-Disclaimers:  The characters in this story are the property of James Parriott, Sony/Tristar and probably some other people I don't know about.  No profit is being made from this fiction.
-Archiving permission to www.fkfanfic.com and JADFE.
-Comments and caviar to stormborn@prodigy.net
-Notes: It was reported that at Visions con, our much-admired Mr. Bennett bemoaned the fact that he never got to bite any 'lovely ladies'.  That, plus the fact that I've always felt FK should have had
a few LaCroix/Janette love scenes, inspired this bit of--surprise, surprise!--*hetero* fiction.
Warnings:  Explicit m/f sex

Members of the Pride
By Molly Schneider
Copyright 1998

Janette let the smallest of sighs escape her as she fitted her key in the lock.  She needed to find something to occupy her in New York very soon; something involving noise and activity and people.  She didn't like being alone and she didn't like coming home to an empty apartment.  Wearily, she turned to close and lock the door behind her; it was only when she turned back that she saw him there, a still figure in the darkened room. "LaCroix!  I was not expecting you.  Is there . . . is something the matter?"

He just looked at her for a long moment, then rose abruptly, crossing to the huge window to look out on the lights of Manhattan.  "No, I just wanted to see you."

And of course, she thought, it would never have occurred to you to write or call first.  So that I could be prepared--the guilty thought crept across her mind--so I could have worn my best dress and your
favorite perfume.  There had never been a moment in a thousand years when the sight of LaCroix had left her unmoved, when his name did not feel sweet in her mouth.

"Our agreement . . ." she hesitated, but he felt her unspoken fear.

"I have kept to it:  Nicholas does not know where you are.  I do not agree with your reasoning in the matter, but it is your decision, of course."
 
She walked to the window to stand beside him.  For a moment they looked down on the city.  So many lights, so many lives, so many *possibilities*.  She laid her hand against the glass and looked at
its ghostly reflection.  Quietly she said, "Nicolas wearies me sometimes."

"Still, he is your sire."

"Non!"

The sharp protest brought a sidelong glance from him.  "How long will you continue to be angry with him?  He loved you too much to lose you; is that so hard to forgive?"

"It is not anger.  I never wanted to be mortal.  But now that I am once again what you made me, I find it best to avoid Nicolas for a little while.  I cannot be the kind of vampire that he would want me
to be."

The corner of his mouth quirked up.  "Oh, I would give a great deal to hear you tell him that."  She laughed a little.  Yes, it would be amusing, for Nicolas to hear the same words from her that he had so often thrown at LaCroix.  A pity that *Nicolas* would not find it amusing.  Her fingers curled into a loose fist and she rapped lightly at the window.

"Let me get us something to drink."  She moved about the apartment, bringing up the lights, retrieving a bottle of her best blend from the bar, and when they were seated on the couch together she said,
"Nicolas brought me back across, but you are still my father.  It is you who made me what I am, and I speak not only of the vampire."

He smiled at her.  "You were special long before I met you."

"Who made me believe that, but you?"  Her mind drifted back.  LaCroix had not offered to destroy her enemies, he had offered *her* the power to destroy them herself.  He'd been the first man she'd known who acted as if she had a brain and a will of her own.  She looked at the elegant hand holding the glass and thought: and the first man who ever moved me.  After Nicolas had joined them their passion had perhaps dimmed a little, distracted by the glowing ardor of the family's golden boy.  He can hardly blame me for that, she thought, ensnared as his own heart is by Nicolas.

But he moves me still.  "How long will you be in New York?"

"Not long, I think.  I only came to see you."

Her heart caught in her throat.  A little shyly, she raised her eyes to his.  "I am here," she whispered.

The hand holding the glass set it on the table and moved to stroke her face, as lightly as a breath. The full, sensuous mouth met her own, sucking gently at her lips.  A moan rose from deep in her throat and he cupped her face in those strong hands as her lips parted beneath him.  He took her mouth as thoroughly as once he'd taken cities: taking, only to give; giving, only to take a little more.

She found herself clinging to his shoulders, pulling him closer in her need to feel him against her.  His arm went around her waist and bent her supple body like a bow as he trailed kisses as searing as
candleflames down her throat.  When he lingered over her sensitive carotid she cried out, and he drew back.  "Not here, my sweet.  Come."

Her bed sat on a low platform of lacquered wood; she kicked her shoes off and fell back on it, displaying herself and watching with greedy eyes as he undressed.  Beautiful, she thought. Alabaster flesh, hard and white, rippling with the muscles of a great cat.  In his body as in his nature there was a maddeningly erotic blend of coolness and sensuality . . . she didn't realize she'd moaned until he smiled at her.

He lay beside her, appraising her as if deciding where to start, then slipped one narrow strap off her shoulder.  His tongue began a thorough exploration of the curves and angles of that shoulder.  She
groaned with pleasure and with the struggle to keep her passion under control.  She wanted him *now*, but a quick and hurried coupling was never LaCroix's style.  His mouth moved lingeringly across the shelf of her collarbone; then the other strap was delicately lowered.  He drew back a little to pull down the scrap of silk, exposing the upper curves of her breasts, and bent over her again.

Wet and ripe, his tongue traced the swell of each breast.  Small sucking near-bites following, growing deeper and more intense as she arched up towards him.  He looked up at her, holding her eyes with his own ice-blue ones as his thumbs teased her nipples with a deliberate circling rhythm.  Too much, too much--she writhed under him with a soft cry, raking the long muscles of his back.  Keeping his eyes fixed on hers he lowered his head to slide the scrap of silk lower and drew her nipple into his mouth. Softly at first, then gradually increasing the pressure he suckled first one, then the other.  He worked the hardened buds to the threshold between pleasure and pain.

"LaCroix, mon pere, mon maitre--please . . ." She bent one long leg and drew the inside of her thigh up the outside of his to rest it on his hip.  He stroked her hair and bent to kiss her but she was ready
for him and met him like a tigress, wrapping arms and legs around him to drag him against her, tighter, closer. One hand found his erection--God, she wanted it, she wanted him, all of him.  Her hand
tightened on his cock, stroking it with avid greed.

A growl rose from him; his eyes paled and his elegant face contorted in the vampire rictus, exposing his fangs.

Catching her by the wrist he disengaged himself from her embrace, moving back to the end of the bed and smiling at her snarl of frustration.  "So impatient," he chided playfully.  Taking her slender
feet in his hands he kissed each high arch, then drew them around his waist.  His strong hands stroked up her thighs, soothing the tense muscles, as he leaned slowly forward.  They continued up underneath the dress, lifting it over her head.

She lay exposed and open beneath him.  She liked the way he looked at her, frankly appreciative.  When his hand cupped the mound of her sex she ground against him.  Two long fingers parted her labia and traced a languid circle around her clitoris.  Sighing, she tossed her head on the pillow.  "You are a bad man, LaCroix."

"Yes."  His fingers were teasing the entrance to her vagina.  Her spread thighs jerked as they slipped in a bare inch, then withdrew.

"A very bad man," she gasped.

"Oh, yes."  The fingers moved back inside her, deeper, working her wet passage.

"I'm *hungry*," she hissed.

He brought his hand to his mouth and licked her pink-tinged wetness from his fingers, delicate as a cat.  "Hmmn, yes, I know."  He leaned forward, pushing her thighs back, until his face was inches from her own.  "You are so beautiful, my daughter of the moon," he breathed, and lunged.

An exultant roar burst from her as he filled her.  Her inner muscles fastened on him, greedy; she could feel every inch of him.  Hips driving up to meet his, she grasped his buttocks to get all she could of him.  Their bodies slammed together with a vicious strength beyond the endurance of mere mortals and their snarls rose together as they devoured each other.  His voice was a velvet rasp in her ear, chanting endearments.

He filled her body, her awareness.  The world was this man in her arms, larger than life or death, and all she could dream of wanting or needing was him . . . He was holding her head as she thrashed on the pillow, screaming; at just the right moment he pulled her face to his throat.

Bliss, this elixir, his blood . . . just as the first time, it pulled her down into the tides of his essence and as she hovered on the verge of being consumed his fangs pierced her, drawing her own essence into
him.  They were two, they were one; they were separate, they were joined, floating on the tides and currents of the cosmos itself.

At last they broke from each other and lay together in companionable silence.  Janette closed her eyes to savor the lingering vibrations rippling through body and soul.  LaCroix took her hand.  How different his children were, he mused.  Nicholas would curl up against him afterwards like a needy child--not this one.  However much she loved him, she was strong, and needed no one but herself.

She turned on her side, propping her head on her hand, and smiled at him.  "I missed you," she said.

"I'm gratified."

Briskly she said, "Good!  Because now, LaCroix, it's *my* turn.  You got to enjoy me--now I get to enjoy you."

She sat up and with a lithe movement of her long legs straddled his thighs.  Leaning over him she ran her half-open mouth across his face while her hands massaged his shoulders and down to his biceps.
Kissing, licking, nibbling, she traced a path down his throat.

So finely made he was!  She inhaled deeply, trying for the thousandth time to put a name to his natural scent.  Leather, grass, spices? Long ago he had still borne the traces of his mortal scars--there had been one from a knife just here, under his collarbone.  They'd been worn away by the slow progress of the vampirism and she found she missed them, a little.  But there was a fascination in the silky-stone feeling of his now-flawless flesh.

Wriggling down a little she splayed her hands over the shield of his chest, caressing it as if to imprint the memory of it into her palms. His nipples were small and pale; she tweaked one with a long nail and watched it harden.  She bent to suck on it while her fingers played with the other.  When he gasped, she pricked it with a fangtip and lapped up the tiny drop of blood.

His hands tangled in her hair as she worked her way downward, tasting him, feeling him . . . the strong arch of his ribcage, this tender spot here just at the pit of his belly . . .

His thighs were under her hands now, powerfully muscled, but her eyes half-closed as she took another deep inhalation of his scent.  Unmistakably male, vampire or not. She slipped her hand over his cock, marveling again at just how hard and rigid the male organ could become.  Her mouth watered in anticipation, but first she traced with her tongue the folds where his thighs joined his crotch.  Another small sound from him--almost a moan?  Smiling wickedly she sucked his scrotum into her mouth while her hand teased his shaft.

"Janette--"

She let go and lifted her head, shaking a finger at him.  "No, no--who's impatient now, eh?"

"Ah, my comeuppance," he muttered.  She frowned slightly, puzzling over whether he'd just deliberately made a very bad pun or not, then shrugged.

The skin on the head of his cock was soft as rosepetals; she licked it carefully before closing her lips around it.  She applied a strong suction briefly, then relaxed her mouth and slid her mouth down the
shaft until it touched the back of her throat.  She held it softly for a moment, then tightened her lips around him and she drew back sharply.  A snarl burst from deep within him.  Encouraged, she
repeated the maneuver over and over, milking his cock.  Gradually she increased the pace; as she did so she was able to take more of him, until her lips brushed his pubic hair.  Finally unable to hold back, he grasped her head and began thrusting.  She relaxed the muscles of her throat and let him take it.

One strong hand seized her wrist in a savage grip, dragging it up to meet his mouth as he struck.  As her blood flooded into him, he came. She drank down his bloody come with the reverence of a communicant, her own arousal cresting in her, and when he finally let her go she turned her head to tear into his femoral artery.

Sweet, the drained silence afterward, the silent awareness of each other's body and emotions.  They kissed lingeringly.

"I'm glad you're here," she said simply.

"So am I," he breathed into her ear.

Tomorrow, or the day after, or next week perhaps, he would return to Toronto and her wayward brother.  But now he was here, and hers.  She wrapped an arm around his waist to remind her of that while she slept.

<FIN>

Molly/StormBorn
UF/FKPagan/Cousin/Inn-mate/NA
stormborn@prodigy.net
http://members.tripod.com/~StormBorn/index.htm
LaCroix.  Punk Enough.