Chapter 19 #3
It took a lot of effort for Aster to contain her strength on a daily basis. Where Sylvia found it hard to constrain her Suggestion, Aster’s power was something more squarely physical. Every vampire had a talent—and Aster’s was that everything she touched tended to die.
Gentleness was something she was forced to learn in the reverse; like a woman with an amputated arm, she had to relearn how to handle life with new, mechanical fingers.
Usually she treated Sylvia with those tempered touches. But not now.
Aster tossed Sylvia, with care, onto the mattress. The other woman landed there, cheeks flushed. Aster climbed over, felt her blood boil under her skin.
“Sylvia,” she breathed. “Give me a safe word.”
Sylvia blinked at her in complete disbelief. You could tell she was expecting just about anything in the world to come out of Aster’s lips then that.
“What?” she spluttered.
“Safe word. Now.”
She could practically see the gears turning in Sylvia’s brain. Aster’s idea had worked, at least in part, because she’d clearly given Sylvia such whiplash that whatever inner-angst she was feeling had been completely shaken out of her like a salt shaker. She was just stunned.
“Jesus Christ,” Sylvia muttered under her breath. When Aster’s eyebrows lifted, she clarified, “No — that’s not the word. Azaleas. Azaleas is the word. Aster, I don’t think—”
Whatever complaint was about to come out of Sylvia’s mouth Aster silenced with a bite to her shoulder.
She didn’t give any warning—no gentle kiss, no swipe of her tongue—just her fangs, cold as ice, diving into flesh.
Sylvia whined in surprise, but not just surprise—“Fuck,” she moaned, and then, again—“God, you could give a girl a little warning.”
Sylvia was talking too much. That meant her mind was still going, which meant Aster wasn’t doing her job right.
“Quiet,” Aster said, taking her hand to press over Sylvia’s mouth.
She sucked against Sylvia’s skin and moaned at how good it felt—she’d almost forgotten—but this wasn’t about her.
This was about the way Sylvia’s breath was hot against her fingers.
“Oh god,” Sylvia moaned, muffled against Aster’s hand. That’s better. “Oh god, keep going.” Much better. Aster smiled against her skin, and she almost let the emotions peek back in—but she shoved them down. This is about Sylvia, she reminded herself.
This was about explaining something Sylvia couldn’t understand unless Aster showed her.
So she pulled out of Sylvia’s shoulder, her eyes glowing bright red. Then she loomed over Sylvia’s face, and blood dribbled from her mouth onto Sylvia’s collarbones.
Sylvia stared at her, completely mesmerized, as the droplets coalesced on her skin.
And Aster, blood on her lips, smiled softly down at her. Utterly enamored by that shock in Sylvia’s face. She wanted to keep it that way — unable to frown. Unable to reconsider.
She wiped the blood from her own mouth, and used the same hand to drag it across Sylvia’s parted lips. She watched the other woman’s eyes light up as the red dragged across her mouth, looking at Aster like she was made of magic.
I love her.
She didn’t even stop herself from thinking it. She just let it exist, then pass.
Aster leaned down and pressed her mouth to Sylvia’s ear.
“You remember that safe word, okay?”
And before Sylvia could reply, Aster surged her teeth into her neck. She felt the other woman’s hips buck up at the contact, moaning like it was a revelation.
But Aster was only getting started.
She slid her teeth out of her neck just as quickly as she’d put them there, and then before Sylvia could complain, she bit again, lower.
She repeated this over and over—bite after bite after bite—barely giving the other woman time to breathe as fangs entered and re-entered her.
Leaving gashes down her neck, then around her collarbones.
“Mine,” Aster said as she sank them in again. She heard Sylvia whimper at the word, so she repeated it at every bite. “Mine.” “Mine.” “Mine.”
Her fangs dragged along Sylvia’s skin, from her collarbones, down to her stomach, ripping open her suit jacket with only the sharp knife of her teeth. She used her mouth to move the damp, blood-covered shirt aside, so her nose was pressed just above Sylvia’s belly button.
“God, I love your stomach. So soft, so pretty. Like the rest of you,” Aster mumbled against her skin, feeling the flat pane of Sylvia’s abs, the soft skin of her lower half. “So perfect.”
Then, without hesitation, she bit the flesh to the side of Sylvia’s belly button, and Sylvia hissed, but the way her hips bucked up told Aster everything she needed to know.
She only increased her ferocity, biting harder—deeper—taking more blood with each bite.
“Oh god,” Sylvia cried, her hips canting up again. “Oh god, oh god. Your fangs, baby—”
“I know,” Aster crooned into her skin. “You take them so well.”
Sylvia’s torso was an utter crime scene in minutes, and if Aster had any mortal instincts left in her, she would have probably fainted at the sight of it, but she could feel nothing but want as Sylvia’s body grew redder and redder, flushed, blood rushing to the surface.
Aster snaked up her body again, so she could see Sylvia’s face.
And, oh — the other woman’s pupils were dilated to an extreme — black and so full.
She looked like she was completely transported. Somewhere else. Outside her mind. The blood loss helped with that—made everything fuzzy around the edges. So did the feeding. The marking. The feeling of being marked.
The combination was like being drunk and high and yet so sober you could feel every touch like a razor’s edge.
“Sylvia?” she said softly, pressing her palm against the other woman’s forehead as she tucked hair behind her ear. “You with me?”
“Mm?” Sylvia mumbled. Eyes open and expressive and so compliant. “Yes.”
“Good,” Aster said, and bit her lip. “You’re being so good.”
Sylvia breathed in sharply at the praise, not protesting, so Aster plowed forward.
“Can you feel how much I want you, baby? Every time I bite you, can you feel it?”
Sylvia blinked at the question. But Aster didn’t want her to think, she just wanted her to answer. She wanted her to know it without thinking.
So she leaned down and kissed her softly on the mouth. A gentle contrast to the battlefield she’d left on the rest of her body. Sylvia whimpered into it, and a moment later, Aster withdrew.
“Answer me,” Aster said softly.
“Yes,” Sylvia breathed out sharply. “I can feel it.”
Aster nibbled at her earlobe, fangs grazing there too—Sylvia hissed.
“You’re so perfect. My perfect little blood bag,” Aster whispered into the side of her face.
In any other state of mind, she would have blushed at the words leaving her mouth.
But she was so high on Sylvia, seeing only crimson red, the words only felt natural.
Sylvia was hers. Sylvia was perfect. “Being so obedient. Letting me devour you. Letting me suck you dry.”
Sylvia moaned when Aster repeated her own words to her. “Fuck, Aster, I need you—”
“Are you begging the big, scary vampire to fuck you, Sylvia?”
Aster bit her own lip at that one. She withdrew so she could get a good look at the other woman’s face. But Sylvia wasn’t laughing. Instead—it had clearly done something to her.
“Yes.” She said, cheeks frighteningly pink. “Please.”
Aster smiled softly at her.
“Okay,” she said. “But Sylvia, I want you to know something first. So pay attention.”
Sylvia’s eyebrows furrowed. Aster could see her fighting the haze.
Aster’s heartbeat started to racket in her neck.
This isn’t smart.
She didn’t care.
Don’t say this.
She didn’t have the self control to stop herself.
“You are my wife,” Aster breathed.
Sylvia’s face went pinker than it ever had before. Her pupils dilated to oblivion.
“I am?” Sylvia answered, quiet, so quiet, and Aster would remember the quiet revelation in her voice for the rest of her life. The way she unmistakably needed to hear it.
“Yes, you are,” Aster said, biting her lip so she didn’t smile, and she didn’t care if Sylvia could see through her now. She didn’t care if she could tell it wasn’t an act. She didn’t care if this would ruin them forever. “ ‘Till stake through the heart do us part.”
Sylvia laughed—just laughed—free as a bird, and so did Aster.
And then she let her hand wander down, and found the zipper of Sylvia’s pants.