Alex lowered his face between her breasts to clean up the blood there. He swiped his face in the thickening blood, and came up with his cheek stained. That was a gesture of dominance, and an instinctive, marking behavior. Gregor’s incisors sharpened in response. A fleeting desire to challenge Alex for the girl passed through him, and was quickly repressed. It was not true desire, it was instinct. Alex claimed one of Sara’s breasts, sucking it deep in his mouth. She arched her back, rising with the suction, moaning loud.
Gregor thought of Maddy’s flannel nightgown, of how it could not hide the fullness of her breasts. He imagined unbuttoning the front, and taking one heavy breast in each hand. She’d have dusky nipples.
No.
He forced his mind back to the scene in front of him.
Alex hiked Sara’s short skirt up around her hips, exposing the tops of her stockings. Swift and sure, he punctured the soft flesh of her inner thigh, making what Gregor suspected was his final, and so deepest, bite. Sara’s body stiffened as she cried out with the pain, and then she jerked under his bite as the sucking began. This mimicking of the death throes swept all rational thought from Gregor’s mind. Now he wanted her in his mouth, full belly or no. With parted lips he sucked in the air, picking up the flavor of Sara’s blood and the rising musk of her desire. Her head rolled his direction and her eyes, glazed as they were, sought and found his. Soft feeding sounds came from Alex.
Keeping her eyes on Gregor, Sara teased her own breasts, smearing bloody fingerprints across her white skin, staining her nipples red. Some action of Alex’s made her eyelids flutter and her lips part, and it was all that Gregor could do not to jump on her.
All the way back to the city he had struggled to master his desire and now he was fanning the flames. Was it masochism, or was he just an idiot? If he had any sense, he would sit down and look over his freshly audited books and pretend he didn’t have a dick at all, and continue pretending it until Elixir opened. But there was only so much deprivation he could stand in a night. He unzipped his pants and began to stroke his cock through his boxers. Crooking her mouth into a half smile, Sara imitated him: she reached down to rub her clit with her bloody hand. Alex lifted his head, nostrils flaring.
Gregor knew what was in Alex’s mouth, the salty taste of blood and pussy combined, and the memory of it made his saliva run. His cock hardened and he pushed the boxers back so he could have full play. For an instant Sara’s dark, wide eyes fixed on his cock, and then Alex buried his face between her legs. Her eyes closed, and she was gone.
Gregor leaned back in his chair, jerking and stroking alternately, his eyes narrowing, until all there was for him in the world was the strength of his hand and the sound of Sara’s gasps and pleas in his ears. Sara’s cries became Maddy’s cries, and he was under that flannel gown, feeding off her round inner thigh, and her hands were in his hair, pleading with him to…how’d she phrased it? Move north. With pleasure he’d move north. Anything to stop that mouth of hers.
That mouth of hers.
Closing over his cock and sucking deep.
He came, each spurt reluctant and agonized.
“Fuck me,” he muttered, drawing his free hand over his face, while the other still cradled his wilting cock.
Sara’s rhythmic cries told him she was about to come, too. He took that moment to disappear. Alex could have her in private.
An empty cab appeared in Maddy’s line of vision just as she was about to bite down on a steaming hot frank smothered in relish. “Damn.”
Quickly she wrapped the foil back around it and ran forward with her arm upraised. If she got it she may not be late to her herbalist after all, and that would almost make up for the sin of eating a nitrate-and-preservative-packed hot dog on the way there.
The cab slowed down and pulled over about twenty feet away. She ran for it, juggling her bag and her dinner, dodging bodies. Even a short run was proving too much for her any more. She put one hand to her chest, feeling the disturbing, lurching rhythm of her heart. Nitrates are the least of your problems, Maddy girl.
As distracted as she was, she ran straight into someone—someone trying to steal her cab.
“Oh no, buddy. This one is mine.” He was so close, and so tall, that his chest blocked her whole field of vision. Black tie, black shirt, black suit, black overcoat. Color me morbid.
“Madelena?” the wall gasped.
She craned her neck upward to see Gregor Faustin gaping at her like he’d seen his own death.
“What is your problem?” She meant it all sorts of ways. “Let go of my cab.”
Faustin recovered enough to return to his usual unpleasant self. “It’s not ‘your cab’. I hailed it.”
“You lie like a rug.” Her mind boggled trying to figure out how he could be there. How they could possibly meet again. It had to mean he was stalking her.
“What—you think I’m stalking you?” His incredulous expression, she realized, was less than flattering to her as would-be stalkee. And did he just read her mind?
“You’re right,” she snapped. “Why would you go through the trouble of stalking me when you can just break into my apartment and suck my toes whenever you like?”
Faustin folded his arms and glared at her down his crooked nose. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Nothing was more hateful than a bald-faced lie, with the possible exception of an arrogant bald-faced lie. “Look, I don’t know what you intended that night, but if you meant to do some kind of memory wipe, you failed. At the very least you could have taken away my coat and pants. The damning evidence, you know? Sloppy work, Faustin, very sloppy.”
He arched a brow. “Tell me, did you ever get checked for head injuries, Madelena?”
“Bite me.” She smacked his hand off the door handle and claimed the cab.
As quick as a blink, Faustin jumped in on the other side. “Oh no,” he said, “You’re not stealing my cab.”
Maddy met him halfway across the seat and gave him a hard shove toward the door. “Get bent, Faustin. It’s mine.”
Faustin’s eyes narrowed at her in the most evil way, and she suspected he wanted to kill her. With a growl he forced his way in and closed the door with a decisive slam.
“I do as I please.” His tone was soft and even, but chilly, and she knew what he said was the truth. But it didn’t scare her. Maddy wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of anything much—except suffering more at the hands of doctors. Twice she’d died on the operating table, and twice she’d seen the tunnel and the light. Death was no bad thing. Her will was written and she didn’t have pets.
Not that she expected this cab ride to go that wrong—though who knew with Faustin? — but it was a perspective thing. Nothing was worth getting worked up about. So all she said to his icy threat was, “Nice grumpy face you got, Faustin.”
As soon as she said that the driver, who seemed pretty pissed off himself by this time, chimed in. “Tell me please if maybe somebody is going somewhere tonight? Or do you use my cab as a social club?”
“Chelsea” said Maddy, while at the same time Faustin said, “Columbus Circle.”
“I’m late,” she hissed at him.
He shot her another black look, and then said to the driver, “Go to Chelsea first.”
Maddy resigned herself to sharing; he was too big to bludgeon. The cab began to roll. Maddy took off her beret and unwound her scarf, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. She admired how well Faustin played the injured party when she was the one who had been run over and sucked on. He was without doubt the reigning Dark Lord of Sulk. What else he was, she was not sure.