Thirst

Fuck, he is good.

Monroe didn't say anything for about ten seconds as she ran her eyes over the magnificence of his exposed form, pressing her lips together and shaking her head. Yusuf

just happened

to be in the middle of practicing on an acoustic guitar, and he

just happened

to be doing it shirtless, in those black jeans she liked...the ones that hid little. He was leaning there against the threshold of his apartment, fingers flying across the strings and fretboard, just casually strumming away at some old Spanish song she recognized...once she'd included it as part of her 'romance night' playlist, but that was long lost

He couldn't know how the music invoked the bittersweet taste of black coffee at sunset, of an old love's favorite cigarettes.

It made her love it (and him, if she were dangerously honest with herself) even more.

"Bésame, bésame mucho,"

"Como si fuera, esta noche, la última vez,"

"Bésame, bésame mucho,"

"Que tengo miedo a perderte,"

"Perderte después,"

"Quiero tenerte muy cerca,"

"Mirarme en tus ojos, verte junto a mí,"

"Piensa que, tal vez, mañana ya estaré lejos,"

"Muy lejos de aquí..."

A couple of his neighbors walked by, mere bit characters in the latest episode of her soap-opera life -

The Monroe Carter Show

ladies and gentlemen - and the witty one-liner she had planned had long sunk back into the unnatural workings of her grave-tainted brain...their envious glares were as unimportant as the skittering of The City's ubiquitous rat population between the walls.

"A'right, a'right we get it you a fuckin' dreamboat prettyboy," she groused with a sparkling smile, breaking through the resistance and trailing past him into his apartment, running her fingers over the line of his iliac crest as he pulled the door shut.

Mizrah's apartment was always a picture of a...well-organized, black-metal clutter. There was a

lot

of stuff but it all had its place and function here in his abode, even if merely aesthetic or as a story piece. The living room or...den or...whatever he called it had clearly been a work of passion, every inch of the left wall checkered by framed posters - musicians she recognized easily enough (everyone knew Hendrix) and bands that were utterly unfamiliar ('

Illithid-Facefuck

').

A black leather couch that

had

to have been hauled in through a window via pulley crouched against the wall, and a monstrous television was suspended in front of the wall from the ceiling by chains; he'd glued little bat wings onto the corners of the flatscreen.

He hung his guitar from a peg normally reserved for coats and held a hand out for her with that inviting, gregarious smile. Monroe slipped her fingers into his, tugging herself against his statuesque frame and throwing her arms around his neck. Just like that...her worries fled her. The hungry, harrowing mouths of the Syndicate and Yan's humiliating bite were suddenly a light year away. The ubiquitous chill that hung over her body, lessened only slightly under the Blush, evaporated in his arms.

"Hi sexy," Mizrah purred into her ear and she gave him a shove backward onto his couch, straddling his hips and settling her hands on his shoulders again; she loved the way they felt under her hands, corded with definition and powerful like a tiger's. He was like...a fucking fighter jet compacted into a delicious, protean-charged body.

"Went three whole..." Monroe kissed his lips, "damn nights," she

licked

his jaw, "without seein' you," and she nuzzled the tip of her nose against his temple, enjoying her slight stature for once as she found security and rising heat in his warrior's embrace. "Need my fix, otherwise I'll start getting all ornery...real harpie mode." Carter wasn't lying, she realized after the disaster of two nights prior she'd been suppressing a very real need to bask in the firelight of his presence. She still couldn't believe she'd let herself get swept away like this by its coal-bright gravity.

"You think it was easy for me, huh?" Mizrah countered as his hands slid down to the plush curve of her ass; she gave a throaty little moan and her grasp followed suit, pressing his grasp against her and deeply enjoying his touch. "I was all alone, nobody to treat me all nice like you do, Carter." He pulled her hips against his and she eagerly reciprocated, grinding against his already-hard manhood...she could easily sense where this was going, and she could scarcely wait.

Why did she feel relieved to hear that nobody had touched him? She pushed back, straightening so he could watch as she unzipped her jacket and slid it off to reveal the curves of her torso, the swell of her chest awaiting his touch. "Hmm here I thought you were out with all your little side pieces and pretty songbirds."

He was already starting to peel away her sports bra, throwing her a skeptical little smirk that looked like it belonged on the face of some fanciful hero from an Assyrian myth. "Side pieces and songbirds? Get outta here," Mizrah laughed dismissively as she took his face and pulled him into her cleavage.

"Aww baby boy, am I hearin' that I'm the only one mister big bad pierced-dick punk-boy's gettin' it in with?" her voice dripped with sarcasm, even as fluffy orange butterflies wafted through her chest, just waiting for confirmation to be something more than imaginary.

It was endearing how he buried his face against her firm bust, her bare breasts awaiting his lips, his tongue and his teeth. "You kidding me Monroe?" He gazed up at her with those eyes like hot obsidian. "Nobody rocks me like you do. Why're you askin' - ahhh..." Mizrah trailed off with a widening smirk that made her immediately purse her lips at him petulantly, "I get it now."

"You get

shit

," Monroe countered fiercely while stroking his hair back.

"But I

do

, and..." Yusuf's resistance to her dark, diamond-hard nipples broke down and he took one into his mouth, sucking gently at it. Monroe's head tilted back with a low, breathy sound of need, and she began to undo his belt buckle. "You...want...me...for yourself, don't you." The Lupine kissed his way up the curve of her breast to her shoulder as she dug around in the cluttered nest of her consciousness for words.

"Shut...up..." she hissed as she freed his manhood, stroking her fingers greedily over his wonderful, studded shaft and teased him against the gateway of her lust; it had the effect of silencing him with a sharp gasp of pleasure. "I'm not after that right, Yusuf...I've taken so much from you already. No, shh..." Monroe silenced him by gently nipping his lips open, her tongue seeking his, curling around it and exploring that little stud through the tip.

Of course she wanted that, to claim him as her own, and it wasn't from some primitive, unwholesome need to sink her spider-fangs into everything around her; what Vampire didn't long for that which was forbidden them? This tryst with him was bad enough, but...

monogamy?

The thought invoked images of her high school self hovering near the house phone, waiting for her first girlfriend to call.

That was a slippery slope, and she could go tumbling into the briar-patch known as 'love', from which there was no escape and to which every Kindred was vulnerable. He was a distraction from the Cause, from the Laws of the Night that she so carefully broke; he could shatter them, and everything she'd worked for, like a flower vase filled with grave dirt.

Monroe worked him inside of her and wordlessly indicated for him to return his attention to her nipples. It was always an effort to take him, especially without the kind of foreplay she knew he enjoyed. The thought that he could be

hers

alone to enjoy, to adore, it had an effect on her body and emotions that she couldn't chalk up to painful abstinence (three entire nights!). Her breath grew shorter, faster as the tempo of her hips increased, slicking her arousal over his manhood and crying out every time she felt the clasp of his ring touch a mysterious, deep place that cast stellar explosions across her vision.

"Mmm, mhaaah Yusuf, yeah you're a...pretty boy...sex machine, cocky, sweet bastard," she whispered as she fucked him, delighted by his rhythmic deep moans of desire, holding tightly around his shoulders.

"I really like you Monroe," Mizrah whispered against her forehead and she was smiling like a sex-and-love drunk fool...why was that so significant to hear? "I missed you touching me...riding me like this...trying to keep my ego in check."

"Hnnhh, you missed that you horny stud?" she straightened, hands on his shoulders and smiling as she moved her hips in circles over him, her eyes slightly hooded from the waves of wonderful, electric sensation running all along the length of her sex. "You gonna...make up for days lost? Mmm that's two or three times a night..." The Brujah clasped her hand over his when it found her breast, keening musically as she built herself toward the plateau of her release.

"Monroe Carter," Yusuf asked her smoothly as he stood up - god she adored when he did that and LOVED when he held her against his living room wall, the muscles in his chest and arms bulging, tempting her fingers along their hills and crags. "Are you asking me to fuck you six, seven,

eight

times tonight?"

"

Yes, yes I am, give it to me!"

she found herself crowing excitedly - still, there was no way he could.

Right? There was no way a man could pull that off

unless he was there, proving it to her:

The first time he took her against the wall of his living room, his vigorous thrusting shaking his windows and the little Hellraiser action figures adorning the shelves; his first release was accompanied by hers and she dragged lines of red up his back. His heat gushed into her, filling her with vitality and love. When he pulled forth from her, still stone-firm, she kissed him savagely and tugged him toward his couch...

The second time, she pressed hot lust-bites against his deltoids and neck, egging him on as he fucked her into the cushion. Monroe held her legs wide and open, egging him on and slapping her palm against his steel-hard ass; his second release, she pulled him forth and milked him to shoot ropes of his semen across her belly, between her breasts before she slid him back in her pussy to fill her...

The third time, after he followed her into the shower, she held onto the bars welded to the sliding doors, a leg wrapped around his waist, her breasts moving languidly with each thrust. Soapy and slippery, she slid his hard cock forth and turned around, looking wordlessly at him over her shoulder, braids falling alluringly over an eye. From this angle the beads of his frenum ladder sent tingling lightning through her, from the base of her clitoris with a plucking, gentle -thd- as they entered her, seeding her deeply.

Between the third and fourth time, as she was toweling herself and admiring the lackadaisical way he did his hair, she crept up behind him and spider-walked her fingers up his chest, covering his nipples while his hands were occupied, snickering against his back.

"Mmm, I

do

look like Janet don't I," Mizrah quipped, glorious in his nudity. He followed her from the steamy confines of his bathroom to his bedroom, and Monroe reclined on her side, holding a hand out and giving a needy toss of her fingers for him to join her. She was smiling again so much it made her facial muscles ache, and she slid her fingers through his sparse, dark chest hair and lay her head upon him when he joined her.

"Monroe," he intoned quietly, breaking a wordless, comfortable silence that hung between them. He shifted to sit up so he could look at her, and her mind felt like a piece of paper, pressed under the dark-inked metal of his presence, imprinted by him. "What's bothering you?"

The question caught her off guard once again. She ever couldn't recall someone

noticing

she was unsettled enough to ask about it; how skillfully he saw through what she had originally thought to be an impenetrable iron mask. A hundred lies, prefabricated little safe houses from the assembly line of her brain, shot to the tip of her tongue but none found expression in the world of the living. Instead...

"...I fucked up badly," she admitted quietly. "Not cuz of you Yusuf," she caught him, touching his handsome lips before the self-admonishment poisoned the air. "Let me explain, baby..." she was glad now that she'd lain out the foundations of her revolution, of the structures of oppression that followed her from life to death. He could better grasp her precarious situation.

"Some of us are returned from death weak, and we stay weak," she began carefully, "and it's my responsibility to take care of those Kindred cuz...nobody else is gonna. Just ain't part of the usual calculus by which we..." well, she couldn't exactly call it living, not for many of them. "...make it through these nights."

"That's cool of you," he commented, and at first she thought he might have been sarcastic but there was admiration in his eyes. "I'm serious. Mortals barely even give each other the time of day, and among Afflicted...just wouldn't happen, those kind of people are meals." Mizrah's nails gently dragging down her arm were a soothing signal for her to continue.

She chuckled gently and pressed her lips to his chin. "Well...ain't easy. It's not worth going into too much detail over," because to do so might compromise when she sprung it on him that she needed his help, "but suffice to say...I failed. I tried to help her, and I got one of my own killed. Another real badly maimed, dunno if he'll ever be able to use his arm again." Monroe found herself unable to keep his gaze by the end.

The haze of shame came like an ill-tempered squall, dripping down the windowpane of her mind to start filling in that pool of dark, murky self-loathing. Even so she carefully plotted the night out in her mind, how she would cajole and tempt his natural sense of curiosity, to find out what leverage she could offer him -

"Let me help you," he offered casually and her whole world halted with a record scratch.

He's just messing -

But when she looked for deception on that striking, Assyrian-warrior face she found only earnest, open concern. Even the Beast was caught flat footed, for its desire had been dangled before its bone-dry, barb-fanged maw with nary a deception uttered. A second or two passed before she found the power of speech again and shook her head with a clatter of golden clasps and beads.

"No, I couldn't ask that of you," Monroe blurted out without quite understanding why. This was, after all, the reason she'd come here - well. No. That was patently untrue, she'd come to be near him and enjoy the heat of his company...his good humor, his skill in bed, and that he cared for her. She'd yet to grow accustomed to this truth.

That was the rub of it, right? "Yes you could," Mizrah insisted, pulling her to look at him even as she made to hide her face against his chest. "Why wouldn't I try to help you, or protect you?"

Some Kindred possessed the ability to evaporate their bodies into a fine mist, or melt into a tide of vitae; she felt as if she too were dissolving into some indistinct substance, and it felt amazing.

Protected. Secure. Adored.

"N...Mizrah...baby, I can't get you involved in that shit. It's covenant politics, you'd be in over your head and I know you're not one to keep quiet." She wrapped her arms more tightly around his midsection, rubbing her nose gently against the cuirass-hardness of his pecs and really loving his kindness, in spite of herself.

"Oh hohoho, look who's calling who baby now," he pointed out, turning sinuously so that she was on her back and grinning like an idiot as he pressed a finger gently against the tip of her nose. She crowed and pinched his nipples.

"I hate that cutesy shit, get it outta here!" She lied, absolutely

adoring

that cutesy shit. "Don't go trying to distract me, trick me with your bad self, I see right through you, like...you think you good," she lectured him, pulling his face to hers to pepper with kisses. "And you are, a'right?" She nuzzled her lips against his temple as he held her close in his wonderfully sculpted, masculine arms...God she didn't even go for muscles and she loved his, what was going on with her?

"But I'm not using you like that." No...she wouldn't do that to him, she resolved. Monroe Carter could figure this Shrike problem out herself, and instead? She would just enjoy her night with this man.

If she dared to say it in her heart...he was

her

man.

"Though, there is somethin' you could do for me..." she purred gently against his throat.

"Anything, long as it makes you happy." His hand drifted up her bared thigh, already getting it.

Monroe chuckled and whispered it in his ear: "

Have sex with me again, you horny fuckin' wolf.

"

She had been kidding! He wasn't though, and by the fourth time her better judgment had been tossed to the wind. He'd even put on some grinding, sexy doomcore metal as she slurped and sucked, stroked and caressed his cock before she crawled forward on her hands and knees, gripping the sheets and seeing starbursts of ecstasy each time the beaded curve of his frenum ran across her G-spot. Monroe held his hand while he rubbed her pink, hard bead to gush all over the base of his cock.

By the fifth time she and her Id had united into perfect circular, terrible movement, and as she rode his cock - still hard! Still fucking her masterfully, his fingers leaving imprints in the shape of her ass - Monroe wasn't able to help herself. Her kiss became the crinkling stab of icicle-delicate fangs into his throat, and she wrapped herself like a serpent around him as his warm, unnatural lupine blood filled her veins. His cum rushed again into her, spilling over her thighs by its sheer volume as he howled with the Kiss' dark euphoria.

By the time she'd lost count of her orgasms and his, numbers had become a meaningless thing anyway. Her bloodstained lips were parted in rapture, wordlessly exhorting him to never stop fucking her, to love her unconditionally and give her the safety and adoration she craved. When one of his gushing, tingling ejaculations pumped her full, he simply rutted and studded his way through another, and another, and she hungered monstrously for this man...which was why she didn't even think about it as she tore the vein on her wrist, soaking her kiss in her own blood.

If he drank of her Vitae he'd be bound to her much as she was bound to him, for that was what it took to be loved - the unnatural, accursed chains of delicate crimson called Vinculum, for who could love a thing such as she?

Her lips were inches from his own - her bite marks covered his throat, his shoulder...perfectly pliant, ready to slip a rope around.

She caught herself as he leaned in to kiss her, horrified at her own

monstrosity

at the very last moment; she pressed her palm to his lips. Caught in the fog of the Kiss he didn't notice - she hoped! - and instead Monroe just held him against her. She was still tightly coiled about his beautiful, boxing-champion's physique; he was breathing heavily, pale in place of his tawny tan.

Monroe's eyes were pulled downward to where she straddled his penis, moving her hips upward and marveling wordlessly at the full sum of his ejaculate; putting aside her horror with herself, she felt

wonderful

. The intense, indescribable rush of Lupine blood brought every color into bright hyper-focus, and even revealed shades she hadn't noticed. She was practically

glowing

with how much of himself he'd given her.