Chapter 9
Sylvia didn’t respond immediately. At least not verbally. Physically, Aster felt the other woman’s body tense. Her muscles contract. Her pulse quicken in her neck.
“Aster...”
Sylvia laughed against her chest, her hot breath falling on Aster’s neck. To Aster’s surprise, Sylvia didn’t pull away—instead, she tightened her grip around her, locking her in a chokehold of a hug. The other vampire lowered her nose to Aster’s neck.
“Yeah?” Sylvia said, and it sounded shy.
Shy. Oh, Aster was so fucked. Sylvia Maroven and shy did not go together in the same sentence, and yet, here she was. Aster had been expecting a reply like “Of course I taste good. I’m me.” or, more likely “You freak.” That would all be fine, understandable, even.
She had no idea what to do with “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Aster all but moaned in return. Because if Sylvia was going to let her talk like this, if she wasn’t going to shake her and tell her to stop, she had no choice but to keep going.
“I mean, I’ve never really minded the taste of blood.
It’s fine, I guess. Like eating your vegetables.
But your blood? Jesus, Sylvia, it’s like—candy would be selling it short. I don’t know. Cocaine?”
Sylvia snorted, and the sound delighted Aster so much she pressed a kiss to the top of Sylvia’s head, in her hair. Just chaste, innocent. She couldn’t help it. She loved this woman so much.
“You’re not too bad yourself,” Sylvia mumbled.
Aster swallowed hard. The memory of Sylvia’s fangs sinking into her rocked through her whole body, and settled low in her stomach. Fuck.
She tried to play it off. “Jeez. Not too bad. What do I taste like, animal crackers?”
Sylvia snickered into her shoulder. “A little better than that.”
“Orange juice?”
“God, no. Less citrus-y.”
Aster’s eyebrows furrowed. “Cedar wood?”
Sylvia laughed properly into her. Aster giggled back.
Things went silent for a bit. Then she felt Sylvia’s mouth.
Not her fangs, going by the fact that Aster wasn’t about to pass out.
But it was something far more intense, somehow—
Sylvia’s mouth pressed softly to her neck. Breathed against it, a low exhale.
“God,” Sylvia growled. “I can practically taste you through your skin.”
Aster had to kill the whine that threatened to crawl up her throat.
She knew if she made a sound like that, Sylvia would stop—and she couldn’t have Sylvia stop—
Sylvia’s mouth opened slightly, and her tongue glided along Aster’s neck.
Oh, fuck my life. Aster couldn’t stop the sound she made that time—a feathered groan.
Sylvia’s tongue rescinded, and her lips pulled back, and Aster was about to curse the day she was born, but then Sylvia didn’t leave the embrace.
She just hovered there a moment, by Aster’s neck, before pressing down again.
And again—she didn’t bite Aster. She just pressed a kiss to her neck.
“Sylvia,” Aster whined. “Stop teasing me.”
The other vampire smiled against her skin.
“M’not teasing you,” she mumbled, and somehow, it sounded honest. “I just wanted to…”
Sylvia didn’t finish her sentence. Which left Aster to finish it in her head.
Kiss me? She just wanted to kiss me?
No, not her—kiss her throat. Which was still her, sure, but different than her mouth.
But also, in a way, it wasn’t.
Biting was one thing. It was biology. It was out of their control.
Kissing her? Teasing her?
“Sylvia…”
“Shh.”
Sylvia placed another kiss to her throat, then another. They were gentle, almost reverent. But then, a moment later, they weren’t—her tongue poking out again, sliding.
“You’re such an asshole for even suggesting this,” Sylvia groaned.
“I didn’t suggest this,” Aster said breathily, her head hanging back.
But I’m also not complaining.
“Yes, you did,” Sylvia muttered. This complete gaslighter.
“And I’m trying very hard to resist the temptation.
Because I am the mature one.” She kissed Aster’s neck again, and Aster heard a low growl in Sylvia’s throat.
It made her stomach clench. “And you’re just a brat who can’t stop daydreaming about my fucking fangs inside of you. ”
Okay—
What the fuck.
Aster couldn’t stop the whine that came out of her this time.
They were just words, but the way Sylvia said them—she wasn’t joking.
This wasn’t one of her bits. Aster didn’t need to see Sylvia’s face to know her eyes were as crimson as they could be.
She could feel Sylvia’s fangs faintly poke at her neck; Aster bet she didn’t even mean to drop them.
Apparently the image Sylvia had just painted in words had surprised—and turned on—both of them equally.
Aster rubbed her thighs together, unable to stop herself.
She needed this to go somewhere fast. Drinking from each other, that she could do.
But this—whatever this was—was entirely too much. A different, scarier beast.
“Sylvia, please.”
But Sylvia’s fangs didn’t descend into her.
A different part of Sylvia moved entirely.
She lowered Aster roughly down onto the couch, then pushed her legs open with her knee, slotting her leg in between Aster’s thighs.
She did it so smoothly that it didn’t even seem like a conscious choice.
All Aster knew was that suddenly Sylvia’s leg was pressed up against her core, and—
Sylvia pulled back from her neck, so she was lording above Aster, her hair falling around her shoulders, encasing them in their own little world.
“Fuck,” Sylvia breathed. She looked caught somewhere in between completely fucking wrecked and—concerned? Aster did not like that she looked concerned.
Aster frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Just fine,” Sylvia cut her off. Her eyes were blazing a red Aster had never seen before. “Just needed to look at you. Sorry—I—didn’t mean to tease. Or cross your boundaries. You didn’t even want me to bite you. That wasn't what you were asking for. You wanted to bite me…”
Aster’s mouth opened, then closed. She was so confused. Sylvia was lying on top of her, her leg pressed suspiciously—no—damningly close to Aster’s center, and babbling about how she’d read the situation wrong? Aster had to address this, and quickly.
“Sylvia,” Aster cut her off. “You have my full permission.” To do anything you want.
A moment passed, then a small smirk inched its way up Sylvia’s face.
And that’s when Aster caught on to what this was.
This fucking asshole.
“Your full permission to do what?” Sylvia asked, clicking her tongue.
She wanted Aster to beg for it.
“Oh, fuck you, you sadist.”
“Come on. Use your words. You want me to…”
Sylvia was grinning like a wolf. Aster’s head was swimming.
“I want you to—nothing,” she muttered, unwilling to play these games.
“Hmm. Too bad. Maybe this will help.”
And then Sylvia did something insane.
She lifted her own hand, bit into her thumb hard enough to draw blood, then lowered it to Aster’s mouth. Aster had half a mind to scream, run into her room, and shut the door, but instead, she just sat there, completely stunned, as Sylvia pushed her thumb into Aster’s mouth.
Sylvia shrugged innocently. “Appetizer?”
Aster told herself she wouldn’t drink it.
She told herself, This is humiliating, ridiculous, stupid, and also a Very Bad idea, and maybe one last other thing.
A thing she’ll never remember because her tongue was already wrapping around Sylvia’s finger and drinking every last speck of red that she could get from the shallow wound.
She groaned, seeing white, and arching her hips up.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You asshole,” Aster muttered, grabbing Sylvia’s wrist and pulling her finger out of her mouth. She felt her own fangs graze across it, and she moaned again.
“You love it.”
I do, Aster recognized fuzzily, somewhere in the back of her brain, but it was completely clouded by the absolute want that was pulsing through every cell in her body.
Sylvia laughed, and then smiled down at Aster. It wasn’t a mocking smile—it was simple, genuine, disarming. As if she was enjoying this for reasons beyond her biology.
“What do you want, Aster?” she asked plainly, softly.
There really was only one answer.
Aster offered her neck, and bit down on her lip.
“Please.”
Sylvia didn’t make her work for it this time.
The other vampire groaned obscenely the moment her fangs touched Aster’s flesh. They pushed down, in a new spot, and Aster immediately felt the sensation like a tidal wave.
Her hips bucked up involuntarily, and this time, for the first time—they had something to grind against. Aster moaned, the friction feeling impossibly good against her center.
“Fuck— I’m sorry—” Aster mumbled, trying to stop herself from doing it again.
She knew Sylvia liked drinking from her, but this? This was introducing a completely new dimension to it. A very specific, explicit direction. It wasn’t her fault that biting lit up the erotic areas of her brain, but that didn’t mean she could just subject Sylvia to it.
Sylvia’s fangs went in deeper—Aster could feel them hit a nerve, and it felt like nirvana. It took everything inside Aster to keep herself pinned to the sofa, keep herself still and just enjoy the feeling of it, not react—not move—
But then Sylvia moaned, and rocked her hips into her.
“Oh god,” Aster mumbled uselessly, feeling how hot Sylvia was against her leg.
Still—Aster didn’t dare move an inch. Even if this was doing something to Sylvia, it didn’t mean the other vampire wanted it to become, well, in Sylvia’s words, a thing.
It didn’t mean she wanted Aster to respond.
So Aster could—would—restrain herself. She’d just let Sylvia drink, and they’d both get it out of their systems, and they’d move on from this, and sure, Aster might have a dream or two or eight about in the next few weeks, but she’d recover eventually.
Hopefully.
She closed her eyes, and focused on the overwhelmingly pleasant lightheadedness she got as Sylvia’s tongue licked across the wound.
“Need,” Sylvia panted. “More.”