A Paranormal Romance
A short story by Kate Krake
Copyright 2016 Kate Krake
Thank you for downloading this ebook. While this book is free, please do not distribute or reproduce it in any way for any purpose without permission from the author.
Contents
A Paranormal Romance
About the Author
More Fiction by Kate Krake
Guessing Tales
A Paranormal Romance
Laura set down her book and turned the light off. She wanted to keep reading, but it was after midnight and the last thing she needed was another of her mother's lectures about sleep on a school night. Laura was adopted and the older she got, the more she understood what that truly meant. She knew nothing of where she had come from, or why she was different. All she knew was alienation, isolation, and a longing to be with just one other lonely soul like herself.
Her mind wandered, her heart still aflutter, lingering in those pages. Romero had just told Caitlin that he loved her, but Caitlin wasn't sure she could trust him after she heard what happen between him and the legendary Francesca all of those centuries before. Besides, Caitlin had other doubts - she was human, he was a four-hundred-year-old vampire. What could he see in her to love?
Laura sighed in the dark. What she wouldn't give to meet a man like Romero - beautiful, dark, poetic. Another different creature at odds with the world just like she was. She longed for someone to love, to consume, someone who could love her as her true, secret self. She huddled deep into the webbed lace of her bed clothes and drifted eventually into sleep, Romero playing at the edges of her dreams.
He waited, peering from the branches outside her window where he had been hiding since sundown. His gill-like spiracles twitched as he marked her with wide eyes. This one was mesmerising. The thought of what it would be like to touch that young skin, so soft and warm against his cold, hard shell sent a tremor from his tail to the very tip of his antennae.
He climbed through the window, his claws clicking quietly on the floorboards as he made his approach. In his night vision she was a monochrome beauty, just as stunning as she was in the full light and colour of day. It was all he could do to not scuttle straight for her and pounce, thrusting his hypostome deep into her veins and gorging himself to near stupor on her hot blood. But he resisted his base urges, slowly moving his segmented body, leveraging himself gently onto her bed. He watched as her chest moved to the rhythm of her breath, her life gently pulsing under her skin.
He stroked a single hooked claw down her cheek. The hair that covered his eight legs shivered and he watched the fine, barely visible hair on her skin do the same. She moved gently in her sleep, stretching in the pleasure of dreams and settled again. He was ready. He leaned in, carefully spreading a droplet of pain numbing mucus across the front of her milky neck, and pressed until the skin give way with an almost audible pop. He moved to lie beside her, their bodies, so different, stretched out together only inches from touching along their full length. Her precious life flowed into him as he sipped gently. He wanted more, he wanted it all. He wanted to feel the totality of her move into him, violent and final. With a force of will stronger than anything he had ever known, he withdrew. Applying a second droplet of mucus to speed the healing, he wound himself reluctantly off her bed and returned to his hide.
He spent his days concealed between the gables of her roof, obscured by the top branches of the sycamore, watching and waiting until she was asleep when he would take her into him. It was chance that brought him to her. If he had a concept of fate, he might have thought it was destiny. This planet was swarming with these warm animals. At first they were nothing more than convenient blood sacks. But her, this beauty was different to the others - her scent was different, the way she felt, her taste. There was something else too - a longing. She was also lost, one of a kind in a place where nothing made sense.
The fourth night he came to her again, later than usual and more starved because of it. Her pheromone signals told him she was not properly asleep but his hunger could not stall him any longer. He moved to her in the dark and began to draw her blood slowly into him. She moved and uttered a sleep heavy moan. He froze in fear, his hypostome still inside her.
"Romero," she spoke. Her eyes drifted open and he fled, his legs scrabbling for purchase on the floorboards.
Laura's heart tightened in her chest and her breath stopped. She moved backward in her bed, her body strangely slow and weak. She turned on the lamp and pulled the quilt up to her neck.
"Who's there?" she said. She saw the shadow, large as a man, edging to the open window.
He stopped. They spoke a different language, but he felt the meaning of her words. He wanted to show himself to her, for her to know him as he knew her. He had been discovered, their nights together were over. What harm could there be to show her, just once? He moved into the light.
Laura gasped. He was crouched, his segmented body almost doubled over, but he would be close to six feet when standing. His body was covered in a dark glossy, bulbous shell, four legs protruding from each side, almost like a tick. Two long antennae waved towards her from his head, a long tube-like mouth curled in a tight roll beneath his bug eyes.
She reached a hand to her neck where, still wet with numbing mucus, the small incision trickled blood. She touched the wound gently and brought her blood tipped fingers to her lips. He had been feeding from her, like the vampire of her fantasies.
He gaped at the vision of her tasting her own blood. She did not seem afraid of him or what he had done to her. He stepped toward her.
"I am lost, so far from my home with no way to return. Before I saw you, I didn't think I would ever again feel anything good," he said. He moved forward, his front legs extended, reaching for her and offering himself. "I am certain I love you." To his own ears his voice was a crooning whisper.
Her scent was changing. There was curiosity and fear, but there was also compassion. Arousal.
Laura heard a sharp scratching and wordless sound as the creature spoke, but through a magic she did not understand, she felt his misery, a depth of longing to match her own. He was like her: they were both strange beings adrift in a world that would never understand their true nature.
He was close to her bed now. Laura reached out her hand to touch his leg, feeling the coolness of his shell. She drew him toward her, her heart beating so fast it was almost a vibration. It did not matter to her that they were not physically the same, whatever it was that joined them - her blood shared between them or something more otherworldly – theirs was a profound connection.
His body moved above her. She could smell the sourness of his insect mouth as he lowered himself. Her own mouth moved slowly, opening to the kiss. Her flesh folded backward, her mandibles extended. His legs were spread around her, his soft middle exposed. Her stinger flexed outward and shot into his belly. He cried out in a sharp shriek before her paralysing poison hardened his body almost instantly. The groggy weight she had felt of having her blood drained was leaving her body, replaced by the adrenal thrill of at last taking her first mate. She rolled him over, sitting atop him, her nightgown riding up over her erect stinger, glistening with droplets of venom. She leaned over, her still covered breasts gently touching his now motionless form. Her arachnid chelicerae, so much like her beloved Romero's vampire fangs, pierced the soft underside of the creature's own neck, as he had done to her before, and she began to feast, devouring a love she had waited so long to find.
About the Author
Hi! I'm Kate.
I like a lot of different genres though I mainly write speculative fiction. I live in Brisbane, Australia with my husband, daughter, two beagles and an increasingly populous mo
b of kangaroos that have taken up residence in my backyard. I think they're plotting something.
By day, I'm also a blogger, writing about writing and the writer's life on The Write Turn. By night, I'm typically sleeping.
www.katekrake.com
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More Fiction by Kate Krake
'Cascade Street' (short published in Antipodean SF July 2016 – forthcoming – FREE!)
'A Paranormal Romance' (short story- FREE!)
'Briskin' (short story – FREE!)
Jaguar (Guessing Tales #1) (standalone urban fantasy novella from the Guessing Tales collection – FREE!)
Restless (Guessing Tales #2) (standalone dark urban fantasy novella from the Guessing Tales collection – FREE!)
'Toy Maker' (Guessing Tales short story – FREE!)
'Untitled by Anonymous' (Guessing Tales short story – FREE!)
'The Origin of Species' (short story published in Antipodean SF – FREE!) (audio version also available)
'Skin Deep' (short story published in Antipodean SF – FREE!)
Guessing Tales
Welcome to Guessing.
Population: Darkness. Strangeness. Fear.
Walk through streets in a city where things are sometimes not as they seem, where the curious and the monstrous can appear on any corner, where warriors fight, where demons lurk, where ordinary people in ordinary lives might prefer to look the other way rather than turn to see what might be looking back at them from the shadows.
Guessing Tales brings their stories together.
Guessing Tales is a collection of short stories, serialised fiction and other tales written by Kate Krake. Each story takes place in some corner of Guessing, a sprawling metropolis that lives and breathes as much as any of her inhabitants. Each story and serial can be read as a standalone complete work, however some overlap of character and incident links some stories.
Get lost in the whole world of Guessing and check out Guessing Tales for urban fantasy novellas, short fiction and more.