I hear the creak of the door swinging open a moment before Maikel calls out for me. “Arjen? Are you here?”

“I’m here,” I answer him, hastily wrapping the item in my hands back up in its parchment. “Just a minute.” My heart beats a little faster as I glanced at the door, hoping he wouldn’t come to greet me himself. Not until I’ve gotten his gift wrapped up again and tucked away out of sight.

I knew it was risky when I pulled it out, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. I spent weeks fretting over what to get Maikel for Christmas. What do you get the man who has everything he wants, who buys anything he desires without a thought for the price? For a while, I’d despaired that I’d ever find anything for him.

And then, as though by miracle, not a week before Christmas, I’d been walking through De Wallen to pay a visit to Elise and there’d been an artist set up on the side of the street. But the scenes on his easels were not paintings, and the strange sight of them made me hesitate, and my steps slow.

Heliographs, he’d called them. Not paintings but true images, imprinted by the sun. One of the display stands held a picture that I couldn’t help but reach out and take into my hands. It was an image of Amsterdam’s canals, much like the one we were standing beside. In the image, they were sun-drenched and bright.

Maikel hadn’t seen his city in the daylight in over a hundred years. A thrill ran through me at the thought of giving him this, a glimpse of what he’d only been able to know vicariously for so long.

I’d paid the merchant and took the image back home with me, and hid it in the very back of my bureau where Maikel would be unlikely to stumble upon it by chance. And now, listening to the sounds of Maikel’s steps near the bedroom door, I shove it back in its place and slide the drawer shut. I’m on my feet, coming forward to greet him, when he swings open the bedroom door.

“What are you doing in here?” he asks me curiously, a puzzled smile on his face.

“Nothing. Just tidying.” I kiss him, then continue past so that he’ll follow after me, and not indulge his curiosity about what I was doing in the bedroom.

He falls into step behind me just as I’d expected. I lead him out to the sitting room and dropped into a chair, smiling up at him. “And what have you been up to?” I ask him. “Something more exciting than tidying, I hope.”

There’s a playful, teasing hint to his smile as he grins down at me. He lets his gaze roam over me, and I shift, wondering what he’s thinking. I rather suspect I could guess.

“Arjen, do you know,” he says, “there is mistletoe hung all over the city.”

I smile up at him. “Is there, now?”

“All over.” He lowers himself to his knees before my chair, so we’re on the same level. “And there I was, all by myself, with no one to make use of it with.”

“Well, that is a shame.” I take his hand and drew him toward me. “You are not alone now.”

His smile widens. “But we have no mistletoe.”

“We could pretend.”

His eyes light at my suggestion. “In that case”–he leans forward and presses brief, darting kisses to my lips–”I would like to pretend that our ceiling is covered in it.” Another kiss, and this time, the quick caress of his tongue. “So that anytime you take a step, I must kiss you.”

“Do you need an excuse for that?” I ask him warmly. I catch him by the arm and try to tug him up with me.

“I should think not.” His lips skim along my jaw, toward my ear. “But it is Christmas, so in the spirit of the holiday…”

I laugh and turned my head, matching my lips to his, and kiss him properly. He murmurs, pleased, and kisses me back. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, dances enticingly against mine. I wrap an arm around his neck and slide off the chair to kneel with him on the rug.

He breaks away after long minutes. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes dancing with merriment.

“Is that all you did?” I ask him. “Wander the city looking for mistletoe, and yearning for me? I’m flattered.”

“No, I– Oh!” His face is suddenly alight with excitement. “Arjen, you must see what I’ve found! Come, it’s over here.” He pulls me to my feet and drags me along behind him. I laugh and fall into step. “It’s the most wondrous thing.”

He leads me to a parcel he’s left by the door. It’s flat and square, wrapped in paper, and my stomach gives a shiver of foreboding as he lifts it. “Look, come see.” He motions me over as he unwraps it.

It is a heliograph, so similar to the one I got him it would be eerie, if it weren’t so crushing. A sunny day, an Amsterdam street scene. It isn’t the same street as the one I bought for him, but it might as well have be. I look up from the image, look at Maikel.

The excited grin on his face falters, then falls away into a bewildered expression. “Arjen? What’s wrong?” He comes over to stand next to me, points at the image. “Isn’t it brilliant? I haven’t seen the city like this in–”

“A hundred and seventy-four years. I know.” I hand the plate back to him.

He doesn’t even look at this time, just stares at me. “What’s wrong?” he asks again.

My breath hisses out of me in a rush. “It’s Christmas Eve, Maikel.”

“Yes.” His brow furrows. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with the picture?”

“You would *think*, after a hundred and seventy-four of them, you would know better than to buy yourself a gift before the holidays,” I snap, spinning away. It startles me how upset I am by this. But I’d been so excited about being able to give it to him, to see his excitement and happiness and know that I’d brought it to him. And now– now he’s ruined it, and I have nothing at all to give him.

“But…” He circles around to stand in front of me, staring down at me in confusion and concern. “But why?”

“Because you don’t know yet what anyone has gotten for you!”

His mouth gapes open. “I– But– But no one ever gets me anything. Only flowers and candies and little trinkets. Did–” I see the moment he realizes. His eyes go wide, and his expression slack with shock. “Arjen. You got me a Christmas present?”

“Of course I did!” His clear shock that I would do such a thing only vexes me further. I cross my arms over my chest and spinn away, but he catches me and pulls me back around.

“Show me,” he insists. “Let me see.”

I wrench myself out of his grip. “It doesn’t matter now. You’ve spoiled it.”

“I want to see it, Arjen.”

i sigh. I am irritated enough not to mind that it isn’t Christmas Day yet. He’s already gone and bought one for himself. There’s little point in trying to preserve the surprise.

I return to the bedroom and pull the heliograph out of my drawer. I bring it back out and hand it to Maikel, then drop down into the armchair again. I watch him unwrap it with my arms crossed over my chest. I’m practically sulking, but too upset to care.

Maikel unwraps the paper carefully. He holds the heliograph in his hands and looks at it for a long time, saying nothing. I watch him sidelong, waiting, and wonder if he was going to say anything at all.

At last, Maikel looks up from the image, looks at me. His face is soft with awe and shock. “You got this for me?” he breathes.

“Well, I’m not the one who hasn’t seen daylight in two centuries,” I snap. “Yes, I got it for you. I thought you would like it.”

“I love it,” he says simply.

I let out a sharp sigh. “Of course you do. You bought one just like it for yourself.”

“I’m sorry, Arjen.” He sets it aside carefully and comes over to stand near my chair, looking down at me, solemn and contrite. “I didn’t think–”

“That I would buy a Christmas gift for the man I love?” I demand, perhaps more harshly than he deserves, but he’s stung my pride as well. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers, looking more dejected by the moment. “No one has, not real gifts, nothing that’s ever meant anything.” He lifts his head, looks toward the table where he’s put the heliograph down. “You wanted me to see the sun,” he breathes.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does! It was wonderful and thoughtful and I ruined it. Arjen–” He looks at me, stricken. “I didn’t get you anything. I didn’t even think of it.”

“I don’t want anything,” I snap, impatient, and it’s true. Maikel hadn’t asked me what I might want, during the weeks leading up to the holiday, and I knew him well enough to suspect that it was because it hadn’t occurred to him, not because he was playing his cards close to his vest. I hadn’t minded, then. Now that he’s spoiled my surprise, I’m more vexed by his thoughtlessness.

“I’m sorry,” he cries. I try to wave him off, but he will not be consoled. “Please, I want to get you something. Please tell me what you want.”

“I don’t want anything, Maikel,” I tell him again. It only upsets him further.

“God,” he mutters, and paces across the room. He says something, too low for me to make out, but his expression seems so upset it verges on angry.

When he makes a sharp, disgusted sound and stalks into the bedroom, I’m curious enough to follow after him. I’m not prepared for the site of him laying a bag out on the bed and stuffing clothes into it.

“Maikel.” My voice lashes out, with the strength of my shock behind it. “What are you doing?”

He stops and turns to me, his lips flattened into a thin line, his jaw set. His eyes are bleak. “I’m sorry, Arjen,” he says. “I love you, and you deserve better than this. Better than I can do.” His breath leaves him all at once. “I don’t know why you’ve put up with me this long. I’m a rotten sort of man to love. I didn’t even buy you a Christmas gift, God.” He grabs the bag off the bed and ties it up. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but you deserve better than this.”

I feel as though he’s dumped ice water on me. Stiff, immobile, too shocked to respond. When he throws the bag over his shoulder and comes toward me, I move out of the way automatically, and stare after him as he walked out of the bedroom.

He’s halfway across the sitting room when I recover myself and follow after him, so angry I could spit. “Perhaps I do,” I snap at his back, “but then, I suppose I’d have grown accustomed by now to people snatching away what I most want for their own purposes!”

He hasn’t quite reached the door when he stops and turns back to me, his brows wrinkled with an uncertain, bewildered look. “I don’t understand,” he says slowly. “You said you didn’t want anything. Arjen, please, tell me. Tell me what you want.”

I suck a hissing breath through my teeth. “I want you to stop thinking that just because I’m angry with you, I want you to leave!” I shout at him. “I want you to stop running away from me, for God’s sake!”

He comes back to me, and drops his bag onto the floor. I feel as though I can breathe again when he steps away from it, leaving it behind him. “Please tell me what you want,” he begs me miserably. “I’d do anything for you. Please, just tell me.”

“I don’t want anything, Maikel! I told you. I don’t want anything but you.” It might have been a sweeter sentiment if I hadn’t been glaring at him as I said it, my hands balled into fists. Still, it makes his eyes go wide, his lips part, though no sound passes them.

“Arjen.” He comes over to stand in front of me and takes my hands, gently unfolds my fingers so he can lace his through mine. “Tell me what I should do. If there’s nothing you want, what I can do to make it up to you?”

I frown and made an impatient gesture, or try to, but he won’t release my hands. “Nothing. There’s nothing. I don’t want anything. It’s not that easy.” I pull against his hold. “I just wanted you to be happy,” I say bitterly.

“I am,” he says quietly. “Or, I would be, if you would let me make it up to you. Please, Arjen. If there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can give you…” He bends and presses his lips to my palm. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It was so thoughtful, and I ruined it. I hate myself for–”

“Stop!” I jerk my hands from his. “Damn it, Maikel. Don’t say that!”

He frowns down at me, looking uncertain. When he steps in toward me, I stiffen, thinking he means to kiss me and distract me from my anger. But he doesn’t — all he does is slide his arms around me and hug me to him.

It disarms me more effectively than I think he could have possibly expected. Haltingly, I bring my arms up to circle around his back. Maikel lets out a long, slow sigh. “I’m sorry, Arjen,” he says quietly. “I am. I’ll find you something. Something as wonderful as what you got me.”

I make a small, unhappy sound. “You’re not listening to me at all. I told you, I don’t want anything–”

He raises his head, looks down at me, completely serious. “I want to get you something.”

I stop, swallow down the rest of what I’d been about to say. “All right,” I tell him quietly.

He gives a firm nod, satisfied, and draws me close again. I stand, leaning in against him, my chin propped on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of him through his clothes, and I think that it might not kill me to offer him an olive branch, in the spirit of Christmas.

“You know, I think you’re all talk,” I tell him lightly. He raises his head and starts to look hurt, until he recognizes my tone and realizes that I’m teasing.

“Am I?” He still sounds hesitant, uncertain. He’d have been teasing me back already, under normal circumstances.

“Indeed.” I slide my fingers through his hair and tug. “A ceiling covered in mistletoe, you promised me, and kisses any time I took a step. And yet we’ve been all over this flat and back, and I’ve not had a single one.”

His expression starts to ease, finally. “Do you want them?”

“Yes. Every one you owe me.” I turn my face up to his. “And many more, besides.”

He curls his hands around the back of my neck, holding me gently, and bends to put his lips on mine. It’s a soft kiss, tender, still tentative. I brush my tongue over his lip, draw it into my mouth to nibble on until his breath frays. His fingers tighten on me a little, a bolder touch.

I break away from his kiss and take a step back. “And there’s another you owe me,” I tell him with a crooked smile. I take another step. “And one more.”

Maikel follows after me, laughing now, and I continue to retreat, counting each step, until he lunges and catches me by the waist. I wrap my arms around his neck and he hitches me up, carries me into the bedroom.

I drop kisses on his mouth, since he’s the one walking now, one for each step he takes, and more in between because I cannot help myself.

He bears me down onto the bed. I try to sit up, but he pins me with his body weight, his hips on mine. Slowly, I ease down onto my back, gazing up at him, waiting. His hair’s falling in his face. I reach up to comb it back with my fingers, and he turns his head, kisses my hand.

“That doesn’t count,” I tell him.

“No?”

“No,” I say firmly. “And now you owe me another to make up for it.”

He slips his fingers beneath my jaw and uses it to tilt my face up. His eyes narrow as he looks down at me, considering. When he bends down to me, I rise up to meet him, but he avoids my lips and instead kisses the side of my neck. His tongue slides over my skin, a brief caress of heat. He places another kiss in the hollow of my throat, then hooks a finger in the neck of my shirt and pulls the collar down so he can kiss my sternum.

I grab the cuffs of my shirt and pull my hands through, tug my arms out of the sleeves before Maikel can ask it of me. He sits up, so I can rise off the bed enough to tear the shirt off over my head. And when I am bare-chested, he spreads his hand over my heart and pushes me onto my back again with a gentle pressure.

I subside, only because the promise and heat in his eyes when he looks over me makes me want to know what he has in mind. The hand on my chest slides down, over my stomach and across my ribs. He braces the forearm of his other arm on the mattress beside me and lowers himself. When his lips brush my nipple, I lose my breath. When they part and he draws the puckered flesh into his mouth, I hiss and curl my fingers in his hair.

His tongue strokes a slow circle around my nipple, then he drags the flat of it across the tip. I feel the sensation go through me like fire. I can’t help but arch beneath him, flexing my hips up against his.

He’s enjoying it, too. I can feel it in the press of his erection against my stomach. But when I reach for him, to open his pants and release him from their restraint, he catches me by the wrists and pulls my hands away.

“I’m not done yet,” he chides, looking up at me through his lashes. “I’ve still so many neglected kisses to make up for.”

I bite back a groan. I’m grateful, at least, that he moves on, kissing each rib as he makes his way down my side, then swirling his tongue through the indent of my navel. I laugh breathlessly, torn between arousal and ticklishness.

He continues down, following the faint trail of hair to where it disappears beneath the waist of my trousers. And then he continues further, his lips pressing to me through the fabric. He kisses my straining cock but there’s no satisfaction in it. I scarcely feel more than pressure and warmth, when what I want is the hot, liquid glide of his mouth.

He unfastens my pants slowly. I’m sure he is delighting in tormenting me. I imagine if I opened my eyes and looked at him, I’d see his smirk in place, pulling up the corner of his mouth. The thought makes me groan and thrust up against him. The movement makes his fingers slip from the buttons, and delays my satisfaction. I make an impatient sound and thrust my hips up again, this time in demand.

Slowly, he gets all the buttons released, and draws my cock out of the fabric. I hiss at the feel of his fingers wrapped around me. When he bends and places a single kiss upon the head of my cock, I have to fist my hands in the blankets.

“More,” I breathe. “Another.”

“Another kiss?” he asks me, his lips curving.

I nod impatiently. “How many do I have left?”

His head lowers over me again, his hair falling forward so I can’t see his face, or what he’s doing. But I feel his lips brush over me, warm and wet. This time they linger, and he lets his tongue play over me before he draws away.

“I believe I’ve lost count,” he says.

“You’ll have to start over from the beginning.”

“Mmm.” He chuckles. “That is one solution.”

“Maikel…” There’s a note of warning in my voice now. I’m losing patience. I want his mouth on me, his lips and tongue. I do not want to be teased.

“I did promise to give you what you wanted, didn’t I?” he says lightly.

“You did.”

“Well. Since it is Christmas…” He curls his hands around the shaft of my cock and kisses its head again. When I push up against him, he takes more of me, his lips sealed just behind the flared base of the head. His tongue sweeps over me, then teases the slit at its tip.

I lie beneath him, gasping, and struggle to keep still.

He works his mouth over me, taking me deeper, his lips sliding down my shaft. When he draws away, letting me slip from his mouth completely, I swear and reach for him.

He evades my grasp and lowers himself between my thighs. His lips brush my scrotum, and he draws one testicle into his mouth. I clench my fingers in his hair and draw his mouth more firmly against me. He curls his hand around my cock and strokes as his tongue draws circles upon my skin.

He kisses my other testicle just as lavishly, and when he releases it, I think he’s going to return his attentions to my cock. Instead, he pushes at my legs until I bend my knees, making room for him. He kisses down from my testes, his lips soft and warm. His fingers spread my cheeks and he touches his tongue to the puckered muscle of my anus.

I bite down on my knuckle, moaning at the feel of him, gently licking over me. It’s a soft touch at first, almost tentative, but I know him better than that. He drags his thumb up the underside of my cock as he gives another, firmer lick. My breath hisses out of me, and I buck up against him, wanting more.

“Maikel,” I gasp. “Maikel, please.”

I feel his lips curve against my skin, but he doesn’t give me what I need, just light, tormenting touches. Gradually, he increases the pressure of his licks, so he is easing me open. I swear beneath my breath and try for patience, but it is beyond my grasp.

This time, when he moves his mouth away, I suspect his game, and I’m unsurprised when he slides it to the inside of my thigh instead of some other place where I need him most. Unsurprised, but still frustrated, and I try again to grab him and pull him back. Again, he evades me, and leaves kisses all the way down to the back of my knee.

I consider scolding him for denying me. But he has already felt awful enough for one day. I don’t want to make him feel bad again, even a little. Especially since I was the one who demanded the kisses from him in the first place. I should have known I’d lose patience with the game before he did.

So I do not say anything at all, I simply sit up and reach for him. This time, he cannot evade, and I don’t think he tries very hard anyway. I pull him to me, drag his mouth to mine, and he sinks into my kiss as though he wants it as much I do.

I roll him over beneath me and bend over him as we kiss. He runs his hands over my shoulders and down my back, fingers tracing over my vertebrae. He circles a fingertip around the knot at the base of my spine, where the skin is surprisingly sensitive. I gasp and rock against him. He shifts his touch just a little and presses his finger against my entrance, and I rock again, moaning.

He’s still dressed, clothes covering all the places on him I want to touch. I shift off of him and pull his pants down. He helps me, kicking them off. His cock juts up from the thatch of his pubic hair, begging to be touched or kissed. But I’ve had my fill of kisses. I want more.

I straddle him again and let my hips rest against his. My cock slides against his when I flex, tormenting both of us. His eyes go heavy-lidded and dark. When I slide over him again, he draws an unsteady breath and glides his finger between my cheeks.

I rock back against his pressure. His fingertip stretches me open. I catch my lip between my teeth and moan, encouraging Maikel for more, deeper. He brings his other hand to my hip and guides me with it, urging me back, then tugging me forward to rub against him again.

I shudder and lean forward, bracing my arms on the bed so I’m stretched atop him. He smiles up at me and strokes his fingers over the edge of my face. I kiss them then shift, groping on the nightstand until I find the glass bottle of oil we keep there.

His eyes light when I press it into his hand. I slide back and his finger slips out of me. I bite down on my lip to stifle the protest that rises in me unbidden at the loss.

His gaze is steady on me as he pours oil into his palm and strokes it over his cock. I watched, transfixed by the sight of his fingers wrapped around himself.

When he’s coated in the oil, he takes his hand away from his flesh and instead wraps it around mine. I groan and thrust into his fist. The oil makes him slick, no longer enough friction to satisfy me. I make an impatient sound and thrust again, sharper, as I adjust myself above him so I’m straddling his hips again, and his cock rubs between my cheeks.

I grip him at the base of his cock and angle him up. He cups my face in his hands as I shift myself above him until his slick head presses against my anus, urging me open.

I begin to lower my weight on top of him, taking him into me. My muscles stretch at his penetration, a pleasant ache. Maikel pulls me down to him and kisses me, his tongue delving hungrily between my lips.

Slowly, I work him into me, until I have taken all of him and my hips rest against his. He hisses his breath out and rocks his hips, moving in me. I cry out and press my hand to his chest, supporting myself as white-hot heat spikes through me.

“More,” I breathe.

He closes his hands on my hips and moves again, a sharp thrust. I gasp and let my head fall back.

He rises up to kiss my throat. I twine my fingers through his hair and turn my head, baring it more completely to him, thinking he might want to feed. And I do think he’s hungry — he sucks at my skin for long minutes, lips and tongue exploring my throat fully. But he doesn’t bite me, doesn’t even try.

“Maikel,” I whisper. It’s been days since I fed him last, and he must be hungry. But as soon as I speak, he shakes his head and pulls away.

“No, Arjen. I don’t want that from you.” He nudges into me, deeper. His hand curls around my cock and strokes. “Not tonight.”

It must be something to do with the Christmas present debacle. He’s never denied me before, not when I’ve offered myself to him like this. He has always been happy to take from me, when I want to give.

But of course, that’s the problem, this time. He thinks he has taken too much, and must give me something in return. A Christmas gift, though I truly do not care. There’s nothing I want. Nothing he hasn’t given me a hundred times over.

But I don’t want to upset him. I don’t want him to stop, or argue with me, so I say nothing and let it pass. I can feed him later. Right now, all that really matters is the feel of him inside me, the slow rocking rhythm he maintains, driving me mad with it.

I gasp again, his name spoken against his lips. He wraps an arm about my waist and pulls me down onto his next thrust. The jolt of it goes straight through me. I tighten around him, for no other reason than to hear him moan.

Carefully, I lower myself down so I am laying on Maikel’s chest. I press my cheek to the curve of his shoulder and he wraps his arms around me. His thrusts are short and sharp now, driving deep, filling me. I press my lips to his neck and groan against his skin. His breath catches, hitches to a different rhythm in the way I know means he is close.

I am close too. More than anything he might buy for me, I want this. This sensation, this moment, the feeling of his skin dragging on mine, his hardness within me.

It’s true what I told him. I want nothing moreso than I want Maikel.

I gasp again, his name spoken against his lips. He wraps an arm about my waist and pulls me down onto his next thrust. The jolt of it goes straight through me. I I take his hand in mine and guide it to my cock, caught stiff and throbbing between us and sorely neglected. He breathes a shuddering sigh against my mouth as he curls his fingers around me and strokes.

His fist is tight, giving me the friction that I need despite the slick oil that coats his skin, and now mine. I thrust into his grip. The motion makes him give a sharp, unexpected thrust within me, his fingers tightening around me.

I try to speak. I’m not sure what I ‘d tell him, if I could, but I can’t so it doesn’t matter.

What I want to do is warn him that I’m close, too close, but I never manage to form the words. He presses his thumb hard against my glans, a firm, commanding stroke. I choke out a cry and shudder on top of him, spilling my seed into his hand and across his lap.

He continues to move in me, thrusting. I drag his mouth to mine and kiss him until he shudders and cries out against my lips. His motions are short, sharp, until at last he groans and his arms tighten around me. He empties himself into me and pulls me down to lay on top of him.

I keep my ear pressed to his chest for a time, listening to the slowing thunder of his heartbeat. Eventually he shifts, nudging at me.

“Arjen,” he murmurs. “Let me up a minute.”

I roll over onto my side, off of him, and watch with lazy curiosity as he climbs out of bed and walks out of the room. I wonder what he’s up to, and if I should follow after and drag him back to bed. I haven’t yet decided when he returns, carrying both heliographs in his hands.

I am not thrilled to have their company in bed, but I shift to the side anyway to make room for Maikel again. He stretches out on his back, his head propped on the pillow. When he’s settled, I press in against his side and lean my head on his shoulder.

He holds the images up and looks at them. The one he bought for himself is on top. After a moment, he passes it to me. I do not bother to look at it. I’m more interested in what he’s seeing, and why. He holds my gift, the heliograph I chose for him, in his hands for long minutes, just looking at it, until I’m sure I can’t bear it anymore.

“It’s a much better composition, this one,” he says at last, almost to himself. “The light is better. Do you see how the water almost shines?”

I murmur agreement but no more. I turn my gaze from the image to him, but he doesn’t notice. His gaze is fixed very hard on the picture.

“They didn’t have any with the canals, today. Just streets and buildings.” He hovers his hand just above the canal in the image, not quite touching the plate. “It’s like the one outside your bedroom, where we met. Look, there’s even a bridge.”

He sounds like he’s working himself around to something. I curl in tighter against his side and wait for him to get to it. I’m not sure what he means by any of this, but I’d have been happier if he’d left them both out in the sitting room, where we could deal with it later.

At last, Maikel gives a sharp, decisive nod and declares, “You chose a much better one than the one I chose for myself. I like yours much better, Arjen.”

I think he’s just saying it to humor me, to make me feel better. I search his gaze for a moment, for any sign that he is. But he looks happy — that’s all. Just happy, as he looks from me to the heliograph and back.

I lean my cheek on his chest, one arm curled and resting on his stomach. He still doesn’t believe me when I say that there’s nothing I want from him. He’s trying to give me what he thinks I want. I don’t like being humored, as a rule, but it’s sweet and it’s Christmas, so I let myself smile. “Shall we put it on the wall?”

He nods eagerly. “So I can see the sun every day.” He looks at the image again, and I realize that he’s given me the one thing I did want, but couldn’t demand of him.

He’s happy, so I am, too.

—

“Links to other Christmas/New Year Free Reads
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

I wake alone on the last night of the year. Our apartment is quiet, empty. Nye has already woken and left, gone somewhere I don’t know. He’s much older than me, and can rise at twilight, while I’m still young enough that I do not wake until night has fully settled upon the city. Still, usually he waits for me. I’ve grown accustomed to waking to his warmth in bed. There’s a sharp ache beneath my breast to find myself alone now.

I rise and dress. He’s left no indication of where he’s gone or when I might expect his return. I shouldn’t be surprised. In the first months of our relationship, before I learned what he truly was, it was not uncommon for him to disappear for hours at a stretch. I would go walk through the city, or buy a pastry at a patisserie and sit at a table for a while to eat it, watching the people who passed me by.

I cannot go out, now. The day is forbidden to me, and I fear to go out alone at night.

I don’t fear monsters in the dark. Not anymore. I am the monster that lurks in the shadows, now, and what I fear is what might happen if I do not have Nye to watch over me, and keep the hunger from taking control.

It seems absurd that I should be lonely now. It was worse when I was a child, in the orphanage in Ceredigion, surrounded by other children and all alone because they thought I was mad. It was worse when I’d first come to Paris, scratching and scraping for a living and coming home every night to my empty room. There’s no sense in it now, when I have Nye, who loves me, and whom I love more than I’d thought possible.

And yet I am, and I ache with it.

Nye comes home, not too long after I’ve woken, and finds me curled in our armchair, my brow on my knees, trying to ignore the hollow void of loneliness that gapes within me. I’d expected him to be gone longer, so I’m not listening for him, and he sweeps in before I realize he’s there, and sees me sitting there feeling sorry for myself. I unfold quickly, though it’s not quick enough, and pretend he did not catch me at anything at all.

He’s smiling when he comes in, his face bright and flushed with the cold. There are snowflakes caught in his hair and on his scarf, not yet melted. He looks as happy as I’ve seen him, but he’s seen me sitting there being miserable and his smile starts to fade.

“Kynan–” he begins.

“Hi, Nye.” I cross over to him and kiss his mouth, interrupting him before he can ask me what’s wrong. “What have you been up to?” I smile up at him as I ease back, false but bright. It’s not his fault that I’m unhappy. I won’t let him be unhappy, too.

“Errands,” he tells me. When I reach for his scarf to untie it, he brushes my hands away. “No, leave it. I’ve not finished yet.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently pushes me back a step. “Go put your coat on, Kynan. It’s cold out.”

I turn away to obey. “Am I going with you, then?” I ask him over my shoulder as I pull on my coat and gloves, hat and scarf. It may not offer the same threat to me now, but I still do not like the cold any better than I did when I was mortal.

“I thought we’d get some supper. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Oh.” I hesitate, just for a moment, as I’m wrapping the scarf about my neck. “Of course. Yes, I am.” I tell him this because it’s the truth, and he’d know soon enough if I was lying. But I don’t relish the idea. I’d rather go hungry, and put of feeding a little while longer.

It’s not the prospect of feeding that makes me hesitate, though, not really. Walking through the city, now, just makes me feel more alone, even when the streets are crowded. I’m not one of them anymore. I’m not mortal. They’d fear me, if they knew the truth. They’d kill me, if they had the chance.

When I turn back to Nye, he’s not smiling at all any more, and his gaze is shrewd as he watches me. My hesitation has given me away. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my coat and keep the smile fixed on my face, even though it’s pointless now, and he’s seen through it.

What he says, though, is not what I expect. He comes over to stand before me and cups my face in his hands, tilting it up to his. “You are doing wonderfully, mo charaid. There’s no need for fear. I will be with you, if anything goes amiss. But you haven’t needed my intervention in quite some time. I don’t know why this worries you so.”

I look away. He’s misunderstood the reason of my concern, but I don’t correct him. I’d rather he think that, than know the truth.

We venture out onto the city’s streets. It’s busier than usual, and I press in against Nye’s side as we walk. When we turn off the street and make our way down a narrow alley between two buildings, I breathe a sigh of relief.

We’d walked the streets like this only a week before, on Christmas Eve. We’d kept to the larger, busier streets, though and everywhere we turned there were people enjoying themselves, sitting safe and warm inside their homes, candles glowing through the windows, laughter leaking out into the night. It had almost been more than I could bear, to stand out on the dark street, the wind cutting through me like knives, as they’d celebrated the season with the ones they loved.

So I’m grateful, now, that Nye keeps us to the narrow back alleys, where we see almost no one at all, and there are no windows to look through. We climb the sloping streets, up the narrow staircases and through the twisting alleys. He’s leading me up the hill, toward the center of Montmartre. We’ve never come this way to hunt before. I wonder why, and where we’re going, but I don’t ask it.

Gradually, the streets level, and there are no more staircases to climb. There is not the same concentration of bars and brothels here as there is nearer our flat, our usual haunts when we must feed. I wonder once again where he’s taking me.

And then we step out of the alley and I realize where we are, where we have come. We are standing at the edge of a lawn at the highest point of the hill, and before us is the stately facade of St-Pierre-de-Montmartre, golden and glowing in the light of the lanterns.

I stand and gawp at it for a moment. “Nye!” I cry, appalled. “You’re taking me hunting in a church?”

He grins at me and hooks his arm around my shoulders. I cannot fathom what he’s so pleased about. It’s an awful blasphemy. Just the thought makes me ill, and I’m reluctant to move my feet when Nye urges me forward.

“Trust me,” he murmurs. His arm around my shoulders is gentle but firm, leading me with him despite my reservations.

I cannot imagine what sort of trust he expects me to place in him. How can he expect to make feeding on Church land more palatable?

But it doesn’t matter, because I do trust him, and we both know it. I have trusted him with my life already. This is nothing, in comparison. I relax and let myself enjoy the feel of his arm around me, the pleasantness of walking close by his side.

We go around behind the church, and slip inside through a small, unprepossessing doorway that leads to a narrow hall and a stairwell. And then we are climbing again, and I think wryly that I’m grateful for the strength tat comes with immortality, or I’d have been winded and breathless long before we reached this point.

The stairs end at another door, but here, Nye stops and turns to me. I’ve been coming up behind him, letting him lead. When I am standing on the small landing beside him, he draws me close and puts his hands over my eyes.

I blink, uncertain. My lashes brush against his palm. “Nye?”

I can feel his warmth behind me, pressing in close against my back. I feel his breath on my throat, and then his lips brush my ear. “Trust me, Kynan,” he murmurs.

I relax, or try to. He shifts behind me as he reaches forward, opens the door. He guides me forward with gentle pressure on my back, but my steps are slow and stumbling, awkward, because I fear tripping on something. I’m not used to being so thoroughly blinded. I haven’t had to worry about seeing in the dark since Nye turned me. I hadn’t even realized how accustomed to it I’ve become.

He guides me forward, patient with my small steps and the way I reach out before me, feeling the way. I trust him not to lead me into a wall, but it’s instinct, and I can’t help it.

Finally we stop. I drop my hand and find it resting on a ledge, like a windowsill, except there is no window here. I can feel the wind on my cheeks, feel it tugging through my hair. The stone is cold, but Nye’s pressed up behind me, and his warmth insulates me.

“What are we doing, Nye?” I wonder, barely a breath.

He speaks close against my ear. “I’ll show you,” he says, and he lowers his hands.

We’re in the church’s tower, high above the ground. The rooftops and streets of Montmartre slope away before us, and beyond that lies the city itself, as far as the eye can see, all of it glittering with snow and glowing with lights, thousands upon thousands of them. We’ve been having flurries of snow all day, and now it lies like a candy coating on the rooftops, and reflects the lights from the streets so that all of Paris is lit with the golden glow, as bright as sunshine. I bring my hands to my mouth and stare out at it, shining like a jewel.

“Oh, Nye,” I breathe. “It’s beautiful. Is it always like this?”

“Every year.” His hands rub over my arms. His breath is warm on my cheek as he speaks, so close I could turn my head and match my lips to his. “I know you’ve been unhappy, Kynan–”

“No,” I protest swiftly, but he doesn’t let me speak.

“I know you have been,” he says, more firmly. “I know the holidays have been hard for you. You’ve been lonely.”

I shake my head hard. Tears prick at my eyes, and the chill winter wind makes them feel like ice.

“I have seen it,” Nye continues, his body pressed close to mine, wrapping around mine. “And I’m sorry for it. It’s hard, Kynan. I know it is.” He pauses, takes a long breath. The wind brings to us the sound of conversation and laughter. The streets are full of it, full of people, as if it really were the middle of the day. “But tonight… Tonight is New Year’s, and you’ve not seen a New Year’s celebration until you’ve seen how Paris celebrates it.

The streets will be full of men all night long, clear until dawn.” He kisses the side of my throat, lingers with his lips warm on my skin. “We can go, mo charaid,” he murmurs. “We can be men like any other, for at least one night. We can go and celebrate and wish people a joyful new year–”

I spin in his arms with a gasp, unable to bear it any longer. I stare up at him, the light and love and hope in his eyes. I cannot believe his kindness. I don’t know how he’s guessed that I am lonely when I’ve tried so hard to keep him from knowing, but I know he planned all of this for me. Because I was not happy, and he wanted me to be.

“Oh, Nye,” I breathe, staring up at him, so overwhelmed I cannot contain myself. “I love you so much.”

I rise up on my toes and pull him down to me, his mouth to mine. He makes a soft, wondrous sound against my lips and kisses me, his tongue gliding along mine, his lips warm and generous and wonderful. I press myself tight against his chest and kiss him harder, wanting him to know the true strength of this love that has welled up within me, so deep and powerful I feel like I may drown in it.

My arm is wrapped around the back of his neck to hold him to me. With my other, I reach up and tug my glove off. The air is so cold up here it stings, but I want to feel the texture of his hair on my fingertips, the heat of his skin on mine.

Nye makes a low sound against my mouth when I slide my fingers over his scalp. I break away from his kiss long enough to bite at the fingers of my other glove and tug that one off, too. He watches me, his eyes kindling. When I put my hands on either side of his face, he turns his head and presses a kiss to my palm.

“Won’t your hands get cold?” he asks me.

I shake my head. “You’ll keep them warm.”

The corners of his eyes crease when he smiles. “I thought you’d want to go down into the city and be amongst the people.”

“I do. In a minute.” I draw my hand down to his throat. His scarf is looped around his neck, blocking my way. I tug it open and work at the buttons of Nye’s coat.

“Kynan,” he murmurs. His tone is mildly reproachful, but he’s still smiling.

I use the ends of his scarf to pull him to me. He laughs as I rise up to kiss him. “I love you,” I whisper against his lips. “So much I can’t bear it.”

“And this?” He curves his hands around my waist, presses his fingers in hard so I can feel him through the wool of my coat. “Will this help you bear it?”

“No.” The corners of my mouth turn up. “There’s no help for that.” I scrape my teeth over his lip, delighting in the quick catch of his breath. “But I don’t know how you expect me to go down there with you and keep my hands to myself, otherwise.”

“Well,” he murmurs. “We can’t have you failing to fully appreciate your first Parisian New Year’s. In the interest of not being a distraction…” He takes my face in his hands and kisses me again, moving his body in against mine so I am pinned against the column.

I moan against his mouth and take his hands in mine, peeling his gloves off, too. He flexes his fingers at the cold and I grab him by the wrists, press his hands against my neck. His skin is cold at first, but it warms quickly.

Nye unwraps my scarf from around my neck and opens my coat. He spreads his hands over my chest, only the thin lawn of my shirt between us now. I suck air through my teeth and press into his touch.

He leaves a trail of kisses down the side of my throat. I gasp when he flicks his tongue across my skin, heat curling through me.

“And how is your concentration now, mo charaid?” His lips brush against my earlobe. “Are you still distracted?”

“Quite.” I shrug my coat off my shoulders. Nye’s gaze skims over me as it falls down to the floor. “Stop teasing and just touch me already.”

The corners of his eyes wrinkle again. He looks so pleased just to be here with me, teasing and fond. “If you insist,” he says, and presses his lips to the hollow of my throat. I let my head fall back to rest against the stone wall behind me, to give him greater access.

He slides his hands under the edge of my shirt, pushing it up. I suck in my breath and twist away instinctively at the rush of cold air over my skin. But then he crouches and presses his mouth to my stomach. My hands find the back of his head, holding him against me, and I forget about the cold entirely.

Slowly, he lowers himself to his knees. I make a low, surprised sound and begin to sink down to join him. But Nye slides his hand over my erection, straining against my breeches, and I freeze, my hands clenching on his hair.

“Oh,” I breathe. “Nye.”

He tilts his head back, gazing up at me. “Yes?” he asks quietly.

“Please.”

He smiles and kisses my stomach again. His tongue skims the edge of my navel. He works at my breeches, gets them open and draws me out. This time, he doesn’t give me a chance to feel the cold at all. His mouth is on me instantly, surrounding me with heat. I groan and lift my hips away from the wall, pressing toward him.

The feel of his tongue on me is like a madness. I shut my eyes. He takes me deep, running his hands over my stomach and the outsides of my thighs. He drags the flat of his tongue over the length of my shaft, then teases across the head of my penis with the tip, until my breath is coming harshly, my shoulders heaving as I strain against him.

I cannot keep still, not when his mouth, his hands, are on me. I run my fingers through his hair, slip them down to the back of his neck, across the breadth of his shoulders. He works his mouth over me, swallowing me deep. I’m sure I must go out of my mind with the pleasure of it.

I struggle to hold myself back, to keep the heat reigned in, until he licks across the head of my phallus. I’m shaking, gasping for air, and it’s all I can do to sink onto my knees and drag his mouth to mine before the heat erupts within me.

This is nothing like the sweet kisses we’d shared earlier. My hands grasp at him, dragging his body against mine. I kiss him fiercely, needy. He catches my head between his hands and kisses me back with a staggering urgency.

I push his jacket off his shoulders. He pulls his arms from the sleeves impatiently, casts it down to the ground with mine. We drag each other down upon them. Sheltered by the low wall, with the warmth of our coats beneath us and Nye’s blazing heat above me, it is not so cold. I don’t protest when he tugs my pants down off my hips. And then his mouth is on me again, driving me to the edge of madness. I writhe away and reach for the his breeches.

He holds himself still as I unbutton him. His breath hisses out audibly when I take him in my hand and stroke.

“Now,” I whisper, leaning forward to skim my lips over his. “I want you now.”

He nods and bears me down onto my back without breaking the kiss. I wrap my legs around him, arch up so my erection slides against his and we both groan. He holds himself up on one arm and slicks himself with saliva.

I cannot look way from him as he reaches down and positions himself against me. His gaze locks on me as he flexes his hips, and bears down into me.

He works his way in with shallow, gentle nudges, stretching me with painstaking care. I rear up to kiss his mouth, his throat, his shoulder, anywhere I can reach. He curls an arm beneath the back of my head when he realizes that the coats beneath us don’t provide sufficient padding, and it brings him in closer above me.

“God, Nye,” I breathe, then cry out when he finds that place inside of me that makes sparks shoot across my vision. I shudder around him. He groans and gives a sharper thrust, burying himself deep within me. I gasp and clutch at him. I hook a leg over his hip and pull him against me.

With his next thrust, he pulls out almost completely, then buries himself in me, a single smooth stroke. I cry out and buck beneath him, and all my breath rushes from me.

He’s pounding into me now, a hard, driving rhythm. Heat rushes through me and sweat clings to my skin, despite the coolness of the night. Every breath Nye takes comes as a gust against the skin of my shoulder as he strains into me.

I dig my teeth into my lip, fighting to hold myself back. But Nye reaches down between us and curls his hand around my erection, and my eyes fly open with a gasp. He’s above me, looking down at me. His gaze is flooded with love and brightness. It’s too much for me. My heart swells to fill my chest, and with his next stroke, I arch up tight beneath him, shuddering and crying out, and empty myself into his hand.

Nye groans, his arm tightening around me. He drives into me. I wrap my arms around his back and hold on to him. Soon he’s locking his hips to mine, moaning and twitching deep inside me as he slumps down on top of me.

I wrap around him, holding him close. I can feel the way his pulse pounds, and gradually feel it slow as we lie together. “I love you, Nye,” I whisper again, purely for the joy of saying it.

He makes a pleased sound against my throat and rises off of me. Without the distraction of his touch, I’m once again aware of the chill in the air, and the even cooler breeze. I shiver hard, just one. Nye retrieves my hat and a wayward glove while I dress, and then I return the favor for him. Soon enough, we’re bundled up again. I step in close and lean against Nye’s chest. My wool coat protects me from the cold, but I don’t feel half as warm wearing it as I had when all I’d had protecting me had been Nye.

He wraps me in his arms and presses his lips to my temple. I can feel his mouth curve against my skin. “And now?” he asks me quietly. “Will you be able to celebrate the coming of the new year without distractions?”

“You’re always a distraction, Nye,” I tell him. I slip my fingers beneath the edge of his coat, to run along the small of his back. It makes him shiver and lean in against me. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He smiles again, then steps away and hooks his hand in mine. We descend the stairs together, and then we walk together, out of Montmartre and into the heart of the city, where the streets are filled with men and women in high spirits, celebrating with strangers and loved ones alike as the excitement of the moment lifts them up.

For a few hours, we are no different than anyone else in the city. Soon enough, the clocks strike midnight, and the cry goes up. “Bonne Annee!” they cry to one another. Happy New Year. I cannot help but grin as I watch them embrace one another, and exchange kisses.

Nye’s hand catchs my arm, turning me to face him. I smile up at him, brilliantly happy, and when he bends to brush his lips over my cheek and murmur, “Bonne Annee, Kynan,” in my ear, I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him lavishly.

I’m not foolish enough to expect the coming year to be easy. But I do think it will be happy, all the same.

—

“Links to other Christmas/New Year Free Reads
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

This month, I’m sharing the first chapter of Blood and Roses, which will be available at Samhain tomorrow!

—

I was not the only man in the parlor that night, but I was one of the few not looking for a whore.

The girls sat about, mostly, combing their hair or bent in gossip with one another. There was little else to do; it had been a slow night, and patrons came in a discouraging trickle. Occasionally a girl would spy someone she fancied, rise, stretch, and amble over so as not to betray her interest too readily. I sat by a window where the breeze might reach me and played draughts with Elise. There were too many of us in the parlor, crowded and overheated, not enough patrons culling our ranks to keep the numbers at a reasonable level. The chair put my back to the door, and Elise was to spy over my shoulder and give a signal if any patrons seemed to be the sort who might find me a more suitable companion than one of the girls.

I was bent over the board studying my next move when a collective shiver seemed to overtake us all as one. I straightened and saw Elise staring over my shoulder, leaning to get a better view. The other girls, those who I could see, were already scrambling to their feet, idle pursuits cast aside, tripping over their skirts as they rushed to greet this newcomer.

I rose from our table, one of only a handful not already flinging myself at this newest patron, and cast a brief glance behind me, wondering who it was this time the women were making fools of themselves over.

I did not have to wonder what it was. Only one thing turned these working women to sycophants at a mere glance.

Vampire. The king himself might have walked through our doors and not received such a welcome.

I saw a shock of hair as dark as sin in that brief glance, and a flashing glimpse of narrowed eyes, just as black. But mostly what I saw were the women, thronged about him, simpering and sighing and tugging their bodices down in the futile hope that a flash of breast might set them above the others and earn them his company in their bed. Already his name was being whispered in hushed tones better reserved for gods or saints.

“Maikel van Triet,” they murmured, reaching, as though his very name might summon him to them.

I swept the pieces from the board in disgust and slipped about the edges of the parlor to the stairs. The night was a loss already, and dawn near enough that I had little hope of salvaging it. There was no reason to stay and watch these women I worked with and mostly liked turn to mindless fools.

Behind me, he began to speak, and though I could not make out the words, I could feel the way they fell upon the crowd like stones dropped into a puddle, reaction rippling out in waves.

I had one foot on the stairs and thought I might have managed a clean escape when he spoke again, and this time I did hear it: “Wait,” he said.

He might have been talking to anyone, any one of the women pressed in close about him. Surely he hadn’t noticed me, with so many others vying for his attention. And yet, I could not help it. I stopped and turned back, hoping I would see him addressing another.

He was looking straight at me, over the heads of the women as though they did not exist, or as though he was so accustomed to such displays that they didn’t even merit attention. His eyes were not narrowed now, but open and dark, watching me with puzzlement.

“Come back,” he told me. “Come here.”

“Will you buy a place in my bed, sir?” I asked him, unmoving. I would not return for less. I was not even sure I would do it for that.

“Will you have me?” he countered, and gave a grin that made the women sigh like besotted girls.

I crossed my arms and regarded him across the distance. He was pleasant enough to look on, a contrast of dark hair, dark eyes and pale, ivory skin. He dressed to emphasize the drama of it. Were he any other patron, I would lead him to my bed and consider myself lucky to have anyone there at all.

But he was vampire, and his kind never failed to turn the very sensible members of my acquaintance into the greatest of idiots, all slavering to get close and earn a taste of eternity. Who could resist such a temptation?

Not even I, though it was not the lure of his immortality that decided me. It had been a slow night, and business had been poor all week. I was not so well-off that I could afford to turn away a paying customer.

I jerked my head at the stairs. His grin spread, and he wended his way through the crowd to my side. He reached for me, took my hand before I realized what he was about and could snatch it back.

The women gossiped about their patrons, of course, and the lucky few who had taken vampires to their beds gossiped about that most of all. Perhaps they spoke of what a vampire’s touch was like. I did not know, for I had not cared to listen. If I had taken the effort to wonder, I would have supposed that, without the fire of life burning within them, their touch would have been cold as ice and chilled to the bone.

Maikel’s palm burned against mine like an ember. His fingers wrapped about my hand and scorched like tongues of flame.

I jerked from his grasp, turning up the stairs. He followed. Neither of us spoke, but the whispers of the others carried after us. If he heard, he gave them no mind. I supposed he was probably used to it.

I stopped before my door, fingertips resting on the handle, and turned back to him. I held my other hand out, open, palm up. “Is it a tryst you want? Or to stay the night?” We both of us ignored the fact that it was nearly dawn, and night to him meant the full bright of day.

He laughed a little. “A tryst, no. That’s not what I came for.” He counted guilders into my palm, more than I normally charged for a full night, more even than I’d have asked of him, so many that it was all I could do not to gape in astonishment. When he had finished, he curled my fingers around the coins and held my hand in his, giving me a crooked smile. “I’m Maikel,” he said quietly.

I looked down at the silver glinting between my fingers, enough to turn this whole miserable night into a remarkably profitable one. “I know who you are.” I pushed my door open and led him inside.

“Do you, then?” That odd, bemused half-smile still hovered about his face. He lingered in my doorway, watching as I crossed to my bureau and put his fee in my coffer. “I had wondered.”

“You are Maikel van Triet, and a vampire, and your reputation precedes you.” He knew it, of course. It was not only the brothel whores who fawned over his kind. Some days, it seemed all anybody in Amsterdam cared to talk about.

He closed my door with a muted click of the latch and crossed to the window as I tucked my coffer into the back of a drawer. My view looked out over the canal, and the sounds of conversation and gurgling water drifted up to us on the night’s breeze.

“What will you?” I asked when it seemed he might stand there looking out until the sun rose. “Your reputation has preceded you, but not so much that I know your desires.”

He did not answer me at first, but closed and latched my shutters with deliberate care. When they were shut fast against the approaching dawn, he turned to face me, hands braced behind him on the sill. “I desire a bed until dark,” he said. “And surety that the shutters will remain closed until then.”

My brows climbed my forehead. I stared at him, nonplussed. “That’s all?”

His head fell forward, sending a lock of dark hair curling against his cheek. It didn’t quite hide the slight smile that curved his lips. “And the decency not to send me to bed hungry.”

I had expected he might request something of the sort. Still, I turned aside, crouching to tug at a boot as pretense, for fear my expression might betray me. I was not like the others, who took vampires to bed and proudly displayed their bites the next morning, whispering in rapturous tones of an experience so transcendental it brought them closer to God, or who hoped silently that a patron might one night take too much and make her one of his own. I did not care to be bitten. But he was a patron, and I had taken his coin.

Barefoot, I straightened and rolled up my cuff to uncover my left arm, the arteries of which were said to carry the sweetest, purest blood, pumped direct from the heart. I crossed to the bed and sat on it, stretched my arm out toward him, wrist turned up.

He sat facing me and took my hand in both of his. His thumbs brushed across my wrist and lingered over my pulse. “You don’t like me, do you?” he asked without a bit of resentment.

He didn’t look away from me and there was no challenge in his gaze, nothing in it daring me to confess. It was simple and direct, an honest request for nothing more or less than the truth.

I shrugged and broke my gaze away. “Not very much, no.”

I had to look back when he laughed, soft and amused. “And yet you would offer me this?”

“You paid for it.”

He kept my hand cradled in both of his, holding it in his lap like something cherished, fingers stroking tenderly. “I believe I am at a disadvantage. You seem to know a great deal about me, but I do not even know your name.” He didn’t look away from my wrist, where fine blue veins drew wandering tracks beneath the skin.

“It’s Arjen,” I said in a voice gone rough and dry.

“Arjen,” he echoed and bent over my wrist.

His hair fell about his face, so I could not see. His lips were warm on my skin, his kiss as sweet as a lover’s. My hand curled into a fist, then spasmed when his thumb dug into the flesh, finding a vein and pinning it in place. I braced my other hand behind me, clenched on the blankets.

His lips parted, breath gusting across my skin like a summer breeze off the water, hot and damp. His mouth formed a seal on my skin, sucking hard enough that I gasped and had to wrestle down the urge to jerk back. His fingers, gentle before, now held my hand with an iron grip. I could try to pull away, but I doubted he’d let me. Fangs pricked my skin like needles, probing. And without warning he bit deep, sinking into me.

I thrashed, unthinking, as agony coursed through me, and realized it hadn’t been greed that made him hold me so tight. I’d have torn my wrist open on his teeth if he’d let me.

He drank, sucking hard at the wound with a rhythm that echoed the thundering beat of my heart. I twisted and tore at the blankets, struggling against the overwhelming instinct to fight.

He bore me down onto my back, his body stretched along mine, and pinned me in place with a surprising strength for someone as lean as he was, so that I could not fight even if I tried. For my benefit, I wondered, or for his? His fangs never withdrew, and his throat never ceased its steady, rhythmic sucking.

I had suffered any number of indignities at the hands of my patrons, and most of them I had done in willing trade for the coin they put in my coffer. But I had never felt as completely helpless as I did then, fully clothed beneath Maikel’s slight weight with his fangs buried in my wrist.

Mentally, I cursed the gossips a hundred different ways. There was no rapture in this, no transcendence, only the throb of the wound and the heat of Maikel’s mouth as he drank my blood from me.

Somehow, my hand had found its way into his hair, fingers twisting knots into the strands, though I did not remember putting it there. I didn’t think I meant to do something so foolish and useless as try to push him back, but my fingers needed something to cling to, something to grip, and it seemed as likely a place as any to bury them.

When at last he released his grip on my arm and let his fangs slip free, I felt as exhausted as if I’d wrestled a badger. I slumped back into the mattress, and Maikel leaned his brow against my shoulder. His back rose and fell like he’d exerted himself just as hard. After a moment, he rolled off me. I pushed myself up on my uninjured arm and looked down at him. “That is truly all you want of me?”

He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes closed. “Let me sleep in peace and I’ll count myself quite satisfied.”

“As you like,” I muttered and crossed the room to my bureau. We all kept bandages tucked away in our rooms in case of something like this, though in truth, when I’d shoved mine into the back of a drawer I had not expected to ever have the need to dig it out again. Still, I was glad now to have it, and I sat gingerly at the end of the bed to dress my wound. By the time I’d finished, Maikel was fast asleep, sprawled quite comfortably upon my blankets. I crept out and ventured downstairs in search of breakfast.

Elise agreed to let me sleep in her bed, then kept me up all morning with endless, breathless questions about Maikel. She sighed like a romantic when I told her he’d refused my services after they’d been rightfully purchased, and shivered as though party to a lascivious secret when I showed her my bandaged wound. She asked me to describe it over and over again, until I realized that what she really wanted was for me to tell her a story like all the others she’d heard, of sweeping romance and unimaginable pleasure and enough cloying sentiment to make a person sick. I shooed her off, pleading exhaustion, and managed a few hours of sleep before the afternoon sun slanting through her window woke me.

I could have risen and closed her shutters and had a few more hours sleep. Instead I lay there for a few moments, my arm shading my eyes, thinking of my own shuttered room and the man in my bed.

My wrist throbbed with a dull ache. I stretched my arm out to inspect the bandage and sighed to see that blood was showing through in places. It’d dry and stick to the wound if I let it. I rose and poured water from Elise’s ewer into a basin. I soaked my forearm in it as I began to carefully unwrap the bandage.

I went slowly, giving the water time to work its way in and soften it. Even so, when the last strip came off, the wound had cracked open and a few drops of blood seeped out. I rinsed them away and returned to my room to rebandage it.

Wary of Maikel’s admonishment that he wished for undisturbed sleep, I pushed the door open gently so the hinges would not squeak. Even so, I had not taken two steps into the room when he stirred and pushed himself up onto an elbow.

I hesitated. “I did not think you’d be up so soon.”

He shoved his hair out of his face. His gaze sought out my wrist. “I smelled blood.”

I grimaced and showed him my newly opened wound as explanation. “Sorry.”

He shook his head and waved as though to dismiss my concern. Instead of lying down again, he propped his back against my headboard and watched me as I went about dressing my wound again.

I turned my back to him, scowling at the weight of his gaze upon me, and the sensation of crawling insects that it sent prickling across my skin.

“You really don’t like me, do you?” he asked unexpectedly. He sounded surprised and—surprisingly—somewhat pleased.

“Not very much, no,” I told him again. I did not turn to look at him.

The bed creaked, and I could imagine him leaning back in it, contemplating me with that strange half-smile. “You could have said no.”

I did turn, then, my brows drawn together with irritation. “And you could have slept in any bed in Amsterdam, fed from anyone you cared to have, for free. If you’re not interested in our trade, why come here for a bed and pay such an exorbitant fee?”

He looked up at my ceiling and lazily brushed away a strand of hair that had caught on his lips. “Those others, the ones who throw themselves at me. They’re all the same. They don’t really care about me, and they don’t care that I don’t care about them.”

“But you care that I don’t?” I shook my head and tied the bandage off with a knot.

“Well, it’s a change,” he said, and the smile was back, lurking at the edges of his expression as though too shy to venture out in the open.

I scooped my boots from where I’d left them. “There’s a few hours left to dusk. You should make use of what you’ve paid for. Soon as night falls, I’ll need my bed again.”

He nodded amiably enough, but made no move to lie back down.

I strode out with an impatient gesture. If he expected me to stay and press the matter with him, he was wrong. He had bought my bed from dawn to dusk, and it was his to do with as he pleased, even if that meant refusing my services and casting me out and sitting awake, imprisoned by the sun and all alone in my drab little room with nothing better to do than study the grain of the wood in the planks that formed my walls.

Downstairs, most of the girls were awake and beginning to prepare for the evening to come, dressing their hair and debating perfume. A few wielded needles, repairing garments that had been rent by overzealous patrons. A whore’s pride was in her appearance, her baubles and scents, in the lengthy measures it took to stand out from the dozens of others in the crowded brothel, and in the whole of De Wallen itself. And every one of them ceased their ministrations when I came down the stairs, crowded around me as though I were a vampire myself, and demanded I spare no detail.

I sat on the second-lowest step, unable to progress farther into the parlor without pushing people out of the way, and wondered if Maikel van Triet might not have been the better choice in company.

—

Links to other Excerpt Monday writers
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

This month, I’m posting another except from Copper Kiss, to celebrate it’s release today from Liquid Silver Books! You can read more excerpts here and here, and if you like what you see, head on over here to buy it.

—

Logan’s car was in the driveway when they pulled up, and lights glowed within the house. Reina’s heart started to flutter with hope, until she saw Kynan walking towards the house from the car. His shirt was ripped and stained with blood, his face and arms smeared with it.

“Oh my God.” Reina threw herself out of the car before it had stopped moving. She ran to him. “Kynan! Are you all right?”

He took her arms, held her still when she might have whirled off in a hundred different directions. “I’m fine, Reina.” He hesitated and glanced towards the house.

She didn’t wait to hear more; she ran for the door.

Inside, the house was in an uproar. People ran from one place to another, shouting to others as they went. Everyone bore wounds, but all were on their feet and more or less intact.

Everyone but Logan, who sat on the couch in a daze, the eye of the storm of activity. Reina ran to his side. She dropped to her knees in front of him, took his hands in hers. “Logan?” Her voice wavered, caught, broke like ice on the pavement.

He turned slowly. His eyes took too long to focus on her. “Reina. Got your message. Too late.” He closed his eyes and listed forward. She caught him, held him close, and swallowed panicked tears. “Thank you,” he whispered, lifting his hand to her cheek.

It was a clumsy move, completely devoid of his usual grace, but Reina gave him a tremulous smile and pressed her hand over his.

“Don’t thank her, you damned idiot,” Keachan growled from behind her. He leaned close and spread a pale gel on the wounds on Logan’s face. It smelled strongly of antiseptic. “If you hadn’t gotten her message, you wouldn’t have gone running off like a fool and gotten half your blood spilled on the asphalt.”

“What happened to him?” She half-turned to look at Keachan over her shoulder.

“The stupid bastard tried to protect us, to keep us out of it. He took the brunt of the attack on himself.”

Reina looked back at him. She hovered her hand just above his heart. Beneath the tattered remains of his shirt, his skin was blistered and blackened in the silhouette of a cross. Tears stung her eyes. She had to look away.

Logan listed further forward. His head rested heavily on her shoulder. Reina stroked his hair and looked up at Keachan. “He ought to lie down. Help me take him to my room?” It would take more manpower than they had to get him up the stairs.

Keachan nodded and slipped Logan’s arm over his shoulder. Reina helped, and the rest of the brood trailed anxiously behind them. Keachan laid him down on the bed. Reina knelt by his head, gently stroking the strands of hair that spilled across his cheek.

Logan looked up at her through a heavy-lidded gaze. “Tá mo chroí istigh ionat, ma mhuirnín.” He gave her a drowsy smile. “Tá mo chroí…” His eyes dropped closed. The Gaelic slurred into incoherent syllables.

“He’s going into shock,” she muttered. “Damn it. He needs blood.” She stripped off her jacket and began to roll up the cuff of her sleeve.

Everyone in the room was suddenly staring at her, motionless.

Reina stopped and looked up at them. “What?”

Keachan cleared his throat. “Reina–”

“I’m the only mortal here, aren’t I? What else do you suggest?” She didn’t wait for a response.

She leaned over Logan and pressed her wrist to his mouth, but the angle was awkward. He barely seemed to notice. “Come on.” She lifted his head and shoulders onto her lap. “Come on, Logan, you need this.”

The angle was better this time, and he roused at the touch of her skin. His lips parted and his tongue slid wetly along her wrist, but he still wouldn’t feed.

Reina pressed her eyes shut against the sting of frustrated tears. She tightened her other arm around his shoulder and pressed her lips against the top of his head. “Please, Logan,” she whispered into his hair. “I know what you are, and I know what I’m doing. It’s my choice. I offer it to you freely. Please, take what you need.”

With a brief, violent shudder, he closed his mouth around her wrist and bit.

—

Links to other Excerpt Monday writers
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

This month’s excerpt is a scene from my current work-in-progress, Iconoclast:

–

It had been a very long time since Samyazaz was a child. He remembered it as a quiet time, a time of study and learning, marked by the wonder of discovery and the somber honor of his duty. He had never even been so careless as to rip a garment, to his recollection.

The first time Sariel and Baraquiel had brought their young daughter to him, her palms scraped raw and dirty scuffs upon the hem of her skirt, he had been speechless with appalled surprise.

Now, years later, as he ushered her into his workroom yet again, he thought ruefully that he had ceased to be surprised by her. Weary resignation had taken its place.

“I was in a hurry,” she said by way of explanation, and remained standing even though he motioned for her to sit upon his table. “Father said we were having the Council over for supper and I must be well-presented, but I lost myself in the library and before I knew it—”

“You were running,” Samyazaz said grimly, stretching out her arm. The shoulder of her sleeve was in tatters, its edges stained with flecks of blood. Through the rent camisole he could see that her arm was abraded and inflamed. A few long cuts had gone deep enough to break the skin.

“My feet flew right out from under me.” She sent him a sheepish grin, which he countered with stern disapproval. It was not lost on him that she had not rebutted his statement, but had not conceded to it either.

“It is unbefitting a Watcher to run through the halls of her own home,” he scolded her, not for the first time and surely not for the last, as he drew a dagger from his drawer. He turned in time to catch her making a face.

“It is unbefitting a Watcher to come unkept to a supper with the Council, as well, or so my father tells me,” she mocked, her tone light. And then, glancing up at him through her lashes as he began to cut her sleeve off at the shoulder, “Sam—”

He ignored her until she blew out her breath and said, “Samyazaz.”

“Your father is right, of course.” He set aside the bloodied ruins of fabric and turned her wound to the light for a better look. “You might consider that the rest of us manage to arrive at supper on time, and well-kempt, and needn’t rush about and injure ourselves to accomplish it.”

She did not answer, so he turned away and hung a kettle of water on the hearth to boil. Penemue’s gaze followed him as he moved about his workroom, gathering herbs and ointments. He dropped a pinch of slender orange petals into a cup and she said, “What’s that?”

“Calendula,” he answered without turning from his work. He added comfrey and shreds of butterburr, then retrieved the kettle from the fire. The water steamed gently as he poured it into the cup and the petals and herbs floated brightly on the surface. A delicate scent rose from the tisane, comforting, the scent of herbs and healing, of knitting broken bodies back together.

While the infusion steeped, he turned back to Penemue and looked on her unhappily. “How old are you now?” he demanded of her.

She swung her legs and caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Fifteen come spring,” she said at length.

Fourteen. He closed his eyes. It seemed unbearably young. Could he even remember being such an age? Not clearly. He had a vague impression of hours spent in vast libraries, and hauling around books that seemed to weigh more than he did. Certainly he recalled nothing like Penemue’s distressing irreverence, of flaunting the dictates of behavior and being scolded only to flaunt them again.

He opened his eyes and frowned at her. “You’re old enough to know better, then.” He did not know what to make of her. He wished she would behave herself and act like a proper Watcher, but nothing he had said to her over the course of her short lifetime seemed to have any effect at all.

When the tisane was cool enough to touch, he strained the herbs from it and soaked the corner of a cloth in the infusion. Penemue had been a patient of his enough times to know his intent, and she turned her arm to him and held it still while he dabbed the tincture into the wounds. She drew a swift breath, hissing slightly through her teeth, but knew better than to complain.

When he was satisfied that her wounds were clean, he gave it a final wipe with the herbal infusion, then left her side to retrieve an ointment. He saw her gaze on the jar as he returned.

“Meadowsweet,” he told her by rote, working the stoppered cap free. “It’s for–”

“–Aiding healing,” she interrupted him. “And reducing inflammation.”

He looked up at her, startled, jar and lid forgotten in his hands. She sent him an impish smile and glanced away.

“I paid attention.”

When he had recovered his voice, all he said was, “Indeed.” And, “Give me your arm, then.”

She stretched it out, grimacing at the movement, and arched her wings back so that they were not in his way. Samyazaz scooped the ointment up on his fingers and spread it carefully over her wounds. They were already blossoming black and purple, spreading down to her elbow and around her shoulder. The scrapes alone did not seem so bad, but the bruises told another story. A fall that bad could have easily broken bones.

She must have been very late, and running very fast.

If it had not been the floor she’d hit, but another Watcher…

Displeasure made him careless and heavy-handed. Penemue hissed in her breath, and released it with a faint, “Ow.” He glanced at her, then away, and continued wordlessly.

It was prudence that made him lighten his touch, not sympathy. If she could inflict such wounds upon herself without a thought, then she could very well endure their treatment without protest.

“Penemue,” he said when he thought he might be able to control his ire. “Did it not occur as you raced about your home that it might be someone else you injured, and not yourself?”

She looked up at him, stricken, and he had his answer.

“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t think– But everyone would have been at supper, or preparing for it–”

Samyazaz took a roll of bandages from his supplies and began to wrap her arm tightly. He did not speak until he had tied it off, and given her the bandages and the ointment so she could change them herself. As he walked her out of his villa, he hesitated at the front gate and wrapped his hand about her uninjured arm. She stopped and looked up at him, hope dawning beneath the uncertainty in her eyes.

“You are not a child anymore,” he said roughly. “You are nearly a woman. You might consider acting like one.”

Disappointment crushed out the light of hope. She nodded, downcast, and wrenched her arm from him. “Yes. I might.” She turned down the street. “Thank you for your help, Samyazaz.”

He watched her go from beneath furrowed brows, resisting the urge to call out a chastisement as she rubbed at her bandaged arm.

No. He had surely never been like that, as a child. If he had been, he did not know how the others could have ever tolerated him.

–

Check out these other great reads!

So, to kick it off, your hosts:

Mel/Alexia Reed, Urban Fantasy (R)

and

Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)

Joining us this week:

AJ O’Donovan, Poetry (PG13)

Stephanie Draven, Paranormal Romance (PG 13)

Heather S.Ingemar, Dark Fantasy/Poetry (PG13)

Babette James, Fantasy Romance (PG 13)

Cynthia Justlin, Romantic Suspense (PG 13)

Kaige, Historical Romance (PG 13)

Julia Knight, Fantasy Romance (PG13)

Ansha Kotyk, Middle Grade Adventure (PG13)

Adelle Laudan, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)

Jeannie Lin, Historical Romance (PG 13)

RF Long, YA Paranormal (PG13)

Caitlynn Lowe, Epic Fantasy (PG13)

Shawntelle Madison, Paranormal Romance (PG 13)

Crista McHugh, Contemporary Erotic Romance (PG 13)

Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)

Leigh Royals, Historical Romance (PG 13)

Megan S., Paranormal (PG13)

Dara Sorensen, Historical Paranormal (PG 13)

Bethanne Strasser, Historical Romance (PG13)

Melissa Aires, Futuristic Romance (R)

Melissa Blue, Contemporary Romance (R)

Jax Cassidy, Contemporary (R)

Christina DeLorenzo, Furturistic Sci-Fi (R)

Maya Doyle, Parnormal Romance (R)

Ginny Glass, Paranormal (R)

Amber Green, Romantic Suspense (R)

Cate Hart, Paranormal YA (R)

Kinsey W. Holley, Erotic Romance (R)

Ali Katz, Erotic Paranormal Romance (R)

Aislinn Kerry, Fantasy (R)

Inez Kelly, Fantasy Romance (R)

Cherrie Lynn, Contemporary Erotic Romance (R)

Mel/Alexia Reed, Urban Fantasy (R)

Rebecca Savage, Romantic Suspense (R)

Fae Sutherland, Contemporary Erotic Romance (R)

Stephanie Adkins, Paranormal Erotic Romance (NC 17)

Evie Byrne, Erotic Historical Romance (NC17)

Ella Drake, Erotic Contemporary (NC17)

Dawn Montgomery, Erotic Paranormal Romance (NC17)

Lauren Murphy, Erotic Romance (NC 17)

Kim Knox, Erotic Paranormal Romance (NC17)

Emily Ryan-Davis, Historical Western Romance (NC17)

Kirsten Saell, Erotic Fantasy Romance (NC 17)

Jeanne St. James, Contemporary Romance (NC 17)

When an unnatural eclipse hangs in the sky, portending doom, Ryllana is chosen to be sacrificed to ensure her land and her people’s survival. She expects her fate will bring a swift, violent death at the claws of Teppal’s beast. But though the beast comes to claim her, he does not devour her. Instead, he carries her away to his castle.

There, she waits for him to return and demand the sacrifice required of her. In the meantime, she finds a companion in the beast’s human servant, Draig, who surprises Ryllana with his tenderness and compassion. Despite herself, she begins to fall for him — but the beast still waits, and the secrets Draig is keeping might destroy everything she loves.

The eclipse rose in my window and passed out of sight at midday, so I had no means of tracking the time beyond the number of candles that I burned through. It might have been minutes, or days, when my door crashed open. I jumped, my heart in my throat, and a smile bloomed across my face to see Draig in the doorway. I pushed my books aside and started toward him, but cried out in dismay not halfway across the room, for his tabard dripped with blood and he clung unsteadily to the jamb. His face was ashen, his head drooping forward, as though he hadn’t the strength to hold it upright.

I ran to him and helped him to the bed. He held on to me, stumbling across the rug. I eased him onto the bed, then took his face in my hands and turned it to me. His expression was slack, his eyes half-closed. “Draig!” I cried. “What happened?”

He opened his eyes. It looked as though it took a great effort. “Ryllana,” he breathed, and smiled as though it was a wonderful surprise to see me. Then he grimaced and groaned with pain. “I’m hurt.”

“You don’t say.” I pulled frantically at his tabard. “Draig, help me! I must see where you’re injured.”

He rose up onto his elbow and I began to strip his tabard off, but his strength only lasted a moment before he collapsed back onto the bed. His ragged breathing made fear twist through my stomach.

“A kiss, lady,” he whispered, a thread of sound. “For strength.”

I stared down at him. “Don’t be absurd. Now is not the time.” I gripped his tabard at the throat and tore it open down the front. Draig blinked at me, but didn’t protest. It took another moment to unlace his shirt, and then I had his chest bared.

Four parallel gouges cut across his chest, each as long as my forearm and bleeding freely. I clasped my hands over my mouth, horrified. “Oh, Draig…” I sought out his gaze. “This is bad.”

He nodded, and I saw recognition in his eyes. He knew. He knew, and had come to me. I crouched on the bed and tore strips of fabric from the hem of my robe, trying not to cry. I could clean him and bandage him, but little more. I had meager sewing skills, and no needle or thread in any case. I helped him sit and wound the makeshift bandages around his back, then took his hand in mine and bent over it, pressing a fierce kiss to his palm.

He pulled from my grasp and raised his hand to my cheek. “A kiss, lady,” he whispered again.

I shook my head wildly and dashed tears from my cheeks. “Fool,” I whispered down at him. “How can you think of stealing kisses now?”

“So be it, then.” He gave me a crooked smile. “Will you refuse the last request of a dying fool?”

I covered my face in my hands, protests rising unbidden to my lips. But they were an empty comfort. We both knew the truth. He might die, and there might be nothing I could do to prevent it.

I knelt at his side in the mattress and put my hands to his cheeks. I looked gravely down at him, his face grey and pale, then bent and pressed my mouth to his.

I meant it to be only that, a momentary brush. But when I tried to draw away, he curled his hand around the back of my neck and held me to him with startling strength.

His lips coaxed mine, urging them to part so he could take the kiss deeper. I pressed them together and shook my head. When he persisted, I broke away. “Don’t tax yourself,” I commanded unsteadily. “You’ve better things to save your strength for.”

“Better things than kissing?” He eased back onto the bed with a lopsided smile. “I can only think of a very few.”

“Living?” I demanded.

His smile softened, warmed. “What’s the use of that when pretty women refuse to kiss you?”

Make sure to check out the rest of this month’s great excerpts!

Mel Berthier, Urban Fantasy (PG 13)
and
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)

Joining us this week:

Kinsey W. Holley, Paranormal (PG)
Caitlynn Lowe, Epic Fantasy (PG)
Dara Sorensen, Paranormal (PG)

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The last thing Arjen wants is a vampire in his bed, despite the rest of the world’s obsession with the creatures. Unfortunately, his reticence is precisely what attracts Maikel van Triet to him. After hundreds of years of being adored because of what he is, Maikel is enthralled by Arjen’s apathy.

What starts as a simple arrangement soon becomes something more than either of them expected. But vampires are shallow, fickle creatures, and Maikel could never truly love another. Could he?

I stopped before my door, fingertips resting on the handle, and turned back to him. I held my other hand out, open, palm up. “Is it a tryst you want?” I asked him. “Or to stay the night?” We both of us ignored the fact that it was nearly dawn, and night to him meant the full bright of day.

He laughed a little. “A tryst, no. That’s not what I came for.” He counted guilders into my palm, more than I normally charged for a full night, more even than I’d have asked of him, enough that it was all I could do not to gape in astonishment. When he had finished, he curled my fingers around the coins and held my hand in his, looking up at me with a crooked smile. “I’m Maikel,” he said quietly.

I looked down at the silver glinting between my fingers, enough to turn this whole miserable night into a remarkably profitable one. “I know who you are.” I pushed my door open and led him inside.

“Do you, then?” That odd, bemused half-smile still hovered about his face. He lingered in my doorway, watching as I crossed to my bureau and put his fee in my coffer. “I had wondered.”

“You are Maikel van Triet, and a vampire, and your reputation precedes you.” He knew it, of course. It was not only the brothel whores who fawned over his kind. Some days, it seemed all anybody in Amsterdam cared to talk about.

He closed my door with a muted click of the latch and crossed to the window as I tucked my coffer into the back of a drawer. My view looked out over the canal, and the sounds of conversation and gurgling water drifted up to us on the night’s breeze.

“What will you?” I asked when it seemed he might stand there looking out until the sun rose. “Your reputation has preceded you, but not so much that I know your desires.”

He did not answer me at first, but closed and latched my shutters with deliberate care. When they were shut fast against the approaching dawn, he turned to face me, hands braced behind him on the sill. “I desire a bed until dark,” he said. “And surety that the shutters will remain closed until then.”

My brows climbed my forehead. I stared at him, nonplussed. “That’s all?”

His head fell forward, sending a lock of dark hair curling against his cheek. It didn’t quite hide the slight smile that curved his lips. “And the decency not to send me to bed hungry.”

I had expected he might request something of the sort. Still, I turned aside, crouching to tug at a boot as pretense, for fear my expression might betray me. I was not like the others, who took vampires to bed and proudly displayed their bites the next morning, whispering in rapturous tones of an experience so transcendental it brought them closer to God, or who hoped silently that a patron might one night take too much, and make her one of his own. I did not care to be bitten. But he was a patron, and I had taken his coin.

Barefoot, I straightened and rolled up my cuff to uncover my left arm, the arteries of which were said to carry the sweetest, purest blood, pumped direct from the heart. I crossed to the bed and sat on it, stretched my arm out toward him, wrist turned up.

He sat facing me and took my hand in both of his. His thumbs brushed across my wrist and lingered over my pulse. “You don’t like me, do you?” he asked without a bit of resentment.

He didn’t look away from me and there was no challenge in his gaze, nothing in it daring me to confess. It was simple and direct, an honest request for nothing more or less than the truth.

I shrugged and broke my gaze away. “Not very much, no.”

I had to look back when he laughed, soft and amused. “And yet you would offer me this?”

“You paid for it.”

He kept my hand cradled in both of his, holding it in his lap like something cherished, fingers stroking tenderly. “I believe I am at a disadvantage. You seem to know a great deal about me, but I do not even know your name.” He didn’t look away from my wrist, where fine blue veins drew wandering tracks beneath the skin.

“It’s Arjen,” I said in a voice gone rough and dry.

“Arjen,” he echoed and bent over my wrist.

His hair fell about his face, so I could not see. His lips were warm on my skin, his kiss as sweet as a lover’s. My fingers curled against my palm, then spasmed when his thumb dug into the flesh, finding a vein and pinning it in place. I braced my other hand behind me, fingers digging into the blankets.

His lips parted, breath gusting across my skin like a summer breeze off the water, hot and damp. His mouth formed a seal on my skin, sucking hard enough that I gasped and had to wrestle down the urge to jerk back. His fingers, gentle before, now held my hand with an iron grip. I could try to pull away, but I doubted he’d let me. Fangs pricked my skin like needles, probing. And without warning he bit deep, sinking into me.

I thrashed, unthinking, as agony coursed through me, and realized it hadn’t been greed that made him hold me so tight. I’d have torn my wrist open on his teeth if he’d let me.

He drank, sucking hard at the wound with a rhythm that echoed the thundering beat of my heart. I twisted and tore at the blankets, struggling against the overwhelming instinct to fight.

He bore me down onto my back, his body stretched along mine, and pinned me in place with a surprising strength for someone as lean as he was, so that I could not fight even if I tried. For my benefit, I wondered, or for his? His fangs never withdrew, and his throat never ceased its steady, rhythmic sucking.

I had suffered any number of indignities at the hands of my patrons, and most of them I had done in willing trade for the coin they put in my coffer. But I had never felt as completely helpless as I did then, fully clothed beneath Maikel’s slight weight with his fangs buried in my wrist.

You can find the full list of participants here, or follow some of the links below:

Mel Berthier, Urban Fantasy (PG 13)
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)
Christina DeLorenzo, YA (PG 13)
Bryn Donovan, Paranormal (PG)
MG Braden, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Babette James, Fantasy Romance (PG 13)
Cynthia Justlin, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Kaige, Historical Romance (PG 13)
Adelle Laundan, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Jeannie Lin, Historical Romance (PG 13)
RF Long, Paranormal (PG 13)
Crista McHugh, Paranormal (PG 13)
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)
Dara Sorensen, Paranormal (PG)
Grace Draven, Fantasy Romance (R)
Cate Hart, YA- Paranormal (R)
Aithne Jarretta, Paranormal (R)
Inez Kelley, Contemporary Romantic Comedy (R)
Kim Knox, Erotic- Sci-fi Suspense (R)
Cherrie Lynn, Erotic- Contemporary Romance (R)
Alina Morgan, Urban Fantasy (R)
Stephanie Adkins, Erotic- Supsense (NC 17)
Evie Byrne, Historical Romance (NC17)
Ella Drake, Sci-Fi Romance (NC 17)
Annie Nicholas, Sci-Fi Romance (NC 17)
Kirsten Saell, Erotic – Fantasy (NC 17)

—

A shiver rippled down Reina’s spine, a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, and spread icy fingers up the back of her neck. All thoughts of sleep fled. Slowly, she sat up and reached her empathic senses out, searching for the disturbance.

What she found was a void, an absence where there should have been her own residuals, and Brett’s, and Adri’s fading ones, still lingering about. But just beyond her door there was nothing, only a cavernous emptiness that made terror run through her veins.

She felt out for the wards she had set around her room the first day she and Adri moved in, reached empathic fingers up to the ceiling and down into the floorboards. And in the doorway, just before the void, she found a tiny opening, a paper-thin slice made with surgical precision, just big enough for a man to slip through without anyone the wiser.

If she hadn’t woken, if she’d slept through the tiny shiver of reaction that the breach had sent through her…

She reached blindly for her nightstand, and the cross she always placed there when she removed it for the night. Her fingers grasped metal that burned like ice. She drew it close against her chest and reached out again, found the small, solid weight of her cell phone.

Quiet, she eased the flip phone open and thanked any gods who were listening that she had thought to program Logan’s number into her speed dial. Two buttons–one for the number, one to send–and help would be on its way.

She pressed the first, gripped her cross tightly, and hoped she’d be able to last until it arrived.

And, reaching for the second, the button that would connect the call and bring in the cavalry, a slow, sibilant voice whispered, “Oh, little girl. I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

She froze, while every fiber of her being screamed for action. Froze in fear and panic and indecision, and the sudden overwhelming certainty that if she just held absolutely still, if she didn’t make a sound, he might forget about her and go in search of other prey.

Flight was impossible, trapped in her room where the only exit led directly into danger, and to fight was sure suicide. Anyone who left an empathic void like that was a vampire, and not a newly-fledged one. Anyone who could slice through her wards with such neat elegance had psychic skills beyond her comprehension.

A low chuckle slid down her spine like razors. “Put the phone down, child, and let’s talk.”

She lowered the phone to the nightstand, let the plastic case click audibly against the wood. Her bedroom door swung open on hinges that she was sure had never been so quiet for her.

All she could make out was a shadow darker than the benighted hall behind him. He stepped into the room with a slow, purposeful stride, the calculated stalk of a predator who knows his prey is cornered and all that’s left is to wait for the proper moment to strike. She curled her hand around the edge of the nightstand and fought the insane urge to run.

“Fine,” she said in a voice that somehow managed to sound strong and steady. “Let’s talk.”

A flash of smile in the darkness, starlight reflecting off of pointed teeth. “You’re an empath of some skill.” A twist of shadow suggested a head tilting back as he inspected… what? The posters on her walls? “I could use your talents.”

“You break into my apartment, cut through my wards, and you’re trying to recruit me?” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch that belied her terror. He laughed quietly. “Your pitch sucks.”

“Does it?” He laughed at her. “Well then, how about this for incentive. If you do not offer me your aid, I shall tear your throat out and drink your blood as from a fountain.”

Bile rose in her throat. She forced it down and locked her knees against the faintness that threatened her. Lily’s uncertain words echoed through her memory.

There was a man. Adri didn’t say much about him, just that he was harassing her. He wanted her to do something for him.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

His smile flashed through the darkness.

Her finger twitched toward the phone. He held up a hand. “I really wouldn’t.”

“Why? You’ll rip my throat out?” Her voice was tight with fear, but anger was beginning a slow burn deep in her chest. “Better get on with it, then.”

“You won’t help me?” He laughed. He sounded delighted. “Whyever not?”

Slowly, she inched her hand toward the phone. And focused on keeping the other very, very still. “I’m starting to suspect you killed my best friend. That doesn’t put you very high on my to-do list.”

“Oh, tut.” He made a moue of disappointment. “That’s such a petty reason. I could give you eternity, child.”

“Eternity as one of your relatives? I think I’ll pass.” With a flick of her wrist, she slapped her hand onto the phone and pressed the button to connect the call. Almost immediately, an iron-cold grip circled her forearm and pulled her away. He was a tall, solid presence before her, still cloaked in shadows. His fingers bit deep into her arm, at odds with the pleasantry of his tone.

“Well, my dear, that is unfortunate.” He pushed her back against the bed, bent over her throat. “Are you sure I can’t convince you? We’re kin of a different sort, you know. Campbells, both of us. Magic always did run strong in our line.”

“If you’re going to start giving me a ‘blood is thicker than water’ speech, you can save it.”

He slid a finger along her throat. The tenderness of his touch was even more revolting than the blatant hunger in his gaze. “Are you sure? Think hard. I won’t ask again.”

“Oh, I’m sure all right,” she said. And when he leaned in, fangs bared, she twisted the arm he’d pinned between them and shoved her cross against the vulnerable skin beneath his chin.

—

You can find the full list of participants here, or follow some of the links below:

Kirsten Saell, Erotic Romance/Fantasy (NC-17)

RF Long, Fantasy (PG)

Gina Ardito, Historical Paranormal (PG)

Alina Morgan, Urban Fantasy (PG 13)

Inez Kelley, Rom Com (R)