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There weren’t many lesbian bars in Berlin, it turned out.
This one was inconspicuous, down a secluded side street on the outskirts of the city. The butch on the door looked Daniel up and down – all 5'9 of her gangly frame – crossed her beefy arms, and let her through. The bar was down a flight of stairs and the smoke and pounding bass hit her like a wall as she slipped through the doors. The space was small, dark and full of bodies.
Daniel scanned for her, the same way she did entering any room. Wretched, necessary habit. It had been a month without a sighting, now. Prey between her teeth. Daniel itched for her to bite down.
She leaned up against the bar. The bartender, tall and feminine and a little in the image of her, raised an eyebrow at Daniel’s drink choice. Have at it, came Daniel’s gestured response, eyeing the other butches swigging beer and whiskey. She sipped at her grasshopper.
The change in her jacket pocket was running low. The last time she’d seen her she’d sprinkled a few handfuls of notes in various currencies at her feet, Daniel scrambling on her knees to pocket them as she turned on her heel and left. Daniel had learnt how best to hitchhike, to hide among cargo and ride unnoticed along the continent. She rarely paid for more than one of her drinks and scoring drugs was second nature. Still, though, in the mornings, washed out from the nocturnal frenzy that had led her halfway around the world, her stomach would grumble, and it was nice to exchange a crumpled up note for strong coffee and the local delicacy of wherever the hell she found herself.
Armand.
Armand, who’d chased her down across the continent. Armand, who could swallow her in a second. Armand, who kept Daniel alive on the simple condition that she continued to amuse her.
Yeah, maybe Daniel had a knack for getting herself into scrapes. It was where her best stories came from. But she’d bartered her tape recorder for a thick coat and boots without holes in them way back in the Nordic winter, and honestly it was difficult to see the spark of something interesting in anyone else when she was checking every dark corner for the most interesting person she’d ever meet. Tonight she was wearing a new shirt she’d stolen off a man she’d smoked a joint with – wide collar and enough buttons undone to show off a hint of her bound chest. She wore it better. It attracted the attention of a few femmes, a butch, some androgynous types. Daniel liked the attention. She imagined the bar watching as Armand grabbed her by the lapels, dragged her to her feet. She imagined Armand watching, amber eyes on her as the femme across the bar slid a hand down her chest.
‘What are you looking for, kid?’
The bartender – dark skin and black-lined eyes, was leaning on her elbows to look down at Daniel. The nickname grated, anachronistic, the woman no older than her. In her head Armand’s pretty, youthful lips curled around the sounds. Kid. Boy.
‘Another drink, mainly,’ Daniel said. ‘But you see –’
She lay out the contents of her inner pocket on the counter, fingering a pile of change, a little weed, a loose button.
The bartender tilted her head. Pretty neck, tall and thin like the rest of her. A long chain earring hung from one ear, grazing her collarbone when she moved. Was it Armand’s fault, that Daniel leered at necks like teenage boys leered at tits? She tried and failed to remember the origins of the habit. Meanwhile the bartender mixed a second grasshopper, pushed Daniel’s change back in her direction. Daniel nodded in thanks.
‘I look American?’ Daniel asked after her first sip. The bartender’s English was clear, voice deep and rich, spoken with a smooth English accent because of course it would be.
‘Something in the fashion sense.’ She nodded to Daniel’s belongings. ‘Backpacking?’
‘Hitchhiking.’
‘Hm. Lots of weird folks out there.’
Daniel laughed, then, stifling it quickly. Yeah, she could picture the scene now. Sad middle-aged guy, car full of peanut packets, takes wrong turns down country roads, reaches for Daniel’s thigh. Armand would probably smash through the car window, waiting at the roadside. Guy’s blood dribbling down her chin. She’d look at Daniel. Steal the guy’s car. Leave her on some abandoned stretch of countryside. Until the next time.
‘Fearless, huh?’
Ha. If only the angry scars on her jugular showed up better in the pulsing lights. The bartender’s eyes barely left Daniel’s as she poured two shots and pushed one Daniel’s way.
‘Aren’t you working?’
‘Slow night.’
Daniel squinted at the smoky haze of the bar around her. Lots of bodies, but, granted, they were mainly focused on how brazenly they could shove their hands down each other’s pants on the dancefloor. She clinked her shot glass against the bartender’s and winced at the burn of the alcohol.
The bartender laughed, and Daniel wanted to catch her thumb on her canines.
‘Sweet tooth, honey?’
Daniel fixed her eyes on her long nails, painted black, drumming against the bottle in her hand. Could they cut her open like Armand’s did?
The last time she’d seen Armand, she’d been coming down off a two-day bender with a couple of friends she’d never learned the names of, stumbling down a cobbled street through a warm Spanish night. Armand had pounced on her, and then she had her back against the wall in a narrow alley and a hand on her throat and a knee to her crotch and she’d smiled, such a tired, boneless smile. Armand hadn’t been gentle, hadn’t spoken – just torn into her and swallowed all that withdrawal, all of that ache for her, and it had been so good to be wanted. To be needed. Not a little drink – no, she could have told that from the size of Armand’s pupils when she grabbed her – Armand couldn’t hold herself back that night and when she left again, Daniel dropped to the ground, neck dribbling blood from an unhealed wound which she couldn’t keep her hands away from. A perfect mark. Her blood, thrumming now in Armand’s ancient veins. A string, tight between the two of them, Armand unseen but always close.
Always close. Daniel wanted her here. Wanted her watching. Wanted her to drop from the fucking sky and rip Daniel to shreds, she didn’t care.
Every corner, every window, every stranger opposite on the train – Daniel was being stalked, hunted. Every cell in her body electrified.
And yes, she wanted comfort, and yes, she could curl herself into the arms of some toothless reflection of Armand –
‘It’s Artemis, by the way,’ the bartender said, leaning closer. ‘You know, my shift finishes in an hour, if you wanted to –’
But Daniel was eyeing the door. Invisible string. Amber eyes. She pushed together her empty glasses and slung her backpack over her shoulder.
On the way out, she zeroed in on a punk at the edge of the dancefloor. Bleached blonde mohawk, leather, studs. A far cry from anyone Daniel was familiar with. She spoke no English, Daniel spoke no German. A negotiation, a hand bunched up in her metal band t-shirt. Daniel left with her.
*
Daniel led Katja – she’d managed to discern – to a nice-looking hotel she’d seen when she’d arrived in the city. She slipped a wad of cash from Katja’s bag and placed it on the reception desk with a crooked smile and a few garbled words from the phrasebook. She took the room key between her fingers and pushed Katja to the mirrored wall as soon as the elevator doors closed.
The girl was vocal, brash – voice hoarse, she guessed, from years of screaming at punk shows. She spoke aloud in German as though Daniel would understand her and Daniel liked the harsh consonants. They took a fumbling route through the corridor, all lips and teeth, winding around an older lady with a suitcase who barked what Daniel could only assume was abuse. Katja stuck up a middle finger, apparently universal. Daniel had fingers in the girl’s mouth as soon as her back was on the right side of their room door. The spiked up hair that ran along the centre of her head folded crisply to the side as she rocked with the movements of Daniel’s hand. She seemed like she might be the type to put up a fight, try to flip their bodies over. Daniel wasn’t in the mood. She held a palm, firm, against her sternum. When her fingers emerged smeared with black lipstick, a nod indicated to the girl to clean it up. Daniel breathed through her nose, giddy at the image of the pierced tongue against her skin. Seemed like the message had been received.
The room was nice – nicer than any of the places Daniel had slept from the last year, with a few exceptions for when Armand took pity on her and slipped her a key to the city’s nicest hotel, where Daniel wouldn’t rest but lay awake and wait in vain for her to join.
Armand hadn’t fucked her – not once – though she’d lost count of the times she’d fucked herself to the thought of those glasslike eyes. She drank from her, and that was enough – was more – was an opening up of herself, a dissection, an invitation for the vampire to take what she wanted, what she needed. She’d throw Daniel up against the wall, against the headboard, against the fucking floor, it didn’t matter – and Daniel would give herself over, bask in the sweet darkness.
Not now.
Daniel didn’t want a pale imitation of Armand. She wanted Armand. Wanted to taste her, be her. Wanted to pull their string taut and find the window she watched from. Wanted amber eyes on her as she fucked the girl.
She grabbed at the leather, cast it away roughly. Strewed clothing on the floor. Palmed at the girl’s pretty pierced tits. Left bruises up the column of her throat and took her earlobe, heavy with metal, between blunt teeth. It was true Daniel spoke no German, but she found she needed only gesture to push the girl towards the bed.
Pristine white bedding. Daniel wanted Armand, wanted her to paint it with her blood.
Two fingers, little warning. The girl was wet enough. Daniel was still fully clothed, all the way down to her boots. She wanted the girl’s mouth on them.
She liked the girl’s tattoos, pit hair, bush. Liked the way her face crumpled up at the stretch of a third finger, biting her own knuckles at the pace. She wanted to rough her up some, mark her. She wondered what her angular black makeup would look like run with tears.
Daniel – untouched, unmarred. Her skin reserved for Armand. Armand, who’d grab her from behind, sink her teeth into her neck as the girl underneath them hissed at the loss of pace. Daniel, who wouldn’t really care.
She pushed the girl back, pulled her fingers out, quick – watched her gasp at the loss and wiped her fingers against her cheek. A little degrading. A little cold. It made Daniel wet.
She travelled light, as a rule. Bartered most of her belongings for food or drugs way back. Still, there were a couple she clung onto. Daniel pulled down her jeans and boxers, slung her shirt to the corner of the room, and pulled her leather harness from her bag. She caught the girl’s dilated eyes as she attached her cock – simple, black, not an unintimidating size. God, she wanted to watch Armand sink down on it. Hell, she’d let Armand fuck her with it if she wanted to. Daniel, knuckle deep in the girl underneath her. Armand, hand around her throat, sinking it deep inside her. A dizzying phantom presence.
As it was, the room was empty save for Daniel and the punk, who, language barrier be damned, Daniel had ordered onto her knees beside the bed. Daniel smudged her thick eyeliner with a thumb. Hooked it around her lower lip and rested the tip of her cock there. The girl took it beautifully.
The black lipstick was all but gone, just a stark outline around the outer edge of her mouth. She didn’t have much hair to grip onto, but Daniel curled a fist around a mussed section of mohawk, earning a choked gurgle as she began to set the pace herself. Daniel pictured herself from the outside. Glanced to the still-open curtains. Pictured Armand, hunting her down. Renting a room in one of the hotels opposite. Spotting their silhouettes with a gasp. Touching herself, or biting herself, or whatever the hell vampires did. Trying hard not to knock down the door, smash open the window, and have Daniel right there among the debris.
Have her in what way, Daniel didn’t care. Fuck her. Bite her. Kill her. It didn’t matter. Daniel would rip open her chest for her, lay out her entrails. Lick her warm blood from her chin.
A string of saliva connected the punk’s smudged mouth obscenely to Daniel’s strap when she pulled her away. Daniel reached into her bag and tossed a bottle of lube at her feet. The girl didn’t protest. Daniel wouldn’t have understood it, anyway. She watched her squeeze some into her palm and slick up Daniel’s cock. She grabbed her hair again, rocked into her utilitarian strokes.
‘Face down,’ Daniel said, knowing it wouldn’t be understood – and the girl’s gasp was half-muffled by plush hotel pillows when rough hands on her hips flipped her over. Then the head was up against her, and Daniel grinned as she watched her grit her teeth, biting back a groan. She sunk inside her in one stroke, pressing her chest against her tattooed back. The girl was gripping hard onto the headboard bars, unspoken instinct that made Daniel smile.
Fucking her was easy – hard, fast strokes while she snaked her hands around the girl’s body to tug at pierced nipples or tease at her clit – grabbed at her hips to pull her back deeper into each movement or stretched her mouth with fingers so her moans became garbled and wet. She watched as the girl fell into her rhythm, wordlessly learning which sounds made Daniel grunt, made her reward her with a bite to her shoulder. Daniel watched her come – watched her arch and keen and drop, limp, to the mattress – and fucked into her still, the girl’s moans growing frantic as she stroked, hard, at her clit, her body seizing with overstimulation and her hands, despite it all, still white-knuckling obediently on the headboard. Daniel fucked her until she was red-faced, slack-jawed, her pillow wet with tears and drool and smudged with eyeliner. Her neck and shoulder were painted with bruises, marked with blunt teeth. She wondered what her blood tasted like now.
Daniel grew gentle, a lull as the girl beneath her rode out a shaky third orgasm. She stroked for a moment at her cheek, licking a stripe there through the tear-tracked eyeliner.
‘One more,’ she said into her ear, whispered praises washing over her in a foreign tongue.
She thought of Armand, who would hold her so gently, who would tilt up her chin and tell her what beautiful prey she was before she made her second, her third identical neck wound in a neat little line, cool tongue against hot blood. The multiples weren’t for practicality – if anything, they made the whole thing more difficult, and definitely messier – but because Armand loved to hear Daniel cry out, that unreachable moment of connection, that being consumed. And Daniel loved to offer herself up to her. Her perfect boy. Armand would tell her as much, blood dripping from the lips pressed up against her ear, or the words forced into her skull, ringing out even as Armand’s mouth filled with her.
Now she flipped the girl onto her back, some semblance of gentleness that disintegrated as Daniel buried herself back inside her in one slick move. She pulled the girl’s knees to her chest to allow her deeper and she settled a hand against her sternum as she pulled back and snapped right back in. The girl moaned like a wounded thing. Spent, swollen, red. And fuck, maybe Daniel did have a cold streak, because it made her fucking grin. One hand holding her down by the chest, the other pressing into her oversensitive clit. And as the girl’s mouth fell open, Daniel found a third set of eyes in the room.
Not in a bakery she walked past. Not peeking over the top of a newspaper on the bus beside hers. Here. Now. In her fucking hotel room. Amber eyes catching the lamplight and a body draped over the armchair in the corner as though this were the most normal thing in the world. She looked unaffected, leaning back, one leg bent casually over the other in spite of a long dress Daniel didn’t think she knew – silk, perhaps, or satin – and Daniel took a moment to realise the insanity of straining to identify the fabric of Armand’s dress when she was buried to the hilt inside the poor spent punk from the bar.
The punk, to her credit, was shaking around Daniel in a way that made clear she was close to the edge. She sobbed and she strained and she held tight to the shuddering headboard, Daniel’s rough fingers drawing fast circles as her grip on her hips pulled her down hard into every thrust. The light was low but Daniel swore she saw Armand’s nostrils flare, an unnecessary breath at the sight before her. The girl called out something in German and Daniel stuffed three fingers into her mouth, eyes on Armand’s until she leaned in to bite, blunt, at the girl’s pretty neck.
A hand in Daniel’s hair, then – but the punk’s were still gripping onto the headboard. She tilted her head for a glimpse of Armand, fangs sunk into the opposite side of the girl’s throat. Daniel listened to her cries, garbled words she didn’t understand, a fourth orgasm wrung from her body even as her strap stilled inside her. Armand was drinking messily, desperately – Daniel licking greedily at the remains dripping down the girl’s tattooed chest. Metallic, foul and infinitely erotic.
Daniel pulled back after a moment, the sounds of Armand feeding gruesome and wet in the quiet room. Daniel very suddenly felt herself drop back down to Earth.
She’d watched Armand hypnotise people before. Watched her freeze bystanders and security guards and cops in place, watched her compel people to hand over to Daniel the money in their wallets or merchandise in their shop windows that had briefly caught her eye. She’d watched her drain the will to live from a stranger who’d made a comment about Daniel as she walked down the street – watched the man reduced to begging Armand to compel him over the edge of the bridge he was eventually made to throw himself off. Once or twice she’d seen Armand warm, skin flushed with a little colour, and figured that must have meant she’d fed. But no matter how Daniel spun her fascination with Armand’s nature, Armand would not allow her to follow her on a hunt. Armand, as Daniel saw her, never had her hands dirty. Never let her guard drop. Most of the drinks she took from Daniel were neat, clean, measured. But the sight of her own blood on Armand’s lips made her wet. Daniel maintained a quiet fascination with the thought of the line of bodies Armand must leave in her wake.
The scene before her swam a little at the edges. Daniel thought she might be sick. She didn’t look away.
She watched, dumbfounded, the predator’s work. Armand – clean, measured Armand – seemed to luxuriate in the blood sliding messily down her chin, soaking into her dress – silk, it turned out. She pulled back with a soft gasp, blown vampiric eyes meeting Daniel’s as she licked the blood from her lips as though it weren’t soaking down to her chest. Armand took the lifeless thing by the shoulders and Daniel realised distantly that she was still inside it, pulling back quickly as Armand bundled it in a sheet. Daniel blinked as the punk’s eyes looked up at the ceiling. Katja’s eyes. Armand flipped the thing over.
She didn’t speak. Just looked at Daniel.
Daniel looked at her. Her predator. Her devil. Held here in stasis, dripping blood that wasn’t hers onto bright white hotel sheets. She watched a fang, still descended, poke at her lip. Watched Armand’s bloodied chest heave with shaky, unnecessary breaths – blood warming her cheeks as though the creature before her were close to human. But she wasn’t. She’d never been further. Slowly, slowly, Daniel drew close, and Armand gasped quietly as she began to lick softly at the fresh blood dripping down her chest. She brought a hand to her hair and cradled her there.
What a thing, to be held by the demon.
‘Who was she?’
Ah, Armand’s voice. Too long since she’d heard it last. She held Daniel’s head tight to her chest, pressing as though she didn’t want to be able to hear her muffled response.
‘Just some girl I met. What, I’m not allowed?’
Daniel let out an ah as Armand dug clawlike fingernails into her scalp in response.
‘She won’t touch the hole inside of you, pretty boy.’
‘Actually, I was kind of in the middle of touching hers.’
Armand flipped their bodies over before Daniel could even take a breath. Her laughter was cut off. Her vision swam as she looked up at the bloodied thing, eyes bright in the relative dark, straddling her stomach and warm, so fucking warm, where the space between her legs brushed Daniel. The air felt heavy.
‘What makes you so convinced I’m such a hole?’
Armand laughed, low and easy.
‘Sweet boy.’
She dragged two fingers down her own throat, gathering congealing blood. Daniel had her mouth open and waiting before Armand even offered them up. The taste was foul but the feeling transcendent.
‘Tell me –’ Armand was scratching her nails at the back of Daniel’s throat, watching her gag. ‘Did you let her treat you like this?’
A nail nicked Daniel’s tongue, her mouth filling with her own fresh blood. She swallowed some back, wondering for a moment if Armand would lean down, drink from the source. Daniel cursed herself for thinking so loudly as Armand laughed once more, gathering the blood and saliva on her fingertips and bringing them to her own mouth.
‘Good?’ she asked, mouth dry.
‘Eager.’
She returned her fingers to Daniel’s mouth, feeling around her blunt teeth like an examination. Daniel was happy to allow it. Her subject. Her boy. Her human pet.
‘How long have you been watching me?’ Daniel asked when Armand relented.
‘Oh, thirty-five days. Two hours. Fifteen minutes.’ As Armand spoke, she brought a glass of water to Daniel’s dry lips. Daniel allowed it, amber eyes on her as a little spilled from the corner of her mouth and down along the side of her jaw. ‘Tonight, specifically – at least two orgasms wrung from your companion.’
‘Huh. You like to watch?’
Armand wiped the smirk from Daniel’s lips, a warning hand on her jaw. The feeling sent a roll of heat through her. She thought of her, unseen, draped over the chair. God, she hadn’t even been touching herself. Did the detachment make it more depraved, somehow?
‘I came to see you. You were – otherwise engaged.’
‘Right.’ Daniel smiled inwardly. Armand could play aloof, sure. The blood-flushed heat she could feel against her stomach said otherwise. ‘And you just so happened to stumble upon a free porno – starring me – and hey, look, a convenient hot meal wrapped up just for you at the end of it.’
‘I’d watch your tongue, Daniel.’
‘Hey, tell me, are you still hungry? Since you definitely didn’t come here to drain the first bit of warm comfort I’ve had for months, I guess you’re wanting to add to the collection, right?’ She bared her bite marks, overlapping, all at various stages of healing. ‘Sorry about the preamble, why don’t you just go ahead and –’
‘– enough.’
Daniel mouthed silently around the remainder of her sentence. Found the air held suddenly in stasis between her lungs and the space outside. A flash of panic morphed into something else – a little humiliation, a little excitement. Armand’s eyes were fixed on Daniel, the irises fucking vibrating a little, if it wasn’t a trick of the light. Okay. Sure. An invisible gag.
See, Daniel had never been able to help being the kid who pokes the wasps’ nest with a stick. Came with the territory of being a little girl who looked like a little boy. Came with the territory of being a journalist, too. Cat and mouse, across Europe. The way Daniel saw it, the fun of it for the cat was in swatting at the mouse’s tail without delivering that final, killing blow. If the game hinged on the continued existence of the mouse, there was no reason why the mouse shouldn’t have fun with it, too.
But then Daniel had found herself pinned invisibly to the bed, and Armand had slipped out of her dress.
And Daniel had felt the panic that came when, stick in hand, the swarm emerged.
Her underwear was sheer. Barely there. It had probably cost more than Daniel was worth, and, god, it was perfect against the willowy frame she’d pictured so many times. Armand had little, pert tits, pretty, dark nipples peeking through the thin fabric. Daniel’s eyes raked over smooth skin, narrow hips, the hint of dark hair trailing down to her underwear. Fear coiled in her gut, sweet and addictive.
‘What do you suppose I’ll do with you, when you cease to fascinate me?’ Armand said, climbing back onto the bed and straddling Daniel’s thighs. ‘You dangling by your tail between my claws.’
Yeah, Daniel was never getting used to the mind reading thing. Her limbs snapped into spread-eagle position then, the movement easy and mindless, as though a doctor had tapped her knee with a hammer. There was another thing about Daniel. Terror and thrill were never fully disentangled.
Armand plucked out the thought. ‘Conservative way to put it, isn’t it?’
She sat in the space between Daniel’s thighs, framed obscenely by the cock still attached to her hips.
‘The thought of me killing you gets you hard.’ She looked up at her, eyes dark. ‘Am I right, Daniel?’
Daniel let out a shuddering breath – the noise sudden in the quiet room. She swallowed, finding the gag lifted.
Armand, unsatisfied, trailed two fingers through the air, and Daniel was seized with pain as she manipulated, untouched, the most recent of her bite wounds. The healing skin stretched unnaturally with the movement. Daniel strained, cried out, but the hold on her body was absolute. The pain sent a dark thrill down her spine, to her cunt, her cock.
‘Daniel?’ Armand’s voice brought her gently back to the present, her fingers digging agonisingly into her flesh. ‘I asked you a question.’
‘Does it –’ Daniel was pretty sure the wound tore open – ‘make you hard?’
Daniel sobbed, teeth gritted, body rigid. ‘Yes. Yes! It makes me wet, it makes me hard, it makes me – Jesus –’
The pain relented all at once. Armand, indifferent, knitted the skin back together, it seemed, with a flick of her wrist. Detached. Daniel wanted those hands on her. In her. Coiled around her guts.
Armand crawled further up the bed and tucked herself beside Daniel, stroking her curls. Hot and cold. Searing pain and gentle comfort. Armand lived in the extremes.
‘Mixed-up boy,’ she cooed, scratching a line into the side of Daniel’s face and immediately healing it on the upstroke. Daniel was still white-hot with the phantom pain in her neck. She shuddered into Armand’s touch.
‘You did well this month,’ Armand said.
Daniel was bleary-eyed. ‘Yeah?’
‘I enjoyed Luxembourg. Though I would be more careful next time with your selection of cargo to stow away among. The driver who took you east was an angry man and he came close to discovering you.’
‘What would you have done,’ Daniel found herself saying, voice weak, ‘if he had?’
Armand stroked her cheek with the soft pad of her thumb. Her voice was quiet. ‘Trusted in your self-sufficiency.’
Daniel wasn’t sure that was true. She saw Armand tear into the man, saw her look up at Daniel, wide-eyed and bloodied like an animal in a trap. Saw her, too, sitting back, watching what unfolded, noting how Daniel’s body bruised and reacted as though it were evidence to be collated. Waiting for her at the end of it all, nursing her experiment back to health. The images bled into each other.
‘Are you going to bite me now?’ Daniel’s voice was small.
‘Is that what you want?’
In response, Daniel tilted her head back, exposing her marked-up throat. It was a struggle against the mental constraints. It made her head feel fuzzy, like she might black out.
Armand smiled at her efforts, tracing the months of bite marks with a fingertip. Daniel ached for her to cut them open.
‘Tell me,’ Armand breathed, cold breath to the space below her ear. ‘Why did you choose her?’
Oh. Here they were again. Daniel squeezed her eyes shut.
‘I don’t know. I was at a bar. It’s been months. I’ve got needs, man.’
Armand laughed, breathy. It brought a blush to Daniel’s chest.
‘Needs,’ she repeated. ‘That doesn’t answer my question. Why her?’
Daniel thought again of the fucking corpse beside the bed.
‘I don’t know. She caught my eye. She was alternative.’
At that, Armand carved a line down the centre of Daniel’s chest, dragging down between the tape binding her at both sides. Daniel tried to arch off the bed, held tight in the vice, and keened instead.
‘You spoke not a word of each other’s languages.’
‘Okay! I didn’t want to talk!’
Armand relented, the cut having reached her navel.
‘She was different, I guess,’ Daniel said, quieter. ‘To you. I wanted something simple. Something to stop me thinking about you.’
Armand was on top of her again, and Daniel’s heart could have pounded from her chest when she leaned down to lick the blood pooling from the long wound. The skin knitted itself back together as she went.
‘Do you always seek to hurt your partners?’
There was that feeling again, that Armand was seeking data. A study of human sexuality, of Daniel’s psyche, made from the corner of her hotel room.
‘I didn’t want to hurt her.’ She had, a little.
‘To control her, then?’ Armand rose up, the smooth expanse of her body painted pretty with the girl’s blood. ‘To make her cry.’
A flash, then, of a girl back in Modesto, feminine and pretty and sick with shame, who’d slid her hand down Daniel’s chest only once she could be sure they were alone, and confessed. Daniel, who’d watched the girl place a bag over her head and got off listening to her cry. The girl, who could slip back into pretending at school the next day, and Daniel, gruff voice and strong arms and cropped hair, who could not.
Armand wrapped her fingers around the head of Daniel’s cock then placed them in her mouth. Daniel licked them clean of chemical lube and the musky taste of the dead girl on the floor. All the while, Armand stroked her hair, the weight of her fingers melting into something comforting.
‘Tell me how she tastes,’ she crooned, not removing her fingers.
You tell me, Daniel thought before she could reconsider. And Armand laughed, pulling her hand back and tracing her nails down Daniel’s throat so pointedly that Daniel was sure she was going to cut her open.
Instead, she slipped down the bed and closed her lips over the tip of Daniel’s strap. Daniel, for once, was pleased she couldn’t feel the damn thing, otherwise she was pretty sure this would have taken an embarrassing turn. Every muscle in her hips tensed to buck off the bed, then kept the tension there, deathly still. A desperate cry that rivalled any one of the punk’s slipped from her lips.
Armand, playing badly at unaffected, rose to her knees. ‘Warm. Human.’
It hit Daniel, then, perhaps belatedly, that she was going to have sex with Armand. Armand, who had always held herself at a distance. Armand, who followed her, found her, took what she needed. Who never deigned to answer questions. For whom she was a doll, a pet, an amusement. The devil on her tail had her pinned here and Daniel felt fucking high at the thought that the awful thing wanted her.
Armand let her little sheer bra drop from her chest and stepped out of her underwear. Her head was down, pretty curls obscuring Daniel’s view of her face. When she met her eye, she looked oddly vulnerable, for a moment – shoulders close as though Daniel hadn’t been naked and spread out for their entire exchange.
‘Come here,’ Daniel said, softly, and once Armand returned to the bed, the vulnerability was gone, so completely gone that Daniel wondered if it had all been a trick of the lamplight.
Armand nicked Daniel’s bound wrist with a fang and gathered the blood on her fingers. Daniel swore under her breath as Armand bit off the tips of three nails and reached behind herself. She ached to hold her pretty tits, stroke her thighs. To follow the line of the arm she couldn’t see and feel the movements of her long fingers. To slick up her own and push inside her.
As it was, she could only manage to flex her fingers a little, body locked in place. The movement was small, but it made a bead of fresh blood form at the tiny cut in her wrist. Armand clocked it. It made her moan.
‘Pretty boy,’ she said, breathy. ‘Handsome boy.’
She pulled the bloodied fingers from herself. Daniel wanted them. Daniel wanted her.
‘Use me,’ she said, barely audible. ‘Use me, please. Use me, take what you need.’
Daniel would let Armand kill her, right now. She’d take it. She imagined it, her vision swimming and darkening and her slowing mind so full with the knowledge that Armand was taking what she wanted. That she was needed. Her blood. Her body. Her very self.
This wasn’t so different, she thought, as she watched Armand press down slowly onto her strap. She was open-mouthed, panting, skin flushed with the recent meal that she was still painted in. She took Daniel, inch by inch, until finally she was resting against her hips. She braced her hands on Daniel’s stomach, heaving unnecessary breaths.
Then she pushed herself up and right back down.
Fucking hell. Daniel was panting, groaning with each movement. Her mind and body strained, white at the edges of her vision, against the invisible force pressing down on every part of her. And this was Armand’s design. For Daniel to watch her, unmoving, untouched, unable to reach out to her. Armand was sweating – little beads just visible at her hairline. She ground her hips, crying out when she hit the right spot. Daniel’s teeth were gritted, bared. She wanted to fuck up into her. The scene playing out was depraved.
‘You’d really – ah – you’d really let me do it?’
Armand’s voice was pitched higher than usual, one hand braced cooly on Daniel’s thigh as she ground in quick little circles.
Daniel’s mind was foggy. ‘Do what?’
‘Kill you.’
Daniel nearly laughed. Nearly, but then Armand was letting out a series of little whimpers as she moved and Daniel was back to being awestruck.
‘I mean,’ she swallowed dryly. ‘That’s where – hm – where this whole thing is going, right?’ She bit her lip hard. ‘Cat catches mouse.’
‘Are you not caught?’
Daniel considered around a shuddering breath.
‘You tell me.’
Armand smiled at the repeated words. Smiled, and then whimpered, face folding up prettily. She was close, if the fang peeking from between her lips was anything to go by. Daniel was pretty sure she was, too, cunt still bared and untouched where her legs were spread open.
‘Use me,’ she said, once more. ‘Have me. Take what you need. Please.’
Armand stilled, just for a moment. Then Daniel felt her body move, commandeered again, prickling back into life like she had pins and needles everywhere at once. She was sat upright, Armand still riding her lap, their faces close. Coordination came back to her slowly, and she didn’t wait for it, throwing her arms messily around Armand’s back and raking them up and down her skin as though trying to feel every cold inch of her at once. She held her hips, snaked a hand up her stomach. Cupped a breast and swiped a thumb over the nipple, feeling the stutter of Armand’s hips in response. She braced her hands there and thrust up into her in time with her movements.
Armand keened, the sound cut off suddenly as she buried her face in Daniel’s shoulder. Fangs – yes – and searing hot pain and the rush, finally, of her blood into Armand’s waiting mouth. She drank messily, moaning into Daniel’s skin, grinding her hips down into her. Then her hand found Daniel’s and she dragged it by the wrist to the space between her legs, showing Daniel how she liked to be touched with her hand bracing hers. She was blood-hot and gorgeous, Daniel providing a little friction for her to grind against until she cried out, high and beautiful, into her bleeding shoulder and slumped, panting, against her.
And Daniel held the gorgeous, inhuman thing there, lapping at her wound.
‘Tell me,’ Armand said, breathless against her shoulder, ‘beautiful boy. Do you want me to catch you?’
Stick. Wasps’ nest. Was Daniel always going to have ended up here?
‘What would it mean, if you did?’
Armand stroked at Daniel’s hair, slow.
‘You’d be mine,’ she said. ‘No more running. I’d grant your every wish.’
Daniel smiled. ‘Sounds dreamy.’
Armand lifted her head, eyes bright.
‘I’m speaking honestly. Pick a city. I’ll take you there. You’ll want for nothing, beloved.’
‘Hm, they always love me with my dick inside them.’
Daniel’s eyes were half-lidded, smiling lazily, body spent. Armand frowned, a new energy about her. Then she nicked a cut in her own wrist, blood beading quickly.
‘Do you know what the taste of vampire blood does to a human?’
Armand was watching the blood drip down the side of her arm. Daniel watched her, then the blood. She was pretty sure she might have some Pavlovian associations to work through after tonight. Huh. She figured she was in this deep.
‘You wanna show me?’
Armand’s eyes were wide, bright amber, her hand on Daniel’s face.
‘An exchange would bond us, Daniel. Irrevocably. A string binding us, blood to blood.’
Distantly, Daniel thought of her blood in Armand’s veins. Her blood, keeping her warm. Her blood, needed, wanted.
She watched Armand’s blood drip once, twice, onto the ruined sheets. An offering of herself. A reciprocation. A want, a need.
God, who else was ever going to understand her now?
Daniel closed her mouth over the cut. Potent, rich, all-consuming death. A high that hit her like a freight train. Fingers, all at once, on her cunt and imprecise, perfect friction that had her arching into Armand even as she pulled her wrist from her mouth. Daniel chased it, held back with a hand to her chest, and then lips were on hers, cold, dead lips and the addictive sting of two bloods mixing in their mouths. She came like that, pressed up against cold skin.
‘You like New York?’ she asked as she caught her breath, hot under the curtain of Armand’s hair. She felt her laugh against her.
‘Yes. I like New York.’ Armand kissed her neck. ‘Is that a yes?’
‘I’ll think about it.’