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  I feared they’d cut me out of their lives. My uncle had done so to his oldest son when he’d left his wife for another woman. “The church forbids divorce,” he’d said in a tone that left no doubt that he no longer considered his oldest son his child.

  It was either tell them or live a lie for the rest of my life, and I didn’t think I had the courage to tell them. But I’d been so desperate to escape that decision that I’d been easy prey for Jean-Paul. It had been easy for him to convince me that being a vampire was the best possible escape for me. They’d think I was dead and I would be free to live my own life for all eternity.

  But sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at Jared and what I’d done to him, I began to wonder if I had made the right choice.

  The bitter memories were pushed aside and I began to remember the good things about my parents. There had been laughter, love, and above all else, joy. Birthday parties and high school football games when I could pick out the sound of my father’s voice shouting from the bleachers over all the other noise, and coming home after the game, staying up for hours discussing and dissecting the game with him at the kitchen table. Both of my parents had wonderful senses of humor and loved nothing more than to laugh. I remembered the summer vacations on the sugary white sand beaches of the Florida panhandle, where my skin turned brown from the sun. There had been trips to Six Flags in Atlanta, and my father had ridden everything with me, enjoying the thrilling rides as much as I had.

  A lump rose in my throat as I remembered again how much pain my “death” in the fire must have caused them, was probably still causing them.

  Rachel’s hand touched my shoulder, caressing it gently. “There’s no use in thinking this way, Cord. The pain will not help. It will only make you bitter if you dwell on it.” She sat down next to me on the bed. “What’s done is done. There’s no point in regret—regret is the path to madness for a vampire. You have to put all of that behind you now. It may not seem this way to you because you’re so young, but humans live and die in no more than a blink of our eyes.”

  Eternity stretched out before me, and I caught my breath at the vast emptiness I saw.

  “I cannot imagine what it must be like to be Nigel’s age,” she went on, putting her arm around my shoulders. “The things he has seen—he is my creator, and I am so incredibly young next to him. I’ve been a vampire for only twenty years, and I have seen some of the people I cared about grow older, some of them sicken and die. I try not to think about it too much—you have to learn to deal with it, to separate your feelings from your reality or else you’ll go mad.” She took a deep breath. “And you—you’re just a baby. I could strangle Jean-Paul for his irresponsibility! You shouldn’t be on your own—not for at least another century. Nigel wouldn’t even consider letting me on my own until I have passed my first century—and possibly not even then. What Jean-Paul has done is no different than putting a newborn out in the forest to fend for itself.”

  “Tell me about your old life, your human life,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from shaking. I wanted to hear her story, to forget my own, to push the melancholy and sadness from my consciousness.

  “I was a singer.” She stroked the top of my head gently. “I came to New Orleans to be a musician. I worked in a coffee shop during the day and sang with a band at night. I was quite good too.”

  Jared muttered something and shifted again in his sleep. She had pulled the comforter back up over him, so his erection was hidden.

  “I know, I enjoyed listening to you play,” I replied, smiling at her. “You really have a remarkable voice. You could have been a star.”

  “You think?” She took me by the hand. “Come back out into the living room and I’ll play something for you.”

  She pulled me along and pushed me down into a wingback chair while she sat down at the baby grand. “I’ve always loved music,” she said as she began running her fingers along the keys. “Even now, whenever things become too much for me to bear, I can simply sit down and play and forget everything.”

  She began to play a song I didn’t recognize, but it was melodic and beautiful. I closed my eyes and allowed my head to rest against the back of the chair. The music washed over me and carried me away from everything.

  “Why are you so difficult?” Jean-Paul shouted at me, his eyes blazing angrily. “Why can’t you simply enjoy yourself? Why must you turn everything into some stupid soap opera?”

  “Because I love you,” I retorted, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. “Why is that so hard for you to understand? Do you even know what love is?”

  He stood there, fists clenched, his enormous swollen cock slapping against his lower abdomen as he literally shook with anger. “Sex isn’t love,” he replied, walking back over to the bed and grabbing a fistful of my hair in one hand, pulling my head back and exposing my neck. He leaned down and ran his tongue along my Adam’s apple down to the base of my throat. “You don’t know the difference between the two—and you don’t care, really, do you? You’re just a little pig who wants to get fucked and be fucked and fuck and be with as many men as you can.”

  His angry, insulting words washed over me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care as long as he was touching me. I didn’t care as long as he was feeling something for me, even if it was anger.

  Anything was better than nothing.

  I moaned as the ecstasy pushed the anger from my mind, my cock swelling in response as the pressure on my hair increased as he pulled harder. “You want it rough, don’t you?” he whispered as he pushed me down against the mattress, slamming a leg roughly in between mine and pushing my legs apart.

  “Fuck you,” I spat as his weight pressed down on me. He held both of my wrists with one hand over my head, and I was helpless, even as I writhed and tried to buck him off me.

  “No, I’m going to fuck you, you nasty little bitch boy,” he whispered into my ear, biting down on my earlobe. “I am going to fuck you long and rough and hard, just the way you like it, the way you want it.”

  I gasped as his mouth worked its way down to my nipples, and he began licking and sucking on them, moving rapidly back and forth from one to the other until my entire body was shaking and trembling with need and desire, my cock straining against his body as one of his hands started rubbing over the head, and as much as I was hating him in that moment, I didn’t want him to stop. He was right—I liked it like this. I liked him forcing me. I liked him holding me down and calling me names. It made my cock ache and my balls clench, and I wanted him inside me, pounding away at me, driving his hardness into me, slamming me with such force that my head hit the wall. He released my hands and sat up, releasing me. I gulped in breaths of air as he toyed with my nipples, flicking them with his fingers.

  “Look at you. You’re just a little bitch in heat who wants my cock so bad he’ll beg for it,” he taunted me.

  “Go to hell, asshole!” I shouted the words at him, my face twisted in a sneer. I shoved his fingers away from my nipples and tried to sit up, but he grabbed hold of my legs and pulled them up in the air and forced them down again.

  He placed his mouth right next to my ear as he pressed his weight down on top of me. “You’re just a little bitch, aren’t you?” he whispered into my ear as he kept rubbing the head of my cock. “You want to be forced, don’t you? You like it rough, don’t you, bitch?”

  “Fuck you.” I managed to breathe the words out again somehow, even as my eyes were rolling back in my head from the waves of pleasure emanating from the head of my cock as his fingertips continued to tease it, playing with the slit as my precum began to slowly ooze from it.

  “I’ll fuck you, all right,” he said, and slapped me across the face. My eyes welled with bloody tears as I started fighting against him, trying to push him off me. But he was too strong, and he somehow managed to get both of my wrists in his free hand and push them over my head, holding them there. He stopped the pressure on the head of my cock, and I gas
ped for air as my body’s trembling stopped, blinking back the tears as he tied my wrists to the headboard, the way Sebastian had.

  “Oh yeah, the witch knew what he was doing with you, didn’t he?” His voice was contemptuous. “He knew what you like, didn’t he? He tied you up and you loved it, didn’t you? You teased him with your tight little ass just like a bitch in heat until he couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  He straddled me, sitting on my stomach and smiling down at me, his blue eyes glinting in the candlelight. “What are you going to do now, bitch?” His voice mocked me, and he leaned forward, rubbing his cock on my lips. I could taste the salty sweat, smell its masculine mustiness. His heavy balls rested on my chin, and I wanted him, God help me, I wanted him.

  “You want to suck my cock, don’t you? You want to lube it up with your saliva before I shove it up your ass, don’t you, boy?”

  “Fuck you,” I whimpered as he slid down my body, grasping my cock and his with the same hand, rubbing them together as his hips began moving back and forth, grinding into me, and I started gasping again because it felt good, it felt amazing, and I wanted him inside me, because even though I hated him, I loved him and I wanted him inside, I wanted to feel him thrusting angrily into me, and then his mouth was on my right armpit, licking and kissing and nibbling, and involuntarily I cried out, almost sobbing from the intensity of how good it felt, how absolutely amazing he was making me feel. No one else on earth could make me feel the way Jean-Paul could, no one, and then his mouth was on my other armpit, but there was another mouth on the other.

  I opened my eyes and there was Clint, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight, and Armand was also there, his eyes glinting as he stroked himself. Norman was at the foot of the bed, and he leaned forward. His tongue began darting between my butt cheeks, and I stifled a scream as Jean-Paul maneuvered off me, and I pulled against the restraints. There was nothing I could do, other than writhe and scream and moan, but at the same time it felt extraordinary, and someone was tying a handkerchief over my eyes and I couldn’t see, everything was dark, but I could feel their mouths, their tongues darting over my body, and someone took my cock into their mouth.

  Another mouth was nibbling the tender skin of my left armpit while fingers pulled and pinched and tweaked at my nipples, while another mouth was on my asshole, the tongue and lips teasing the skin around it, and every so often the tongue would penetrate, making my entire body stiffen, but there was nothing to do but moan, nothing to do but surrender to the pleasure.

  “You want to act like a little bitch, then you’re going to be treated like one,” Jean-Paul breathed into my ear.

  And a cock entered me, rough and hard, shoving inside and tearing me apart. I opened my mouth to scream but another mouth came down over it, a tongue shoving into my mouth, lips closing over my tongue and sucking on it, and my whole body began to shiver and tremble as the cock stopped pushing; it was completely inside of me, and I relaxed, welcoming whoever it was inside of me, and the animalistic side of my brain pushed everything aside.

  “Yes, fuck me. Make me your little bitch,” I demanded when my mouth was released again. “Come on, fuck me! Do it! Give it to me! I doubt all of you combined can satisfy me!”

  I strained against the ropes, trying to push myself down farther on the cock, to get it all inside of me, and it began to withdraw and I was gasping from the feeling as everything closed up behind its retreat, and I growled, “Fuck me fuck me make me your bitch I want you inside of me,” and then it was forcing its way back in as I screamed, but the pain crossed the line into pleasure and it was intense. It was like I was a virgin and this was the first time I’d ever taken a cock inside of me, and I wanted them all inside of me. All I wanted was cock in my mouth, in my ass; there wasn’t enough cock to satisfy me, and he kept fucking me, and I got my wish as a thick one was shoved into my mouth, and I lapped at it, closing my mouth around it and toying with his head with my tongue, sucking and bucking my hips upward as the other cock plunged deeper and deeper inside of me, and I gripped with my ass, and I felt that one tremble and cry out as he came inside, and the other began pumping his cum into my mouth, pulling it out, raining the cum down on my face as I lapped for it with my tongue. I wanted to taste it all; I wanted more. And then a different cock was forcing its way into my ass, and I laughed, because I wanted more. I wanted to just be used and debased and humiliated over and over and over again. . . .

  The music stopped and I opened my eyes. I took a deep breath as the memory faded away.

  I looked over at Rachel, who was watching me carefully, her eyes narrowed to slits. “Did they often treat you like that?” she asked, her voice quiet and still and sympathetic. “You know that was gang rape, don’t you?”

  “Please.” I stood up, my erection straining against my jeans. “Please stay out of my head, Rachel.” My legs were wobbly.

  She nodded and turned away from me. She began playing the piano again, this time a classical piece. I think it was Rachmaninoff, but I wasn’t sure, and I knew I had to get away from her pity, away from her loathing.

  Embarrassed, I headed for the front door. “I’m going for a walk. I think I need to get some air.”

  She merely nodded again without looking up.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was all too much for me.

  The night sky was clear of clouds, a beautiful deep midnight blue with a gorgeous half-moon casting light down on the city. The sidewalk was slick and wet, and the gutters were filled with clear water. I stood at the top of the steps, breathing in the clear air. The French Quarter only smells clean after a heavy rain. It always took an hour or so for the stink to take over again.

  I looked over at Sebastian’s—no, Quentin’s—house. That was really where it all started, wasn’t it? The debasement, the dark shameful desires that drove me to illicit encounters with men who had no names, whose faces I couldn’t remember, who were nothing more to me than a body with an erection and an ass to plug?

  Since I had fled Palm Springs and come to New Orleans, every night had been filled with strangers. I fed from all of them, sinking my teeth into that spot on the neck where the juicy jugular vein was most prominent, feeling their bodies shudder with pleasure as my lips closed around the gushing holes and lapped their blood. Sometimes there were as many as four a night, fucking and sucking and licking and kissing until my cock was nearly rubbed raw.

  But the beauty of being a vampire was those raw friction sores always healed quickly, sometimes before the trick of the moment had finished putting his clothes back on and disappeared into the night. There was the back room at Rawhide where conversation wasn’t even required, where I could just go stand in a corner and wait for someone’s hand to brush against my crotch, and my ability to see clearly in the dark gave me an advantage over my human counterparts. I would take off my shirt and toss it aside, open my pants and expose my cock and balls for anyone with a hungry mouth and a need to worship another man to pleasure me. There was the upstairs room at the Phoenix over on Elysian Fields, where I could find a moist hole to pound as they pressed a bottle of poppers to my nostrils as my cock took them to heights of pleasure they never imagined existed.

  I’d been lost in a nonstop orgy for over two weeks.

  And that was really why, a few days ago, I’d decided to test myself by seeing how long I could go without feeding. A stupid, self-destructive decision made because my heart was aching, because there was an emptiness inside of me because Jean-Paul hadn’t loved me, had never loved me. I’d tried to fill that empty space with strangers.

  I might as well have set myself on fire and been done with it.

  Jared was paying the price for my self-destruction.

  I wasn’t human anymore.

  And that, too, had been a thoughtless decision, one that should have received more consideration, more thought put into it. But I had so desperately wanted to be myself, to be able to enjoy the love of another man
that I traded my humanity for it.

  Was it worth it?

  I wasn’t sure any longer.

  I wandered down Orleans Street, not really paying attention to what I was doing or where I was going. I just needed to get away from that house, from her, from what I had done to Jared. The guilt—how did vampires live with such guilt? Was it something that came with time, the longer you lived the less you cared about your victims?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be that person. I wasn’t sure I could ever stop caring, stop feeling guilt. If anything, being a vampire had made me care more.

  I walked past the cathedral and Jackson Square. I didn’t look down Chartres Street, where this whole mess had begun—was it just a day or two ago? I wasn’t even sure anymore. Leaving Palm Springs and Jean-Paul had clearly been a mistake. I had been immature, stupid. So Jean-Paul wasn’t in love with me? So I was nothing more than another beautiful young man who excited his desire and lusts? There were worse things. And I did miss the others, especially Clint. He had always been almost a surrogate father for me, much more so than selfish, self-absorbed Jean-Paul. He was handsome, with his gleaming bald head and gentle blue eyes, the strong, thick muscles. He was the one who always took care of me, made sure I’d fed and was okay—not Jean-Paul.

  I missed him.

  Maybe once this entire mess was cleared up, I could go back to Palm Springs and find Clint. The two of us could leave Jean-Paul and the others and make our way through the world. Surely he was tired of the parties and the drugs, the crowds of sweating musclemen flying high on one drug or another, the thumping dance music, the anonymity of it all.

  I crossed Decatur Street, smelling the coffee and beignets frying in oil at Café du Monde as I went up the ramp. I crossed the streetcar tracks and climbed up the last steps to the very top of the levee. I turned back and looked at the beautifully lit cathedral. Jackson Square was locked for the night, quiet and lovely in the night lamps. I smiled and turned back to watch the river. It was peaceful up here on the levee, with the river making its endless journey to the Gulf of Mexico. A huge barge was going past on the river, and I sat down on a bench, resisting the urge to bury my face in my hands. I watched the currents swirling and wondered what would happen if I simply jumped into the cold, muddy water. Could a vampire drown? Would I simply be swept out to the Gulf by the treacherous and tricky currents?