Guest Post from Jeffe Kennedy!

Content Advisory: The following is an excerpt from Jeffe Kennedy's new release, 'Feeding the Vampire'.


 Ivan lay on his side next to me, propped up on a bent arm, heavy leg draped over me. As if he owned me.

I tugged at the silken cords holding my wrists together. My arms stretched over my head, tied to the heavy wooden headboard. My ankles felt similarly lashed together.

“I don’t always get this privilege,” he purred, stroking my throat with a long finger, “of watching my victim wake up, remember what happened, and realize that she belongs to me now. It’s quite delicious. Makes it worth being out in the open again.”

I forced myself to look at him, not the mirror overhead. The reflection showed a pale, vulnerable woman, bound and terrified, her dress hiked perilously high up her thighs. I couldn’t bear that I was her.

He met my eyes with grave amusement. He looked better, flushed and glowing with my blood.

“You’re wrong,” I managed. “It has never once occurred to me that I belong to you. Because I don’t.”

He chuckled and ran a lazy finger along the center of my chest. My heart thumped, though I tried to keep my breath even.

“It looks to me like you do.” Ivan glanced significantly at the cords tying me to what was clearly now his bed.

“I volunteered to feed you once, that’s all. Not to be kidnapped and…” And I really didn’t want to finish that sentence.

“Ah, that.” He dragged the single fingertip down my stomach, circling the indentation of my bellybutton under the thin cloth. The unrelenting heat and humidity outside made it unbearable to wear anything heavy. With all the volcanic ash in the air, the typically stifling summers in our river town became that much worse. Now in this cool, candlelit room, I fervently wished I’d worn more to the meeting. His touch burned hot. “You see, while you were passed out—you really should be eating better—your cohorts agreed readily enough to the bargain I offered.”

My stomach congealed in a hard knot of fear.

Ivan nodded, reading it in my face. “Yes, I agreed to help defend your little community. I’ll lend my strength to your building projects. It’s an intriguing idea. I generously agreed to only one thing in return.”

Ivan’s finger slipped down farther and I pressed my thighs tightly together. He raised an eyebrow and traced the outline of my mound, then down the seam of my thighs, until he met his own lean leg. The finger started its journey back upward. I squirmed and he smiled. Hungry.

“Do you think to resist me somehow, little rose?”

“I don’t—” My voice caught in my too-tight throat. I cleared it. “I don’t agree.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Well,” he mused, pursing his lips as if he truly mulled it over. “I suppose we could tell the others. They’d likely expel you from the community, but perhaps you prefer what you would face in other towns is less fearsome than this?”

He dragged the hem of my dress upward, exposing the lace panties I indulged in. So few luxuries these days, but I regretted this one. Ivan feathered hot fingers over the lace. I could see myself shudder in the mirror overhead and closed my eyes to it.

“Do you?”

I’d forgotten the question.

Ivan leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek. “See, I think I can make your life very pleasant, my little rose.” He nuzzled my earlobe and licked it with tender laps that sent arrows of electricity to my groin.

I breathed a sigh of relief when he took his hand off my sex. The reprieve ended when he began circling my left breast with languid fingertips. The mirror showed my nipples thrusting hard against the thin cloth, my dress up around my waist. Though my thighs were closed, they looked less like a defensive protection than the helpless clutch against the desire surging in me.

Ivan moved his hand to my right breast, never having hit the sweet spot in the center of the other. I bit back a ragged moan. He snuggled down against me. His hot tongue licked my neck, sending shivers through me.

“The thing is, little rose…” The tip of a fang grazed my tender flesh. “I’m still hungry.”

I went rigid and he clucked soothingly, kissing my throat with light and sweet touches. “I offered you blood, not sex.” I whispered it in desperation.

“For a vampire, they’re much the same. They have to be the same for our…partners as well. The bite hurts. It always does. So, you remember the pain, yes, my delicate flower. But let me show you the pleasure too. The pleasure is the other side that keeps you willing to feed me. I need you willing.”

“I’m not willing.”

“I know—that’s what I’m working on now.”

He leaned up on his elbow, cupping my cheek in one long-fingered hand. His eyes glowed, long hair fell over his shoulder, golden like the silk cords that bound my wrists. “They’re two faces of the same coin, you know. Over time, you’ll find the pain is seductive in its own way.”

He bent over me, his hair falling around me to curtain us from the world. His lips brushed hot against mine, drawing a helpless sigh out of me.

“Let me seduce you, my rose.” His mouth sank over mine, tasting of cinnamon, mace and blood.

Longing swelled up in me and I melted beneath him. His lips moved, strong and gentle, thrilling in their searing touch. He licked my lips, a breath of movement and sank in again, urging me to open to him. With a helpless moan, I did. I didn’t have to tell him he’d had me since that first feeding. Since I’d handed myself to him on a faux-foil cardboard platter under fluorescent lights.

He hummed with delight, his tongue sliding along the tender tissues of my mouth. I drowned in the shivering sensations, pleasure roaring through me. His hand slid down my throat in a lingering caress, trailing to circle my nipple again. I strained against him, close to begging in my delirium. Red and black pulsed in my brain. I tried to remember what I’d been unhappy about. Nothing mattered but this.

A sharp fang sliced the slick tissue of my lower lip and I convulsed, the pain cutting through the dark and sensual haze. His tongue laved the cut, sparking an ache. He crawled over me, straddling my body with his knees and cupping my cheekbones with both hands, tilting my head back so he could better slant his lips over mine. Blood swirled in my mouth and Ivan sucked on it, feeding from me with deep, thrilling kisses. I was a goblet he drank from.

When he released my mouth and raised his head, his lips were stained red with my blood. He knelt over me and smoothed his elegant hands along my throat. My frantic pulse pounded under his touch. His avid hunger frightened me.

“If you keep drinking from me, I’ll die,” I gasped.

I realized at that moment—with my mouth a ravished throbbing ache, wrists swollen against the ropes, and body taut with desire for my predator—that I wanted most to live. I’d seen too many people die. Nothing else really mattered but living. I didn’t care how.

Ivan touched my cheek with tenderness, gray eyes catching candlelight like crystals.

“You think I’d drain my rose?” Ivan caught his own lip with a glistening fang, looking for a moment young, as if he bit his lip in worry. The image vanished when the bright drop of blood, iridescent crimson, welled up in its wake. He bent over me and I tried to turn my head. With a quiet growl he caught my chin and held my head still.

“No escape, rose,” he breathed and covered my mouth again.

Copyright © 2011 Jeffe Kennedy

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. No portion of this work may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

About the Author

Jeffe took the crooked road to writing, stopping off at neurobiology, religious studies and environmental consulting before her creative writing began appearing in places like Redbook, Puerto del Sol, Wyoming Wildlife, Under the Sun and Aeon. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow (2001), was a Wyoming Arts Council roster artist, when she lived in Wyoming, and received the state’s 2005 Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award for a woman writer of exceptional talent in any creative writing genre and the 2007 Fellowship for Poetry. Jeffe has contributed to several anthologies, Drive: Women’s True Stories of the Open Road. (2002), Hard Ground (2003), Bombshells (2007) and Going Green (2009). Her first book, Wyoming Trucks, True Love and the Weather Channel was published by University of New Mexico Press in 2004. An erotic novella, Petals and Thorns, came out under her pen name of Jennifer Paris in 2010, heralding yet another branch of her path, into erotica and romantic fantasy fiction. Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, with two Maine coon cats, a border collie, plentiful free-range lizards and frequently serves as a guinea pig for an acupuncturist-in-training.

You can visit her at her website,  blog, or facebook page. You can also follow her on twitter or friend her at Goodreads.

'Feeding the Vampire' is available to buy from Jasminejade.com.

Blurb:

Through good luck and healthy cowardice, Misty has survived the earthquakes that have torn the world apart, but has no skills to speak of. Or so she thinks. She does have blood, and someone must feed the vampire who has offered his protection and strength in exchange for sustenance. Feeding Ivan is a priority, and Misty finally serves a purpose. But when she awakens tied to his bed, an unwilling gift to Ivan from the townspeople, she discovers he has hungers other than blood. Hungers he expects her to satisfy in the most carnal manner. Under his seductive persuasion Misty discovers she has the power to sustain Ivan in all ways, while experiencing unspeakable pleasure herself.