Chapter 35 #2
“Okay,” she said, nodding slowly as she waded closer to Sylvia, so their bodies were pressed flush together. “And are you planning on killing me?”
She raised a hand to Sylvia’s cheek, and Aster watched Sylvia’s chest shudder. Goosebumps spread across her arms, across the flesh of her neck.
Sylvia stared into her eyes with so much fear, it nearly made Aster’s heart break in half.
“No,” she said. “But what if I do it without meaning to? What if that’s just how it works? What if there’s something I’m missing—something I haven’t read yet?”
Aster smiled at her; smiled so she wouldn't do what she really felt like doing—which was cry.
Because, for as many years as she’d known Sylvia, it was only in that moment that she pieced together why she was such a voracious learner, an obsessive planner; why she read so obsessively, through the night and into the morning, illuminated by nothing but a tiny nightlight; why she always needed to be the smartest person in any room.
It wasn’t just ego. It was also, terror.
Deep and unshakeable doom.
“Sylvia Maroven,” Aster said quietly, stroking her fingers around the back of Sylvia’s neck. “I don’t mean to injure your gigantic ego, but don’t you think if I was that easy to break, the most powerful vampires on Earth would have managed?”
She dragged her free hand down Sylvia’s side until it was under the water, then skimmed it along Sylvia’s hip until it found her nervous hand, and squeezed it tight.
Sylvia shivered beneath her, but managed to laugh darkly all the same.
“You should never underestimate the monstrous size of my bad luck.”
“And you should stop underestimating just how much I’d fight to stay alive if it means spending one more precious, stupid second with you.”
Sylvia looked startled by that confession. Aster did, too; it lurched out of her with the same certainty she’d handed Sylvia the book, or helped her into the tub.
But when Sylvia recovered, it wasn’t fear in her eyes.
It was something that looked dangerously like—
“You have no self preservation instincts,” Sylvia said, shaking her head, but she was leaning towards her.
“I guess that makes us two peas in a pod.”
And Aster expected Sylvia to bite her, then—it would have made sense, with her fangs peeking out from between her teeth, and the flush on her face—but instead her trembling wet hand snaked around Aster’s neck, and she kissed her, hard.
The kiss went on, and on, Sylvia losing herself in it, her fingers itching in the back of Aster’s damp scalp, her naked chest sliding against Aster’s. And because Aster couldn’t resist, and also because she needed to nudge Sylvia gently back to reality:
“I thought we weren’t supposed to do that,” she whispered.
And because Sylvia could be on her deathbed and still be insatiably, incurably curious, she asked against Aster’s lips, “Do what?”
“Kiss outside of … sex.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Before Aster could reply, Sylvia drew away, and looked at her in a way she had never looked at her before—there was a freedom there that was hard to describe, trapped usually under so much fear. “I never meant that seriously.”
Aster licked her lips, her heart hammering. “I’m a stickler for rules, Sylvia. You can’t just say something and not mean it.”
“Fine. New rule, then.” She looked briefly terrified, but she seemed to swallow it down, a hard shot of liquor followed by a new confidence. “Let me kiss you forever, whenever I want to. And I’ll try to start being okay with wanting it.”
Sylvia bit her lip nervously. Aster’s heart veered on implosion.
But before she could say something incredibly stupid like Are those wedding vows? Sylvia’s eyes went wide, and she clutched her chest.
“Oh shit,” she muttered.
Aster shot up in alarm.
“What’s wrong?”
Aster could hear Sylvia’s heart skip several beats. Her pulse, which was normally like a comforting gong, had started hiccuping. Stopping altogether for a few milliseconds at a time. Aster knew vampiric hearts could take more of a beating, but this—
“Hm,” Sylvia said. “Yeah, that’s not great.”
Looking at the light fade, almost casually, in Sylvia’s eyes, Aster felt more alarmed than she’d ever felt in her life.
An indescribable fear that made her human again.
A fear that made her a little girl again, hiding behind the door, knuckles turning white as she watched Wilhelm take her father, then her mother.
Watched their bodies drop to the floorboards, bloodless, their mouths still open wide, like they’d died in the middle of the sentence.
Saw them shuffled away like dust into coffins hours later by the priests.
She had gone through life for so many years feeling powerless to death. Mystified by how easy it was to cause it—but how impossible it felt to prevent.
“Sylvia. Bite me,” she begged, holding the back of Sylvia’s head. “Sylvia.”
Sylvia shook her head vehemently, even as she clenched her chest.
“I can’t do it,” she said, through stuttering breaths. “I don’t trust myself.”
“Well, I do.”
Aster drew her own fangs down, and bit into her lip so hard it drew blood. A lot of blood. Dribbling down to her chin, curling around the base of her neck.
Sylvia’s eyes immediately darkened to near-black.
She could see the other woman fighting every instinct in her biology.
And Aster suddenly knew what Sylvia needed to hear.
“You’re not her, Sylvia,” Aster pleaded quietly, tears streaking down her face. “You’re not bad. You’re not beyond saving. You’re not unloveable. And you won’t kill everything that… that loves you.”
Sylvia swallowed hard.
“Fuck, Aster.”
She took in a long breath, and Aster could see the battle behind her eyes. One that had been waging for a long, long time.
But that was the funny thing—sometimes things that seem like they’ll go on forever can end in a single blink.
“I know.”
And she leaned in.
And nothing could have prepared Aster for the feeling of it.
She tucked her trembling fingers into the side of Aster’s face, and sucked on her lip like it was life-or-death—and Aster supposed it was—but it felt only like heaven as she felt her blood flow into Sylvia’s open mouth. Sylvia whimpered at the taste of it.
“I need to unwind you,” she said, voice breaking. “We can’t do it like this.”
Aster brought both arms around her, clinging to her so close that their bodies felt like one warm, damp, creature drowning in a pool.
“We have all the time in the world,” Aster said. “As long as you stay alive.”
Eventually, after a few minutes, the blood went dry from Aster’s lip, and as much as she wanted—needed—to keep kissing Sylvia, she had other priorities.
“Mouth’s not enough,” Aster breathed haggardly. “Drink from my neck.”
“Mouth’s plenty.”
“Sylvia.”
With a groan of protest, Sylvia moved to kiss her cheek, then her chin, blood streaking across Aster’s skin as Sylvia slowly made her way down to her neck. Aster thought—sensibly—she would stop there, but she kept going.
“What are you…”
“Lean back.”
Aster’s Thrall brain obeyed instantly. And she cursed herself when she felt water splash onto the floor, felt her body sag into the tub, vibrating, suddenly, with want.
Sylvia kissed down her chest, hands scraping at her sides. Aster felt her thighs squeeze involuntarily when Sylvia reached her stomach, kissing past her navel.
“Sylvia, I said, bite me,” Aster groaned.
And it must have been something in her tone—because Sylvia finally obeyed. Her fangs sunk in quick and fast into the flesh of Aster’s thigh, and they both moaned in unison.
Something in that action—in Sylvia obeying her—made a part of the veneer clouding Aster’s mind crack. Like taking a mallet to a piece of hard plastic.
“Fuck,” Aster moaned, letting her head hang back against the edge of the tub as Sylvia’s hands cradled her hips. “We’re not going to need that book.”
Sylvia’s fangs slunk out of her at her words, big cerulean eyes clouded as she looked up at Aster in a daze.
Aster decided in that moment that there would be nothing more beautiful than Sylvia Maroven—hair drenched, naked in a blood-red bathtub, looking at Aster like she decided the fate of everything—ever again.
“What did you say?” Sylvia whispered, her breath cool against Aster’s thigh.
Aster noticed that she was shivering much less. Just a few goosebumps left on her skin then. And her heartbeat was coming regularly now, beat after beat.
She’s okay. She’s okay.
So, with quiet relief, Aster said, “I think I figured out how to unwind myself.”
Sylvia’s eyes widened.
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be so cryptic,” Sylvia huffed—and oh, she was definitely feeling better, the audacity was coming back in waves—“How?”
Aster blushed. She looked away, toward the purling red water, which was rippling with every shallow movement Sylvia made.
Aster took in a long breath.
“This might get a little weird.”
“We’re swimming in a bathtub full of other people’s blood, Aster.”
“Fine. Do you trust me?”
Sylvia’s wordy mouth stilled. She laid her head against Aster’s thigh, staring up at her with a quiet intensity as the bath water lapped the blood from her lips.
“Completely,” she whispered, like she was in a confessional.
“Okay,” Aster said, threading her hands through Sylvia’s hair, and tugging it slightly, so she was looking completely at her.
She tugged deep into her own chest, past the anvil that was sitting over her heart, and she willed her own eyes to turn lightly red.
“Kiss me,” she said.
Instantly, Sylvia understood. She snaked up her body, and shoved Aster backward into the back of the tub—compliant, obedient, but never easy.
“Bite my neck,” Aster ordered softly next, and felt her mind strain to get the command out. But each time Sylvia obeyed, it hurt less; like Aster was a creature crawling in the sewers, rapidly approaching the light seeping through the grates.
“Yes, baby,” Sylvia murmured into her ear, and Aster groaned.
“Fuck. Call me that again.”
“Baby?”
“Yes.”