Nos Faux Ratu Ch. 03

Jenna's fingers moved faster, and she felt Nessa's reciprocating. Whatever it was they were doing, it felt pretty damn good and she was continuing. She also felt comforted that she was basically in charge. Nessa was not going to give even the impression that she was in charge, though they both knew that the vampire was definitely orchestrating the whole thing.

The Nightwalker turned her face to the ceiling and gasped as a second orgasm hit her. She would have thought that the second would be less intense than the first, but her sexual parts were still on high alert after the first climax, so it almost became too intense. She was so caught up in the tingling sensation that was everywhere in her body that she almost missed that Nessa was orgasming as well.

Jenna had always seen Nessa as beautiful, but seeing her succumb to her passionate side was something else entirely. It was as if she put every ounce of energy she could produce into spreading the warmth through the entirely of her form. Perhaps she did, because she looked as joyful and content as anyone Jenna had ever seen.

Nessa took Jenna's arm and pulled her down so that she cold taste those nervous lips one more time. "And that is the basic lesson for making love. And you are quite an apt pupil."

"I don't think I can take much more of this," Jenna said. "Everything feels . .. well, everything feels."

"Some women are more sensitive than others after they cum, and this was your first time."

Jenna blushed, this time with some more closely resembling shame. "No, it --"

"Yes it was," Nessa interrupted. "What happened before does not count as sex, fucking, making love . . . what that son of a bitch did was about abuse of power."

Jenna started to collapse back in on herself. "But how could I love him then? I did. I had to."

"No, you didn't. I promise you, you will feel love someday, and you will understand how different it is from what you felt before. You did what you had to do internally to cope, but you have to move past that now." She put a finger on Jenna's lips. "No more talking about him or what he did. Not tonight." She pulled Jenna under the covers and wrapped her up. "I don't want to own you. I just want to know you."

"You know me better than anyone alive," Jenna said. It felt odd to be held in a such a protective manner, but it was also odd to be held at all. "You've seen inside my mind."

"I've seen the essence of who you are, and the defining moments that made you put those walls up to protect yourself. There's more to you than that."

Jenna felt a chill. "Nessa, I don't want you to go back in there."

Nessa pursed her eyebrows. "Why? I thought you trusted me."

"I do. Lord knows I do. But some things . . . some things I need you to let stay secret, at least for now."

Nessa nodded. "Fair enough. I think you've started to cope, so I'll let you work through things on your own. But I need you now as an employee also. If you start to freak out again or give up --"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Jenna traced the skin on Nessa's arm, marveling at the smoothness of that freckled skin. "Tell me more about you. You've been in my head, and my bite doesn't give me the wacky brain-drain ability."

"What do you want to know? If you say 'Start at the beginning,' we'll be in bed for days. And as tempting as that is, we have work tonight."

"Where were you born?"

"Well we really didn't have a name for it back then, but it wound up being called a place called Musselburgh, Scotland. Actually, that was one of the first known established settlements in Scotland, though there were some others that didn't survive. Folks were decent enough I guess. Hunters and gatherers, the lot of us. I had a half-dozen siblings, most of whom didn't survive to their teens."

"Do you miss them?"

"Sometimes. I see folks with their families and realize that there are disadvantages to outliving your own. But I've put together a family or two along the way, so it balances out."

"Scotland . . . is that where you met Anabella?"

"She does have an accent, doesn't she?" Nessa laughed. "Yeah, I actually met her not long after I got Turned. Turned is what happens when a human gets changed into a vampire, by-the-by. Vamps can see the non-corporeals like banshees and ghosts and what-have-you, so I got to talking with her. She and I hit it off from the get go, and we've been best friends ever since."

"Who turned you?"

"A vampire who had actually come up from Greece," Nessa said, her mind stretching all the way back to the beginning of her second life. "He was just wandering around the world and came upon me and my kin tanning hides. He liked the looks of me I guess, and saw that I wasn't exactly enjoying my domestic lifestyle. He let me know what he was, asked if I was interested in becoming one, and I accepted. Turned out that he was just looking for a bed bunny and planned on disposing of me after a century or two."

Jenna frowned in disapproval. "What happened?"

"I killed him. Seriously, he was such a boozer that he let it slip what he was going to do to Anabella, she told me, then we offed him. Don't ask how. Let's just say it wasn't pretty."

"Brutal?"

"And a half. The world of the Night Breeds is like that."

Jenna nestled into Nessa's body, letting herself feel comforted. She was tired of brutal, she was tired of not knowing who she could trust, and she was very tired of the loneliness. Nessa was doing so much to alleviate the latter two items, and the former was unlikely to change for her benefit. For the moment, she would have to be content. She had never been so adrift in her life.

"Stop thinking," Nessa told her. "Plenty of time for that when you wake up."

"I'm really not tired," Jenna replied. "I told you that I only need four hours a day." Ten minutes later, she was out like a light.

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Elsewhere . . .

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The Three of Cups was struggling to keep up with the rest of his troop, limping along with a bandaged knee. Out of the darkness, a half-dozen shapes jumped out of a hover-truck and charged towards him. The Three looked horrified for a moment as his attackers, all of whom seemed to be covered in a coarse hair and sporting impressive looking teeth, closed the gap on him with alarming speed. Then, the horror went away, as did the Three. Jet flames erupted from the the soles of his boots and he took to the sky.

"What the hell?" one of the werewolves said.

Another started looking around. "Trap!"

Sure enough, the nearby roofs were suddenly lined with the entire Cups suit, all of whom were armed with nasty assault gear. But they were just there to hold the line. The muscle of the operation came out of four different alleys. The werewolves could tell that these were not lightweights.

One of these commandos wore a skull emblem on his armor, and he held himself with great poise. A female figure had a pair of scales on her breast, while the third man had a pitchfork emblazoned on his armor. But it was the fourth man who had their attention.

This man was a monster, even from the point of view of other monsters. He was nearly seven feet tall, and his armor could barely contain the powerful muscles that covered his body. His armor was completely black, but had no emblem. Instead, a noose made of white synthetic rope hung from his belt. And in a voice devoid of remorse or even the slightest hint of humanity, the man spoke.

"We only need one of them alive."

One of the werewolves launched himself at this figure, howling a battle cry that reverberated through the night sky. He was not going to go quietly into that night. But go he would.

The man with the noose moved so quickly that even the werewolves' improved vision could barely keep up. He grabbed the wolfman by the throat, swung him overhead, and pounded him into the pavement with bone-crunching force. The werewolf was then pulled off the ground, kicked so hard in the back that his spine snapped, then was bludgeoned by a straight punch to the face while he was still floating in the air. The creature was dead before he ever hit the ground.

The Hanged Man tilted his neck to one side until everyone hear a slight popping sound, then he tilted it the other way. "So," he continued in that almost robotic voice, "who's next?"

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To be continued . . .