Two Short Stories and Three Very Short Stories Read online

  After I rinsed her with a damp washcloth, she washed me with a touch that left me impatient and ready. Damp and heated, we patted each other dry with warm towels that wrapped us from shoulders to knees.

  Emily raised her fingers to my face. “Jasmine,” she said, her voice tight and her eyes bright with curiosity and need.

  “Come on!” I grabbed her hand and led her down the hallway to the room I’d slept in last night.

  She tugged me in the opposite direction.

  It took a couple of seconds to register where we were headed. She pulled open the door and pulled me inside. After all these years, I was, at long last, ending up in Alec Carpenter’s bed.

  I grinned as I yanked back the covers and pulled Emily beside me. She tumbled onto her belly and the smooth expanse of her back and lovely curvy butt inspired me. “Don’t move! I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I was down the hall to the bathroom and back with a jar of lavender lotion in less time than it takes to tell.

  “What are you doing?” Emily asked, looking over her shoulder as I walked through the doorway.

  She hadn’t moved.

  “Pleasuring you.” I squeezed out a dobbit of lotion and rubbed my hands together to warm it before easing my palms across her shoulders and down her back to the curve of her waist. She sighed with pleasure so I reached for the lotion again. I anointed her. Kissing her neck and shoulders as I stroked lotion into her back and arms. Fluttering my tongue on the soft pale skin behind her knees as I massaged her thighs and butt. She went limp and relaxed under my touch. Lovely. But I didn’t want her too loose. I needed her sweating with want as her body arched under me and her eyes blazed her need.

  I rested a hand on the curve of her hip and nudged. “Roll over.”

  Emily didn’t need asking twice. She flipped onto her back, giving me an uninterrupted view of her delicious, firm breasts. I ran my tongue up from her rib cage to her nipple and felt her excitement as I worked it between my lips. She gasped as I pulled it into my mouth and let out a slow moan of contentment as I worked my lips to her other nipple.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered as I pulled away.

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  I could smell her arousal over the scent of lavender but I took my time, running my fingertips over her curves and tasting her skin. As I rested my hand on her bush, she was whimpering with need. I spread her legs with my shoulders and opened her with my fingertips, reveling in the scent of her sex. Gently I breathed on her moist flesh and ran the tip of my tongue from fore to aft. Her head came off the pillow with a jolt, and the eyes that met mine were wide as her cunt.

  “Jasmine!” It came out on the tail of a gasp. “There? No one ever…”

  Can’t say I was surprised. Alec always was a selfish bastard but… “Shhh.” I didn’t say anything else. My tongue was busy.

  She was sweet and fresh as morning and as ready as sunrise. I’d hoped to take longer but in minutes she climaxed with a series of little cries and frenzied jerks of her hips as frantic hands grasped my hair.

  She was still gasping, her breasts rising and falling with each pant, as I eased up the bed and took her face in both hands. I kissed her very gently, letting my lips linger before opening her mouth so she could taste the joy I’d given her. She was halfway to fainting when I let her go. I settled for gathering her close, delighting in her warmth and scent and, I have to be absolutely truthful, thrilled that I’d upstaged Alec.

  Nasty of me. Bitchy of me. But in the circumstances…

  “Jasmine?”

  “Yes.” I smiled at her as I ran my hand over her hair.

  “You haven’t come?’

  I shook my head. “Not yet.” It could wait. I was enjoying a different satisfaction.

  Emily disagreed. Propping herself on one elbow, she bent her head to my breast and carefully worked her way down. When she reached my cunt, she delved in with the enthusiasm and ardor of a convert. I came three times before she finally paused and I insisted we take a nap. She might not need a rest at her age, but I did.

  We slept the day and night around, waking as the early sun streamed in through the open curtains.

  After a slow morning loving, Emily lent me Alec’s toweling robe to eat breakfast in. We sat in the bay window, sipping coffee and spreading creamy butter and tart Seville marmalade on Butteries. These were heavy, fatty pastries I’d have disliked in anyone else’s company but now they tasted of Emily.

  We were debating the wisdom of more coffee, or back to bed when Alec walked in, clothes rumpled, hair on end and eyes red from lack of sleep. I was scared he’d smell the sex on us but all he seemed to notice was food. Muttering a couple of sentences about idiot crews who don’t maintain equipment properly, he wolfed down the remaining four Butteries and the better part of the second pot of coffee nice wife Emily fixed. Apparently Alec had not enjoyed the past twenty-four hours as much as his wife and I had and unfortunately he wobbled off to bed to restore himself so that put paid to an encore for us. But there were would be other times. I was a patient woman.

  “So glad you two get on so well together,” Alec said that evening as we walked down the platform to my sleeper. “Some people have been unbelievably snooty. Peter hardly talks to me now.”

  Can’t say I blamed Peter. He was bound to take his sister’s part. Heaven help me. Had I really loved this man? He was so self-centered, patronizing and just plain thick! I had, once, when I was young and equally thick but now I was well and truly cured. “Nice of you to ask Emmsy to your book signing in Edinburgh,” Alec went on as I hugged her goodbye.

  “It’ll be nice to see someone I know.” I gave a wave and hopped on the train. “I’ll let you know the date.” Something good had come out of the hurt of Alec Carpenter. I was going to have to call my publisher and insist they added Edinburgh to my next book tour. They wouldn’t need to provide any escort. I could arrange that. I settled back in my seat, thinking. I was a trifle torn between genuine fondness for Emily and our promising affair and the certainty that Penelope would get a kick out of knowing I’d made Alec a cuckold.

  This story is a vampire one I wrote for The Sweetest Kiss—an anthology of vampire erotica—and it’s once of very few stories I’ve written with an historical setting and, although heterosexual, is also first person. It just seemed to fit the male character, who, despite being unnamed really does take total control of the story and the action.

  Nightlife

  © Copyright Madeleine Oh

  He caught my eye at once. I’d returned to Paris after an hiatus of seventy years or more, and on the third night, I found him in a nameless club among the tangled streets of the Butte. He was alone in the crowd, no doubt his air of despondency kept the surrounding roisterers at bay. Halfway to drunkenness, he seemed caught in the enveloping presence of humanity and the aroma of cheap wine.

  I watched as he called for another carafe, which he drank alone. Perfect. I prefer the ones without companions. No one to remember me. This one was ideal: a morose expression on his bearded face, alcohol-drenched eyes and those absurd little lenses mortals use in their vain attempt to see as well as we do.

  I sat down in the lone chair beside him.

  “Go away,” he said.

  I laughed. (Who gives orders to a vampire?) And I met his eyes. He didn’t quail or shudder as so many would. Too far gone in his cups for that, but behind the dullness, I glimpsed a wild and wayward passion, a yearning for excitement and deep traces of suppressed longing.

  I smiled. Carefully. It was too early to show my fangs. I touched his arm. “Come with me.”

  He rose and I understood the reason for his loneliness. A dwarf with the torso of a man. He looked at me, eyes bright with defiance and the expectation of rejection, as his wide mouth twisted in a warped smile. “Madame, you wish for my company tonight?”

  I didn’t waste words replying. Hadn’t I made that abundantly clear, even to a half-drunken mortal? “Come,” I repeated, keepin
g hold of his arm. “I offer a sweeter oblivion than cheap, Algerian wine.”

  He laughed at that: a deep peal of mirth rooted in pain and awareness of the farce of mortal life. “Not a patch on the wines of Galliac, I agree but it serves its purpose.”

  “I offer better.”

  We were in the street now. He tightened his coat against a gust of wind and looked at me. “Don’t you feel the cold?”

  Maybe a satin dress and a light stole were a little brief for January but I shook my head. “My kind do not feel heat or cold. Come.”

  He came. Few mortals can resist a vampire’s call. We turned corners and crossed narrow streets. The scurrying rats and the stench of refuse belonged to the city of a hundred years ago. This was a Paris far removed from the wide, clean boulevards of Haussmann’s new city. Not that the mortal noticed, too intent on the imagined pleasures ahead no doubt. But he did hesitate climbing the stairs to the rooms I’d acquired. Was it difficulty mounting the stairs on his attenuated legs? Or some inner sense that I was not the usual woman of the night?

  He didn’t hesitate long. Men: rich, poor, strong or crippled all want the same from a woman. I give them that and take much more than they could ever imagine.

  He looked around my room, surprised perhaps that a woman he perceived to be of easy and available charms lived in such comfort. I did not choose to explain.

  To forestall any conversation, I tossed my stole on a chair and removed my dress.

  “Madame,” he said, “you have a name as well as fine breasts?”

  I walked over to him, to underscore my words and distract him from conversation. “I prefer sharing my breasts to sharing my name.”

  Curious and briefly alarmed, he asked, “I’ve never seen you before. Are you known in this quartier?”

  “Not at all. I have been out of Paris for many years.” Before he or his father was born.

  “Many?” he echoed, a wry smile on his wide mouth. “Not so many, I think, madame. Unless you left in your nurse’s arms.”

  Gallant in its way, I suppose, but I hadn’t picked him for his charm. Why had I chosen him, the cripple, from a club peopled with healthy, upright men, anyone of whom would gladly remove his trousers for me? What caught my eye? Apart from the briefly glimpsed passion behind his eyes, did I suspect a wild desire reined in behind his wall of pain and arrogance? Was I drawn to the quiet need traced on every line of his face? Perhaps it was simply a whim to stroke the rough darkness of his beard?

  That was easily indulged in. I ran two fingers over the line of his jaw, tracing under his full lower lip and taking care not to pierce his skin with my nail. I wanted his blood. Just not yet.

  Knowing how much chill air diminished ardor and deflated erections, I turned to add more wood to the stove. “The bed awaits you,” I said.

  He ignored my suggestion and crossed the room, taking the bundle of wood from my hands and adding to the stove. “You need a servant to do this.”

  “I have a servant.” A girl I found in the streets and hired for more than a pimp would give her to prostitute herself. “She is abed. Should we not be?” I turned my back to him. “I would rather not wake her to undo my stays.”

  He did the honors, loosening the laces until I could ease my corset over my head. Even with that he assisted. Had I found a romantic? Or was he hesitant to disrobe and reveal his deformed legs?

  All he had removed was his hat and gloves, placing then on a side table when he entered. Time to see to the rest. I took his coat and hung that over the back of an upright chair.

  “Sir,” I said, “I think we both know why you accompanied me here.”

  He inclined his head with, “But of course,” as he removed his jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat.

  I chose to assist, running my hands over the woolen fabric and the fine linen of his shirt. Inhaling the scents of laundry starch and male flesh disguised by cologne. His skin was mortal warm through the crisp fabric. Mortal, warm and awaiting me, as I unbuttoned his shirt and removed his silk cravat.

  I let him cope with the stiff collar, contenting myself with watching as he discarded that and the shirt.

  Then it was my turn. Mortal flesh never ceased to attract me and this man was no exception. His chest was warm and firm, the nipples dark and his hair soft and springy under my fingertips. I eased my hand down to the waist of his trousers, imagining the tighter curls clustered around his cock; assuming he wasn’t as small there as his legs might imply.

  I should have thought of that, but too late. If he was, I’d take his blood and leave him with fair memories. Why dally? I lowered my head and kissed him as I reached for the buttons at his waist.

  His response distracted me. Wild passion and need burst from his lips like a tide of burning heat. Was it his desire or mine that flared between us as I pressed my lips to his and I pulled his head upwards to anchor his mouth on mine.

  He whimpered, moaned, as a sweet shudder rippled down his body and I reached my hand to cup his erection.

  No lack of manliness there. He was hard and ready but I wanted far more from him than a fumbled fuck. I stepped back, aware of his racing heartbeat and heightened breathing and the glorious flush on his face that promised richness beneath his skin.

  I said nothing in reply to his gasp but walked over to my bed, shedding chemise and petticoats on my way, and letting my pantaloons fall to the carpet. I stepped out of them, knowing full well he was watching. (What man with blood in his veins wouldn’t?) To encourage him further I placed my foot on a nearby stool as I rolled down my stockings. Slowly. Without looking back, I climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged, waiting.

  I’ve seldom seen a man shed socks, shoes and trousers at such speed. He kept on his drawers. Modesty? I thought not. Would be pointless anyway.

  I beckoned.

  He didn’t hesitate. Few mortals could.

  We embraced again. A pleasant enough sensation by all measures but it was his body, his blood, his jism that I hungered for and to take all I desired, I needed him secure. I broke the kiss. He lay in my arms, limp and pliant. Faster than a mortal could move I tied his hands to the bed head with silken cords.

  His eyes widened with shock. He opened his mouth to protest so I brought mine down again. He did not, could not resist. Ignoring the restraints, he gave himself over to my lips and welcomed my tongue as I opened his mouth with mine.

  That stifled any protests.

  “There’s nothing to fear,” I told him as I stroked his chest and bent to lick his nipple. “I will not harm you,” I went on, smiling at his hardening nipples.

  “Then why restrain me, madame?”

  Ever polite, this one was. “To keep you in my bed,” I replied, and kissed his other nipple, nipping it gently to wring a groan from him. Much as the rhythm of his heartbeat tempted, I was not ready to draw blood. First pleasure, then feed.

  Seemed he accepted my word, or realized the futility of resistance. Perhaps he was one of those who enjoyed submission? No matter. I kissed his neck, stroked his chest, teased those proud nipples with my tongue and let him feel the caress of my fangs against his skin, all the while hiding them from his view.

  Some of my kindred enjoy instilling fear and horror. I refrain, unless it is merited, like the creature who abused my little servant. I enjoyed his cringing terror.

  Seeing my man eager, his agitation having increased rather than diminished the bulge behind his drawers, I stroked his thighs, sensing the weakness beneath. What tragic accident had caused crippled legs on such a fine torso? I eased down his drawers and stared. In three hundred years I’ve seen many men, but never one this well-endowed.

  Seemed nature, having cheated him on his legs, compensated him with this cock: stupendous in size, form and girth. Indeed, for a few moments, I wondered if I’d encountered a new form of mortal creature. It was as if his cock leeched strength and power from his legs and I was losing my concentration. I’d searched for a man to milk and found a colossus. Now I had
to watch against gorging myself.

  “You are indeed endowed by the gods.”

  “In one way only,” he replied, his voice taut and harsh.

  “The way that matters most to a woman,” I replied and wondered about the spiteful mortal women who’d rejected him for his short stature when he possessed a prize beyond most lover’s dreams.

  “You are fine indeed,” I said, stroking my finger up the side of his cock until it twitched at me.

  I licked my lips in anticipation and he laughed. “Madame, one would think you planned to make a meal of me.”

  “One would indeed,” I replied, licking my lower lip as my fangs itched and pressed my gums. “I cannot but wonder how a man as endowed as you does not have a sweetheart or lover awaiting him. Why spend your evenings in the company of a bottle?”

  Mistake. He growled at me. “A bottle makes an uncomplaining mistress.”

  More likely, a bottle offered oblivion but his demons were not mine.

  “I will not complain,” I told him as I stroked his atrophied thighs. “I will devour you instead.” And I closed my mouth over the head of his cock.

  He gasped, but not from pain or shock. His hips jerked and I took him deeper. He groaned a few times as his spine arched and his frail legs flexed but he didn’t object. Couldn’t. I took him deeper and sensation engulfed him. I swirled my tongue over the soft head of his cock and eased my lips up and down his shaft. Between times, I stroked his balls.

  Strange little things mortals are, and the men, so vulnerable, so helpless as the passion takes them. This one was no different.

  His hips rocked, his shoulders rose off the bed and his legs stiffened as he neared his climax. He cried out, sweet guttural sounds as the jism rose in his cock and I tasted the sweetness of human life.

  I waited to bite until he was lost in the throes of ecstasy. Did he notice? Who can tell with humans? He gasped and called out as his body jerked under my fangs and I milked him of blood and jism, drawing on his strength and the abundance of human essence.