Chapter Text
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ANTHONY
The tight stiletto boots hug his calves, rendering them both hard and sinuous. It has been a struggle to squeeze him into the leather – much as it has been a struggle to silence him. His lips are stilled now by the unforgiving steel. Green eyes glare at me with the cold rage of a frozen land. And a flicker, I suppose, of fear.
I straddle him and casually kick his legs apart. A growl escapes the narrow gaps of the muzzle; it turns into a soft keen of pain as I pull his head back by his hair. My lips, my teeth, sink into the river of his neck.
His icy blood fills me…
A part of me that died when the shrapnel pierced my heart quickens back to life. How ironic that this chilled river warms me like no other. Not human blood, nor animal nor that of fellow blood-hunters can save me. Only his – a hybrid jötunn runt whose precious veins held my salvation. Whose quicksilver beauty I must corrupt over and over to keep myself alive.
The cross-dressing is merely a flourish. A fetish of mine, I must admit.
How delightful it had been to force him into the corset that made of his lithe maleness a woman’s frame, and the elbow-length gloves with laces that cleverly fastened to keep the wrists pinned together behind the back. I have a collection of such garments. It only pains me that so few are beautiful enough to wear them well.
Beautiful, and powerful. For I had chosen him for his ruthlessness as much as his fair visage.
But wait. What of my supposedly immortal heart, you ask? It had been damaged by a cunning vampire killer, whose clever arrows leased explosive slivers upon hitting their target. In a moment of carelessness, I became a target. But for my immense age and immense strength I would have burned right from the inside.
Instead, I stumbled slowly and painfully toward death for three moons. Until a half-giant tried to stab me.
~
Our meeting was not at all pre-arranged, but it was predestined. I had been hunting in the dark forest of the Carpathians, hoping for a catch big enough to fill me for at least a week. Prey was scarce of late – the jötnar, hulking creatures of frost and stone, haunted these woods more and more as troublesome settlers pushed them out of their own territory and into mine.
We clashed over a kill – a fine buck deer. I remember the flash of his smile and his knife. He was small for a jötunn. But filled with a fierce and terrible need to prove himself a hunter.
He was no match for me. Much as he towered over me, the steel I wore to protect my vulnerable heart was an advantage. The breastplate, especially, was a reinforced alloy crafted with knowledge I had obtained from a decade of experimentation.
I let him plough his knife into my armoured chest – then I trapped him in my immortal arms and drank of him.
It was then that I knew. With the frost-tinged blood came a rush of wonderful healing warmth. It took such restraint to stop myself from draining every drop. When his hard body grew soft in my arms, when his breathing slowed and his jewel-like eyes grew glazed and distant, I pulled back.
I carried him home as if he were a treasured child. A few times he stirred to half-consciousness, but my spell and his drained state pulled him back under.
As I laid him in my bed for the first time, I kissed his brow. This strange and exquisite being, with features so much finer than his kin, must always be mine.
My prisoner. My saviour.
~
He is stiff in my grip still, not having given up the fight. But he is also trembling slightly. The clammy touch of his skin tells me he has weakened. I lick the last few drops from the wound. A small painful breath, almost maiden-like, emerges from the muzzle. It sounds very much like pleasure.
“What did you say, my beloved?” I whisper tenderly as I pull the laces of the corset tighter. Another painful gasp.
I find the sight almost unbearable: his tall, strong body caged in the exacting constraints of my sadistic adornments. He struggles to breathe. The muscles in his fair arms stand out from the discomfort of the gloves. He was a deep blue when I met him. But the warmth of the hearth-fire turns him into marble and cream. A mysterious hybrid, indeed; he won’t tell me his origins. With the steel gag I have forced on him, he will not be telling me anything tonight.
I kiss his hard sloping cheekbone. I nibble lightly his ear. In the flickering shadows, it seems we embrace like lovers. Perhaps it is love – on my part, at least. I do love him. I am in love with my beautiful pet.
One last drink, my dear. My teeth sink in again. He buckles and gasps.
Then I pull him down into the dark whirl of my centuries-old desolation, and bid him fill me with joy again. His brilliant eyes roll back, flutter, fall close.
My saviour surrenders.
~