Title: In Shanghai
Author: elfin
Email: elfin@burble.com Homepage: http://www.sundive.co.uk/
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Forever Knight / The Pillow Book Pairing: Nick / Jerome
Archive: none
Classification: PWP, character death, blood-letting, vampirism, consenting sex between adults
Spoilers: none
Warnings: see classification
Summary: Nick stops over in Shanghai and meets his next meal
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine, they belong to James D. Parriott and Barney Cohen (Forever Knight) and Sei Shonagon and Peter Greenaway (The Pillow Book).

Shanghai was just a stop over.

I found Jerome in a café, a strange place where the waiters were pimps to the well-dressed men who appeared to frequent the place and their clients were businessmen rather than tourists.

He was a translator. A very well dressed young man with beautiful, flowing chestnut hair, held off his face by his sunglasses which he had pushed back on his head. He had the most stunning eyes I’d ever seen, full of dark mischief and promise. And for once, I didn’t have to make the first move. He was sitting at a table with a small group of young men, when I entered the café and sat myself up at the bar. I noticed him immediately, and now he was turning to look at me. There was heat in his eyes, interest in me, or rather, in what he thought I wanted from him. I ordered a drink, a whiskey, which I didn’t touch, and sat watching him. I made no disguise of my intentions, and neither did he.

His smile had turned from one of greeting already to one of seduction. His lips parted in a cheeky grin that had my body’s attention some time before my mind became involved. Taking one last drag on his cigarette, he stubbed out the butt and pushed his chair back, striding confidently toward me. Putting one hand on the bar, he indicated my drink. With a single gesture, I offered it to him, watching the way his lips seemed to caress the rim of the glass as he tipped the amber liquid down his long, lovely throat.

“I’m fairly expensive,” he told me, his lilting accent definitely not local, “but I’m worth it.”

I was sure he would be. And if the price had actually mattered, I’d have paid it. I simply smiled and inclined my head in acceptance of his offer.

There were open rooms around two sides of the café, containing wooden frames with white mattresses – beds hidden from the main room by white curtains. Taking my hand, he led me to one of them. I watched him as he closed the curtains behind us and moved onto the bed on his knees, backing up, facing me. Very slowly, with the chatter of the café as his soundtrack, he started to strip. He unfastened his white, silk shirt one button at a time, revealing a smooth, firm chest and belly. He left the silk draped over his shoulders and without taking his eyes from my face he unzipped the fly of his beige trousers and pushed them down over his slim hips. He wore nothing underneath, and I’m embarrassed to admit that my eyes may have widened a little.

His phallus was long and thick. And deliciously hard. I could feel my true nature pressing forth, and although I didn’t want to scare him too soon, I couldn’t help but to allow the change to come over me just slightly. My fangs dropped and I swept over one of them with my tongue, tasting my own blood from the shallow graze. Stepping forward, I reached out to touch his face with my fingers and his mind with my mind. I took him gently under the thrall, not wanting to overwhelm him but also not wanting him to run from me. I hadn’t killed in over a hundred years, but this beautiful creature seemed almost to want it. I don’t know what made me think that, I just felt it. That even if I left him alive, he would not be on this earth for very long. Vampires can sense a death-wish, LaCroix had once told me. Maybe that was what I was picking up from him.

He had slipped his trousers off and dropped them to the floor, and was now simply watching me. Waiting. Slowly, I unfastened my own blood-red shirt and black trousers and let them fall next to his clothing. Taking his hand, I moved onto the bed, also on my knees, shuffling him back. Tilting my head, I kissed him. His lips parted wantonly under mine, and his tongue slid into my mouth, beckoning me forth to taste him. Trapping his tongue with my own, I scratched it quickly with the point of one fang, taking the first drop of his blood into me. It was smoke and spice, sexual confidence and yet, underneath, a desperate need to be desired and loved. A rich taste indeed, one to be savoured just as surely as I planned on savouring his body. He didn’t startle when I cut him. I held him carefully now, letting the thrall overpower his natural reaction of fear and allowing him to feel only his arousal and the pleasure I would give him before taking his life.

When I ended the kiss, he lay back, gracefully pulling his legs out from under him and stretching them out, one either side of me. I took time to admire him, his lithe body, those boyishly handsome features and the stunning eyes that seemed to watch my every move with a deep desire. Reaching out with one hand, I palmed his full erection, closing my fingers around it, feeling its glorious weight. I thought for a moment about bringing him across, simply on the merits of his cock alone. LaCroix would love him, I knew. But I was in no position to be travelling with a newborn. And Shanghai was only a stopover. I sighed to myself. This would be a waste indeed. But I would enjoy him while I could. Squeezing my hand, I listened for the first time to his low moan of pleasure. His eyes closed for a moment, and when they opened, he reached for me, meaning to give me the same exquisite sensation. But I caught his hand, and smiling, I brought it up to my mouth. He grinned, and pushed two fingers between my lips. I sucked on them for a few seconds. And then, with him held safely in thrall, I scraped the twin points of my fangs over his skin. I continued to suck on the digits, finding more of him in every drop I tasted. If he was at all worried by my strange actions, he didn’t show it. I didn’t catch a single confused thought in his mind. And it occurred to me that he knew, somehow, what I was.

Releasing his fingers from my mouth, linking them with mine, I pushed his hand down against the mattress and leaned over him, bending to kiss him. As I did so, our erections knocked against one another, sending shivers of pleasure through me which I echoed into his mind. I didn’t need to really. He was already arching up to me, rubbing himself against me sensuously. I couldn’t hold in my own wordless plea and for a moment I had to bring myself back under control. His tongue was plundering my mouth, tracing out the elongated outline of my fangs, once deliberately cutting himself on the sharp tip of one. When I pulled away from him, pushed myself up to gaze down upon him, he was smiling at me.

“You like the taste of my blood?” he asked almost innocently. I nodded, saying nothing.

“Are you going to kill me?”

If I had breath it would have caught in my throat. I wanted so much at the moment to deny it. But as if again reading my mind, he reached up and combed my wayward hair back from my face.

“It’s all right.” Pulling me back down into another kiss, he repeated the words against my mouth. “It’s all right.”

I sucked on his tongue for the longest time, until the vampire within me began to get impatient, and I could feel the change becoming more complete. Nibbling his bottom lip as I moved, I settled between his legs, my body on his, my lips hovering over his chest. He brought one leg up to wrap it across the small of my back as I drew the point of one fang like a razor blade over his right nipple. He cried out with the first real pain I had subjected him to. His fingers clawed in my hair as the initial spurt of blood hit my tongue before I sealed my lips over the hard bud. And then he was moaning softly only in pleasure at my suckling. His fingers loosened and he just held me in place, raising his head now and again to watch me. I looked up at him and smiled, before closing my eyes and losing myself in the elixir of his blood.

This had always been a sensual, intimate act for me. LaCroix had held me, on many an occasion, to his breast like a suckling child. Jerome seemed to understand that. He stroked my hair and my face, touched the corners of my lips. I sucked hard, reopening the wound twice by biting him quite fiercely. Each time he cried out quietly but arched against my mouth as if wanting me to take him deeper. Harder. It had been too long since I’d been with someone so responsive. I could feel his thick phallus bobbing against my side, but for now I ignored it. Soon enough I would I have him. Finally, lapping soothingly at the red bud, I lifted my head away from his chest. He whimpered in loss, and I moved over him again to kiss him, to let him taste his blood in my mouth. Again, he thrust his groin up against mine. Much more of him would be my undoing, I knew. And so I shifted down his body, kissing and nipping his skin as I went, to end up kneeling between his muscled thighs.

He parted his legs further, bending his knees to allow me more room and better access, until I could smell the clean musk of his arousal. Sliding my hands under his ass, I gripped the firm cheeks and lifted him, bending forward until the head of his cock touched my lips and I could swallow him to the hilt. The sounds he began to make were obscene. His fingers clawed the white sheet under us as I squeezed him with the muscles of my throat, my lips tight about his root, effectively stopping him from coming before I was ready. It wasn’t long before his body became desperate for release. Dropping him carefully back to the bed, I replaced the tight ring of my lips with my fingers, and lifted my mouth from his length, sucking all the way up his long erection. He struggled to sit up, and begged me not to stop. And I glanced at him, eyes flaming red with flecks of gold, lips pulled back from blood-thirsty fangs. I heard a beautiful bright word issue forth from his lips and he watched intently as I pushed his cock flat to his stomach and tilted my head to draw the point of a fang along the underside. As I did so, I took him deeper into thrall, stopping him from screaming as he must have wanted to. Blood began to flow from the wound and immediately I swallowed him whole again, working him, drinking from him, massaging him to an excruciating orgasm. He flooded my mouth, semen mixing with blood and I drank every drop.

The taste was exquisite. Soon, he was wilting, his body going as limp as his cock. I kept his flaccid organ in my mouth as I looked up at him, and to my surprise he was still watching me. “I can think of no better way to die,” he murmured softly. I think, at that moment, I might actually have fallen in love with him. Rising up, I put my hands on his thighs. He needed no more encouragement than that and lifted his legs to circle my waist. Putting my hands once again under his smooth buttocks, I pried them apart with my fingers, finding his anus and touching him crudely before moving him into position, the thick head of my straining erection pushing against the tight ring at the entrance to his body. I looked down at him then, from his still-bleeding cock nestling almost in my own groin, up over his tight stomach.

There was a trail of blood from the open wound across his right nipple. His throat was taut as his head was thrown back into the pillow. His lips were parted, and his long, chestnut hair had fanned out against the white of the bedding. Slowly I pushed into him, feeling his body tight around me, his ass already clenching to rid itself of the unwelcome intruder. I would not be shifted. I went deeper, as deep as I could be inside him until my balls were pressed almost painfully against his ass and I could feel him along every inch of me. His legs tightened around me, holding me in place. And for a time, I remained still, simply enjoying being buried within him, being a part of him. Leaning down, I licked the winding trail of blood over his ribcage, lapping at his nipple when I reached the source. He whimpered, pain now beginning to seep through at the edges of his pleasure. In the past, I had left my victims to endure, to slowly realise the truth of what was happening to them. But I found I wanted Jerome to suffer nothing but pleasure in my arms. And so I touched his mind once again, enveloping him within me, linking us for a short time. I deepened the thrall even more, and the pain vanished from his perception, leaving him with only the ecstasy I too was feeling. His hands came up to clutch at my shoulders, and I started to move within him, pulling out before thrusting all the way back in one unstopping motion.

I changed the angle, the head of my cock brushing over the one point inside him that made his cock jerk with reawakened arousal. After a few hard thrusts, I lay myself on top of him, moving as best I could, wrapping my arms around his beautiful body and stroking him everywhere I could reach. I was close to my own release, I knew. And as much as a part of me didn’t want it to end, the vampire was taking over. Kissing him once more, I whispered to him that I loved him.

And he replied, “I know.”

Then, thrusting my fingers into his thick, golden hair, I shifted his head to one side. One of his hands came up and cradled the back of my head as my lips grazed his skin. As we were both moving together in that ancient rhythm, I opened my mouth and bit hard and deep into his throat. He jerked against me, but the only sound he made was a low moan of soul-deep pleasure as I started to drink his life-blood from his body. As I fed, I came, filling his ass with my dead seed. I kept pumping until every drop had been delivered from my balls. But even when I stilled, I stayed within him. I kept in tune with his heartbeat. He lived for a long time. But as I continued to drain him, his pulse started to falter. I lifted my spent cock from his ass before he died, lying back on top of him, stroking his fair skin, his hair, ensuring he went painlessly and with only the afterglow of orgasm in his mind. His heart thudded one last time, and then died. I licked the wounds on his neck, cleaning them, and stayed with him until his brain was starved of oxygen for too long, and Jerome was no more. I dressed quickly.

Then I pulled the sides of Jerome’s silk shirt – still he was wearing it - back around him. After that, I wrapped his body, from feet to shoulders, in the white sheet from the mattress. He simply looked as if he were sleeping. Only I knew better, and it would remain so until I was far from here. Finally, I kissed his forehead before leaving.

Shanghai was just a stopover. But it was where I found Jerome, and I shall always remember him.

fin