A/N: Completely random short story of one of my original favorite bad-for-you pairings. Expanding on an idea of events spawning from Claire being wounded and poisoned in the Nosferatu fight in Code: Veronica.

Summer 2005

Claire stands on a secluded walkway, overlooking a thumping pumping night club's floor in a bustling city far from where anyone she knows would find her. She can feel his presence and is looking for him in the crowd when he comes up at her back. She feels the swish of a long coat of some kind against the backs of her calves just before she feels the gloved hand wrap tenderly around her throat.

"Your blood sings to me," he says and her head is turned to the side enough for his nose and lips to bury in the juncture of neck and shoulder, teeth pulling at her pulse point.

It's hard wired to her pleasure, shiver inducing pulses shooting from his bite straight to the spot between her thighs. She feels herself make a horrible, ardent cry of want but she can't hear it over the throbbing bass beat of the music or of her blood. Her hand dips back between them and the heel of her hand rubs over the rock hard bulge in his trouse

rs. He makes a strangled noise and buries his face into her hair just behind her ear.

"Tell me," he says in a strained voice, "is it just your blood that calls to me?"

Claire doesn't stop her rubbing and moves to grind back onto one of his thighs, needing to relieve the pressure of a suddenly constructing suit of clothes and skin. "Don't be so poetic," she says gruffly. "Not when I literally called you here."

His fingers flex and tighten again at her neck, making her pleasure double, triple; it's blinding. His other hand comes to play over the scar on her stomach from all those years ago in Alexia's playground. "Inadvertently a queen and you still speak like the rest of the trash here."

He tugs her more firmly to him, cutting off her ability to rub him and pressing his hips to the roundness of her rear. They both gasp.

"Claire, is it just your blood?" His desire to know rivals his desire for her in these moments.

Her head is shaking left to right before she's even decided she wants to answer. She finds herself half bent over the railing and moves to grip it tightly while his hands remove themselves from choking her to hike up the hem of her dress. His thumbs are hooking into the sides of her panties even as he continues.

"They can hear it too, you know." He gestures to a moving, grinding group of men and women with a sharp jut of his chin. "They are just simply too dull and unevolved to understand its call."

"Albert," she says breathily and it makes him growl a terrible noise of possessiveness. She feels him wrestling with his zip now and she's gasping by the time he's out and pressed hot and naked against her rear. "Nobody," she pants, rubbing against him in a dizzying desperation. "Ever since we-it's never been the same, with anyone-"

He allows himself both a moment of pride and of jealousy at the thought of "with anyone" as he roughly thrusts into her from behind. The noise she makes causes something primal within him to shudder and spike and he is moving urgently within her, drawing out moans and cries from her freely. He pulls her flush to him, feeling the fingers of one of her hands thread back through his hair and the others wrap around the wrist of the hand that slides down between her thighs to wring out her pleasure.

"Because you are Queen," he growls into her ear as he fucks her. "And my queen can't be satisfied from the rabble."

"Albert," she keens and drags his face back to her neck. "Shut up-" Her thought is cut off when his teeth clamp down, breaking through the skin. Her muscles around him clamp down also and she hisses her satisfaction out through her teeth.

The rest of their words are lost to the music and the feral snarls of him or the delighted moans of her as they rut like animals on the private walkway that overlooks the club.

It has been three years since their last meeting and this moment is over far too quickly for either of them to be satisfied.

Claire exits the shower many minutes after him to find him still disrobed and now seated on a towel draped over the hotel room's office chair. He has a lit cigarette burning down in one hand as he looks out over the nighttime cityscape and dries. Towel draped over her shoulders, her hair dripping rivulets down her bared chest and back, she pads to him. She takes a moment to appreciate the view, of both the city and of man and his strange glowing eyes surveying the land before plucking the cigarette from him.

"Stop," she says. "It's not too late to stop."

And she finds herself then pinned to the hotel wall with a violent thud. Her hand still holds the cigarette but is anchored to the wall with one of his while the other is once more tightening around her throat. Those ferocious eyes glare into her.

It makes her heart race and not at all in the way it should.

"No business," he growls indignantly. "We had an agreement that we would not discuss it here."

In just as swift a movement, there is the click of a hammer being drawn back and the shifting click of a gun settling into her trained grip. Claire has snatched it from the bedside table next to her and is pressing it to his cheek. She can hear the pounding of her pulse in her ears and her mouth parts when his grip tightens, cutting off so much of her precious air. She doesn't have to see to know that her eyes have ignited in their own unnatural stare inherent to the T-Veronica virus sleeping in her veins.

"It's not too late," she repeats herself. His hands flex around both her neck and wrist. Her lids flutter and her errant gaze catches sight of him hardening again. She licks her lips. "Albert-"

"I am building us a kingdom," he snarls heatedly, excited by the emergence of the light in those eyes. She whimpers in something that isn't pain at all and he feels the telltale weeping of moisture from his tip. He turns her face towards the large, wide glass of the room's window before pressing closer. Her gun moves with him, pressed into the side of his head now, but it doesn't stop him from bringing his lips to her ear in a mockery of a loving whisper. "Don't you want it all? Look for me Claire-it's right there and ripe for the taking. I've almost done it and you want me to stop now?"

Despite herself she scans over the lit up city. She feels the desire for it muddle her thoughts. It's been humming in her brain ever since she'd been run through by that damned creature. This virus - that woman's virus - it wanted it all. It WANTED to be the Queen and it was barely being kept at bay by the drugs the BSAA had her on. Her brother, her friends, they'd tried so hard to help but her hold on the virus was weakening every day.

Never in her life had she ever wanted so badly to just let go.

"Is it just your blood, Claire? ...or is it more?" He asks her once more and she understands the finality of the question.

No.

Not since the first time they met before the outbreak and had their affairs under her brother's nose.

Not since he scented her once more in Antarctica and let her and her brother get away so very easily.

And certainly not since the last time they had danced like this together.

It has never been just her blood.

Her gun, towel, and his cigarette fall to the floor.

She feels her breath returning and leaving in the same round of seconds that she is hefted up the wall.

His fingers dig harshly into her thighs as they wrap high around his waist.

Hers clutch hopelessly to his shoulders and the last fragments of her humanity flee on the coat tails of her torrid cries.

Their crowns are formed in these wee hours of the night.

The room burns; they burn.

Long live Their Majesties, King and Queen of the world.