Soft, noiseless, Andar slipped from the double bed, suddenly feeling the chill of the morning air. Reluctantly the young man left the warm chenille blankets, slipping from beneath the down comforter, smiling leanly with questionable memories. He glanced back at the girl--

Gods, she was beautiful, the blankets draped like a poet's words about her naked, shapely body. She slept on, delicate face cradled in the crook of her arm, dark hair spread like a silk curtain against the softest pillows in all Khiran, or so Andar claimed. The bed was hers-- he couldn't think of bringing something this refined, this beautiful into his own home just outside the city slums.

Betham.

Gods above, Betham. She was beautiful, even asleep, her still features belying just what she could do to a man in the heat of passion. Andar loved to scream softly beneath that wonderful passion, that wonderful, beautiful thing that was his latest lover.

Andar ran a comb through his jet-black hair, bending over slightly as he blinked into his own sapphire eyes. He'd never lacked for company to keep the bed warm. Somewhere beneath his own bed was a small collection of ladies' gloves, all perfumed, dainty right-handed gloves bestowed on him by willing lovers. His conquests had included both many a maiden as well as certain wives of other men...

Quietly he pulled on his trousers, making as little movement as possible so as not to wake Betham. He was fiddling with the drawstring when he heard her stir. Andar looked up, grinning as he saw her reflection in the floor-length mirror.

"Good morning," he said simply, glancing back at her.

Betham smiled, rubbing his eyes. "It isn't even dawn yet," she complained.

"The early wren catches the worm," quipped Andar, still combing his hair as he glanced back at her.

"Look what happened to the early worm," she countered, extending her arms. "Come back to bed, my love. Surely they do not expect you back at the tannery until at least dawn..."

He grinned, and she grinned back, taking his shirtless body and holding it close to hers. His hands found a smooth path down her breathtaking, beautiful body, tracing the spiraling tattoos that he alone knew well. She, in turn, pushed him back to the sheets, tracing the lines of the muscles in his abdomen...

A slight fluttering followed his trousers back to the floor as he buried his face in her neck, kissing delicate, pale flesh. She was his china doll, he was her slave... a slave of her wonderful love. Andar moaned quietly as she took him in, her lustrous, full lips tracing their own path up his shoulder, his neck...

"Scream a little softer," breathed Betham, pulling him roughly over her and then back down on the bed, the way that Andar loved. He groaned beneath her, hissing in pleasured pain as she bit down hard onto his ear... it hurt, and yet it felt so exhilirating... In that second, he craved her, he needed her more than he needed life and sustenance.

A faint line of blood trickled from where she'd clamped her teeth on his ear. Betham twitched slightly at the sight of blood. Damn her lust for it... vaguely she wondered how the greater vampires could remain still. Already she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, her tongue twitch in anticipation, her breathing hasten for just a split second. She stilled herself as best she could, knowing she had to wait...

Oh, but how she couldn't.

She pushed him deeper into the blanket, licking her lips in anticipation. The young man was too caught up to notice, to engrossed in her chilling sex to even feel her change, feel her nails sharpen and her features suddenly become not warm and welcoming to her lover but only coldly beautiful as she traced a softly pulsing jugular vein. She bared suddenly pointed teeth and waited, delicately tilting his chin upward, watching the vein stretch taut...

She bent over Andar's moaning form, and faster than normal hands could move she tilted his chin retraced the vein that looped lazily up the side of his throat-- and sank sharp teeth into pale flesh, feeling as the young man's eyes snapped wide open, as he choked-- Betham prefferred her prey live, writhing as warm blood spilled over their neck... with ecstasy she drank, reveling in his blood...

"Shit..." choked Andar, even as Betham's coldly beautiful face faded into consuming black.