On a Mission

The vampire waited until Harry went into his cellar to do the working we’d discussed. He’d sat in the far corner of the room, and he’d been quiet all evening, flirting politely with his beer in a way that made me think of Bela Lugosi: “I do not drink … vine.” I mean, I knew he was White Court, and didn’t drink blood, either, but he just wasn’t interested in that beer the way someone who eats and drink for sustenance would be, and you can’t tell me differently.

When the cellar door fell, though, he looked at me under his lashes in a way that men just don’t, and said, “If tomorrow happens the way we think it will, you might want to get that taken care of, first.”

I looked at him blankly, and he returned the look with interest. It was the first time that evening that he’d really turned on the heat, and fuck, I could feel my face going hot as I realized what he meant. It doesn’t show right away when I blush, though, so I snapped back, “What, this is the famed White Court seduction technique? ‘Let me take care of that for you’?” I’d known when Harry had said he wanted to call his vampire ex in on this that Raith would look at me and see a virgin, but I’d managed to forget it for most of our planning.

“Empty Night,” said the vampire, “I meant, maybe you have a friend, or someone who… " and the vampire actually looked a little awkward.

“You think I’m the smooth one, then,” I said, feeling the blush recede a little. I blinked a little trying to imagine the conversation. “‘scuze me, I have an urgent unicorn-related problem–’ no wait, better, ‘I’m heading into battle, and there’s a tactical advantage in your pants.’”

The vampire snorted, which made me feel better again; once they think I’m funny, I usually do okay, although it was weird to think of a vampire that way. “Your choice. But if there’s White Court there, you’ll be swarmed.”

His eyes were dark, and across the room, he sat in shadow. He didn’t look like much, a thin, pale guy, who sat, perhaps, slightly too still. I didn’t underestimate him.

“You seem to be resisting my rugged charm,” I said, trying to figure out how much was bullshit. I mean, Lara’d been pretty hot to – I shifted a little, and decided not to think of Lara Raith. He’s her brother*, Carlito*, I reminded myself. I knew Harry trusted him, but Harry got kind of dumb when sex was involved.

Raith grinned across the room, a flash of white teeth that made it easy to remember he was a predator. “I am somewhat… more practised at self-control,” he said, silkily, and then in a somewhat more normal tone, “and besides, Harry would hex everything in my apartment if I debauched you the way I’d like.”

He said it so casually, and I guess if you’re a White, debauchery is pretty casual, like making a sandwich. I scowled at my beer, which was mostly empty. I didn’t see how Harry had any say in my debauchery. “I’m not his apprentice, I’m not anyone’s apprentice. What, he’d let me ride his dinosaur, and have his back in a duel, but he doesn’t trust me to make decisions about–” I was going to say, ‘relationships,’ but stopped myself, partly because it was so obviously the wrong word, and partly because Raith was quietly cracking up.

“Ride his dinosaur?” He adopted an overly earnest tone. “I don’t know what he’s told you, but I’ve seen it, and it’s not that big.”

The cellar door banged all the way open. “Thanks a lot, Thomas,” said Harry, “I really appreciate all the work you put into making sure that rumor never ever dies. I hope someday to be able to repay the favor.”

Thomas batted his eyelashes at Harry, more playful than he’d been all night. “Come now, Harry, you know I’ve only helped your reputation. Miz Vittorio asked how you’d finally managed to ’tame the wild stallion’.” He glanced at me. “The wild stallion is me,” he explained unnecessarily and with obnoxious sincerity, eyes dancing with… something.

“Ugh,” said Harry.

“Rumor?” I asked.

Raith managed to stop grinning like an imp, but his eyes were still full of humor and– affection, almost, when he looked at Harry. “Harry would rather stick his dick in a wood-chipper than have sex with me,” he explained, making it sound like it was one of Harry’s endearing quirks.

“Augh!” said Harry. “Stop it! Stop talking!”

Raith saluted him obediently with the bottle.

“But he’s about right,” Harry admitted. “Listen guys, my last shipment of isinglass is cracked, and I’m going to have to run down to Pete’s. Anything I should get while I’m out?”

“More beer?” I said, fighting not to crank my head around and stare at Raith. I dunno why it should be such a shock, and I guess more fool me for listening to rumors, but it was bizarre trying to rearrange the facts in my head around this new information. If they weren’t– Then they–

“I dunno, maybe we should be cutting you off, Junior,” said Harry. “Right, Mouse, don’t let these two jokers get in too much trouble.”

I started to protest that I’d been legal drinking age for five years, but Harry was already wrestling with his fiend of hell door, which makes a squeal like a tomcat in the throes of passion, so I gave it up.

Raith and Harry’s relationship was weird, obviously more complex than any easy explanation, but maybe if Harry really was utterly immune to the vampire’s sex appeal, that in itself could be appealing to Raith. If Harry was just that heterosexual, I felt a bit dumb about some of the thoughts I’d had, though. “He’s just– immune?” I asked, once the door slammed shut behind Harry. “I didn’t know anyone was that heterosexual.”

Raith shrugged easily. “Harry is Harry,” he said, as if that was an explanation, and something must have showed on my face. “Oh, I see, you want to ride his dino–” I glared, and he dropped the dinosaur thing, thankfully. He looked a little sympathetic. “You could try him? Hey, maybe it’s just me.”

That seemed spectacularly unlikely. I put down the empty bottle I’d been playing with. “As fun as it’s been having my romantic life mocked by a vampire, I’m going to get going,” I said, and started to stand up.

Raith was across the room and had seized my wrist, before I could stand. Carajo! I was off balance, and the vampire was leaning into me, eyes dark. Half of me was scared shitless, wishing for my gauntlet, and the other half of me was finding the feel of his thumb on my pulse hypnotic.

“I’m not joking,” said Raith, intently. “You don’t know how appealing you are; you don’t know what they’d do to you.”

I swallowed. “Yeah I do,” I managed to say, although my throat was dry. “They’d get way into my personal space, tell me I smelled pretty. Generally act like that dude who’s masturbating on the subway.”

I heard my heart beat twice in my throat before Raith somehow… softened. My wrist was still held, but it didn’t feel like a trap, just a connection, and his invasion of my space seemed slightly less threatening. He still looked like a panther, poised to leap, but… well, a panther’s a beautiful animal, you know?

“You don’t know what they’d do to you,” he said, but not like an accusation. “Do you know what we’d do to you, if we got ahold of you, in House Raith?”

That ‘we’ should have sent me running, should have been been louder than a fire alarm, but the way Raith was talking, quiet, intimate, it was like he was offering to tell me a secret.

“What?” I asked, idiotically.

A small smile played at his mouth. “You’d be… kept,” he said, “treasured, of course, because you’d be a valuable commodity.” He seemed to be leaning in, and I couldn’t seem to help sagging down beneath him, until I was back on the couch, not so much sitting as fallen against it. “We’d try to preserve your freshness. We’d feed on you with, perhaps, only kisses, each of us taking a turn to taste you. Or perhaps we’d come to you two and three at a time. Maybe I’d hold you down, touch you here,” and he touched me, just to one side of my heart, a caress that wasn’t soothing at all. “Pet you while my sisters fed from your mouth. You’d like it, of course,” and his thumb brushed my mouth, like the kiss he was promising. He was leaning one-armed on the back of the sofa behind me, smiling into my eyes from maybe a foot away. I felt like I couldn’t move any part of my body, like my lungs wouldn’t draw breath except when he breathed.

Harry’s giant dog shoved his head between us then, wiser than me. “It’s okay, Mouse,” I said, and he let me push him aside.

Thomas didn’t break his gaze. “You’d be ours, by then. You’d love knowing that you were our sustenance, that you were a delicacy. You wouldn’t mind that we’d tease you.” He scraped a fingernail down my chest, over my shirt, right over my nipple, and Mother of God, it stung, but I didn’t want it to stop. “We’d torment you. Come to you naked, caress you,” and his hand was still heading down my chest, toward my lap. “Make you hard, and deny you, leave you to jerk off alone. Not because it’s necessary to feed.” He smiled, a horrible smile. “Just because we’re cruel.”

He put one knee up on the couch, and then the other, so that he was kneeling over me, and then slowly, so slowly, started settling his weight down. The hand that had been travelling down toward my dick was now planted in my solar plexus, and he was leaning into it enough that I was pinned; the other was still behind me.

“Of course, you’d tarnish, eventually. Virginity isn’t just penetration, and our torments would, inevitably, wear away at your clean taste. How desolate you would be, to know that every time we came to you, we were eroding the attraction you hold for us. You wouldn’t mind that we were slowly killing you.” His ass brushed against my cock, through the layers of our clothes, and then, fuck, he rose slightly, so that I couldn’t feel him. I made a sound I blush to remember.

“As a wizard, you’d last longer than most mortals. I could feed off of you for a long time, perhaps convince myself I wasn’t doing you any harm. I’d let us both pretend we were just lovers, not a monster and his meat.”

I think that burst the spell for me, realizing it wasn’t me he was punishing, maybe it wasn’t even me he was talking about. The words he used to enthrall me were for himself. I brought both hands up and shoved, and he went flying off me, caught completely unprepared, and landed on his ass.

“Stop it,” I said, fiercely, meaning both his stupid play and his using me as part of it. “I’m not– I don’t want that.”

He blinked, looking, honest to God, surprised, and then– I expected him to look angry, but he looked ashamed. He looked away from me, finally, as if he didn’t want to meet my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, and I think he was sincere. “You didn’t deserve that.” He laughed, a little bitterly. “My self control is not as good as I thought; I honestly didn’t intend that, either.” He looked at me, finally, but couldn’t seem to keep his eyes there. “I just meant to warn you, I didn’t think I’d– That’s not an excuse.”

He started to get up, a bit stiffly, which was when I realized he was hard in his pants too. I had thought it had been him doing to me, but I guess I did to him a little too.

“Hey,” I said, aware this time that I was maybe making a big fucking mistake, but at least making it on purpose this time. “If we did now, I guess, whatever’s enough to make me not, you know, catnip for vampires. Would that slow me down tomorrow?”

Raith went completely opaque. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he also went– just normal sexy, I guess. He looked attractive, but he didn’t look like sex right off the grill with lime squeezed over it and a side of guacamole. He stayed on the floor, half-way to pushing himself to his feet, like a weird spider, or a game of twister gone wrong. “Believe it or not, I haven’t much experience with wizards. My guess is that you wouldn’t even notice, not just one time.” He looked at me, looking me in the eyes, now. “But you’d be more vulnerable. The next of my kin who tried to seduce you, you’d want it more. You might tell yourself one more time couldn’t hurt, that what you’d survived once, you’d survive again. You’d want it more each time, start coming up with excuses-”

“Stop,” I said again. “Stop talking. Could we have sex without the– without the mental effects?”

“I could suppress it to some extent, but not entirely.” His face composed of harsh lines. “You realize what an idiotic idea this is, don’t you?”

“I’m old enough to make stupid decisions,” I said, “Do you want to or not?”

He clambered to his feet. “Empty Night. Harry’s going to kill me.”

“You start talking about Harry, or House Raith, I am shoving you right off this couch, and you are not going to get a taste of this fine Latino specim-” at which point he proved he could put his mouth to better use.

“Is that a tactical advantage in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” I asked, when he was back in my lap, and had one hand down my pants, grabbing my ass.

“Maybe you should shut up too,” he said, speculatively, and then we mostly gave up on conversation.

 

“Stars and Stones!” Harry said, when he got back. “Thomas, again? On the couch? Again?”

“Sorry,” said Thomas, and licked my neck. He didn’t sound too sorry.

“Don’t blame him,” I said, “it’s not his fault. I showed him my bicep curl and he was helpless. I’m irresistible.” I demonstrated my bicep curl and Thomas ducked and slid off the couch, then went looking for some clothes.

“You can put that away, Carlos,” Harry told me. “No one needs to see that.”

But he totally looked again, over his shoulder, after he’d chucked Thomas’ pants at him. Huh. Maybe a ride on Harry’s dinosaur was possible after all.