The Harlequin

The ardeur started to feed then, at that bloody kiss, but this was Belle Morte, the creator of the ardeur . You did not feed from her and stop. You fed until she stopped you.

The knife cut us out of the dresses, and where it nicked the skin we licked and drank each other's blood, and it didn't seem wrong, or a bad thing to do. The taste of her blood was sweet, and slow, and I knew that vampire blood was not a meal, but it could be foreplay.

I ended up on top of her, and my body kept forgetting that it wasn't male. I pressed her to the bed, with my body between her legs. But I could not do what I was remembering. I swore in frustration, because more than anything in the world in that moment I wanted to pierce her body. I wanted to plunge parts that I did not have into parts of her that I did.

She lay underneath me with that dark hair spilling around her body, across the silk of the pillows. Her lips parted, her eyes filled with that eager light. I knew what she was, knew it better through Jean-Claude than most. I knew that she would slit my throat and make love in the blood while I died, but in that moment with her looking up at us, I didn't care. I just wanted her to keep giving us that look.

She laid me back against the sheets and began to kiss her way down my body. I watched her eyes roll up, watching my face, as she licked, and bit, and drew small pinpricks of blood where dainty fangs pierced too close. It wasn't my memory that made me writhe at the sight of her over my groin. At first, it felt wrong, because I was expecting a different sensation, but Belle had spent two thousand years learning about pleasure, and she knew this pleasure, too. I gazed down at her with her mouth between my legs, and her tongue found me, traced me, licked me, and finally she sucked me, lightly at first, then deeper and deeper, until fangs bit deep as she sucked me, and I wasn't certain if it was the pleasure that brought the orgasm, or the pain. The ardeur fed, and fed, and fed.

I screamed, and writhed, and clawed at the pillows, and only after I lay back boneless, eyes fluttering blind with pleasure, did she raise her face from my body.

She stared up at me with eyes that glowed so bright, she looked blind with power. She laughed, and the sound trailed down my body and made me cry out again. «I do see what he sees in you, ma petite , I truly do. I have fed you enough to keep you all alive, but Mercia and Nivia, and any of the Harlequin that took part in this, will have to kill you before you can testify against them. They will not know that I know.»

I tried to say, tell people , but my mouth couldn't work quite yet. Hell, if there'd been an emergency I couldn't have rolled off the bed, and it wasn't the medical emergency part that kept me lying there. It was a few thousand years of practiced sex that made me lie there and look at her, or try to look at her. The world was still white-edged with orgasm.

«I believe that they have allies for their illegal activities among the council, so I must go slowly here, but you need to be well there.» She smiled at me, and it was the smile that Eve must have used in the Garden of Eden; Want a bite of apple, little girl ? «I will send a call out to my bloodline in your territory. Jean-Claude is still too hurt to stop it. I will talk to them as of old, before they had Jean-Claude's new power to hide behind. When you wake, you will need powerful food for the ardeur . You must share that power with Jean-Claude and your wolf.»

I managed to whisper, «I don't know how to do that.»

«You will,» she said, and she came to straddle my body, leaning in until our lips met. I could taste my body on her mouth. We kissed, and the dream broke, and I woke, with the taste of her kiss on my lips.