B007XKEWAE EBOK (6 page)

             
“You should go,” he told her, His voice was cold, emotionless.

             
The woman was visibly shocked. Gabriella imagined that she could almost hear her heart breaking in her chest. As it was such a telltale would have been
superfluous. The look on the woman’s face, the tears rapidly forming in her eyes, the quivering of her lips and chin. All combined to such a pitiful look of abandonment. If Gabriella hadn’t felt such glee at the sight she might have even felt sorry for her herself. As it was she almost burst out laughing when the first tears started down her cheeks and she ran off into the crowd.

             
The fleeing woman’s ex-partner watched her leave. He blinked then, haltingly, took half a step after her. He reached out with a hand as though to keep her from leaving. But Gabriella was there before he could do any more than that. She had him as a fish on her line, a few gentle tugs was all it took to bring him back in the right direction. She got
his eyes back on her and he forgot all about the other woman.

             
She noted a glint of metal on the ring finger of his hand as it dropped back to his side. A quick glance identified it as a wedding band. So the other woman had been this one’s wife. That explained the extra resistance he had been able to muster. But in the end he succumbed. It was futile to fight against her charms, natural and
un
natural both.

             
“So, what do they call you?” Gabriella asked cupping his chin with her hand to keep his eyes on hers while they danced. Cementing her control. In a few moments he would be completely hers. He would loose all freewill and not even realise it.

             
“Steven,” he answered.

             
“Well, Steven,” Gabriella mused, “Whatever shall I do with you?”

             
She looked him in the eye and raised her eyebrows to make it clear she wanted an answer to what would ordinarily have been a rhetorical question. Steven didn’t hesitate in providing the answer he instinctively knew Gabriella required.

             
“Anything you desire.”

             
She smiled. “Very good.”

             
She decided to stay with Steven in the club for a while first. Playing at being a
normal
girl for a while. Hah, normal
,
mundane, weak,
human
. Gabriella might like to play at being one of them for a short time but she always knew that she was more than they could dream of being. She revelled in being different. The humans had a word for
things like her. They called them supernatural and they were right.

             
So she would dance with this one for a while. Tease and tempt him just like any other girl might flirt with any other boy. But always she had focused in her mind that this was more than a simple flirtation. This was a predator playing with her prey before the inevitable conclusion.

             
There was never any danger of her forgetting what this was about. Though she played the part she could never develop any real feelings for this human. Purely physical flirtation was one thing but when it came to feelings, Gabriella would always remain faithful to Francesca. Just as she knew Francesca would always be loyal to her.

             
They had been dancing for a short while, just long enough to have
become so raunchy that they developed a small gaggle of groupies. Gabriella made a show of studying each of the onlookers before they left, flashing each of them a smile and a suggestive wink as a parting gift. If she ever encountered any of them on a subsequent night this brief contact would be sufficient to bring them under her control even more swiftly.

             
“Sorry guys, this show’s over. Come along, Steven.”

             
They made their way out of the club without incident. Now that she was quite obviously taken there were no more approaches by potential suitors. Though she received at least as many admiring, to put it politely, glances as before.

             
When they were outside Gabriella led Steven away from the relatively brightly lit area at the front of
the club. She led him out of sight of the queue of people waiting to enter the club, and the doormen who decided their worthiness, and took him off the main boulevard. They entered an alley which traced a route behind a series of shops that had long since closed for the night.

             
The air was getting quite frigid this late but had no effect on either of the pair. Gabriella was naturally immune to such details, being only slightly inconvenienced by the cold despite her attire. Steven was only a little better dressed for the temperatures than Gabriella, and of course he was only human. His body reacted naturally to the cold, goose bumps raised on his exposed arms, he shivered and his teeth were starting to chatter.

             
Although his body was reacting there was no conscious knowledge, Steven was too deeply under her spell to notice anything without her bringing it to his attention. Gabriella supposed he had made his way to the club wearing a jacket that they had failed to retrieve from the cloakroom on their way out. Not that it mattered. There were other ways the two of them could generate heat, and Steven wouldn’t be alive long enough afterwards for the cold to affect him.

             
The streetlights and illuminated facades of the clubs and bars facing out onto the main road didn’t give off enough light to brighten the alleys behind them. There were no streetlamps back here and the only light that managed to spill out through the back windows of the shops was weakened, designed for
illuminating small displays and no competition for the dark spaces between the buildings.

             
Where the main street was reasonably well populated, here, just a short distance away, there was nobody. Common sense kept most people near the comfort of the light and other people and away from the unsafe dark and isolation of the back alleys. For Gabriella the dark wasn’t a problem and she hadn’t been afraid of anything for a good many years.

             
She judged they had gone far enough and came to a halt. Steven stopped with her. She glanced around. They were at the point where a couple of buildings backed up against each other. The alley took sharp turns a few metres away in both directions so any observer
would need to be up close to see anything, and up close Gabriella could deal with them quickly.

             
There was a shallow niche in the back of one of the buildings which sheltered a battered looking fire exit. Above the door was the only visible security camera, a device the rapid proliferation of which had caused numerous problems for her kind in recent times. Still this was hardly a good example of the blasted things, it was looking even more the worse for wear than the door below. Gabriella doubted whether it was still functional, but just to be on the safe side she jumped up and swatted it on the side. The camera came loose from the metal bracket which held it, by three out of four screws, to the wall. The camera swung down suspended on
a pair of cables worn through to bare wires in places and smashed the lens on the brickwork.

             
Steven had stood by without comment throughout Gabriella’s preparations. He watched her with a kind of infatuation that wasn’t active enough to be natural. Quite obviously he was a man under some sort of spell. With her playground set Gabriella turned her attention back to her toy. Wordlessly she guided him into the fire exit’s niche. A moderate application of pressure to his shoulders and he sat down on the low step.

             
He was still watching her with that same expression, lustful but somehow vacant at the same time. Gabriella backed off a little. Most of her playthings didn’t fall for her quite as
deeply as this. She wanted him compliant just not so . . .
inactive
. Cupping a hand under his chin she once more focused his eyes on hers. This time however, instead of leaching it away, she let some of his freewill trickle back into him. She finished with a short touch of her cool breath on his face to put a small fracture in her spell.

             
He stiffened taking his head out of her hand. Steven blinked rapidly. His eyes left Gabriella’s face and darted around these new surroundings. Obviously he didn’t remember coming here with her. His eyes quickly came back to rest on Gabriella. Being the only person here with him presumably she would be able to answer his questions.

             
“Wh . . ?” Was all Steven managed before Gabriella moved in to reassert some of her hold on him.

             
Not using the supernatural charms vampirism had granted her this time but something wholly natural. Utilising the charms she had been gifted at her first birth, which had fully blossomed when she hit puberty. An act of control any woman could exercise over any man. The simple contact of lips on lips.

             
Gabriella pressed her lips onto Steven’s and his wonderings ended there. He returned her kiss forcefully, still having forgotten or else not caring about his young wife.

             
After her initiation it was Steven who took control and Gabriella was content to let him. For the moment at
least. He kept her close after the kiss. His arms wrapped around her shoulders to keep her from pulling away, not that Gabriella had any intention of doing so. His breathing quickened and his hot air washed over her as he rapidly fumbled to free Gabriella from the constraints of her top. She shifted to give him better access to the fasteners.

             
Gabriella was having a much easier time getting Steven’s belt and trousers undone. He still hadn’t got her top fully undone when Gabriella gave him a wicked wink. She licked her lips, letting the tip of her tongue become visible just slightly from her mouth for a moment.

             
“Did your little bitch of a wife ever do anything like this for you?” She asked.

             
There was resistance as she tried to lower her head. Steven was
gripping her shoulders more harshly than before. Even though he had  managed to loosen her clothing sufficiently that it had fallen open with her forward motion exposing her left breast, Steven wasn’t looking. He wasn’t looking at anything. His eyes had that slightly vacant far-away look to them that they had had when he was fully under Gabriella’s spell, but this wasn’t the vampire’s doing.

             
“My . . ? Kimberly?” He frowned, his eyes regained intelligence without focusing on Gabriella.

             
“What have I . . ?” Now he did focus on her. “You!”

             
Gabriella shrugged off the venom in his tone. She straightened up and casually took a single step back from him. It seemed there was still more than a little will left inside him after all. She
started fixing her clothes while Steven jumped up.

             
“What did you do to me? Oh, Kimberly, I’m sorry.” He pulled himself up to his full height and thrust his chest out at her. Then he gave her what he probably thought was a very menacing glare and stood there like he was impersonating some sort of malevolent thundercloud.

             
Gabriella looked him up and down, tilted her head to the side and started laughing in his face.

             
“What?” His face was bright red. 

             
She glanced down again now that she knew where all that blood had gone.

             
“You aren’t very menacing with that thing just flapping out there.”

             
Steven’s anger was quickly matched by embarrassment. He brought his hands to the front of his trousers so he could do something to remedy his exposure. Before he could though Gabriella grabbed both his wrists and had them clamped in her lefty hand. Steven might have commented on the surprising strength which she used to immobilise him, but he soon had other things on his mind.

             
Gabriella used her other hand in an action which she knew was guaranteed to bring that precious blood back down from his head. After a few moments he was quite ready for her.

             
“You know, this would have been much more enjoyable for you a few minutes ago?” she said conversationally.
“Still, you never know, you
might
enjoy this. What is certain is that it will hurt.”
             

             
With that she lowered her head and took him in her mouth. The sigh which escaped him indicated that Steven was indeed enjoying what she was doing for now. All that changed when she willed her fangs to extend from their recesses in the top of her mouth. She pierced his tip with one ivory needle and continued sucking. He went flaccid as his lifeblood passed out of him into Gabriella.

             
He screamed, bucked and fought against her all without effect. She continued to gorge herself on him, gladly accepting this, a much more pleasant tasting liquid than the one he was expecting her to take.