Free Darkness In The Flames by Sahara Kelly

and were seldom required to be awake at night with the Master, but even so, it was thought by many— eccentric .
    However, nobody complained. The wages were fair, Sir Sidney was held to be a good employer, and St. Chesswell’s had been around so long it was considered quite a coup to be numbered amongst its household. It did wonders for one’s prestige at the pub.
    Sidney himself was contentedly snoring amongst his pillows, a book lying half open across his knees. He muttered a little in his sleep, his brain still attempting to solve various puzzles and follow its own train of thought even at this time of rest.
    Further down the corridor, in the darkest suite of St. Chesswell, a man lay still on his bed, nary a rise and fall of his chest betraying his presence.
    Adrian, too, was sleeping.
    But, unlike his father, Adrian was dreaming.
    Early in their association, Sidney had warned Adrian that his dreams were probably not going to go away. That whatever had precipitated Adrian’s “condition”—a word they used in preference to his “death”—had manifested itself within Adrian’s subconscious mind as well as his body.
    That his state of near-death had heightened his psychic facilities, forged an odd bond between him and his “maker”, and would create dreams real enough to make ordinary men scream and break out in a sweat.
    Since Sidney had begun dosing him with the herbs and concoctions from his laboratory, Adrian had known his diagnosis was correct.
    His body might be getting better, but his dreams were getting stronger. Almost as if the symptoms and habits he was working to cure while awake found a new outlet in his mind while he was asleep.
    Several times he’d awoken to the last fingers of daylight, fangs loosened and ready, hungry to savage and feed on some unsuspecting dream prey. It had all receded as his mind surfaced to reality, but for a while the dream had been all the reality he could handle.
    Occasionally, Thérèse visited him, and these were the hardest times of all. In more ways than one.
    She knew how to tantalize, to tease, to arouse his hunger and his sexual desire and how to take both to fever pitch, leaving both unfulfilled. Her tongue felt like an insubstantial wraith as it swirled around his cock—yet swirl it did, leaving heat and moisture in its wake.
    He would have to watch as she fucked—or was fucked—her sexual ingenuity seemingly endless, and her enjoyment of his discomfort evident. She would take him to the edge, over and over, only to leave him there, hanging. Literally.
    Thanks to Sidney’s medications, Adrian could now masturbate his anguish away, exploding into his sheets with violence in a frenzy of unfulfilled lust. It was his only release from Thérèse’s nocturnal torture.
    And although it eased his balls and softened his cock, it left his hunger unsated.
    Almost all his dreams aroused his hunger but left it unsated. He could experience all the pains and pleasures of sexual desire, but never did he feed in his dreams.
    He wanted to, but couldn’t, wouldn’t—didn’t. His fangs would emerge, his guts would harden in readiness, but somehow something would distract him, pull him from the fantasy before he could feed.
    It would send his hand to his cock once more, seeking the insubstantial release that would give him a measure of comfort, of relief.
    Adrian Chesswell couldn’t really decide if sleeping was a good thing for him or not. Whether his dream world was hell or heaven or something in between. And there were times when he wondered if that was his true reality—if his life as the newly-found son of Sir Sidney was the dream, and his existence in the dark and shadowed half-world of unfulfilled desire was actually his destiny for eternity.
    It was confusing, to say the least, and gave him much food for thought. Usually he was clear-headed enough to work things through for himself, but since his momentous visit to Kitty Edgeworth, Adrian’s brain had been notably