14
Dexter
I hate leavingthe club Thursday morning, but it’s not like I can stay there with Eilidh. She has a life outside of me that, for now, I have no access to and no right to demand to be a part of.
Time. It’s something I have in abundance, unfortunately.
It’s the one thing I can freely offer her without restrictions or hesitation because I know it’s the one thing she’ll accept from me without reservation. I’m simply glad I didn’t scare her off with my grand gesture.
Stepping into the shower, I lean against the wall, close my eyes, and take my erection in hand. There won’t be any sleep in my future if I don’t relieve some tension. Whatever special perfection exists within Eilidh, it has an effect on me I didn’t realize I’d been missing so much.
Everything about her speaks to me, weaves a spell around me. I’ve spent so many centuries reinforcing walls around me just to have this sweet, perfect woman walk right through them.
Imagining it’s her mouth around my cock and her violet eyes staring up at me, I stroke myself, not dragging it out this morning. Tipping my head back, a fantasy of gathering her hair in my hands and using it to fuck her mouth takes over. Even as my balls tighten and pleasure snaps, and I spend all over my hand and the shower, I feel a shadow of guilt try to root itself in my soul. She’s no sweetblood. She’s no eager slut willing to let a vampire flog or spank her to chase the high she wants.
And I’m not a good man. I’m not even sure I’m worthy of her. The darkness within me and that I am consigned to taints everything in my existence.
Just like it tainted my love with Robert.
Finally, I finish and dry off. I deal with a couple of minor tasks before stretching out in bed naked just before dawn. I send a few final texts to John and Mark and then close my eyes. As the daily stupor creeps over me, I sense the sun’s presence outside, even though all the windows in my suite have been prepared. John and Mark have taped a heavy tarp inside each window, as well as affixed clips to the blackout curtains, so they cannot drift open, even a little.
The only light in my room comes from the LEDs on the TV and DVD player and the digital clock on the nightstand, but to me, I can see as well as if it were daylight.
I miss my sun like a phantom ache. Robert used to love the sun.
I miss how Robert used to walk outside and lie in the sun, completely warm his body, and then immediately return to me, so I could hold him, bury my face in his hair, and inhale its scent.
He was my sun, and I orbited around him.
In many ways, I still do.
I haven’t allowed myself to love anyone since losing him, although there have been some humans I grew fond of. I always sent them away before I could become too attached, used my powers to make them think they left me.
Made it my fault. Always my fault, and sent them away with plenty of funds, so they could make it on their own.
Always wished them well.
But no one ever dug under my skin and embedded themselves in my soul the way Robert did.
I never loved anyone since losing him.
I didn’t think it was even possible.
I remember how in the mornings after I fed from him, or he’d tried yet another vampiric “cure” on me, he used to pluck a couple of hairs from me and lay them on the windowsill, hoping beyond hope.
His devastation every time to see them turned to ash used to gut me.
How he begged me to turn him, so he wouldn’t lose me. I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to. Terror filled me, though, because I was already afraid he wouldn’t survive the process. Once I felt certain what he was sick with, I was even more convinced he might not survive. Yes, it was selfish on my part, not wanting to speed his departure.
I tried healing him with my blood. Letting him feed from me. If nothing else, I thought certainly the more he fed from me, the better his chances once I did turn him.
He would have done any- and everything I asked of him. He wasn’t just my love, he was my willing submissive, my slave. I met him in a small pub on the outskirts of London and knew from the moment I laid eyes on him that he was mine. I didn’t have to thrall him.
I didn’t have to compel him.
I feel about Eilidh the way I felt about him, and it terrifies me all the more, knowing how that story ended, even though the bacteria that eventually stole him from me had already invaded his body before I met him.
Except this is the twenty-first century. They have drugs now that can kill all but the most tenacious strains of TB. I know more than I did back then. I have more resources.
