Читать книгу Red Grow the Roses - Janine Ashbless - Страница 6

Sophie met the vampire while speed-dating.

There were twenty numbers printed on the paper, each with a tick-box next to it. So far Sophie had ticked two, slightly reluctantly, and she wasn’t all that sure about Number Eight: he’d had an annoying laugh that ended in a snort each time. It was a good thing, she told herself, that this wasn’t a professional event, just a charity do put on by their regular bar in aid of some cancer relief charity. She and Netta had only paid a tenner each to enter.

And oh, boy, are we getting our money’s worth, she thought, suppressing the urge to giggle.

‘I’ve got a classic MG that I’m doing up myself in my garage,’ said Number Nineteen hopefully. ‘I’ve just had the new front wing sprayed British Racing Green.’

This meant nothing at all to Sophie. She stole a glance sideways at Netta, perched just like her on a high barstool at one of those teeny little round tables you could never quite fit all your glasses on, her legs crossed, her foot twitching sharply as she listened to a beaky-nosed man talk. They had five minutes with each guy and this time it had turned out to be four minutes and fifty seconds longer than she needed to decide No. ‘Really?’ Sophie said.

Luckily, that was the moment the host by the bar picked up the wineglass he was using as a signal and tapped it with his pen. As the ringing died away all the men at the tables stood and started to move on.

Last one, thought Sophie.

‘It was nice meeting you,’ said Number Nineteen with gallant desperation.

‘And you,’ she said cheerily. No call to be rude, was there? He wasn’t going to be getting a tick though. He wasn’t going to be getting hold of her name or her e-mail address.

She was still looking down at her slip of paper in despair when the last of her ‘dates’ sat down in front of her, saying, ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’ Then, looking up, Sophie thought: Oh … wow.

Maybe this was going to be worth doing after all. Number Twenty was easily the best-looking man of the evening. He was one of those scruffy stubbly dark-blond types with hair and skin sun-kissed to nearly the same colour, and rather thick eyebrows. She liked that outdoorsy look. His athletic build was well displayed by a white T-shirt. He grinned at her, an open easy grin. ‘You having fun?’

I am now, she thought, but said out loud, ‘It’s … different. I’ve never tried speed-dating before.’ What lovely eyes he had, she noted: brown, but flecked with gold. All the patter honed by repetition over the evening suddenly deserted her and she realised she was staring. To cover her unexpected awkwardness she took a sip of her vodka and orange, then berated herself inwardly for wasting time.

‘So.’ He put his hands on the table. Blunt hands with clean square nails, and a silver thumb-ring on the right. ‘Tell me about yourself.’

OK, so he wasn’t exactly bursting with originality either. It gave Sophie a little confidence back. ‘I work at an art gallery in town,’ she said. ‘A commercial one, not high art or anything – and I’m just an assistant – but I want to run my own gallery one day. I like hanging out with friends and going out on the town …’ She ground to a halt as she realised she was being obvious and dull. ‘What about you?’

He just sat and looked at her with his face almost alight, like he was full of sunshine. She could imagine him climbing a mountain or white-water-rafting or hitchhiking around Asia. ‘Me?’

‘You. You’re supposed to say something interesting,’ she reminded him.

‘Oh. All right then. I’m a vampire.’

She had, she thought, never met anyone who looked less like a vampire. ‘As chat-up lines go,’ she said, a little acid now, ‘that’s better than “I’m a serial killer.” But, you know, a bit worse than “I’m a big Star Trek fan.”’

‘Ouch.’

‘You could try it in the Fox and Grapes though. They have a Goth Night on a Wednesday, I think.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ His brow furrowed humbly, but he grinned.

‘And to be honest,’ she said pointing at him, ‘even if I wanted to be impressed, that’s just not vampire at all.’

‘What?’

‘Your teeth. Unconvincing. Where’s the fangs?’

‘Retractable.’

‘Really?’ She was actually enjoying herself now. He didn’t seem at all put off by her sarcasm.

‘Of course. Otherwise we’d be lisping and drooling all over the place.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Hold on. I’ll just …’ He pursed his lips and wrinkled his nose back and forth as if something were stuck in his teeth. Then he peeled back his lips and opened his mouth. He had fangs this time: translucent as Chinese rice porcelain, sharp as thorns.

‘OK,’ she admitted. ‘That’s quite impressive. And … different.’

He shut his mouth and flashed his eyebrows in a smile, vindicated.

‘Did you show that to all the girls?’ Sophie turned to the table at her right. ‘Hey, Netta, did you get a look at these?’

Netta looked startled to be interrupted. ‘At what?’

But when Sophie glanced back, Number Twenty was gone. ‘I … uh …’

Gone. Completely gone. Sophie’s eyes searched the room. There were plenty of people in buying drinks, apart from those engaged in the speed-dating, but none of them looked like him. Sophie bit her lip. She didn’t understand where he could have disappeared to; she had barely looked away from him. She supposed that if he’d leapt up and hand-sprung backwards he could have jumped over the bar itself in time, but that was a bit too Ninja-like to be actually believable. She got up from her stool anyway, and walked over to the bar to check for herself. He wasn’t hiding down among the glasses and the plastic crates.

‘Weird,’ she said.

It was another three minutes before the last round of the speed-dating was over. They were the longest, most awkward three minutes of her life, but at last the chime was sounded and all the couples broke up and she was able to make a beeline for Netta.

‘Did you see where he went?’

‘Who?’

‘The guy with me. Number Twenty … well, he would have been your Number Nineteen. The really good-looking one.’

Netta frowned. ‘Really good-looking? You sure?’

‘Oh, come on! Blondish, white shirt … nice teeth.’ She was even more confused now.

‘Uh, no.’ Netta looked down at her tick-sheet. ‘I didn’t mark him down anyway. I can’t really remember him, to be honest. There were so many guys, I suppose, Sophie: you just stop noticing after a while.’

Sophie passed her hand over her face. ‘Can we get out of here?’ It was the state of her own mind that was worrying her, but she tried to hide it. ‘I’m scared the one with the bad breath is going to try and carry on our chat.’

‘You’re not going to hand your sheet in?’

The piece of paper had grown damp in her hand, she realised. She crumpled it up. ‘No. I didn’t fancy any of them, really.’

Netta sighed. ‘Me neither.’

They made their way to the door – and there he was, Number Twenty, bathed in the magenta strip-light of the Bar Trattoria sign, chatting amiably to the bouncer. His eye fell on Sophie. ‘Hey there. You going before I can buy you a drink? I’m Ben, by the way.’

She blinked. Face to face with him once more, she couldn’t believe there was anything weird about him. Not that the teeth thing had actually worried her: she’d assumed that was just a trick of some sort. ‘Um. We thought we’d head out somewhere else.’

He glanced questioningly at Netta, who looked very pleased indeed. Plump and pretty, she always made the most of her capacious cleavage and now Sophie saw her swing it into action, turning those orbs on Ben like twin lamps, in the hope of dazzling him.

‘I’m Netta. Short for Agnetha – my mum was a big ABBA fan.’ She giggled. ‘We work at the same place, Sophie and me.’

‘Ah … the art gallery?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, can I buy you both a drink then?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Sophie shrugged and nodded, pushing any lingering disquiet aside.

‘You want to go to a club?’ suggested Ben. ‘How about the Rose Garden? We could skip the queue: I know the guys on the door.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Netta.

‘Yeah,’ Sophie agreed. The Rose Garden was expensive and she’d never been there.

He held the glass door open for them both and followed them out on to the street. Netta took the chance to catch Sophie’s eye and mouth ‘Hot!’ at her. Sophie wanted to ask her if she remembered him from the speed-dating line-up now, but she didn’t have the chance.

He didn’t let them down at the Rose Garden either, marching them straight up to the bouncers and inside, after a nod and an exchange of greetings. He made sure he paid too, and bought the drinks at the bar, slipping an arm round each of their shoulders as he stood between them and ordered, encouraging them to choose the fanciest cocktails they could find on the bar menu. The dancefloor wasn’t yet packed as it was relatively early in the evening, so there was plenty of space for the three of them to go on and dance together. He was a good mover, Sophie noted, though his eyes only really lit up when they played a remix of some jangling 60s hit by a group she was too young to be able even to picture. He flirted with both of them, paying each equal attention and obviously enjoying their company, wriggling up against Netta with a cheeky twinkle during a dirty song, dancing away insouciantly a moment later with an ironic wink at Sophie. Every move he made proclaimed: ‘I’m having fun and I’ll take the fun as far as you like but I’m not after anything heavy.’ His grin gleamed under the UV light, but his teeth were completely normal. Well, Hollywood normal.

Taking a break, they retired to a quieter corner to rest their feet for a few minutes. Netta went off to the toilet then. Normally Sophie would have gone with her, but they had a fresh batch of drinks on the table before them by this point and she wasn’t going to be so naive as to leave them unguarded, not with the stories you heard these days. Ben seemed nice, right, but … they didn’t know him. Not yet. You had to be careful, didn’t you? So she sat and they made light talk and that was when Ben kissed her, leaning in and brushing his lips softly to her own.

All the noise of the club seemed to fade to nothing.

Oh, thought Sophie in the sudden silence inside her head: Oh, I like this. She was flushed and warm from the dancing; his lips felt cool, yet the flicker of his tongue-tip hinted at a deeper heat. She could taste the tang of the lager he’d been drinking. His stubble was softer than she’d expected on her skin as his mouth moved over hers, swallowing her breath. And oh, his hands – one arm around her, smoothly, like she might startle: the other now on her knee, his fingertips the lightest of caresses, not at all intrusive even as they slid up the inside of her thigh, over the lace patterns of her black tights. His cool fingers sketched pointillist pictures of sensation on her skin as they played over the tiny holes in the lace, and Sophie felt a sly seep of moisture within her, a secretly avid response to his touch. And how she wished she’d worn stockings now, as he reached the hem of her skirt.

Ben’s tongue was in her mouth now, smooth as cream liqueur and just as sweet. Not boorish, not greedy. She wondered what it would feel like between her pussy lips and, catching herself at that thought, she squirmed beneath his hand and broke the kiss with a little gasp. His teeth caught her lower lip, gently, and she froze.

He let her go. He looked, with a faint but pointed smile, down at his hand on her thigh, as if surprised to find it there. She looked down too and they both watched as her legs eased apart to grant him narrow passage between thighs barely illuminated by the distant flicker of the dancefloor lights. Slowly his hand disappeared under her skirt, following that warm cleft. His cold fingers tickled their way, like water running underground, to the mound of her sex. His nail caught on the threads as he flicked it, quite accurately, over the hidden spot where her clit burned – and Sophie nearly left her seat, trying in vain to mask the spasm of her arousal. Ben scraped his finger up and down on the coarse weave, and smiled as he looked into her eyes. Sophie couldn’t grin; her mouth went slack instead as he played with her, her eyes glazing over.

Then he stopped and sat back, without haste. Sophie shook herself from her trance and realised that that faint bloom of light had been the door of the Ladies opening and closing, that Netta was on her way back over to their table. For cover she lifted her cocktail to her lips and sipped from the glass, crossing her thighs. There was a bubble of heat between them that glowed as she squeezed her legs together.

‘This might be a flash place but they’ve still run out of hand-towels in the loo,’ announced Netta cheerily as she sat down.

Ben casually rubbed his fingertips together and lifted them to his face as if inhaling the bouquet; the gesture was smooth and almost unnoticeable. ‘Hey, it’s always best when the girls are a little … damp.’ The weak joke made Netta squeal and pretend to slap him and he played along.

‘My turn then,’ said Sophie, rising. She’d had more to drink than she thought, it occurred to her as she staggered slightly. Or maybe it was just that her legs were wobbly.

‘Careful, love.’ Ben placed a hand lightly on her thigh to steady her. It didn’t help.

In the ladies’ toilet there was chill-out music playing and a row of mirrors a mile long for the customers to examine their make-up in. Sophie larded on another layer of lip-gloss and stared at her reflection, wondering if Ben was making a pass at Netta while she was away. She wouldn’t put it past him; he seemed the sort to try anything and his flirting was aimed in every direction. A critical examination of her reflection didn’t make her feel too bad, though. She was slimmer than Netta at least, though she’d never manage to match those fabulous tits. With a slight frown she undid the top button on her dress and tucked the cloth down to reveal more of the valley between her own, imagining Ben’s head nuzzling between them, his tongue lapping at the silky skin of her breasts. Even the thought made her wetter. God, he’d turned her on. She wanted more of that. She hadn’t particularly come out to get laid tonight – she didn’t count herself as that sort of girl – but now that it was looking like a possibility her pulse was running faster. She didn’t want Netta to snatch him from under her nose – and Netta was so much brassier than her and more likely to get what she wanted.

Maybe Ben was hoping to pull both of them, she thought suddenly. In the mirror her reflection blushed and her eyes snapped. ‘Oh,’ she mouthed with her bright fresh lipstick. That sort of implied he had a place of his own, if he was planning anything that elaborate. She’d never done it before but the novelty had a certain trashy sort of appeal – and she and Netta were good enough friends that it might work. They’d seen each other undress often enough, and talked about sex without any restraint. She wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of Netta.

It could be fun. Ben looked like, no matter what, he would be fun.

Making up her mind, Sophie returned to the toilet cubicle and pulled the skirt of her dress up so she could grab the top of her floral lace tights. It was a warm end-of-summer night after all. She could go barelegged.

By the time she left the Ladies she was wearing nothing beneath that short skirt at all.

Back at the table, she wasn’t surprised to see that Netta was sitting up close to Ben’s side and that his arm was resting down the back of the padded bench behind her shoulders. Nor was she surprised at his cheeky smile. But his words weren’t what she’d expected: ‘I was telling Netta here that I have a friend who’s an artist. A really good one. Sculpture mostly. You want to see his work?’

‘Now?’

‘What – don’t you mix work and pleasure?’

‘I just … well … it’s pretty late.’

‘Oh, he’ll be in his studio. He likes to work late. It’s not far, if you want to take a look. And he’s … a really interesting bloke. You’ll like him. He’d like to meet you two, I’m sure.’

Oh, thought Sophie: that’s how it is, then. He was pulling on his friend’s behalf too. She tried not to consider whether she was disappointed or not.

It wasn’t actually all that late by the time they emerged from the Rose Garden; not that late if you were out on the lash on a Saturday night, that is: late for everyone else. Bars and takeaways were doing a booming trade but the only vehicles on the streets were taxis and buses and police vans. Ben slipped an arm around each of them.

‘Ooh,’ said Netta: ‘you’re cold.’ She was right, thought Sophie: he wasn’t icy, but there was none of the heat she’d been expecting from his body. That white cotton T-shirt might as well have been draped over a mannequin’s torso: toned and unyielding and cool.

‘Yeah, I am. I need you two to keep me warm.’

Netta giggled and pressed herself up against him in a hug that only looked innocent.

So Ben walked through the night streets with them flanking him, his arms around their shoulders, their arms about his hard waist. He steered well clear of loud and dangerous-looking revellers, but kept to the lighted main roads as if to reassure them. And he kept up a stream of chatter all the way, all about Warhol and Lichtenstein and other names Sophie knew she should have paid more attention to on her art-history induction course, until they crossed under a flyover and followed the road in a curve and there were suddenly trees and a big black building looming over them. A church. It stood in a little island in a whirlpool of main roads and it wasn’t floodlit like some of the city-centre churches. Victorian Gothic in style, its stones were black with soot dating back to the Industrial Revolution and it was close-grown with big dingy sycamores.

‘Here we are,’ said Ben, suddenly grabbing their hands and skipping them across the road under the nose of a taxi. They reached the pavement beneath a white streetlamp that made the building beyond look even more shadowed.

‘A church?’ asked Netta, pulling out of his hand. She wrinkled her nose. ‘It looks derelict.’

‘It’s an artists’ centre now. Naylor’s studio’s inside – see the light?’

They peered into the gloom, and Sophie was relieved to see that there was a glow high up in one of the tall stained-glass windows – though it barely showed through the encrustation of soot and the thick protective wire lattice over the exterior of the glass.

‘Looks spooky,’ muttered Sophie.

‘Looks like a place for freaks to hang out,’ Netta grumbled.

‘Aw,’ he mocked softly. ‘Are the little girls scared?’

Netta cast him a sharp glance. ‘Hey – how old are you?’ she asked. It sounded like a change of subject but Sophie knew where she was coming from. She’d assumed all along that Ben was their own age or thereabouts: mid-twenties at most. That’s how he’d looked under the indoor lights. But out here under the harsh white light of the streetlamp he looked suddenly older. It wasn’t wrinkles; he didn’t look wrinkled. It was something less definable, something about the way the shadows fell or the look in his eye as he derided their squeamishness. Something about his eyes, for sure – as he turned his face down to them he looked almost blind for a second.

‘How old do you think I am, love?’

‘Thirty? Thirty-five?’ Netta was being deliberately nasty, trying to get a reaction; Sophie could hear it in her voice. But Ben didn’t reply. He just smiled, and it was a different sort of smile to the others he’d used upon them. Secretive and coldly amused.

Netta readjusted her bag on her shoulder. ‘It’s getting late,’ she said in a hard voice. ‘You know, I think I’m going to go back. My mum’s coming over to visit tomorrow and I need to get up early to clean the flat.’

Sophie was surprised and dismayed. So, their hot date had turned out to be a bit of a cradle-snatcher – but did it really matter how old he was, when he was this fit? Wasn’t Netta over-reacting?

‘Don’t you want to meet Naylor?’ he asked.

‘Maybe some other time.’

‘You’d like him, I promise.’

‘Like I said, it’s late.’ Netta looked sharply at Sophie. ‘You coming then?’

‘I think I’ll stay.’ She saw the spark of shock and outrage in Netta’s eyes, the look that said: You can’t stay on your own. You stick with your girl friends whatever. That’s the rules.

‘Sophie!’

‘You go home if you like,’ said Sophie, nettled. She wasn’t letting an opportunity like this pass. ‘I want to see these sculptures.’

Ben folded his arms, counting himself out of the discussion. For a moment the two girls glared at each other. Sophie could hear the unvoiced accusation: On your own?

‘Suit yourself,’ said Netta with a sniff. ‘See you Monday.’ Unspoken was the sneer: Don’t come crying to me if it goes wrong. With an irate bounce in her step she marched away up the street, toward the neon glow of a Chinese takeaway sign and the taxi rank beyond. Sophie watched her go, then turned to Ben, who was waiting with eyebrows raised.

‘Sorry about that.’

‘Why be sorry?’ He took her arm and slipped his hand in hers. ‘Now I get to enjoy the undiluted pleasure of your company.’

Sophie’s pulse jumped, and she felt her sex clench in anticipation.

He led her into the churchyard, under the black shadows of the trees, and took her not to the front porch but around the north side of the building. The gravestone slabs had long been cleared away but a few table-tombs remained, and there in near-darkness he backed her up against a cold gritstone box and kissed her, harder this time.

Harder, deeper, hungrier.

Sophie slid her arms around his neck and ground her thighs against his, feeling for the telltale bulge of his erection. And oh yes, there it was – his cock hardening in response to her heat, her softness, her willingness. He put his hands on her waist and lifted her to sit on the tomb-top, and she opened her legs so he could stand between them, pressing up against her. Her skirt rode up, stretched tight across the very tops of her thighs. He took her left breast and squeezed it to the rhythm of his kisses, making her groan into his mouth. The sound seemed to galvanise him and he trapped her nipple between forefinger and thumb, twisting it until she squeaked again.

She’d never fucked in a churchyard before, she thought. It was exciting, in an old-fashioned way. His cock had clear definition now under the fabric of his trousers, and he was pressing right up against the mound of her sex, and she wondered if he’d realised yet she wasn’t wearing any knickers or whether his own clothing had fooled him. She wrapped her legs about his muscular ass. Her head started to swim; he seemed to have no intention of coming up for air.

Gasping, she broke from his lips. He laughed low in his throat.

‘God, girl: you’re hot, aren’t you?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She was seething with heat. She nibbled at his lips, finding them by feeling his face, and heard the hiss of breath between his teeth. He abandoned her breasts to push both hands up her smooth thighs, questing all the way to the top, finding the rucked-up skirt and then her soft, shaven, plump-lipped sex, a fashionable landing strip of hair the only veil to its nakedness. His thumbs plunged into the wet, twin divers, and she writhed with pleasure.

‘Oh, let me guess what you want,’ he whispered. It made her giggle.

‘I’ll give you three guesses.’

‘Really? One,’ he growled, massaging her clit with both thumbs. She arched her back, speechless. ‘Two,’ he continued, parting the folds of her sex and opening her wide with those thumbs, then working the rest of his fingers into the hot oil she was leaking, getting them good and slick, opening her up. ‘Three,’ he concluded, entering her with three fingers at once, his right wrist locked like a weapon, the muscles of his forearm tense as he pushed those fingers in deep, right past all those thick knuckles until he was holding her by her pussy, his thumb in possession of her clit – then out, then in again. His fingers were blunt and determined and brooked no refusal. Sophie jerked her hips and squealed and writhed, raking his skin with her nails. He pinned her with his other arm, pulling her hard against him. ‘Did I guess right?’

‘Mm,’ she nodded frantically, her lips bruising themselves on his hard jaw. She wanted his cock even more, but his fingers certainly had the right idea.

‘Then guess what I want, love.’

‘You want to fuck me,’ she whispered.

He chuckled – that dark low rumble again, deep in his throat. Lingeringly he withdrew his hand, enjoying her little whimper of loss. ‘Let’s go see my friend,’ he whispered, confounding her.

‘What? Now?’

‘We walked all this way.’

‘Oh … can’t we … first …’

‘Don’t be impatient. Everything comes to those who wait, love.’ He tickled her clit teasingly, then slipped from her embrace, secure in the knowledge that she would follow. Sophie slid off the stone feeling like there was a hollow void inside her, and sure that Ben was getting off on her discomfort. She tugged her skirt back down over her thighs and brushed specks of lichen off her behind. She couldn’t care less about Ben’s friend or his artwork now, to be honest, but she wanted his cock so badly she would have followed him almost anywhere.

‘Ready?’ He took her hand and led her off, surefooted even in the darkness. He led her to a small door in the north wall, one so low he had to stoop under the arch. It was unlocked, and a light burned in the room beyond.

Sophie knew almost nothing about church architecture; she was expecting them to emerge into the main body of the building among the pews. She’d expected gloom and age. She wasn’t expecting a small room full of shelves and cupboards, or a set of unpainted plywood stairs that took them up into the roofspace. There was a strong smell of new plaster and paint.

‘I knew you were lying,’ she said, trying to be sparky, as Ben led her up. Her thighs felt sticky.

‘What?’ He frowned back at her.

‘About the vampire thing. You wouldn’t be able to walk on consecrated ground.’

He turned away again. ‘This was deconsecrated in the nineteen-nineties.’

They came out into a big white space – almost the whole of the interior of the church roof – illuminated by a few floor lamps. Every surface was painted white. There were pale human figures dotted about the place, on dustsheet islands spattered in paint, but none of them moved. Only one was animate: a slim figure crouching over and dabbing at one of the sculptures with a brush.

‘Hello, Naylor.’

The young man stood. He moved with great fluidity and, though Sophie’s spike heels made a terrible racket on the wooden floor, his bare ones made no sound at all. He was standing in front of them almost before Sophie, transfixed by his grace, had grasped that he was moving at all.

‘Ben. Hi.’ He smiled at Sophie, not even bothering to hide the fact he was checking out her tits, her hips, her legs. ‘You’re a pretty one.’

‘Sophie,’ she said weakly.

He was breathtaking. Slight, not tall, with sharp cheekbones and slanted, narrow eyes that turned out to be a wild pale green when they caught the light. A full lower lip gave him an incongruous pout. He was startlingly pale. Black hair flopped over those eyes, partly veiling the finely angled brows but not the wicked glint beneath them. There was a grace about his narrow hips and wiry limbs that seemed almost dangerous, as if he were poised in readiness for something. Something swift and ruthless, she thought; something never regretted. He looked younger than Ben and considerably more slender, but there was nothing weak about him at all. He folded his arms, having looked her over.

‘I can smell pussy,’ he said, gazing into her eyes, the corner of his mouth hooked in a smile.

‘Yeah … it’s all over my hands, I’m afraid,’ Ben answered, as she started and flushed.

‘You been taking her out for a trial lap, you dirty beggar?’

‘Just warming the engine.’

‘Huh. You want a beer, Sophie?’

The abrupt switches in conversation stunned her a little, and she barely managed to nod and squeak an affirmation. Ben had been right: she did like Naylor. He looked like bad news – but wasn’t that always more fun in a man? She had a clear idea where this was going, she thought, and she didn’t object – but a little Dutch courage wouldn’t hurt. She’d never been with two guys at once. It excited her a lot more than the thought of her and Netta and Ben. It scared her quite a lot more too.

Naylor retreated to a cool-box that stood near one wall, near a pile of dustsheets. She watched as he groped inside for three bottles of beer, then prised the caps off against the angle of the lid with three casual flicks.

‘Sophie works at an art gallery,’ said Ben.

‘Is that so?’

‘Just Yardley’s,’ she answered, her voice husky.

‘What do you think of my stuff, then?’ he asked, indicating the sculptures with a twist of his head.

Politely she turned to look them over. A standing figure nearby appeared to be a resin cast of a naked woman, her skin the stippled grey of poplar bark, her nipples black knots. But her eyes were only holes and from behind she was hollow, the bark curled and flaked at the edge, her insides cobwebbed. Sophie swallowed. How was she supposed to judge real art? Yardley’s didn’t cater to the high-concept end of the market, just to people who liked a nice picture and wanted something that would match the wallpaper. Sophie worked selling the products of conveyor-belt artists. There was the one who painted nice autumnal landscapes, and the one who did portraits of cheeky 1930s urchins, and the one who did the red canal perspectives … Nothing like this. What did she know?

She moved to the next sculpture, a heap of reclining naked women. Their skin had the texture of sand and their sleeping faces were peaceful and beautiful – but once again they were hollow, this time from the ribs to the hips, their abdomens smooth white concavities.

‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Powerful.’

‘You think?’ Naylor was at her shoulder, though she hadn’t heard him approach. She turned a little abruptly, and he slipped a cold bottle into her hand. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ He was standing unsettlingly close, almost touching her.

Naylor tilted his own bottle to his mouth. Sophie glanced at the label, but it was some Continental brew she’d never heard of. She took a sip of her beer, all too aware that both men were taking a very personal interest in watching the neck of the bottle ease between her lips. She felt self-conscious: she’d never been the focus of such undisguised greed. She normally was the sort of girl that men could take or leave; rarely without some sort of masculine action in her life, yet never the centre of any drama. Procrastinating, she glanced away at the room again.

‘Is that one of yours?’ she asked, peering at something a bit different: two large wooden boards mounted on a wall that part-divided the roof-space. They were covered in black and gilt lettering that was hard to decipher.

Naylor snorted. ‘Nah. Fixtures and fittings, doll. This was a church, remember.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ She could make out some of the words now: Thou shalt not …

‘The Ten Commandments. Not that anyone takes any bleeding notice of any of them these days. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy,” eh? “Thou shalt not covet.” The country would fall apart.’

‘There’s still one left,’ said Ben, stepping in closer and running his fingers down Sophie’s spine. ‘“Thou shalt not kill.”’

Naylor sniggered. ‘Yeah, well. Our Good Shepherd is still keen on that one, that’s true.’ He jerked his head. ‘You like the beer, dollface? Is it to your taste?’

Sophie opened her mouth but didn’t manage to reply, because on the word ‘taste’ he dipped his hand beneath the hem of her skirt and touched the neck of his bottle to the juncture of her thighs. The glass was chilly and she staggered a little; instantly Ben was behind her, steadying her – and making sure she couldn’t retreat. Sophie’s mouth went to an O shape as round as the mouth of the bottle that was pressing the mound of her sex – and then nudging to the split there, and the swollen petals that were so puffy with arousal. For a moment she resisted his entry and then Ben slipped his arms round her from behind, cupping her breasts and tipping her weight back against him, and at the same time Naylor changed angle and thrust the bottle between her thighs and then up, into the furrow of her pussy, sliding the bottle-mouth back and forth, cold and frictionless as only lubricated glass can be.

Sophie gasped. She felt the little round mouth embrace her clit momentarily, like a kiss. Then it dived back again, into her molten flesh and then – changing angle again – up into the wet clench of her hole. He ran the bottle up into her all the way to its shoulders, watching her face all the time. Then he pulled it out. Milky streaks patterned the brown glass. He licked the bottle, swirling his tongue right around the rim, and sucked the glass.

‘Only two things taste better than beer,’ said he softly. ‘And one of them’s hot wet cunt.’ He took her own bottle out of her limp hand. Sophie sagged back into Ben’s embrace as he pinched and played with both her nipples through the thin layers of her clothes. She could feel his hardening cock, crushed against the soft jut of her bum and struggling to rise.

‘Nice tits, love,’ he breathed in her ear.

‘You’re up for this, aren’t you?’ Naylor asked, dipping the neck of his bottle into the cleft of her cleavage and rubbing the glass suggestively from swell to swell of her breasts. His lips were parted and shiny. ‘You’re game for it, I can tell.’

‘Mm,’ she whimpered, nodding.

‘Told you you’d get everything you wanted, love,’ Ben said hoarsely. ‘Everything and more.’ He nuzzled at her ear and took the lobe between his lips, nipping softly.

‘Ben …’

Her head seemed to swim. Naylor had set the beers aside and was stripping off his clothes now. He shed his T-shirt and kicked his trousers off, revealing a slim smooth body, the only visible hair a black nest at his crotch that climbed in a narrow line to his navel. His beautiful smooth cock was already stiffly erect and nodding in the free air: it had a slight curve back toward his stomach and looked almost out of proportion to his delicate frame, so engorged was it. He stroked it like it was a hunting-dog waiting to be unleashed, as he stalked back to her and looked down into her face.

‘This is what you were hoping for, wasn’t it, doll?’ he asked, taking her hand and rubbing it over his cock. It seemed to pulse against her, its sticky mouth kissing her palm. ‘A bit of fun?’

Sophie nodded.

‘It’s going to get a bit messy.’ His gaze lifted to Ben over her shoulder. ‘Clothes off, I guess.’

They stripped her of everything: the purse hanging from her shoulder, the cherry-coloured dress from the boutique she couldn’t really afford on her wage, the lacy bra she’d bought only last week. All but her high-heeled shoes. Everything was tossed aside in a heap. Her boobs bounced free as Ben whipped the bra off and her nipples stiffened in the cool air of the church. She didn’t seem to be required to do anything but accept their hands and the liberties they took groping her as they pulled at her clothes, playing with her tits and ass and pussy, pinching slyly between caresses until she squirmed. Ben pushed her into Naylor’s grasp as he wrenched off his own clothes, clearly impatient now. She caught a flash of his body, golden fuzz marching up his stomach and down his legs, before another shove landed her back in his embrace. He caught her wrists and pulled them to the small of her back, guiding her hands to the vertical staff of his cock.

‘Hold this,’ he said: ‘That’s right.’ Then his own hands went back round her, holding her under the jaw and around her waist.

She wasn’t quite sure she liked that. Without the use of her hands to fend anyone off, she felt strangely vulnerable, and she whimpered when Naylor patted her breasts back and forth with stinging force.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said; ‘does that hurt? Kiss it better.’ Falling to a crouch he caught her right nipple in his lips and sucked it long and slow and expertly. Pleasure crackled through her nerves, and she squeezed Ben’s cock hard in her hands. But it lasted all too brief a moment before Naylor lifted his mouth away and grinned. She saw his teeth, cruelly pointed fangs, just before he stooped back down on her breast and sank them in.

It wouldn’t be quite true to say she was surprised, not really. She’d known, after all, from the beginning; she’d just avoided thinking about it. But she tried to scream anyway, except that Ben’s broad hand clamped over her mouth and the sound was trapped in her heaving chest. There was no outlet for the pain, the searing hot cut of his fangs puncturing her skin.

Then the pain was gone, and something entirely different took its place. Sophie, pinned and thrashing, took a long time to grasp what it was, as it flowed through her right breast like melted sugar fizzing in every capillary – like worms of sparkling fire – like a hundred tiny meteors circling the burning sun of her nipple. She stopped fighting and sagged back against Ben, only half-aware that her hands were still clenched, sweating, around his erect cock, that Naylor was nursing on her tit, his throat working as he swallowed.

Slowly, Ben slid his grip from her mouth to her lower jaw so that she could breath. She whimpered, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck,’ her panic now swamped in the glorious sensation of the suckling, but horror making her pant.

‘“Oh Fuck No” or “Oh Fuck Yes”?’ murmured Ben. ‘Sounds like an “Oh Fuck Yes” to me, love.’ Lifting her left arm he sank his teeth into the fleshy bulge of her bicep.

Again – a white flash of pain, a wave of coruscating pleasure.

Then Naylor stopped feeding and lifted his mouth. There was surprisingly little mess on her breast, only two puckered puncture marks over her enflamed and aching nipple, each filled with a little ruby bead. No blood ran. But when Naylor licked his lips his tongue was red and wet.

‘Oh, please,’ she moaned. All her will seemed to have faded away as the wild chemistry of their saliva ran riot in her body tissues. Her right breast pulsed with the hungry need for Naylor to latch on again and her left breast ached to join it, even though her stomach recoiled from what it meant that their mouths were that colour.

‘You like that?’ he asked with a mocking scarlet smile.

‘It feels … nice,’ she whispered. She felt drunk with shock and her voice broke on the last word into a strange giggle she had no control over.

‘You do like it, don’t you?’ He nuzzled against her, grinning. ‘Naughty girl.’ His fingers slipped up between her thighs and paddled in the ooze of her sex juices. ‘Dirty fucking little girl.’

‘Look at this,’ chuckled Ben, brushing her turgid right nipple with his thumb; it was as swollen as if it’d been stung by a bee, and so sensitive that she gasped. ‘Just bursting with juicy goodness, aren’t you, love?’

‘Want another kiss, don’t you?’ Naylor lapped teasingly at her breast. ‘Let’s try something a bit different, heh?’ Then he sat back on his heels, took her thighs in his hands and spread them, lifting one to drape over his shoulder. He and Ben took her weight easily, as she was pulled on to the kneeling man’s mouth and he buried his face in her crotch.

‘Oh!’ she wailed reflexively, as his tongue broke the split of her sex, as he lapped and sucked at the juices welling there. She tried half-heartedly to struggle but her body wasn’t co-operating, and even if it had done the two men were far too strong. For a long moment the sensation of his mouth was just one of simple pleasure and she stopped twisting altogether. That was when he bit down, and his fangs pierced the mound of her pubis either side of her clit. She spasmed once – and that was the last time, the last vestige of any resistance that night, because the bite was all ecstasy. Pleasure took no prisoners. Naylor sucked and she burned, and soon she was coming into his mouth, blood and juices together, and Ben was biting at the back of her neck and her shoulders, feeding greedily, the stabs of his teeth no longer even painful as her climax turned everything to gold. She thrashed wildly in their embrace, crying out. Naylor’s eyes flashed with triumph. And she couldn’t stop coming, even after the first burst was over – he kept sucking and she kept rolling down the waves of orgasm, each lifting her to the crest of the next. She couldn’t even draw breath.

‘Jeez,’ said Ben, gasping. ‘Give her a rest, Naylor!’

Naylor dropped her. The deprivation was instant and vertiginous: she felt like the sun had been torn from the sky. He stood up and faced her, lifting her and crushing her against Ben’s torso as if the other man were a wall, and then he pressed into her and lifted her thighs apart and thrust his cock up into her pussy and began to fuck, fiercely. His face was knotted into a mask of concentration, his eyes narrowed, his lips tight over his monstrous teeth. Sophie’s inflamed sex responded with gratitude to the impaling pressure of his cock inside her, to the battering he was giving her clit, to the pressure from behind as well as before. She began to groan with each thrust, the air forced from her lungs. Ben helped by slipping his hands under her thighs and holding her up, splayed, for Naylor’s easier access, and she could feel Ben’s cock under her ass-cheeks, rubbing along the spread cleft of her behind as the two men sandwiched her and pummelled her between them.

Naylor slipped a hand round the back of Ben’s neck for better purchase.

Taking his cock only momentarily stilled the burning itch of Sophie’s clit. Her body was already primed and charged, orgasm throbbing just below the skin and ready to burst out under pressure, so she came first. For all the two men’s fierce lust she hit orgasm before Naylor did, and her screams sent him over the edge, pumping into her. She felt the gush – she’d never felt ejaculation before, not inside her – and it was cold, even colder than their sweatless inhuman skin. Then Ben bit her again, on the angle of her shoulder and neck, and that rolled her into orgasm and lifted her again, burning like the sun. She nearly passed out.

‘Fuck, that’s sharp,’ whispered Ben.

His ejaculation spent, Naylor stepped away and left Ben to lower her to her knees and let her fall slowly backward, her legs tumbling apart in disarray. Sophie’s head was swimming, and in the afterwash of her orgasm she felt faint. Too stunned to support herself, she hung limply at the full extension of her arms from wrists which were gripped easily in Ben’s off hand, and her head rolled back as black and red circles bloomed behind her half-closed eyes. His flexed arm didn’t even tremble. He took his stiff cock in his right hand and began to tug with the determined motions of a man who knows he’s ready to unload.

‘Open wide, love.’

Sophie parted her lips and in seconds his spunk jetted out to splash on her – the first squirts on her breasts, the final couple on her face. They kissed her skin like drips of melted ice cream. When she licked it off her lips she found he tasted like fresh-turned earth, with a metallic, coppery tang.

They’ll stop now, she thought weakly. They’ll have finished with me.

They didn’t. They hadn’t.

Ben’s erection didn’t even flag. He lifted her and flopped her forward on to her belly, then took her hips and pulled her ass up as he crouched over her. His teeth pierced the downy globes of her bum, first one side then the other, then he spread her cheeks and munched down on the hole of her ass, each bite a torment and then a beatification, each drawing no more than a single sucked mouthful of her blood. Sophie, her face lolling on the whitewashed floorboards, spasmed at each bite and tried to lift her head, but her arms felt as limp as dishcloths and she could hardly bring them up and plant her palms against the floor. As Ben stood, lifting her, and braced his thighs in a straddle so that he could slip his cock into her burning slot, she could do nothing but hang doubled-up from his grasp, spine and legs limp. It took Naylor sliding beneath her and pushing her up with one casual hand to lift her to even a horizontal position. And as Ben powered into her from behind, Naylor lapped at her dangling breasts once more.

‘Ah!’ gasped Sophie, as his mouth moved over the tingling ice-water splashes that Ben had left on her skin. Naylor laughed a low throaty laugh and bit her over and over again from below, Ben’s semen and her blood melting together on his tongue.

Both men laughed as she wailed and came once more.

The physically strenuous aspects of their recreation were easy for them: effortless. She was no heavier than a rag doll in their arms, and no more capable of rebellion. Her body drove them crazy, her blood intoxicating them so that they fucked her over and over again, as playful and heartless as young lions. Each time she came to climax they both bit her and drank, tasting the spike of her orgasm in her blood. Nor were they restricted, it seemed, in the number of their own orgasms, and in exchange for what they drank from her they washed her in copious outpourings of their own fluids. She took cock like she’d never taken cock before, until she felt like she was an empty sack they were trying to fill, until she was streaked and smeared and musky with come, her hair dishevelled, her make-up smeared.

They never fucked her mouth though.

At the end they carried her to the pile of dustsheets and snuggled up around her, all three of them on their sides, their arms a languid tangle. She liked that: they felt warm now and she was cold, washed in a dark sea. Ben embraced her from the front, his cock wedged up her pussy, while Naylor impaled her ass from behind for the third or fourth time. It didn’t hurt: nothing hurt any more. Every inch of her body was numbly replete from their bites. Together they rocked her in slow luxurious rhythm as they fastened their teeth in her shoulders and sucked slow and long. Sophie felt herself falling toward sleep, the room spinning about her as consciousness ebbed. She tried to speak, though her mouth was dry and she had no idea what she wanted to say, only that she was possessed by a strange sense of regret, not even dismay, only the faintest sense that she was unravelling, her soul frayed to loose red threads that would never be whole again. But only a dry croak escaped her lips as she dissolved into unconsciousness.

* * *

‘Whoa,’ said Ben, unfastening his mouth. His eyes were dark with repletion. He squirmed out from Sophie’s limp embrace and looked down at her. ‘Better stop.’

Naylor rolled away on to his back and squinted at her, sucking his teeth. ‘Let’s just finish her off,’ he grunted. ‘The dregs taste the best; you know that.’

Ben sat up on his haunches. His body was speckled and streaked with dark drops and he absently licked at a smear down the inside of his forearm. ‘Do you want to piss Reynauld off?’ he asked sweetly.

‘Well, now that you suggest it,’ answered Naylor with a switchblade grin, ‘that would be a bonus.’ He sat up though, and scratched at the little spills that had dried on his smooth chest. Ben snorted.

‘I’ll go drop her off on the embankment, shall I?’

Naylor waved a hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve finished here.’

‘What about these?’ Ben looked around at the pieces of sculpture. ‘They’re good.’

‘Estelle’s sending somebody to pick them up.’

‘Estelle?’

‘Yeah. Wants them for one of her clubs, she says. Let her worry about the red tape.’

Ben nodded, then as Naylor stretched and wandered off he walked over to the small pile of Sophie’s belongings and rummaged in her purse. First he extracted the bank notes, folding them between his fingers. Then, opening her cell phone, he thumbed the keypad three times and then held it to his ear, ambling about the room and shuffling one-handed into his jeans, hopping as he pulled them up over his legs. ‘Ambulance,’ he said after a pause.

Naylor necked a beer chaser.

After Ben’s first answer the woman’s voice on the other end of the phone connection kept talking, but he took no notice. He dropped the squawking phone on the sheets next to Sophie and looked down at her with a little smile. She didn’t stir. Pale as marble, she looked like one of Naylor’s sculptures. Her eyes were half-closed, showing crescent-moons of sclera. Her lips were blue, her features relaxed and peaceful. If there was no obvious movement of her ribs, the thready pulse at her throat – quite audible to him – attested that she was still alive for the moment. Her whole body was covered in paired puncture marks, everywhere but over the major blood vessels at the neck and the insides of her thighs.

‘Thanks, love,’ he whispered. ‘You were a blast.’

But Sophie heard none of that.

(Ben)

And this is Ben, the golden boy, youngest of the six vampires in the City. Young enough that he can still pass for human and that he can still go out in daylight, though he wears long-sleeved shirts and sunglasses then and keeps to the shade of buildings because direct sunlight stings him. His hair is cut fashionably short and quirky now, and his eyes are warm and direct. His skin is still tanned from the sun that shone in 1967, a year of wild fashion, wilder youth and chemical revolution. The year he died.

You wouldn’t know that Ben was different from anyone else, meeting him. Undeath hasn’t changed him much, not yet. His demeanour is relaxed and he likes a beer, and in fact it’s easiest to bump into him in a bar or a nightclub. Only in sudden strong light might you notice anything, because his eyes are so sensitive that he can see even in total darkness and under bright light the pupils contract to invisible pinholes, leaving his irises blank. But his eyes never were windows to his soul; even in life they were more like silvered mirrors, reflecting the gazer’s desire.

As a youth his aims were to have fun and chase tail, and in over forty years as a vampire they’ve altered remarkably little. His life revolves around sex and food, which are almost always the same thing. For vampires, there’s no distinction between thirst and desire. Blood-lust and fuck-lust come as a package, one engendering the other. He’s constantly horny, eternally obsessed with pussy. It’s one of the things he likes so much about his new life: he never has to stop. There are other advantages: he’s become faster and stronger and has keener senses, he heals cuts in minutes, his flab has converted to muscle and even his face has subtly changed, honed to a new beauty – but the buzz of rampant desire, the priapic stiffy that threatens to wear a hole in his pants, the heat that grips him every time he spots a potential target: that’s what he really trips on.

Being dead – What’s there not to like?

He’s vaguely aware that others of his kind are different, that things do change with time, but he doesn’t worry about that. Ben is young; still young enough to eat, even. Perhaps only a few mouthfuls a night – pizza and Chinese takeaway mostly, and hold the garlic because in the last couple of decades it’s started to turn his stomach – but he’s still capable of digesting some solids. That will be the first faculty to go, and he will miss it when it happens. The multiple flavours of life will be lost to him, the spices and the textures. All that will be left will be hot, sweet, infinitely appealing blood.

In a big city like this, a world hub, there’s no problem with him taking a different person a night as prey – so long as he doesn’t kill them – and enough places to hunt in that his face doesn’t become known. Notoriety would be a handicap, and Ben likes to fly below the radar. Bars are the easiest places to pull in: hothouses of exotic painted blooms. There’s never a problem if you look like he does, and everyone is awash with alcohol, and they’re all young and hot and eager to be plucked. He does a lot of plucking.

You might well meet Ben that way, particularly at night. But he is a seducer by nature rather than a hunter, and he’s surprised himself in recent years by discovering a taste for the more difficult target. The plainer girl – not the dull, slack-jawed type who’ll do it for a bag of chips or the cheery twinkly one who’ll do it for a laugh, but the buttoned-down type. Does that describe you? There are more women of that kind about than people think, though they’re invisible to so many eyes. Perhaps he’d find you that way, by daylight, when you’re least expecting it. He’s taken to haunting university buildings, parks, art galleries, even botanical gardens. He’s looking for the girls who wear sweatshirts even in warm weather, the ones who haven’t starved themselves or fried themselves orange on a sunbed or bothered to use hair-straighteners for that compulsory sleek look. Sweaters … Sweaters drive him half crazy with lust. Soft, pale, unfashionable girls. The ones who don’t actually believe that a man like him would hit on them. He can smell their defensiveness and the aching eagerness buried beneath.

Is that you?

It’s hard work to get past their disbelief. They often think he’s taking the piss, that he has a coterie of friends hidden nearby killing themselves laughing as he mocks their naivety with his attentions. Oh, but it’s worth it for the first bloom of their sexual scent, the rush of heat and wet, the look in their eyes as they tip from suspicion to hope to surrender. He’s prepared to work for days to get that.

So perhaps he’ll find you when you’re concentrating on something else entirely. At work maybe – your frustrating, claustrophobic job, the one you took just as that first stepping stone, the one that tides you over until you move on to something really worthwhile. Or perhaps he’ll find you in a line at a shop counter, or queuing up to hand in a form in some official waiting room. And he’ll catch your eye with his frank, humorous gaze, so warmly that you’ll wonder, ‘Is it me he’s looking at?’

Yes, it’ll be you. It’ll be hard to believe, but even harder to resist. You might be in a relationship, or you might be resigned to celibacy, but it almost certainly won’t make any difference – so long as there is a sexual instinct buried in you, he will bring it out and reel you in. He’ll use your own nature against you. He’s just too good-looking, too charming, to shrug off, and sexual heat radiates from his cold body like an aura. And you can forget morality or common sense: those things won’t save you. They don’t ever save anyone. Sex, when it kicks into gear – that raging appetite, that dizzy high of anticipation – trumps everything else. Don’t you know that yet?

He can be subtle or he can be pushy, whichever works best in the circumstances. In either case he is persistent. Before you know it, your head will be awhirl and your heart will be beating faster every time you see him. You’ll feel a cramping thrill every time he smiles, every time his hand brushes yours, every time he leans in a little closer. You’ll wonder what is happening to you. Reflected in his eyes, you’ll see yourself as if for the first time: beautiful, desirable and free.

And then, finally, you’ll let him cross the line. Because by then you’ll want nothing in the world more than the sight of his golden skin, his parted lips, his naked body. By then you will be weak-limbed, dizzy, breathless. Your skin will be running hot and cold chills. Your nipples will be so sensitised that the rub of your own clothing is almost painful. Your sex will be heavy with moisture, like a storm ready to break. When he takes you in his arms it will be like a profound pain has finally found release.

Where do you want him, when he takes you at last? In your apartment, in secret? In the park, under a full moon? Behind the shelves where you work, muffled and frantic and daring? He doesn’t mind, so long as he can fuck you. So long as he can have your sex juices and your sweat and your surrender, your cries and your tears of joy. Your bright and racing blood.

It can’t be denied that he’ll give you a good time. Just hope he doesn’t bring Naylor in on it, though.

On his own, Ben is about as harmless as a vampire can be – but Naylor is his weakness. Naylor is the trigger for him going badly wrong, because he turns Ben’s simple lust to his more sadistic ends.

It was the itch of Ben’s lust that brought him to this city in the first place, when he was still alive and living with his parents in a provincial town and had a job as an apprentice repairman, in those days when they still bothered repairing televisions and radios and kettles. He wanted a chance at the big-city nightlife he’d heard so much about, and he found to his delight that there was plenty of sex available: with the Pill now available, trendy chicks had no excuse to say No. He shacked up in a squat with a girl calling herself Moonbeam who had a seemingly endless supply of pot and LSD and a similarly endless line of parties to go to, parties at which the right people showed up to mingle with the hip young things, or if they didn’t they should have and everyone said they had done anyway, the next day. He thought he was in love with her, just a bit, though that didn’t stop him sleeping with other girls. And she went with other blokes too, of course. She was the one who introduced him to Naylor.

She said he was this totally amazing guy who hung out with the Stones and had insights into history and eternity like no one else.

Ben ended up in a room draped with Indian-printed cotton and reeking of patchouli, on his knees with his cock down Moonbeam’s throat, watching awestruck while this skinny beautiful youth fucked her from behind and she gobbled his dick and made noises like she was seeing Krishna himself. Ben had never shared a girl with another man. He thought it the hottest experience of his life, and he didn’t mind even when Naylor began to bite at Moonbeam’s back and shoulders, sucking her blood. Admittedly, the pot probably helped with that surprise. And Moonbeam didn’t seem to mind either; in fact she seemed to revel in the sensation, climbing to new orgasmic heights. It wasn’t long before Ben was finding out for himself what it felt like.

In the whole wide world, there was nothing at all he’d ever known that was as good as the sensation of Naylor sucking his dick. Teeth and tongue. Blood and spunk. People who derided that sort of thing didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. Sometimes, thanks to that magic bite, he walked round with a hard-on all day. Sometimes he woke so drained that his hollow balls just about clanged together.

For a little while the two of them were Naylor’s favourites. The vampire fucked them together and separately, whenever he felt like it, without asking any leave and without needing to. All shame and propriety vanished from Ben’s life. He’d bend over and spread his ass-cheeks in the middle of a crowded room at the flick of a finger, the crook of an eyebrow. He’d offer his arms and his anus and his cock. He’d ask for nothing in return but the benison of Naylor’s razor-edged kiss.

That all stopped when Moonbeam’s heart gave out, quietly and without any warning, one night as she lay with her head tilted backward off the edge of the bed with Naylor sucking at her crotch and Ben’s cock so far down her throat that she didn’t even cry out as she died. The two men buried her body in a patch of wasteland and then Ben threw a tantrum of recrimination and they fought, very briefly and with devastating effect as far as the human one of them was concerned. Naylor must be credited with some impulse of contrition, because he saved Ben from bleeding out by force-feeding the boy his own vampiric blood. That was how Ben was reborn.

In very short order he decided that he hadn’t loved Moonbeam that much after all.

He was luckier than he knew: it so happened that Reynauld was away abroad that month, and his conversion was revealed as a fait accompli upon the older vampire’s return. Moonbeam’s death never came to Reynauld’s attention at all and Ben was permitted to stay, so long as he swore loyalty like the others.

Ben doesn’t resent Reynauld. But he’s still close to Naylor, and that way danger lies. Ben’s bad at spotting danger, though: he lives his life – if that’s the word – on too much of a high. Ironically, these days he’s completely straight, chemically speaking. Psychotropic drugs don’t work on vampires. He can’t even get drunk – except on blood, of course.

That’s all that’s left to him now: blood and sex.