Chapter 46: This Party is Smokin'...

"If you get bored, I want you to let me know," Alex said. He was behind the wheel this time, feeling a little more confident in his ability to watch the road instead of being mesmerized by his companion. The sun had gone down just a couple of hours earlier, leaving them with a surprisingly clear, comfortable night for late September.

"I'll have no trouble keeping myself amused, master," Lorelei assured him. She sat in the passenger seat, clad in an even smaller and even sexier little black dress than she had worn the night before. Her hands were folded demurely in her lap. Her innocent posture and sweet tone of obedience sent out very blatant signals inviting him to pull over the car and molest her as he pleased.

He glanced at her, noting the sly grin that confirmed those signals. "You really do love being like this with me, don't you?"

"Hm? Like what? Loyally subservient? Thoroughly dominated? Owned, body and soul?"

"Yes."

"So very much, master."

Alex kept driving. They'd been having virtually nonstop sex from sunrise to well past sunset. The only breaks had been in the bath and in getting dressed for the party. Even his "I Really Need to Study a Little This Weekend" break was subject to her oral attentions. Not that he had objected. For all that, though, he was of half a mind to turn the car around and go right back to the hotel. Or, more reasonably, he could pull over, fuck her senseless in the car and then go back to the hotel.

He loved her, and he loved his life with her.

"Seriously, though. This is gonna be a bunch of college-age kids, and a lot of 'em aren't really sure what they're doing with their lives. Probably most of 'em still claim to be psych majors, for cryin' out loud. Hardly any of us have real jobs yet. And I don't even know most of them. Just the hostess and a few of her friends who were also classmates of mine. I kinda doubt you're going to find everyone very interesting. They'll all be blown away by you, though," he added.

"Alex, not everyone I have associated with has been some highly-placed aristocrat or potentate. Far from it. I have spent much more time in simple farms and villages and even humbler settings than I have in castles or mansions. Mortals fill their lives with complexities and meaning regardless of where they are placed in society. It's really all just a matter of perspective."

"Yeah, but...I've just got this feeling it's going to devolve into a bunch of people feeling like they're wild and crazy just because they've had a few beers and are talking really loud."

"I'm sure it'll be fine."

"You're just saying that to be tactful."

"You know I would not do that, master" Lorelei replied. "If I didn't want to go with you to this party, I would have made an effort to influence your decision. Your friends will be there, won't they? I rather enjoyed their company the other night."

"Well, there's my close friends, and there's people I know from school, and their friends. I've gotten along at these parties, sure, but I wouldn't call most of them up at night to see if they wanted to go catch a movie. Maybe Drew and Wade."

Lorelei shrugged. "That is the way of things for mortals. Not every pleasant association can lead to something life-altering."

They both feel silent for a moment. Arriving at their general destination, Alex began looking for a parking space. As he did, he asked tentatively, "Do demons ever have friends?"

"No," she answered. Her voice had grown quieter. "Not among our own kind. There is occasionally the pretense of alliance or loyalty, but it is all out of self-interest, and all know it. I have had... a passing appreciation for some few mortals in my life, but I kept my distance for their own good." Alex felt her eyes upon him as he found a parking spot. "You and yours are the first friends that I can say that I've truly ever had."

He turned to look at her then, and found her solemn gaze telling him a hundred things without using a single word. Without their eyes breaking, she finally said, "I want you to have a good time at this party tonight, my love." She shifted a bit in her seat, allowing herself to slide her black lace panties down and off. Lorelei dangled them for a moment between herself and Alex without ever breaking that stare of undying desire and unquestionable devotion. "A very good time."

They were parked out on a residential street at night lined with cars against both curbs. It was Magnolia again, the same neighborhood where Alex had met Raymond Cordingly and confronted the reality of what Lorelei was for the first time. Their destination wasn't as opulent or as large a home as Cordingly's, but it was more than ample for throwing a big party. Several of the houses in the neighborhood were apparently hosting their own get-togethers; it had been tricky finding a place to park. Alex and Lorelei had a couple of blocks to walk before they got to the house.

But before that, Alex opened Lorelei's door, offered his hand in helping her out, closed the door... and then took a knee before her on the pavement. His hands slid up her thighs, pushing up the hem of her dress. With his eyes on hers he gently, lovingly invaded her wet flesh with a kiss.

Lorelei's eyes closed. She moaned out loud in response to his affection. He didn't keep it up very long, meaning it as a kiss and an indulgence rather than a full service, and she knew it. He let her down easy from that height of pleasure, then rose to stand in front of her.

Lorelei slung one leg over his shoulder just as he stood, straightening it and bending it upward at the hip like a trained ballerina. Wordlessly, she loosened his jeans and pushed away his button-down shirt until his cock was freed. Lorelei's intense stare held as he pushed into her. It was broken only by the closing of his eyes and of his arms around her as he pulled her close, thrusting into her slowly with the words, "I love you, Lorelei."

She was about to say much the same, but the pleasure of having him inside her, pushing her bare ass up against the car drew from her a wordless announcement of pleasure, and then another. She threw her arms around him, deciding to reciprocate that love physically rather than in words.

Swept away by shared desires, neither of them had thought to have Lorelei employ her supernatural knack for hiding in plain sight. A BMW passed by, slowing long enough for the older woman driving it to yell out in disgust, "Hey! Go inside! This is a decent neighborhood!"

Laughing happily, Lorelei called back to the woman, "Not tonight, it's not!"

************

After three hundred years, Alistair Prescott Rafferty was more than accustomed to being the center of attention at social events. He was young when he was ushered into unlife, barely over twenty years and having seen little of the world past his small English village. But his talents for poetry, artistic expression and social interaction had caught the eye of a passing vampire. The ancient one swept him away with a vivid description of the macabre grandeur of the undying society of the night and flattered him by speaking of the need to preserve Alistair's own exquisite eloquence. Unable to resist this siren's call, he consented to giving up his life's blood for a chance at transcending his drab, common mortal existence.

At first, there had been emotional turmoil and angst -- oh, the angst! -- but with time, Alistair adapted to the realities of unlife and the society of the night. His artistic and interpersonal acumen served him quite well among both the living and the undead. He was celebrated, in Europe and even America, in high society ballrooms and theatres and private performances.

His unending youth also worked to his ongoing advantage. Change in society and the arts accelerated in the 19th Century and then even moreso over the 20th, and as it did the relevance of young people only grew. It was Alistair's eternally young face and voice that allowed him to keep current, to adapt well to changing times and blend in with the mortal world even more adeptly than many of his own kind. It made it easier to keep up with trends, to maintain his artistic and social edge... and to feed.

He had no shortage of young, nubile, willing vessels. Alistair simply moved from toy to toy, clique to clique, party to party. This Saturday night was no different.

His current dalliance was Brittany, a lovely, buxom young blonde college student enchanted by Alistair's deeply thoughtful, brooding eyes and his dark, mysterious styles. When Alistair arrived outside her window, half an hour past sunset as he had for the past several nights, she asked, breathlessly dazzled as always by his dark charms, if he would go with her that night to a party.

She had been invited to a house in Magnolia, thrown by a friend of a friend named Sherri. Her longtime friend Britney would also be there. Alistair had seen the pictures of this other blonde and found them intriguing. Brittany's eyes shimmered with joy as he said he would love to meet her friends. She knew he would be a great hit, being so worldly and magnetic and talented. Alistair knew it, too...

...until they arrived, and hardly anyone noticed him. Oh, he and Brittany had made an entrance. He came through the door, brooding and enigmatic with the lovely, innocent blonde on his arm. Heads turned and conversations fell to a mere murmur. Brittany's grip on his forearm tensed as she realized with a self-conscious excitement that all eyes were on her -- well, on him, anyway. But she was with him and that was naturally, he understood, exciting enough in its own right.

But then someone pressed through the crowd and said, "Ohmygosh, Brittany, you're here! You've gotta see! There's a woman doing fire dancing outside!"

Brittany hardly hesitated. Alistair's very light skin went an extra shade pale as people rose from the foyer and the living room beyond, all headed to the rear of the house to see what was going on. Alistair let his date be pulled from him, not wanting to be dragged anywhere near terrible, dreadful flames.

He stood in the foyer alone as VNV Nation began blasting outside and party guests began to whistle and cheer. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Alistair followed, through the living room and then the broad kitchen space beyond and out to the spacious backyard. He was more than happy to stay at the rear of the crowd, eventually finding a planter upon which he could stand balanced with his inhuman grace.

That grace, he found, was quickly put to shame.

She was an astounding beauty, clad in a tiny, flattering black party dress, a black pearl choker and a charming, confident, sexually stirring smile. Her long black hair was swept back in a simple ponytail. In her hands were spinning contact juggler's sticks, burning at each end. To either side of her in the damp grass were small jars of what appeared to be some slow-burning fuel.

He overheard from someone in the crowd that this was entirely improvised. Sherri, the hostess, happened to have a few of the right toys; the rest was all thrown together from her absent family's camping gear. The stereo system had been moved down from an upstairs bedroom. Had Alistair not heard that, he'd never have believed this was not rehearsed, for while the dancer carried an air of spontaneity it was as if the movements were all second nature.

The vampire couldn't help but also notice her appalling comfort with fire. She spun those sticks terrifyingly close to her flesh, tossing and catching them even at their burning tips and twirling them between and around her limbs, her waist and even her neck. Her legs extended and bent and swayed with mesmerizing sensuality.

Her performance went through a single song, thrilling everyone else but leaving Alistair a touch shaken. Someone cued up the next song as she twirled the sticks with great speed until the flames were blown out. Then she reached out her hand to someone else in the audience who provided a can of some clear liquid -- more fuel, of course -- and two thinner sticks with their tips wrapped with cloth or pitch or some other covering that would clearly maintain a flame.

Another song by the same band began. She dipped her sticks in the fuel, then in the flame of a jar next to her, and her performance became all the more frightening to the vampire. As she danced, she would trace one end of a stick across her flesh -- an arm, a leg, even across the top of that magnificent chest -- and leave the line of fuel left behind burning for a second or two before rubbing it out with a single, smooth swipe of her hand.

Alistair had seen such things before, but rarely so close. It wasn't the sort of thing that the undead looked upon with keen interest. His kind, for all their resilience, was at least as flammable as mortal man.

"My love!" she called out finally, her face aglow with a joyful smile, "Do you trust me?"

The answer came from within the audience. "With my life," said a young man in jeans and a black button-down shirt. Catcalls and whistles erupted from the crowd in appreciation.

She took full advantage of the innuendo suggested by the crowd. Her posture and expression both took on a distinctly erotic feel as she beckoned him forward. "Come to me, my love," she urged him, fixing him with a smoldering gaze that left everyone else hollering. Her fingers twirled a flaming stick even as they gestured to him.

The young man obeyed with a smile, standing still before her at her direction. He was passably handsome, Alistair thought, and acceptably dressed without being particularly stylish. But ultimately he seemed strikingly ordinary next to this work of larger-than-life sensuality and beauty.

What came next was predictable, but impressive nonetheless. She slid around him, bending and twisting and even grinding as her dance continued. He mostly kept his hands at his sides, though on occasion he bent with her. He had good instincts for when to slip an arm around her waist or along whichever leg she threw around his hips. The flames were all around him, often coming very close. Alistair would have fled in terror in the first seconds, but this youth apparently truly was comfortable with his life in the dancer's hands.

Then she escalated to fire-eating, which sent a shudder through Alistair's undead body. She doused one flaming side of her thin stick in her mouth. Then she extinguished another the same way... until it was clear that she had only allowed the fuel to drip into her mouth, still burning, and with a puff she re- ignited the doused end. She teased the crowd with this twice, and in the end with her back to her lover she dripped and dripped flaming liquid onto her long, extended tongue before she extinguished the last of her sticks.

She turned her lover, ensuring that they were both side-on to the majority of the audience, and pulled him close while the flame continued to burn on her tongue. It went out with their kiss, which was long, deep and very much encouraged by the audience.

The tone was set for those in attendance. Late arrivals would only be swept away by the energy rippling through everyone already there. Alistair realized that for once he was not likely to be the center of attention.