(December 2019 Gravesend, Brooklyn, NY, USA)
She wondered for a moment if he were terribly attached to his roommate, because the man was treading on her very last nerve.
She had been keeping a stranglehold on her self control for an uncomfortably long period of time now, and that had not at all been her intention for this evening. That particular ship, however, had been blown out of the water at about the time she had descended the last few steps into the narrow entryway.
After she had gotten past the feeling that someone was playing an absurd joke, she had become aware of the more absurd reality.
He was quite real, he was quite clumsy, he was quite serious, and he was absolutely precious.
This led her to the rather uncomfortable intersection of wanting to eat him alive and... well... wanting to eat him alive, just without the euphemism. Various alleyways were to be found here, including a particularly hairy looking one down which there was the realization that she did, in fact, want to see him again.
Imagine, actually being interested in a human... It was a humiliating, terrifyingly foreign prospect. Think, as hard as she could though she did, she could not think of one time in the prior three centuries since she had risen from her own rot that she could remember ever, just once, a human who had merited her attention, a human that everything from her blood to her marrow told her was hers to ravage. He was made for her, the darkness whispered.
Then again, she could not think of a time in which she had associated with a human who did not know just what he was dealing with without that human meeting a grisly end, but she thought of simply feeding and being on her way and it made her... sad.
It seemed terribly boring, while the option of discovering more about this strange man seemed quite interesting.
And she had thought this at just about the time he had been unceremoniously mauled by that feral feline.
She couldn't help but feel as though the mangy beast were laughing at her. Because... the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and once she had caught the scent of his blood, it was all she could smell. Rich and resinous, something earthy like cedar and musk and freshly turned soil, and while she had learned long ago that humans often had their own distinct scents, this was not one she could remember ever having sensed before.
What was he, exactly?
She had drawn tantalizingly close to understanding some new level of that question, the taste of it had been in her mouth when the greasy man, Tony, had interrupted them again, and it was amazing how cranky she got when she was hungry.
She briefly considered the logistics of killing the one and pinning the other down to see just how much jaw pressure it would take to sink her human teeth into his throat.
But that would certainly make further conversation terribly awkward, and she rather enjoyed listening to him speak.
It was so much easier dealing with humans who knew their place in the grand scheme of things. She had known some individuals who had shown a proclivity for such things as keeping pets, the Priest, for instance, but she had never found the time to wonder how exactly they had managed to achieve that relationship. How exactly would she explain what she was to him?
Did she even remember how to do it, act human? How absurd that she actually seemed to be willing to endure the act to find out more about him...
She slipped down from the table, and made sure that her thigh slid tight against his as her toes touched the floor. He noticed it, she could tell, his eyes were glued to the spot where the hem of her skirt was being pushed up by the fabric of his trousers. His heart was still pounding and the scent of his arousal was still dizzying. She stepped back and behind him and she was pleased to see his spine stiffen as he swiveled to track her movement.
It was so strange, she was so far gone that the hunger was barely contained beneath the surface. Her skin was jerking and rolling, the movement barely discernable to the untrained human eye, but she was struggling to maintain her human form and it pained her. It made her nervous, as closely as he was watching her, if he noticed and became frightened it would ruin all of her plans.
But rather than the normal human response she expected, the lizard brain perception of a predator accompanied by unease, he seemed drawn to her despite the fact she had not once Called to him.
What a strange, skinny little man...
"I'm sorry," she said for the fourth time, "I have to go now."
"Wh-what? I mean, are you, uh, are you sure you have to go?"
The hopeful look on his face was so tentative, she could smell the discomfort he was feeling, and she knew if she demanded it of him, he would sink to his knees to beg to finish what they had started, and she thought perhaps she finally understood the allure of keeping a Pet.
"I-I have to get back home," she shifted her weight slightly onto one leg as she slipped first one and then the other of her coat sleeves on, and tugged at the tiny lace cuffs at her wrist as she slipped her hands into leather gloves. "It has gotten fairly late, I still need to catch the train home."
"Where do you live?" he blurted out, his eyes had been focused on her hips as she shifted from foot to foot; his desire was like a siren's call, but then she watched his wonderfully expressive face swim out of his blinding lust to show that he had already reached the realization it was probably not an appropriate question at this stage in the game.
"Manhattan," she offered, very vaguely, quirking her lips in a tiny smile that said she was amused, not frightened, by the question, and she watched a real smile bloom across his own, and it was absolutely wondrous. What a precious, precious creature.
The greasy man was still there, Tony, she recalled again, and from the corner of her eye saw that he was standing very still and watching her; he, however, was not smiling.
She turned to the door and quickly unlatched the five locks he had turned with a muttered "I promise I'm not locking you in here," and stepped out into the entryway.
She had to get out of here, she... wanted so badly, what she didn't know precisely, that it was proving truly impossible to maintain her human form for much longer. And the fool was following her.
She looked up and was disturbed to find a figure blotting out the hallway light at the top of the stairwell.
When had he gotten there?
It was dangerous to be so distracted, Rocco would have given her a long lecture on the importance of situational awareness, and she once again cursed her Maker for dooming her to an eternity as damaged goods: she would always be weaker than the others of her kind. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to focus on the shadowed face, and froze.
"Hello, pretty," came a heavily accented voice, Eastern European, Polish, specifically, and while they had never come face to face, she knew his mug shot and he clearly knew who she was.
"Are you lost down there?" Came the suffocatingly sweet voice again, and she did not have time for this man's games.
She should have known better than to even show up to this address, so close to Mino's establishment as it was, but she had not expected the dreaded Zabrowskas of bad neighbor fame that the child had warned her about, to be twenty-eight year old Antoni Zabrowska of 'the polack keeps moving in on my territory' fame. Wouldn't Jimmy just be thrilled to hear he was set up right here on Avenue U now?
The thoroughfare was the heart of his dominion, one that now stretched from the abandoned Coney Island in the south, to Brooklyn Heights in the north. Most of the businesses that cleaned his money lined this particular street, and moving in here... it was a clear act of aggression, and though the man's face was carefully blank she could see the flare of pride in his green eyes that it had taken any of Jimmy's crew this long to find him. He wasn't really trying to hide, was he?
She would not be be able to clear the hallway without passing by Antoni and he would most likely follow her to the station, and while she did not fear for her safety, she did not have the time to hide a body so easily missed at this time of night.
There were eight Zabrowska brothers, and innumerable cousins, and the Brighton Bratva were not going to simply overlook the dissappearance of an up and coming brigadier who had made so much progress pushing out from Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, and now into the heart of Gravesend.
Mino's Of Avenue "U", the restaurant Jimmy had run since he was given it as an eighteenth birthday present by his Uncle Enzo as an effort to keep his feckless nephew out of trouble, was directly across the street from this ruin of an apartment building.
Maybe the human would have some use more than momentary amusement.
"Would you mind walking me to the station?" She asked sweetly.
"Oh yeah," he answered, then "I mean, sure, I..."
He never finished his sentence, but dissappeared so quickly she expected to hear a whoosh sound effect accompany the movement.
He returned to sight pulling on a pair of trainers clearly too small for his feet, and having thrown on a second blazer on top of the first.
The idiot was going to freeze to death... then again, looking at the state of the apartment, did he even own a coat?
Ridiculous... she needed to make a stop now before she reached the station.
He very gallantly offered his arm (how polite, she thought in amusement) and stopped in his tracks as his own eyes focused on the top of the stairwell and the doorway above them.
"Oh," was all he said, and the hollow of his elbow tightened around her fingers and as she glanced up to his face realized he was scared shitless of the man at the top of the stairwell but had straightened his shoulders anyway.
This situation required no heroics and she shot him a look that he acknowledged with a wrinkle of his brow and she took several steps upwards as she slid her fingers free of his arm and bent her fingertips loosely into his. He gripped them tightly in response and climbed to the stair just below her in only one stride. He followed close behind her as she climbed higher and still the man showed no signs of removing himself from the doorway.
"My my," Antoni drawled with mock gravity, long-fingered hands spread open slightly before him, and he was looking over her shoulder to the man behind her when next he spoke. "Things must be looking up for you. I wouldn't expect you could afford this one's hourly rate."
There was an intake of breath behind her, he was about to rise to the bait (of course the child would not realize that all of her time spent in court was in fact billed by the hour) but she squeezed his fingers again and he fell into silence once more.
"Excuse me," she said coldly, and it was a very long moment before Antoni moved to the side, one slender, leanly muscled arm trending outward in a gesture that they were allowed to pass, his torso slightly bent in a bow. Hm. Favored theatricality. She filed the thought away for later use.
He was taller than her but shorter than her human companion, 5'8, she would wager, and his limbs were long and lean and his dark brown hair, smoothed back from his face without the heaviness of gel for one strand of his hair near his ear held an artless curl, revealed a widow's peak.
He was stunning actually, and were it not for his... affiliation, she might have followed her hunger and taken another new, younger lover.
She could imagine the fit Giacomo would throw: he and Rocco had always been her youngest human lovers, and she really rather preferred the age ranges they possessed now, but one could be coerced into making exceptions.
This man did wear makeup, he was wearing mascara and his eyes were surrounded in a reddish purple liner almost like a bruise but it made those arresting eyes, she would call them seafoam, stand out even more. He was a vain child: his trousers were carefully pressed, the tank top draped artfully over his trim torso, the black never once dull or faded, and the cologne at his throat and wrists, adorned with modest but quite real gold chains, was expensive and she had to admit it smelled quite nice.
She let out a breath as she stepped clear of him finally. The bluff had worked, the prospect of taking the time to deal with a witness just for the sake of going after Jimmy's 'get out of jail free' card didn't seem to interest him at the moment.
She made it down the narrow hallway and to the staircase back down to street level before she pulled in a breath of cold, open air as she stepped out onto the pavement, and her companion's hand had reached out past her shoulder to push the metal mesh door open before her fingers ever touched it. Such a sweet boy.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, and he looked embarrassed and uncomfortable, humiliated by his own cowardice. "I shouldn'ta let him talk to you like that, it's not right."
She turned on the spot as he cleared the doorway and he startled again as he came almost flush against her: he was still half hard, she realized, his hips were pressed against her stomach. His hand gripped the edge of the door tighter to stop his momentum from crashing into her fully but she stood as though rooted to the concrete, not backing away from him at all.
"It's an easy insult," she murmured quietly, her head tilted back to look him in the eye and she noticed how he tipped his head forward to hear her better and how his fingers twitched as she reached up and brushed her fingertips against his own.
"Every woman is a whore to men like that. I have heard worse. I will hear worse again before it is all over."
She turned and stepped away, pausing as she glanced back over her shoulder.
"Are you not coming?"
"What?" was his response and she raised her eyebrows expectantly at him.
"I did ask you to accompany me for the next few blocks. You are going to let me walk the street alone? In a neighborhood where I seem to be mistaken for a whore?"
He blinked at her owlishly for a moment before he shook his head and the security door slammed stolidly against the building as he let it go.
"Of course not."
She smiled as his forward progress brought him beneath the edge of a street lamp and it created the most fascinating shadows upon his face: the darkened, almost bruised skin around the hollows of his eyes reminded her of a painted skull with sockets empty.
She held her hand out expectantly, and it was only another moment before he moved to her side and she remained stubbornly still until he finally reached for her hand and tucked it into the hollow of his elbow again. She was pleased with how malleable he was, prone to taking suggestion. That was a wonderful quality to have in a human lover.
There was silence for a moment, filled only with the tap of their shoes against the sidewalk and the quiet friction between the wool of her coat and the velvet of his sleeve. She curled her free hand about his forearm and herself against his side beneath the guise of seeking his warmth.
The cold of the night did not bother her, per se, her coat was much thicker than normal, but she did have to admit it was a rather nice feeling being pressed close to him. She did not produce much by way of her own body heat, but the cold had not reached through the fabric of his jacket yet and she basked in his radiated warmth not unlike a snake curled in the sun.
The silence grew comfortable for her, clearly uncomfortable for him as he kept glancing at her from the corner of his eye without ever fully turning his head.
She searched for something to say.
"I have to say that was, very possibly, hands down, the *worst* date I have ever been on. You are a very strange man," she said seriously, glancing his way.
He let out a bark of laughter.
"Ouch," he said and she narrowed her eyes at the next words that came out of his mouth with a snide tone. "I don't know how long you've been off the boat, sweetheart, but I'll give you a little hint on how we do things in America."
He was already losing his straight face, the corners of his mouth curling down as he attempted to suppress a smile and she realized he was teasing her.
"We usually just skip straight to the rejection without the kissing part, cause that one part gets moved over to the next dimension where the date nominally worked out and it's a little easier to pretend you actually want to talk to me again."
"I do want to talk to you again," she answered sincerely.
"Yeah?" he asked, with a hopeful raise of his moth brown eyebrows and the slightest turn of his head toward her.
"Yeah," she repeated back to him, laughing internally at the way the informal word sounded coming from her mouth, and squeezed her hands where they were laced about his arm and she noticed that he glanced away and bit his full bottom lip as the muscles beneath her fingers coiled and he balled the fabric of his jacket between his fingers.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, emitting a clicking sound as his mouth was clearly dry, and what a pity they were on such a well lit portion of the street because if he kept doing things like that it was about to become very unsafe for his person.
The sweet child truly had no idea the danger he was in displaying himself as he was.
"I will have you know, however, that I did not arrive to this country by boat. I arrived on an airliner. Who even comes here on a boat anymore?"
"Who even says airliner anymore?" he quipped back at her, and she bristled a bit this time.
"You have the nerve, you, the five and dime Pagliacci, you have the nerve to laugh at my English skills while you are perfectly proficient at making an ass of yourself in your native language." She bit out, but he laughed again instead.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "The munchkin's got jokes!"
"Munchkin!?" she snapped, visibly offended this time. "I was attempting to be nice and give you a compliment, and this is the thanks I get."
"So strange is a compliment now? Who taught you English again?" He asked with a full smile, bone white teeth glinting in the light of another passing streetlamp.
"You make it very hard to find the words," she muttered, then raised her voice again. "You are... unique and... very amusing."
"This isn't getting any better," he chided, in mock pain, his free hand splayed across his chest as though his heart pained him.
"Shut up! You... you make me laugh, and that is not something I get to do very often."
A successful parry that had led to a hit.
His face did a strange thing, frozen in an expression half amusement and half... what? Contentment? He seemed so happy to hear the words. What was it that she had said exactly to warrant that response?
"You are strange, and I like it. You make me laugh and I like that, too. You are interesting, and I know you tried very hard, no matter the disaster that occurred and that will get you, what do they call it, an A for effort? 8 out of 10, would repeat some version of the experience."
"Wait, what? Only 8? I get an A for effort, but still only 4 stars? This is worse than my employee reviews!"
"You kissed me and you did not follow through. You lose two points for being a tease and leaving me wanting you," she stated matter of factly and the expression on his face was wonderful, and all he could manage to say was a very soft,
"Oh."
Author's Note: Please vote if you enjoyed!