Chapter 15 #2
Aster’s brow creased. She began to feel self-conscious.
“So you’re bothered by my… lack of experience?”
Sure, it wasn’t much by vampiric standards, but she’d definitely done it more than most of the mortals Sylvia brought home. Why should she be held to a different standard?
Sylvia answered that question with another rude laugh.
“Not at all. If anything.” She lowered her voice. “I like teaching.”
Aster groaned embarrassingly just at the tone of it, and pressed her hips desperately into Sylvia’s hand. But Sylvia refused to move her fingers anymore. Apparently, they had ended up in a Serious Discussion. One that Sylvia viewed as more important than getting Aster off. A tragedy.
“I just… It’s hard for me to get in the mood when – when I’m wracked with this guilty conscience. I don’t do well with guilt, you know. I feel it so rarely that it gives me hives.”
She took Aster’s hand and splayed it against her arm, which was covered in a thin layer of barely-there goosebumps. Sylvia sported her best pity me expression. Aster rolled her eyes.
“Those aren’t hives.” This idiot. “And what do you have to feel guilty about?”
Sylvia sighed, withdrawing completely from Aster and sitting up on the bed. Aster missed her touch with an ache she wasn’t proud of.
“Because the bite is the only reason you feel this way. You’d still be a little celibate nun otherwise,” Sylvia said, looking at the chipped white plaster of the walls and running a hand through her hair.
She had that cruel, vacant look about her that she got when she was about to confess something vulnerable.
“And I did that to you, like some kind of fucked up sex spell, and now I’m…
taking advantage of the consequences. It makes me feel like a predator. Like a…”
Like a beast, went unsaid, but Aster knew that’s what her mother would always call her.
Catrina had not been a fan of Sylvia’s proclivities towards women.
It was a wound that went deep and scarred badly, and Aster could see it re-open in Sylvia’s stilted expression.
It immediately made Aster want to reach out and cover her in kisses. But fear kept her frozen.
Sylvia bowed her head, and when it nodded up again, she had this sad smile on her face.
“I know. I know. The ancient vampire has her panties in a twist about being a predator, of all things. You’re allowed to laugh. It’s funny.”
But Aster, mouth open in disbelief, didn’t laugh. Even though Sylvia was right that it was absolutely comical. Just not for the reasons she thought.
It was comical because it should be Aster having these anxieties; how if anyone was using anyone else, it was Aster taking advantage of her.
Because every time Sylvia pressed a light, almost tender kiss to her head, her shoulder—she got to pretend for a moment that in Sylvia’s mind she was doing it because she loved Aster.
Wanted her beyond the confines of friendship or sex.
But she wasn’t about to say that. She was too selfish; she was enjoying this too much. It couldn’t end so quickly. She felt like a child trying to save a snowman from melting in the rain.
She rose to a sitting position to match the other woman. She took Sylvia’s hand and squeezed it tightly.
“I want this, Sylvia.”
She hoped that was enough. She didn’t trust herself to expand on the point.
Sylvia, after all, had always been the talker between them; unlike Aster, who had been mute for years as a child.
Her parents had to bribe her to speak by offering her favorite meals for dinner, or promising her extra time to play after the field work.
Omission had always been how she protected herself.
Sylvia frowned, her eyes imploring. “But how do you know if it’s what you really want, deep down? If you didn’t want it before?”
And now, of course, because this was Sylvia, (The Inquisitor, the Detective, the Relentless Asker of Questions) they were debating the nature and ethics of desire when Aster would much rather have Sylvia’s fingers knuckle-deep inside of her.
Aster once again takes a note from Sylvia’s playbook. “Well, did you want me before this?”
And if Aster had been any other person, she wouldn’t have noticed the brief panic that struck Sylvia’s expression.
Because Sylvia doesn’t show panic like a normal person.
It was a minute change of expression—her lip twitched, and the tips of her ears went bright red.
But the rest of her was stock still. Even her hand, which Aster was still holding gingerly, didn’t move an inch.
She swallowed, then licked her lips. “Occasionally,” she said, as impassively as one could say anything. But the information immediately pummeled Aster like boxing gloves.
Aster’s cheeks were heated and she couldn’t help herself but ask, “When?”
Sylvia looked down to study her nails, treating this turn of discussion as if it was the most boring thing in the world.
Which Aster knew it was obviously not. “When? I don’t know.
A handful of times. It’s not like I wrote a journal about it.
” She lowered her voice mockingly. “Dear Diary, today I was besotted with the desire to fuck the living daylights out of my roommate…”
Aster let out a sigh that was both exasperated and needy. “Sylvia.”
Sylvia’s expression twitched into a scowl.
And suddenly Aster’s wrists were up in the air—Sylvia had grabbed both of them—and in the next blink she was being thrown down on the bed, and Sylvia was straddling her from above, breathing heavily, her lips levitating inches from Aster’s face.
Her fangs had flashed out of her in a moment’s notice.
“Fuck it. Fine. You want me to fuck you, is that it?” Sylvia asked again, raggedly. “You won’t stop thinking about it until you’ve come around my fingers?”
Seeing Sylvia’s teeth, the red in her eyes, Aster descended back into another mind space completely, every other thought in her head shot with a gun. “So much,” she whined back.
“Tell me how much. Tell me what you want.”
Aster could tell from Sylvia’s expression, thoughtful and frowning, that she wasn’t asking for the sake of it. She needed to hear it. That she wouldn’t be able to keep going otherwise.
Aster was more than happy to oblige. She closed her eyes, and imagined everything she’d been keeping in a tight lockbox in her head, letting it loose like Pandora’s Box.
“I want…” She moaned. Sylvia rewarded her by sliding her fingers back down to her underwear.
“I want you to bite me while you fuck me. I want to—ah—I want to come while you’re drinking from me. ”
“Oh god, Aster.” Sylvia looked like she could cry just at the idea of it.
Aster processed this with a blink. She really likes it when I talk.
Sylvia bit down hard on her own lip, and looked toward Aster’s neck, towards the wound they kept re-opening. But there was still a shadow of uncertainty there.
Deciding in an instant, Aster took Sylvia’s chin with her hand.
“Sylvia,” she commanded with a whine. “Start touching me right now, and I’ll keep talking, okay? I’ll tell you everything I want. Can you do that for me?”
She had no idea what possessed her to speak like that, but the way Sylvia’s eyes immediately darkened to two black marbles, her mouth opening, her eyebrows lifting, spurred her on.
Sylvia nodded slowly, obediently, and like magic, her fingers began to work against Aster’s clit, drawing perfect circles that made her nearly come undone in an instant.
“‘S that okay?” Sylvia mumbled, searching her eyes for approval.
Taking in her suddenly small, nervous expression, Aster was overcome with an amount of adoration for her that she couldn’t contain. She took both her hands and cupped Sylvia’s face, kissing her tenderly on the lips before whispering. “It feels—ugh—perfect. You’re perfect.”
She saw Sylvia’s cheeks light up pink, her eyebrows raise, and it just made Aster’s heart ache even more.
Has anyone ever told her that before? It occurred to Aster then that the only partners Sylvia ever had were humans—short-lived, single day dalliances—and even if they did make Sylvia feel good, it’s not like she could ever earnestly believe the praise they’d laud on her.
Aster was in a unique position that she’d known Sylvia for almost half her life. Her words meant something different to her. They carried a weight.
I need her to know.
She kissed Sylvia again softly on the mouth. “You are so perfect.”
Aster meant it. She was afraid of just how much she meant it.
But she could say it under the guise of sex, use the plausible deniability that it was just something that jumped out of her under the influence.
That’s what she’d do, she decided. She could say whatever she wanted to, because this was another world—and if Sylvia asked about it later, she’d just wave her hands.
Sylvia pushed a finger into her, and Aster moaned obscenely.
As she began to pump into her with a rhythm, Aster kissed Sylvia again, and Sylvia whimpered into it, almost as if fucking Aster was doing more to her than the other way around.
An idea that was confirmed by the way Sylvia had begun to rut into her; Aster raised her thigh to give her something to attach to, and Sylvia immediately moaned.
Aster dragged her fingers through Sylvia’s hair possessively. “Ready to go again so soon?”
“Just— keep talking,” Sylvia whined, arching into Aster.
Aster didn’t think anything could turn her on more than the small, neediness in Sylvia’s voice when she asked her that. She could do nothing but oblige as she rode Sylvia’s fingers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this turned on in my life,” Aster confessed, and Sylvia blinked down at her like it was a revelation from God.
“It’s almost terrifying. Like, I’ve been horny before, but it’s always felt like — like this chore I need to take care of.
Like cleaning. Doing the dishes. But fuck, Sylvia… ”
Sylvia moaned, and slotted another finger into her. Aster nearly saw white.
“And now?” Sylvia asked, biting down on her lip. “How does it feel now?”
She cupped Sylvia’s cheek as she rolled her hips down and moaned.
“It feels like I need you to fuck me every day of my life. I wish I was joking. I’m — I’m not.
I always knew vampires were supposed to have — high libidos.
Insatiability is a hallmark of the species.
But I didn’t understand it until now. I think I might have to – I might have to beg at your door every morning for you to come deal with me, or else I’ll— I’ll… ”
“Oh fuck, I can’t take it,” Sylvia cried, and plunged her fangs into Aster’s neck.
And Aster hadn’t been joking about that, either. There was no pleasure on Earth or in Heaven like the feeling of all of it at once—of Sylvia’s mouth on her neck, her fingers deep inside of her, thrusting over and over, almost helpless, of every part of them connected—except one.
Aster wanted to bite her back, too.
And she almost did it, almost pressed her teeth down into Sylvia’s neck, only the moment she thought to, her orgasm pushed her over the cliff and shoved her aside. Tears, wet and salty pressed to Sylvia’s shoulder as she let out a whine, coming desperately on Sylvia’s hand.
“F—fuck, I came,” Aster said, so Sylvia could slow down her fingers.
But the other woman didn’t hear her. She was arching helplessly on Aster’s thigh, and Aster quickly moved her own hand to touch Sylvia under her dress—how had they still not taken their clothes off?—and felt her arousal build again, almost instantly when she felt how wet she was.
Aster used her other hand to thread her fingers through Sylvia’s hair, pressing her down into her neck and sighing. “Come for me, baby,” she said softly. “Please. Baby. I need you to come for me. I need to feel you come all over my hand again like before. Please—”
Sylvia whined so loud Aster was surprised the Airbnb’s windows didn’t shatter, the vampire coming with such an urgency that she took an entire bite out of Aster’s shoulder as wetness sprayed around Aster’s fingers.
Aster hissed, the pain electric and terrible.
But it faded almost immediately when Sylvia drew back and she saw the look on her face—terrified, helpless.
“Oh god, Aster, I’m so sorry. I–”
Aster leaned forward and captured her lips, the blood intermingling between them.
There was no hesitance when she pleaded, “Fuck me again.”