Black Sunshine: A Dark Vampire Romance

“Why did you do that?” I whisper, panicking. “Why did you do that?”

And why do I care if he dies?

I should want him to die.

What the fuck is that about?

“Trying to show you something,” he says, his voice light, not a care in the fucking world. “The first part is this.”

He brings his arm up to my mouth and I jerk my head back, trying to move away, but the blood is pouring out of his vein, onto my face, until I’m drenched in it, choking on it. I try to breathe, but it’s in my nose, in my mouth, hitting my tongue.

The effect is immediate, like I did a line of coke.

Goes straight to my brain.

Unhooks a few wires, screws them in other places.

A total rewiring of the mind.

All those heightened senses I was experiencing earlier come at me tenfold. I can hear more, feel more, smell more, taste more, see more. I’m overwhelmed in it, just as I’m drowning in his blood, and I might die this way, and for once I really don’t care what happens. Every pleasure part of my body is coming alive, like I’ve been dead all of my life, dead until right this moment when I’m finally awake.

He takes his arm away, pressing his other hand on my shoulder to hold me down, and then I realize what I was doing. The blood wasn’t just pouring onto my mouth; I was sucking at his skin, tasting him, drinking him, consuming him, reduced to nothing more than a fucking junkie.

I gasp for air, trying to come to terms with what I’ve become, while my body starts to move, restless, agitated, straining against the ropes.

I glance up at Absolon, and he’s watching me, pensive, wary, alert, like he doesn’t quite know what to expect either.

“And how do you feel?” he asks carefully.

I open my mouth, but my throat feels so parched. I need his blood again. I need that liquid to quench my thirst. I want to tell him even water will do, but I know that probably won’t be the case.

“How else do you feel?” he adds, reading my mind.

I close my eyes, his voice feeling like nails scraping along my scalp, making me sink into the bed. Heat rushes to my cheeks, throbbing builds between my spread legs, a feeling of emptiness, of needing something to fill me. My skin feels too hot and tight for my body and I want to claw it off but I can’t. I writhe on the sheets, trying to dissipate the urges.

“That’s what I thought,” he says thickly. Clears his throat. “You know, back in ye olden days, mothers used to do that to their kids when they were impatient and wanted the process over with. Then they’d lock their daughters in a dark room with the stable boy, and, well…sometimes he came out a happy man, and sometimes he came out dead.” He gives me a wry look. “I have no doubt you’d try and kill me if I let you loose. You’d fail, of course, but the drama would tire me.”

I glance down at his forearm. The blood has dried to a trickle now, and I can practically see the skin healing, sealing the cut. “You should be dead by now,” I say softly, my voice caught in the depths of my disbelief.

“I’ve heard that a few times, moonshine.”

“What’s happening to me?” I ask, just as my body starts to jerk. A frustrated moan escapes my lips, my head going from side to side.

I need to get off.

I need to fuck.

To come.

I need something, everything.

To be touched.

“I told you,” he says patiently. “You’re in the first stage now. Lust. It sounds good, but without the proper…outlet, it could destroy you.”

“Then let me go,” I growl.

He leans in, his brows putting his eyes in shadows. “And then what will you do? Try and fuck me? Kill me? You’d wouldn’t succeed at either of those.”

I would never fuck you, I want to say.

I want to tell him I don’t find him attractive.

That I don’t want him.

But the truth is, whatever is happening to me has rattled my brain, turned me inside out until I’m just an animal in human skin.

“I’m the one in control here.” He flashes me a dark smile. “Be a good girl and maybe I’ll let you come.”

“You bastard,” I manage to say, gasping. “You’re sick.”

He pretends to be admonished. “I’m sick? You’re the one tied to the bed because you’d probably hurt yourself if I let you loose. I didn’t make you into a vampire, Lenore, so don’t put your blame on me.”

Vampire.

I’m a vampire.

I can’t be a vampire.

He gives me a patient look. “This is what happens to everyone who turns naturally, at any rate. It’s The Becoming. First is the lust, because lust of the body depends on blood of the body. Your blood is going wild right now. Arousal is all linked to blood flow. That’s the simple truth of it. You’re going to be driven mad with desire for the next while and there’s no getting around it. So mad, that if you don’t get off, if you don’t make the pressure, the pain, the agony, go away, for even a moment or two, you might never recover. I’ve seen…things you don’t want to see, when people were finally let loose when they shouldn’t have been. Not taking that chance with you.”