That night I waited, impatiently, alternately sitting on my bed and pacing my tiny room. Eventually, after darkness had settled through the apartment, the shrill bell rang. I rushed to the intercom and buzzed Theo in. He came up, his nose wrinkled slightly.
"How on earth could you live here?" He asked.
"Oh, just shut up and help me move," I said, but he grabbed my hand and pulled me to him. He tucked his nose into the crook of my neck, and inhaled deeply. He groaned. I groaned--the rush of air and his electric touch had my head swirling and my whole body tightening and pulsing. I collapsed forward onto him, grabbing tightly onto his shoulders, and he carried me without effort into my bedroom. He set me on the edge of my bed and kneeled between my legs. He pushed up my sundress and began licking the sweat from the back of my knees, slowly kissing and licking his way up the inside of my bare thighs. I shuddered and lay backward on the bed, breathing heavily. The sensations his tongue was causing in me made me lose track of up and down, gravity and physics. I was floating, flipping, flying--his teeth grazed my cotton undies and I gasped. He licked around my undies and up to my hip bones, gently biting and sucking. He pulled my dress up even farther, and then all the way off. He unclipped my bra and leaned over me, sucking and licking my nipples. He moved to my neck, sending showers of stars straight down to my pussy, and I pulled his lips to mine. His lips tasted sweet, their coolness refreshing in the sticky heat of my apartment. I sucked on his lips, pushing my tounge into his mouth and pressing all my desire into this kiss. He groaned and leaned his forehead into mine, panting slightly.
"You taste so good, Lana."
He dove in to kiss me deeply, before pulling away again, and making his way back down my body. I lifted my hips slightly, and he pulled my undies down and off. His cool breath on my pussy lips shocked me, and I jerked my hips back. He gently opened my legs, leaning forward to delicately lick my lips, sending electricity through my whole body. He pressed his tongue into the fold between my lips, carefully avoiding my clit. I began to moan as he started to fuck my pussy with his tongue, licking down to my asshole and back up again, licking the sensitive skin around my clit, above it, and right below it. My orgasm was building steadily, curling and uncurling in my abdomen. Suddenly he clamped down his lips on my clit and I screamed--the sensation was so intense. He pushed his fingers into my pussy and began fucking my hard. He was deep within me, touching everywhere my other lovers had never bothered to. I still hadn't come, and was panting with desire and need, but Theo wouldn't push me over yet. He was stretching and curling his fingers and sucking on my clit. Just when I thought I would die from the feelings, he slipped an extra finger into my asshole. I gasped, and immediately my orgasm crashed over me as I felt his fingers in my pussy and my ass. He sunk his teeth into my thigh, drinking my blood and sending a huge surge of orgasms through me again--I hadn't known I could come that much and that hard. He kept fucking my until I had to actually pull his hand out of me, panting and laughing.
"Oh my god, Theo," I breathed, when I finally stopped shivering. He crawled up to me and lay down on his side, his head propped up on his hand. He licked the blood off his lips, almost feline in his contentedness. He leaned forward to kiss me and I tasted my own coppery blood on his lips, but somehow it didn't turn me off. His clear desire for my blood turned me on--it made it all much more attractive to me.
"Shall we get going then?" He murmured into my ear. "Although I delight in you, I cannot stand the stench of this apartment building. Come to my home."
When we finally got downstairs and out onto the street there was a sleek back limo waiting, and several suspiciously perfect people standing around reading newspapers and pushing baby carriages. The front door opened and a man in an impeccable black suit stepped forward to take my bags. Theo opened the door for me and I got in, overwhelmed by the service.
"You certainly have quite a following," I said as we settled in.
"You can't expect me to march around New York City without bodyguards."
"What about when we met? You seemed alone then."
"Not the first few times. I am almost always followed by at least 3 guards. After that, though, we met alone. I told them to stay at home. You were too ...interesting to share with others."
"Why are you so special that you get bodyguards? I guess you're some sort of prince, but how does that work?"
"Well, I'm the prince of New York. That means that I have a cabinet, advisers, and I will one day become King. Although for all intents and purposes I am the sole ruler, my Sire is still the official King. Vampires don't ever get old, and never die except through violence or sunlight, but my Sire is, essentially, getting old. He's too tired of existence, too frustrated by the infidelities of his staff. Currently he is on vacation."
"How long has he been on vacation?" I asked, knowing for some reason that it was a significant amount of time.
"Seventy years."
"And you have been ruling all that time?" Theo nodded. "So how old are you?" I asked.
Theo looked at me and smiled. "Five hundred and forty five years old."
"Oh man. You old fogey. So you were born in..." I struggled to do the math, while he quietly laughed at me. "1466? Jesus. Well, how do you like the New World?"
"It certainly has changed quite a bit in my time. My Sire came here in the early 1500s, looking for a little piece and quiet, and took possession of most of the east coast, from New York down through Virginia. Later, as more of our kind came over, he began to have to fight more and more to keep his property. By the 1780s the International Coalition on Justice came to a conclusion about the states, deciding that each state would be ruled by its own leader, as if each were its own country. This way they could have more control over the country as a whole--no vampire could become too powerful for them to crush and replace. My Sire, Prometheus, was uninterested in being squashed, so he appointed his own rulers to the kingdoms of each state he had control over, and created an alliance between them. For many years it was all those rulers needed to be content with their power allotment, but soon, as always, they began to argue that he held too heavy a hand over them, even though in the eyes of the Coalition he had no more power than the other State Kings or Queens. I had come over in the the late 1700s and was acting as his leading adviser by the late 1800s, and ended up doling out my fare share of punishment upon the Kings and Queens of the other states in his alliance. It was enough to make me hated and feared, so when my Sire announced his desire to go on "vacation," he chose me as his prince with very little argument from the others. When he dies, or if he officially passes his Kingdom on to me, I will be King of New York, and head of the Eastern Seaboard Alliance."
I thought about this for a moment. "So, I bagged myself a hotshot, you're saying?"
Theo laughed out loud. "See, Lana, this is why I marked you. I can't stay away from you. You're just something beyond me. Hilarious, snarky, stubborn, and you have absolutely no respect for my title. When you yelled at me in the park the other day it was the first time anyone, my family included, had talked to me in hundreds of years. It's absolutely refreshing."
"Well, like any self-absorbed celebrity, you need to be taken down a level or two, and you know it. So that's why I'm here to help." Theo laughed more, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my face.
"Speaking of me being here to help--I want to start work as soon as possible. Do you have a way to contact all the people who needed a healer? I may not know much about vampires, but I'm a fast learner, and I don't want to be living off your wealth and name without holding my own in some way."
"Absolutely. I'll put out a notice that we have a healer available for treatment, set you up in one of my offices, and you'll be in business, no problem. Do you need anything in particular?"
"You mean like supplies? Yeah, I'll need a lot of them, but I'm not sure yet what sort of issues I'll be addressing. Are there any other healers around I could talk to?"
