Girls Who Bite Read online

  “You like pussy?”

  I couldn’t nod, couldn’t do anything other than salivate and gurgle my affirmation, my head pulled back, my neck ridiculously strained.

  She smiled, a Cheshire-thin slice across her face that shot lust to my belly.

  “Lick it and don’t stop until I say.”

  Heaven in a phrase. She loosened her grip on my hair, but didn’t release me entirely, and I savored my freedom, kissing up her leg, nipping inside her knee, worshipping her thigh. Her femoral artery pulsed under my tongue and visceral hunger gripped my heart, but I pushed it back, savoring instead the divine scent of her sex and the juices that had already slicked her thighs.

  The edge of her slip rubbed against my nose as the thin lace lightly tangled in my lashes. I nudged the slip’s hem aside and brushed my lips along the line of trimmed fur above the wet cleft. I kissed the crown, the faint taste of her sex a drug. When the tip of my tongue slid between the lips of her pussy and tasted her exotic essence, all I knew in that precious divine moment was the sanctity of her dominance.

  I buried my face in her sex, gripped her thighs, pulled them apart to improve my feast and applied my mouth with all the strength of my convictions, my longing, my endless faith.

  My lips and tongue traced every fold, every ridge of her pussy, and the wet, warm life that coated my face and overwhelmed my senses electrified me, jolted me into frenzy. I’d savaged and worshipped so much flesh, gorged myself in blood and jizz, and nothing, nothing had inspired me like this beautiful woman’s sweet cunt.

  I found her clit with the tip of my tongue, closed my lips around the bud and sucked as my hands caged her ass, the tips of my index fingers teasing her anus. She moaned musically, a long bow of pleasure that echoed inside me, like fire feeding fire.

  I felt both pleasure and ravenous hunger.

  My chin dripped with my efforts. Her hips ground against my lips and nose, her orgasm loomed before us both. I wanted it. I wanted her to scream, to release me from the torment of unfulfilled dreams, to brand me servant again and bind me to her with a chain only her release could provide.

  She pulled my head into her pussy, her fingers nearly ripping hair from my head with the intensity of her claim, and I groaned, my pussy dripping as wet as hers, my fangs aching with the hunger to pierce her. The ball in my stomach became a living squirm of snakes, snapping, biting, tearing at me. I wanted and needed her.

  My finger slipped into her ass, my relentless tongue tortured her clit, and she screamed, a blended adagio of joy, lust, release and entitlement as she came, shuddering and clutching me to her as if I were the last anchor in a raging sea.

  Her legs trembled against my breasts. She bent, curled over me, enfolding me in her arms and scent. She was heat and life, blushing fruit and savory spice. In that moment, I knew love, had tapped into a stream of vibrancy that only she could provide. I needed her order, her strict control, but I lived for this precious moment of unguarded connection. The sweet sting of her sated sigh branded my soul, and I welcomed the burn.

  She patted my head, a condescending triple-tap that thrilled me. “Good girl,” she breathed as she straightened, pulling her sleep shirt over her hips with a natural stroke of her hands.

  I rested on my heels, her juices cool on my chin. I kept my head down, appreciating the captured glow of subservience as she drank deeply from the glass of wine. Light fluttered before my eyes and my limbs eased from solid to sludge. My needs could not be denied much longer.

  “Mistress?” I dared.

  She set the empty glass on the counter and looked down at me. Maybe I was pale, maybe gaunt, it didn’t matter. She knew.

  “Hungry?”

  “Yes, Mistress. Ravenous.”

  The silence that filled the house pressed against my shoulders, brought my chin to the tile, obedient and wanting.

  “Eat.”

  One word, one command: it was what I would always wait for from her; that one single, loving word.

  She did not see me move; how could she when even I didn’t feel the space melt between my tile-touching chin and her warm thigh? There was that precious barrier, flesh to fang, that singular moment of possession as my teeth pierced her skin, and I found the artery and opened her life to me. There is no greater gift, nor greater bond: her blood, my need. Her essence filled me, completed our union and stilled the animal drive of my soul. I drank deep, the scent of her pussy arousing me even more as warm life filled my mouth, quenched my thirst.

  She gasped and groaned, the wineglass shoved off the counter in her throes, shattering on the tiles, the shards slicing sweetly into my legs.

  I drank of her, gluttonous, pulling her life into my throat, my hands gripping her thighs, kneading the orbs of her ass.

  She clutched my head between her legs, pulled my hair with a fevered grip and screamed as a second orgasm blasted from my bite to her cunt, her breasts, her brain.

  She yanked, and I released my hold on her thigh, the lush flow of blood from my bite slicking her leg before my drying saliva sealed the wound. “Enough,” she growled.

  My tongue circled my mouth, claiming every drop of her precious blood. I wanted more, needed more. I could have it too. One look, one word, and she’d be on the tile beside me, arching her neck or spreading her legs for me to take all I wanted.

  “Out,” she panted. “The way you came.” She slapped my nose and pointed to the door.

  I shivered, my pussy pulsing with delight.

  I crawled on all fours through the living room and then looked back at her, her blood still warm on my chin. She didn’t smile, but the fire in her gaze promised me her lifetime.

  I gathered the wolf, slid into the pelted skin and crossed through the pet door knowing I’d return through the same portal again and again at her command.

  Her dog.

  My Mistress.

  My pelt never touched the edges of the frame.

  DARK GUARD

  Karis Walsh

  Stecker, the chief wants to see you,” Lieutenant Cohen said, as Lisa Stecker was leaving turnout with the other officers.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  Cohen just shrugged. “Duty roster says you’re on special assignment tonight. That’s all I know.”

  Lisa turned left at the end of the hallway instead of following the rest of the graveyard shift out to the parking lot. She paused outside of Chief Bannert’s office, making sure her duty belt was centered and her uniform was neat. She didn’t have to worry since her crew routinely teased her about always looking spit-shined and ready for inspection, but it had become a habit to recheck her appearance. She knocked and entered at the chief’s command.

  Bannert and the woman sitting across from his desk rose as she came into the room. Her greeting died on her lips when the overpowering aura of a Marginal rippled over her like a wave. Her nostrils flared as she identified the woman as a vampire and she fought the urge to step back. Her hand automatically traveled to the weapon on her hip.

  “Are you planning to shoot me?” the vampire asked calmly.

  “Stand down, Sergeant,” Bannert warned her. Lisa dropped her hand, but every muscle was tense and ready to respond to the danger she sensed. “Stecker, this is Aurica Nelson. She’s a Dark Guard. And your new partner.”

  Lisa’s gaze whipped away from the vampire and onto her boss. “No,” she said simply.

  “Actually, yes,” he said, returning to his seat and gesturing for the two women to do so as well. They didn’t. “This is the Council’s decision.”

  He hesitated, expecting them to take a seat, but they remained where they were, Lisa eyeing Aurica warily, and the vampire returning her stare with a casual half smile. “You know about the serial killer we have loose in the city?” he asked finally.

  “The Marginal who’s been murdering citizens,” Lisa clarified.

  “Alleged,” Bannert amended. “Anyway, the Council and the Dark Guard decided we should join forces to take care of this qui
ckly. Until the killer is caught, you two are together and on the case.”

  “But, sir…”

  “Dismissed,” he said with a wave of his hand, as he opened a newspaper and started to read.

  Lisa pushed his office door open with more force than necessary and Aurica barely saved it from slamming. Once outside Lisa turned to face her.

  “I don’t like this,” she said.

  “You don’t like me,” Aurica corrected her.

  Of course I do, Lisa wanted to say, and that’s why you’re so dangerous. Even through her anger, she found it difficult to resist the scent of the woman in front of her. Her eyes traveled over her, from the coppery blonde hair that reminded Lisa of an ornate, gilded frame to her face that had the perfect features and proportions of a fine painting. And her body…dressed in the simple black of a Guard with no insignia or rank markings so there was nothing to detract the eye from her beauty. Lisa shook her head as if trying to physically shake the image of Aurica out of her mind. The vampires survived because citizens found them so irresistible. Citizens survived only if they could fight the call.

  Aurica was watching Lisa while she tried to control her responses, and Lisa knew exactly what the vampire would notice about her. Not her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her hazel eyes or her tall body that had been carefully toned in the gym. No, Aurica, like everyone else, would only see the four scarred lines that made deep etchings from Lisa’s left cheek to her throat. As if to prove Lisa’s guess, Aurica stepped forward and gently trailed a slender finger down one of the scars.

  “They say your mother did this,” she said, in that voice designed to break a citizen’s will.

  “Yes, she did,” Lisa answered softly, caught for a moment by Aurica’s golden eyes. She reached up and grabbed the vampire’s wrist in a tight hold. “Stop doing that.”

  Aurica frowned in confusion. “Stop doing what?”

  “Stop calling to me. If we’re expected to work together, I can’t worry that I’m about to be your lunch.”

  “I’m not calling you,” Aurica said with a tilt of her head and that maddeningly superior smile.

  “But I feel…” Lisa stopped, not wanting to admit to the desire that coursed through her at Aurica’s touch.

  The vampire laughed. “Darling, if you’re feeling anything for me, it’s simply lust. I already fed today.”

  Lisa’s grimace of disgust was interrupted by the emergency tone coming from her radio. She cocked her head and listened to the dispatcher’s emotionless voice announce the location of a murder scene.

  “We have another body,” she said unnecessarily. She was almost glad to have this interrupt their conversation. “Come on, Nelson. And keep your claws to yourself.”

  “Call me Rica,” the vampire answered, as they hurried to Lisa’s patrol car. “And it’s my teeth that should worry you, not my claws.”

  They arrived at the scene and were immediately ushered to the body that lay at the end of an alley. Apparently word was out that Lisa and her Guard were taking point on any new victim of the city’s serial killer. This was the fourth body in less than a week, but the first that Lisa had seen. She was momentarily shocked by the gruesome way the man had been gutted, but she swallowed her disgust and maintained a coolly professional expression, she hoped.

  “Were-cat?” she asked Rica in a quiet voice when they were alone next to the body. The victim, a citizen in his thirties, was wearing a business suit that had been ripped to shreds, along with most of his midsection. His lacerations were eerily similar to the ones that marked her own face.

  “Looks like it,” Rica said, carefully avoiding the large bloodstains as she squatted on her heels near the body. “But the claw marks are closer together than yours. Was your mom a were-panther?” At Lisa’s hesitant nod, Rica turned back to the body. “Probably a were-lynx then.”

  Lisa heard the thickening of Rica’s voice and she stepped closer, putting a hand on the vampire’s shoulder. “Can you handle this?”

  “Like I said, I fed today,” Rica assured her.

  “Good. Try not to lick any of the evidence,” Lisa joked, attempting to cover up her momentary concern for the vampire.

  Rica rolled her eyes, but she nevertheless got up and moved a few feet from the body. “Do you smell anything?” she asked.

  Lisa frowned. “Blood, urine, garbage. Nothing unusual.”

  “Get closer, really close, and smell him,” Rica insisted.

  Lisa glanced over her shoulder to make sure that the other officers weren’t paying attention to her. She leaned over the body and sniffed, feeling foolish.

  “What am I supposed to smell?” she asked Rica when she sat up again. The coroner’s arrival interrupted, and the two women moved a few feet away to let him work.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  “You’re supposed to smell the killer,” Rica said. “You have the affinity. That’s why I was assigned to work with you.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s common among hybrids that you can sense Marginals by smell or sight. It’s in your records, I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

  “I thought everyone could do that,” Lisa said with a shrug. “I just grew up that way.”

  “In the ghetto.” It was a statement, not a question, since Rica had obviously read Lisa’s file. Lisa had spent her childhood in the ghetto with the were-animals, vampires, and their human children and spouses. She had been happy there, knowing no other way of life until the War started and the Marginals won their right to live in society, in an uneasy peace with the citizens. Lisa’s mother had been one of the earliest rebels, and once the War started Lisa’s human father had turned his wife in to the military. They arrived at the house in time to rescue Lisa from her mother’s deadly claws, and they eventually recruited her into the fight.

  “Well, with your affinity and my tracking ability we should catch this killer before the week is out,” Rica continued, breaking into Lisa’s memories.

  “Thank god,” Lisa muttered. Getting this vampire out of her car had become her top priority.

  Lisa kicked off her covers as she slept fitfully the next day. The city radiated heat on the late summer afternoon, and the sheets tangled around her sweaty legs as she struggled in her sleep to break free. The vampire stalked her dreams, running a hand that was so soothingly cool down Lisa’s bare back. The hand was replaced by lips and a tongue that trailed an icy path down her spine and calmed her restless movements. She arched her back, the uncomfortable heat forgotten as that tongue moved across her hips. As if her movement was an invitation, a hand slipped under her, cupping her, teasing closer to the wetness that suddenly rushed from deep within.

  Lisa moaned and ground down onto the fingers that flexed below her belly. She felt golden hair cascading across her back as the enticing scent of vampire filled her nostrils and lungs. Somehow the smell triggered Lisa’s internal alarms even when her other instincts failed her, and she suddenly snapped awake. She heard Rica’s cry of surprise as she lunged quickly upward, throwing the vampire off her back.

  “Jesus,” she shouted, sliding closer to her headboard so she could put as much distance as possible between her and the vampire who was now sitting at the end of her bed. “What the fuck are you doing in my room? In my house?”

  “You overslept,” Rica said calmly even though her golden eyes glowed with desire. “I came to get you for work and I guess I got carried away.” She raised her hand to her face and inhaled deeply. “You smell so good. I’ll need to feed before we go out tomorrow.”

  “Just don’t pack a lunch,” Lisa said, pulling the sheet up to cover her bare breasts. “I don’t want to drive some poor girl around until you get hungry.”

  Rica smiled at the tentative return of Lisa’s humor. “I eat at the feeding grounds. I don’t get my meals to go.”

  Lisa had, of course, heard stories about the areas where Marginals could legally feed, but she had never seen them. Most of the were-animals co
uld eat regular food as well, but the vampires relied on the grounds for their blood. As in the ghetto, there were always people willing to allow the vampires to feed off them, even though there was a possibility the bite would be fatal. The feeding grounds were stocked with citizens who voluntarily offered themselves to the vampires in exchange for the thrill, the sexual climax, of the experience.

  “It disgusts you,” Rica observed without emotion.

  Lisa shrugged. “I eat meat, so I can’t totally condemn the way you have to feed. But I can’t imagine…”

  “It’s not what people think,” the vampire said quietly. “There’s very little screaming or panic, except among first-bloods. And no one is there without consent.”

  “But some of your victims die.”

  “It happens. We try to be careful, but it happens.” They sat in silence, aware of the gulf between them. Finally Rica changed the subject.

  “I have the photos and coroner’s reports from the four murders. Why don’t you take a shower and then we can look through them.”

  Lisa waited until Rica had left the room before she got up and headed to the shower. She felt a little silly locking the bathroom door since that apparently wouldn’t stop the vampire, but it gave her some sense of security. Unfortunately the cold water running down her overheated body only reminded her of Rica’s touch, and her body’s willing response to it.

  She hurried through the shower and came out to find Rica settled at her kitchen table. She had photos spread across its surface and she flipped through the pages of autopsy reports as she sipped a cup of coffee. Lisa poured a mug for herself and settled into a chair, pulling some of the photos closer.

  “Looks like the same animal,” she said casually as she compared the victims’ wounds. Rica’s head snapped up and her golden eyes flashed with anger.

  “Were-cat, not animal,” she said. Lisa gestured with her hand as a form of apology.

  “Or someone with a weapon trying to imitate a were-cat. How can I be sure you aren’t the killer?” Lisa asked in an attempt to lighten the mood.