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  I lost myself in the pleasure.

  This pleasure was even more seductive than feeding from the warm neck of a beautiful young man.

  I had no memory of Jean-Paul feeding from me during that Mardi Gras. It seemed so long ago, but it had been only a couple of years. A little more than two years since I ceased to be human, since I walked away from my life, my family, and my closet. There had been many pleasures in the time since—but nothing like this. This was addictive, dangerous.

  No wonder humans stopped resisting when we began to feed from them.

  If this was how it felt to have someone drink from you, it was a wonder they didn’t line up to feed us.

  It also was a wonder there weren’t more vampires walking the planet.

  Another wave of ecstasy radiated from my self-inflicted wounds as his mouth began working on me, the heat spreading up my arm to my shoulder and into my brain. It felt like I was catching on fire. The burning sensation traveled through my body with each breath I took—and the air itself seemed intoxicating. A ball of fire moved up and down, back and forth through my body. A thousand little pins and needles were piercing my flesh, and I heard myself gasping, gulping in more air that seemed somehow thicker, richer, taking me higher than I’d ever felt before.

  I went up onto my toes as each beat of my heart pumped another spurt of my dark blood into his mouth, and I felt his tongue licking at my skin so he wouldn’t miss a drop of it, as it nurtured him, changed him, turned him from what he once was into what he was going to be, into what I was. I tried to resist the pleasure, to remain in control of my mind, heart, and body—but it was too much for me. I wasn’t strong enough, physically or mentally, and I doubted anyone would have been. I was experiencing pleasure in its purest form, an animalistic pleasure that spoke to my atavistic core, until I finally surrendered to its insistent demand for obedience. There was no way I could resist, no way I could stop even had I wanted to.

  So I stopped resisting the pleasure, the sheer joy of how it felt to have him feeding from me, drinking from my veins, and allowed it to take me, consume me, and I heard the moan come from deep inside me and explode out through my mouth.

  I brought my free hand up to touch my hard nipple and an electrical current went through me. My body shook, convulsed, and trembled. I couldn’t catch my breath and simply gasped air.

  I felt like we were connecting in some primal, instinctual way that felt so right, like our souls were mating and coming together, like I was becoming him and he was becoming me, and together we were becoming something else completely.

  But even though my mind was so deeply lost in animalistic pleasure, there was still a sense that there was something important that I couldn’t grasp, something I’d missed earlier, but before I could try to focus, the pleasure electrified me again. My entire body went stiff as his mouth’s grip on my wrist somehow became even tighter, and I gave in to it again, let myself go, and hoped that I would remember when it was over.

  The only thing that mattered now was the pleasure.

  My other hand brushed against his forehead, which was hot and damp with sweat. I opened my eyes and saw the rivulets of sweat pouring down the side of his face. His hair was wet and slick, and his eyes also opened, locking on mine, and I almost lost myself in the beautiful deep blue of his eyes.

  It was like drowning.

  I love you so much, Cord. Thank you for this. We’ll be together forever, always together, just the two of us, and I will love you forever.

  And again a thought danced through my head—this is wrong—but it was gone in an instant as he brought one of his strong hands up to my crotch, his thumb teasing the head of my cock, until a drop of precum leaked out, and he kept rubbing his thumb over it, toying with the slit, and I didn’t want him to ever stop.

  Ever.

  I wanted to feel this ecstasy forever.

  Our shadows danced across the ceiling as my eyes half closed. The light of the chandelier flickered briefly, as though there was some kind of power surge. I moaned again, an involuntary sound of pleasure as my head went back and my blurred vision tried to focus on the ceiling.

  I could feel my cock getting even larger as my blood pumped into it, growing long and hard and strong with every beat of my heart, an urgent need for release radiating from my balls, which were beginning to ache.

  And still his thumb rubbed over the head.

  I almost whimpered.

  I’d never felt such pleasure before. I’d never felt anything like this before. This was better than getting fucked, getting my cock sucked, or fucking someone. My years with Jean-Paul and his fraternity had taught me sexual delights I’d never dreamed possible, even in my wildest dreams and fantasies back when I was in my fraternity closet back at Ole Miss looking at gay porn on my laptop late at night in my room. They taught me positions and activities that made my eyes roll back into my head and forced animalistic howls to escape from my throat as they drove me nearly insane with the unimaginable pleasures they’d spent centuries seeking out, learning, and perfecting. Almost every night it had been something new as they initiated me into the world of vampiric desire and pleasure, each night instructing me in a carnal knowledge that left me spent and exhausted and panting on the bed or the floor or the mat or hanging from whatever device I’d been attached to.

  But all of those nights combined were nothing compared to how this felt.

  I wanted Jared to keep sucking my blood forever and to never, ever be sated. I wanted his need for my blood to be as powerful as my need for him to take it from me. I wanted him to never remove his mouth from my arm—to always be there on his knees before me in supplication, need, and desire, as my blood changed his into something else, transformed his beautiful body, turned him from being merely human into something ever so much more than he ever dreamed possible.

  I felt like I was transforming from a vampire into a god, because I was feeling the joy of creation.

  This must be what God had felt like when he created life, the universe, the planets, the sun and the moon and paradise, the animals and birds and trees and plants. How had God stopped, if the story I’d been taught from childhood, had been drilled into my head, was in fact the truth?

  If this was creation, the rush God must have felt on each of those six days must have made him drunk.

  No wonder he’d rested on the seventh day, collapsing onto his couch, spent and exhausted and panting from the exquisite pleasure and pain of creation.

  Had it been like this for Jean-Paul when he created me, when he took me from my old human life and made me what I am now?

  Dear God.

  There was no drug or intoxicant that compared to this.

  During my years with Jean-Paul, I had tried everything he’d given to me—Ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, crystal meth—stimulants whose addictive properties we vampires were immune to, but these drugs still altered our states of consciousness. Jean-Paul claimed we felt them even more intensely than humans could, as we experienced everything with a much higher degree of intensity than they did—which made me pity them all the more. Wasn’t it sad enough their bodies aged, withered, and died, but they couldn’t even experience pleasure as intensely as a vampire?

  It hardly seemed fair. . . .

  Ecstasy was my favorite of them all, of course—the joy of warmth glowing from within, of feeling beautiful and wanting to touch and be touched, of feeling music wash over my body and get inside my very soul until I was one with the beat, with the lyrics, with the emotion, of dancing in a crowd of incredibly beautiful men until the sun came up, of feeling like the night could, should, would, last forever.

  But this . . . this was better than Ecstasy.

  This was a pleasure I would never tire of, a pleasure I wanted to go on forever.

  This pleasure was seductive, addictive.

  Both of his strong hands came up, grabbing hold of my arm so tightly he almost pulled me down on top of him. I closed my eyes and somehow regained my balance
as yet another shudder of joy wracked through my body and my brain—pushing every thought out of my head other than how incredibly magnificent his lips felt against my skin, and I could hear the thundering beat of my heart.

  I could feel pressure building inside of my balls.

  I started bouncing up onto my toes.

  I opened my eyes as my breath started coming in gasps.

  I opened my mouth to say I love you, but I couldn’t get the words out around my panting breaths.

  I smiled hesitantly down at him, and our eyes met.

  What I saw in his eyes in that moment sent a chill through me.

  His eyes were different.

  Jared had always had dark blue eyes—but the eyes that were looking up at me, full of lust and desire, were brown with golden flecks.

  I hadn’t imagined it that first time.

  What the hell?

  I’d seen eyes like that before—

  Sebastian.

  But he was dead. . . .

  Another wave of pleasure pushed everything out of my mind.

  He’d said Sebastian was still alive.

  But that wasn’t possible.

  My mind flashed back to that horrible night.

  I was tied to the bed, completely helpless and at the mercy of a crazy man, a man who was not just a man but was also a witch and was working a powerful spell on me, a spell with an evil purpose. He was a beautiful man, such a beautiful man . . . and then Sebastian began sucking my cock—remember? Remember how that felt? I remembered the feeling of another consciousness inside of my head, filling my thoughts, almost as though determined to take over my mind and my body while Sebastian worked his magic on me. I was helpless and at his mercy; there was nothing I could do. I was tied, spread-eagle, each wrist and ankle to a different post of the bed, and I called for help, and help finally came before it was too late, before Sebastian could drain my body of its blood entirely, the blood that was already starting to change from whatever it was that Jean-Paul had done to me the previous night. Sebastian was going to kill me and drink my blood. Jean-Paul had taken some of my blood, but he’d given me his vampire blood to drink in return, and that had started to change me. All day long the sun had bothered my skin and hurt my eyes, and a connection had been forged between our minds, and it was that connection—the connection of our commingled blood—that allowed us to communicate in our minds together. Sebastian wanted to combine the power of a witch with that of a vampire and it could not be allowed . . . so all of them, the entire fraternity of vampires headed by Jean-Paul, they came to my rescue and murdered Sebastian, burned the house down with his body and that of another inside, gave out the story that I’d somehow died in the fire—I don’t know how they worked the dental records and so forth; all I knew was there was another corpse in the house with Sebastian’s and it was positively identified as me and I was dead—free to live my life as a vampire, free to escape from my old life and begin anew.

  I opened my eyes with a start.

  There was that feeling again, inside of my mind.

  Someone—some thing—was trying to get inside of me.

  And it wasn’t Jean-Paul this time. I knew how Jean-Paul felt, recognized the feeling when his mind entered mine. We’d connected many times over the past few years—and it was a comforting feeling when his mind joined with mine, whether it was across a crowded dance floor while music blared from speakers or on an airplane as we traveled to yet another of the endless circuit parties we always seemed to be going to.

  This was someone else—and despite the pleasure still radiating from where his lips were locked onto my wrist, the heat was burning out and turning cold.

  I looked down into Jared’s eyes—the eyes that weren’t Jared’s. The corners of his lips curved up into a smile even as he maintained their pressure on my wrist. One of his hands let go of me, sliding down and closing again around my hard cock. He began stroking me slowly, his hand moving back and forth slowly, and my eyes closed again.

  How does he know to do that ?

  The thought flashed through the pleasure before disappearing into the ecstasy.

  There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Cord.

  He was . . . he was inside my head.

  But the voice . . . it didn’t sound like Jared’s.

  And the thought that had danced in and out of my head came rushing back.

  Whenever you feed from a human, you see into their mind. But when I’d fed from Jared, his mind had been closed to mine.

  That was what was wrong.

  And perhaps that was why the wounds wouldn’t heal.

  Something was wrong with Jared.

  How does he know how to pleasure another man? He’s a straight boy.

  You weren’t so concerned about that when I was fucking your ass, Cord. You didn’t give a shit that I was straight as long as your tight hole was riding my big cock. Isn’t that right? So now you care? I bet if my big thick cock was pounding your tight little ass, you wouldn’t care anymore, right? Why question it? Why not just enjoy the ride, little vampire?

  I forced my eyes open and looked down at him again.

  His eyes were now closed, the sucking becoming even more urgent as I noticed his own erection, a clear drop of liquid glistening at the slit. He was moaning, a deep guttural sound from deep within himself.

  I could hear Jean-Paul’s voice: The conversion doesn’t change the basic core of who you are as a person; becoming a vampire will not make a good person evil, nor an evil person good. Vampiric blood brings with it great power—power that many humans could not handle. Have you heard that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely? Many have allowed the new power to corrupt their soul, turn them into something evil—but the seed was there all along. Likewise, I was a lover of men when I was human, with no interest in women. Over the centuries, I have taken women as lovers—but that was more from boredom, a need for something different. And yes, there are male vampires who were repulsed by the thought of loving another male when they were human who, out of ennui or curiosity, have taken male lovers. But the blood itself will not make someone change something so basic as their sexual orientation.

  I bit my lower lip and pushed Jared away from my wrist.

  His eyes opened as he fell backward against the couch.

  They were blue again.

  Had I imagined the whole thing?

  It was possible. The ecstasy—

  I felt dizzy. He had taken too much of my blood; the pleasure had distracted me. I was too drained. I felt weak . . . my mind . . .

  He smiled up at me, my blood smeared all over his lips, his chin, his teeth reddened with it. He tilted his head to one side as he wiped the blood from his chin with his right hand before licking it off. There was something almost predatory in the smile, in his eyes as he kept looking at me. “I want more,” he purred, getting to his feet. His erection slapped against his stomach. He put his left hand on it. “I want more of your blood, Cord.” He took a step toward me. “I want to fuck you some more. I want—”

  I shook my head and took another step backward. The red holes in his neck looked even angrier than before. “You need to rest, Jared,” I managed to say, relieved that somehow my voice didn’t quiver or break. I folded my arms. The wounds in my wrist were closing. I licked the smeared blood from my forearm; when I looked again, my wounds had completely healed.

  So why won’t the holes in Jared’s neck heal? Even now that he has ingested my blood? What the hell is wrong?

  “I want—”

  “No,” I cut him off firmly. “You drank my blood, Jared. You don’t know what that means, what that’s going to do to you. Trust me, you need to rest.”

  “I didn’t ask for it.” He smirked at me as he sat down on the divan, leaning back against the arm. The muscles in his torso flexed as he shifted, and I noticed that his tan skin was getting lighter. The blue veins that had crisscrossed his muscles were even more prominent than they had been. He was changi
ng before my eyes.

  And I didn’t know how to handle any of it.

  I’d made a terrible mistake.

  A horrible mistake—and it was too late to fix it.

  Other than killing him, there was nothing else I could think of to do.

  What had I done?

  “Why don’t you lie down in here?” I somehow managed to keep my voice level as I walked across the room to the big double pockets doors. I pulled them open, revealing the small guest bedroom. I turned and smiled at him. “This bed is much more comfortable than that couch.”

  “I am rather tired,” he said, masking a yawn with his hand. He stood up and stretched, the muscles in his stomach rippling as he raised his arms over his head and arched his back slightly. “I think I will sleep for a bit.” He went through the doorway, sitting on the edge of the double bed. “Are you sure you don’t want to lie down with me?” He patted the mattress next to him, his right eye closing in a wink. In the moonlight coming through the window, his body looked like carved marble. He pouted as he slowly reclined until his naked form was stretched out completely. “Please?” He placed his hands behind his head, his latissimus muscles flaring out and turning his armpits into deep, hairy craters.

  “I’m not tired,” I replied, trying to keep my eyes on his. I didn’t trust myself to look at his body—the temptation might be too much for me. “You go ahead and get some rest. I’ll join you in a little while, I promise.” I stepped closer to him and kissed his cheek. His skin felt cold against my lips.

  He closed his eyes, and within moments his breathing became even. His mouth fell open, and he snored. Inside his mouth, I could see that his canine teeth were longer, more pointed.

  The conversion was already starting.

  I stepped over the threshold back into the living room and slid the doors closed behind me. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door. Scooter, the striped orange cat I’d adopted since my arrival in New Orleans, wound around my legs and howled at me.