ranker scent of Adrienne’s, under the flowers and clean linen of the casa grande’s main bedroom. The chain-rack was suspended a few yards from the foot of the great bed, running up through a pulley on a rafter.
There’s no safe word here.
“That’s because I’m not a tame tiger, Ellen,” Adrienne’s voice laughed in her ear. “I don’t jump through hoops when the whip cracks. You do. That’s the way this circus works.”
A hand traveled down her back, cool and delicate, fingers lingering at the base of the spine.
“Have you ever thought of a tattoo here, ch?rie? A phoenix, perhaps, or a monarch butterfly, or some Celtic knotwork to emphasize these little dimples and the curve…”
“A tramp stamp?” she said incredulously, shocked half out of her daze.
“Well, you are such a pain-slut, Ellen. Yes, I definitely think it would work. We’ll do it tomorrow.”
The hand clenched hard on one buttock. Ellen arched again with a strangled grunt.
“Hurts good, doesn’t it?” the taunting voice said.
“Yes.”
Which is true. God, how I hate you! That’s true too. What are you doing- “Unhh! No! ”
“Delightfully dual-purpose.”
“No, please! ”
“No, what?” she laughed. “Is that: No, stop! Or: No! Don’t stop!”
Ellen let everything but the flood of sensation drop out of her mind. When it receded she forced her legs to lift her again. Adrienne stood before her, and looped the whip around her neck to draw her close. The gold-flecked eyes stared into hers after the kiss, and her skin twitched at the sensation of her mind being riffled through like a collection of pages. The silk slid free and was tossed aside.
“Shall I feed?”
“Yes,” Ellen said, bending her head back to bare her neck. “Oh, please, yes.”
Lips and tongue touched her throat, caressed the vein. Then: “As the sadist-which I am-said to the masochist-which you are-no. Not yet.”
“Oh, God, how I hate you,” she whimpered The thought resounded in her head with the iron ring of certainty, beneath the burning need.
Adrienne walked over to a table-eighteenth-century French, stone on cast-bronze legs-and wiped her hands on a hot damp towel scented with lemon and tossed it into a hamper. Then she poured herself a glass of a pale yellow wine and turned, leaning with a bare buttock braced against the smooth stone, eyes sparkling and taut nude body sheening with sweat. Her gaze fixed for a second, and the tumblers inside the cuffs opened with a click as the dance of stress and molecules aligned precisely. Ellen fell to the linen cloth that covered the carpet and tried to make her limbs work under her own command again.
“I’m going to feed later, so don’t worry. Crawl on over. Start with the toes,” Adrienne said, extending a foot.
Perfectly nice toes, Ellen thought, as she did. Nothing wrong with kissing clean pretty toes, in the abstract. Nice high-arched feet. Nice ankles, for that matter. Very trim calves. Muscles like a ballerina. Thighs, OK, skin like satin, a little salty with sweat…
“You’re stronger than you seem, Ellen,” Adrienne said thoughtfully, some time later, stroking her hair, her voice slowing as her breath did. “You’re enjoying parts of this a great deal, aren’t you?”
You know I am. Though I’d much rather it was Adrian and it was my idea. Sort of odd to be talking mentally with your nose pressed into someone’s navel and your arms around their ass, but what the hell.
“It’s not that you don’t really hurt,” Adrienne said. “You do, but the reactions to it go off in all sorts of intriguing tangents inside your head. I wouldn’t have thought that a masochist would be so much fun for a real sadist, but it’s actually quite a delightful romp in a wholesome Girl Scout sort of way.”
Well, it isn’t as if it was consensual, Ellen pointed out. I’d bolt in a minute if I had a chance and have nightmares about you for years. You must be enjoying my fear and sense of boundary violation and the emotional contortions I have to go through to keep from getting really incoherently angry at being treated like a toy. I’m not enjoying any of those one little bit. I just… suspend them.
“Yes, that’s all extremely nice. And the deeply buried feelings that you deserve to be treated like this, which you continually deny; that’s exquisite. Like a hint of red chili in a creamy sauce. We can build on that together as our relationship deepens.”
Ellen gritted her teeth as the other laughed with delighted cruelty at the uncontrollable surge of anger/guilt/pain.
Though there’s actually a sort of erotic frisson from being completely honest with someone I hate so much, too, she thought. It’s a bit like talking dirty but more so. And knowing you’re reading my mind and sensations is like being naked twice. Naked inside, not just skin. I’m starting to see what you meant about devouring me and it’s scarier than anything else.
“And there are the images you keep having of driving a stake through my heart. I’ve seen that one quite often and it’s very entertaining. How did Adrian like this sort of thing? The ritual, so to speak.”
He was… conflicted. Afraid to let himself go. I understand that better now.
Adrienne laughed again and sipped. “Long-denied desires are hard to contain, which is one reason I don’t deny them in the first place. Stand up.”
She put the glass to the other’s lips; it was sweet and cold and had a fugitive taste of flowers in Ellen’s mouth, clearing the salt and musk. Then a quick flick poured the last of the wine in a cold stream along Ellen’s collarbones. Adrienne began to lick up the droplets; Ellen shivered at the slight gentle contacts, running a hand up the back of the other’s neck.
“Mmmm,” she sighed, hugged the Shadowspawn’s head against her breasts and thought:
That’s nice, but oh, God, stop dicking around and bite me, will you! It’s been a week! But not there! Please! “In due time. Your blood would be too sweet right now; a savory-some garlic butter, so to say-will make it taste better. Perhaps it’s time to move on to a little horror? Ah, now that sent some real fear through the system!”
She stood back and gestured to the huge bed. Ellen got into it and lay back, the cool cotton grateful against the heated glow of her skin. Adrienne lay down too, arranged her head on the pillow and then crossed her arms on her breast so that each hand rested on the opposite shoulder. Her eyes closed and she let out a long breath.
That’s the horror? Ellen thought, holding back a flood of relief. We go to sleep? I need the feeding, but maybe I could sleep first…
“Over heeeeere! ” Adrienne’s voice called.
“Shit! ”
Ellen leapt convulsively and scrabbled backward against the carved African ebony of the headboard. Adrienne was back by the table, arms folded and grinning. And she was lying beside Ellen…
Oh, shit. She’s hardly breathing. That’s not sleep. It’s trance. She’s night-walking. That’s her aeth-something over there.
“My aetheric body. Exactly, ma douce. And that little shriek and the way your heart went pit-a-pat and the emergency clench of those superb buttocks was worth the effort in itself.”
She looked at her tranced physical self, and made a little punching gesture upward with both fists along with a mmmmph of wordless satisfaction: “I am such a hottie! You’re a lucky lucy, Ellen, truly.”
Ellen swallowed and swallowed again, edging backward until as much as possible of her was crammed against the wood.
“Of course, I admit that sometimes I can be a complete bitch, too…”
This time Ellen followed the instant of transformation; a wavering glittering flow more sensed than seen through the eyes, like a prickle… and a bitch-wolf was sitting and watching her, yellow eyes gleaming, gray-black fur, tail curled around its front paws. She shrieked again and wrapped her arms around her shins, trying to cram herself into an invisible ball, but she couldn’t make her own eyes shut as the wolf came to its feet.
It’s huge, it’s huge, she thought.
Big and elegant, dark fading to brownish-cream on the belly, eyes golden. The teeth were very white as it snarled, the sound low and guttural. It stalked forward, insolently slow, head down and ears laid back, the fur bristling. Then another step, faster, faster, crouching, the long smooth leapEllen did shut her eyes then, screaming wild and high as she waited for the fangs to close in her flesh. There was a thump as weight struck the bed… and then nothing. Terror made Ellen will her mind to stop operating at all, but terror also made her force her eyes
