Obsession Fulfilled
(Short vampire erotica)

“Pain is a tangible reality in some circles.”

LeClerc listened to the words, felt the waking of an inner curiosity about the young voice that was so aged by despair and unwanted wisdom.

“Is pain your truest companion?” he asked quietly. His eyes no longer saw the dark shadow of the microphone, his senses filled with the fury of intense emotion that emanated from the faceless caller.

“Truest?”

Irony... And tremendous bitterness... LeClerc shivered, a ripple of excitement brushed his spine. Buried beyond the anguish lay even stronger emotions. Desires, carefully hidden from any scrutiny. Hungers that ignited his macabre desires. He had a cultivated, exquisite taste for morbid pleasures. Centuries of life had taught him things that would make most mortals cower in terror.

“Who are you?”

Dead air answered his breathy query, and he waited, reached for the essence. Nothing responded to his probe.

She was gone...

* * *

Dream of me...

Startled, LeClerc peered into the darkness that surrounded him, his vision unimpeded by the shadows. The Underground Sanctuary, his nightclub, was silent now, dawn only minutes away. He’d been alone for several hours, yet the voice filled his senses. Had he heard it within his mind, or had it somehow been externally audible?

Vampires don’t dream, my dear, he laughed to himself as he spoke to his imaginary companion. But he felt the twinge of awareness that reminded him it was a lie. The truth was simpler: he hadn’t dreamed in a very long time.

* * *

Almost a week had passed before he heard her voice again. The nightclub was filled with people, mortal heartbeats drowned the blare of music and the more subtle, sibilant hiss of vampire hungers. From his select vantage point, LeClerc surveyed the mass of humanity, and smiled as a faint tremor of agony kissed his consciousness.

He straightened in his chair, glanced at the computer screen, and flipped a switch on his control board.

“You’ve been lured back to the night,” he purred into the microphone.

“I belong to the night... That’s why you understand.”

“We talked about pain, you never answered my question.” LeClerc’s curiosity was aroused, though he’d never concede it.

“Why answer the obvious?”

“What is it you want from me?”

“From you?”

Amusement filled his mind, and her laughter woke a quiver of longing deep within him. As before, he couldn’t be sure if the sound was real, or merely his delusion.

“Tell me about dying?”

“You assume I know death,” he countered, and his eyes began to search the room as his sense of recognition sharpened.

“I assume nothing, I simply know your darkness.”

“You know nothing of me.”

“I know your soul... I know your secrets...”

LeClerc’s handsome features distorted into a scowl of frustrated fury when the words stopped, and as abruptly as he’d felt her nearness, he was faced with nothingness again.

* * *

Silk sheets, the color of rich burgundy wine, caressed cool skin. The effect was sensual, provocative. LeClerc sighed and settled onto his back, his features softened with weariness and the simple pleasure of relaxation. Slowly, he closed his eyes and waited for the blackness of sleep to engulf him.

A low groan of blissful pleasure slipped from the ancient vampire’s lips as he stirred back into awareness. He tried to open his eyes, found only darkness, and shuddered again when he realized he was unable to pierce the heavy veil of obscurity. He was unable to move.

          I told you to dream... I asked it of you... Dream of me...

LeClerc trembled violently, lost in the throes of passion that assailed him in his total darkness. Unseen hands smoothed over the contours of his body, and a warm mouth explored with a gentleness that was an exquisite agony of delight. He felt the whispery touch of soft breasts against his thighs, rigid nipples tickling his skin as his unknown lover eased his legs apart.

Wet heat enveloped him, and his hips pushed into the warmth, begged for stronger contact, and still she teased him, kept him hovering on the edge of euphoria. Eventually, her tongue snaked lower, delved into his most intimate places.

LeClerc wrenched himself free of the invisible bonds that held him, and bolted upright with a hoarse gasp. The shadows that had blinded him disappeared, but he was alone. Her scent hung in the air—sweet... feminine... hungry with lust. He tried to find some trace of her within the spacious bedroom, and detected nothing.

A rush of breeze fluttered the curtains inward, and he glanced down at his uncovered nakedness. His body glistened in the cold silvery-white light from the rising moon. Day had passed into night, and he hadn’t felt the transition of time, hadn’t awakened at sunset—for the first time in a thousand years. The moisture that anointed his limbs was not his own, there was no trace of blood, no betraying stain on the bedding.

And he ached with unfulfilled passion.

Something else he hadn’t experienced in many centuries.

* * *

Nights passed, turned into weeks, and she remained elusive.

No calls.

No dreams.

No whispers to interfere with LeClerc’s cultivated detachment.

Yet, every woman who walked into The Underground was examined by the vampire, her mind and manner carefully observed.

With the absence of her mystery, he grew restless—and hungry.

Her words haunted him: I know your soul... I know your secrets...

The obsession took hold and he didn’t see it happening, wasn’t able to recognize the trap he had perfected and defined over the centuries.

* * *

“Have you dreamed?”

LeClerc froze, his entire body motionless. Expectancy made him feel dizzy. He laughed inwardly at his own weakness, then frowned at the microphone, angered by her arrogance.

“I am the dream,” he said softly. His voice was a sensuous rasp of sound that caressed the airwaves, and incited the desires and hidden hungers of all who listened.

“Chimera... dark fantasy... demon...” She paused, her voice softened to thoughtful speculation. “All these are your names, yet not. Do you want me?”

“You have a companion. A lover more faithful than I would ever be,” LeClerc taunted.

“Pain,” she acquiesced.

The word was a stroke of evocative sensuality. He waited. And his thirst grew. His body woke with need so intense it shocked him.

“Teach me freedom,” she whispered, breathless, excited.

“I prefer to keep you enslaved.”

“Then be my slave again, immortal dream.”

* * *

He knew before he crawled between the shimmering sheets that he would find no true rest. He felt her close to him. She wasn’t vampire. It was the only thing he knew with certainty. She’d been in The Underground. He’d caught her scent, subtle, aroused, a stimulant to his already ensnared mind.

LeClerc shut his eyes, attuned his senses to the intricate resonances of his home.

Nothing altered.

There was no shift of air, no motion of any kind.

But she came to him.

This time, he was ready to embrace her.

The images coiled and writhed within his head... he saw himself... entwined in a lover’s arms... felt her heat around him... her mouth... her hands... and he heard her soul cry his name...

He never saw her face...

* * *

LeClerc seethed as he poured his rage into the night. His hand shook as he keyed the panel and listened to another foolish mortal woman attempt to seduce him with her pleas and promises. They all pretended, and he hated them for it. The caller he waited for had been silent again, until he had begun to think her nothing more than an aberration created within his mind.

LeClerc barely repressed a growl of fury when a murky shadow enveloped him. He looked up, stared disdainfully into dark brown eyes, then dismissed her with a look. Pain registered for a fleeting moment as their gazes locked, but he felt no recognition. She sobbed quietly, and ran. He felt nothing, not even the amused pleasure he would once have experienced at her terror.

* * *

Blood...

Crimson... Still warm...

It covered his hands.

LeClerc tasted bitterness, spit the offending tang from his mouth as he looked down at her body. This one had been bolder than others, her hazel eyes challenged as her voluptuous curves enticed his attention. And he’d thought, fleetingly, that he’d found her. The caller.

He roared his wrath to the heavens, eyes alive with red fire, fangs elongated and aching with unappeased hunger. He’d torn this bitch’s throat out in his eagerness, and she revolted him.

* * *

The master vampire sat alone in his darkness.

The luxurious apartment was shadowed with soft candlelight and the more intangible intensity of brooding melancholy. He sat, still as death, elegantly attired, regal in bearing. One long-fingered, elegant hand curved around the slender stem of a crystal goblet, the ruby wine within the bowl was untouched.

“Teach me freedom.”

The glass fell from LeClerc’s hand.

Before he could recover, her arms encircled his neck and he felt the warmth of her cheek next to his. She was behind him, and her breasts, soft and full, cushioned his shoulders. Her scent poured over him, flooded his mind, made his body tremble with the passion he’d refused to fully acknowledge. His fingers closed over her wrists and he very slowly pulled her around to face him.

She dropped to her knees and her head bowed. Streams of shining brown hair fell like a curtain, and he noted the play of light that haloed her. Gleaming within the softness of brown were threads of golden sunshine and the paler ice of silver moonbeams.

“Look at me.”

He hardly recognized his own voice, heard the rasp of aroused anticipation as though it were distant, apart from him.

“I can’t.”

LeClerc rose, eased her to her feet with him, then he slid his hands into the masses of hair that obstructed his view. When she would have looked away he held her face between his hands and smiled. She was not beautiful. She was not the slender, angelic wraith he had envisioned. She was pretty in an ordinary way, curvaceous when the present fashion was rail-thin, and she did not tremble at his touch—an awareness that annoyed him when he accepted his own level of exhilaration.

“Look at me,” he repeated when she continued to stare past him.

For several seconds, time stood still, and LeClerc felt the tiny shift of her head when she finally did as he requested. Her gaze rose to his, and his vision filled with pure, meadow-green color. The emotion impacted an instant later, and he shuddered at the wash of misery and pain that battered his psyche. Her smile came slowly, but did not banish the agony he felt within her.

His hands moved, glided over her shoulders, slipped beneath the gauzy material of her dress. Buttons opened at his careless manipulations, until the garment pooled on the floor at her feet. Her eyes never left his, her expression didn’t falter.

She was his.

And they both knew it.

LeClerc swiftly discarded his clothes and gathered her into his arms. In the second before his mouth covered hers, he heard the gasp of her voice: “Teach me how to live... and die.”

He pulled her body into contact with his, felt a surge of undeniable satisfaction when she shivered violently at the touch, then he drew her deep into his kiss as her hands began to explore the living dream that now held them both prisoners.

The images that had haunted him, teased and tormented him, all became real throughout the long night. She worshipped him, loved him, and fed him. And in return, LeClerc taught her the freedom of passion, and the ecstasy of being alive in a lover’s arms. He’d been stunned to discover there had been no one before him.

“I can give you eternity,” he murmured into her ear. His mouth moved to her neck and his tongue stroked the wounds he’d inflicted. He’d taken from her veins several times during their lovemaking, another time would end her life.

“You’ve given me all I wanted, and more,” she replied in a shaken whisper. “Grant me your kindest gift, Andre.”

He stared down into her eyes, saw the change that had come into her look, and he understood clearly for the first time. Sorrow had melted into joy, and pain had receded to wonder and happiness. He had tasted her death in her blood. His hands moved, raised her hips to meet his possession, and his fangs sank into her throat. She sighed softly, and clung to him.

* * *

The master vampire gazed down at the marble headstone, then smiled as he bent to place a single white rose at the base of the polished surface. Peace filled his veins, and when he permitted himself to remember, he knew it was her soul that sang to him late at night.

He had never known her name.

The inscription that had been etched into the stone was unpretentious: Freedom Granted

“Dream of me,” LeClerc said softly, then turned and walked from the small cemetery.

At the ornate wrought iron gates, he allowed himself the luxury of a backward glance. He nodded, and his smile grew softer. Seated beside the grey marker, the fragile white bloom held reverently in gentle hands, she watched his departure. Her eyes met his, and her smile was radiant with gratitude for the gift he’d given her…