Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

"Not a Judas kiss, no. It has to sink in slowly, like slime."

"It will take what time it takes. Do you agree?"

"Anything. Just… get started."

"How is that to happen?"

I shrugged in helpless fury, picturing Ric in the hands of the ancient undead, the unhuman, those determined to extract the secret of his cursed gift of giving animation to the lifeless. To force him to raise the dead he'd sworn never to violate again with his power.

Then Grizelle was suddenly at Snow's back, wearing a heavy metal leather wetsuit from hooded head to booted feet.

He handed her a device like an iPod on which he'd hit several buttons in succession. "Contact the first tier to bring their best fighters. Roust the second tier of our own forces and contact the enemies I highlighted."

"How will you move such a force openly through Las Vegas?" she asked.

"I won't. Miss Street and I will need vampire-fighting gear. I think you can guess her size."

Grizelle's gaze nearly fried me on my bones. "She's coming with us?"

"She's our Joan of Arc," Snow said with a tight smile. "Now leave us. We have some business to finish while you're mustering the forces."

Grizelle hesitated. For only a second, but she did hesitate.

Snow's frown lines above the glass frames set her in rapid retreat, already beating out a tom-tom rhythm on the device.

Snow turned back to me.

The sunglasses studied me from head to foot.

"You must forget everything else but this, for the duration," he said. "You must accept it totally. Any worry or withholding will have dire consequences. Furthermore, I won't accept the deal as done if you falter. It will all be for nothing."

"Fine. I have one condition," I said.

"You're in no position to bargain, but what is it?"

"You ditch the sunglasses. I won't sell my soul to anyone who can't look me in the eyes."

His silence seemed endless, but he finally peeled off and tossed the sunglasses aside.

I didn't even glance to see where the hateful "shades" fell.

His eyes-!

The pupils weren't just albino pink, like I'd imagined, but deep magenta, faceted like jewels, blinding to look into. The sunglasses weren't worn to protect an albino's weak unpigmented eyes and eyesight, as I'd assumed, but to protect others from his searing glance.

I stood there blinking, my eyes watering.

"It begins then," Snow said. "You can't go back."

Shit! Who ever could?

I stopped trying to talk him into anything, just let out a long deep breath, buttressed by the taste of the Albino Vampire still on my tongue, and awaited my fate.

Not that I wasn't worried. I hoped that even a trio of orgasms in triplicate couldn't enslave me body, mind and soul forever, or even half an hour. Yet, what if there was some other addictive element to the Brimstone Kiss?

And, worst of all, by submitting to another man's intimacy, I was compromising my love for Ric. To save him, I'd have to betray him.

I just wanted us to be together again, the same as we were. Ric the same. Me the same. Surely a mere day couldn't destroy that? Who was I kidding? An hour, the wrong hour, had destroyed love time and time again in lives immemorial.

So my knees and soul were shaking just as hard as I stood there, waiting to be sold down river.

Snow tilted his head the other way. Damn, he had good hair! A girl would kill for that hair. Then his hands reached up… crimped into my blue velvet gown at the gathered vintage shoulders and pulled it open to my waist.

I was naked beneath. The brutal stripping action made the ebbing velvet feel as raw as duct tape searing my skin as it was torn away. Already it was more than a kiss. It was complete surrender.

His hands cupped to capture my naked breasts.

Something icy flowed over my heart.

Not fear, nothing inner. I looked down where Snow's half-lidded magenta eyes were focused.

Whoa. Major exposure, sans bra. I felt a chill silver flood rising. Instant silver bustier, courtesy of his own initial manufacture.

The pale lips smiled. "You have a way of winning allies," he murmured.

His flesh-seeking hands had captured the cool silver expanse of a metal mesh bustier that had sped to cover my bared breasts.

"You've formally surrendered, Delilah. Release your familiar."

"But it's yours! It's your unwanted, leeching familiar made of hair-turned-metal. I've never been able to take it off or make it release me. It simply wanders my body, as your hands do now, taking on whatever whimsical form suits it, tormenting me with bad memories and ugly questions."

His head with its long white strands shook slowly. "Mine the lock of hair, yes. Yours what it became, what it made of you and you of it. I've never commanded this snake of white hair turned goad and guardian. And you must know that."

"No!" I didn't. "Not for an instant."

"I can't give you the Brimstone Kiss while you wear it in any form."

"I can't get it off!"

"But you can let it leave."

Let it leave? That simple? Not fight it? Just let water flow downhill, silver melt into hot metal, worry wilt into wishes. Just… let it go. Just click my heels and go home? Then what was all this for! I stopped questioning, rebelling, and sighed.

My metal bustier turned warm and pliant, flowing up Snow's wrists and arms, where it formed matching metal gauntlets that warded his forearms.

My talisman was cozying up to my bitter enemy. He was armed while I stood half-naked before him. I felt an absence so intense that it took my breath away. I'd loathed the daily reminder of his meddling, yet felt as if another defensive curtain had been ripped away.

Then… I felt free.

Again.

It was like getting a rotten tooth pulled. I'd gotten used to the daily ache and now glimpsed utter liberty. Yes! I had only to pull away from his fingertips and I'd be free of Snow and his possessive toys. I was moving…shaking him off like a bad dream, of which I'd had plenty.

"Montoya," he reminded me.

We both stood frozen as statues. Some classical subject, a Greek god in human form pursuing unwilling nymph. Me starting to twist away. He starting to tighten his grip on my naked forearms so the pale marble would seem as pliable as bread dough, flesh sinking into flesh, only everything was stone inside.

I shivered from cold or fear or fury, or all three. I felt all three states, holding still to submit when every muscle was poised to twitch with revulsion at being here, doing this.

Ric would say no to my deal with the Devil, with his last breath. I knew he would never submit to the vampires who held him. not the boy who had resisted the human coyotes who had abused him unimaginably time and again. He might be already dead, lost, and this sacrifice was futile.

To save Ric and our love at the price of being mauled and put in thrall to another man's kiss, no matter how supernatural… I knew I was forsaking what I cared for most for the mere chance to save the person I cared for most.

But this was my deal.

I shut my eyes, feeling Snow's cool hands finally closing on my undefended breasts, and shuddered. His thumbs touched my nipples to harden them.

"C-c-cold," I stuttered, an explanation for my apparent arousal.

"You'll be warm soon. Very warm." He pulled me closer. "Open your eyes. You wanted to see."

I batted them open. Looking into his eyes no longer made me blink. The pupils had expanded into black bottomless pools, the gemstone facets a mere ring of glitter around them.

Snow desired this. Snow desired me, my surrender.

Remaining still defied every screaming nerve in my body.

I kept my emotions battened down, dead. I made myself into what I thought a zombie was: a mindless, will-less shell that felt nothing, cared nothing, only shuffled dutifully to do others' bidding…