It started innocuously, as these things usually do.
A chance encounter that led to a random sexual experience that shifted everything on its axis for me.
I supposed I should let you know that vampires aren't sexless. Or, maybe I should say that we aren't asexual. It's true that there are those of us who don't particularly care which sex they attract and for them sex is just sex. But those of us who choose to live amongst humans, and do as humans do, we pretty much stick to whatever our sexual proclivities were when we'd been human. And that is true for me. I like the ladies.
I'd indulged in my time. I'd even tried dating a time or two. But bloodlust and sexual lust have an annoying habit of overlapping. Remember when I told you that my family had had to move on a few times because I'd slipped? Yeah. When I slipped I tended to do it during sexual play. Sue me. I'm a guy. We like sex. I just hadn't quite mastered the art of 'getting off' without 'tearing off', so to speak.
Anyway, back to this girl. She was different. She changed everything for me.
You're probably imagining some out of body experience. That this random woman made such a deep impression on me that I fell headlong into love with her and now I'm struggling with my humanity because she changed me fundamentally with her magical vagina.
Wrong, wrong and a bit more wrong. Vaginas aren't magical. What are you thinking?
She didn't ensnare me with her femininity. She didn't blast away the coldness of my heart and thaw out my icy emotional demeanour. She didn't shock my conscience into life and she didn't wrap me in a warm, fluffy blanket of love.
What she did do is flog the living stuffing out of me.
I'm strong, okay? Vampire strong. That part of the fairy tale is true. And she was very attractive in a 'black leather skirt and thigh high stiletto heels' kind of way. She was arrogant and confident. Not at all coquettish and not at all intimidated by me. But she flogged me good despite my strength and despite my careful countenance.
In short this girl was all the things I didn't usually look for in a partner.
And before you get on your soapbox, no, I don't know her name. And it's not because she didn't mean anything to me and I can't remember. She never gave it. So for the purposes of the story I'll just keep calling her this girl, or she, or whatever the sentence requires and you can just know that if she'd told me her name I'd tell you. Gloves off, remember?
So, she wasn't my usual. I liked them reserved. I like the girl next-door look. Long hair, braided if possible. I liked long skirts, demure blouses and plain gold jewellery. I liked a soft voice and soft creamy skin. I liked it when they were shy. I liked guileless. I liked pretty but not stunning. I guess I liked what my peers had had when I'd been eighteen.
That was hard to find for me. Clubs didn't usually attract 'nice' girls before midnight. Or if they did it was because they'd been dragged there under duress by groups of other girls and spent the night as the designated driver. Sober didn't often equal pick up for me. I know that's less than gentlemanly. I don't need her to be drunk, just a little uninhibited. More open minded I guess.
Sometimes you'd spot a nice girl who wasn't sober, but more often than not she was the one in the middle of the group with the veil and the 'I'm the bride, buy me a drink' button pinned to her dress. Again, that wasn't going to equal pick up for me.
So I tended to go for quieter clubs. Not that many of those existed. If I'd been through a bit of a dry spell and was needing some physical company I'd get sneaky and go to clubs at opening instead of closer to closing time. The nice girls tended to arrive early and leave early. I have good statistical research returns to prove this. Pubs were okay too if I could manage to find one that didn't turn into a den of iniquity after dark. Cafes too. It was amazing how many nice girls frequented cafes. They'd sit for hours reading, or texting, or just watching the world go by. It wasn't difficult to strike up a conversation when you're blessed with ethereal looks and charm up the wazoo. It's a vampire thing. I wasn't charming, nor particularly handsome, as a human. I scored those after my change. I thought I was using the gifts wisely at the time.
I should tell you, just so you can keep my situation straight in your mind, that my siblings are pairs. Emmett is with Rose. Jasper was is with Alice. Carlisle and Esme you know about. So they are all paired up and blissfully happy too. Which sucked for me because I was perpetually the odd man out.
So I went to the clubs and pubs alone. I never took anyone home. I always went to their place. I never called, even though I always promised I would.
I'm not the only guy on the planet with a thousand girls numbers in his cell phone and no intention, or inclination, to ever call any of them. Chivalry really is dead. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But it is. Guys aren't gonna call. Sorry ladies. If you want to see him again take his number. Call him. And that three day rule you have all seemed to have hung your hopes on? Stupidity. If he wants to call you, or see you again, he'll call the next morning. Three days and it's a no brainer. Stop waiting.
So I'm a shit as well as a vampire.
I never called. I never 'hooked up again next weekend because, you know, I come to this club all the time so let's not make plans but maybe I'll see you here next Saturday'.
And I was happy with my life. I wasn't exactly looking for love but I wasn't opposed to holding on to it if it ever found me either. I didn't set out to be a heart breaker and didn't understand the angry, reproachful remarks my family made after I'd made a conquest and then never called or saw her again. I didn't ever stop to think about the hearts of my partners. After all, after an hour or two in someone's company how could a human heart form such an attachment? It was ridiculous and I scoffed at the family for suggesting I was hurting anyone.
So I cut as much of a swathe through whatever city's nightlife we were living in at the time as I could. Without attachment.
I was lonely, but not enough to turn a mate.
I'd never do that. The others had, but it wasn't for me.
And the chances of finding another already turned vampire female that I could be with for eternity was slim to none considering our particular lifestyle. We weren't the only 'vegetarians' we knew of, but the ones we did know were all mated too.
The idea of waiting out a decade, or more, while a new vampire conquered her thirst sounded nothing like bliss to me.
So I was alone. Didn't bother me all that much. I sought as much company as I wanted and I wasn't hurting anyone into the bargain. Screw the family and what they thought. Wasn't like they could do anything about it anymore than I could. Short of turning someone for me, which would more than likely lead to a fight and the loss of someone's body parts.
Oh calm down. They grow back if you attach them quick enough.
So, this girl who began this spiral I'm living in now. Right.
This girl wasn't my type at all. For a start she was tall. I didn't like tall. I liked the feeling of being big, bigger maybe. I'm six-three so I didn't often find a girl who was too tall, but this girl was. She was maybe five-ten or eleven and she was sleek rather than petite. She was all feline curves and long lines. She was dark haired too, which wasn't exactly a deal breaker, but I usually went for blondes or at least mousey browns. This one was dark, in every sense of the word. Hair, clothing, attitude.
Now, as I've explained, you humans are supposed to be scared of us. We're supposed to invoke the fight or flight response. And while it's true that the girl next-door types didn't always choose flight, flight nearly always was the better option when they saw me, but a very select few sometimes fought it long enough to try me out.
But this girl, the dark girl, she didn't hesitate.
I was stood there, propping up the bar in that club like the thirty or so guys in the joint were. I couldn't consume the liquor in my glass but made a good show of looking as though I was.
It was at times like that that I wouldn't have minded at all being able to read minds.
Vampires are supposed to have tricks like that, right? In the stories you've been told, or read or heard, vampires stalk the night and use mind bending tricks to get innocent, young (why are they always young? Mature ladies need lovin too) victims to following them back to their dungeons willingly. It's stupid and it's insulting. We can't fly either, before you ask. And turning into bats is ridiculous. Think about it. If you were blessed with supernatural powers over physics and the laws of gravity would you want to turn into a bat? You'd pick something kick ass. Like a hawk. Or a vulture. Or something sleek and sexy like an eagle. Yeah. A massive, Golden Eagle. Those huge suckers were used in Europe to hunt wolves! How awesome would that be? You could fly around and pick out a mangy, flea riddled wolf and pluck it from the ground and soar off with it in your claws. You'd be the king of the skies. Not some hideous, fruit eating, webbed thing with ugly claws that hangs out in caves and lives in its own shit.
No, given the choice, and saying it was possible, you wouldn't pick a bat. Eagle is much better. But we weren't given a bloody choice and it's stupid anyway. Fairy tales. Nothing more.
Oh, and we aren't bothered by garlic or silver either. Garlic is gross no matter your species. It stinks. It seeps out your pores if you eat too much of it and it bothers me about as much as chilli. It doesn't.
Silver either. It's shiny and it's metal. That's about as interested in it as vampires get. We don't cower from it and we don't covet it. Silver bullets are just expensive. They don't work any better than other bullets do. Same goes for wooden ones. They sting like hell when they embed themselves in your skin, and you spend a good day and a half trying to pluck the little fucker from the healing wound, but it won't kill us.
Same goes for staking us, heart or otherwise. Have at it. But apart from a couple of splinters it won't do much but piss us off. You don't want us pissed at you, for obvious reasons.
What else? Oh, the sun. Sorry to disappoint but that won't kill us either. We can bake it in and nothing. No tan. No melanoma. No wrinkles. Sucks to be human now doesn't it? Oh, and we don't fucking sparkle. Jesus. If I see one more description of a sparkly assed, uber shiny hunk playing a vampire on telly I'll fucking puke. Oh, that's impossible too. Just so you know. Not sure why you'd care, but I can't puke. Or pee. Or fart, shit or burp. Nuff said? Good.
I'll put the kybosh on facial hair, ass grapes and spilling my seed into some unsuspecting female and creating a race of super human/vampire hybrids too while we're at it. Nope. Nada. Can't happen.
Right. We on the same page?
I'm a vampire. I don't have super powers. I don't do mind tricks. I can't get sick or make you sick or pregnant. I can bite you, but unless you drink a shitload of my blood in return I'll be returning you to your apartment in exactly the same condition at the end of the evening as you left it. Hopefully sexually satisfied, but no worse off for the experience. Who knows, you might even like it if I bite you. But I'm not gonna. That's how 'slips' happen. Got it?
Right.
Onward.
So, I'm leaning against the bar, pretending to drink. The thirty other guys are doing the same. They're all humans, just for information's sake.
There are lots of pretty girls in the club. It's early. What can I say? I was horny and I was using all my best research to score. So, there's two potentials and quite a few maybes in attendance. Big cities attract big crowds, so I was in with a shot.
Potential number one was slight, sober and blonde. Check, check and check.
Potential number two was bigger though not unattractively big, slightly less sober and slightly less blonde. Check, check and why the hell not, check.
They were in the middle of two groups. Very different groups too. One was a leaving party for a group of office girls. The other was a coming out party for a recently confirmed lesbian who just happened to have a group of heterosexual friends. Didn't bother me. I wasn't averse to trying my hand at turning a girl back to the right team.
And before you gape, or start emailing me pro-gay pamphlets, let me just say that I use the term 'right team' in its broadest sense. Every guy thinks he can turn lesbians around. It's a left over psychological thing from when we lived in caves. I didn't invent it. I don't claim I agree every time. But guys want to think they are manly enough, macho enough, that if they just got the chance to bed that poor, lost little lesbian she'll realise the error of her ways and start liking dick again. It's probably not right, but like I said, I didn't invent the concept.
So, the two groups were at opposite ends of the club. They'd splinter into smaller groups or pairs and dance, and then come together again as groups of girls tended to do. They'd drink some more, scope the room for potentials of their own now and then, then come back together to discuss further the merits of whatever petty drama was keeping their attention amongst their group at the time. It's what girls do.
There were other groups, of course, but I'd pegged my two potentials from these two groups so there is no need to describe for you in any detail much else. You don't care what club it was, right? You don't care that like every other club, in every other city, in every other state, that the barman was attractive in an aloof sort of way. The doorman was tall, broad, had a nametag and a bad attitude. You don't care that the walls were stained, as was the floor and that the music was too loud, too fast and a hell of lot crapper than it sounded on your iPod.
I watched, waited and listened to the two potentials as they moved within their groups. One of them, number one, had already pegged me with a sweet little stare, so I decided to go with her.
She had a nice smile and her laugh was infectious.
I had just decided to try my luck by asking her to dance when I was tapped on the shoulder. Now, I was propping up the bar, so the tap could quite easily have been more of a 'move out the way you dickhead' than a 'hey big boy, wanna dance' thing. I didn't know which it was until I turned to see who'd done the tapping.
She did. You know? She. The one I was telling you about. Tall, dark hair, dark attitude, leather skirt and sinful boots.
I'd never been approached before. I was usually the one who did the approaching. So the whole situation was new, right from the off. She stood there, grin on her lips, staring at me.
"Yes?" I asked lamely. What else was I going to say, by the way? I can't read minds, remember?
She sided me, as in she slipped in beside me, and way closer than a human normally would, and fronted me. This girl had balls. Metaphorical ones. We'll get onto my foray into the male world of sexuality at some point, but not right now.
She gripped the front of my button down between her black painted nails, stood on her toes and breathed huskily into my ear. "Nice girls are fun and all, but ever thought about a bad one?"
Then she let me go, turned back to face the bar, slid a twenty across it and gestured to the barman to replace her empty glass.
To say I was stunned is an understatement, so I won't bore you with that. But I was. How did she know I'd picked two nice girls from the crowd? How did she know I'd picked anyone? Couldn't I just be standing next to the bar enjoying a quiet, solitary drink?
Much later, after the fact, I began to wonder if I'd shown any signs of being predatory that night. Had I given off the vibe of being on the hunt? Did she see me do something, look a certain way, that made her so sure I was targeting anyone, let alone a nice girl?
But at the time I just stared at her retreating back as she sashayed across the floor and took a seat in a booth. On her own.
This girl wasn't part of a group. She wasn't a giggler like the others. She wasn't gossiping or flirting with anyone. She wasn't part of a party and she wasn't dancing. So what, exactly, was she doing in the club that night?
She looked normal, human. She gave off the normal scent. Blood, blood, and for good measure a nice mix of blood and pheromones. She moved in a human way, as opposed to how I moved which had, at certain times, been described to me as like watching mercury slither across an uneven surface. She was bold and confident and she sat, on her own, without a seeming care in the world.
She wasn't looking for company, despite having just propositioned me. She was happy in her solitary booth, with her own company. She wasn't nervous or anxious because she was a lone female amongst groups and pairs.
And what exactly constituted a bad girl?
She didn't hang her towel on the rail at the end of her bathing routine? She didn't wipe her feet when coming indoors? She didn't floss as regularly as she should?
I had no clue. I'd never sought a bad girl before so had no point of reference.
I couldn't phone a friend and there was no way I was asking the thirty males keeping the bar from toppling over what they thought. That meant a fifty-fifty shot in the dark.
I took one more look at my two potentials. Number one was now thrusting her tongue down the throat of the newly converted lesbian. I guess that put paid to that. Number two was tapping her car keys on the table top and looked bored and ready to leave. She still had potential, despite her obvious lack of enthusiasm for the good time being had by her friends. But the idea that I'd have to wait until she'd taken her friend's home safely and then try to convince her to let me go home with her no longer held such a fascination for me.
I didn't mind having to work for my pleasure, but I knew a dead end when I saw one.
That left the girl.
I took another look at where she sat, tipped my glass over so that the contents soaked conveniently into the napkin before I brought it to my lips and 'drank' its contents. I dug into my pants pocket and transferred my wallet into my coat – you never knew when someone was going to have a go at ripping you off while you're vulnerable, or had your pants round your ankles – nodded once to the barman using the universal 'I'm done' gesture and walked as casually as I could to her booth.
She looked up at me through her lashes but said nothing. I guess it was going to be down to me to make this happen.
"Do bad girls drive or do they need a ride to where they're going?" I asked.
She grinned; somewhat evilly I recall now, slugged back the last of her drink and dug into her purse for her keys. She swung them from her index finger. "I drive. You follow."
It seemed that was that. The deal, whatever the hell it was, was struck and I was to follow.
Now, I know you're going to want me to tell you that I drive some impossibly fast, overpriced, precision piece of high class engineering. I get that. The guys in these stories always do. So if you want me to, or need me to tell you that, I will. Just to appease you. Let's say I slid into the supple leather of my Pagani Zonda and felt the roar of the engine beneath me as I followed her lead out of the parking lot.
For those of you who care what I drive just know that I got into my Volvo like a regular guy and that the radio was probably playing Biffy Clyro.
She drove toward the end of the block and swung right, I followed. I had no idea where we were going, or what I'd find when I got there, but I followed. Was she taking me to her place? Someone else's? Was she luring me away for something sinister? God I hoped so!
I was intrigued as to what constituted bad for her and I desperately wanted release.
Another left and then another right and she pulled into a parking garage under a nice residential building that was lit up like a Christmas tree. I parked on the street.
She came out of the stairs by the front doors, motioned for me to follow by crooking a finger at me, opened the door using a key and waited for me to join her on the stoop. I did. She smiled then ushered me inside.
As we walked up the two flights of stairs to the floor she was after she spoke in a hushed tone, "Elderly neighbours, but don't worry, my place is sound proofed."
I couldn't think what she'd need her apartment sound proofed for but I nodded as though I knew. I let her lead us into a neatly furnished, perfectly normal apartment. She flicked on two overhead lights as she went into the main room, threw her keys and purse down onto the countertop in the little kitchen and opened her cell phone. She dialled while I stood there like a shag on a rock, not knowing what the fuck I'd gotten myself into, and wondering who the hell she was calling.
I didn't have to wait long.
The line obviously connected because she began to speak cryptically.
"It's me," she paused, "One male, vehicle registration xyz123 (obviously I'm not giving you my registration number, stalker!). Give me an hour, I'll check in."
With that she closed the phone and set it beside her keys. She turned to me, smiled slightly and headed toward the refrigerator. "Drink?" she asked as she extracted a bottle from within it. I shook my head and she shrugged "Suit yourself." She poured an overly large portion into a monumentally sized crystal goblet and took a long drink. She put the glass on its foot on the counter and looked me over from head to toe. "Shall we set a few rules?"
Now, I'm a vampire, and as I said before, we lived by an extensive set of rules. So rules themselves didn't bother me. After all, I could take or leave them depending on exactly what it was she had in mind. I could leave if I didn't like what she had to say.
"Sure," I told her as confidently as I could.
She smirked then and twirled the glass around her fingertips before taking another sip. "A newbie, how delicious," she whispered to herself. No human ear could've picked it up, but my vampire ones did. A newbie? And more specifically a newbie what? "Firstly," she said loud enough to share, "I don't want to know your name, so don't give it."
"Fine," I smirked in return. After all, if she didn't know who I was she'd never be able to stalk me later.
"Second, we use protection in all its forms." This was said so matter of factly I was glad I'd knocked back the offer of the drink because I'd have spat it at her feet at that.
"Of course," I tell her, smiling. Of course I knew I couldn't catch anything from her, or give her anything nasty from myself, but only an idiot in this day and age would agree to unprotected sex – and by now I was pretty sure that's where this was heading – with someone they knew nothing about.
She nodded once then continued on. This was a well rehearsed format I came to see. Whatever sort of newbie I was she wasn't. She wasn't nervous, or anxious, and she certainly wasn't afraid of me like she should be. It was a curiously intoxicating mix.
I began to wonder if I'd just found the perfect female specimen. Arrogant confidence, nameless sex and no sense of self preservation.
And then she spoke again.
"And three," she grinned and moved towards me, once again sliding her fingernails through the placket of my button down, "Your safe word will be Pandora."
A/N: The response so far as blown me away. So I thank you all for all the lovely encouraging messages.
Thank you for reading.
Please review.
