"Close your eyes, Megs."

I felt his breath warmly tickle my ear and his firm body press against my back.

"They're closed, I swear." The giggle bubbled in my throat.

Brandon tutted but mirrored my laughter with his own, that deep rich chuckle that always made my stomach flutter to hear it. "You're peeking, I can tell." Reaching up, he placed his palms over my eyes, plunging me into darkness with the warmth of his hands.

He'd been right. I had been peeking. It was just too much to keep my eyes closed; I never could resist the temptation.

Manoeuvring me forward down the hallway, he removed one hand momentarily to push on the kitchen door - yes, I was still peeking - and we shuffled together into the room, where he stopped me just inside the doorway.

"Okay," he said softly. "Now you can look."

His hands drifted to my shoulders and I opened my eyes, my mouth curling up immediately as I surveyed the scene before me.

The table was set for two, with perfectly laid out leather place mats, our wedding china, Veuve Clicquot on ice, candles emitting a soft light around the room. A large bouquet of red roses decorated the crystal vase on the worktop and by its side, the iPod unit crooned out the subtle tones of John Legend, a mutual favourite of ours.

"Oh Bran," I breathed, touching a hand to his cheek as he leaned down and pressed his lips against my neck.

"Would Madame like me to show her to her table?" he said in mock-maître-de style, taking my arm and escorting me to my seat.

"Why, thank you, sir." I curtsied coquettishly before sitting down, watching admiringly as he walked over to the fridge before returning with the entrée. I raised an eyebrow as he placed the papaya and avocado salad in front of me. "You made this?"

"Of course," he said innocently as he sat down opposite me, but I saw the smirk pulling on the corners of his mouth as he arranged the napkin on his lap. "Champagne?"

"Bran...." I narrowed my eyes.

He poured the champagne, still maintaining that look of pure innocence before he could hold it no longer, the grin breaking through the veneer easily. "Okay, okay, I admit. I had a little help."

"Philippe?" Philippe was a friend of ours who owned a cute French brasserie in North London. When I first met him, he had just given up his place as a rising hot shot lawyer at Walter and Noble in a bid to live out his dream setting up his own restaurant. Brandon had been the only Walter and Noble colleague to stick by him and sometimes, when dining in Le Loup Rouge I noticed the way he surveyed Philippe, who moved about the restaurant like he'd been born to be there, so natural, so comfortable, so happy and I would see a tinge of darkness in Brandon's eyes, something that rippled under the surface that he would suppress with a grin whenever my questioning gaze met his.

Brandon nodded. "Yeah, Philippe. But he didn't do it all, I swear. His role was purely supervisory." He glanced at me, his brow crinkling with anxiety as I picked up my fork and swallowed a mouthful.

"Well, I have to say, you did a pretty damn amazing job, babe. It's delicious."

"Really?"

"Would I lie to you?"

"I hope not, especially not where papaya and avocado salad is concerned. That's serious business, you know." He raised an eyebrow as he took a sip of champagne.

"Well, in this case, I swear that everything I say will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," I grinned mischievously. "Of course, if you're still in doubt, you could always cross-examine me."

Abruptly placing the glass back on the table and standing up, Brandon walked over to where I sat, grabbed the leg of the chair and pulled it out, twisting me around to face him. I stared up at him in excitable trepidation, noting the cut of his trousers on his slim waist and the way his fitted white shirt pulled taut across his broad chest.

"Sir, I do believe you're badgering the witness," I challenged. "This kind of behaviour would never be tolerated in a court of law."

Placing his hands on the back of the chair, Brandon bent down and brushed his lips softly against mine. "I'm about to do a lot of things that would never be tolerated in a court of law."

Sinking to his knees, he parted mine, smoothing the skirt of my black Donna Karan dress up my thighs until he could see the silk of my underwear. He watched me intently as he ran his hands up my legs, all the way from my ankles upwards, stopping briefly so his fingers lingered on the soft skin behind my knees before they wandered further, tracing a trail that seemed to burn the inside of my thighs. When his hands reached the top, he slid his thumb over the silk of my panties, rubbing gently in a circular motion and making me exhale deeply. As he steadily increased the pressure, the warmth radiated out from between my thighs, stretching down my legs and making me curl my toes with pleasure. I clutched the sides of the chair, gripping the seat tightly and knowing that he liked it like this. He loved to watch me, loved watching me getting off, teasing me with a slow-build up until he knew I was teetering precariously on the brink.

Slipping his fingers under the soft fabric, he couldn't help but smile when he felt the dampness between my thighs, easily sliding two fingers inside. I moaned and bucked against his hand, trying to force him deeper but instead he shook his head, holding me in place with his other hand.

"Keep still, Megs," he instructed.

"I can't," I moaned, my hips moving instinctively against the motion of his fingers.

"You can and you will," he scolded, his dark eyes running over my face, but he pushed his fingers in further, letting his thumb slide upwards and making me shudder. I couldn't bear not being able to move and he knew it. I wanted to rock my hips back and forth against him, but this way made the pleasure more intense as I was forced to focus on the movement of his fingers inside me. When the first pulse came, it was sudden, almost violent in the way it surged through me and I cried out, bracing myself against the chair in fear that the shock would send me sprawling to the floor. By the end, I was gasping and he was still watching me, his eyes locked with mine.

Reaching up with the same hand that had just been inside me, he slowly parted my lips with his fingers and pushed them inside my mouth. I sucked voraciously on them, tasting what he had just done to me and gripping his wrist tightly, holding his hand there as my lips moved up and down his fingers. It was his turn to hiss with pleasure as I flicked my tongue insistently over his fingertips.

Pulling his hand away, he climbed to his feet, standing so close that his legs were pressing against the chair. I dragged my eyes away from his face and let them wander down to his hips, watching transfixed as he slowly unbuckled his belt and undid the button on his trousers, tugging on the zip.

"Do that again," he demanded, looking down at me through his long dark lashes and I saw the way the candlelight reflected in his eyes, giving them a golden tinge. "Just like that. And don't stop."

Curling my fingers over the waistband of his trousers, I smiled lasciviously when I saw how very hard he was.

"Happy Anniversary, darling," I breathed.

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

"Put this on," he ordered, holding out a man's white shirt.

It was one of his. I'd worn them often enough. He had always said how much he loved it when I wore his shirts and I had to admit, I had always loved wearing them too, especially if they hadn't been laundered yet and I could still smell the heady scent of his cologne on the collar.

Today, however, I wasn't so keen. I eyed him warily as he stood with his arm outstretched; shirt in hand, but it was the door behind him that caught my attention.

It was wide open. Beyond it, I could see a glimpse of the corridor. A Boucher-style painting hung on the wall directly outside my room, flanked either side by two ornate candelabras.

"What's going on?"

"Just put the shirt on, Megs," he insisted, ignoring my question. His face flickered with tension and the panic began to ball in my stomach, like a fist clenching around my insides and squeezing, squeezing until I thought something might burst.

Standing up, I took a shaky step towards him, reaching for the shirt. I thought he might pull it out of my reach, forcing me to step closer but he seemed keen to keep his distance, relinquishing his hold on the shirt with ease as I took it from him. When I dropped the sheet that I had still held around me, I saw the way his eyes drifted over my body, before he quickly averted his gaze, chewing on his lower lip as he waited for me to button up the shirt. From his back pocket he pulled out a scarf and proceeded to move behind me, placing it over my eyes and tying it into a knot tightly at the back of my head. I flinched as he adjusted it on my face, his fingers brushing my brow and cheek so that my eyes were completely covered.

"Please Bran, what's happening?"

"Come on," he said, nudging me forward and I froze when the thick carpet under my feet soon changed to the cool touch of polished floorboards. The scent of the Varúlfur was thicker here, infusing the air all around me with a foul odour that left a bad taste in my mouth and my veins icy with an all-consuming fear.

"You said I wasn't safe outside the room," I said, hating the way my voice cracked. "You said I had to stay in there." For days now I had wanted to be free of that damn room and now that I was, I wanted to flee back inside and beg Brandon to lock the door.

"They will not touch you. You have my word."

I wanted to scream at him that his word meant nothing, that I had heard his words at the church altar and they were as meaningless then as they were now. But I didn't. Instead, I let him push me along, my steps faltering and my legs weak. I half-stretched my arms out in front of me, feeling like I needed to brace myself for a fall but not wanting to reach out too far in fear of what I might touch.

Being blindfolded only seemed to intensify every sound. My vampire hearing was already more sensitive than the average human's but by blocking my sight, my ears overcompensated for what my eyes could not do and I gasped and cocked my head at every slight noise. The sound of Brandon's breath in my ear, his footsteps against the floorboards, the muted buzz of a television possibly downstairs, the ticking of a clock, probably a grandfather clock, deep and solemn on the wall nearby. And my breath, loudest of all, quick and short, wheezing out from between dry lips that I kept wetting with my tongue until the skin felt chapped and sore.

"There are stairs directly in front of you, leading down," Brandon warned, taking my hand and placing it on the thick wooden handrail. I felt every curve and groove of the carved wood as I slowly descended, my bare feet carefully searching out each step in turn. Brandon guided me partway down, turning me ninety degrees to indicate that the stairs had changed direction. Soon the handrail ended and I knew I had reached the bottom of the staircase and as I did so, I heard a low unmistakable growl from a few metres in front of me.

Daniel. I would have recognised that sound anywhere.

I whimpered and shrank back against Brandon, feeling his hand encircle my waist and pull me tight against him. And then came a terrible noise, one so animal and so feral that my legs finally gave way underneath me and I would have buckled completely if it wasn't for Brandon holding me firm. Shrieking, I clawed at his arm, desperately trying to prise it from my waist because I knew where the sound had come from - I had felt it rumbling from his chest as he had held me against him, vibrating down my spine and now I couldn't stop the panic from consuming me. It was him. He had emitted a growl so terrifying and so full of power that I had gone from seeking sanctuary against him to wanting to flee anywhere, even if it meant running headlong into my nemesis, Daniel.

The sting of blood engulfed my senses and I knew my nails had scored his skin, but still I fought against him, until somehow his voice penetrated the white noise that was resounding through my ears and crushing me from the inside out. 

"Stop, Megs, stop," he barked. He had collapsed against the bottom steps and was gripping me tight on his lap, his arms wrapped around my upper body and our legs tangled together. "Calm down, it's okay, I swear, it's okay."

I gasped for air as I struggled to regain control. My insides were still screaming, my blood rebelling against the creature that held me and my head telling me that it was just Brandon, just my husband. He sleeps on the right, I sleep on the left. I chanted it over and over in my head like some sick mantra, desperate to cling onto something that made sense, something that could make me believe that the man holding me was not the beast I knew him to be.

"Please, Megs." God, how I hated that he sound so normal, so....so Brandon.

I stopped struggling, my body now stiff in his arms. Daniel was gone. I couldn't see, of course, but I knew that he was no longer there and that just Brandon and I remained by the staircase. Pulling me to my feet, he grasped my hand and stroked a strand of hair behind my ear, a comforting gesture he had used a hundred times before.

"Just a little further, Megs, that's all. Just a little further, okay?"

Just a little further turned out to be approximately twenty metres or so of shuffling forward, followed by the opening of a door and another staircase, this one narrow and more precarious than the last and the further we descended the stronger the scent became. Only this time, the air wasn't just tainted with their smell, but our smell and more to the point, my smell.

It's a strange sensation being able to detect your own blood. For us, your blood is like your calling card. Each person's is unique. Individual. Yours. And it sets you apart from everyone else and them from you. You might think you have a blood type shared by hundreds of thousands of people, but trust me, when you break it down, it's yours and yours alone. It's what we love about you. How can we get bored when we have billions of varieties to choose from? It's no different for our kind either and I could smell my blood drifting up the stairwell and I knew exactly where Brandon was taking me.

"No," I whimpered, bracing my hands against the walls either side of me and coming to a halt. "Please, no."

"Keep going, Megs." His voice was firm and resolute.

"Pleeeeease." I didn't want to go back to the room. I would have agreed to stay locked away upstairs for eternity if it meant never stepping foot in this room again and I knew that if Brandon was bringing me back here, it meant only one thing. Time had finally run out. Maybe Walter and Noble had discovered Brandon's secret and he had decided to sacrifice me instead of handing me over. Maybe he had decided to sacrifice me anyway. Maybe he had decided what I had known all along: that his dream was futile.

Realising that I was about to go into meltdown again, he did the only thing he could and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and ignored me as I screamed and pummelled his back as hard as I could. He wasn't impenetrable. I heard his grunts as a couple of my frantic punches hit home but he barrelled forward regardless, flinging open the door and tossing me into the corner of the room, when he couldn't carry me any longer.

I scrambled backwards, ripping the scarf from my head and turning my face into the stained plaster, clawing at the wall as if I could bury into it and seek refuge from all the horrors this place had to offer. The stench was overwhelming. A gross concoction of Varúlfur sweat and excitement mixed together with layer upon layer of blood and vomit. I curled into a ball, sobbing profusely like little Megan Walden adrift in a sea of nightmares.

"Megan." Brandon's voice drifted across the room. "Look, Megs."

I looked. I couldn't help it.

The room was just as I had remembered it, with a couple of new additions: my blood joining the rest of the blood painted on the floor and walls and that chair in the middle of the room, that chair that had been my prison, my own personal brand of Hell. Only now it was somebody else's. Someone else sat in my place. Bound. Blindfolded. Gagged. Human.

He was young, about early twenties from what I could tell, with long, lank dirty blonde hair hanging over his face as his head drooped down onto his chest. He was bare footed, his feet filthy and toenails caked in blood. An oversized T-shirt revealed needle marks puckering the thin skin of his arms, small faded purple bruises accompanying the signs of way too much intravenous drug use. A dark wet patch on his jeans spread out from around his groin and the stench of urine was fresh and strong, not that it was worse than any other smell in this room.

Brandon stood leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, arms folded across his chest, the shallow welts I had made visible on his forearms. Smears of blood tinged the rolled up sleeves gathered at his elbows.

"Do it," he said stiffly and I felt the hostility whirling around him, gathering momentum as he stood in the eye of the storm, watching me with dark, angry eyes.

"W-what?" I stammered, still clutching fearfully at the wall.

"Do what you have to do. But do it quickly, because I don't think I will be able to stomach it for very long." His lip curled into a disgusted sneer and I knew instinctively what he was asking me to do.

"No," I shook my head vehemently. "I can't." But as soon as the words left my lips, I knew it was a lie. I could. I wanted to and until that moment I hadn't realised just how much I needed to. My body cramped involuntarily and I clutched my stomach, knowing that the saliva was rushing into my mouth in frenzied anticipation.

Stalking across the room, Brandon gripped my arm tightly, his fingers digging into my flesh as he dragged me across the floor, dumping me in a heap in front of the human. Grasping my chin, he locked eyes with me and I saw that dangerous flicker of amber fighting to break free.

"I did this for you. Do you even understand what that means? I took him and I brought him here for you. To please you. And trust me, I didn't want to. A big part of me would rather see you starve to death than see you do this, so don't you dare sit there and tell me that you can't. When are you going to get it into your head that everything I am doing, I am doing for you? I am trying so damn hard, Megs, I really am. The thought of this, the thought of you doing this just makes me want to puke, in fact it's worse than that, it makes me want to rip you apart right now just so I don't have to see it. Letting you do this is going against everything that I am and you think you can say no to me? You don't get to say no to me, Megs. Not this time. Now you do it and you do it quick before I change my mind."

He released his grip on my face, snarling in repulsion as he did so before retreating back to the other side of the room, his fists clenched by his sides. I lay prostrate at the human's feet, staring up at him and it was then I realised that he wasn't unconscious as I had first thought. The blindfold was wet with tears and he was whimpering, the sound heavily muted by the gag that was wrapped tightly across his mouth. A large wound decorated his temple and the blood had run in rivulets down the side of his face, much of it hidden by his hair. Without thinking, I touched a hand to my own temple, remembering a similar wound of my own and the way in which my hair had plastered my forehead, the dried crusts of blood fusing it to my skin.

My stomach cramped again and I averted my gaze from the man, pressing my fists into the floor and gritting my teeth as I fought the hunger that was starting to consume me, sending sparks of fire powering through my veins. I didn't want to do this in front of Brandon. I didn't want him to watch me as I fed, almost as if I were some kind of secret binge-eater desperate to hide my addiction because I knew how repulsed he would be by my frantic need to gorge. But the scent of blood was intoxicating me, dragging my attention back to the helpless man, forcing me to become the one thing I knew Brandon didn't want to see.

Shuffling to my knees in front of the human, I ran my fingers up his arms, the touch causing him to flinch and his terrified moans becoming louder as my fingers moved higher, lightly moving over the bumps where the needles had punctured his skin. I inched closer until I was crouched between his knees and my face was almost touching his. Inhaling deeply, I savoured the scent of the blood on his skin and gently nuzzled his cheek with my nose, unable to stop my tongue from darting out and stealing a taste. I groaned and pressed myself against him, feeling the tremors shaking his body violently yet unable to grant him any reprieve. That one little taste was all it ever took.

As I dared to make a bolder advance, letting my lips travel up his face and lapping at the wound on his head, I realised that the man's whimpers had turned to frantic mumbling, a constant hypnotic buzz that had me reaching for the gag and tugging it free from his mouth.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

I drew my head back with a sharp exhale and let my fingers trace his lips as he formed the words, over and over again. On and on it went, like the tortured whispers of the ghosts that waited, clamouring over each other behind the gates of Purgatory. On and on it went, this thin reedy wicked whisper that taunted me, another one to add to the masses, another one that would come to haunt me. The anger ripped through me then, almost greater than the hunger did.

I curled my hand tightly into the hair at the nape of his neck and held his head firm as I pulled his ear close to my mouth.

"Pray all you like, it won't do you any good," I hissed. "You're already dead."

Wrenching his head back, I sunk my teeth into his neck, moaning at the sweet resistance of his flesh when I pierced his skin, revelling in that first hot rush of blood that flowed over my lips and wanting to cry at how blissful it felt to feed. His prayers soon died but I carried on, embracing him tighter as my veins screamed with pure pleasure.

And as I drank, I glanced over his shoulder, watching in horror as Brandon crumpled to the floor, plunging his head between his knees and clutching his hair in his hands as he rocked back and forth. Pulling back abruptly, I wiped my chin, staring with disdain at the thick blood that now saturated the cuffs of the shirt that Brandon had given me and when I heard that awful snarling sound, my head snapped back up in shock. He was staring wildly at me, tears streaming from his now-amber eyes, only it wasn't his eyes that made me recoil in terror, stumbling and slipping backwards across the blood-stained floor.

It was the way the skin was bubbling and rippling across his forehead.

I knew it wouldn't do me any good to pray. It never did.