And she’d had enough. “I’ve never had a gentleman caller, but from couples I’d observed at the Super Club, umm...” Toying with her fingertips as she mustered the courage to explain whatever this was, Pearl took a deep breath. “These would not be considered appropriate topics for courtship. Especially unchaperoned courtship.”
Canting my head to the side, I puckered my lips, considering. Then I stole a peek—a little one. The fantasy sweet Pearl had daydreamed was of a man who wanted to talk to her, to introduce her to his parents, who didn’t care that she was half-starved, disgusting, and poor. Where she could pretend she was human and wouldn’t have to watch him slowly age and die.
How sad to have lived a life never knowing she had a whole family waiting for her. A family who would never age. Who would love her.
Uncharacteristically pensive, I murmured, “I see that I was right.”
It would be that first baby that would make her love me. A beautiful, perfect cherub that would nurse at her breast and drink of my flock.
But this I could not say, because it would just stir the pot. Pearl was already half-mad, and it would be centuries before that damage might mend.
Fuck you very much, Darius.
Oh, was I going to have another long talk with my son. The nightmares I would inflict on his mind. And I knew exactly what his next torment would be. Poetic justice.
I would make him relive every single night Pearl suffered in the crypt as if he were she. The perfect sentence. One I could carry out over and over and over until the sun ate this planet and my people repopulated a new one.
Tapping her foot in a feminine gesture passed down through the ages, I came back to the present to see Pearl’s arms crossed under her breasts. Her lovely lips turned down.
“I was right.” I amended, “In saying I’d follow where you walked. But I was wrong on other counts. Screw the Yelp. I should have asked you where you’d like to be treated on our first date.”
That threw her for quite a loop. Shoulders relaxing, my darling one lowered her arms. “I don’t even know what street we’re on, what year it is, or what I would have liked.”
“Quite right. Furthermore, no more talk of Jade, or ancient history. It was uncouth to assume you’d be thrilled about children as if you’d waited an eternity as I had.” I was salvaging this beautifully, despite the way she unconsciously clawed at her forearm.
So beautifully, in fact, that she said, “Well… we shouldn’t let the food get cold.”
Offering my hand like a proper gentleman, I said, “Despite my failure to ask, which I won’t repeat, I do think you’ll be pleased. The Yelp is a hilarious mishmash of human snark and assholery. But, it has its uses. If you like, I’ll teach you how it works so you might live dangerously and pick where we eat next.”
“I want to try fast food. Like from the commercials.” What a lovely glow came to her eyes before she announced, “Tacos!”
My love was completely insane, but even I was aware of humans’ delight and the necessity of tacos. “Done. And then I will introduce you to something so popular I don’t even know how to describe the human reaction to it. A taco truck.”
Our dinner was lovely. Pearl drank wine and ate her fill. So content that she let me feed her from a vein when we returned to our temporary home. Albeit the vein was in my wrist. And, unfortunately, she closed the door to her room on me when I tried to follow her in.
I was only going to hold her, and maybe steal a kiss.
Between her legs….
So instead, like a mongrel without a world begging to fuck him, I took my member in hand and stroked out a release. My thoughts full of Pearl, listening in on her dreams and lightly inserting the arousal I felt as my seed sprayed my chest.
Her mind responded in kind. In sleep, she orgasmed.
Chapter Seven
Pearl
Back bowed, I woke to a symphony of sensation that left my gasp punctuated with a shameless cry. Pulsating from my pelvis, another wave of feeling broke. Leaving my mouth gaping on another relentless, unstoppable moan.
Sweaty, panting as the dream faded and reality stole in, I sat up. Staring down where my nethers were covered by sleeping gown and blankets. Completely confounded.
What on earth?
“I heard a cry! Are you okay?”
Clutching the sheets to my breast, my head shot up to find Vladislov shirtless, wearing drawstring pajama bottoms, wiping his chest with a towel. One he then dropped on the floor as if it had never been in his hand. All the while stepping closer to my bed.
And still, I tingled, turning my eyes from his half-nakedness and trying to piece together some semblance of an answer. Because what could I have said?
Mortified, unnaturally hot, all I wanted was to fan my face or hide under the covers. But I had cried out rather loudly, and of course someone would have heard.
“A dream.” Not that I could remember it now, or even recall my name in that moment. “I’m fine. Sorry if I worried you.”
The bed dipped, and a male wearing no shirt sat next to me. He did this despite my discomposure, even resting a hand on my blanketed knee.
Leaning closer as I stiffened, shivered, and blushed, he said, “You look rather flushed, Pearl. Do you need anything? Water? A cuddle?”
My nipples were hard, poking against the simple cotton of my nightgown, covered by the sheets I clutched to my breast. And my breasts themselves… ached.
Water would be perfect. An entire frigid bath of it.
Instead, I was given heat. Heat in the voice of velvet offering solace. “You’re shivering, Pearl. Shall I warm you up?”
Before I might think of something coherent that might drive him off, my bare arm was stroked, a wake of pure fire left where I had been touched.
And it burned so beautifully in places it should not that I groaned in frustration.
“This won’t do, my dear.” Gathering me to him, Vladislov somehow already under the covers, I was pulled to that naked chest. “Let me hold you.”
Finally, my tongue unhinged. “You’re not dressed!”
Words waving off my valid complaint, he embraced me all the tighter. “In this era, men do not sleep with an upper covering. I like to keep my costume fitting with the times. Wait until you meet Vampires who still wear powdered wigs or mud for clothes. Ridiculous.”
There was a heart beating under my ear. There was warmth further invading the thin cotton of my nightclothes. The smell of smoke, spice, a cedar forest at night.
The body of a man intimately touching me in a way that wasn’t carnal but extremely intimate. Even tangling his legs with mine.
A man so strong I wouldn’t be able to stop him when—
“I didn’t come in here to have sex with you, Pearl.” That big, warm hand moved up and down my spine. “You cried out, and you need comfort.”
Which sounded reasonable.
But half-naked? Touching me? Another, last, impossible series of twitches left the place between my legs clenching at emptiness, when his leg shifted just so.
Gulping air, I succumbed to the tail end of a shiver and… finally, mercifully… whatever had possessed me abated.
My wits returned, and though I appreciated that the flaming blush of my cheek was hidden, tucked as I was under Vladislov’s chin, the entirety of this situation was wholly improper.