Vampires of Noctra(24)

another.

Suddenly one of Skye's hands came down against Donté's flanks and he felt the spin of the sting deep inside. He brought his hand down again

and again, across each cheek, and Donté felt the searing heat scale through him.

"Such pale, cold skin, Donté. You should see the flame of crimson spread across your white backside now. How long will it last, do you think?

How long before your cold, lifeless body sucks the heat away and all you feel is the empty coldness of your undead heritage once again?"

Donté hated that this man seemed to know him so well. And the sudden coldness struck his back as Skye stepped away. The sharp sting of the cat

shouldn't have surprised him, but it did. The tips connected with his upper back, confident and strong. A figure-eight of pain spreading from one

shoulder to the other. Then across his ass, swiftly adding to the sensations already spreading through his body. Slowly Skye warmed his cold

flesh with ribbons of repeated pain, making Donté feel as though his whole body was suffused with human heat. The spread of welcome pain

brought tears to his eyes. Yes, this is what he'd yearned so many years to once against experience.

Skye was right; he was expert at wielding the whip. More so than he ever could have imagined a man to be.

The whipping stopped. "Do you feel the heat now, vampire? Do you feel like you're alive?" He didn't wait for an answer as the strokes flayed

again. Harder, faster, and Donté shuddered and yielded beneath the onslaught. He arched as the tips cut him and blood trickled down his back.

The pain whirled through him. Fire and flame licked at his skin, every nerve ending alive with feeling.

He remembered the past, the anger of the lash Joshua had used on him.

"How much can you take, aristo?" Joshua had taunted him. It usually occurred just after another slave had been whipped for some small

infraction. And Donté would take it until there was nothing left to give. He yearned for the brute force of the whip. He'd never felt so alive as under

the heat of Joshua's lash.

And then Joshua would release him, hold him in his arms. Kiss him and fondle him. Tend him. Make love to him.

The cat struck him again and again. The pain claimed him, forcing him beyond the onslaught to a place of ecstasy he'd thought never to touch

again. Beyond the demands of his ship, his crew, his sire. Of the living and of the dead.

"Do you know how I learned to wield the whip, vampire? I used it on minions of the vampires we captured. Torture to get them to reveal the hiding

places of their masters. So we could find them and kill them."

Slowly, he pulled the damp ball of material from Donté's mouth and tossed aside the sodden fabric. Donté worked his jaw to relive some of the

aching tension.

Skye stroked his jaw, then gripped it. "Did you suck him, Lucienne? Did you swallow his cum like a good boy?" Then Skye pressed a hand to

Donté's back, smearing the blood. He brought a hand to Donté's face and spread the blood across his cheeks and forehead.

"You can't live without our blood. You would shrivel up and die." He slid a finger across Donté's lips, glossing them with warm, crimson blood.

"Your kind consume it without care, murder and destroy for it."

Donté slid his gaze to Skye. "Is that what you mean to do to me, Templeton? Kill me? Murder me?" He passed his tongue across his lips, tasting

the blood, savoring the rich texture of the only element of humanness about him. "Am I to be a monument to all you have lost? A sacrifice to your

thirst for revenge? Would you kill all of us without a worry as to who the true murderer of your family was?"

"Who said it was my family?"

Donté chuckled. "Who else? You humans. You are all the same. So self-righteous. Yet immortality is what you all hunger for. You're just too weak

to be willing to pay the price. But torture? Ah, yes. That you understand and mete out with relish. Particularly to those weaker than yourself.

Different than you."

"You're not human."

"And yet you want me, don't you Templeton? You have since the first moment you boarded my ship. You want me and you want my crew. But

you're afraid to take us, to yield. Particularly to me."

Skye slid a hand beneath Donté's jaw, forcing his head back. "Do you know what we did after we'd obtained the information we wanted? After I'd

given my general what he demanded?" He arched Donté's neck even farther, straining the muscles along Donté's throat. "We made love. Right

there, as our prisoner drew his last breath, General Encantro fucked me, praising me for my skill."

"You worshipped him."

"I loved him."