To Bleed for Him

"Do you feel like you're falling?
You've taken this step.
In front of you is further from the truth.
You fall apart in front of me again.
Again!

Denial isn't the way to forgiveness.
You always swore that I was wrong."
- Staind

"Torryn, wait!"

"Torryn, what's wrong?"

"Torryn, stop!"

It wasn't until the chorus had rung out several times that she felt a hand on her arm, a tight but gentle grip that could only belong to one man — Antony.

"Where are you going?" he asked softly as he pulled her to a stop. She couldn't bring herself to look at him, her eyes on the little red Sunfire parked just a few feet away. Where had she been going? It wasn't like she had the car keys hidden in her robe or something.

"Away," she mumbled, still refusing to face him. Tears were still wet on her cheeks, still pouring from her eyes. God, how she hated to cry, how pathetic she felt…

"Why?" she heard Skylar ask from behind her, and his tone made her picture his face, his brow furrowed in concern and worry further softening the sky-blue of his beautiful eyes. But what if she was wrong? What if there was judgment there? What if he and Antony both found her as weak as she found herself to be?

She still couldn't face them.

"You saw what happened," she answered in a whisper. "You saw what almost happened to me." Antony's grip on her arm tightened but quickly left, and she glanced back to watch his hand as it flexed at his side.

"It's…It wasn't that bad," Skylar said uncertainly, but she recalled the way he'd been screaming at Antony only a minute ago, telling him to kill Caleb for what he'd done, and she knew that he was lying.

"It was," Antony said darkly, and she finally turned to face him. His eyes were on the ground, though, his fists clenched at his sides and his features contorted in a bitter glare. "It really, really was." He looked up, and his eyes met hers fiercely. "I can't let this keep happening to you, Torryn. I can't keep letting vampires toy with you this way."

"I'm not leaving, if that's what you're thinking," she said, a spark of stubbornness suddenly surging to life within her. It was irrational, she knew, but she hadn't quite lost her battle with the vampires yet, and she didn't intend to forfeit by leaving. The crying — that didn't count for anything, she decided.

He shook his head slowly, an amused smile curving his lips, and confusion lanced its way through her determination. "I knew you would say that, but that's not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?"

"The pheromones," he said, and his face grew more serious. "We need to build up your tolerance to them."

Her confusion redoubled, and she eyed him skeptically. "Is that even possible?"

He shrugged. "No one's ever tried, as far as I know, but it's possible in theory, isn't it? You can build up a tolerance to alcohol, so why not to pheromones?"

"Pheromones are nothing like alcohol," Skylar remarked confusedly. "I don't think it'll work the same."

Antony shrugged again, glancing at the boy. "Well, then, she'll just have to learn to fight her way through it."

"Like I haven't done that already?" she snapped, gawking at the vampire as if he'd just paid her the worst insult.

"You haven't fought it in a controlled environment with the intent of getting stronger," he said, smiling crookedly at her angry outburst. "And maybe it won't help. Maybe you'll remain just as susceptible to the effects no matter how much you try. But it can't really hurt to try, can it?" His smile melted into a sexy smirk, and he added, "Even if we fail, at least we can say we had a little fun doing it, right?"

"Ew!" Skylar exclaimed, and Torryn jumped a little, startled. "That's what you plan to do to her? You're disgusting!"

Antony shrugged, still smirking smugly away. "She's my girlfriend. We'd probably be doing it, anyway, so why not throw in a bit of training while we're at it?"

"Would you stop saying shit like that?" Skylar snapped.

"Why?" the vampire asked, positively radiating arrogance as he crossed his arms over his chest. It was just then that Torryn realized that he was still in nothing but his boxers — standing on the lawn at five in the morning, in his underwear… "Because you're jealous?"

Skylar only glared at him for a moment, his jaw working as he chewed at the inside of his cheek, but he soon said, "I'll just get my stuff and go, then. You obviously have everything under control here." He spun on his heel and made his way into the house, then, leaving Torryn alone with Antony in the front yard.

"Are you all right now?" the boy asked as he turned to face her, his voice and his eyes gentler than she'd ever seen them. "Caleb didn't hurt you too badly, did he?"

Torryn shook her head and offered him a weak smile. "No, he didn't. I'm fine. I totally would've won that fight if you hadn't gotten in my way, ya know."

"Of course you would have," he said lightly, putting an arm around her shoulders. "You're my little badass."

She chuckled. "Like My Little Pony? Thanks."

"You really did do quite a number on him before I got there," he said, smiling lopsidedly down at her. "You've gotten stronger."

She smiled tentatively. It was nice to hear him say that, but was it even true? She'd almost lost at the end, all because…She forced the thought from her mind and whispered, "Thanks." She watched through the open front door as Skylar, fully dressed and scowling darkly, descended the stairs across from it and stepped over Caleb's unconscious form, and her haphazard smile faded into a frown. "You really should stop saying things like that to him," she said softly, "about how we're together now."

"You've said that before," he murmured, "and you saw how that worked out for you."

She turned to look up at him, and he gazed down at her with unnervingly empty eyes. "Why do you hate him so much?"

"I don't," he said simply, then Skylar was upon them.

"Call me if you change your mind about wanting to live with this scumbag," the human said, tossing a sneer Antony's way before focusing his grim visage on Torryn. "And be careful with him."

"Will do," she said with a half smile. "Take care of yourself in the Arena."

He nodded, but his expression never changed. "I will. I hope to see you there sometime." And with that, he walked past her, his parting words the sound of a slamming car door and crunching gravel as he pulled away.

"Let's get to bed," Antony said softly once Skylar's car had disappeared down the road. "This night's been more eventful than I usually like my evenings."

"Yeah," she whispered, resting her hand atop his where it still rested on her shoulder, and another moment passed before they headed inside together.

-?-

A light prod at her bare stomach drew her from her fitful sleep, and her eyes drifted open to reveal Antony propped up on his elbow beside her, absently staring at her stomach as he poked it over and over again. "Excuse me," she mumbled, her voice raspy with disuse, "but may I ask why you're jabbing me in the stomach, sir?"

"I can't sleep anymore," he answered blankly, giving her stomach another poke.

She cocked an eyebrow and asked, "And why, exactly, did that make you want to poke my stomach?"

"Because I happened to notice how different it is from when we first met," he said, his eyes only now drifting to her face.

"What do you mean?" she asked, and caught his wrist before he could prod her stomach again.

He smirked, playful. "Don't you remember? I made fun of you for being a skinny little bitch with a belly, but now look at you." He slipped free of her grasp and tapped his knuckles against her, rapping on her stomach like it was a door, and she finally looked down to see what he meant. "Hard as a rock. A few months of fighting gave you some muscle. Of course, the sex probably helped, too." When she turned back to his face, his smile was wicked, and she knew what was coming even before his lips met hers.

He was on top of her in an instant, the weight of his body pinning her down, and when his lips parted, his tongue prodding and pleading, so did hers. Her hands found his back, sliding across smooth skin, over hills of muscle, until they reached his ass. She gave both cheeks a pinch, and he drew away from her lips, laughing softly.

"Was that really necessary?" he asked, his breath washing over her face with a tinge of copper, and she grinned up at him.

"Everything I do is necessary," she laughed, leaning up until her lips brushed his when she spoke, the stomach muscles he was so fond of tensing with the effort. "Haven't you learned that?" Then, her lips were on his, parting and sliding, her tongue fighting his, teeth nibbling at it whenever it got too close. Her hands firmly on his chest, she gave him a shove, flipping him onto his back so that she could follow him down and take control. She felt his low, seductive laugh more than she heard it, and she smirked to herself as she took his lower lip between her teeth and tugged gently at it.

She leaned back to gaze down at him, and he looked back at her with half-lidded eyes, eyes pupil-black and showing to the world his barely contained lust. Her eyes darted toward the clock on the bedside table — 11:24 — as she rested her hands upon his chest, and his fingers danced up and down her thighs with a lulling, soothing rhythm that she fought to ignore. "It's not even noon yet. Why are you so awake?" she asked as she let her hands wander downward, trailing along the hard muscle of his stomach that put her own to shame.

He forced a sigh and scowled up at her, though his fingers' gentle waltz upon her legs never changed tempo. "You just had to ruin the moment, didn't you?"

Her eyebrows rose. "Is it something bad, then?" She pinched his cheek and teased, "Did someone have a nightmare?"

He rolled his eyes, but a hint of a smile crept onto his lips — lips that were growing paler by the day, she noticed, though she did her best to force the thought from her mind. "No," he answered. "I just couldn't stop thinking."

"About what?" she asked, but she had a feeling she already knew the answer. And she suddenly felt the chill of his skin where her hands rested upon it, lukewarm where it used to be 98.6 degrees — undead where he used to be alive.

"Don't worry about it," he said, his smirk growing, and she suddenly felt that familiar haze blossoming in her mind like the devil's flower — God damned vampiric pheromones. "Let's just get some training done, shall we?" he murmured. Suddenly, the tables were turned, and she was pinned beneath him once more, her arms held above her head and Antony's fangs glinting only inches from her face.

She squirmed uncomfortably beneath him, part of her enjoying the contact but another part unable to shake the feeling of the night before, of how dirty she felt after letting Caleb toy with her and violate her that way. "I don't know if this is such a good idea," she said, her speech still crisp and understandable — the pheromones hadn't worked all of their magic yet.

"It'll be fine, Torryn," his voice soothed, a deep echo in her mind, the center of her universe, all she could hear. A pleasant tingling started where his hand touched her cheek, his skin sending thrill after thrill of electricity through her body. "Fight me as much as you can. I won't do anything I know you wouldn't want me to."

"But how will you know?" she asked, but her words were slurred now, barely audible. She tried to wiggle her fingers above her head, and they barely moved. She was deep in it now, lost in a sea of promised pleasure, a place empty of pain, and she couldn't bring herself to hate it as much as she knew she should. This was Antony, after all, not Caleb or Caesar or any other vampire bastard. This was nice.

"That it's something you don't want?" he asked, and when she nodded, just barely able to move her head, he smirked. "Because I know you. I won't do anything we haven't done before." He leaned down to kiss her neck, and a slow tingling worked its way through her at the light touch. "Fight me as much as you can," he whispered in her ear, and a shudder raced down her spine. "I want to see what you can do."

His lips were against her neck again, placing kiss after gentle kiss upon her skin, and with each shiver that sparked its way through her, a single phrase rumbled through her mind in his voice — Fight me. Fight me. Fight me. She focused on those words instead of on the electric sensation of his lips on her throat, of his hands on her shoulders and sliding slowly downward. Her mind was swirling, reeling, swimming in the fog of his pheromones and threatening to wade deeper into the death-scented waters with each passing second.

Fight me — but how?

His words faded into the distance until there was only the sensations. The voice took with it her critical thoughts, her reason, everything that she needed to get out of this. But did she really want to get out of this? His fingers slipped beneath her bra and pushed it up and over her breasts, and the sudden chill of the air upon her bare skin felt like ice water on her nipples. She shivered as his fangs grazed her neck where he'd just kissed her, a fiery sensation in direct opposition to the chill upon her breasts. There were so many feelings, so many sources of pleasure, so much Antony all around her and all over her…

Why would she fight him? Why would anyone fight him?

She slipped her wrists from his lax grip above her head and placed her hands on his back, pulling him closer as she dug her nails into the skin to either side of his spine. He dropped from his position over her to rest on his elbows, lying his whole body on top of hers. She felt him, hard against her, pulsing rhythmically against her clit — but he didn't have a pulse, did he? Was it the pheromones making her imagine a living man, lulling her into a false sense of security by reminding her of what it felt like with Skylar? But it never felt like this with Skylar. It never felt this…this…good to be with him. He was just a human; compared to him, Antony was a god.

And that's exactly why she needed to fight him, she realized, a spear of lucidity piercing her obedient thoughts, the thoughts the pheromones wanted her to think. She felt it with sudden, aching clarity as he pinched her nipples and sank his fangs just a fraction of an inch into her throat. "Antony," she whispered, and his fangs slid the rest of the way into her neck to send pleasure rolling through her body like the intense waves of an orgasm. She arched her back and cried out, tumbling headfirst back into the pit of passion the pheromones had created.

With each deep, taunting pull from her vein that Antony made, she moaned. She raked her nails down his back, bucked against him, bit into the juncture between his neck and shoulder as hard as she could — every passionate action her carnal instinct could come up with just short of ripping his boxers off and forcing him inside of her. "Antony!" she screamed, grinding against him. Her nails tore through his flesh until she felt lukewarm blood sticky upon her fingertips. "Don't stop, Antony. Don't stop!"

The combination of pheromones and vampire saliva was heady enough to blacken her vision and numb every part of her body but for where the man touched her, where he bit into her, where he wanted her to feel him. It was more powerful than anything she'd felt before, even from Caesar. It was more powerful than anything Antony had ever done.

"Antony!" she shrieked again as he rubbed against her, still rock-hard and throbbing. His pulls at her neck were harder now, more vicious, threatening to take every last drop of blood she had left in her — and she loved it. She hoped he drained her dry right then. That was the best death she could ever hope for.

His fangs slipped from her throat, and she groaned pleadingly, her fingers tangling in his hair to hold his face to her neck. She felt a low chuckle roll through his chest, then his fingers were suddenly brushing against her thighs, his touch making her shiver so hard it might have hurt if she wasn't so far gone. "Hurry," she whined, feeling just the tip of him rubbing against her as he pulled her underwear to the side. Even that small sensation was nearly enough to send her over the edge, and she dug her nails into his shoulders, gripping tightly as if holding on to him would keeping her from falling into another vampire-induced chasm. "Please, Antony," she whimpered. "Please."

"You're not fighting this very well," he murmured, his voice velvet smooth, and the feeling of him sliding into her was the perfect punctuation to his sentence. She moaned loudly, nearly screaming, and bucked against him to drive him deeper inside. He grunted beside her ear, the sound almost a growl, and she thrust against him again and again, driven by the overwhelming desire to please him. "Harder," he murmured huskily in her ear, and as his fangs sank into the unbitten side of her neck, she obeyed, gripping his shoulders tightly and thrusting against him harder and harder.

The separate scents of their blood mingled together in the air with the faint undertones of sex; his growls and gruff moans twined with her cries and echoed through the room. She was dizzy with blood loss and with desire and with every vampire chemical known to man, her vision clearing to show only a hint of white ceiling beyond a head of dark, dark brown hair. She clung to the throbbing that grew in her groin with each thrust; she wouldn't let go until he had. For once, she wouldn't be first; she would give him what the chemicals told her he wanted.

"Torryn," he moaned as she thrust against him as hard and fast as she could, her breath coming out in gasps and groans. "I'm cumming!" And finally, she let go of the ledge she so desperately clung to and toppled into ecstasy — and then, she blacked out.