“Promise?”
“I swear.” He brought his other hand up to my cheek and traced it. “But for now, missy –“ he stood, and pulled me up after him. “You need to get to bed. But don’t take any clothes off right now – if you do I’ll never find the strength to leave.”
I crossed my arms belligerently. “I’ll take pity on you, this time. Only once though.”
“Thanks,” he said, coming in for a kiss.
* * *
We stumbled down the stairs, kissing and groping, unable to let tonight finish, until his coat was on and he was at my door, kissing me against it, one hand on the knob, unable to leave me.
“I want you again, Angela,” he said, his breath hot on my neck.
“I want you too,” I whispered back, having visions of him taking me here in my kitchen, on all fours on the tile. Then there was a sound above us, and we both froze, the spell momentarily broken. I used the opportunity to dart away – I couldn’t do anything wild like that where Rabbit would find out. And if he heard us and woke up all the way now – the thought of that was like cold water down my spine.
Mark was not similarly tortured, and took a step near, closing the space between us until I put a hand out to stop him. “You have to go.”
“I do,” he reluctantly agreed.
“Promise me one more thing first?”
“Anything.”
“If you touch yourself again tonight, you have to think of me.”
A sly smile crossed his face. “I would have, anyways.”
I grinned back at him, helplessly, not trusting myself to kiss him again. “Go on then. Get.”
He leaned in and kissed me one more time, before finally leaving.
Chapter 7
There was only one place in Vegas I could go to in this condition, one person that would understand, who wouldn’t ask questions, mostly. Francesca’s.
Francesca’s place occupied a small office park, and all the offices were technically there for business, just not the kind that required secretaries or HR. Or maybe they did, I really wasn’t up to date on Las Vegas tax codes where dungeons were concerned. I parked my car in the back, walked past a row of rentals, the occasional Tesla, and one very out of place mini-van, before knocking on a completely non-descript door.
I knew someone was looking at me through the one-way glass on the other side, then I heard a key move a lock, and Vincent’s face loomed, the bouncer for tonight.
“You look like shit.”
“Thank you for stating the obvious, Vincent. Is the lady in?”
“Of course. She’s busy though.”
The hunger wound its way up through my gut and into my chest. It would be so easy to push the door open and bleed him. “Can you get me a room?”
“As a favored freak, yes.”
He undid another lock which let the door further open – if you were going to clean up before a raid, you needed all the excuses to slowly lawfully cooperate you could find – and I slid in.
Francesca’s entry way was done in tastefully minimalist décor, like an upscale spa, and there was a well dressed secretary frowning at me from the far side of a polished desk. “Jack,” she tsked.
“Janice,” I acknowledged her with a tight smile, and tried to ignore the way my hunger coiled, waiting.
“This way,” Vincent said, and led me down the hall.
The building still retained its general office-like nature, but Franny had made a ton of upgrades, from replacing the shitty drop down ceiling with stamped tin and soundproofing all the doors. Every window we passed was tinted, except for the ones of people paying extra for the thrill of being seen.
Despite Franny’s best efforts, I could still smell what went on here, the dual scents of
want
and
need
. This place’d been going for so long, they’d probably never air out.
Vincent opened a door revealing a cramped room full of metal shelves with bottles on them, brooms and mops. “You can wait in here.”
“Is this a closet?”
“You’d be surprised how many affairs start in office closets. Sometimes people like to reminisce.”
I stared at him. His face was so implacable, I could never tell when he was joking. Vincent was the living embodiment of the words ‘seen it all’.
“Sure.” I wasn’t in any position to argue. I went in and sat down, all the better to keep my remaining blood inside me. At least this room was windowless. “Tell Fran to hurry, will you?”
“Will do,” he said, then both closed and locked the door, which I was grateful for. I lay down and tried to meditate my hunger away.
***
This was an only recently acquired skill. I knew certain vampires managed to perform something like suspended animation, to find freedom from the urge to feed by slowing incredibly down. I hadn’t figured out all the kinks yet, but I wanted to.
I’d never been addicted to anything in real life – the life I’d had before my vampirism. But I’d known enough addicts, closely, to know that that’s what this was like. This whole-body longing, every cell calling, down to the fiber of my theoretically lost soul. Everything in me wanted to feed, and not just feed, but glory in the blood. Make a show of taking it, run someone down, them knowing they were going to die just as I knew I was going to kill them. To wait until the last possible moment when they were trembling helplessly in my arms and bite. To taste the salt-bitter-sour, like sucking on pennies, the heat of their blood on my tongue. To feel the stillness emanate from them, as they died, as the life they’d possessed poured into me. Did Paco know how close he’d been to dying – I’d bitten him at least a hundred times – when if for a second I let the hunger rule me it would take him? I thought maybe he did. Maybe it was why he loved me. I was the personification of his secret wish to die, more dangerous than any gun.
I visualized my hunger as an amorphous beast, an animal I could not fully comprehend, like something swimming in the deep ocean, and tried to let it wash over me. Yes, it was everywhere, yes it was all the time, but we were separate, it and I. I could acknowledge it and move on. I could stay still, battered by its waves, yet remain afloat.
I was concentrating so hard on this that I didn’t know how much time had passed when I next woke.
“Jack?” said a melodious voice.
I blinked awake – the hunger had abated, somewhat – and my nice leather jacket was in tatters around my arm, cut up to the elbow, where Franny had inserted an IV. Red cabled down from a bag of blood like licorice.
“You’re on your second,” she informed me.
And after that, I noticed the blindfolded woman at my hips, kneeling politely, stroking my cock.
“Franny –“ I complained, swatting the woman’s hand aside.
“Hey Jack,” the woman said, companionably.
“Sarah? Sarah.” I recognized the curve of her smile and the straightness of her hair. “Goddammit.”
“Don’t be angry. She’s blindfolded. And if anyone knows the value of a good blindfold, it’s me.”
I gave Franny a look that was supposed to convey, “
How many more people need to know my secret?
” While Franny telegraphed back, “
Look, you’re the one who showed up here half dead
,” with an arch of a well-plucked eyebrow.
I rocked back and pulled up my pants, as Francesca stood and gave the IV bag a squeeze, pulsing more blood into my arm. Tonight she was wearing completely skin tight latex, from her ankles to neck – I had no idea how she got into or out of the thing, I supposed she had helpers for that, and was wearing a fabulous wig of curly blonde hair which poofed out evenly on all sides. She’d chosen C-cups for the evening, but I’d seen her before in falsies all the way out to GG’s, with complicated non-BDSM harnesses behind her back.
Once upon a time, Francesca had been Frank, which was when we’d met, becoming fast friends after I’d given him a late-night tattoo. Perhaps he’d sensed the deviancy from the norm in me, or I in him, but he’d trusted me enough to tell me when his gender and his occupation changed: from a moderately good EMS tech to an amazingly good drag queen and master of a series of increasingly nicer dungeons, culminating in this one. Somewhere along the way I’d come clean myself – I think right after Franny explained medical play. Some people were into bloody kinks. It wasn’t a guaranteed thing – but if she ever got any, she froze it special in a locked freezer and texted me. Blood divorced from consequences and guilt? Sign me the hell up.
Fran took the bag off the pole and rolled it like a tube of toothpaste, pushing the last of the contents inside me. I felt much, much better now – looking down, I could see the holes on my shirt where the lead’d gone in, but only smooth skin behind. Eventually I’d cough up the buckshot or shit them out – being a vampire was odd. And where my ribs had been rubbing, they were solid now, I gave them a poke. Fran chased the last bit up blood into me, then pulled out the IV, wheeling the whole contraption into the back, hiding it behind a shelf.
“You can get up now, Sarah.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” she said, rising as smooth as any geisha. She didn’t move like I’d have moved, stretching out kinks. The only thing she had to betray she’d ever been uncomfortably sitting for so long were red spots on her knees, clearly visible beneath her short-short skirt.
“And you may take off your blindfold and leave.”
“Thank you, Mistress.”
Sarah did as she was told. She looked at me, and gave me a satisfied smile – Sarah was a service sub, through and through. The men of Vegas’s tourism had little use for her, as most of them longed to be dominated themselves, but when she performed for the right dom, she was spectacular.
“Till next time, Jack,” she said, lunging in for a kiss, before racing for the door.
She was also a little bit of a brat.
Francesca turned back to me, and gave me a look. “You don’t call, you don’t write – and then you show up, looking like that?”
“I’m sorry Fran. I’ve been busy and –“ Telling her everything would feel good. I wanted to understand what the hell had happened – why that strange biker hadn’t died. But her eyes squinted at me and her red lips curled into an appeasing grin. “…What?”
“You know how you’re always saying you owe me?”
I suddenly wondered if I’d made the right choice, not chasing Murphy into the desert. “Yeah?”
“Time to pay up. And then I’ll hear all about whatever the hell happened to you later tonight. I’m interested, darling, I am, but you coming here is something of a god send.”
And knowing what went on inside these walls -- “How so?”
“I’ve got a couple. They’re new to me – but they both claim to want a cuckold.”
“Awwww – Franny –“
“No. It’s perfect. You’re scary enough that she won’t say yes unless she’s really into it. And behind one way glass, he can beat off confidently, knowing that a mom of three isn’t going to leave him for you. You being who you are, of course.” She waved a hand to indicate my intricate tattoos.
It was ironic, considering the woman I’d lusted after longest without success was also a mother. But what would Angela think of me, if she knew what I was?
“Plus you’re all I’ve got. They rolled in late, no appointments. Rude, but with a lot of cash. Soooooo,” she said, grabbing my arm and propelling me down the hall. “Take a shower and then get in there, slugger.”
* * *
Francesca had thought of everything – the showers were just as nice as the rest of the rooms here, except for the rooms that were disgusting on purpose of course. I thought they might be for employees, then realized it was possible people wanted to enact assorted shower-scenes like they’d watched in porn. I opened a fresh bar of soap and scrubbed up.
I’d read somewhere once that ‘Mood’s a thing for cattle,’ meaning that one ought to always be in control of one’s self. Self-aware adults don’t always get the luxury of feeling out of sorts – or headachy, as the case may be. And tonight, neither did I. I turned the water off, and reached for a towel.
Franny had put out a blood-free outfit for me to wear, much like the one I’d lost – jeans, T-shirt, white this time, and another black leather jacket. The shirt and jeans didn’t really fit, too small and too big in turns, but the jacket – I ran a hand over the smooth leather after I put it on.
“Exceptional. As always,” Fran said, coming into the room she’d led me to.
“This is what I’m wearing in their fantasy?” I found that hard to believe.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to stay on long.”
A bed occupied the center of the room, neatly made with nice sheets, a nightstand on each side, and a leather chair sat in the corner.
“Is that where he’s going to be?”
“No. I’ve arranged the cameras for him –“ she pointed at the ceiling, where small red lights shone.
“Is he up there already?”
“Ready and waiting.”
I strode over to the chair, sat down, slung a leg over an arm, and looked up at the nearest camera. “Thanks for letting me fuck your wife,” I said loudly.
“Jack!” Franny protested.
I gave her a bemused look. “That’s what he wants, isn’t it?”
“You are incorrigible.” She put her hands on her hips, surveyed the room, and then nodded to herself, satisfied. I was glad one of us was. I watched her walk out.
* * *
Living in Vegas I was well aware of all the different ways that sex could be transactional, from the brothels far outside of town, the card-clickers on the corners creating litter, the vast abyss of the internet. Anything from a blow-job to an orgy could be bought here, including, apparently, me.
I was slouching into the chair, trying to look like I did this sort of thing all the time, when she walked in.
She was as tall as I was, thin and angular like a ballerina, her chest almost flat. Her hair was in a flapper-ish dark brown bob – all the better to be out of children’s sticky hands. She had on khaki trousers and, I swear to god, a mint green sweater set, pearl buttons clasped all the way up. There was a ring on her finger, and her thin lips were pulled into a worried line. She stood just inside the doorway, and I could feel her judging me.