Life Among the Dead

Part Two

June 30, 2008

He tastes like whiskey on her tongue. The first kiss he gives her only makes her want another, then another, and another as they stumble inside together and she kicks the door close.

His mouth never leaves her, which is a good thing because Claudia would surely chase Nikolas down to seek out more of these hot, wet, needy kisses that he is giving her. He's kissing her like she's his oxygen. She's never felt this vital to anyone's survival before.

Three kisses in and Claudia becomes an addict. Her drug of choice is his mouth on hers. She would murder to get another one of his kisses.

There is no denying that he is a threat to her heart. But she wants him anyway.

Claudia has wanted Nikolas since the first time they kissed, during those intense life changing days when she was his guest on his private island, when he pulled her back from the brink of death. Claudia's mind has played out this fantasy time and time before. He's at her door late at night, looking to fling himself completely into the dark abyss where she lives, looking to take her- hard, fast, rough, relentlessly- before he talks himself out of it. But the Nikolas of her dreams does not come anywhere near being as intoxicating as the Nikolas who's flesh she digs her nails into right now.

This man is her match and her opposite all at the same time. Her temptation. Her salvation. Her downfall. He's an agglomeration of everything she craves and fears in this world. He may very well end up being deadly for her. For she will die if she falls in love, of that she is sure. Love kills independence and without independence I am nothing, she thinks.

But that thought is not enough to make Claudia push Nikolas away. She instead smiles against his lips as he yanks her even closer to him, till they are indecently mashed together, and she can feel the hard length of him against her. She tries to control their kiss then, fighting him for the lead, but he's made up his mind, she quickly realizes.

Nikolas is in control tonight.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

She tastes like heaven but Nikolas is sure Claudia's so much closer to the devil than that. She does not lie about how dark her life is, her heart is, her mind is, and that, damn her, causes him to be even more intrigued by her, instead of less.

She's hypnotic. She's some kind of witch, he's sure, working voodoo on him. She calls out to him from across this filthy little waterfront city...until he has no choice but to imagine her, just like she is now, in a tiny red dress and stiletto heels, her eyes filled with heat and her body sweat slicked.

Claudia has forced his hand, he would swear to this on a stack of Bibles. Somehow, in the times when they bumped into each other around town, she has put him under her spell. Used black magic on him. She's trying to make him her slave. And hell if she isn't succeeding at it too.

That angers him. He wants to make his own choices. All his life he had to live by his family's rules until he finally reached manhood and then all he did was lash back at them...and always by fucking the one woman that would make them all pale. Too old for him. Too wild for him. Too married for him. But he took them all for him, made them all his own.

This man was born entitled. No one will make him bend to their commands ever again.

Not even Claudia. So when she tries to slow down their kisses, Nikolas only doubles the intensity, his tongue battling with hers till he gains dominance again, and she lets out a stifled moan.

He finally pulls back and allows her to breath. Her lips are bruised and swollen. "Lead me to your bedroom now..."

When she only stares back at him, slightly dazed and trying to get her bearings, he snaps at her "Now, Claudia."

Her hand slides into his and she takes him down the hallway. As soon as they reach her room, Nikolas pushes her against the wall outside. He presses close to her, his body rubs against her curves, her hard, pointy nipples stab at his chest, sending fire shooting down his body till it pools in his groin. "Is anyone else here?"

She shakes her head, no.

"Good. Then you can scream all you want." His mouth attacks hers again, sucking on her tongue, while at the same time he pins both her hands above her head.

Nikolas closes his eyes but Claudia is right there in his mind...no one else...only Claudia still. Its as if she owns him now. But if anyone is owning anyone tonight...he wants it to be him owning her.

XXXXXXXXXX

Damn, I had no idea, Claudia thinks to herself.

He kisses her with a fierceness that leaves her throbbing for him to hold her down and make her beg for more. She's his possession now.

Claudia knew that Nikolas was a man not to be messed with...his eyes alone warn of just how dangerous he could be if pushed too far...but she didn't know he could be so commanding. It must be the royalty in his blood.

The world is his for the taking, and tonight the part he wants to take is her.

If he stays this way, keeps kissing her like she's just some disease he wants to work out of his system, she will survive this night unscathed. She will get what she wants most- their bodies withering together till neither can remember their own name- but won't lose what she fears most...her heart.

That's what I want, Claudia tells herself, Just to fuck him. That's all.

She's always been such a liar.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Her dress doesn't cover much. But its covering entirely too much of for Nikolas, all the same. He peels it right off her shoulders, and sends the red fabric falling to the floor. Beneath it she wears a thong and matching bra- red, of course. Just like in his fantasies. Only now she's real and in front of him, taking in short little gasps of breath, her eyes searching his.

Her body is pure sin but those eyes...they're just soft and broken. One tender look from her and his illusions about this not being emotional fall away. She isn't just any woman...she's Claudia...she nearly died and he saved her...she confessed her secrets and he kept them...she's stayed away because he has a son and he has missed her... he's hated that he misses her and has tried to stop but failed...she haunts him and her eyes show she knows things about him she never was supposed to discover.

(How can you see

into my eyes

like open doors?


Leading you down

into my core
where I've become so numb)

Nikolas stands there, breathless and lost in his own mind, at the sight of her nearly nude body. His eyes rake up and down her. Claudia flings herself back into his arms. She kisses him quickly, her tongue glides along his teeth, her fingers press against the length of him, her strokes frantic, she's not letting him think too much...that way he won't feel too much.

This will work much better if they both stay detached.

(Without a soul

my spirit

sleeping somewhere cold


Until you find it there and lead it back home)

Her pushes her back against the wall, and breathes his words into her ear "Bed now or I'll take you right here in this hallway."

Stay cold, Nikolas, he tells himself. Get her out of your system not into your heart.

He would say his chances of doing that are slim- very, very slim indeed. He hasn't felt this alive in years...not just months...years. Darkness just might suit him after all.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

She goes completely wet when he says he'll take her against the wall. But that's not how she wants him...having to keep half her attention on if the front door opens...having her brother and his sister walk in on them...no thank you...she wants him locked in her room. So Nikolas can do as he pleases with her for as long as he wants.

Taking his hand she leads him inside her bedroom, as she turns the lock, he stands behind her, kissing her neck and then doesn't let her turn back around. She's pressed with her breasts against the door. He unhooks her bra, but since her hands are pressed flat on the wood at shoulder level the bra doesn't fall off.

Nikolas slides his finger over her thong in a slow, measured way...as if he plans to take hours and hours slowing bringing her to the edge and then away and back and away until she's weeping for release.

Claudia starts to tremble at the thought that his finger will soon slip inside of her. Nikolas moves achingly slow, tracing the line of her thong and when he runs his finger up and down her heated core, Claudia lets out a soft moan. She never knows what he will do next. Order her to do this or loving caress her like that. It makes her head spin.

She feels like she is with two different men, but she's just with a tortured one. Caught between who he really is and who he thinks he should be. She's his crime and his punishment...but she's loving ever second of it too much to complain. They both have issues that make them less than perfect; she'll be his cure, if he will be her drug.

Her head tosses back when his thumb caresses her clit- the hypersensitive nub of nerves, his plaything. She whimpers when his finger moves away.

Claudia bites her lip so hard she thinks it might bleed. Nikolas scraps his teeth over her neck just as his finger plunges inside of her. She whispers his name, softly chanting it beneath her breath, and he tells her "You will scream for me before we're through."

She has no doubt about that.

(Wake me up
Wake me up inside


I can't wake up.


Wake me up inside.


Save me.


Call my name and

save me from the dark)