furniture and decorations went, it had been reduced to the bare minimum. Maybe that bell was chiming midnight or perhaps noon. Whatever the reason for its noise, it had woken me up.
I had to struggle my way out of the blanket that smothered me, which had been tucked in around my body like a bunting bag. It’s harder to do than you’d think, with your hands locked behind your back.
That fucking vampire bastard! I hadn’t used my arms when they’d been tied up in front, so why the hell were they locked behind me again now?
Damn, I was thirsty. The glass of apple juice was sitting on the coffee table, with the straw still sticking out of it. I got on my knees, crawled over to it, and drained it dry. The cheese and crackers were still sitting there too, though the cheese had taken on that dried out, shrivelled, stale-around-the-edges, unappealing look. My stomach growled. I’d eaten a lot worse than dried-out cheese in the past. It wasn’t going to be a problem.
I didn’t make much of a pretty picture, munching on cheese whilst using my tongue to drag the crackers to the edge of the plate so that I could get my teeth into them. The crackers were drying my mouth up inside. Damn, I shouldn’t have drunk all the juice first. Maybe there was more to drink in the dumbwaiter.
Climbing to my feet, I stood stock-still to see if the weakness that had kicked the crap out of me earlier were still there. It was but not to the same extent that it had been before. It was much less now, and so I managed to cross over to the dumbwaiter, turn with my back to it, grab the handle and pull as hard as I could.
I was rewarded with its small door popping open, and turning around, I used my head to nudge the opening wider, taking a look inside.
There was a cake sitting on the metal contraption. A cake? Why would that be in there? Marcus wouldn’t eat that. I froze as I looked at the iced message on it. It read, “Happy Birthday, Sex.”
That couldn’t be right. I hadn’t been down here as a vampire’s fuck-and-suck toy for a year. It couldn’t be. An entire year? I’d been raped daily, for a year, mostly twice a visit, sometimes three or four times. That all amounted to…
I’ve been fucked more than a thousand times. No…no. Oh, no no no!
“ Actually, it is more like seven hundred and ninety-five times; that is, if you only count anal intercourse.”
Marcus was suddenly standing right behind me, a hand on my shoulder, keeping me from turning around. “If we add in the fellatio, the masturbations, the number of times we used other body parts because you were too sore, well then I believe we would be closer to one thousand, one hundred and four. Now, look though, you have gone and spoiled my surprise for you. I even had thirty candles set aside to light on top of the cake.”
I didn’t even react as he wrapped his forearm around my neck and pulled me back against him, watching him as he reached into the dumbwaiter with his other arm and dragged out the cake with his hand.
“ We, or rather, you, will enjoy this cake. We will have a final party, and then you will choose your gift.”
Then you’ll kill me.
“ I have to, my Little One. It is the Vampiric Code. We can only keep humans for a single year. Any longer than that and it would be open season on me by the others. So the choice we have before us is this: are you just my fuck toy, or are you my equal? That is for you to decide. I was going to give you a third option, but it is a moot point now.”
Marcus maneuvred me back to the couch and tossed me down on it. He sat himself on the edge of the coffee table and looked down at the cake.
“ I took you from your world one day after your birthday. Tonight, I will take you from this life, but I am granting you a new one.”
Let me go.
“ If I did that, we would both die. Do not worry, Sex. I will be gentle. This will make up for my taking your virginity so brutally.”
I don’t want to die.
“ It will only be