creamy skin of her shoulders and upper chest bare. It is daringly low-cut, displaying a delicious-looking cleavage that you’d snuck more than one glance at over the course of the day. Its material is thin and airy, making the outline of the thin white thong she wore beneath obvious to see - as was the absence of a bra.

Her hand closes around your cock, begins to pump up and down in earnest. You reach up, slide your hand against her cheek, and kiss her.

Your tongues find each other, resume the duel they’d been waging on and off in the four days you’d been in Paris. Your hand slides down her neck, lingering there for a moment, enjoying the feel of her pulse beneath your palm. Between you, her hand continues to pump up and down your shaft, fingers tight around your stiffness.

Your hand drifts to her shoulder, sliding beneath the thin spaghetti strap of the dress and sliding it down her upper arm. The dress slips over her breast, baring it to your hand.

You caress the firm, round mound, her nipple already poking into your palm. She sighs into your kiss as your fingers close around her bud and tease, pinch, pull. She breaks your kiss for a moment, and you lie there a while, noses grazing each other, breathing heavily against each others’ lips as your hands play with each others’ bodies. Sometimes your gazes are locked, sometimes one or both pairs close, sometimes they are half-lidded. But they always find each other again.

Her hand leaves your aching cock for a moment, and she brings her hand to her mouth. You hear her spit into it. Her eyes are locked on yours the whole while, until the feel of the wetness of her pumping hand around your shaft sends a shiver up your spine that causes your eyes to shut.

“Fuck,” you hiss, through gritted teeth. Momo’s lips find yours, and you sigh your pleasure into her mouth.

“Does that feel good, baby?” she says, softly. Her hand tightens around you, her pace increasing slightly. “Do I look good for you?”

She reaches up with her free hand, slips the other strap of her dress down her shoulder, baring her other breast. She pulls it down further, until she is naked almost from the waist up. For the millionth time on this trip, you are utterly entranced by her chest - their perfect shape, the weight of the one in your hand, the feel of her soft, creamy skin, the way they sat on her chest and moved slightly with every pump of her hand on your cock.

“You… like my tits, don’t you?” she continues, slightly breathless now. There is a tremble in her voice. It was clear to see in her voice, in the flush on her cheeks, the tightness of her nipples - pleasuring you pleasured her equally.

“I do, Momo. I love them.”

The word elicits a soft, wordless moan from her lips, as though it had triggered something inside her.

“Cum on them, okay? Cum on me.”

Despite the sharp spikes of pleasure that every movement of her hand sent throughout your body, you find yourself surprised.

“Really? No teasing, no edging this time?”

Momo smiles, despite herself, but the relief is brief, and quickly her eyes become intense again.

“No. I want to see you cum. Just for me, please. Just for me. You said you’d be mine. Just mine. Cum, please. Just for me.”

Your hand leaves her breast, finds her cheek, brings it close for a fierce, passionate kiss. You sigh and moan into each others’ mouths as the pleasure she is creating between your bodies begins to reach a peak.

She breaks the kiss to look into your eyes.

It strikes you all at once - the intimacy, the closeness, the vulnerability. You are entirely at her mercy in that moment, heart and soul laid entirely bare. She knows who you are, knows your secrets. You can hide nothing from her, and she knows it.

Somewhere else in the park children are playing, dogs barking, elderly couples going for a late-afternoon stroll, but none of it matters; the entire world is boiled down to the three foot square of the blanket and the wonderful woman you shared it with. Not one other thought - not of the other girls, of this trip, or of the bustling city around you - existed. There was only you, and her, and the pleasure she was creating for you in this private little moment that you two shared. A moment she’d created for the two of you only, that neither of you would tell another soul of - it belonged to the both of you, and no one else.

The past several months had been filled with some of the most intense, erotic, carnal moments in your life - but none as close, as intimate as this.

“Cum for me, please?” she says, almost pleading now, for her as much as for you. “Please, baby. Cum all over me.”

Your breath cuts out, your hand clenches around the side of her head - between you, your cock spasms and spurts thick cum all over Momo’s chest. It lands in heavy streaks across her breasts, her nipples, her collarbones. She sighs with each rope that lands on her skin, the same way she sighed when you filled her cunt - as though it were an equally enjoyable experience for her as it was for you.

“Yes, baby,” she whispers beneath her breath as her pace on your cock slows, fingers still tight around your shaft as she milks each drop of cum from your body. “More, please, more.”

You are drained by now, both of cum and of breath - but your body manages a few more weak spurts of semen that land on the dress bunched beneath her breasts, staining the fabric with thick drops of creamy white. Your hand still clutches at her cheek, your arm trembling slightly as your orgasm winds down.

You open your eyes to view the mess you’d made of her body. It wasn’t the first time on this trip that you’d seen her chest streaked with your cum, but in the fading sunlight of the Paris afternoon it was somehow more beautiful than the times previous. The thick ropes of semen begin to slide down the round mounds, leaving behind glistening streaks that mark their paths across creamy, perfect skin.

Your eyes find hers. To your surprise you find them eyes glassy, as though on the verge of tears. The intensity of the moment you’ve shared hits you both, and you find your eyes watering as well.

“Momo,” you say, because she is what your existence is filled with. In that moment, she is all you know.

“I’m here,” she says, softly, lips finding yours.

---

Morning dawned on Paris. Bright rays of gold bathe the city, make it glimmer and shine. It slowly makes its way across its buildings and roads and parks, inevitable, inexorable.

It makes its way through the open balcony window of the hotel suite you’d shared with Momo over the past week. It illuminates the messy sheets and the remnants of mostly-eaten takeout and room service trays, over your mostly-packed luggage, over the navy blue blanket she would take home and treasure, because it would remind her of a week when she felt loved.

Finally, it illuminates the bathroom - unlit by artificial light, it’s a little dimmer than the rest of the suite, meaning the only light that reached Momo’s naked, wet skin is that of the sun.

But you didn’t need much light. The feel of her body against yours, her arms wrapped around your neck and one leg raised against your hip, heel digging into your backside as you slid in and out of her - that was enough.

You tighten your grasp on her ass, holding her upraised leg up, opening her up further, spreading her, stretching her. Your foreheads press against each other, breathing heavily, moaning softly into each others mouths. You kiss, sometimes - little, involuntary movements, acts of affection amidst the passion. You open your eyes to find hers locked on yours, and the shower water flowing down her face makes her appear as though she’s crying. You need to touch her face, need to cradle it, need to make her feel safe.

You raise your hand to her cheek. Her hands wind through your hair, holding your head, pressing it against her forehead again. Through it all your are fucking her softly, slowly. No teasing or edging here, no playful banter or filthy talk. It is close, intimate, raw.

“I’ll do whatever you want, you know?” she gasps, the rising tone of her voice betraying the depth of her words. “I’ll be whoever you want. Just say you’re mine, please, and I’ll be yours.”

“Momo-”

She presses a finger against your lips. There is need written on her features, of course, and pleasure and lust, but also an genuineness, a realness that you rarely saw in her. Everything about her is laid bare, and the honesty on her lips is plain to see. She meant every word she said.

“Even if you don’t, even if you don’t want me, pretend, okay?” she whispers, barely heard over the patter of the shower on your bodies. “Even if it’s not true, just say it, I need to hear you say it.”

“I’m yours, Momo. I’m yours, I swear.”

The breath leaves her lungs in a long, wistful moan as she cums around your cock. Her cunt tightens, her body quivers. Only your hands on her body keep her upright, keep her back pressed against the cool tile of the shower.

Through the haze of her orgasm she locks eyes with you, her hands cradling your face. There is nothing between you, nowhere to hide, no secrets or mysteries. It feels vulnerable and it feels safe and it feels wonderful, all at the same time.

“Cum inside me,” she says, softly, and soon enough you do, burying yourself inside her, sighing against her shoulder as you fill her yet again. She moans into your ear as you fill her, nails digging into your scalp.

Your orgasms wind their way throughout your bodies, just as they did dozens of times over the past week. But this one doesn’t last as long - perhaps it was the impending end of the week, perhaps it was the words that remained unspoken between you - either way, eventually Momo lets her leg drop from your hip, and you slide out of her body.

You both linger there awhile, the shower dousing you both. Your warm cum leaks out of her, dripping down her still-quivering thighs, joining the water trailing down her leg. She pulls you close, buries her head into your neck. Your arms wrap around each other.

“Momo,” you say, softly, some indeterminate amount of time later. Your flight home was later that morning, and you were already running later than you would have liked. “We have to-”

“I want to stay here,” she says into your neck.

“I know. But we can’t. We have to go.”

Time passes. You remain there, the both of you, breathing heavily against each other. The shower continues to run. The sun continues its advance into the bathroom, illuminating most of it now. Momo turns away from it, nuzzling deeper into your neck, knowing that its appearance signalled the end of the week, the end of the trip.

For many the Paris dawn is beautiful. For Hirai Momo, the light is merciless.

“Momo,” you begin.

“I know,” she answers.

Without any further words or looks, she leaves your arms, leaves the shower and grabs a towel on her way out of the bathroom. You hear the bedroom door shut behind her.

Your gaze follows her, watches her leave. From the doorway of the bathroom you can see the open balcony across the room, where the sun has chased away the last of the night.

Beyond the balcony Paris continues about its day, adding another tryst, another love story - whatever word could possibly encapsulate the last week you’d spent with Hirai Momo - to the countless others it has borne witness to over the centuries of its history.

---

“So yeah, I guess I’ll see you Thursday? We’re filming the next episode of Time to Twice-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Momo answers, leaning on the doorframe of the apartment she shared with Nayeon. As much as she loved spending time with her members, she liked filming these “reality” shows much less - they were when she was expected to act like the hot but utterly clueless bimbo that the world believed her to be.

“Make sure you get a good night’s sleep the night before. I snuck a peek at the script and they need you to-”

“I know, I know,” she repeats. “Play the dumb airhead.”

You sigh under your breath, knowing how much she hated being portrayed the way she was. You wished you could tell her how much you loved seeing that other side of her - the one that was smarter than she let others believe, the one that knew about the gas lamps in Paris and could speak elementary school French.

You both linger there in silence for a while as the words you wish you had to comfort her never materialize.

“Momo, about this past week…”

“Just two fuck buddies doing Paris,” Momo declares with surprising zest, although there was something in her eyes that doesn’t quite match with the words leaving her lips.

“So all that stuff about-”

“Just pillow talk,” she spits, almost on reaction, as though she wanted to cut off that particular line of conversation before it got any further - or if she’d been preparing for you to raise the question and had rehearsed an answer for it. “Just stuff to get me off. Got a romance kink, I guess. Paris, city of love, city of light, you know how it is. That’s all it was. Don’t go thinking I’m in love with you, or anything.”

You aren’t sure you believe her. She felt too honest, too real, too raw on your trip. If she was faking it all - acting - then she was in the wrong profession.

“Okay, then,” you begin, slowly. “I guess I’ll… I guess I’ll see you later.”

“See ya.”

You turn away and begin to head towards the waiting elevator. Midway there you turn to find her still leaning against the doorframe, watching you. A sad smile makes its way onto her lips.

“Hey, Momo?”

She perks up, expectant.

“Thanks.”

Her smile deepens, but her eyes betray her - there is disappointment in them, as though the word that left your mouth wasn’t what she was expecting, or hoping, to hear.

“No worries! See you Thursday,” she says, as brightly as she could, before closing the door.

She leans her forehead against the closed door for a moment, eyes closing, doing her best to process the past seven days. Her heart pounds against her chest, and she places a hand over it, willing it to calm down.

In her pocket, her phone vibrates. It’s Nayeon. She sighs as she declines the call - dealing with her was the last thing she wanted to do at the moment.

With tired legs, she shuffles her way into the living room of her apartment, where Sana is lounging on the couch with Woody, who has fallen asleep, head on her lap. The younger Japanese girl is idly scrolling through her phone, but she sets it down on the coffee table when Momo enters the living room.

“He doesn’t know, does he?” Sana asks as she begins to play idly with Woody’s hair as though he were a pet and not a whole other human being. She’s wearing only a loose t-shirt and Woody is naked aside from the throw blanket thrown haphazardly across his midsection, making it clear what they were up to mere moments before Momo had arrived.

“About what?” Momo replies, sighing to herself as she enters the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water. The trip had left her drained, and without the energy to deal with Sana and her incessant nosiness.

“That you picked him,” Sana continues, finally looking up to fix Momo with a look. “That you picked him out at the concert that night. He should be your toy, not Chaeyoung’s.”

Momo lets out a sharp breath.

“It doesn’t matter,” the older girl replies. “He’s Chaeyoung’s now. He doesn’t need to know anything more than that.”

“But you wish he did.”

As annoying as Sana could occasionally be, she was often more adept at reading a person than the other girls were. Given how much time they’d spent together, she knew Momo better than most, making it obvious to her from the second she’d arrived what had really happened in Paris.

“He’s not hers yet, not completely,” Sana continues. “If I were you, and if you really have feelings for him, I’d tell him how you feel before Chaeyoung does. Wait too long, and she’ll have him wrapped around her dainty little fingers.”

“You’ve seen the way he acts around her,” Momo replies, setting her water bottle down on the counter and bracing herself against it with her hands, letting her head fall down between her shoulders. “He’s probably on his way to see her right now. He likes her.”

“Does he? I think you should fight her for him. She doesn’t deserve him. You do. He should be yours, not hers.”

Momo raises her head, closes her eyes. It was all too much, all too much to think about right now, minutes after getting home from one of the more eventful weeks of her life. She was exhausted, physically and mentally and emotionally.

She looks down the hallway at the door he’d just occupied. She wanted nothing more than to return to that hotel room in Paris, with him, and…

She shuts her eyes and leaves the room, hoping some sleep would at least provide her with a temporary reprieve from the million thoughts running through her head.

When she hears Momo’s bedroom door close, Sana picks up her phone from the coffee table and brings it to her ear.

“Did you hear that?” she asks the person on the line.

“Yes,” Nayeon answers. “That was well done.”

“Thanks, unnie. Don’t you worry - I’ll make sure those two are at each others’ throats. Whoever he ends up with, it won’t be either of them. Then he’ll be all yours for the taking.”

She begins to stand, gently lifting Woody’s head from her lap and placing it on the couch so as to not interrupt his sleep. She is still talking softly with Nayeon as she makes her way to the bathroom.

When he hears the bathroom door close, Woody, who’d been awake from the moment Momo arrived, reaches for his own phone on the coffee table.

He begins to write a text.

---

Author’s Note: lol longest piece I’ve ever written and of course it had to be Momo. she’s the reason why I’m here, after all. :)

Be kind to yourselves and to each other. <3

#twice #momo #twice momo #kpop smut #kpop fanfiction #hirai momo

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zorostitties · 3 months ago

Text

Aurora, 3 (m)

⤕ Your existence had been an endless night, where shadows whispered long forgotten secrets. Trapped in a golden cage, your fragile mind and shattered memories were chains that kept you from dreaming of freedom. Then, he appeared with the first light of dawn, like a gentle sun warming your cold skin. In his gaze, the promise of a new beginning; in his presence, the sunrise your soul had longed for.

In which Alucard saves you from Erzsebet.

pairing: alucard (castlevania) x (f) reader

genre: angst, romance, slow burn, eventual smut

warnings: violence/blood, explicit language, mental health issues, grief, physical abuse.

rating: 18+

word count: 6k

A/N: Happy one week anniversary to this fic!!! Three chapters in seven days??? I don't write this much or this fast since I was like 15. Oh God. Hyperfixation go BOOM Thank you everybody that left comments last chapter!! Reading them makes my day!! Without further ado, let's hear Alucards thoughts. Enjoy! <3

⤕ Masterlist ⤕ Also on AO3 ⤕ Playlist

The fast passage of time never failed to surprise Alucard.

The way the pages of his favorite books would get yellowed and frail without him noticing. How stone pavement would get slippery, worn out, after years of feet walking on it. How quickly a small village with only a few families could turn into a city bubbling with thousands of lives. How a small seedling would turn into a tall apple tree laden with fruit before he could take notice of it. The way fashion changed rapidly; how his clothes would get outdated and he’d be forced to acquire new ones in order to fit better into society.

How fast humans aged.

He didn’t like to ponder too much into it. Not anymore. It always made old scars ache again. However, as he looked at Juste Belmont, he couldn’t stop himself.

A part of his brain still expected to see a skinny and clumsy boy when Richter mentioned Juste. After all, that was his last memory of the Belmont, although he knew it was impossible. And yet… when Alucard laid eyes on the man, he couldn’t help but be shocked. He knew he’d see an adult, yes… not an elderly man with white hair, beard and deep wrinkles, a man that looked older than him (even though he was in much better form than the average human his age).

How many years had it been since Alucard last saw Juste...? It was around the time his grandfather passed, if he wasn’t mistaken. Was it around 50 years ago, perhaps?

Hell. Only 50 years had passed, and Juste already looked like a raisin.

Half of him knew that was part of the beauty of human existence: its fleetingness. Every human had a clear and direct story: beginning, middle, end. Their will to build, transform, adapt, improve and sometimes destroy, despite the little time they had on Earth. That was why human society changed so much in all those years. They had limited time: they were in a hurry to do everything they could with what they got – and that’s why Alucard admired mankind so much. Despite their immortality, vampires didn’t seem as willing to make significant changes, always choosing complacency or destruction instead.

The other half of him – the half where his deepest scars where hidden – hated this fact about humans. Even felt bitter of them, although he wouldn’t admit it out loud. Humans came and went before he could notice. They marked his life and left him alone before he could even prepare himself.

Alucard inherited the human heart that an immortal shouldn’t have. That was one of the small curses he carried for being who he was.

“Why don’t I come to Paris with you?” Juste argued with Richter, which honestly humored Alucard a bit. The younger man was acting as the adult, coming with up with rational reasons, while the elder was eager to join the fight with them. There it was… humans’ will to do something despite everything.

The white-haired vampire watched the scene in silence, sitting on a tree trunk with Annette by his side. The morning fog over the lake and around the clearing made him keep his guard up despite his relaxed demeanor, as it could hide spies easily; in fact, he was almost sure there was someone out there, but he couldn’t tell exactly where. The smell of burnt wood, ashes and vampire corpses was disorienting.

“Are all Belmonts like this?” Annette wondered out loud with a quirked eyebrow.

“Irritating? Oh, yes.” Alucard knew that it was a genetic trait inherited by every Belmont (other than their clear blue eyes). “To be honest, it’s been years since I’ve had much to do with them.” He admitted. Even so, it seemed that things hadn’t changed much in this aspect. “But if I can’t stop Erzsebet, I’ll need a Belmont to finish the job. Or a revolutionary witch, of course.” Annette opened a small, bashful smile at his last sentence.

Richter started to list reasons to why Juste should stay in Machecoul – he owed it to Maria’s mother, he didn’t care if Juste wasn’t great with teenage girls, all the usual Belmont family drama. Well, something else that time hadn’t changed. Alucard almost had a deja vu, as it wasn’t the first time he witnessed a scene like that.

So he decided to lay his attention elsewhere.

Ruby was standing at a good distance from the rest of the group; she had a focused – slightly annoyed, even – expression on her face as she analyzed the pairs of boots in front of her. She had taken them herself from the corpses before the three men collected the deceased vampires to throw them at the fire burning in the Belmont’s now ruined cottage.

She took a boot and placed it next to her barefoot feet, measuring it. Apparently, it was too big. She sighed and did the same with the next pair.

Alucard had been paying much attention to her. He’s one to always focus on the task at hand – said task meant to stop the impending doom hovering over mankind on Europe – however, from the moment he entered her room through her window, things took a different turn. Got more complicated.

The white-haired vampire knew she wasn’t lying. After you live that long, you learn how to pick up the mannerisms of deceit, especially in humans. They blush, blink, avoid your gaze, stutter, their voice gets higher. It takes a lot of practice to get rid of these involuntary quirks. From the moment they first met, Ruby seemed absolutely honest in her fright; in fact, it was as if she couldn’t lie even if she wanted to. As if… she was trained to never lie.

However, it wasn’t enough to make Alucard less suspicious of her. Too much was at stake to let himself be carried away by her story. He knew he was too old to get fooled, but he also knew to never say never – thus why he kept his attention on her, even if he didn’t show it.

He was trying to understand her. Get a glimpse of what was really going on.

Ruby kept silent during most of the way to Juste’s cottage – and that was a lot, given they walked the entire night. She barely made questions. She didn’t ask to rest, to get some water, didn’t complain about her tight shoe (Alucard could feel the faint smell of blood coming from the scratch on her heel). She kept her head low most of the time. Well… she did promise that they wouldn’t even notice she was there, but Alucard didn’t think she was so serious about it.

It made him feel bad for her, to be honest. He could tell it was another thing she was trained to do.

Three moments of their long walk towards Juste’s location caught his attention the most.

The first was during one of their few stops, when Ruby stood apart of the group and stared at the sky for quite some time, in complete silence. She had a focused expression he hadn’t seen her show yet; one that didn’t somehow look pained. The second was when she caught glimpse of a squirrel – the tiny animal ran up a tree so fast that Richter and Annette didn’t notice it – and gasped, her eyes widened, as if she’d never seen a squirrel before. When the two asked what happened, Ruby brushed it off in embarrassment.

The third moment was while Annette explained what they were going to retrieve in Paris – Sekhmet’s mummy which contained half of her soul. And… Ruby didn’t react.

Alucard remembered that both Richter and Annette got confused at what a mummy is. Ruby didn’t. As if she already knew what it was.

That put a question mark in his head.

Alucard wanted to trust her. She seemed genuine. He got really worried about her at the forest, when she learned about Drolta’s death; there was no way she could lie about that. But… how could he trust someone whose own mind was untrustworthy?

Ruby measured her feet with another worn out leather boot, knee-high and with a very short heel. This time, it seemed to match. She put on the pair. Tip-toed, turned her ankles around, took some steps. Finally, she opened a tiny satisfied smile and sighed in relief. “This will do,” she muttered to herself.

Alucard narrowed his eyes slightly.

There was a time – a long time ago –, when he was young, Alucard would trust her in a heartbeat. He wouldn’t even question her. He’d let himself be carried by his inexperience, his naivety… and his inherent taste for beautiful, delicate things. Because yes, Ruby was beautiful like a flower. She reminded him of a weeping begonia – graceful, colorful, yet with a certain melancholy to it. He’d offer help, cook for her, give her a shelter. He’d even offer himself to carry her on his back the entire way due to her hurt heel.

But Alucard wasn’t naive anymore, and there was too much at stake to have faith in her like that.

Of course, one could argue that if that’s the case, then he shouldn’t trust Richter and Annette as well, given he barely knew both. But Richter was a Belmont – and like all Belmonts, he carried his heart on his sleeve; Richter was incapable of deceit. Annette was mature, much more than someone her age should be, due to her past; Alucard could recognize someone with a strong sense of justice and pride like her. There was nothing complicated about them. Ruby was complicated. Ruby meant mystery in a situation that demanded clarity.

Ruby was their upper hand against Erzsebet, but she was also a problem.

“Annette,” the white-haired vampire called quietly. The girl looked at him immediately, understanding his quiet and serious tone. “I’d like to ask you a favor.” She nodded. “Try to… stay close to Ruby. She might feel more comfortable to talk with another woman.”

Annette narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. It might’ve sounded that he was just caring for Ruby, but the suspicion in his expression told her otherwise.

“Do you think she’s lying?” she asked in the same quiet voice.

“No,” Alucard said. “But she doesn’t remember anything from her past, so it doesn’t mean much. Perhaps… the real Ruby hidden in her memories might not be who she seems to be.”

Annette appeared hesitant – Alucard knew she had sympathy for Ruby – but nodded anyway.

The white-haired vampire sighed, tired of hearing the Belmonts talk, and got up.

“Richter. We need to go.” He was about to call Ruby as well, but she was already running towards them.

“Did you find one that fits?” Annette asked as she also got up. Ruby nodded.

“Yes. It doesn’t even smell bad, either.” She appeared so content with something so simple. Annette sent her a small smile before frowning and crossing her arms.

“What happens if we get to Paris and the mummy doesn’t hold any power, it’s just some old corpse that was stolen hundreds of years ago?” Annette wondered – but Alucard didn’t really pay attention to it.

Richter hugged Juste. Ruby watched it in silence – and the faint happiness she held seconds ago for finding good boots immediately faded away, being replaced by… longing. It was like watching a flower wither in front of his eyes.

A weeping begonia, indeed.

It was another one of those moments when Alucard wished he didn’t have his human heart. One of the few things that the fast passage of time hadn’t been able to change.

“Then at least it’s no use to Erzsebet, either,” he answered Annette’s question and turned around, not waiting for anyone to follow him.

When the great flowing river appeared, you couldn’t help but feel a bit of excitement.

Rivers and lakes kept frozen most of the time in Erzsebet’s country. It amounted to your pile of new experiences. In 24 hours, you’d already seen and done much more than during your time in imprisonment.

You tried not to gasp. This river was much larger than the one you’d seen a few hours ago, during one of the stops you’d made to drink water. The sound of the serene current was hypnotizing; it reflected sunlight beautifully, its surface shimmering with the glow of a million diamonds. A bit of fog still hovered over the nearby trees of the river bank.

“The river will take us much of the way from here,” Alucard explained. Since leaving Juste’s clearing, he had taken the lead and resumed himself to not talking much. Richter and Annette were carrying all of the conversations, to be honest, as you decided to also keep quiet.

Since you left the ruins at Machecoul, you noticed that Alucard was a bit… aloof. Or at least, he decided to act this way due the current situation – and you could understand that. The half-vampire wasn’t being rude, and never once did he appear annoyed anytime Richter and Annette made questions; in fact, he was more than eager to debate their plans or to explain how his hunt for Sekhmet’s mummy went over the years. And at the same time… his expression stayed nonchalant all throughout the way.

Well. You couldn’t expect anything less from a man that stayed extremely calm as he invaded Erzsebet’s chateau.

Nevertheless, it made you feel a bit… weird. You didn’t want to say lonely, but that’s more or less how you felt. Alucard was the one to talk to you at the forest after all, and Richter and Annette… they seemed too enthralled in each other, so you didn’t want to interrupt. You didn’t have the courage to initiate a conversation with Alucard either, scared to bother him. So to you, the entire travel had been a long, weird silence.

There was also the fact that you were in panic of attracting any attention to yourself. They must be extremely confident to walk around at night, you thought; how many vampires could be lurking under the moonlight, between the shadows? As much as the sights amazed you – heavens, you even saw a squirrel! –, you couldn’t help but also shiver whenever one of them stepped on twig.

“We won’t be stopping, so if you need provisions, get them now,” Alucard continued. “Keep out of sight. For sure, we’re being followed.” There it was. Just as you were thinking of vampires lurking, he confirmed your fears. And yet, instead of taking a fight stance or getting tense, he just furrowed his eyebrows and completed in an annoyed tone: “I’m always being bloody followed.”

Richter looked back. Then, you saw as his chest bubbled with excitement.

“Are you going to turn the tables on them, surprise them and then take them out with your flying-sword-thing?!” he asked on the same beat, not taking a second to breathe, his blue eyes shining with anticipation.

Alucard stared at him an embarrassingly second longer than normal.

“...I’m going to find a boat.”

And walked away.

Annette covered her mouth to muffle her laughter. Richter’s face got redder than a tomato. You looked down, unable to hide your chuckle as well. He seemed… very impressed by Alucard, you noticed. Once again, excited like a child. It was cute – and you got surprised at yourself, because you didn’t remember thinking anything was cute before.

Richter recovered from the embarrassment in a second. “I’ll hunt, you gather,” he said, pointing with his thumb. “I mean… you could hunt, too.”

Annette giggled once again. “I’ll find some mushrooms.”

They started to walk into the woods while talking about mushroom types.

For a second, you stood in place like a scared cat. Should you follow Alucard? Would that annoy him? Should you follow the other two? Would you annoy them? Didn’t they said you’d have to keep under watch at all times? But what if you became a burden? What if–

“Why aren’t you coming, Ruby?”

You jumped.

Annette and Richter stopped walking to look back at you. The girl had a little smile on her lips. “Do you like mushrooms?”

Oh. Right.

You ran to reach them. “I do,” you said awkwardly. The only good thing about living under Erzsebet’s enclosure was that you were, in fact, well-fed. It wasn’t always like that… but after you became obedient, you were served good food – and creamy mushroom soup was one of the dishes you liked.

“Let’s just hope that Alucard likes it, too,” Richter pondered, holding his chin. “If he even eats at all.”

“Of course he eats. Why wouldn’t he?” Annette raised one eyebrow.

Richter shrugged. “Well, I’m not an expert in half-vampire anatomy to understand his physiological needs.”

You clasped your hands behind your back, taking courage to speak up. “Is he… always like that?” You knew Alucard must’ve been far by that point, yet you still lowered your voice, as if afraid that he might hear it.

You didn’t even need to explain what “like that” meant. Annette pursed her lips. “I can’t tell. To be honest, we know him as long as you do.” That took you by surprise; you mean that Alucard trusted Richter and Annette without even knowing them?! The girl in yellow smirked and sent a teasing look towards Richter. “I mean, I didn’t know him; Richter right here knows everything about Alucard.”

“Hey– it’s not like that,” the boy blushed yet again and scratched the back of his neck. It seemed to be a quirk of his whenever he felt embarrassed. “It’s just that my family knows him for a long time, okay? I’ve… always heard stories about Alucard.”

“And is he what you were expecting?” Annette asked. Richter hummed, taking a second to answer.

“...Not exactly.” He crossed his arms. “I always imagined he’d look older. I mean, if you heard the stories they told me when I was a kid, you’d expect to meet a giant, like five meters tall.” Annette chuckled.

“Why does your family know him?” you asked Richter. He sighed.

“The Belmonts… we’re a long lineage of vampire hunters. Hundreds of years ago, my ancestors helped him defeat Dracula.”

Hundreds of years ago? So Alucard was that old? You shouldn’t be surprised as you knew that vampires didn’t age, keeping the same appearance they had when they were turned. Yet, since Alucard was only half vampire, you thought that he actually was the age he looked to be...

Annette narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think she knows who Dracula is. I didn’t know.”

“Riiight.” Richter nodded awkwardly. “Well, Dracula was considered by many the Vampire King for a long time. He was extremely powerful. And he almost wiped out life on Earth. Lovely guy,” Richter shrugged. “There’s also the detail that he was Alucard’s father.”

You widened you eyes. That meant that… Alucard had to kill his own father?!

“Does that make him the Vampire Prince?” Annette wondered, not appearing to care about what the blue eyed boy just stated at all.

“That’s one of his titles in the legends, though I don’t think he likes it,” Richter crossed his arms. “Well, he does look like a prince.”

The girl opened the most playful, devious grin you’ve ever seen – in fact, that was the most emotion you’ve seen her show up until now. Annette was somewhat serious and her reactions were very contained, so you were a bit surprised by that. It seemed that only Richter could evoke these reactions from her…

“Oh, God. Are you going to ask his hand in marriage? When you do, tell us previously, so we can leave the room,” she playfully elbowed his ribs.

“Wait– That’s not– What I meant is–“ Richter stumbled over his words, his cheeks redder than ever – and this time you couldn’t help but giggle with Annette, covering your mouth. It also seemed that only Annette could get Richter flustered like that…

“Alright, lover boy. This seems like a good place,” she stopped walking, pointing to her right side. “Let’s see if we can find some good ones. Take care to not get hurt by your dangerous rabbits,” she sent him one last playful look.

Still blushing, Richter smiled, shook his head and kept walking ahead.

Her eyes lingered on his figure. For a second, you wondered if she forgot you were even there.

Finally, she looked at you. “Shall we?”

You nodded, following her into the woods.

And… back to silence.

Awkward silence.

You didn’t really know how to start conversations. You didn’t even know if you should. That might annoy her, you thought. I’m not her friend like Richter. It’s better if I just keep silent to not attract unwanted attention.

With the corner of your eye, you observed Annette.

Richter commented that Alucard looked like a prince - and talking about royalty… you also thought that Annette looked like a princess. Her features were delicate; she was soft spoken, polite and intelligent. Her round brown eyes reminded you of kindness and warmth, although you could see they were clouded with some sadness and distress. The way she matched her yellow vest with the golden hair rings and earrings reminded you of a sunflower. Earrings… looking at them made you feel the ghost of a familiar pain. Whenever they dressed you up for Erzsebet’s night balls, they’d have to pierce your ears to put earrings on them. Every single time. And the skin would constantly try to heal around the earring, making them itch uncontrollably until you’d finally rip them off–

“Oh! Looks like we found some,” Annette cut your line of thoughts before they could spiral. “Well, that was fast…”

She pointed towards the ground nearby. There was a tree with a couple of mushrooms growing near the roots. Annette took a small wooden bowl from the shoulder bag she carried across her chest and knelt down in front of the tree.

You narrowed your eyes as you got closer to the tree…

“These aren’t edible.” You blurted out.

Annette looked back at you.

You stepped closer, shyly pointing towards the mushrooms.

“They’re… too white. The gills. Poisonous,” each word that came out of your mouth made you frown more.

The girl in yellow looked down at the mushrooms, softly pushing them with her fingertips to see under the cap better. Then, she looked back at you.

“You’re right,” she got up, watching you in silence.

You looked back at her in silence, too.

Silence.

“I didn’t know I knew that,” you admitted in a whisper.

Annette cracked a small smile. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Why?”

“You remembered something.”

You remembered…?

You were sure of one thing – never once in your life have you ever went mushroom picking under Erzsebet’s imprisonment. Your memory could be a mess, but of that you were sure. So why would you know how to spot a poisonous mushroom?

Was that… was that really a memory?

“You look very shocked,” Annette pointed out. You realized she was already some steps ahead of you looking for another tree. You ran to reach her.

“I… well, I… do you think this could be a memory?” You didn’t like how high pitched your voice sounded.

“Of course it’s a memory. What is knowledge if not a collection of memories?” she said softly.

You felt excitement bubbling within your chest, making your heartbeat increase and you grab the fabric of the skirt.

“Then I think I had another memory past night.” This caught Annette’s attention. “I… I saw a squirrel.” She quirked one eyebrow up, confused. “See, back in Erzsebet’s castle, I was always locked up. And it’s a cold place, there’s always too much snow. Even if I’d go out, I don’t think I’d ever see a squirrel.” You looked up at her, eyes gleaming with excitement. “B-But I saw a squirrel yesterday and I knew what it was, you see? It’s the same situation, isn’t it? A… a knowledge?”

Annette chuckled, but you saw in her eyes – they were very honest – that she didn’t find the situation funny at all. It was… maybe similar to what you saw in Alucard’s eyes past afternoon. It had sympathy and, again, a hint of sadness.

Oh… you let it slip the part about being locked up in a castle.

She was probably feeling bad about you.

“It might be,” she spoke, once again, in that soft tone. “Perhaps those things are common to you, and now you’re beginning to remember.”

Right.

Right, right, right. She was right. Your heartbeat kept up its fast pace as a million ideas flooded your mind. This was the first time you weren’t being mistreated and tortured. When you weren’t being tortured, you were under the constant anxiety of when it was going to happen next. That’s why you slept so much. This was the first time you refused to sleep in order to take in everything happening around you, even the smallest things. What if it was somehow healing your mind?

What if you used to live in a place with mushrooms and squirrels? What if it was a cottage like Juste’s, near a clearing? What if it had trees all around? What if… what if you had relatives that would hug you like Juste and Richter? What if they taught you the difference between an edible and a poisonous mushroom? What if you had parents?

What name did your parents give you?

What was your name? Your actual name, and not this mockery Erzsebet named you that night?

Ruby. That beautiful necklace, bejeweled with diamonds and a big ruby stone that you hated so much. It seemed to burn your skin, seemed to weight tons. But yes, it had the same color of your blood; the necklace got soaked with it whenever Erzebet’s fangs sank in your throat, it’d soak the collar of your dresses, it’d paint your body in that color, it’d paint the Vampire Messiah’s lips–

You gasped and flinched away when you felt a hand on your arm.

Annette looked at you with worry.

“I’m sorry. I called you a few times but you didn’t listen…”

You gulped, putting your hand over your chest and feeling your heart thundering nonstop. The way she was looking at you…

It happened again… just like yesterday, with Alucard…

You hated how your hands were shaking. You hated that you could feel your vision get blurred. You hated all of it, and you hated how a simple thought could make you drift back to her.

You also hated that this thing happened, yet again, with someone to witness. Heavens… you didn’t want to appear weak. These people already had enough problems; all you had to do was not bring them more trouble, to be as unnoticeable as possible, but how could they not notice you if you kept embarrassing yourself like that over and over again?

“My apologies.” You managed to speak somehow. “I’m fine.”

Annette pressed her lips together. Oh, you hated a bit how genuine her eyes were… she couldn’t hide any emotion at all. She felt bad for you. She was worried. You didn’t want to worry anyone.

The girl let out a deep sigh. She held the wooden bowl with both hands, pressing it close to her abdomen, and looked down. For the first time, you noticed the symbol burned on the skin of her right hand… it looked like a flower. Was she branded…?

“I… understand how you feel,” Annette started in a quiet voice. The way she somehow sounded fragile took you off guard; it was the first time you’d seen her like that. “I really do. Those people… they keep haunting you. On your sleep, or even when you’re awake…”

Wind swayed the trees above, played with Annette’s hair, made the golden rings around her locs tinkle softly. In that moment, she looked very young… no. She was very young. Yet, it was the first time you noticed it. She always kept a certain posture, a certain way of speech, that didn’t let this fact be noticed easily. Her fragility almost made her look child-like.

Oh…

The sadness in her eyes… it didn’t have much to do with you. Your state just reminded her of something painful.

“I am not saying that it’s easy to get over it. I still struggle myself,” she admitted quietly, as if she wasn’t proud of it. “And I am not saying that you should be embarrassed to feel this way. It’s… natural.”

Finally, she lifted her head, looking at you once again.

“I don’t know exactly what you went through. But what I can say is that… to be truly freed is to not be afraid. Because when you’re not afraid anymore, they can never hurt you again, even in your mind.” She opened a small, dimpled smile. “And when we defeat Erzsebet, justice will be done. You will be entirely free.”

Sunlight that breached through the leaves touched her face softly. Made her golden earrings glow; lightened her deep brown eyes, making them look caramel. The hint of sadness was still there, but they also shimmered with something else: hope. Courage.

You wondered what Annette must’ve been through; you weren’t brave enough to ask. You could see that life hadn’t been kind to her… her eyes didn’t lie. And even so, she was walking towards indescribable evil to fight against it, even though she had her own demons to face. She was taking her time to offer you encouraging words.

Annette was really like a sunflower; despite the darkness of the world, she chose to face the sun.

You didn’t even know what to reply.

“Thank you,” was all you managed to say now that your heart had fallen into a slower pace again. Luckily, Annette didn’t seem to expect you to elaborate. It’s like she knew you couldn’t.

She nodded and tapped the side of your arm. “We still have mushrooms to pick. And it’s better if you find them… I was about to poison us all, apparently,” she managed to jester, earning a chuckle from you.

When Annette came back, she had the weirdest expression on her face.

After you finished picking enough mushrooms, she went to look out for Richter. Although you were still uneasy, she declared that there was no danger nearby, so you could rest a little if you wanted – which you accepted to do, sitting under a tree for a while. It was nice being alone for some moments. You tried to hear your own mind; maybe it could whisper new memories…

However, Annette came back barely five minutes later with her eyes widened.

You got up immediately. “Did you find Richter? Is everything alright?”

The girl blinked several times. “Y-Yes, I found him. Everything’s alright.”

Annette… stuttering?

Then you noticed… she was blushing.

What…?

“We s-should reunite with Alucard,” she sounded a bit exasperated and rushed. “Richter’s still hunting, but I bet he–“

That’s when you heard the sound of the explosion.

The floor shook beneath your feet. The loud noise came from close by, followed by a loud grunt. Richter’s voice.

Your entire body got tense. Your eyes widened. Your breath hitched.

But, before you could say anything, Annette looked at something behind you and widened her eyes.

“Get down!”

She didn’t need to say it twice.

You dropped, covering your head with both hands, one second before a scrawny looking vampire could stab your temple with a knife.

The thing hissed – and for a second you got desperate thinking, Annette is going to die.

Only for one second, though.

It was the time it took her to kill him.

With a quick gesture of hers, the knife the vampire held melted into somewhat a formless pulp mid air and floated to her hand, where it was reshaped as a spear. With a groan of effort, Annette pierced through the vampire’s skull as if it was butter.

You looked at her in absolute shock.

“Nice reflexes!” She said. But you heard Richter’s voice again, the sound of flames whooshing in the wind, and other unknown voices; the sounds of a fight. “Let’s go!”

She grabbed you by the wrist and ran.

Your most primitive instincts wanted to run in the opposite direction; hell, you’d barely recovered from whatever just happened a second ago. Your worst fears became true; there were vampires deep within the forest, hiding in the shadows even during the day. And you were alone in the woods… if Annette had taken a minute longer, you’d have been knocked out. Maybe that vampire would’ve taken you and ran back to Erzsebet’s entourage. Was Alucard nearby? Did he heard the fight? Was he coming to help you three–?

All your thoughts disappeared.

Richter was fighting two vampires at the same time with his bare hands. You watched, in shock, as he switched from fire to ice to lightning, covering his punches and kicks in blue elemental magic, not showing any sign of struggle at all.

He managed to knock two of them – but didn’t notice as a third short vampire was ready to shot him with a shotgun. Annette was faster. Once again, she controlled the metal of the bullet, disintegrating it before it could even touch Richter, and forced the projectiles to ricochet back at its shooter.

Richter looked at you and Annette.

“I would’ve dodged that,” he complained, pouting.

“Is ‘thank you’ so hard?” Annette retorted.

The blue eyed boy looked at you. “Stand behind us, yes?” As if he needed to say it. Another tall vampire wearing an armor sprinted at them as they took their offensive positions.

You were in such a deep shock that you couldn’t even be scared anymore.

They… they weren’t struggling. At all. They were just human beings, fighting against vampires and winning, winning with the help of magic. They predicted the vampires’ moves and broke their attacks like it was nothing. They were so overwhelmingly superior that the enemies barely even noticed you were there, too focused in trying to survive.

Now you understood why Alucard trusted them without even knowing them well.

They didn’t even need Alucard’s aid.

Annette fought against a tall and skinny vampire. She controlled the blades he used on his sleeves, preventing him to run away; she then reshaped his blades into a sharp spear. After exchanging a few blows, she launched the spear with a scream of effort – and hit bullseye. Quite literally. The spear pierced into the vampire’s eye through his skull, killing him immediately.

Richter had ran off after the last vampire, disappearing from your sights.

“Where’d he go?!” she asked in a rushed tone. You pointed towards the direction he sprinted on, unable to speak.

She didn’t need to ask you to follow her.

When you reached him, the situation seemed under control. Richter had retrieved his whip, and the short vampire was down on his knees.

Richter smirked confidently.

“I hope the vampires in Paris are better than this bunch of blood wankers,” he boasted in a cocky way…

But the vampire smirked as well.

With a puff of black smoke, he turned into a small bat.

“Richter!” Annette called. At the same time, another vampire appeared from within the shadows.

The blue eyed boy didn’t know which to chase – but the new enemy seemed faster and more dangerous. His whip got involved in blue fire; with a single whiplash, the vampire was killed.

But the bat had already disappeared.

“The little one’s escaped!” Annette groaned. It was the first time she looked even slightly annoyed at Richter. She had a breathless scowl in her face, her nose slightly crunched. “Great! Now they know where we are going!”

Richter was distressed. He looked around, his cheeks flushed either because of the physical effort or sheer embarrassment. “Let’s– Let’s look around for him, he mustn’t be far!”

“A tiny bat flew away between the trees, Richter. We won’t find it.” The girl put her hands on each side of her waist.

They started arguing on what they should do next. You didn’t have it in you to interrupt.

Now that adrenaline was slowly fading away, you felt… pretty useless. All you could do was stand there like a frozen statue while these two fought like beasts. At least you didn’t disturb them or made the situation more difficult.

The bigger part of your brain was still frightened. A tiny part of it was… a little excited.

“I suppose we should tell Alucard,” Richter admitted defeat after apologizing over a hundred times, shoulders dropped and a flushed pout on his lips. Annette sighed.

“Let’s not. It probably won’t matter.” Maybe she had a point… these vampires didn’t look like Erzsebet’s servants. No cloaks, no moon symbol on their foreheads. She crossed her arms. “And I don’t want to give him another excuse for that ‘oh, you children’ look he does.”

You wanted to disagree, but you didn’t feel that you had the right… not after what you saw them do.

And… you couldn’t judge them for hiding something.

You were hiding something, too. Something you didn’t want to talk about – at least, not yet.

Three memories of yours awakened that day.

You knew what a squirrel was. You knew what poisonous and edible mushrooms were.

And...

I don’t think she knows who Dracula is, Annette said back then.

She was wrong.

You did.

#alucard x reader #castlevania #castlevania nocturne #adrian tepes #alucard x you #adrian fahrenheit tepes #castlevania alucard #alucard tepes #alucard adrian tepes #castlevania x reader

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wol-fica · 19 days ago

Text

-Oscar Winning Tears-

pairings - sabrinacarpenter x fem!reader

summary - With Sabrina being away in Europe on her tour, you just couldn’t keep up with your emotions

warnings - none

an - stripping fic is almost done, doing up the final touches before it’s yours <3

———————

Crying is a form of release, a way to let all your pent-up emotions out that have built up throughout the day. It is a quite easy option instead of losing your temper or being frustrated and sad.

Unfortunately, your body would not let you cry, for whatever reason.

It had been an awful day, and honestly an awful week, and all you wanted to do was just scream into your pillow and just let it all out. Things went wrong, people were upset, you pretty much got yelled at every day, and you had to come home to an empty house after.

Sabrina was in Europe, specifically Paris, while finishing up the last few shows of the tour. She wasn’t supposed to be home until mid-April, and normally you would never ask her to come back to you while she was on tour, but you really needed someone to lean onto and your girlfriend is always the first that comes to your mind.

The phone in your hand rang softly, your eyes focused on the screen as you waited to see if she would pick up. It was 2 AM for you, meaning it was an early morning for Sabrina, and she was usually getting ready for her show at rehearsals. She has always told you that she would prioritize your calls and do her best to answer, but it was never guaranteed while she was working, especially in the mornings.

“Y/N?” A voice sounded after the line clicked, soft and questioning, “It’s late hon, why are you up?”

You inhaled, your breath shaky and weak from the emotions piled up inside of you. Sabrina listened on the other line, waiting patiently for your response.

“What’s wrong baby?” She asked after a moment of silence, “Can’t sleep?”

“Yeah.” You mumbled, playing with the hem of your blanket, “I can’t”

A sigh came from the other end, not of annoyance but more of remorse. You heard her shuffle around, saying something inaudible to another person before the sound of a door shutting came through, the quiet chatter behind her disappearing.

“There’s melatonin in the bathroom, if you want to take that.”

“I know…I just…” Your sentence gave up on itself, struggling to find your voice to say what you felt.

“Baby.” Sabrina sounded firm, yet still gentle and loving, “Did something happen?”

Your bottom lip wobbled, the feeling of crying rising in your throat. Your hand clutched at your chest, trying to find the right way to breathe in the thick air around you.

“I just…I’ve had a r-really bad week.” You said shakily, trying but failing at steadying your voice, “I know you’re in P-Paris…but I just wish you w-were here...”

Your voice broke at the end of your words, your lip slipping between your teeth as an attempt to suppress your tears. You heard Sabrina inhale sharply on the other end, a sign of her realization and guilt.

“Oh, my love.” She cooed to you, a skill that helps soothe you, “I’m so sorry honey, I wish I could be there too.”

You nodded, a whimper passing through your lips at the thought and understanding of her being so far away. Her heart broke at the sound, her lips curling down as her mind raced with what could have potentially happened to upset you. She looked around the room as she pondered, trying to come up with a solution that would help you.

“I’m gonna come to you.” She said after a while, making up her mind, “The show can be postponed for a little.”

Your eyes snapped to your phone, wide and alarmed, “Babe no, you don’t have to.”

“Honey.” Sabrina interrupted you, her voice stern, “You need me; I’m coming home.”

You went to speak again, but the words died on your tongue as you heard her speaking to someone in the background about booking the soonest flight. You knew how incredibly stubborn she gets when she sets her mind on something, and arguing with her about leaving wouldn’t benefit anyone; Naturally, you gave up.

“Okay…okay thank you. Still with me baby?”

You nodded, wiping your eyes, “Mhm.”

“I should be home around 1 or 2, okay?”

“Ok.”

“Alright, can you do something for me?”

You nodded again, a small yawn coming through your mouth as you spoke, “Yeeaah.”

Sabrina giggled, making you smile slightly at the sweet sound, “Think you could throw on one of my tour hoodies and try to sleep?”

You hummed, carefully pulling the covers back before heading into your closet to steal the cozy article she requested, immediately sighing when the smell of her perfume hit your nose after you put the hoodie on. It was soft, warm, and infected with her aroma, your brain melting to slush at the stimulation it produced.

“Okay, I’m wearing it.” You mumbled, rubbing your eyes as you got back into bed, “…feel sleepy already…”

“That’s my girl, I’ll see you soon.” Sabrina replied softly, “I love you so much baby.”

“Mm…I love you too…” You whispered, now struggling to keep your eyes open as the hoodie was doing wonders for your insomnia.

“Sweet dreams my love.” Her voice sounded through the phone, your eyes falling shut at the sound of the line ending.

-------------

You groaned softly, peeling your eyes open to the sound of music playing softly downstairs. The sun was shining through your curtains, rays of light cast on the floor like angled pillars that of a coliseum.

With a groan, you pushed yourself up into a seated position, your head falling into your hands as you slowly woke up. You peeked an eye at your phone, seeing that the time was 3:30 in the afternoon, and started to stretch and exit your bedroom. A yawn fell from your lips; arms raised above your head with your eyes squeezed shut as you made your way downstairs towards the music. The sound of someone singing along filled your ears, a sweet and melodic voice that you knew all too well.

Once you round the corner, your heart skipped a beat from the sight. Sabrina stood at the counter, gently stirring a spoon in a saucepan while she swayed to the beat. Her hair was up in a ponytail, messily clawclipped together with her bangs settle just above her glasses. She was wearing one of your shirts, the oversized style completely swallowing her small figure like a dress, with a pair of fluffy pink socks covering her feet.

“Baby…” You whined, rubbing your hand over your eyes as you approached her.

She turned to you, a smile curved onto her lips from hearing you, “Hi beautiful.”

You grumbled something in response, the feeling of sleep still heavy on your body. She giggled at that, setting the spoon down and holding out her arms so you could fall into her. You burrowed yourself into her, your face falling to her neck as your arms went around her shoulders. She wrapped you up in her embrace, rubbing your back softly whilst leaving little kisses against your cheek.

“You’re home.” You mumbled, squeezing her gently, “Thought I was dreamin’.”

“Well, I am here! In the flesh.” Sabrina pressed her lips to your temple, “I missed you.”

Her nails ran up the back of your shirt, scratching gently at your skin. A low rumble sounded from your throat at the feeling, almost purring into her neck from her soft touch. She hummed at that, squeezing your abdomen before pulling back to cup your face.

You locked your eyes with hers, smiling softly when you noticed the subtle blush on her cheeks. She slid a little closer, her nose brushing your tentatively before you pulled her into a kiss. Your lips slotted into hers perfectly, soft, and long awaiting your attention from being away for so long. Fingers danced across her waist, squeezing and pulling her in as close as you could.

“Missed you too.” You murmured, nipping her bottom lip slightly as you pulled away, “Europe is too far; I’m going with you when you go back.”

Sabrina giggled, poking your stomach gently whilst nodding, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Long distance is always a struggle, but a few tears and some kisses does the trick; Fortunately, you have an amazing girlfriend who can do just that.

———————

honey? where’s my super suit?

#wolfi random #sabrina carpenter x y/n #sabrina carpenter x fem!reader #sabrina carpenter x you #sabrina carpenter fanfic #sab #sabrina #sabrinasource #sabrina carpenter #sabrina carpenter x reader #sabrina carpenter x read #sabrina car

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esamastation · 4 months ago

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Hello, here follows a bit of original LITRPG writing in the form of a forum post. I have no idea how to explain or what to title it. It is a thing.

In which the origin of System is pondered upon.

Theories of Apocalypse forum

The System - is it human made? by the Witchess of Londonium, 1st of June, 20xx

Guys, I figured it out, I connected the dots.

The System wasn't created by the IFAR.

I know, I know, there's like a billion theories about this, and of course everyone knows what the Elves say. The System is a Gift to all of humanity. Sure. And then there's that crackpot Mayfeather's theory about it being inheritance from ancient aliens that bred with humans thousands of years ago. Personally I think that's just because he wants a harem of furries, but each to their own. And then there's the stuff about american military experiments that went rogue, but that seems a bit too much of a coinkydink for me, what with the apocalypse happening at the same time.

Though, now that I think about it, a weird human program would go rogue during the apocalypse, wouldn't it. And I actually kinda do think that's close to what happened - though not that it was secret military drugs or nano machines or whatever.

I think it's something bigger - something we all knew and loved, in the old world. Something… ever present, that was part of all our lives. Something utterly beyond IFAR's comprehension.

I mean, think about it. This thing is huge, in like, cosmic, evolutionary, technological revolution sense, huge! This thing is like the dawn of information technology but times a hundred, with, I don't know, genetic engineering and all of weight loss and bodybuilding industry thrown in the mix. This is the "next step in human development" level of stuff!

And weight loss and bodybuilding industries of old wish they had what we have now. We can literally level up now, and with each level we get stronger. And that's just on the base level. We can change our species now! I've seen people transform themselves completely with the System. One chick, she's a dragon now, just through the System. This guy I know, super into calisthenics, yeah, he can bench press cars now, through the System. I've seen people with wings, tails, horns, with multiple arms - and there's rumours about this one old lady, she can just transform herself into other things. And all we need to do to make all that possible… is level up and get some exp.

… which, okay, it isn't that easy to get exp, you really gotta work for it, and sometimes it's so damn hard to get ahead you just wanna cry, but still.

Why would they ever give this thing to us?

Here's the thing. I don't think they did.

Just think about it - why would they give this thing to us? It makes us stronger, it powers us up - it gives us magic. And okay, yes, it also, consequently, spreads magic around, which helps them, making things more magical and more chaotic and dangerous - but seriously! Why would they want to empower us? They're here to subjugate us! How does giving us all this power and opportunity benefit them in any way?

It doesn't, it just doesn't - just look at the Dragon Battle of Paris. You can bet your probably by now feathery butt that those guys who ate it in the Boulogne-Billancourt wish we didn't have the System.

So here's what I think happened. I think it was a complete freak accident.

When the Veil was breached and the Aurora Magicalis happened, those particles changed everything they came in contact with, right? We got magical people and creatures and trees and houses and lakes and, I don't know, magical damn water towers now. And those were like intrinsically linked changes too - the thing with the metro proves it! One thing changes by magic and everything that's a copy or similar enough of the original changes too.

And that's why we have giant centipede trains all over the world now.

Which is still terrifying.

So, what happened to the internet when magic particles hit it? What happened to all that knowledge just interlinked all throughout the world? People think it vanished with everything else electronic - but we know you can't vanish things by magic. You can only move things… or change them.

I think the internet got whammied, guys, the same as the rest of us - and like everything else that got whammied, it gained a life of its own. But the internet isn't like a train or, I don't know, a taxi cab that's suddenly alive, it doesn't really have a specific territory where it exists. It's everywhere in the world and it's got no one specific spot where it starts from and we just accessed it with our phones and computers and whatever.

(Yes I know the internet has physical forms on servers and data centers or whatever, shut up, I'm thinking magically here.)

So, the internet gets magically whammied. Where does it go? It goes where it's always gone - to us. It was made by humans, for humans, for sharing of human discovered and developed and intended information. So it just… attached itself to us. And it's still doing the same thing it's always done - sharing information.

And why is it running out of lives like a videogame now? Well, have you ever wondered how much of the internet bandwidth in total was taken by online videogames? Okay, it probably wasn't that much - but it was still kinda significant amount! Or who knows, maybe the first bit of the internet that got whammied was someone's Steam account, who knows.

Either way, I blame the evils of online videogames, as many concerned aunties have before me. Heh.

Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass and it's all a plot by the Elves to Stockholm Syndrome all of humanity - but isn't it a bit weird, how none of them have this thing? Isn't it a bit of a hell of an inconvenience to them, that we do? Did no one else notice in the early days how shocked they all were to see some of us flinging magic right back at them?

And isn't it a little bit more comforting to think that this Awesome thing that now unites us all wasn't made by our enemies - but that we ourselves made it?

Because, guys, I definitely don't think they were expecting it. When I ran into goblins the first time, they totally thought they could just roll right over us. Orcs too. And the Elves, man… I'm definitely not the only one with a bad first impression. I don't know what they were expecting me to go, bend over, lick their boots, beg for my life, maybe. They were definitely not expecting a fireball to the face, lemme tell you.

Between you and me, I don't think they would've given me, or anyone, that skill if they had a choice in the matter.

Also it just makes sense though, right? I mean, it's not like Elves even know what videogames are. They don't have computers, they never developed, like… Dungeons and Dragons or anything like that. I bet some human had to explain to them what levels and upgrades even are - because that's, that's really weird and really niche human knowledge, in the grand scheme of things, right? It hasn't been a thing for more than maybe a hundred years.

I don't actually know how long the concept of a "Character levelling up and getting more powerful" has been a thing - feel free to let me know because I am kind of obsessed with this and I suddenly need to know.

Anyway, The System. It's definitely been to the benefit of all of us using it in this bullshit apocalypse, right? And the IFAR… Yeah, I don't think it's been to their advantage at all.

Also, like, come the feck on. When you really think about it, the info the System gives us… isn't it kind of familiar? Boil it all down and what we have are chats and forums and wikis at our fingertips! What kind of invading force gives the people they're invading a communication tool like this? Like, sure, it took a while to get here and it takes effort to use it, it has a cost - but so did the internet.

This is nothing new to us, human peoples of the Earth. Such as it is, right now… invaded and transformed and on the brink of being conquered by damn fantasy Elves…

So, that's my pitch. The System is the sentiment and magical new form of the World Wide Web, with an online RPG twist.

What have you been doing with it?

336 credits, 759 replies, 163 awards.

Tadaah, the thing. Relating vaguely to this Isekai based DND campaign idea I had, which was originally an original story which I wanted to write, which I think is this?

Also IFAR is short for "Invaders from another reality", lol.

Anyway. The thought won't leave me alone but I have no idea what to do with this. Maybe I could do prompts based on this? Idk. Some sort of RP thing??

#original writing #litrpg #epistolary #i don't even know how rp on tumblr works lmao

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bugoutreviewgirlie · 2 months ago

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Revelator basically confirmed that except for the person who was akumatized, everyone remembers what happened before, during, and after an attack. This is something I've been pondering a long time, because it means people do remember watching their friends transform into inhuman monsters. people do remember being chased down by killer machines that crushed entire neighborhoods at once. people remember the moment they're turned into piles of dust. the people of Paris remember all the times they've died and have been brought back to life. and they just live with that.

#imagine a character is about to die of natural causes and they desperately hope their sickness is the side effect of someone's akumatization #bc if it is then Ladybug can save them and they don't actually die and things can go back to normal #back on my 'why is there not a ladybug cult' bs don't let me get started #miraculous ladybug #ml revelator #revelator spoilers #liveblog

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fastbrother · 9 months ago

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The most he’s ever said (E, 16.4k words)

It takes them twenty years.

Tags: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, POV Draco Malfoy, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Alcoholic Harry Potter, Closeted Harry Potter (for a while), Decades Long Situationship, Infidelity (not between Drarry), Potions as Substance Abuse, Paris, Sexual Content

Excerpt:

“We can go to mine, if you want,” Draco manages after a long time, almost as long as his whole life. “Sure,” comes Potter’s reply, neither too slowly, nor too quickly, eyes still glued to the telly. They’re quiet during the six-floor walk-up. Potter’s heavy steps echo down the curved escalier as he joins Draco on the narrow landing. A clink of keys, a drawn-out squeak, and they’re inside. Potter doesn’t comment on the size of Draco’s room, nor the rest; the bed, propped up by books and crammed between a sink full of empty bottles and the door, the water-damaged wall, the potion vials on the floor. In fact, he doesn’t seem to take in anything at all, his eyes glossy and fixed somewhere beyond the walls of Draco’s room. Draco finds a half-full bottle of wine under the bed, and pours Potter a glass. Potter accepts it, a heavy air of preoccupation hanging over him. They spend another couple of minutes in that viscous silence, side by side on Draco’s lumpy bed, then Potter stands up. Draco’s heart is pounding. Harry sets his empty glass on the stack of newspapers Draco uses to cover the window when it gets too hot. He lingers for a while with his back turned, as if pondering some important decision. Draco wonders if he’ll leave, then, just like that. He doesn’t. He turns. The room is so small, he’s in front of Draco in one step. Draco breathes in, lets his glass tumble next to him. Potter’s hand rests for a beat on the crown of his head, a torturously familiar touch, then slides down across his cheek. He nudges Draco’s chin up. When Draco looks up, Potter’s finally looking back. There’s hunger in those eyes. Draco understands. He swallows past the knot in his throat; gets down on his knees. As he unzips Potter’s jeans, Potter puts his hand back on Draco’s head, and says, “I’m not gay.”

Author's note: Fic claim for my @hd-wireless entry this year! I wrote this story because I wanted to talk about how important it is to say the things we want to say, even when they are implied or we feel we don't need to. A gift for Jojo/@pl0tty 💖

#drarry #drarry fic #hpdm #harry x draco #hp fic #my writing #the most he's ever said #hd wireless 2024 #i love u jojo

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safarigirlsp · 2 months ago

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From the Pages of the Penny Dreadfuls

Victorian Vampire Jacques Le Gris x OC Georgette

Word Count: 31.8k

Warnings: NSFW. Action. Graphic Violence. Gruesome Horror. Romance. Old Timey Sexism. Hot Toxic Masculinity. Conniving Bitches. Victorian Setting. Vampires. I play a little loose with time and events, but they are all within a couple years if not a couple weeks. But I also play a little loose with vampires and cowboys, so whatever.

AO3 Link

I'm finally catching up on some old requests. This is one from @napiersmirk that I probably bastardized totally, but hopefully there's some fun stuff in here. This is basically a 30k shitshow with Victorian Vampire Jacques and a Cowgirl.

Once upon an autumn dreary. Sir Jacques Le Gris modified the words to one of his favorite poems to suit his surroundings and mood, hearing it as an internal monologue as he strolled down Martin’s Lane toward Trafalgar Square. The nighttime air was cool and humid, the stars hidden behind a stormy veil. Mist crept low, slithering through the streets. It was the kind of weather Jacques loved most, when his breath fogged from his lips like ghosts wrought upon the darkness. In high spirits, he gave his ebony cane a twirl, letting the silver grip in the shape of a wolf’s head turn in palm. The streets were unusually vacant. Those damned Ripper murders were keeping people inside at night. Not only did the Ripper have the nerve to frighten the ladies of London, but he also had the gall and plain bad form to stain Jacques’s name. He went by Jack occasionally, usually when dealing with English and Americans, it seemed simpler for them. Jacques pondered solutions to this nuisance, as he had many evenings before. The best solution to the problem, both society’s and Jacques’s, was likely the simplest – for Jacques to hunt the hunter, victimize the villain. Bleed the butcher dry. He grinned at the thought, his tongue subconsciously tracing the peak of his canine.

But that was a game for another night.

Tonight, Jacques was on a simpler mission. Priding himself a champion of the arts, Jacques took pleasure in seeing the arts and the shows London had to offer. He was a man who enjoyed a spectacle, even if he was not partaking. Although he greatly preferred the latter. It was a wonderful time to be alive, Jacques knew better than most. From P.T. Barnum’s great circuses to group seances and magicians performing grand stage acts, spectacles were all the rage. Queen Victoria was celebrating her fiftieth year on the throne, drawing in crowds from across the empire and motivating every performer to put on his best.

Lithograph posters advertising performances of all varieties were plasters to the sides of buildings, ranging in size from a common portrait to as large as a bedsheet. Smaller letter-size fliers clung to every pole within reach of the urchins who earned a pittance by scattering them about the city. The posters called to Jacques as he strolled past. Thoroughbreds raced across a field of green on a poster for the Epsom Derby. A darkly handsome man stood in front of a gilded portrait advertising for the play The Picture of Dorian Gray. A snarling tiger faced a roaring lion on a poster for P.T. Barnum’s Circus. The infamous magician, Kylo the Malevolent, wore his signature black tailcoat and held a ball of flame in one hand while he conjured dark forces with the other in the poster for his show at the Royal Albert Hall. Even the wanted posters for Jack the Ripper were lost in the collage of lithographs. A Bohemian freakshow was passing through London this week on its way to Paris, the posters advertising its oddities littered across buildings and walls. Jacques saw a poster for the World’s Strongest Man displaying a burly man in a singlet with simian body hair flexing a monstrous arm. Next to him was a poster for a man labeled Ink Well who was tattooed over every inch of his skin.

Jacques stopped in front of a haberdashery he frequented. He had even purchased the tophat he wore at present there. Instead of the usual tophats, canes, and derbys that regularly filled the display window, there were now American style cowboy hats with different shaped crowns, and even two pairs of western chaps, one crafted from thick woolly sheepskin and another from splotchy grey sealskin. On either side of the display windows, the building was plastered with posters, unique from the others, that caught Jacques’s eye. Galloping horses, stampeding buffalo, cowboys with six-shooters, cowgirls with lever-actions, and a lively white-haired man with an impressive Van Dyke made the wall come alive with the spectacle of the American West.

In celebration of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, Buffalo Bill was bringing his Wild West Show across the ocean to perform for her. Buffalo Bill was rumored to travel with well over one-hundred people, including gunslingers, Native Americans, sharpshooters, vaqueros, trick riders, and musicians. A menagerie of animals was also part of his troop: horses, mules, and longhorns, naturally, but also domesticated wildlife including buffalo and elk. Jacques wondered how much of that travelling zoo would accompany Buffalo Bill on his visit to England. Jacques hoped the store owner was getting a commission from Bill for all this free advertising. He decided he would purchase a new hat for the occasion and encourage his friend, Pierre to do the same. The comically large ten-gallon cowboy hat center stage in the display window would call to Pierre as seductively as a Parisian courtesan. Pierre would be an easy sell, always eager to parade new trappings that might impress the ladies. When Jacques had informed Pierre that he had secured the company of a pair of prima ballerinas from the Russian ballet to accompany him to the Wild West Show, Pierre had boasted that he would be attending with a trio of blondes from a theater troupe.

Smiling at his schemes, Jacques tapped his cane on the cobblestone and continued on into the square in the brisk, long strides he favored when he wasn’t ambling slowly in consideration of a female companion. Only a handful of people walked through the square, mostly couples and one raucous group of obviously drunk young men. There wasn’t enough traffic to keep the light fog from settling over the cobblestones, and it draped them in a spectral haze. With the Ripper at large, it was rare to see lone women and even lone men out at night unless it was unavoidable, or in the areas of town where the three-penny-uprights conducted their business. Jacques was surprised to see one lone woman in the square, standing at the base of Nelson’s Column. So surprised that he stopped short and simply stared at her for a long moment. She faced away with her neck craned to look up at the column, and a lovely neck it was. The grey coat she wore hung down past her knees and its black astrakhan collar rose nearly to her ears. The only bit of skin to be seen was a narrow satiny strip above the fur collar and below her hairline; her hair was piled on top of her head in an intricate bun, courteously enough to allow that tantalizing peekaboo of skin. She wore no hat nor fascinator, and was likewise free of a bustle in a rather risqué defiance of custom. Jacques’s eyes were well-seasoned at discerning ladies’ figures, and he could tell this one was shapely and alluring.

Jacques was striding toward her before he knew he had commanded his feet to do so. In the midst of the Ripper murders, he felt compelled to offer his company. That’s what he told himself. He might be every bit as violent and villainous as good ol’ Jack, but he was also a gentleman. Hearing his bootsteps on the cobblestone, the woman turned to face him, fixing him with a level gaze that speared straight into his eyes. There was nothing soft or demure about the way she looked at him, it was almost enough to freeze him in place like Medusa’s stare. Her eyes were luminous, seeming to catch all the scant light and reflect it back like starlight in the foggy night. She cocked an eyebrow at him when he came to stand beside her, silently but icily inquiring as to his purpose.

Most ladies would have looked away from him after so long a glance, or have broken the silence with a giggle or a pleasantry. This woman allowed the silence to spark in the air around them while her eyes appraised him mercilessly. She was terrifyingly beautiful, and her bold countenance beguiled him into smiling.

“I, too, find the sights more pleasing when admired in darkness,” Jacques said, feeling foolish for allowing himself to lose this small battle of brinksmanship.

“The solitude of darkness is what I find most pleasing. The solitude you’re intruding upon, I might add,” she answered. “I cannot abide crowds and mulling herds of humanity.”

“London seems a poor fit for you,” Jaques returned.

“I’m only visiting.” She smirked. “Admiring the sights, as you said.”

“As a visitor, you might not be aware of the dangers,” Jacques said more seriously than he preferred when speaking to an alluring woman. “Have you not heard of Jack the Ripper?”

She made to roll her eyes, but stopped herself and sighed instead, “I hope you’re not going to tell me that a lady shouldn’t be out alone at night. It’s very tiresome advice.”

“Of course not,” he lied. He was absolutely going to offer that exact advice. Instead, he added, “I am never tiresome.”

“Oh dear, you’re not waiting for me to agree?” She smirked again. Jacques liked that smirk, even if it was at his expense.

“No concern for the Ripper, and no concern for your reputation, being out at night without a chaperone. A lady should be more cautious.” Jacques grinned back at her. “Your wit may be rapier, but it won’t save you against such dangers.”

“Between my rapier wit and my derringer, I feel quite safe.” She patted her coat pocket. “My reputation in London doesn’t concern me.”

“Ah, yes, you’re only visiting.” Jacques took a step closer to her. Her scent curled into his nose, something sultry and sweet like roses and cinnamon. “How long is your visit?”

“Perhaps I should be flattered by your attention.” She sounded entirely un-flattered. “But I am intentionally alone. I am not desirous of company. Hence the hour and my relaxed state of dress.”

“If not this evening, perhaps you would grace me with the pleasure of your company another time.” Jacques flashed his handsomest smile. “Only this evening, I was thinking how grand a night at the Wild West Show will be.” He would cancel his rendezvous with the ballerinas in a heartbeat in favor of her. He inclined his head and said simply, “Join me.”

A smile bloomed on her lips, then she laughed lightly. “I already have an invitation, I’m afraid.”

“Decline whatever other invitation you have and accept mine,” he pressed. “You will not be disappointed. You have my word.”

“Mine is an invitation I cannot decline.” She smiled wider. “Besides, no seat is closer to the action than mine.”

“If the Wild West Show doesn’t strike your fancy, I can show you the sights,” Jacques offered. “Dr. Ren’s Cabinet of Curiosities is all the rage. Have you ever seen a satyr skeleton or a book bound in human skin?”

“A book bound in human skin? You know the way to a girl’s heart,” she laughed. “But my Saturday engagement must stand, I’m afraid.”

“Then permit me to walk you to your lodgings,” he countered. “Where are you staying during your visit?”

“I’ll permit you to say good evening right here.” Her demeanor was pleasant now, but she pointedly ignored his question on where he might find her again.

“May I at least know the name of the lady who is so immune to my charms?” Jacques asked as he took off his tophat and shook a persistence cowlick back from his face.

“Georgette,” she answered, offering her hand.

“Jacques Le Gris.” He introduced himself with a flourished bow, then kissed the back of her hand.

“Good evening, Jacques Le Gris.” She gave him one last smile, turned, and walked away.

Jacques followed her with his eyes as she departed. The sway of her hips was almost hypnotizing. He waited for her to look back, but she didn’t. Their small exchange replayed in his mind, her bold and beautiful face already imprinted on his memory. A rare and radiant maiden, indeed. He waited until she turned down a street and then he followed her anyway, gliding almost soundlessly over the cobblestones. He was as at ease in the darkness as any creature of the night, and he knew how to use the foggy gloom to cloak his movements. He would make sure she was safe during her foolishly imperious stroll. And he would know where to find her again.

*******************************************************************************************

Trailing the woman at a discreet distance, Jacques could savor her scent as strong and lovely on the air as the smell of a flower shop with fresh blooms. It required a heroic effort of will to restrain himself from chasing her down and snatching her up in his arms. He attempted to keep the thoughts and images of what he wanted to do next out of his mind, but that was a hopeless endeavor. He watched her until she safely entered the Grand Royale Hotel, and contemplated his next move. It was within his ability to compel her to come to her window and see him again in whatever light he wished, even to do after she undressed for the night.

But such parlor tricks would cheapen the hunt.

Big Ben had not yet tolled midnight. The night was young and Jacques was on fire, his senses alighted by the woman and desire burning through him in a rage. Frustrated and ravenous was no way to spend a perfectly dreary evening. He gave the cobblestones a decisive tap with his cane and walked toward a less upscale part of the city. His destination was far enough to warrant a carriage, but Jacques enjoyed a brisk stroll and it would be unwise to create any witnesses who knew of his haunt. A man as illustrious as Jacques had airs to maintain. Not that Pierre ever bothered with discretion. Jacques grinned and shook his head at the thought. How that philandering bastard hadn’t outed them both yet was a miracle.

Heading West, Jacques met few people and no other women. A few men returning late from their jobs passed him, their faces streaked with coal and grime. One rough-looking man in a bowler hat loitered in a doorway, holding the leash of a Bull Terrier. The man watched Jacques, appraising him, no doubt calculating his odds of successfully mugging the much larger man. Jacques hoped the man would try, it would be a fine bit of sport for the evening. The terrier knew better, whimpering and hiding its white face against the man’s leg. Animals always sensed Jacques’s nature more quickly than men. He again cursed the Ripper for bringing increased scrutiny to the streets and the bobbies out in force. This was the sort of hooligan who wouldn’t be missed, easy prey for Jacques to remove from the streets and perform a public service at the same time.

His destination was near Holborn Hill. Jacques paused to admire the shop’s sign, a fine piece of reverse glass depicting a green serpentine dragon with long whiskers and a fanned tail coiled intricately through gold letters that spelled Snap Dragon. The dragon’s clawed hands clutched the D and its head reared above the letter, snarling at incoming patrons. The Snap Dragon was an apothecary that stocked the rarest compounds and elixirs to be found in England. Rumor had it that Prince Albert purchased tonics there known to cure the pox and other maladies.

Now nearing midnight, the apothecary was closed when Jacques strode past its door. He turned down the narrow alley that separated the apothecary from the butcher next door, as black as a crevasse in the foggy darkness. He descended a set of stairs and stopped in front of a recessed iron door that appeared neglected and disused. Jacques rapped his knuckles on the iron in a peculiar rhythm and waited. The door swung in on well-oiled hinges without a squeak, admitting Jacques into the real business of the Snap Dragon. The apothecary, lucrative though it was, was a front for an opium den – a far better business than herbal remedies. Prince Albert also frequented this side of the business, and heartily enjoyed the expensive courtesans who could be enticed to entertain the delirious patrons for a fee.

Gossamer green haze wafted through the darkened parlor. It was a trick of the lighting, achieved with candles hidden inside green silk lanterns, sneakily engineered to give the ever-present smoke an ethereal quality. The effect was eerie, especially when paired with the dozens of barely conscious men reclining on futons and pillows, crooning, laughing, coughing, draped in smoky green gloaming. Most of the movements inside the den were languid and hazy, save for the sober attendants and one topless courtesan who bounced eagerly on the lap of a nearly unconscious man, determined to earn her fee whether or not the man was aware when he crossed the finish line. The first few breaths inside the den were always terrible for Jacques, as his heightened senses acclimated to the pungent scents of opium, unwashed men, and overused women.

A tall, sinewy woman wearing a brocade dress embroidered with dragons and flowers materialized out of the haze and fixed her black eyes on Jaques. Her smile was razor sharp when she greeted him. Jacques had known her a very long time, since she had been a dancer in Bohemia, long before her latest trade helping men chase the dragon. She had been beautiful then, long ago, in her former life. Pierre had been fond of her all those years ago, and she was eternally indebted to him for the gift he had bestowed upon her. Now, she was seen by most as exotic, with her abyssal black eyes, gaunt features, and straight jet hair that contrasted starkly with a completion that was almost translucent in its paleness. She looked to Jacques a bit like a dehydrated corpse. It was enough to unnerve a brave man when she smiled her shark’s smile at Jacques and told him to make himself at home.

Jacques threaded his way through the parlor to a private room hidden away in the back. Before entering, he could hear the familiar laughter of his oldest friend and the giggles of several women. The door was closed, but Jacques didn’t bother knocking. It had been many years since Pierre had managed to shock him.

Tonight was no different. Pierre D’Alencon bolted up from the large futon in the center of the room, ready to chastise the intruder. His blonde hair was disheveled, his pale chest flushed, but he smiled when he recognized Jacques. Wearing only an open kimono-style robe that did nothing to conceal his naked body, nor the tumescent evidence of his antics with the eight naked women flitting around him. He didn’t bother to cover himself when he gestured magnanimously and said, “Come in! Take your pants off!”

“Are any of them still fresh?” Jacques asked as he shrugged out of his overcoat and tossed it over the back of an obliging chair. His cane and tophat followed.

“Yes, you’re in luck. I’ve only just begun to defile them,” Pierre answered and the women laughed. “Where in the blazes have you been? I expected you hours ago. Now, we’ve only a few hours left before dawn approaches in all its intrusive goddamn glory.”

“I met a rather striking woman enroute.” Jacques smiled, picturing her.

“Oh, good. Is she here?” Pierre made to look around Jacques’s body toward the door.

“Certainly not!” Jacques laughed. “I barely got her name. She was most –"

“Did you hear what I said?” Pierre cut him off. “You’re burning darkness yammering on about some strange woman who wouldn’t give you the time of night. I won’t allow it! Get in the proper spirit of the evening or take your doldrums elsewhere.”

Two of the four women approached Jacques, sashaying their hips. They stroked his chest and began untying his ascot then unbuttoning his vest and shirt. Jacques continued talking to Pierre, unbothered by the women caressing his bare chest or Pierre maneuvering his selection of women back toward the futon. “You haven’t seen this one, my friend. Beautiful and strong. The kind of woman who could use some evil inside her.”

“Talking of only one woman while you’re in the company of several fine others is blasphemy,” Pierre said as he fell upon a pair of women on the futon, his kimono fluttering above his comically pasty ass.

Jacques persisted in telling Pierre about the mystery woman, paying the women in his present company little mind until the most ambitious of the two began shoving his trousers down his muscled thighs. When she traced her nails along his rapidly swelling cock, he decided he could continue this conversation later. He led the women toward a larger couch set against the far wall and fell back into the center of the push cushions. Another woman sat at the end of the couch, draped over the armrest, pale and delirious. Blood was smeared across her neck from her jaw to her collarbone, still oozing slowly from a pair of twin puncture wounds.

“You’ve been careless with that one,” Jacques said to Pierre as he gripped the hips of the nearest woman and assisted her in settling over his lap. He thrust up into the woman and added, “Best show some restraint with the others.”

“She’ll be as good as new after a good night’s rest and a good meal,” Peirre replied nonchalantly as several women crawled over him. “I’ll pay her extra. There are no surprises when they service us here.” He looked at one of the women and asked, “Are there, dearie?”

In response, she held her wrist up to Pierre’s lips, inviting him to drink from her.

Jacques found himself distracted from the task at hand. Despite being buried to the hilt in the woman writing in his lap and with another pawing at him from beside, his mind was still filled with thoughts of the woman he had met earlier, his nose still filled with her extraordinarily alluring bouquet. A most unnatural feeling came over him, one he hadn’t felt in ages. He felt a pang of guilt now, which was wholly unwarranted since he was beholden to no one. Certainly not to a woman who didn’t even want him to walk her home like a gentleman and who had given him a rather decisive brush off. In defiance, he thrust up harder into the woman straddling his lap. But if there was any doubt in his mind before that he wouldn’t seek out the beautiful stranger, he was now filled with resolve to find her again.

Trailing his hand up the woman’s back, he gripped the nape of her neck and drew her closer. His canines had descended in razor points, as eager to sink into warm flesh as the rest of his body. He didn’t bother to kiss the woman’s skin or entice her before he bit into her neck. He didn’t have to give, Pierre had paid her well for them to dispassionately take. It was always difficult to restrain himself when the first rush of blood coated his tongue. The primal part of him wanted to rip into her soft flesh like a wild beast; to feel muscle and sinew tear in his mouth; to feel hot blood coat his lips and drench him down to his chest. But he restrained himself, sipping the woman with gentlemanly care and only taking enough to sate himself for a while.

Restraint was the most important skill any vampire who wanted longevity must learn. Many vampires would say that either anonymity or community were of paramount importance. Vampires who prospered outside of cloistered covens or seclusion were the rarest of all their species. None had prospered better nor more infamously than Jacques and Pierre for nearly five-hundred-fifty years. Jacques attributed this to restraint more than anything else, not being glutinous or wanton when it came to prey and hunting. It was one of the few areas in life he exercised restraint at all, and it had taken him more than a century to master.

If one asked Pierre the key to survival, his answer was simple. Joie de vivre! If a man isn’t enjoying life, every moment can be agony. Immortality would be a terrible curse for the poor bastard who doesn’t live life to the fullest. Pierre had lived by this creed for centuries, flaunting his lifestyle to the more conversative of their species. He even made it a personal game of sorts to seduce the hunters who would find them on occasion. Most could be seduced by money or pleasure, and Pierre was generous with both. Jacques had a hotter temper and less patience. He enjoyed tearing apart anyone who threatened him or the small handful of people for whom he had genuine affection.

The grunts and whimpers coming from the futon creaking beneath Pierre and three women indicated that he was indeed living life to fullest at present. Jacques allowed himself to finish quickly, not bothering to hold himself back, and sipped from the woman as much as he dared. The woman’s body was limp and her head lolled sideways when Jacques lifted her off his lap and maneuvered her onto the couch beside him. She slumped against the semi-conscious woman Pierre had used earlier. Jacques watched her for a moment, satisfying himself that she would recover after a few hours. Turning to look at the unused woman on his other side, Jacques grinned and patted his thigh as an invitation. He was more eager to drink from her than fuck her, but those pleasures were best when paired together. Sinking back deeper into the couch, he gripped the base of his cock, positioning it for the woman as she smiled in delight at his impressive size then kicked her leg over his lap.

Vampires needed only seconds to recover between bouts. Jacques could do this all night, until all the women were spent or he became bored with them. The latter had been an increasing problem over the last century. His body was willing, but his interest was waning. Whereas Pierre never grew bored so long as he kept a variety of women parading through his sheets, Jacques had long ago grown weary of much of humanity. The fleeting, meaningless interactions he had with them bored him and left him deeply unsatisfied. Sometimes, he still found humor, even joy, in humanity. Other times, he felt as though they were a plague crawling over the earth like maggots on a carcass. Vampires were even worse, a macabre and morose lot whose tastes tended toward one perversion or another. That was a point on which Jacques and Pierre had always agreed, hedonism is far superior to perversion, and also just simpler.

After finishing with the second woman and using a third, Jacques reclined in a chair as he ruminated on these matters that were never far from his thoughts. He hadn’t troubled himself to redress fully and sat in his trousers and unbuttoned shirt. He swirled a glass of smoky green absinthe, his gaze fixed pensively at an unremarkable patch of floral wallpaper, unbothered by the raucous sounds of Pierre and the last pair of conscious women.

It wasn’t the Green Fairy that danced in his mind, but visions of the mysterious woman and her addictive scent. That she was beautiful didn’t hurt matters at all, but that fact alone would have held little appeal to him beyond wanting to possess her for a few evenings. When a man had centuries to hunt, even beauty grew common. Rarer than beauty was wit, and rarer still was nerve. Jacques had assessed her as having all three attributes. It may have been a hopeful guess, but he was rarely wrong in assessing women. He considered himself something between a connoisseur and a sommelier of fine ladies, and hers was a vintage like nothing he had tasted in ages.

First he had to find her again, and he would. He thought through what he would do to ensnare her, captivate her the way she had so easily captivated him. Jacques didn’t want to get her by crook or by hook. He had no qualms about employing less than savory techniques to lure a woman into his bed for an evening, but he had always maintained a personal ethic when it came to the few substantial women who had piqued his interest more deeply over the many long years of his life. He wanted her, craved her even, but he wanted to win her fairly and by his own merit.

Shortly before dawn, Pierre finally finished his escapades. He let his last woman flop onto the futon and donned his kimono, then joined Jacques in an adjoining chair. Jacques offered to pour him a drink from the decanter filled with green.

“Vile drink, absinthe,” Pierre declined and waved his hand toward one of the naked women strewn across the room like casualties on a battlefield. “How you can chase a perfectly fine vintage with that noxious green ooze is beyond me.” Instead, he lifted an opium pipe to his lips and inhaled deeply. He looked at Jacques fixedly and said, “Oh God, you’ve got that look. Don’t tell me you’re pining after that woman you saw tonight. It’s very tedious of you.”

“Pining?” Jacques frowned. Whatever he was doing, he certainly was not pining.

“Yes, yes. Pining.” Pierre glared and took another puff. “I’ve had to endure your pining over the occasional woman during the last few hundred years. It never ends well. Either the pining leads to sulking when you frighten them away or, far worse, it leads to that terrible sentiment I wish you’d purge from your emotional arsenal.”

“Which terrible sentiment is that?” Jacques smirked over the rim of his glass as he took a drink.

“I try not to sully my tongue with four-letter words,” Pierre said, acting offended.

“I’ve barely spoken to the lady,” Jacques replied dismissively. “I��m merely intrigued by her.”

“Ah, yes, I remember the last time you were intrigued by some strumpet.” Pierre grimaced at the horrible memory. “Dark times. You were the worst possible company during your infatuation. Then when she rejected you – as they all will when you want a taste of them – you had the morbes for years! You were utterly intolerable. If I were a lesser friend, I would have left you to wallow in your misery alone.”

“You hold a grudge as tenaciously as a scorned woman! That was over a century ago,” Jacques scoffed. “I should have known better with her anyway. All the ladies in Versailles laced their corsets so tight for King Louie, it deprived their brains of oxygen. Hardly her fault she was so fickle.”

“And the one before that?” Pierre raised his eyebrows. “She was wickeder than you and, tragically, far crazier to boot.”

“Ah, the Countess,” Jacques said fondly. “She was a marvel.”

“Marvelously batshit crazy. Batshit Bathory.” Pierre shook his head. “Imagine how deranged a mind must be to have a genuine vampire in the palm of her hand, yet believe the true path to immortality was bathing in the blood of servant girls. You’re better off without that raving harlot.”

“It’s been far too long since I’ve indulged in a nice blood bath.” Jacques smiled at the memory.

“Now that can be arranged!” Pierre said excitedly. “We’ll take in that Wild West Show, which cannot be anything but a wondrous spectacle. Then we’ll fuck some women, and soak in blood until your heart’s content. That should take your mind off this absurd infatuation with whatever wayward tart happened to wander in front of you.”

“You assume I want to take my mind off of her?” Jacques cocked an eyebrow and took another drink.

“Can you not think of me for once instead of pursuing this selfish course that invariably leads to misery?” Pierre sighed theatrically. “However it ends for you, it will be dark times for me, my friend.”

“You’re worse than a jealous damned wife,” Jacques laughed.

“Yes, insufferable, aren’t I?” Pierre agreed. “Best steer clear of the real thing.”

“The real thing would have assets that compensate for the times she’s insufferable.” Jacques smirked lewdly.

Pierre sighed exasperatedly. He looked at the window and visibly started when he saw the red drapes glowing pink around their edges with the coming dawn. “We’d best continue this debate in my carriage. Unless you’d prefer to stay here throughout the day. Actually, let’s do! I’ll buy us more women.”

“Put your goddamn pants on and get a move on,” Jacques laughed. “I’d brave a stroll at high noon before I find myself locked in an opium den with you all day.”

*******************************************************************************************

It had been Jacques’s nature as a man before he became a vampire that he slept little and found the darkness rousing instead of calming, so his vampiric nature paired well with that natural proclivity. Sleep wasn’t needed for its restorative benefits and Jacques couldn’t remember what actual sleep felt like. He spent the brightest hours of the day languishing like a cat, indulgently laying around as he pleased and lightly napping occasionally. Since his encounter with the captivating woman in the Square, he hadn’t been able to settle his mind or have a reprieve from his thoughts of her.

It was not unusual for Jacques to spend the nighttime hours restless and alert. It was, however, highly unusual for him to spend his nights alone. He was never in want of women to fill his bed, but now a woman of no consequence sounded as appealing as a mouthful of ash when he was salivating over filet mignon.

The halls of his manor were dark and cold, feeling almost unwelcoming as he roamed them restlessly in his dressing gown. He paused by a tall arched window in his library that overlooked a manicured garden. The moon was a perfect cat’s eye crescent, bright as firelight, beckoning him out under its glow. Without a plan or any intention beyond following his feet, Jacques dressed quickly in trousers, a loose white shirt with no vest or cravat, and an overcoat.

Minutes later, Jacques sat in the back of his carriage as the cadence of the trotting hooves of his team of black horses carried him away from his home. Jacques’s driver was always at his beck and call, no matter the hour – a creature who was once a man horribly disfigured by leprosy before Pierre benevolently turned him into a familiar for them both to share. Carroughes never had much of a brain in life and was much happier now in his eternal existence as chattel.

Something between nostalgia and hope directed Jacques back to Trafalgar Square. He didn’t realize he had leaned forward in his seat, nearly pressing his large nose to the window as he looked out to the place he had met her. The carriage hit a thick cobblestone, making Jacques bump his nose on the glass. Falling back in his seat, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, finding nothing there but the usual crooked bump, and cursed himself for being so foolish. Of course she wasn’t there again. It had to be nearly two in the morning. No one with any sense was out prowling the streets at this hour. She was almost certainly in bed asleep. He immediately shut his thoughts down when they began to careen into the terrible territory of imagining that she wasn’t alone in her bed.

Looking at the façade of her hotel would do nothing to satisfy his curiosity nor sate his desire, but he grumbled to his driver to take him there anyway.

Every window above the first floor in the stone face of the Grand Royale Hotel was black, looking down on Jacques like merciless eyes. On one of the higher floors, one lone window flickered dimly, no doubt some restless guest reading by the light of a single candle. Jacques eyed it curiously out of the window of his carriage but paid it no mind. His thoughts were occupied with an image of a beautiful woman with luminous eyes and a teasing smile. Picturing her in his mind, he barely noticed the light moving and growing slightly brighter as the person inside picked up the candlestick and moved toward the window.

Jacques felt a rush of hope that made him feel foolish. Like a fool, he stepped out of his carriage to get a better view of the high window. A cold breeze fluttered his hair around his shoulders and his coat around his knees as he stood alone on the street, craning his neck upward. He felt even more foolish holding his breath as he watched the light move closer to the window. But all his foolishness was burned away when the window opened and the beautiful woman from his thoughts leaned out over the railing. It had been a long time since Jacques had willingly watched a sunrise, but he couldn’t remember one ever warming him the way her smile did now when she looked down at him. Gilded by moonlight, her hair free and dancing on the breeze, she was the picture of an ethereal specter haunting him.

Although he didn’t know what had summoned her to the window at such an hour, her smile told Jacques she recognized him. Forgetting any sly reserve, he waved brashly at her and took several steps away from his carriage until he stood in the center of the empty street.

“’Tis the West, and Georgette is the moon!” Jacques called to her teasingly, uncaring if he woke the entire hotel. “Descend, fair moon, and let the stars envy you while you dance in my arms.”

“I never thought I’d see a wolf howling up at the moon in London,” she teased back. She didn’t need to raise her voice for Jacques to hear her clear as a bell, just as he could clearly see that she wore only a diaphanous gown under a velvet robe. His senses were as keen as the other creatures of the night.

Jacques could get to her easily and within minutes. Hell, he could scale the outer hotel wall if he wanted. But he wouldn’t risk frightening her. It was too soon to reveal the monster to the maiden. He could summon her down to him using his vampiric powers of persuasion, but he wanted her to come to him willingly.

“What will entice you down from your tower?” Jacques placed his hand over his heart in a gesture of sincerity. “I can tell you many wondrous reasons, but they are better shown.”

“Perhaps you’re more devil than wolf, trying to tempt me into risqué scenarios with your silver tongue.” She leaned her forearms on the rail, gazing down at him with moonlight glinting in her eyes.

“Rest assured, howling wolf and silver-tongued devil are both equally within my repertoire.” Jacques grinned devilishly. “Is it teeth or horns that you prefer, ma belle?”

She laughed heartily, a melodious sound to Jacques’s ears. She retrieved a handkerchief from the pocket of her robe. Holding it out over the railing, she let it catch in the breeze before releasing it. As the handkerchief danced lazily through the air on its slow ballet to the ground, she said, “Find me again on Sunday and perhaps I will listen to more of your howling. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll even have a dance with the devil underneath the crescent moonlight.”

Before Jacques could respond, she flipped her hair and ducked back inside her room, closing her window and leaving her balcony as empty and bleak as all the others. Still, Jacques grinned like a dumbstruck fool as he watched the handkerchief float slowly down to him like an autumn leaf. Either her aim or fate directed the little cotton square true, because it drifted right down to Jacques where he stood in the street. He plucked it from the air above him before it settled neatly on his chest.

Bringing the delicate handkerchief to his nose, Jacques inhaled deeply. The woman’s alluring scent flooded his bloodstream faster than any dragon he had ever chased. From her scent alone, he could picture every nuance of her as clearly as if she stood in front of him, feel every luscious inch of her body as though she were pressed against him. He closed his eyes to better savor her perfume and groaned lewdly on the exhale. He grinned as he tucked the handkerchief away safely inside his pocket.

She was an affliction and Jacques was infected with her. Tonight, he knew he was powerless against succumbing.

*******************************************************************************************

Saturday afternoon was blissfully overcast and foggy, shielding Jacques and Pierre from the sun as they strolled toward the exhibition hall at Earl’s Court to watch The Wild West Show. Each man had a pair of women draped on their arms. A pair of redheaded ballerinas laughed at nothing and smiled up at Jacques. He had always been fond of redheads. Pierre, who liked variety, was accompanied by a very pale brunette and a tan blonde. The women chattered as they walked past a colorful carousel playing cheerful music while its painted horses circled round and round. An army of other spectators crowded the streets as they too made their way toward the show. Tickets were sold out and Earl’s Court seated twenty thousand.

“Peasants. Commoners.” Pierre grimaced as he used his walking stick to shove a small man in pinstriped pants aside. “Commoners everywhere. I miss the good ole days when we didn’t have to mingle with the commoners just to go about our day.”

“Ah, but today we don’t have to worry that every third one of them might have the plague,” Jacques said with a laugh. “I don’t ever remember you complaining about common women.”

“The men are certainly more objectionable.” Pierre brandished his walking stick at a teenage boy who waved a newspaper for purchase too close. “Mustaches and damned bowler hats everywhere you look.” He made a sweeping gesture with his cane. “Look around. It’s a veritable, black, blunt sea of bowler hats.” He purposely knocked off the hat of the nearest man with his walking stick, then smiled falsely at the bald, offended man who had been wearing it. “Terribly sorry. My stick has a mind of its own.”

“Frequent problem for you,” Jacques muttered out of a sideways grin. He paused at a food cart and traded a few coins for a bag of roasted chestnuts.

Several women in nice but plain dresses approached them, waving pamphlets. Suffragettes. Three of them smiled invitingly at Jacques and the remaining two thrust their papers at Pierre’s chest.

“Women voting? What a bizarre idea!” Pierre laughed. Then, just to irk the women and help shoo them away, he added, “This is no way at all to go about getting a husband, dears.”

One of the feistier suffragettes handed Pierre’s brunette a pamphlet and told her scathingly, “Don’t let him seduce you. Marriage will make you nothing but his property.”

Pierre looked at Jacques and scoffed, “They think we want to marry them.”

“If you really want to keep the suffragettes away, just tell them about your brilliant investment ideas,” Jacques suggested wryly. “In only seconds, their eyes will glaze over and they will take flight like a covey of doves.”

“Look down that crooked nose of yours at my investments all you want.” Pierre gestured with his cane like a pointing finger. “But mark my words, the Zeppelin is going to make me a mint. I will accept your apology when you come begging me for money after you lose all yours on that ridiculous motorcar investment.”

As they neared the entrance to the exhibit hall, they passed a gallery of lithograph posters for the Wild West Show, each advertising a different act. Pierre paused to study a poster of Chief Sitting Bull, the legendary Sioux warrior, while the women debated whether the tall King of the Cowboys, Buck Taylor, was more handsome or the bright-eyed trick rider, Fearless George. Jacques was most excited to see Annie Oakley, the pint-size lady sharpshooter heralded as one of the finest shots in the world. Jacques stopped counting performers at twenty. The show was enormous. Even some of the animals in the show were famous enough to have their own posters, from Buffalo Bill’s famous horse, Old Charlie, to wild bison and elk who had been shipped across the sea, and a proclaimed flying black horse called Faust.

Pierre accosted at least another dozen people with his walking stick on the way to their seats. A private balcony booth awaited them, offering both privacy and an excellent view of the center of the ring below. One end of the ring was covered by a tent, like a big top, but its canvas was nondescript and sand-colored, covering about ten square yards of the area. Jacques thought it was odd, but he assumed it was for an act and his attention was quickly diverted elsewhere. They were close to the action, close enough to count the buttons on a man’s coat and clearly see his expression when he stood in the center of the arena. Jacques was very interested in watching the show. Unlike an opera he knew by heart or a play he had seen too many times to count, everything in the Wild West Show was new to him. It had been on his mind the last few decades to visit America – to see for himself all the cowboys and mountain men and wild horses that were ripe fodder for the Penny Dreadfuls – but he had yet to make the journey. He figured that tonight would serve to either turn him off the idea of gunslingers and rough riders, or whet his palette and leave him wanting more.

Because Pierre knew this, he refrained from sampling his women as he usually did for his own private preshow. Instead, they discussed the snippets of American West news that made it to them across the sea while Jacques largely ignored the ballerinas pawing at him on either side.

A young, pimply-faced usher came to their booth to see if they wanted any food or drink before the show. Jacques slipped the kid a whole pound, making the youth’s eyes wide and his smile dopey. With an air of secrecy and importance, Jacques told him, “These fine ladies’ husbands might not look kindly on our taking in an innocent show. I can trust you to tell us if you see any suspicious men nosing around near our booth or inquiring about us?”

“Of course, sir,” the usher promised eagerly and bowed awkwardly. “I’ll keep a sharp watch out.”

Jacques thanked him and Pierre spoke when the usher was gone, “Can’t be too careful these days. Is it just me, or are there more and more hunters after us every year?”

“They multiply like rats in a sewer,” Jacques agreed. “I blame all the free time this younger generation has. They don’t have to toil in the fields like they used to, so how do they occupy their time? Hunting vampires down like trophy stags.”

“Between bowler hats, women campaigning to have the vote, and vampire hunters, society is really going to Hell in a handbasket.” Pierre shook his head.

“Well, we do our part to keep the hunters’ numbers down.” Jacques grinned wickedly and tipped his glass toward Pierre.

“And we have such great fun doing so!” Pierre cheered him back just as an announcer’s voice boomed over a loudspeaker that the show was about to begin.

The crowd cheered when Buffalo Bill himself rode into the ring to greet the many Londoners who had come to see his show. The man was dressed as flamboyantly as an American wildman could be, wearing buckskins with draping fringe and thigh-high boots, and his horse wore a bridle and breast collar set with shining silver conchos. His brown horse, Old Charlie, was as famous a character as any of the other performers and rumored to have the intelligence of a man. Buffalo Bill rode into the center of the ring, jumped off Old Charlie, greeted the crowd and gave them a knightly bow. Remounting, he raced Old Charlie around the ring at a dead run, save for the closed off corner, to give the opening signal for the show to begin. As the horse circled round the ring, they were joined by other performers, all following Old Charlie until they were tantamount to a stampede. The Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe came out first after Buffalo Bill, a kaleidoscope of color in their feathered headdresses riding painted war horses and shouting whoops and war cries. Vaqueros from Mexico wearing sombreros and huge-roweled spurs followed, then the cowboys, all firing their six-shooters into the air. The cowboy band played the “Star Spangled Banner” as loudly as possible, trying to outdo the shouts and gunshots.

The opening was a wild scene to the Londoners, riling spectators to stand up in their seats and shout encouragement to the performers. The English had their own style of performance horsemanship, focused on control and refined power. Many had never seen this brand of American horsemanship that seemed to focus on wild abandon and unpredictability as they raced and bucked and kicked around the ring.

Jacques watched raptly, enjoying the wild spectacle. He cheered along with the rest of the crowd when Annie Oakley made her entrance and blew apart several dozen glass balls and clay pigeons thrown through the air by cowboys who rode around the ring at a gallop. She then shot playing cards flung in the air and even hit the bullseye while holding a rifle backwards over her shoulder, using a handheld mirror to aim and fire behind her. For her finale, she called her husband into the ring and shot a cigarette from between his lips.

“See the sort of things a husband must endure at the cruel hands of his wife?” Pierre said to Jacques. “Think better of it, my friend.”

“Yet the poor bastard keeps coming back for more,” Jacques said as he clapped for Annie. “Tells you the reward is greater than the punishment, doesn’t it?”

“My methods ensure a man is only on the rewarding end of women and never the punishing,” Pierre argued, stroking the thigh of his blonde. “I’m certain I can find you plenty of amiable distractions until you’re over this infatuation with your mystery woman.”

At Pierre’s suggestion, one ballerina began caressing Jacques’s thigh and the other trailed her nails down inside his collar. Jacques plucked their hands off him, frowning as he tried to watch the next act. “Good things come to those who wait, ladies.”

“Good God,” Pierre said mostly to himself. “It’s worse than I feared.” He elbowed Jacques in the ribs as a covered wagon was pulled into the ring by a team of eight horses, a dozen cowboys with lever action rifles covered it like spines on a hedgehog. “Where do we find this mystery woman of yours? If you must, I’ll help you fuck the taste of her out of your mouth and then we can fuck other women to get over her. Deal?”

“No.” Jacques grinned and added. “And if I knew where to find her, she’d be here with me now.”

Hot on the trail of the covered wagon was a troop of twenty bandits, all firing live rounds into the canvas wagon cover and near the horses’ hooves. The wagon driver whipped the team of horses into a run, making figure eights inside the ring as the bandits choused them. Both sides fired their rifles and pistols until the air was a haze of dust and gunpowder that stung the eyes and smelled of sulfur and horse sweat.

“Spectacular!” Pierre exclaimed, looking at Jacques.

“Makes me miss the days when I was the one riding out on the tournament field, lance in hand,” Jacques reminisced.

“I always envied the way you handled your lance,” Pierre remarked and pinched the brunette’s thigh to make her squeal.

When the covered wagon had triumphed over the bandits and the dust had settled, the announcer introduced the next performer. “Now that your blood is pumpin,’ raise the roof for our trick rider and one of the Wild West Show’s top all ‘round hands when it comes to ridin’ anything with four legs! Fearless George and Faust!”

An enormous jet-black horse shot into the ring at a dead run, mane and tail blowing out behind him like pennants. The horse was so large as to make the rider look tiny. Jacques wondered how the rider kept the cowboy hat on his head while riding at such a pace. The rider waved to the crowd and with apparent ease, hopped up to stand on the animal’s back as the horse continued to run. The rider was dressed in buckskin pants and a blue shirt, wearing a hat and gunbelt. Fearless George waved to those in front then turned and waved behind him, all while standing on Faust’s back as the horse ran. Still facing the horse’s tail, George dropped back into the saddle, riding backwards for another half turn around the ring. As easily as adjusting his seat on a bench, George twisted his body so he sat sideways in the saddle with his legs crossed demurely to wave to another side of the crowd. He flipped his legs over Faust’s rump again to face the opposite, cross his other leg and wave to the other side of the ring.

Faust still ran at a full gallop when Fearless George dropped from the saddle casually but kept hold of the metal pole that was fixed in the pommel in place of a saddle horn. George took a few bounding strides beside the horse, his feet barely touching the ground as he was carried along by Faust. Using the pole and Faust’s momentum, he bounded back up into the saddle with ease. Faust had now made several passes around the large ring, his black coat glossy with sweat. George pulled him into a sliding stop that threw clumps of dirt from the ring twenty feet out in front of his hooves and dug trenches behind as he skidded to a stop. Faust reared high, almost vertically, and pawed the air with his hooves. George waved to the crowd, but unlike Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, he did not remove his hat in a more formal greeting.

While this was happening, a few crewmen pulled a large wooden object into the center of the ring. It looked vaguely like a trebuchet, but Jacques recognized it as a quintain that was used in training for jousting. The large contraption was fitted with a shield painted with a bullseye on one end of a long swinging arm, the other side held a large heavy bag like a punching bag. To practice timing in the joust, a knight would have to strike the center of the shield, causing the arms to spin and the heavy bag to swing around towards the knight’s head from behind. If the knight didn’t have correct timing, the heavy bag would knock them off their horse. The crewman positioned other smaller shields around the ring, propped up on tall wooden posts like road signs.

The announcer told the crowd, “We have a new trick for you as a nod to the culture of our country and to yours.”

A very tall black-haired cowboy in a red shirt entered the ring holding a lance high. Fearless George spun Faust to face the cowboy and kicked him into a gallop. The cowboy threw the lance to George when he was close and George plucked it out of the air easily. Jacques suspected the lance was made of a light metal and was probably hollow. It would have been quite a feat for him to catch a solid wood lance midair with one hand and make it look simple. Fearless George did not have the build of a strong man and sat lightly on Faust while spinning the horse around again and positioning the lance.

The crowd cheered when George charged at the quintain, lance aimed across Faust’s neck. Even Jacques watched avidly, leaning forward in his seat with excitement. It had been ages since he’d seen anyone wield a lance properly. Faust arched his neck and picked his hooves high as he charged the target, looking every bit the destrier. George held the lance with a steady aim with the correct balance of firmness in the shoulder and give in the torso. He struck the target dead center, exploding the wooden shield and causing the quintain to swing around fast with the heavy bag. George dropped the lance and in the same fluid movement, flipped around in the saddle like he had done previously as he drew a pistol from its holster. Before the heavy bag could reach him, he fired a shot into it, bursting the bag also in a geyser of sand. The crowd hollered and Jacques laughed at the mix of weaponry, as George flipped back around in the saddle to face forward.

George put Faust’s reins in his teeth and filled his left hand with his other pistol. With a gun in each hand, he charged around the ring firing at the other shield targets that had been set out by the crewmen. George weaved Faust between the targets, firing left and right and filling the air with gunpowder and wooden splinters. It was a relatively simple feat of marksmanship for a competent shot, but the horsemanship was exceptional for Faust to comply with such a ruckus.

Pierre squinted his eyes to focus better when George passed near them during a turn around the ring and prodded Jacques again with his elbow, “Would you look at the ass on George? It’s enough to make a man forget he has an eager woman on each arm.”

Jacques laughed, but couldn’t help but stare. He didn’t share Pierre’s tastes in this regard, but he had to admit he had never seen an ass that enticing on a man before.

When George’s guns were empty and the targets obliterated, he guided Faust prancing back toward the center of the ring. Faust bowed deeply, going down on one knee and touching his nose to the ground. Fearless George gestured graciously, but again didn’t remove his hat. Faust stood back up from his bow and nodded his head at the crowd, seeming to approve of the deafening applause and shouts that filled the stadium. With a final high rear, George sent Faust prancing away out of the ring, swishing his tail haughtily.

“Now, we have a real treat for all you Brits!” the announcer boomed through the loudspeaker. “Following our fearless knight is our own king. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Make some noise for Buck Taylor, King of the Cowboys!”

The crowd cheered and hollered, boisterously enough to make Jacques’s ears ring. Pierre, too, winced from the sound. He leaned toward Jacques and screamed into his ear to make his joke heard, “What do you wager the American cowboy king has an even bigger gun than the rest of them?”

But instead of a gun, the King of the Cowboys burst into the ring on a grulla paint horse fuming in a full-blown, violent, buck. The horse stormed ahead, kicking and bucking and rearing, snorting steam like a dragon, black mane and tail whipping through the air. The man riding him was very tall with a thick mustache and long black hair that matched his horse’s mane. Both horse and rider had piercing blue eyes. His red shirt and red and white spotted chaps made from Axis deer hide clashed with the black, grey, and white of the horse and the dull dust in the ring. The man sat the horse easily, riding each buck and twist as though his horse was taking him for a leisurely trot in the pasture. He kept his right hand held high, not touching the saddle horn as he waved to the crowd. The horse squealed and bucked, twisting high into the air and flashing his white belly up to the sky. The cowboy hooted cheerily and spurred the horse when he landed, sending him into another angry fit of bucking and carousing. Horse and rider were fused together as wholly as a centaur, and nothing the horse tried no matter how frantic or vicious could unseat the man.

Pierre elbowed Jacques and smirked, “Look at this dandy! Long hair, garish attire, taking up entirely too much space and making himself the center of attention. Hardly the way a gentleman should present himself.”

“Good thing I’m never garish,” Jacques quipped as he watched the man. It was a rare man who was Jacques’s equal in stature and build, but this King of the Cowboys looked very close. He was handsome too. Jacques hated him instantly.

Eight seconds didn’t enter into this act. Buck Taylor rode the horse until the animal was too tired to buck anymore, and only had the energy to crowhop around the ring. The bucking had lasted the length of a full act as long as the others. When the horse slowed to a walk, sides heaving and foam dripping from his belly and mouth, the tall cowboy kicked one leg out of his stirrup and over the horse’s neck to easily step off his mount and land on the ground. Without missing a step, he walked toward the center of the ring, taking off his enormous cowboy hat to take a bow.

“I’ve never seen a horse buck so hard,” Pierre remarked. “The Yanks are going full-bore for us.”

“Clearly you don’t remember the time when my horse’s crupper whipped him in the flank,” Jacques scoffed and rubbed the hump in the bridge of his nose. “He bucked so hard, his crinet came lose and broke my nose.”

“Well then, I haven’t seen a horse buck so hard since the Battle of Poitiers,” Pierre laughed.

As the man straightened from his bow, Faust, the black horse from the previous act burst through the entry gate. This time he was riderless and bridleless, seemingly in command of himself as he galloped toward the cowboy. Buck turned to bow again to the other side of the ring and Faust slowed to a prancing trot. Neck arched and legs stepping high, the horse trotted up to Buck from behind. When Buck straightened from his second bow and raised his hat back toward his head, Faust bit the brim of the hat and yanked it out of the cowboy’s hand. The black horse jumped sideways when the man cursed and made a grab for the hat, and sped away in a long, elegant trot around the ring. Buck gave chase for a few steps before waving off the horse in frustrated resignation.

Faust looked back at the man and appeared to feel guilty for stealing his hat. He slowed to a walk, dropped his head in contrition, and ambled back to the man. Buck walked to meet the horse with his long arm outstretched, the large rowels on his spurs jingling. When the horse was almost within Buck’s reach, Faust yanked his head back, holding the hat up in the air like a prize, out of reach of even the tall man. The horse taunted the man, dipping the hat lower then jerking it back when the man made a grab for it.

A whistle sounded from the opposite side of the arena where a new gate had been opened. Faust wheeled around and galloped toward the whistler, hat still clenched in his teeth. The hat-stealing act had been a distraction, no one had paid attention to the woman entering the ring. A woman stood near the newly opened gate, dressed rather lewdly in only a gold bathing suit and leather booties. Her thighs and arms were bare, her lovely figure on display, and her hair loose, earning various gasps of shock and catcalls from the crowd.

At the other end of the ring, several crewmen pulled the canvas tent away from what it had covered during the show. A huge pool of water was revealed, an extra-deep diving pool. Jacques frowned in confusion, wondering at its purpose.

“Well, Folks, it looks like our trick rider has one more trick up her sleeve,” the announcer said. “George…” he let his voice trail away, then boomed louder, “George…ette. Georgette, the High-Flyer! Best ya’ll sittin’ close make sure you don’t get splashed.”

“By God!” Pierre laughed. “It’s a woman!”

“It’s her,” Jacques said quietly, almost to himself.

Pierre looked at him sideways. “Her her? What wretched luck. Well, there’s a legitimate chance she breaks her pretty neck in the next few moments.”

Only then did Jacques notice that the gate opened to a ramp near the pool. The ramp too had been covered with canvas and Jacques had taken it for nothing more than covered stairs to reach the higher seats. Now the canvas covering had been pulled away to reveal a long metal ramp, like a long livestock loading chute. It ran at a steep angle up for sixty-feet and opened to nothing but thin air high above the pool. Jacques had heard about the wildly dangerous American stunt of horse diving, but he never thought he would see it firsthand. Let alone, watch a woman carry his heart over a sixty-foot precipice with her on the back of a flying black horse.

Faust galloped toward Georgette, who looked very small and fragile compared to the enormous thundering animal. The hat dropped from Faust’s mouth and flew over his back to flutter in the dust behind him. Faust looked as if he would run right over Georgette, passing by her with only inches between their bodies and not slowing a stride. Georgette grabbed the long silver horn of the saddle and swung herself up onto the horse’s back with ease. Faust didn’t slow as he barreled into the shoot. It looked barely wide enough to accommodate the horse and woman’s bare legs on either side of him. Hooves drummed like a gatling gun up the metal ramp as Faust lunged up the steep incline. He charged as he reached the end, vaulting out into space like it was nothing more than clearing a low fence.

Jacques shot forward in his seat, all but leaning out over the rail as he watched the horse and woman dive through the air toward the cold, navy water far below. Faust’s mane and Georgett’s hair blew out behind them as they fell, Faust’s tail flowing behind him like a sail. The horse’s form was as fine as any professional diver, his body stretched long like an arrow with his front hooves tucked under his chest and his ears flattened against his neck. Georgette kept her seat on his back, clutching his mane tight. She tucked her head against his neck before they hit, burying her face in his mane.

They hit the water with a great splash, submerging entirely, and Jacques thought that both horse and woman must have broken their necks. While horses were usually fine during such stunts, it wasn’t uncommon for riders to break bones, including their necks, or blind themselves. To Jacques, it seemed like they took an eternity to surface. He sighed with relief when Faust erupted from the water, blowing water from his nose, and swam to the head of the pool where the bottom was ramped to allow the horse to trot out with Georgette still seated on his back. She whipped her head back, dramatically slinging the hair out of her face like a mermaid breaching the waves. She arched her back and waved to the crowd to a great chorus of cheers, shouts, and applause. Jacques was up on his feet, clapping harder than anyone and watching her every movement in that revealing gold swimsuit.

“All of us cowboys and cowgirls hope you have enjoyed our little Wild West Show!” the announcer called. “If you liked it, tell your friends! If you didn’t like it, tell your friends all the same!”

*******************************************************************************************

After her dive, Georgette only took the time to ensure her horse received a good petting and a treat from her hand before she handed him off to a groom and hurried to her dressing room. In those few minutes, she was shivering and her teeth chattering. The cold was biting in London this late in the year, made worse by the humidity, and she felt chilled to her bones. She wouldn’t have performed a dive this late in the season for any regular show, but this was a special occasion.

Thankfully, a tub filled with steaming water awaited her. While the rest of the crew hobnobbed with the Lords and Ladies who wanted to meet the genuine American roughnecks in person, Georgette lounged in the tub. She considered this a score on two fronts. She had a rare moment to relax while also avoiding the obligatory socializing the rest of the crew underwent. Her dressing room was tiny, barely large enough to accommodate the tub and a mirrored vanity. Several bouquets of flowers crowded the vanity with a few overflow bouquets propped in one corner. The steam from the water filled the little room with an opaque haze that smelled of roses and Parisian bath salts. It was Georgette’s most relaxed moment of the day.

The near-scalding water and rosy bubbles were usually enough to relax her muscles and quell her thoughts in a few minutes, but as she lounged in the bath, she felt the odd but unmistakable sensation of being watched. It was absurd inside the little room. There was certainly no place for anyone to hide. She closed her eyes, forcing her mind to more rational pursuits, and breathed deep. Sinking deeper into the water, she glimpsed a figure through her half-lidded eyes. She shot bolt upright in the tub, sloshing water over the side, ready to fight the towering shadow she saw in the corner. But of course, there was nothing there. She saw that now, with her eyes fully open. It was a trick of the haze through her half-closed eyes, perhaps combined with the general strangeness of being so far away from home. Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she relaxed back into the water.

She was interrupted again by a knock on her door, and a voice as smooth and warm as bourbon spoke to her from the other side.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” Jacques crooned, a grin audible on his words. “I wished to congratulate the star of the show, but a rather imperious groom told me that I had to have permission from his owner to give Faust an apple.”

“I’ll relay your adulation.” She smiled.

“I would also very much like to congratulate his rider,” Jacques said through the door.

“Is this how a gentleman approaches a lady?” she replied, glaring at the door. “I was told British men had more decorum.”

“I would be remiss to represent myself as a gentleman,” Jacques said in a huskier tone. “Furthermore, I have seen enough of you to know that you would not be frightened away by a little thing like a lack of decorum.”

“I could forgive your trespass of accosting me in the bath, but I do not look kindly on you attending my show flaunting a woman on each arm.” She settled back in the tub, refusing to look at the door even if he couldn’t see her small act of rejection. “Women I gather you’ve now abandoned to come here and stand insolently outside my door.”

He was silent for a moment and she added, “My spies are everywhere.”

“They are nothing more than aperitifs.” Jacques waved his hand dismissively. “Fleeting company for an evening. Certainly not the sort of women I would pursue across the city, and plead with through a locked door.”

“You’re very open about your actions with them,” she huffed with unveiled disgust.

“I do not wish to embark on a journey with a lie when it holds the promise of something lasting and genuine.” He leaned against the door. Even through the wood, her enticing scent carried to him, heavy on the steam.

“Your words are as fancy as your tailored suit,” she quipped. “I have no doubt you can slip into the role of a Cassanova as easily as you can don a topcoat. One is just as superficial as the other.”

“How would you have me prove otherwise?” Jacques spoke to the door, his prominent nose nearly grazing the wood. “Give me any task, milady. Anything you wish.”

“Were I to give you such a task, it would certainly not be something in which I thought you would excel.” She thought for a moment. “No, it would have to be something at which you are terrible. Something utterly demeaning and embarrassing.”

“Demeaning and embarrassing?” Jacques laughed. “Well, I’ll admit that’s a first. You can’t know what a rarity it is for me to experience something for the first time with anyone.”

“A first for a man like you?” she scoffed. “Oh, I’m sure you’re quite the blushing bride behind closed doors.”

“I could sing for you,” Jacques offered with a grin. “That would demean and embarrass me.”

“It’s obvious you’re very impressed with yourself, and no doubt used to impressing women with ease. I have no interest in any of your tactics you’ve employed on other ladies like so much unsuspecting prey.” She ran a soapy sponge down the side of her neck. “You must do for me something you have never done for any other women.”

“What privilege will that earn me?” he asked in a lower tone.

“The privilege of making me smile.” She smiled to herself. “What else would you possibly expect a lady to promise in return? I wonder at the species of harlot you must be accustomed to.”

“If you’re concerned about setting yourself apart, you already have,” Jacques crooned.

“I’m flattered, but that was not my concern,” she said flatly. “You’ve yet to set yourself apart to me. Aside from your pretty face and your brass, I’m waiting to be impressed.”

“I have a pretty face, do I?” He smirked. “I’ll try my best not to keep you wanting. Give me a proper chance, and I cannot fail to impress you.”

“Admittedly, I’m somewhat impressed you haven’t barged in here,” she laughed. “You seem to go and do as you please with little regard for decorum.”

“Says the woman who rides wild horses wearing nearly nothing. I do indeed go and do as I please. But while I put little stock in decorum, I am not so much a boor as to intrude upon the intimate ablutions of a lady without her permission.” He dropped his voice to his sultriest tone. “Do I have your permission to enter, mon cherie?”

A gruff voice interrupted from behind Jacques, “This man botherin’ you, Georgie?” The tall King of the Cowboys projected his voice loud enough to be easily heard through the door. He was possessive over Georgette in a way that made Jacques think he had a reason to be. It was almost enough to incite him to murder right then and there. Sadly, that would probably not be the best approach to win the woman’s affection.

“You seem rather comfortable entering a lady’s dressing room,” Jacques said instead, keeping his words relatively innocuous while flashing a rude sneer at the man to silently provoke him. It would be beautiful if the ruffian took a swing at Jacques and gave him the opening to respond in kind. Jacques noticed the cowboy wore a gold earring in one ear, giving him a piratical look. It took great restraint for Jacques to refrain from yanking it out.

Buck didn’t bite on the provocation. He grinned and put a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips. “Who says I ain’t got a good reason to be nice ‘n comfortable here?”

“Neither of you are entitled to feel comfortable in my dressing room,” Georgette reprimanded them both through the door. “Or haranguing me from outside my door, for that matter.”

“Where, then, shall I harangue you?” Jacques persisted, casting a side eye at the other man.

“You’re quite good at finding me,” she teased. “I’m sure you’ll connive yet another inconvenient opportunity to bother me.”

“I will, that’s a promise,” Jacques agreed and grinned wickedly at the cowboy. “Until then, darling.”

Jacques straightened and Buck bristled. Jacques was satisfied to see that he stood a fraction taller than the other man when his back was straight. Holding the cowboy’s blue stare, Jacques walked past him so close they almost brushed shoulders. He made his challenge clear and belligerent. What great sport it would be if the beastly American took the bait.

*******************************************************************************************

The sights of London were almost overwhelming for someone from Colorado where a paved street was a novelty. Colorado Springs was one of the few towns with a modern brick street down the center of town. Georgette had ample experience with mountain lions and wild horses, miners and mountain men, and gunfights with two men walking out into the street and only one returning. But the sights of London were unlike anything she had experienced, they were fantastical to her. To see gas lamps illuminating shiny cobblestone streets well into the night, and even the occasional building lit with electric light. She was determined to see as much of the spectacular city as she could while she was there.

Georgette preferred to take in the city in the afternoons and into the evenings. The crowds were diminished during those hours and, more importantly, she wanted to minimize the risk of her being recognized. The best part of her act was her change from Fearless George the trick rider to Georgette the horse diver. It never failed to earn a riotous applause from the audience. Likewise, she didn’t ride out in town on Faust, although she would have preferred to, so he could not be recognized as the trick horse from the show who flies off the high dive platform.

The sun was sinking toward the Western horizon as she strolled down a lively street on her first day off after the remarkably successful weekend shows. Steely clouds crept across the sky, making the waning sunlight look like a bloody wound seeping through grey gauze, and the evening air was cool on her skin. She was not in the habit of wearing a bustle – in the American West, high fashion was still something of a novelty outside of the biggest cities. She had come prepared with fine dresses and accoutrements should the occasion call for it, but for her sightseeing outings, it was convenient to dress simply and it eased her movements. She kept a brisk pace with no bustle to hamper her and only a modest front-lacing corset that didn’t constrict her breathing.

Gas lamps lining the street had been freshly lit casting glimmering light on the city slick with foggy dew. Carriages trotted up and down the street filling the air with the cadence of hooves on stone and the vague smell of horse sweat and leather mingled with the damp smell of the city. Clothing stores displayed the most stylish fashion in their windows, but what caught Georgette’s eye was a striking lithograph poster advertising a magician show. She paused in front of the poster of Kylo the Malevolent, looking into the magician’s eyes that were penetrating even on poster stock. She was reminded of a short story she had read ages ago called Vampyre. She thought it would be nice to take in a magic show, or visit one of the famous cabinets of curiosities in the city.

The familiar sounds of the dwindling chatter of the evening carried on behind her, mixed with the clatter of horse’s hooves. One pair of clattering hooves grew louder, the horse coming close to her. The hooves stopped suddenly as she whipped around, startled. Georgette came face to face with the soft muzzle of a large dapple-grey horse, standing so close she could feel the heat of its breath. Seated on the animal was a large handsome man, grinning down at her devilishly with mischief gleaming in his vibrant eyes.

Jacques Le Gris tipped his head back to look up at the gloomy evening sky and held his gloved hand out as if to test for any rain. He returned his eyes to hers, grinned again, and told her, “A perfectly fine evening to harangue a lovely lady, is it not?”

“I already have my evening planned, I’m afraid,” she said coyly and continued walking down the sidewalk on her way.

Jacques kept his horse facing her as she walked, making the horse side-pass perfectly down the street with his front hooves inches from the sidewalk. He sat straight and poised in the saddle in the English style, his commands to the horse almost invisible. “You’re not the only one with tricks, mademoiselle.”

“Men and their tricks are almost always tiresome. If I wanted to see parlor tricks, I would take in the devious looking magician’s show,” she said dismissively as she walked ahead without sparing him a glance. “I believe I told you I would enjoy seeing you perform some embarrassing act for me? I would have been much more impressed if you had appeared riding a donkey with your laughably large feet dragging the ground.”

“You’ve not yet given me the chance to properly embarrass myself,” Jacques countered, still commanding his horse to prance sideways and keep him facing her as at ease as if he sat in his favorite chair. “I thought you might enjoy your conquest more if you were to embarrass me yourself.”

This piqued her interest, and she turned to cock a curious eyebrow at him.

“I took you for a lady who would want to seize victory herself,” Jacques said. “Anything less would be a pyrrhic victory, would it not?” He gestured down at his horse and gave his voice a teasingly haughty air. “You’re quite an impressive rider. For a woman. I wonder how you’d fare in a race against me.”

“Since I am afoot at present, you have me at a disadvantage,” she huffed.

“And if you were astride that black beast of yours?” he asked as his horse danced sideways, snorting impatiently.

“I’d wipe that smug grin off your face in less than a furlong,” she said without batting an eye.

Jacques had timed it perfectly because as Georgette finished her statement, she reached a cross street. Standing at the curb where the cab carriages usually waited for customers was Faust. Georgette stopped short, shocked to see her horse saddled in her western gear, his ears pricked forward to greet her. The foulest looking man she had ever seen held Faust’s reins – if such a deformed monstrosity could be called a man. The wretched creature looked like he had been plagued with leprosy, but that the disease might have improved his features.

“What the hell is this?” she asked angrily as she rushed to her horse and yanked the reins away from the loathsome man who looked at her with hazy black eyes. “Did you steal him? I hope you did, because if not, I’m going to skin that horrible little stable hand alive!”

“I had to bribe him so well, I am the man who is the victim of theft,” Jacques laughed. “Don’t be too hard on the stable hand. I can be more persuasive than most.”

“Persistent does not equate to persuasive,” she quipped, satisfied that her horse appeared fine.

“If you want to reprimand me,” Jacques smirked. “You’ll have to catch me.”

“What are you thinking?” she asked exasperatedly. “That I will just happily climb onto my horse after you stole him, and engage you in an impromptu race? While wearing a dress, I might add.”

“When you put it like that, I can see how it could be too much for you.” He grinned wider.

“Nothing you can throw my way is too much for me,” she scoffed at him and at herself for succumbing so easily to his provocation. Backing down from a challenge was not a form of restraint she had ever mastered, nor ever cared to. She glanced quickly down at her dress. It was not a split skirt designed for riding and she wore heeled boots instead of riding boots, an outfit entirely ill-suited for riding.

“I promise to keep my composure even if you’re risqué enough to hike your skirt up and expose your ankles,” he teased, looking pointedly at the hem of her dress.

“I don’t need to ride astride to best a braggart,” she said as she walked to the left side of her horse, preparing to mount.

“Do you need a hand?” he asked, edging his horse closer.

“Certainly not,” she huffed and swung herself up into the saddle. She kept her left foot in the stirrup and hooked her right over the saddle horn to sit in a makeshift sidesaddle. To ride astride, she would have had to pull her skirts up around her thighs, which was probably exactly what Jacques was hoping for and she would never give him the satisfaction. Glaring at Jaques, she smoothed her skirts primly, ensuring they draped down past her ankles and exposed no skin.

“I wasn’t expecting so much modesty from a woman who bares her legs in front of thousands of spectators to ride bareback and plunge into water,” Jacques teased, bringing his horse close to hers.

“We both know I’m safer exposed in front of a crowd of thousands than one dangerous man,” she returned, holding her horse in place as he pawed his front hoof in anticipation.

“Any danger within me is no threat to you,” Jacques told her seriously. “I would never harm you.”

“Neither my person nor my reputation?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

Jacques grinned and shrugged without answering.

“Just what I thought.” She smiled back. “I’m sure you have more tricks up your sleeve than that Magician on all the posters.”

“I do. He’s an amateur,” Jacques dropped his voice. “But if you wish to be awed, I’m sure I can think of something to accommodate you.” When she only replied with a bored expression, he cleared his throat and told her, “Hyde Park isn’t far. It has a nice dirt track running along its south side called Rotten Row. We can race around as many times as it takes you to win.”

“How boring,” she said dismissively. “I’ll race you to Rotten Row from here instead.” With that, she poked her horse in the shoulder and clicked her tongue in some practiced cue. Faust pinned his ears and struck out at Jacques’s horse like an angry cat, landing a painful bite to the other horse’s rump.

Jacques’s horse squealed indignantly and jumped forward like he had been rudely whipped. Georgette laughed and kicked Faust, sending him into a gallop in two powerful lunges. Jacques cursed his startled horse as he reined him back under control, then laughed deeply as he watched Georgette gallop away from him. Jacques kicked his horse, making him rear then jump into a run after his opponent. The horse slid when his front hooves struck the cobblestone with a riot of sparks, giving Georgette another few strides lead. Georgette cast a look back over her shoulder to see how far ahead she was and laughed heartily at her early lead. Jacques caught her eye and winked. His horse was powerful and used to races and steeplechase, and he gained ground fast.

The horses flew the length of a block in seconds, sending the ghostly evening mist swirling around their legs. In the second block, Jacques’s horse came even with Faust’s haunch as the beasts galloped against each other. Jacques was close enough that could have reached out and grabbed the hem of Georgette’s dress as it billowed behind her leg as she rode sidesaddle. An alley branched off the street on their left. Georgette could see little inside it but shadows in the lateness of the evening. When Faust came to the alley, Georgette reined him, forcing his back hooves to slide on the cobblestone as he sat back his haunches to make the tight turn.

“Do try to keep up!” Georgette shouted over her shoulder.

The alley was narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate a horse and rider. Jacques had to sit back on his reins and bring his horse into a skid to slow enough to make the turn, grinning as he did at having such fine sport. He did not have the masculine weakness of being unable to admit when he met a woman who was his equal or even his superior, albeit this was a rare occurrence. He was pleased and enthused to have met one now, at least when seated on the back of a horse. Georgette tucked her toes against Faust’s side, wary of them striking some protrusion she couldn’t see in the dark. Fortunately, horses have better night vision than humans and Faust avoided any obstacles in his path. Georgette barely saw the pile of crates that had been carelessly discarded in the alley until they were nearly upon them, but Faust gathered himself for the jump and soared over them with ease, landing without breaking the stride of his gallop.

Of course, vampires could see even better in the dark than horses. Jacques’s sight was equal to a wolf or panther or any other nocturnal beast. The pile of crates was as visible to him as white bones in the desert. He saw every detail of the black horse ahead of him and his beautiful rider. Even as his horse took the jump, Jacques’s eyes were fixed on the way Georgette kept a perfect seat and the lovely view he had of that seat devoid of a bustle.

“Bear right if you wish to keep your lead to Hyde Park!” Jacques boomed over the cadence of hoofbeats when Georgette reached the end of the alley.

The alley emptied onto a street through a business district lined with closed shops and nearly devoid of traffic as nightfall approached. One shop owner who was late in closing up glared at them through his window when the pair of horses thundered down the cobblestone in front of his door. Jacques’s horse was shod and the iron shoes sparked on the cobblestone making him look like a silver beast fueled by hellfire, snorting with every stride. A lone cab drawn by a single horse trotted down the street toward them. The horse startled when Jacques and Georgette each flew past him on opposite sides, and the driver cursed them and threw in their mothers for good measure.

Neck and neck, they barreled into Hyde Park. The pair of horses tore down the dirt track called Rotten Row, kicking up clods of dirt under their thundering hooves. Rotten Row was a popular lane for riders, but in the gloaming Jacques and Georgette were alone. Trees grew close on either side of the lane, their branches hanging close enough to grasp at them like witches’ claws. Both horses were large and powerful, not running fleetly like thoroughbreds, but charging ahead like destriers ridden by knights of old. As they neared a bend in the track, Jacques kicked his horse to get a small burst of additional speed. He swept his right hand through Georgette’s skirt and laughed as he passed her, surging into the turn just ahead of her.

Darkness had settled over them while they had raced through town and the stars winked down through the veil of clouds leaving them in shadows and the light spectral mist as they charged down the row.

A violent crack tore the soft belly out of the night, as sharp as the bite of a bullwhip, and the trees at their side thrashed into the lane like an army of living branches. Jacques’s horse buckled when he hit the rope strung across the lane, catapulting forward over his head and neck in a macabre somersault. And rolling over Jacques as he did. A rope attached to a mostly sawn-through tree was run across the lane, acting as a boobytrap to bring a tree down on top of a rider unlucky enough to hit it – if the rope didn’t behead him first.

A ton of tree trunk and barren branches as sharp as spears came crashing down on the crumpled mass of Jacques and his horse as they both thrashed and kicked painfully over the ground. The last sight Georgette had of Jacques was of his magnificent chest being crushed between his horse’s neck and the unforgiving ground as his horse rolled over him, and his flesh being lanced by branches before the tree crushed down upon both horse and rider.

Faust stopped on his own, not needing a command from his rider to dig his hooves into the dirt and slide to a stop before colliding with the fallen tree. It was fortunate Faust took care of himself and Georgette because she was paralyzed with horror, a scream trapped in her throat tight enough to strangle her. She vaguely registered noises in the trees on either side of her, but her mind was at once both reeling and numb. Faust stomped his hooves and shifted nervously as Georgette slid off his back and stumbled awkwardly on wavering legs. She clutched Faust’s reins in a shaking fist and her chest felt tighter than the most unforgiving corset. The tree that had crushed Jacques and his horse thrashed on the ground in front of her, no doubt from the wounded animal pinned beneath it. She didn’t want to get any closer to it or see what horror it had caused. But she had to help Jacques. Even if she knew he could not possibly walk away from such an accident, and likely not survive it.

Suddenly, the trees on either side of the lane erupted with dark snarling bodies bursting from them and charging at Georgette. A pack of large hounds leapt at her from the foliage, their teeth bared, snarling their intent. She recognized the roman noses and bristled fur that belonged to Irish Wolfhounds as they charged her and Faust. She heard the shouts of their master’s still inside the trees. The nearest dog leapt at her, teeth bared, and she whipped the reins she held across its eyes as she ducked sideways. The hound yelped and stumbled, missing his aim for her throat. A second dog caught her sleeve, growling as it tried to yank her to the ground. Faust struck out with his front hoof and hit the dog in the head, knocking its jaw slack. He reared and pawed down onto the hound’s neck, driving it into the ground and killing it instantly.

A pack of several dogs were digging at the fallen tree, braying and snarling like they were hot on the scent of their prey. Two dogs attacked Faust from behind, biting his heels and hocks in an attempt to cripple him. The horse kicked and bucked, inadvertently yanking Georgette off balance from her hold on the reins. One dog he kicked loose switched its attention to Georgette and jumped at her with open, bloody jaws. On instinct, she raised her arm in front of her face and felt the sharp crunching pain of the dog sinking its teeth into her forearm as the weight of the large hound knocked her backward onto the ground. The dog weighed as much as an average man and muscled her to her back on the ground with its weight. Despite the pain in her forearm, she wedged it deeper into the dog’s mouth, using it as a barrier between the ravening beast and her face.

It must only have been seconds since Jacques’s horse fell and the tree crushed them both, but time had dragged on as agonizingly as the pain spearing Georgette’s arm. Something broke out of the fallen tree with explosive force, like a lion breaking free of a wooden cage. Branches and splinters flew through the air like shrapnel and several dogs howled with fear and yelped with pain. Georgette could see nothing but the mottled fur and beady eyes of the dog above her, and then with sudden brute force, the dog was ripped away from her with a pained squeal and thrown across the lane as though it were a stuffed toy.

Jacques stood above her, his shoulders hunched in a fighting stance, wearing a snarl more ferocious than the hounds. His fists weren’t balled, his hands open instead, as if he was hoping to rip living bodies apart with them. There were tears in his jacket, across his back and shoulders, and his undershirt was scarlet with his own blood. Blood streaked his face and ran from his lips, but she didn’t see any obvious injuries. His eyes raced over her body, assessing her injuries quickly without diverting his attention from his attackers. One of the braver hounds lunged at Jacques’s face, but met with his hand as Jacques caught it in the air by its throat with his crushing fist. Another dog took the opening to jump onto his back, snapping down at the back of his neck and trying to paralyze him like a wounded animal. Growling with rage, Jacques shook the hound off his back and threw the hound he held by the throat into the other, sending them both careening over the ground and running away with terrified yelps.

Jacques stepped over Georgette, placing himself between her and whatever other danger still lurked in the trees. Though his movements were not frantic, he moved with unnatural quickness. He appeared to not even be hurried, yet the lines of him were blurred with his swiftness, like a striking viper. His eyes were narrowed and vicious, focused on something in the trees that Georgette couldn’t see. Slowly, he knelt beside her and took her arm. He didn’t spare the time to examine the dog bite as he pulled her up to her feet. Though she was perfectly capable of standing, walking, or anything else that was needed of her, Jacques lifted her into his arms and swung her up onto her horse. He placed her foot in her stirrup and let his hand linger on her calf.

“Run, darling,” he told her as he squeezed her leg. “Run out of the park. I’ll deal with them. They won’t catch you.”

“Who’s they?” she asked as she gathered her reins to control Faust as he danced nervously in place.

“I’ll come to you after I’ve handled this.” He didn’t answer her question.

Jacques turned to face the trees, shoulders bunched and teeth bared wolfishly. A growl rumbled in his thick chest, an inhuman sound that raised the hairs on Georgette’s neck. Faust reared in fright and tried to bolt away from Jacques, but she reined him back. The black horse kept his composure amid gunfire and battle, but he reared and spun in place now, rattled with such fear that his body quivered, his nostrils flared, and his eyes rolled until they showed white as he side-eyed Jacques. It unnerved Georgette to see that it was not the hounds nor the attack that had terrified her horse, but Jacques. Georgette saw it too, the way Jacques looked ravenous and bestial with his wild hair and predatory stance. His eyes were no longer amber, but glinted a lupine yellow, his lateral incisors had grown to points and his canines were long, sharpened fangs. Images flashed through Georgette’s mind, conjured from the tales and legends she had heard growing up in the Wild West – tales of skinwalkers and werewolves.

She didn’t have long to ponder it.

Something shot out of the trees faster than the eye could follow. With great swiftness, Jacques twisted sideways and caught the thing out of the air as it flew past his head. A steel arrow with brutally hooked barbs was trapped in his fist. Attached to the fletching was a steel chain that was drawn taught, leading back to a crossbow designed to hook its prey and drag it back to the hunter like a whaling harpoon. Jacques yanked the arrow and attached chain toward him, snarling with delight.

A shout came from the trees followed by the thrashing of foliage as Jacques dragged a man out of the brush like a salmon on a fishing line. The man still held his crossbow, trying futility to gain the upper hand with Jacques. Two other men charged out of the trees holding weapons unlike any Georgette had ever seen, something like snub-barreled shotguns with multiple, large-bore barrels. She didn’t hesitate. Georgette pulled her tiny pepperbox derringer from the garter on her thigh and fired two of its six barrels into the closest man, blowing his head apart like a ripe pumpkin. As the first man collapsed, blood spurting from the blown-open side of his face and empty, gaping eye socket, Georgette fired another round into the second man. The bullet flew straight into his open mouth and blew out the back of his head in chunky pink mist.

Both men were on the ground twitching in the second it took Jacques to reel in his attacker. Jacques whipped his hand across the man’s face, hooking his thumb under the man’s jawbone like hooking a fish, and violently ripped the poor bastard’s jaw completely off with one swipe. The man’s eyes bulged almost comically and his tongue twitched from side to side in a gaping bloody hole, free and confused without its seat in the jaw.

Still clutching the man’s detached jaw, Jacques held it at eye level and addressed it like Hamlet’s skull, “What else should I rip off your owner for attacking a lady and casting a pall over a rather promising evening?”

The man’s eyes widened impossibly further and a wet gargling screech hissed from the hole in his face when he guessed Jacques’s intent. Jacques flipped the jaw in his hand so the lower teeth faced outward and rammed it with all his brute strength into what remained of the man’s face. The man’s own lower teeth cut into the bridge of his nose and ruptured one of his eyes. As the man staggered backward, Jacques grabbed his lapels and yanked the man toward him. Jacques bent forward and attacked the man’s neck, tearing into it like a rabid beast and ripping the flesh of his throat apart.

Georgette had never seen such gruesome violence. She was unable to look away, her eyes still locked on Jacques when he turned to face her, his beard and chest coated in viscous, dripping blood. Faust trembled beneath her and the remaining wolfhounds brayed mournfully over their dead owners. The gun in her hand moved with a mind of its own as it drifted toward Jacques’s chest.

Jacques raised his bloody hands and grinned, flashing sharp canines shining scarlet. He approached her slowly, the way he would a frightened animal, and held out his right hand. “May I?” He gestured for her derringer.

Wordlessly, she handed him the little pistol. Whatever he was, Jacques had protected her, so she rationalized that she needn’t fear him. Jacques took the gun and walked back to the opposite side of the fallen tree. He knelt and stroked the dapple-grey neck of his horse, still trapped beneath the tree and breathing with difficulty. “Au revoir, mon ami,” he said with hoarse regret as he soothingly petted the horse’s neck with his left hand and fired a shot into its head to end its misery. He straightened and looked down at his horse for a long moment until he was sure no tears would breach his eyes before he walked back to Georgette.

Four wolfhounds still circled them, heads lowered, watching them warily. Jacques rolled his shoulders and growled at them more vicious and rumbling than any canine, so guttural his hair seemed to rise like the hair on the hounds’ backs. The hounds whimpered and dropped their heads in submission before backing away slowly and deferentially.

“I told you to run,” Jacques said with gravel in his voice when he again stood beside Faust.

“I don’t run scared. And I damn sure don’t follow orders,” she said firmly. “I’m sorry about your horse.”

“So am I.” He handed her the derringer and rested his hand on her thigh to comfort himself.

“Are you a werewolf?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“Christ, no!” Jacques spat, almost hissing as his hackled rose like a cat sprayed with water. “I will tell you on the ride home.”

“Home?” She frowned.

“I keep a home in town,” Jacques gestured at his blood-soaked clothing. “Imagine how the rumors will run rampant if I am seen looking like Jack the Ripper.”

Without waiting for an invitation, Jacques swung up onto Faust behind Georgette and looped his arms lightly around her waist. His breath was hot on her ear and smelled of coppery blood. Wet heat seeped through her clothing on her back from Jacques’s blood-soaked chest pressed against her.

“Is the blood yours or theirs?” she asked as she turned Faust away from the chaos.

“Mine, mostly. Felling a tree was a nice touch. New to me.” Jacques grinned mirthlessly. “It’s nothing to trouble yourself over.”

“I’ll find a doctor,” she said with concern.

“That won’t be necessary.” He tightened his hold around her waist. “My home is on Park Lane.”

“Tell me what exactly I just lived through tonight,” she said and kicked Faust into a canter.

*******************************************************************************************

The home Jacques kept on Park Lane, dubbed Brook House, was grand and elegant, standing five stories above the carriages that trotted by on the cobblestone street. A footman in a sharp uniform rushed out to meet them as Georgette brought Faust to a stop at the front door. The footman looked up at Jacques with the same black haze in his eyes that the obscene valet possessed, and took Faust’s reins. Jacques dismounted with the flair Georgette had come to expect from him, his movement devoid of pain or injury. He offered her his hand to step down from her horse, then moved his hand to her waist possessively when she stood beside him. Jacques stopped her when Georgette made for the door to his home.

“If you come inside, I may never let you leave,” he said and tightened his hold on her waist. “I’ll have my carriage drive you home.”

“Don’t be absurd! You’re badly injured,” she protested. She was still digesting what Jacques had revealed to her about his nature during their ride to Brook House.

“Am I?” He grinned devilishly. “I would love nothing more than to feel your healing touch, but I will not have it under false pretenses.”

“Have you lost so much blood you’re delirious?” she scoffed, eyeing how his shirt was plastered to his chest with drying blood.

“See for yourself,” he purred as he leaned in closer and pulled the lapel of his jacket aside.

Tentatively, she reached to the top button of his white shirt and began unbuttoning it. The way he smirked at her uncertainty eliminated it, and she looked brazenly into his eyes as she deftly unbuttoned his shirt down to where it was tucked into his trousers. His pale skin shone red with blood, but she saw no injuries. She ran a hand over his chest to convince herself by touch what her eyes told her, feeling the thick ridges of warm muscle. It was as though he had just emerged unharmed from a bath of blood.

“I’ve done that too, in another life,” he teased. He brought his fingertips to her cheek and caressed her skin. “Your thoughts are loud when you worry. I hope this has put your mind at ease.”

“At ease is the wrong term,” she couldn’t help but laugh.

“It occurs to me I should have suggested a kiss from you would heal me a few moments ago,” he said huskily, leaning in slightly closer until only inches separated them.

Georgette tilted her chin up and smirked at him, challenging him to not only kiss her but to impress her. Jacques trailed his hand from her cheek down to her throat, letting it rest there and using his thumb to angle her chin as he wanted when he brought his lips to hers.

His plush lips were so much softer than she had imagined. He kissed her gently, his lips caressing hers with indulgent passion, making her body melt against his. It was she who parted her lips first, an invitation to deepen his kiss that Jacques hungrily took. The heat of his tongue seared through her entire body, and the heady masculine taste of him made her shudder pleasantly. His chest rumbled with his approval as his lips moved against hers. It was clear that he was a very skilled lover, so easily raising a rash of goosebumps down Georgette’s spine. When she finally pulled back from his kiss for breath, her eyelids were slow to flutter open and return her to reality.

“Your lips could raise a man from the dead.” He smiled down at her, swaying softly as he held her in his arms.

“Be more cautious in the future so they never have to.” She pulled him back down by his lapels to kiss him again.

“Ah, but you already have, ma belle dangereuse,” Jacques crooned, his voice rumbling thickly in his chest. “You’ve made my deadened heart beat so frantically I could dance to the rhythm.”

“And yet you want to send me away tonight?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Unless you wish to stay forever,” he told her without a hint of teasing.

“I’ll think on it.” She did tease because he was too serious not to.

“While you do, join me for an intimate soiree at my dear friend’s home.” His nose was still so close to hers that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.

“Will I have to fight a harem of women for a place on your arm?” She pulled back to watch his expression when he answered.

“Never,” Jacques assured her. “No one compares to you.”

“Surely, you must have as many lusting women hunting you as you do vampire hunters,” she said. “No doubt plenty of them would have my head on a spit as readily as a vampire hunter would yours.”

‘The number of those hunting me doesn’t matter.” He trailed a finger down her cheek. “There is only one I will let catch me.”

“What if I dispatched with any trespassing women with the same finality you did the hunters?” She smiled, looking up at him through thick eyelashes. “What if that’s how I expect you to deal with them so long as I keep your company?”

“If it piques your fancy.” Jacques grinned wickedly, flashing his pointed canines. “I do love a bloodthirsty woman.”

*******************************************************************************************

Logistics regarding the soiree Georgette had agreed to attend with Jacques had not been discussed. It was a bit disheartening when she didn’t hear from the persistent man for days. She felt she should be worried, given the injuries she saw him sustain, but she also saw them heal. When a man had all the time in the world – and seemingly all the women – perhaps, he felt less urgency. She was not prone to pining and she felt her thoughts were unnaturally occupied with Jacques. Moreso, it was almost as though she could feel his presence in her mind when it was quiet; when she was in her bath or lying in bed. It felt like he was peering into the window of her mind like a voyeur trying to catch a glimpse of her skin.

She would have to ask him about that.

She had expected Jacques to initiate another run-in with her or an ostensible chance meeting that was obviously premeditated. Instead of surprising her in person, Jacques arranged for a package to be delivered to her room, surprising her by its presence on her bed when she returned one evening. A large box with a crimson ribbon beckoned her, quashing all the irritation she felt at someone breaking into her room. She tried to purge the image from her mind of that horrible creature, Carroughes, tromping around her things.

Sitting on the bed, Georgette ran her hand over the box, untied the ribbon, and lifted the lid. Gasping excitedly at the sight of its contents, she sprang back up from the bed and pulled her gift from the box. The finest scarlet fabric she had ever felt cascaded down from her fingertips, as she held aloft the most elegantly decadent gown she had ever seen. She couldn’t resist hugging the gown to her body and twirling. A small white card fell to the floor from its hiding place within the folds of the gown. Folding the dress carefully and returning it to the box, she bent to retrieve the card. Written upon it in graceful black calligraphy was a simple message.

My Belle Dangereuse,

Have this dress on by 7:00 tomorrow evening. Or have no dress on at all. The curtains in my carriage are impenetrable.

Your servant, Jacques.

*******************************************************************************************

From her window Georgette saw a carriage drawn by a pair of prancing black horses arrive outside the hotel at 6:45pm. The carriage must belong to Jacques, with a coach in funerary black and black harnesses on the black team of horses. Silver accents on the carriage door, harnesses, and bridles glinted in the gas lamps that lined the street, and the curtains were black and silver brocade. Although she was fully dressed and coiffed, and had been for fifteen minutes, she wouldn’t let Jacques know that.

At five ‘til seven, Jacques stepped out of his carriage. The evening breeze ruffled his hair and made his tailcoat flutter around his long legs as he leaned his back against the coach, tapping his walking stick on the cobblestone. Georgette watched him through a slit in her curtains. He was dressed all in black, save for an ascot the same color as her dress, and looked particularly towering with his slim pants, long coat, and top hat. She decided to make him wait longer.

She walked outside at five after wearing the dress Jacques had gifted her, but barely any of the scarlet silk was visible beneath the long astrakhan-trimmed coat she wore. Jacques smiled broadly at the sight of her as he took off his hat and gave her a regal bow with a flourish of his coat. He opened the coach door and tossed his hat and walking stick inside while Georgette walked to him.

“Have you ever been to Switzerland?” Jacques asked, taking her hand and raising it to his lips.

“Is that where your coach is taking us?” she teased.

“I’ll take you there, or anywhere else, on your whim.” Jacques kissed her hand. “The air there is so clear that at night the starlight shimmers on the glaciers like diamonds and the moonlight makes everything glow. You’re beautiful in the same way, shimmering and glowing. A dancing light in the darkness.”

“Says the man who has never seen me dance.” She smirked. “Thank you for the dress.”

“It is thanks enough seeing you in it.” He kept hold of her hand, stroking his thumb over her skin.

“It fits suspiciously well,” she mused. “How did you get my measurements?”

“Would you rather hear that I have an eye for certain qualities, or that my spies are everywhere?” He grinned and guided her into the carriage.

The plush leather seats were rich oxblood and the interior was dark red velvet. The coach dipped when Jacques climbed inside and took his seat across from her. Sitting so close to her, Jacques could feel the heat from her body radiating inside the coach, hear every beat of her heart, savor the sweet scent of her. It was an exquisite form of torture, a sensory overload influencing his body to respond against his will. He crossed his legs, his movements slightly awkward inside the cabin that was made for a smaller man.

Grinning wolfishly, he flashed his vampiric canines at Georgette. The cadence of her heartbeat quickened at the sight and her pupils widened – signs imperceptible to a human, as was the way her scent changed subtly, tinged with a hint more invitation. Jacques’s grin bloomed into a full broad smile when he saw this confirmation that he had read her correctly. She liked the danger about him. Rather than being frightened, she was aroused by that part of him.

“Refreshments?” Jacques asked, reaching below the middle of the seat to pull out a concealed drawer filled with decanters, chocolates, and fruits. “I have scotch, wine, coffee, and tea, and a range of delicacies that pair well with each.”

“I’d best start with coffee and keep my wits about me as long as possible,” she teased. “It surprises me you have it here in the land of tea-drinkers.”

“I have not just any coffee.” He retrieved a pair of teacups and a decanter with contents as black and thick as molasses. “Turkish coffee.” He handed her a cup and poured the strong-smelling sludge into it. “My favorite.”

“It’s a bit presumptive for you to be scheming to keep me up all night so early in the evening.” She raised the cup to her nose. She had never smelled coffee so strong.

“My sinister schemes have no bounds.” Jacques grinned as he filled his own cup and returned the decanter to the drawer.

“Tell me about these plans,” she succeeded at sounding coy until she took a drink of the Turkish coffee and coughed as though she had downed a shot of whiskey. “My god!” she said as she wiped a tear from her eye. “This might keep me awake for the entire weekend.”

“Even better.” Jacques’s eyes crinkled at the edges with delight as he sipped from his cup. “At the risk of shocking you, I’ll warn you my schemes involve conversation and camaraderie. I’d like to learn more about you and reveal anything of me you wish to know.” He took another drink and winked at her. “No matter how sundry and salacious your request may be.”

“Spoken like a man who has all the time in the world.” Georgette’s next drink was invigorating now that she expected the strong bite of caffeine on her tongue.

“That I do, and I don’t want to waste a second of it.” Jacques fixed his unnerving eyes on hers, and Georgette thought their gleam was more citrine tonight, more firelight in them than amber. It was likely a trick of the gas lamps the carriage trotted past. His eyes danced when he added, “I aim to capture your heart before the sun rises.”

“Is that all?” she laughed and sipped her coffee, finding she now enjoyed it very much. “I admire a bold man.”

“I, too, admire boldness, which makes me defenseless against you.” His eyes shimmered, almost hypnotically, making her wonder if this was another vampiric talent. He pointedly looked away out of the carriage window before he began to lose hold on the bestial part of himself. When he returned his eyes to hers, they had mellowed to the color of whiskey. “Tell me what makes a beautiful woman want to live so dangerously? What compels you to travel the world in the company of rough men for these shows?”

“Your question presumes I don’t need to do any of those things to live a perfectly satisfying life.” She held out her cup for him to refill it. “I disagree. Most women I know want nothing more than to marry and start amassing a litter of children, which frankly, sounds like a prison sentence to me. I would like to marry one day, because I feel life is better when shared with someone, but there are limits to how tethered I will ever allow myself to be. There is much I want to do first, like this,” she gestured at the carriage window and the buildings passing by outside. “I want to see the world, and I can do that this way, by travelling for shows, and with relative safety and only a little scandal. Otherwise, to travel so, I would be at the mercy of a husband.”

“Fair enough,” Jacques agreed. “But what in all infernal hell compels you to ride that horse off a diving platform?”

“I enjoy it. There is no more to it than that, and there doesn’t have to be. One day, I’ll be too old to have adventures and danger, and all I’ll have is my story. I’m trying to live a good one.” She smiled sincerely and added, “One of my favorite writers said it best, ‘Ride, boldly ride.”

“’The Shade replied,’” Jacques added the next line for her, playing the role of the Shade. “I too am always searching for cities of gold, in a manner.”

“I’ve all but told you that what I fear most is a cage and infirmity,” she said somberly. “What thoughts trouble a man who never need fear such things?”

“Loneliness,” Jacques answered quickly and sincerely. “Facing the ages alone is a daunting prospect.”

“That doesn’t strike me as an insurmountable problem for you,” she laughed.

“More so than you think, cherie.” Jacques again opened the drawer and returned their empty cups inside. He uncovered a dish of fruits and chocolates, and plucked a pitted black cherry by its stem. “You’ll love the taste after coffee,” he crooned and held it to Georgette’s lips.

Although he sat across from her, Jacques was so large there was little space remaining between them when he offered her the cherry. Leaning tentatively forward, she took the cherry between her teeth, allowing her lips to brush his fingertip when she closed them around it. She closed her eyes in satisfaction at the burst of flavor that complimented the lingering taste of coffee. Jacques watched hungrily at the way her lovely throat moved when she swallowed and the way the cherry had left its stain on her lips. He couldn’t resist tasting them and captured her lips in a soft, savoring kiss. Georgette brought her hand to the back of his neck, her nails sending sparks down his spine. He almost lost control of himself when she wove her fingers into the hair at his collar and pulled him closer.

The world outside could have burned around them, the ground quaked beneath them, and Jacques couldn’t have been bothered to care. There was no world to him now but the intoxicating woman in his arms. Her scent and taste surrounded him, flowed over him and into him until he felt like he could drown in her. Moving his lips to the silken skin of her neck, Jacques moaned headily as he lavished her with kisses.

A rude jolt of the carriage sent Jacques lurching against Georgette, shoving her back against the seat with unintentional roughness. Fortunately, she laughed as the carriage rocked again and Jacques pushed himself off of her and back into his seat.

“Stupid bastard,” he snarled about his disfigured driver. Jacques reached for the window to shout at the man when he realized they had arrived and were parked near a portico framed by fat columns. He hadn’t noticed when the carriage had passed the imposing wrought iron gates and turned onto the long oak-lined driveway leading to the Georgian monstrosity that was Pierre’s London home.

Sitting back in his seat Jacques grinned a little sheepishly at Georgette. “I must tell my driver to slow the horses to a walk on our return. The drive passed too quickly.”

“Do you have enough cherries for a longer drive?” she teased as she smoothed her dress and hair.

“Plenty. I can spend hours eating a cherry,” he thrummed huskily and grinned.

*******************************************************************************************

Thousands of flickering lights inside the mansion made its myriad of windows shine like a burst of sunlight in the dark grounds. From its columns and ornate cornices to the statutes watching from stone corners and among lush hedges, manicured to precision, the estate was awash in opulence. The celebration inside gave its masonry glowing life.

Georgette looked out of the carriage window in awe. She had never been to such a grand estate, nor what promised to be an elegant ball. Excitement mingled with nervousness and an unusual shyness. This was not an experience many American westerners were prepared for. Her nerves would be calm and her hands steady if she were rousting a bear out of her grandfather’s cabin in Montana or inside a saloon with men drawing guns on each other or riding a horse at breakneck speed under a full moon. But dresses and dancing and dining under the strict code of English etiquette? It was enough to make a strong man quail in his boots.

“You’ll find no one here stands on formality. No one who matters anyway,” Jacques said soothingly, watching her with the lupine yellow again glinting in his eyes.

“We’re going to have to come to terms over you prodding my thoughts like this,” she said with mild embarrassment.

Jacques grinned and opened the carriage door. Georgette hadn’t noticed the footman patiently waiting outside. The man was apparently trained to wait for the carriage door to be opened from the inside so he did not disturb whatever might be happening in private. Jacques stepped down and whipped his long coat to the side as he donned his top hat, giving him the appearance of a magician on stage performing his act with flourish. He offered Georgette his hand as she exited the carriage then placed her hand in the crook of his arm as he led her to the grand entrance.

“There’s no need to be nervous.” Jacques leaned toward her and she felt his arm flex beneath her hand. “A lady on my arm is the guest of honor. Nothing else matters, nor does any other opinion.”

His comment had the effect of settling her nerves, but not for the reasons he hoped. Georgette felt a flush of anger and a tinge of jealousy at the thought of how many other young women must have made this walk before, treading on the swirled marble floor of the entrance hall on the arm of a handsome man – perhaps even this very same, centuries-old man – full of excitement and hope at what the evening may bring. Where were those women now? They had been as fleeting as a firefly lighting the night with its beauty for one instant only to be forgotten in the next.

“None of them were you,” Jacques said in his most alluring timbre, again holding a conversation with her inner thoughts.

“How many of them have you told that same thing?” she asked cynically.

“I cannot tell you none, but I assure you there have been very few.” He placed his free hand over hers, comforting and warm. “I do not believe there has been more than one woman a century who has truly captivated me as you have done.”

“What became of them?” She looked up at his angular profile, gauging his response. She was surprised to see a passing hint of pain.

“They made a choice, and it was not the one I’d hoped,” he answered cryptically.

“What choice is that?” she pressed.

“One that may soon be presented to you.” Jacques met her eyes and smiled warmly as he led her into the ballroom.

The ballroom glimmered in white and gold. The high ceiling was beautifully decorated with Georgian plasterwork, like sugary icing on a decadent cake, gilt accents glinting across it like stars in a frosted sky. Two pendulous crystal chandeliers sparkled with the light of hundreds of candles. Notes from a string orchestra carried through the room giving elegant couples a rhythm as they danced, men in mostly black paired with women dressed in a kaleidoscope of color.

Georgette took Jacques’s offered hand and smiled when she saw in his eyes a shared anticipation. His hand at her waist felt like a hot iron burning through her dress, making her skin tingle. When Jacques began twirling her to the Danse Macabre her corset felt too tight and her breath came short. She could feel the restrained power of him in every movement. His body seemed particularly large as he deftly led her in a dance across the ballroom, his skill and power making up for her lack of both. Their dance was not just a series of steps but a conversation between their bodies, an intimate exchange and a promise of what could pass between them. Each twirl and dip brought them closer, their bodies pressed together and their faces inches apart, their breaths mingling in the charged air.

At a quick appraisal, the ball was lavish, filled with beauty and romance. The longer Georgette watched the dancers, the more details she noticed. Details that made her skin prickle with something between excitement and a primal sort of fright. Pointed canines nipped at jawlines and dragged along the throats of dance partners. A few couples were actively engaged in biting each other in lewd displays that morbidly mirrored heated kissing. Claws traced lines over exposed skin, and some innocuous movements were too fast for Georgette’s eye to see. Most unsettling were the eyes. There were eyes colored blood red, bone white, and coal black. Retinas colored in tones usually only found in cadavers, eyed their partners hungrily. Some, like Jacques, had eyes that nearly glowed with vibrant color. Those were both the most striking and the most unnerving. A redheaded man watched her with eyes as orange as a sunset and a startlingly beautiful woman with rich violet eyes looked at Jacques from across the room. Georgette saw no other eyes with the enticing, predatory gold that glinted in Jacques’s.

Vampires. They mingled with the crowd, their numbers few compared to the humans, like a pack of wolves weaving through a herd of cattle.

Vignettes came to Georgette in a flash as bodies moved across the dance floor, hiding one couple engaged in an act of depravity as another was revealed.

A vampire, his glacial eyes as piercing as they were cold, held a young woman close, his lips trailing kisses along her neck before his fangs sank into her flesh. The woman’s gasp was one of bliss, her body arching into his as if seeking more of the exquisite pain. Nearby, another vampire, a striking figure with sterling silver hair, pressed his lips fervently to his partner's wrist, the crimson trickle of blood staining his mouth as he drank deeply. The vampiress with violet eyes dragged a pointed fingernail across her clavicle, releasing a drop of ruby blood. Keeping her eyes fixed seductively on Jacques, she collected the blood on her fingertip and licked it away. Jacques held Georgette tighter and bowed his head to trail his lips affectionately and possessively along her cheek.

“You’re safe here,” Jacques told her to put any distress at ease. “Pierre’s parties are friendly to all. Even if they were not, a vampire would squander the long years of his life by crossing me.”

“That’s a bold statement,” she laughed, but relaxed a little inside his arms.

“You happened to mention you fancy a bold man.” He winked at her.

“Only if his boldness is not misplaced.” She laughed.

“How do you judge me?” Jacques raised his eyebrows.

“I’m reserving judgment.” She ran his hand from his shoulder down over his chest.

Vampires and humans swirled together in a seductive waltz, their movements fluid, with an intoxicating, ethereal quality. Their partners, the humans, seemed entranced, their faces a mix of ecstasy and drunkenness as they succumbed to the allure of their immortal companions. The air seemed to shimmer with the quality often confined to dreams, and it was only because of her exposure to Jacques and the mental effects he could induce that Georgette realized it was a product of the combined hypnosis of the vampires there, creating a dreamlike state among the humans. She wondered then if Jacques was keeping her lucid, or if she had a tolerance simply by being aware of the phenomenon’s existence.

A boisterous laugh sounded through the throng of dancers. Georgette saw a flash of red among the crowd and Jacques scoffed with irritation. She recognized Buck Taylor easily, the second tallest man in the room wearing a bold red shirt. He danced with a diminutive woman, all but slinging her around the floor in his arms. Now that she watched the other dancers more closely Georgette recognized other men from the Wild West Show, most of them part of Buck’s Rough Riders.

“Pierre finds great amusement in your American cowboys,” Jacques explained with distaste.

“They can always be trusted to liven up an event.” Georgette saw that several men wore their gunbelts and revolvers peeking out from beneath their rented tailcoats. One of the bumbling cowboys bumped into an elegant vampiress. The pale vampire hissed at the tan cowboy, but he was too focused on his dance partner to notice. Georgette remarked, “I’ll bet your friends can liven things up too.”

“Pierre enjoys spectacle.” Jacques kept his attention on Georgette, unconcerned with the sights around them.

“Did you bring me here because I fit in with the spectacle?” she was only partially teasing.

Jacques shook his head subtly, rustling his long hair. “If this is a circus, you are the ringmaster and I am merely your dancing bear.” He grinned and twirled her unexpectedly, holding her tighter when he brought her back into his arms. As they moved across the floor, their bodies communicated in a language all their own. A subtle shift of Jacques's hand on her waist, the gentle pressure of Georgette's palm against his shoulder, the synchronized glide of their feet. Jacques brushed his lips against Georgette's skin, his breath warm and tantalizing as he savored her exquisite scent. The sound of blood coursing excitedly through her veins was as clear in Jacques’s ears as the orchestra, beating a rhythm to which he would never tire of dancing.

The haunting melody curled around Jacques and Georgette like mist rolling in with the evening breeze. The world seemed to fall away as Jacques's grip on Georgette tightened, pulling her closer. He lowered his head to capture her lips in a kiss that was both tender and consuming. Georgette felt the world around them blur into insignificance, her senses overwhelmed by the softness of his lips and the heady taste of him. Her fingers curled into his hair, pulling him closer as the kiss deepened, their movements growing more synchronized and passionate. Jacques's hands roamed her back, sending shivers down her spine, while her own hands explored the breadth of his strong shoulders.

Jacques’s chest swelled with pride when he pulled back from their kiss with a smile on his lips. He gave her another ebullient twirl. Georgette should have been equally buoyed, the emotion was certainly there. But there was something in the way so many unnatural eyes watched her; the way their fangs glinted when they grinned. The small hairs on the back of her neck prickled with unease. She had never felt herself weak or any semblance of a victim, but now she felt like a doe who had wandered into a den of wolves. Where there had been excitement minutes before, it was now tinged with trepidation. Jacques seemed wholly unaware and entirely absorbed in her alone. She wondered for a dark moment if it was an elaborate ruse to bring her here so he could have her at a disadvantage, but she couldn’t think that of him when he had been nothing but kind to her. He also had no need of placing her at a disadvantage to do anything he wanted to her, if he wanted to act brutish. She couldn’t pinpoint precisely what was amiss, unable to consciously articulate what piqued the primal part of her mind.

“Is it too much trouble to ask for some fresh air and a drink?” she asked instead, using thirst to explain why her mouth had gone dry.

“As you wish,” Jacques assured her.

Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips, keeping his gleaming eyes on hers as he placed a kiss on her skin. Many eyes watched them as they weaved through the crowded ballroom, giving Georgette another prickle of concern like panicky ants crawling up her spine. Buck Taylor watched too, watched her, his eyes narrowed. Buck could be jealous of her, although never enough for him to lay any official claims on her, but he had never been aggressive or mean spirited before. The sight of him unsettled her further so that she clutched Jacques’s hand.

Jacques led her to a grand staircase at the far end of the ballroom and up to the third story. A short walk down a hallway lined with oil paintings found them at a pair of doors opened to a large balcony. They walked to the stone balustrade, taking in the view of the gardens dappled with moonlight. Jacques rested his hand on the small of her back.

“I’m not accustomed to crowds so large.” Georgette inhaled the fresh night air then turned into Jacques, placing her hand on his chest. “Perhaps the drink would taste better someplace else. Take me away from this ruckus and let us enjoy a more private evening.”

A sound rumbled in Jacques’s chest, as if he had forced a groan back down into his gut before it escaped his throat, and his fingers dug into the fabric of her dress. “I didn’t bring you here tonight with that intention, but my god, darling, there’s nothing I want more.” He did groan now, remembering the obligation to his friend. “But first, I’d very much like for you to meet my friend and our host, Pierre. He must be, ah, occupied for a short time. Let me fetch you that drink and then we’ll reassess. One should never attempt anything amorous on a dry throat.”

He stole a lingering kiss then walked from the balcony in a brisk, long stride. Georgette leaned over the balustrade, breathing deep to try to steady her nerves. Cheery sounds of the ball carried to her and the night was beautifully serene. It didn’t help. Men she had known and traveled with for years were acting strangely and this mansion with its elegant veneer and sinister undertone had to be playing on her nerves. It would be irrational for such a set of circumstances not to. She realized too that the man she felt safest with and trusted most was the man she barely knew. She smiled when she heard footsteps approaching her across the balcony.

Her smile faded when she turned and faced a stranger.

An extraordinarily handsome man walked toward her, tall and muscular with dark hair and viper green eyes that gleamed like radium. Four sharp fangs flashed inside his dashing smile. He had the look of a lion stalking his prey when he approached her, gracile but powerful, the chilling, malicious smile only a façade to keep her from taking flight. There was nowhere for her to flee even if she wished it, unless she wanted to charge past him to the only door or fling herself over the balcony. And she didn’t run from fright.

“I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about,” the man said in a rich seductive voice. Meeting her at the railing, he leaned his hip against it and drummed short but pointed nails upon it, as he let his eyes openly travel her figure. “You’ve caused quite a stir in our little cloister.”

“It’s the dress, isn’t it?” she asked to make light, but she didn’t return his false smile.

“Le Gris hasn’t flaunted a human in a very long time,” the man said, a hint of menace dripping from his words. “He has his dalliances, as do we all, but such things are to be kept discreet. It’s frowned upon, you know. Humans are our hounds and cattle. You can see how taboo that makes it for us to entangle ourselves with a human. Let alone to openly cavort with one.”

“Does my standing alone on a balcony constitute cavorting?” she asked brusquely.

“I can smell him on you.” The man leaned too close, bringing his nose near her throat and inhaled lewdly. “As well as the perfume you’re wearing. Tuberose and jasmine. It pairs well with the scent of arousal you cannot hide from us, but clashes with the vanilla fragrance sprayed upon your dress by its maker. The scent left on the fabric by her aged fingers taints the ripeness of your skin.”

“You make my skin crawl.” She looked at him defiantly, a hair’s breadth away from pulling her derringer and firing a bullet into one of his venom green eyes.

“That is not all I could do to your skin.” He snatched her arm, yanking her to him as he brought her arm to his mouth. Georgette couldn’t twist her arm free from his iron grip, forced to watch with revulsion as the man licked the inside of her wrist.

“I, for one, have never had to capture a struggling woman to taste her,” Jacques’s voice boomed across the balcony from where he stood in the doorway. He held a glass of champagne in each hand and walked nonchalantly toward them. Only his aurous eyes, glinting murderously, betrayed the ferocity boiling inside him. “Do you not have a lady of your own to charm this evening, Slyvester?”

Slyvester kept his eyes on Jacques but spoke to Georgette, “Do you know that whomever of us bites you first will have claim to you forever? No matter where you go or how many years pass, or how many other lovers you take, you will carry our mark forever. Much like branding a horse is to you cowboys.”

“Just like branding a horse, it’s a good way for you to get kicked in the teeth,” Georgette spat.

Still holding Georgette’s arm brutally tight, Slyvester dragged it out until her arm was stretched out over the balustrade in a clear threat as he looked at Jacques. “You haven’t bestowed your curse upon her yet. Humans are so fragile, their lives so fleeting.”

Jacques’s lips curled in a snarl matching the menace in his voice, “Whereas it takes a great deal of violence to kill us.” His exposed fangs looked longer to Georgette than before, or perhaps it was the viciousness about him that enhanced his frightening appearance. “If you want to find out firsthand, I’ll accommodate you.”

“You’re past your prime, old man,” Slyvester said venomously. “You peaked during the Enlightenment.” His eyes drifted up toward a window another story above them. “Just like Pierre, you’ve grown content and weak.”

Without warning, Jacques lunged at Slyvester. His movement was almost too fast for Georgette to see – a blur of bared teeth, wicked eyes, and wild hair, shoulders bunched and black coat flapping around his huge body. Growling bestially, Jacques tackled the other vampire with jarring force, sending both men plunging over the balcony to the garden three stories below. Georgette gasped, helplessly watching them plummet. Horror slowed the moment for her, and it appeared to her that they fell in slow motion, clawing at each other and twisting in the air like angry cats.

The men hit the ground far below with bone-shattering force. Georgette leaned far over the balustrade, as if the few extra inches she gained would help her see better. On the ground, the men rolled over one another, a mass of frenzied punching and biting. Their growls and hisses and curses carried to Georgette, along with the sounds of flesh tearing under sharp nails and fists pummeling into meat.

Tearing herself from the rail, Georgette ran as fast as she could to the nearest staircase that would take her down to the garden where the men fought viciously.

*******************************************************************************************

Jacques fisted Sylvester’s lapels as he tackled him over the balustrade, holding the bastard beneath him as they fell. He ensured that Slyvester hit the ground on his back with Jacques landing on top of him, driving his fists down into the vampire’s flesh with all the force of his heavy body and gravity. Jacques felt Sylvester’s collarbones shatter and his shoulder blades beneath splinter – a minor injury for a rapidly-healing vampire. Sylvester squealed with rage and pain, thrashing beneath Jacques to unseat him.

Sharpened fingernails slashed across Jacques’s face, temporarily blinding him, and giving the other man a moment’s advantage. Bucking his hips and twisting his body, Slyvester knocked Jacques off and rolled up to his feet. Jacques immediately sprang up into a fighting stance, perfectly balanced, with his fists clenched tight. The ragged claw marks across Jacques’s face healed in seconds, leaving blood streaking down his cheek.

“Can you blame me?” Slyvester asked flippantly as he spat blood from his mouth. “She is enticing. For an appetizer.” He swiped a clawed hand at Jacques the way a boxer used a jab, to gauge distance and create space. “What does Pierre think of her? How is Pierre this evening?”

For the first time that evening, it concerned Jacques that he hadn’t yet seen Pierre. That Sylvester was remarking on it now meant something sinister was afoot. Slyvester shot out a low kick at Jacques’s knee. Jacques jerked his leg up enough for the kick to miss, then stomped his boot down on the front of Slyvester’s knee, digging the tread of his boot into flesh and peeling skin away from the vampire’s skin. Slyvester shrieked with pain as the bone crunched, but even this was little more than a nuisance to a vampire. Slyvester shook his injured leg once and when he returned it to the ground it was healed.

Jacques circled his opponent in another semblance to boxing. Slyvester held his hands high to guard his face. Jacques kept his fists lower but ready, inviting a strike at his face. He even leaned in, making his invitation sweeter. Slyvester took the bait, swiping viciously at Jacques’s face with all his force, putting his body into the blow. Jacques bobbed his head and shoulders to dodge the strike, his timing perfect, and caught the arm Slyvester was foolish enough to give him. Anchoring Slyvester’s wrist in his fist, Jacques slammed his opposite forearm into his enemy’s elbow, shattering the bone. In the same savage motion and with the same arm, Jacques whipped his hand to Slyvester’s face. His thumb caught under his enemy’s nose and his fingers dug into his far eye socket. With a cruel wrench of his hand, Jacques broke the man’s nose, ripped the flesh from his cheek, and popped his eye from its socket. Slyvester howled and fought against Jacques’s hold on his arm like a pheasant flapping in the jaws of a hound. The crippling blow had been executed in less than a second.

Slyvester’s eye dangled from its stringy optic nerve, looking like a bloody yellow string of snot connecting the bobbing eye to the empty bloody socket. Grinning evilly, Jacques snatched the eyeball, yanked it off its string with a pop and crushed it in his fist like a grape. “That won’t grow back.”

Mercilessly, Jacques planted his bloody hand on Slyvester’s shoulder as the crippled man howled in pain and outrage, scratching ineffectively at Jacques with his free hand. Using the arm he held as leverage, Jacques spun his opponent until he faced away and Jacques was able to bring his arm up behind his back, bent unnaturally like a chicken wing. With a brutal yank, Jacques forced the man’s arm far past the range of motion for the joint, wrenching the shoulder out of its socket with a sickeningly wet gurgle of tissue and bone scraping against bone. It was hardly more difficult for Jacques than pulling a drumstick from a roast turkey. Slyvester’s arm dangled limp and useless inside its sack of skin. It would heal quickly once the joint was realigned, but this was not easily and quickly done by a man inexperienced in such matters of field medics, and it would dangle like a tassel until then.

Now, one-eyed and effectively one-armed, Slyvester swayed on his feet and whimpered feebly. Blood, snot, and drool mingling in a dripping mess from his face. Jacques shoved him away, sending Sylvester stumbling. Jacques straightened and smoothed his lapels. He cast a glance at the huge bay windows that looked into the candlelit interior of the mansion. The sounds of the ball had grown louder and more raucous.

“You forget, mon ami,” Jacques snarled ruthlessly as he ran a hand through his wild hair. “I spent centuries at war. Hundred Year’s War, Byzantine Wars, Muscovite Wars, Hessian Wars, Napoleon’s War. I returned from the Transvaal less than a decade ago. War and women are all that have held my interest throughout the centuries.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Slyvester sputtered. “It made you arrogant.” He grinned, showing a broken-off canine.

Jacques narrowed his eyes at this misplaced reaction.

A crash inside the mansion drew his attention. He jerked his head to the sound, but saw nothing inside the shimmering ball other than a flash of the expected horde of moving bodies. Something rustled on Jacques’s opposite side in the garden. A white streak shot out of the dark with great speed from among the hedges and flowers, aiming for his head. Jacques ducked and snatched the thing out of the air, realizing it was a rope when he clenched his fist around it. The rigid sort of latigo rope used by cowboys. Jacques’s hand instantly burned as if he had grabbed a red hot poker out of a fire, and his skin began to sizzle, filling the night air with the scent of burning skin and something metallic.

“Silver?” Jacques frowned as he sniffed the smoke rising from his palm to confirm his suspicion. Silver wouldn’t kill Jacques as it would a weaker vampire, but it burned like hell and it rendered many of his vampiric abilities impotent. Silver interwoven into a rope could render him as useless as a mortal. He didn’t release the rope despite the pain in his hand, and instead wrapped his fist around it multiple times to get a better grip and yanked the rope toward him, reeling in the man holding it. The flesh on Jacques’s hand burned and sizzled like steak on a grill, but the pain didn’t stop him. Another rope flew at him from his other side. He saw it just in time to catch it with his left hand, instantly scalding that palm too.

Just as Jacques realized Sylvester had been a ruse to lure him out into the garden alone, the bay windows exploded. Glass and iron framing shot out into the garden, stinging Jacques’s skin like angry wasps. A dozen vampires and humans burst out of the broken window in a frightened stampede, the humans screaming and vampires hissing. Hot on their heels was one of the cowboys, a man with a handlebar mustache and drawn pistol in hand. The cowboy aimed and fired at a male vampire Jacques recognized as one of Pierre’s acquaintances. The vampire seized when he was struck in the back, his mouth open in a rictus of pain. Other party goers ran around the injured vampire, too scared to care about him. The bullet didn’t exit the front of his chest and must have settled inside his ribcage, because his chest began to burn from the inside out. Charred flesh crept up from his collar up his throat to his jaw and over his face, until his features resembled a sizzling mummy.

Jacques watched, confused. Bullets didn’t have that effect on vampires. He’d been shot dozens of times to little more effect than a bee sting. In the few seconds he watched the bewildering scene unfold, he felt his great strength seeping away. The ropes in his hands felt like they were attached to Clydesdales instead of the men holding them, and he felt his arms being slowly drawn apart as his muscles quivered with fatigue. One of the men who had stepped out from his hiding place, approached Jacques with his gun drawn as he tried to get his rope back and take another shot at catching him in a more effective hold.

Handlebar Mustache stood just inside the broken window, one boot planted on the window frame. He trained his pistol on Jacques.

Jacques summoned a burst of strength from his faltering muscles and yanked the rope held by the closest cowboy. The cowboy stumbled toward Jacques, who dropped both ropes and grabbed the cowboy by the throat with lightning speed. Jacques spun the cowboy in front of him as a shield just as Handlebar Mustache fired at his chest. His strength was already returning as the bullet struck the cowboy in the chin, level with Jacques’s heart, and tore off his face. Jacques grabbed the man’s pistol and shoved his body away.

A woman staggered away from the melee inside the mansion, clutching a wound on her thigh that spurted blood in time with her pulse. She weaved in between Jacques and Handlebar Mustache, blocking his shot. In that same second another lasso shot at Jacques from behind, catching him around the neck and instantly cinching tight. Jacques choked as he was yanked backward off his feet and dragged across the ground, the gun in his hand bouncing wildly with no target in sight. He forced the fingers of his free hand in between his flesh and the rope that was choking him, burning through his throat, and leaching his strength all at once, as his back scraped over the ground. Twisting his head, he saw another cowboy mounted on a horse with the rope dallied around the saddle horn. The cowboy was trying to aim his pistol at Jacques’s head while his horse backed quickly away to keep tension on the rope as he was trained.

With a shaking hand, Jacques tried to aim his pistol at the man before his opponent could get a shot off. Jacques flinched when a shot crashed in his ears. But it was the mounted man’s head that burst open, sending a spray of pink chunks out from the side of his temple. The man slumped in the saddle and another shot rang across the garden, catching Handlebar Mustache in his open mouth as he shouted something that would never be heard.

Jacques’s eyes were blurry when he tried to aim his gun toward the gunfire. He could only see the hazy blood red outline of a woman walking swiftly toward him out of the shadows of the mansion. Georgette aimed over Jacques’s prostrate body and fired again, killing the other man who had roped him. His vision was clear enough to see the deadly focus in her eyes when she trained her tiny derringer dangerously close to his head. Her fourth shot burst in Jacques’s ears and the rope around his neck went slack with a twang.

Coughing violently, Jacques rolled over and pushed up to his hands and knees. He shoved the rope off over his head and breathed deep, feeling his strength return quickly. He got to his feet unsteadily and tucked the pistol into his waistband as Georgette ran to him. Grinning painfully at her he said hoarsely, “A woman of many talents.”

“That’s nothing,” she replied breathily. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to shoot another admirer down from the gallows before his neck snapped. That’s pressure, I tell you.”

She didn’t run to Jacques but to the horse who now stood nearby, riderless and panicky. Grabbing the reins, she paused to pet the animal, letting him know she meant him no harm. She called to Jacques over her shoulder, “You might hurry! I only had four shots, and you’re lucky I didn’t miss any of them.”

Georgette swung up into the saddle, keeping a tight hand on the reins so Jacques could clamber onto the horse as it shied from the mayhem surrounding them. Jacques had barely locked his arms around her waist when she kicked the horse into a gallop. He had to shout in her ear to be heard above the rattling gunfire and screams inside the mansion, and the horse’s drumming hoofbeats, “Here you were worried the vampires would cause trouble.”

“I recognized some of those cowboys,” she said as she brought the horse in a tight whirl around a circular fountain, using it for cover before charging down a lane between hedges. “They’re hired guns. Gunslingers.”

“Not amateurs either,” Jacques agreed. “Their weapons are rigged to target our weaknesses.”

“So then, it was a vampire causing problems. One of yours gave the gunslingers some inside information.” She cocked her head to the side to look at him. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to spend much time around me to learn I’m always right.”

“Sylvester must have made a deal with them,” Jacques gritted, his arm tightening around her waist. “Pigeon-livered bastard.”

“Lucky for you, the man isn’t alive who can catch me when I’m riding a horse.” She kicked the horse into a run down the hedgerow. For Georgette, the hedges were very dark, aside from the faint light that reached out from the mansion, casting strange angular shadows among the hedges. The fighting was centralized in the mansion, quickly fading behind them. With the start they had and a fast horse, they could easily ride to safety.

Jacques squeezed her and put his hand over hers on the reins. “I can’t ride away from a battle. And I have to find that damned harlot, Pierre, and keep him alive.” He pulled back on the reins from behind, slowing the horse. “I’ll get off here and go back. Keep riding until you’re safe. I promise I’ll find you before the sun rises.”

“Says the man who was just hogtied and bleeding into the grass,” she snapped angrily. “Just hold on.”

Sitting back in the stirrups and leaning back against Jacques’s chest, she pulled the horse into a sliding stop in the dewy grass. At the press of her heels, the horse wheeled around with catlike agility. Instead of dashing back down the hedgerow, Georgette aimed the horse straight at the hedge that separated them from the mansion. The horse sailed over the hedge with ease. Jacques grunted when the horse landed. Having no stirrups to support his weight, the seat of the saddle hammered him rudely in the crotch.

“If we vampires didn’t heal quickly, you might have just ruined one of my finer talents,” Jacques grumbled in her ear, trying to adjust his painful seat on the horse’s running hindquarters.

The lights of the mansion blasted her eyes like an explosion in the darkness, matching the chaos inside. Many windows were shot out or broken, and straggling guests, human and vampire alike, ran terrified from the broken windows and torn-off doors. Gunshots and screams had both dwindled, but as with any battle, the silence following was more grim.

“Tell me where to find your friend.” Georgette set her jaw, aiming the horse at the large, shattered bay window.

Jacques fumbled with the pistol in his waistband, clumsily checking the number of rounds in the cylinder. “Five shots.”

“Do you know how to use that Colt?” she asked as she tried to spy the part of the windows least covered with toothy shards of glass.

“I’ve never had much use for a revolver,” Jacques answered as he closed the cylinder and returned the gun to his belt.

“Wonderful.” Georgette kicked the horse when it balked at the window.

The animal had more sense than its rider – entering a broken window into a room that echoed with gunfire and smelled of blood, gunpowder, and fear seemed like a bad idea to any rational horse. Georgette yanked the reins when the horse tried to turn away from the window and kicked it again. Squealing in frustration, the horse reared in protest at the window then launched himself inside with enough gusto to clear a five-rail fence. Polished hardwood floors were slick as ice under a horse’s hooves, and the horse landed in a barely controlled skid. An unlucky cowboy running toward the window with his gun drawn was caught between the horse and the wall. The horse careened sideways into the man, crushing him against the wall and shattering his ribcage. Jacques gave him the coup de grace by kicking his heel harshly into the man’s temple. His body slid down the wall leaving a bloody smear. Jacques had to duck low to avoid the doorframe when they charged through the double doors of the ballroom.

The ballroom that shimmered with elegance and anticipation earlier was now mayhem, filled with the dead, the injured, and those who were still fighting, while bullets shot across the room. Gunsmoke hung in the air, mixing with the smell of blood and viscera. Broken shards of crystal littered the floor, twinkling especially bright where they sat in the scattered pools of blood. Bodies of vampires lay partially charred, still smoldering, contorted in agony, and humans lay broken and bleeding. A toppled candelabra had caught the dress of a dead woman on fire, leaving her body ablaze on the ballroom floor.

A cowboy trained his pistol on a vampire dashing toward the nearest doorway and fired. The vampire seized when the bullet caught him between the shoulder blades before his flesh began to sizzle then burst into flames across his back. A lady vampire with blazing blue eyes hissed like an angry cat at the cowboy as he fired a round that just missed her head. He fired again, the hammer falling on an empty chamber with a snap. Terror flashed across the cowboy’s face when he realized he was out of bullets, and he fumbled to quickly reload. The vampire launched herself at the cowboy, sinking her claws into his chest. He screamed until it was cut off abruptly as she tore his throat out with her teeth in a geyser of blood.

“What the hell is in those bullets?” Georgette asked, kicking the horse into a gallop across the ballroom. The horse vaulted over a pair of dead dancers, splintering the wood floor with his hooves when he landed.

“I’ll be damned if I know,” Jacques said in her ear. “More than silver. Silver was woven into that rope, and you saw what that will do. This is something else.”

“You better not get shot,” she told him. “If it doesn’t kill you, I’ll do it myself.”

“Indeed.” Jacques grinned and raised his hand in front of her, pointing at the large staircase. “If Pierre is anywhere inside, he’ll be in his favorite bedroom on the second floor.”

A cowboy standing near a wall fired a shot at them, just missing Georgette’s face. It passed so close she felt the air sizzle as it flew by her ear. Jacques aimed his pistol over Georgette’s shoulder and fired. The wood next to the cowboy’s head exploded, sending splinters stabbing into the side of the man’s face. Jacques had missed the man’s head by a foot, but his shot was lucky. Howling with pain, the cowboy clasped his ruined face. Georgette aimed her horse at the man and kicked hard, making the horse charge into the cowboy at a run. The horse plowed over the man, crushing him beneath pounding hooves.

“Save your bullets if you can’t shoot straight,” Georgette snapped at him.

Georgette made for the staircase, passing near the toppled candelabra where it lay across a woman’s burning corpse. As they ran past, Jacques shoved the pistol back in his belt and leaned far to the side, holding Georgette’s waist for balance as he reached toward the floor. Jacques grabbed the candelabra, twirling the long metal pole in his huge right hand as he righted himself behind Georgette.

“This suits me better,” he said with a laugh as he held the three-pronged end upright like a lance at the ready.

The horse took the stairs gamely, lunging up them like a hillside, taking four and five at a time as splinters flew up from the battered wood beneath his hooves. A cowboy rushed toward them at the top of the stairs. It took him an extra few seconds to decide where to aim at the strange spectacle of man and woman riding double on a horse bounding up the stairs. Jacques drew back his right arm and threw the candelabra like a javelin, flinging it ahead of the running horse and straight into the cowboy’s chest. The iron rod impaled the cowboy with its trident head with such force that it sent him stumbling backward, dead on his feet. As Jacques and Georgette rode past the man’s twitching body, Jacques plucked the candelabra from the man’s body where it stood upright like a pin in an entomology specimen.

The horse galloped toward the closed pair of doors at the far end of the hallway. Georgette wanted to charge straight through them, but the horse balked, sliding to a stop at the last second and whirling to the side. Cursing the animal, Georgette brought him alongside the door. Jacques kicked the door but it held fast, locked from the inside or even barricaded. Raucous voices could be heard inside the room beyond. Georgette spun the horse around until his rear faced the door. Jacques understood and smacked the horse hard on the rump. With an indignant squeal, the horse kicked back in response to the rude smack, kicking through the wooden doors as effectively as a battering ram.

Georgette kicked the horse to burst through the broken doors, scattering the people inside in every direction like a covey of quail bursting haphazardly from cover beneath the nose of a hunting hound. Women’s screams and men’s shouts filled the room along with the clamor of glasses dropped to the floor. Jacques aimed his candelabra lance as the horse ran inside, choosing a cluster of three men who loomed over a pair of frightened women. It angered him more to see all parties were mostly naked, thinking of what violent acts against the women he had interrupted. The trident tip hit the nearest man high in the chest and simultaneously the man beside him in the shoulder, finally thrusting through to the man behind, catching him in the guts. The charging horse forced the three skewered men backward, as they futilely screamed and flailed, until their backs collided with the latticed windows. With a final heave on the lance, Jacques shoved the three men out of the window to meet their death two stories below, impaled together. They made for a garden decoration that would have been the envy of Vlad Tepes.

Pierre was shouting something from a far corner of the room where he huddled with three women, naked and waving his arms wildly. Jacques paid him no mind beyond reassuring himself that his friend was still alive, albeit in some state of nude disarray. But that was not an uncommon state for Pierre.

Georgette brought the horse around to face the room, leaning low against his neck to shield her from any gunfire. Jacques jumped down from the horse, landing fully in balance and descending into a crouch in a fluid movement with feline agility. He assessed the room faster than a heartbeat. Two men stood in the corner near Pierre and his women, also mostly nude. One mostly dressed, very tall man stood alone by a large fireplace, fumbling to draw his gun from his gunbelt that was undone along with his trousers and flapping around his hips beneath the hem of his red shirt. Jacques sprang at the pair of men by Pierre, covering the room like a panther, his fangs likewise bared in a bestial snarl, eyes gleaming aurous and merciless. He caught the men before their sluggish human reflexes could avail them. Jacques’s right fist slammed into the nearest man’s teeth with inhuman strength and all the forgiveness of iron, nearly bursting through the back of the man’s skull and killing him as quickly as a bullet to the brain. With his left hand, Jacques caught the other man’s throat, digging his nails into the feeble flesh and ripping his throat out, severing arteries and tendons and windpipe all in one vicious motion.

Using his body to block Pierre and the shrieking women near him, Jacques straightened to face the one remaining cowboy. The tall man in the red shirt. Buck Taylor, the King of the Cowboys and, Jacques suspected, a rival for Georgette’s affection. The snarl on Jacques’s lips turned upward into a malicious sideways smirk. With Jacques’s heightened senses and hyper-fast reflexes, events inside the room seemed to move in slow motion. Georgette had aimed the horse at Buck, trying to run him down. Pierre was shouting something undoubtedly not worth listening to. Buck had retrieved his pistol from his gunbelt, drawing it on Jacques with the famous lightning-quick speed of an American gunfighter. Jacques drew his own pistol, fanning the hammer with his left hand to circulate a fresh round into the chamber as he simultaneously raised the gun with his right hand. Jacques fired when the front sight moved across Buck’s heart, a fraction of a second faster than Buck could finalize his aim.

The bullet caught Buck under his collarbone on his left side, an inch too high for a killing shot, but enough to send him reeling backward. He stumbled toward the broken window as Jacques fanned another round into his revolver and fired again, faster this time and more errant. The second bullet embedded itself in Buck’s hipbone, knocking him nearer the window. Following his momentum, Buck dove out of the broken window, taking his chances with the drop to the ground below instead of Jacques and his gun.

Jacques’s narrowed eyes followed Buck out of the window, the grin still on his lips at the prospect of the hunt. He stumbled when Pierre struck him hard in the back from behind and shouted angrily, “What in the hell are you doing, you raving madman!?”

“Huh?” Jacques sputtered dumbly, taken completely off guard. Confusion knotted his brows when he turned his head toward Pierre.

“Can you not be invited to any decent occasion without wreaking utter fucking mayhem?” Pierre seethed, spittle flying from his mouth, his chest blotchy red with waning arousal and mounting anger, his vampiric eyes gleaming deep mahogany. “This was the most promising evening I have arranged in years, and here you burst in like a goddamn lunatic? What are you thinking? And shooting? Why in the Nine Circles of Hell are you shooting inside my mansion!?”

Still holding the pistol, Jacques gestured from the broken window to Georgette to Pierre, his mouth gaping – a very rare event in which he was lost for words. Blinking through the confusion, he asked, “What exactly were you doing in here with those cowboys?”

“What was I doing?” Pierre laughed bitterly. “What does your towering intellect tell you?” He gestured at his nudity and his now unimpressive flaccidity. When Jacques still looked dumbfounded, Pierre continued with the same inflection he would use to speak to a very stupid child, “I had four cowboys in here – the biggest of the bunch of them, I might add – and not enough women to go around. The big one, Buck, is a fairly tolerable stand in for you. Since you have never agreed to have a properly fun and debauched evening with me, I have been forced to finagle it in other ways.” He stomped his foot petulantly, making his limp dick flop humorously against his thigh. “This is the nearest I’ve been to enjoying just such an evening, and this – this – is the pallor you cast over it!”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Jacques shook his head, his brow furrowed. Then he started to laugh. “You had the cowboys in here for a goddamn orgy?”

“It sounds so cheap and vulgar when you say it like that,” Pierre huffed. “Just because they’re beastly Americans, that’s no reason for you to be rude. It was going to be a marvelous evening. One for the books, I tell you!”

Georgette’s expression was a mixture of aghast and amused when she looked at Pierre, as if her features were unsure of which emotion to settle on. She kicked her leg over the horse’s neck and dropped to the floor. She looked at Jacques for guidance, but he was of no use at present, still dumbfounded himself.

“Did those men accompany you here to your bedroom?” Jacques wiped the back of his hand over his sweaty brow. “Have they been here all evening?”

“They came here in a raucous sort of hurry a short while ago.” Pierre was still so irritated, he hadn’t yet bothered finding his pants, as if he was still hopeful for the brand of action he wanted. “But then I convinced them – without much difficulty, I might add – that I could give them an evening far superior to any other they had planned.” He tapped his temple in a knowing gesture.

Jacques couldn’t stop the laughter that bellowed from his throat. “You seduced the fucking cowboys? Men come to kill you, and you seduce them. I bow to your superior skills of self-preservation.” Jacques did bow, low and mockingly, with a flippant flourish of his tailcoat.

“You’re stark raving mad.” Pierre planted his hands on his hips and looked accusatorily at Georgette. “Have you poisoned him?”

Jacques looked at Georgette too, his eyes luminous with laughing tears. “All vampires have unique gifts. Whereas I can be persuasive and intuitive, as you have seen, Pierre can seduce anything that walks, crawls, or brays.” Looking around the destroyed room he laughed again. “Or shoots six-guns and throws lariat ropes.”

“Hear the jealousy in his voice?” Pierre asked Georgette sardonically.

“Have you any notion of the destruction wrought upon your guests and your mansion?” Jacques asked, wiping a tear from his eye. “It’s utter havoc downstairs. Did you not hear the screams and the gunfire?”

“Still raving, I see.” Pierre threw his hands up, finally capitulating. He located a pair of pants and awkwardly pulled them on while still berating Jacques, “Since when have you become such a namby pamby about a little havoc? It was only two centuries ago that my castle was under siege, and you couldn’t be bothered to stop fucking that infernal redhead while the entire West wing and tower were blown to smithereens!”

“The cowboys you invited here tonight were hired guns, sent to dispose of us.” Jacques tried to purge the laughter from his voice. “Hired by that jealous little bastard, Slyvester, and no doubt led by another jealous bastard, Buck Taylor.”

“Ludicrous,” Pierre said adamantly as he searched for a shirt. He retrieved a white frilly one and pulled it halfway over his head before realizing it belonged to one of the women and was much too small.

Jacques flipped open the cylinder of the pistol he had used. There were still two rounds remaining and he pulled one out. Using his thumbnail, he dug into the soft lead tip of the bullet. A silky silver substance oozed out, glimmering in the candlelight. It was like piercing a cherry cordial housing sticky liquid inside a chocolate shell. Jacques wrinkled his nose at the scent of it and the tip of his thumb sizzled until he wiped it off on his trousers.

“Mercury,” he said with extreme distaste. “That does a number on us, let me tell you. You can see for yourself when you venture downstairs. Do you think your average American cowboy has mercury filled bullets?”

Pierre studied the silvery oozing bullet, frowning. “Well, if they were indeed mercenaries, they weren’t very good ones.”

“They were pretty damn good, actually,” Jacques said, laughing again. “But the murderous bastards weren’t prepared for being bamboozled by the biggest harlot on the continent.”

“It will take more than flattery to redeem you from this travesty,” Pierre crossed his arms over his chest. “Even if what you say is true, you could have had the decency to allow me to have my fun first before causing such destruction.” He looked at Georgette with something that might have been jealousy. “Especially since you get to have your fun with your American.”

“Are you not going to appraise the destruction downstairs?” Jacques asked incredulously.

“I have maids and butlers who are paid to deal with such nonsense.” Pierre waved his hand dismissively. He looked at Georgette and grinned. “For a cowgirl, she’s hardly bovine at all. Perhaps we can still salvage the evening.”

“I intend to salvage our evening.” Jacques winked at Georgette. “Preferably someplace less overflowing with mercury and orgies.”

“What a boring way to live.” Pierre shook his head.

*******************************************************************************************

The second time Jacques took Georgette to Brook House, his home on Park Lane, he didn’t waste a breath inviting her in. When his carriage rocked to a stop, Jacques swept her out of the coach, down his foyer, up a marvelous staircase and along hallways lined with artifacts gathered from the far reaches of the world. It was an impressive feat that she could spare a portion of her awareness for the magnificent artifacts filling Jacques’s home, even while anticipation and arousal coursed through her body and the hot weight of his hand pressed insistently on the small of her back, guiding her toward a night of excitement, perhaps filled with even more intensity than the vampire ball was fraught with death. She resolved to study these in detail and hear the story behind each tomorrow, or whenever it may be that she desired to leave Jacques’s bed. Upon further consideration, that might not be for days.

She smiled at the thought. Jacques must have intercepted her mental process because he laughed heartily, his voice booming down the long hallway. His hand at Georgette’s back snaked around her waist and he hoisted her off the ground with ease and slung her over his shoulder like a barbarian claiming his spoils of war. When he reached the doors at the end of the hallway, he shouldered into them then kicked them shut behind him, twirling with Georgette as he crossed the room toward the inviting canopy bed. Instead of dropping her onto it, Jacques returned her to the floor in front of a grand fireplace set into the wall adjacent to the bed. Dancing flames gave the room a sultry glow and made Jacques’s eyes gleam like honey.

Taking her hand, Jacques raised it to his lips in a softer overture than Georgette had expected. He fixed his eyes on hers as he slowly drew his lips higher, pressing them next against her inner wrist. She had never been kissed in that sensitive place nor with such delicacy. It was a simple action but it sent a flutter through her. The tip of Jacques’s nose rested on her skin and he inhaled her scent. The sheen in his eyes deepened until they shimmered with the same otherworldly aurous quality Georgette had only seen in them when he was looking at her desirously or ripping into living flesh.

“You want to bite me.” It was a statement because she could see the answer plainly.

“More than I’ve ever wanted any worldly pleasure,” Jacques purred. “But I won’t until you ask me.”

“Not tonight. Not yet,” she said but her voice wavered. “Worldly pleasures first, if you please.”

Jacques trailed his plush lips and coarse beard from her wrist up her inner arm, holding her eyes while his mouth caressed her skin. His next kiss was to the inside of her elbow as he raised her arm to rest her wrist on his shoulder. Georgette twined her fingers in the thick hair hanging down the back of his neck, pulling him closer. His lips relished their way up the length of her arm, pausing next on her shoulder with lips slightly parted so she felt the hot tease of his tongue. A shiver passed through her when his mouth reached her collarbone, and she laughed at her own sensitivity to his touch. Jacques grinned against her skin and lingered there for several kisses.

When he reached the base of her neck, his tongue met her skin before his lips and his hands dug harshly into her flesh. A guttural rumble rolled through his chest, a dark ravening brand of arousal. He felt impossibly large with his body pressed against her, looming over her to kiss her. The laces of her corset felt as if they had been tightened by an invisible hand and the luxurious silk of her dress felt as itchy as burlap on her skin. The thought of ripping the fine scarlet dress apart just to be free of it flashed through her mind.

Jacques ran his hands up from her hips, over her nipped waist, to the top of her bodice. He pulled back enough to give her a devilish grin. “I could rip this off as easily as tissue paper.” His forefinger teased her bosom above the bodice. “But you’ll think me a villain when your head clears. Women and clothes, you know.”

Instead, he turned her so her back faced him and ran his long fingers over her bare shoulders down the laced back of her dress. Jacques grabbed the top of the dress on either side of the laces and ripped it open as if it were nothing more than frail gauze, but causing no damage aside from the torn laces and a few warped hooks and eyes, several of which skittered away across the polished wood floor.

The small act of aggression loosened the tether on the wilder part of his nature that Jacques wanted to restrain during their first encounter. His hands turned more demanding, his mouth hungrier. He locked a strong arm around her waist from behind and kissed her nape as he hoisted her fully off the floor to extricate her from the thick pile of dress she stood inside. In the same fluid motion, he crossed to the bed and laid her on the thick duvet.

He was less considerate of her undergarments. Leaning over her, he ripped her corset open to the tune of tearing silk and snapping whalebone, making her laugh excitedly. He was gentler with her chemise in an effort to savor the moment, unwrapping a gift he’d earned with his blood. There was a simple bow at the top of her chemise, securing a decorative stitch along the neckline. Jacques bowed his head until the tip of his prominent nose pressed her skin and hooked his canine in a loop of the bow to pull it undone. Georgette smiled and arched into him, encouraging him. Jacques took the dip in the neckline between his teeth and, paired with his left hand, ripped the chemise open down the center. He nuzzled into her exposed breasts, kissing and licking the flesh that pillowed around his lips and nose.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Georgette purred, pushing back lightly on Jacques shoulders. When he raised his head and looked at her with lusting but uncomprehending golden eyes, she tugged his scarlet cravat loose and pulled the silk out of his collar. “You’re overdressed for the occasion. It seems unfair that your clothing should meet with a more civilized fate than my poor corset.”

Jacques pulled back from her and stood from the bed. He shrugged out of his tailcoat and appraised his torn and very bloody shirt. Flashing his teeth in a grin, Jacques gave her the show she wanted and ripped his own shirt open with exaggerated flair, puffing out his enormous chest and shaking back his wild hair. His pants were brusquely discarded as his eyes roamed her body, devouring the sight of her before his hands and mouth would devour the feel and taste of her. He crawled over her slowly, kissing his way up her body starting on her thigh. He met her eyes when he reached her sex. Pushing her thighs apart, he licked a fat stripe up her center and kissed her pussy as indulgently as he had kissed her lips. Bringing a hand to her breast, Jacques rubbed his calloused palm over her nipple as he squeezed her supple flesh. The sensation made her back arch, offering him more. Jacques lavished her with his tongue until her thighs were quivering and she was writhing beneath him, dripping into the sheets. He continued up her body, kissing over her navel and breasts on his way to her throat.

Jacques allowed some of his heavy weight to settle on her, pinning her beneath him. He caressed her thigh as he lifted her leg back to hook over his hip. His thick cock teased her entrance when Jacques brought his lips to hers. He kissed her ravenously, swallowing her moan, as he thrust inside in one swift motion. With her arms wrapped around him, she could feel the powerful muscles in his back and shoulders flex and tense in time with the rhythm he set. She dragged a hand through his hair and fisted it at the back of his neck, using her grip to direct his head down to her neck. The feeling of his lips and tongue on her skin and pulse point combined with the dangerous knowledge of what he could do to her there was exhilarating.

Georgette held him tighter as she trembled with pleasure and his breath became hoarse, puffing on her neck like a locomotive. The orgasm that wracked through her left her almost delirious with pleasure. Jacques dutifully pounded her through it, thrusting hard, wringing all the pleasure he could out of her body. He came with a rumbling groan, his massive body shuddering. Breathing heavily, he relaxed over her, pleasantly crushing her into the duvet while he spent several minutes kissing her indulgently.

Rolling onto his back, Jacques pulled her to drape over him. That massive chest of his made for a wonderful pillow. His voice was rich and husky, “I warned you once that if you came inside my home, I would never let you leave.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?” she purred.

“What do you want it to be?” he teased, running his large hand over her hip and the dip in her waist.

“An invitation.” She pressed closer to him, relishing the feeling of the length of his hard body.

“Stay with me,” he dropped his voice to a smoky octave just above a whisper. “Stay forever.”

“Forever would require me to be a vampire.” She looked at him with a cocked eyebrow.

He lifted head to kiss her cheek and rumble in her ear, “Shall I make you one tonight? Say yes, ma belle.”

“What other vampiric weaknesses do I need to be aware of?” she asked, lazily trailing her fingers over the faint lines on his shoulders and chest left by the silver-woven rope. They were mostly healed now and look like they were weeks old instead of only hours. “Do you burst into flames at the sight of the cross?”

“Why would a cross have any effect on us?” he scoffed. “I’ve no doubt vampires existed long before crosses were considered holy.”

“Prior to meeting you, all I knew about vampires I learned from Penny Dreadfuls.” She shrugged.

“What else did you learn from those ridiculous tabloids?” HIs hand continued soothing and caressing her.

“That vampires have no reflection in a mirror,” she answered.

“Do I look like a man who cannot see himself in a mirror?” Jacques grinned.

“I’m bored with talk of vampires, and it feeds into your preening too much.” She propped herself up with her arms on his chest. “Far more interesting than vampires are werewolves.”

“Werewolves?” Jacques raised his eyebrows.

“The Penny Dreadfuls have a story about a pack of werewolves far up north in the Yukon.” She toyed with a tendril of his hair. “They like the cold.”

“Naturally.” He smirked. “It would be prudent for me to make you a vampire before you go werewolf hunting.”

“Perhaps if we were going werewolf hunting, I’d let you,” she returned then added wistfully, “I’ve always wanted to travel there.”

“For the werewolves?” he teased.

“The northern lights are said to be beautiful.” She ignored his flippant remarks. “My father believes there is gold there too, up in the Klondike. A few miners have struck gold in the Yukon.”

“Werewolves, northern lights, and gold?” Jacques raised his eyebrows. “You’ve sold me, mon amor. When shall we leave?”

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Tagging some buddies! @babbushka @in-silks-and-flesh-and-leather @mrszimmerman24 @mrs-gucci @iamburdened @gabesprincess @rynwritesstuff @candycanes19 @caillea @cas-backwards-tie @queeniebee @mythrielofsolitude @ghoulian13 @icarusinthesea @reyloaddict55 @heartlight-starlight @thepalaceofmelanie @reveluving @vedavan @reylokisses @queen-of-elves @kyloremus @vixenofcourse @napiersmirk @lumberjack00fantasies

#best #fic #my stuff!#my wiritng #victorian!kylo #vampire #halloween #cowboy

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