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"She appreciated the fact that the wolf did not caper, bow down, yelp, or slaver on her, in the slavish and inconsiderate way of dogs. The wolf was no whore for man's approval. He fed himself.”
― Patrick Califia-Rice from No Mercy: Short Stories
“Quit bitching about it and commit man. Yes. No, that’s— fucker, listen to me will you?” Daniel raked a hand through her cropped curly hair, landline tucked under her chin as she strained to put her groceries away. If they could be called that— cans of soup, bread, sliced cheese, and a handle of gin. Between this and bouncing around the bars and the clubs she could remain alive for another week and change. She should have bought oranges or pears or something though.
“I’m not saying go all in now, I’m saying get there though. Yeah, there’s a fucking difference.”
The deadbolt to her one-bedroom jiggled and then unlocked with a smoothness that no key could replicate. Eddie and the troubles of his on-again off-again paramour would have to wait.
“I’ll see you this weekend at Campout?” Eddie asked, voice cutting out over the phone as he stepped away from the landline. There was a noticeable click that Daniel assumed was him lighting a pipe.
“Maybe,” Daniel said, voice slow and listless. The deadbolt was unlocked, and now the doorknob. A thrill ran through her, the same now as it was each time Armand came back.
“Fuck you mean maybe, commit or—“
“Fuck off, I’ll call you back.”
Daniel hung up the phone abruptly. It was rude, but she was a rude person. Eddie would forgive her; she’d buy a round of drinks or spot him for a fix or maybe offer to fuck his boyfriend one more time. She did that still, sex with men for drugs, for money, for a story. Strange bleed over between Daniel and the other he-shes of the scene that she decided not to think about. But make no mistake when Daniel fucked men, she fucked them.
Which was why she was so eager for this, this release, though she would never admit it sober or outside of the throes of sex. Fortunately for her, she was seldom sober.
The door opened without fanfare as if Armand had stepped out to get the mail instead of being gone without a trace for a month. A month. Daniel wanted to drop to her knees and cry at her feet.
Armand was a perpetual beauty, entirely unnatural and inhuman. She was beautiful the way the guts of a computer, glaciers, or geometric mosque ceilings were beautiful— forever and apart. Except not to Daniel, who she alone let in next to all of humanity.
“Hey,” Daniel said as Armand shut the door behind her with a click. She made a show of re-doing the locks before looking at Daniel.
Armand’s hair was loose, curls slightly less voluminous than when Daniel saw her last. She wore a golden silk v-neck that exposed the curves of her breasts and a necklace that hung on her sternum. Beneath that were men’s jeans and heels, which she toed off immediately. Armand was able to jostle back and forth between masculinity and femininity with an envious sort of androgyny. Daniel supposed that came from her ancient age, a face that saw the invention of photography and steam engines, and the heliocentric theory could play with gender like soap in a bathtub. She had a boy’s strong shoulders and a girl’s cheeks and hands that made Daniel’s mouth water.
“Hello Daniel,” Armand said. She liked how her name fit in Armand’s mouth, her page name, her re-written name. The Danielle of her birth had been too flowery, the slight difference in intonation an unfathomable barrier, and the nickname ‘Dan’ reserved for her friends was not dramatic enough for a lover.
Daniel glanced at the last of the groceries to be put away and then abandoned them. She was still in her sleep undershirt and boxers although it was midway into the afternoon. She hadn’t showered, her mouth was dry and tasted like smoke.
She all but ran to Armand and tucked her head into the vampire’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around her thin frame and waiting for Armand to do the same.
“You’re messy,” Armand said. She placed a hand on the back of Daniel’s neck and pulled her away like a misbehaving kitten, and Daniel bit back a sigh. Too early, too much, can’t be this desperate for a fuck when she literally just walked through the door.
“Well, you caught me at a bad time,” Daniel shrugged. It was usually always a bad time, almost universally a bad time. Broken pipes, overdoses, medical maladies, manic fervors and depressive slumps, evictions.
One time, last year, Armand had offered to pay for her. For her rent, for her time, a wired allowance. At the time Daniel had nodded in agreement, thought it invariably sexy to be kept on a financial leash by Armand even when she wasn’t around. Though at the time Armand was fucking herself on Daniel’s hand while Daniel was tied spread-eagle to the edges of her bed and was high off her mind on vampire blood and coke, so it wasn’t her fault that the morning after she had rescinded her acquiescence.
She didn’t want the money and not Armand. She proudly scraped enough coin each month to make rent and utilities and food, and if not all three of those things then two of them. And if not any of those things, she had a network of friends and ex-lovers and fellow addicts that she could crash with in exchange for some housework or a fuck.
It helped that now and then her immortal lover traipsed through her life and bought her heaps of gifts and fed her things like sushi or carnitas or Michelin star pastries.
“You’re eating this?” Armand asked incredulously, letting go of Daniel and moving into her kitchen like she owned the place. She held up the pack of cheese slices, all individually wrapped with the package stamped with a clearance sticker.
Daniel shrugged, playing up her helplessness, the muted state of her life. Look how I am, without you here. Don’t you want to fix me? Don’t you want to stay?
“This expires today,” Armand noted and then threw the entire block into the trash.
“Hey,” Daniel sputtered, on instinct more than anything else. She knew she would be taken care of, she always was with Armand, but she had principles. Armand sauntered back over to her, still walking like she was wearing her heels even when she wasn’t. She and Daniel were almost exactly the same height— they had measured against a doorframe and back to back when Armand didn’t believe her— but each time they came eye-to-eye Armand seemed to have the advantage on her.
“You’re a growing boy,” Armand said and tilted Daniel’s head upwards with two fingers placed under her chin. She swelled with pride under the nickname. Daniel swallowed and stared at the ceiling, allowing Armand to poke and prod her like a show pony. She rolled her eyes when Armand pinched the skin of her cheek but couldn’t fake out the slow stream of heat pooling in her gut.
“You need your greens. Or, your iron, more accurately. I can smell a deficiency brewing and believe me when I say I am selfishly motivated against this. Are you hungry?” Armand dropped Daniel from her grip and Daniel cracked her neck and shrugged.
“Depends. You have something I can eat?” Daniel said, smug and grinning. She reached out for Armand’s waist, trying to pull her into a kiss, but Armand placed both of her hands on Daniel’s chest instead. It wasn’t sexual even as Daniel tried to make it become that way, arching her spine and willing Armand to slide a finger over a nipple.
“Not yet,” Armand said simply and then squeezed the flesh of Daniel’s tits. Daniel bit down on her tongue but the touch was over as soon as it started. Armand opened and closed a few of her cabinets, peered into the fridge, and then nodded.
“I’ll be back,” Armand said and made her way to the door. Fear seized Daniel, a depraved panic that she hadn’t readily shown before they had even fucked. She grasped Armand’s wrist as she bent to put her heels back on.
“No, wait, don’t go. I’ll wait, I’m sorry,” Daniel said, trying to make up for whatever it was that had changed the playing field. Her face burned—- shame at doing something to upset Armand, shame at that feeling of shame, shame as the rush of pleasure still coursing through her even as she was emotionally upended.
Armand’s orange eyes softened, her pupils growing as the color of her eyes darkened. It was one of Daniel’s favorite parlor tricks, along with the floating. She urged Armand each time they met to pick her up and fly with her like Superman, but each time Armand would acquiesce only so far as to gather Daniel in her arms and float around the apartment or hotel room or rental property with gentleness of a rocking wave.
“I will be back.”
“Soon? Actually?”
“I promise,” Armand said, and Daniel let her go. She meant that. Armand would shield, hide, manipulate, and lie, but those specific words were iron.
When the door closed Daniel felt a kinship with her childhood pet, a dog named Abbie that would sit at the window all day until they came home from work or school.
Armand’s sudden presence had, as always, left her horny and scatterbrained and self-conscious. She put away the groceries, and the bits of trash littering the living room, and blew dust off of the bookshelf. She mixed gin into an open can of Sprite and pretended not to notice the seductive unlabeled bottle of pills next to the toaster. Daniel opened the window in her bedroom and contemplated changing the sheets on her bed but knew that whatever happened today Armand would buy her new ones. She swept a used needle into an old detergent bottle and then glanced at the calendar hanging above her mirror, the one from the bank in Chinatown that had the dates printed in beautiful golden type.
“Shit,” Daniel swore. She had missed her shot date; she was supposed to have done it yesterday but spent the day drunkenly finishing an article and the night dancing at a bar with a group of strangers.
It had been Armand to get her on the stuff, actually. Half a year ago, maybe more, probably less, while they were lying in bed and Daniel was pressing a pillow to her chest.
“You should go on hormones,” Armand had said, and Daniel had buried her warm face into the pillow.
“What?” Her muffled and embarrassed voice in response. Armand had plucked the thought out of her head some time ago. She knew a lot of other dykes on them, for male-passing or fun or some mix of the two. She knew more queens that took them in the opposite direction, and was fascinated with their budding breasts and how they described orgasming as a woman in the dim lights of bars or as they shared a joint in sweet alleyways.
It was the curiosity in her that did her in. Daniel had never been the right kind of girl, that much was clear from how much she liked to fuck them and how she cut her hair short the day she turned sixteen and never looked back. But it was above all an experiment, meant in the most loving and intentional of ways. Daniel delighted in the methodical change in her body like evidence of a story unfolding: the lengthening of her clit, the hair on her stomach, the voracious appetite that lead her to eat her way through her hookups’ fridges. It fulfilled her love of novelty and change.
She also adored the thin, boyish wisps of hair above her upper lip, and the bulge of muscle in her calves just from walking. The sensitivity of her desire, the flattening of her voice when she moaned. Above all, she loved how Armand loved it. Armand would inspect her like a doctor, or a girl playing with a doll to see the marks of evolution and time on Daniel's body.
“I can procure a prescription for you. Pull a few strings with a few doctors. I can do it, you know.”
“I’m… I believe that you can,” Daniel said carefully.
“Would you like to?”
Armand had stared at her with bright eyes, and Daniel could read the hunger for her in them. So what. She wanted this. She wanted Armand. It would be the most harmless thing she shot into herself.
“Sure. Yes. Get it for me.”
Back in the present, Daniel grabbed a syringe— used? Unused, probably, the plastic wasn’t discolored— and looked around for a replacement needle. She had an excess of these, for the male hormones and the heroin and now, occasionally, the morphine.
She riffled through her bedside drawer— lube, amyl, a jar of weed, a package of envelopes— and found an unopened pack of 20 gauges. She held the syringe in her teeth and brought the needle packaging to the kitchen. She had no dining table, just the coffee table next to the couch covered in old papers and odds and ends. Daniel cleared a space there and laid out the needles, then went on the hunt for the actual hormones.
She found a container in its prescription box behind the mirror of her bathroom and brought that out. Armand would know she had done this recently and could taste it in her blood. She liked measuring the hormone changes against Armand, the way Armand would notice things that Daniel herself didn’t.
“You taste different,’ Armand had said once, mouth covered in Daniel’s blood as Daniel was sprawled on a couch, lazily grinding against her palm as Armand licked her fingers clean.
“How? Tell me?” Daniel pleaded, and Armand kissed her, showed her, blood on her tongue, and gasping.
But Armand opened the door before Daniel could get the syringe in the bottle, and she poked her finger on it instead.
“Shit,” Daniel muttered and sucked the blood.
She looked to the apartment door to see Armand carrying one large plastic bag and with it the smell of basil and vinegar.
“Is it time for your shot?” Armand asked, immediately energetic and fascinated. She kicked her heels off and dropped the bag of food straight to the floor, making a bee-line to Daniel’s place on the couch. She moved supernaturally fast, and it was a credit to Daniel’s experience and concentration that she didn’t flinch.
“It was, I missed it. ’S all good though. What’d you get?” Daniel wiped the smear of blood from the needle and pulled up the hem of her boxers. Armand laid a hand on Daniel’s wrist and then twisted it up with the syringe still in it.
“Eat first. And then I’d like to try something new with you.” Armand took the needle from Daniel and laid it out on its plastic wrap on the coffee table. Daniel swallowed and nodded, letting Armand lead her by the hand to the bag on the floor. They sat cross-legged on the hardwood, even though the couch would be more comfortable.
Armand removed two large sandwiches from the bag, plus a glass bottle of pop and a bag of kettle-cooked chips.
“What is it?” Daniel asked again as Armand unwrapped the first sandwich and set it on its paper in front of Daniel. Daniel’s stomach growled traitor that it was.
“Capicola, prosciutto, ham, salami. Fresh mozzarella, tomato, no lettuce,” Armand said and Daniel grinned with unbridled delight.
“You remembered!”
Armand raised her thick eyebrows, and Daniel noticed she was wearing makeup, just a touch of something dark around the eyes. It made her eyes pop out even more, and Daniel wanted to see the charcoal darkness run with her blood tears after a few rounds in and out of bed.
“Of course. It’s important and quite easy to remember. I don’t eat so,” Armand nodded to Daniel, “Your preferences are foremost in my mind.”
Daniel grabbed the sandwich and took a bite of it, and then another, and another, and Armand reached out to her and snaked a cool hand to her cheek to cradle her face. Daniel was sure Armand could feel her chew, the exact grind of her teeth as she ate.
“Take your time. Breathe. It’s not going anywhere.”
“But you are,” Daniel snapped, paused, and then took another overlarge bite of the sandwich to prevent any further conversation.
“I’m serious Daniel. I don’t want you to choke. Not like this, at least.” Armand smiled and Daniel was bombarded with images, scents, textures, and feelings from one of their later trysts.
In Miami, breaking in a new strap that Armand bought for her, an expensive thing of tempered glass made the most exquisite, slick noises as Armand brutally rode her into the mattress. Daniel was told to leave her hands above her head and she did, gripping into the sheets and tensing up her abdomen with each greedy thrust.
“Please, Armand, please please please,” Daniel was blabbering, drunk on the heavy base of the strap striking her clit just right as Armand rolled her hips back and forth to seek her pleasure.
“What,” Armand was saying, half annoyed and half imploring. She splayed her hands on Daniel’s stomach and smiled down at her, tiny fangs front and center.
“My neck, hold me, please, do it hard—“
And Armand was grasping Daniel’s neck as she snapped her hips back and forth, squeezing with an intensity that made Daniel gasp and a bead of drool roll from the corner of her mouth. Immediate, how her vision went blurry, how an intense pressure built behind her eyes, how aware she became of her heartbeat under Armand’s controlling fingers.
She had blacked out completely, waking with Armand holding her from behind, rubbing circles on her chest with one hand and massaging her temple with the other. Blood on her dick, between her legs, and a slick wetness from her twitching cunt that she hadn’t yet grown used to.
Reaching around for Armand, trying to get her hands on her even in this state of delirium, drawing blood on her fingers as she wheezed.
Daniel did choke then, coughing over the bits of sandwich at the onslaught of memory, the remembrance of her own intense pleasure, and then, on top of that, the shared pleasure from Armand. She caught the end of the feeling from her, filled with Daniel’s dick and feeling Daniel’s pulse bottleneck and slow under her waiting fingers.
“Jesus—“ Daniel coughed and put the sandwich down. Armand let go of her face and smiled, completely cool and controlled.
“You want that?”
“I want you,” Armand responded. She shifted in her position to sit on her folded knees, leaning slightly forward. Daniel glanced at her shirt and saw she wasn’t wearing a bra, the soft forms of her breasts visible under the shining fabric.
“But for now, I want you to eat. I want you to clean up,” Armand said with a dismissive wave, “And then, yes, I’d like you to fuck me. But as I said, I have something new. An idea, if you’re amenable to it.”
“You know me,” Daniel said, taking another cautious bite and being sure to chew it thoroughly, “They call me mister amenable. What is it?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Well— it can’t be a surprise as—“
“It’s a surprise until it happens,” Armand said, a flicker of annoyance in her voice that made Daniel very scared and very proud.
Daniel licked one of her fingers, sandwich oils wetting her palms. It was delicious, hearty, a wonder of textures that she had missed in this week of eating wonderbread and Velveeta. The smell of the spices in the oil was intoxicating, and Daniel moaned as she crunched down on a tomato, sweet against the intense salt of the prosciutto.
“You should feel this,” Daniel said, permitting Armand as if Armand needed permission to muck about in her head. When they fought it was Armand speaking, then yelling, and Daniel forming thoughts and not even getting the time to get them out as words before Armand would collapse over their subtle meanings, their slights. It often ended with Armand storming out, and Daniel trying to get high or get hit by a car, but sometimes Daniel could fall to her knees and beg her to forgive, to start over, then lure her back.
Daniel felt the presence of Armand in her head, like catching the tail end of music and not being able to pinpoint it. She sent her the taste of the slices of meat, the preserved saltines, and the sweetness of the ham. Then the texture of the bread, the crumbly crust and the glutenous pull, and the wet softness from the tomatoes pressed against it and the oils. Armand grabbed Daniel’s hand, then not currently intent on wolfing down an entire twelve-inch sandwich, and licked the pad of her thumb. Armand winced.
“What does it taste like for you?”
“Not like you how taste it. Like… acid. Or nothing. Or dishwater.”
Daniel screwed up her face. She had begged Armand to turn her, and would again, but at that moment she scorned the displacement from human routine, human taste, and human food. Who would she be without her love of dark beers, salty chips, and sweet pickles?
Armand clearly caught onto the edge of this thought and raised her eyebrows.
“No. No, you can’t take that and use that,” Daniel said.
“You said it yourself,” Armand whispered, “Who would you be?”
“Me,” Daniel snapped and ripped off an extra savage bite of the sandwich, and then, down to the last edge of it, stuffed the rest into her mouth. She chewed messily, tomato juice running down her chin. Armand took a napkin from the bag and dabbed at her skin without Daniel even noticing she had moved.
They sat for a moment in relative silence, the noises of the street and the sound of Daniel chewing her way through the last of the sandwich.
She swallowed and then reached for the bottle of pop.
Daniel twisted the cap off and Armand took it from where it fell on the ground and played with it between her fingers. She drank half of the bottle and sniffled a burp into her elbow.
“Do you feel better?” Armand asked, and Daniel was surprised and irritated to look within herself and find that yes, yes she did. More energetic, more aware of every mote of her skin. Unfortunately, it made her itch for a change of clothes and a shower and then maybe that second sandwich if she could keep that down and still fuck Armand for a few hours.
“Yeah, where’s this from?” Daniel asked, licking the last of the oil from her fingertips. She watched Armand watch her and put on a show of it. She dragged her tongue down her pointer finger, and then bit down on her thumb and let her jaw hang slack for a moment before sucking on it with a pop. Armand looked unaffected, but Daniel knew her well enough to see the subtler sights. Her hands tensed or balled up or rubbed against each other was one. Another was the color and the dilation of her eyes. Presently Armand’s pupils were the size of saucers.
“A deli,” Armand said finally, snapping herself out of her feeling with control and deliberation that Daniel envied and raged against. It was inhuman, how she could switch moods.
“A few blocks from here, Tutto Bene. Owned by a Tuscan man named Mike. He’s quite kind,” Armand added as if she and Mike the sandwich man were old pals.
“That’s the expensive one,” Daniel noted proudly.
“It’s worth it to see you satisfied,” Armand explained as if the price difference was noticeable to her. Daniel asked once what she did for money, that human problem and Armand had waved her away as if it was a foolish question. Daniel thought maybe she killed people, or secretly ran some business, or was an heiress of some sort.
“I’m an art dealer. A real estate developer. A shareholder in a few companies,” Armand said, answering the question unspoken in Daniel’s head. It surprised Daniel how easily she offered up the information after so much time with thinly veiled half-answers.
Armand, never one to let Daniel sit with an emotion unless it surrounded sex, gathered the food and drink and slid it all in a pile onto the last sliver of open space on Daniel’s kitchen counter.
“You have to clean this. Not now,” Armand added, and Daniel was sure she saw the awful fall in her expression as well as felt the wave of displeasure through her mind.
“But you do. Speaking of cleaning,” Armand clapped her hands together and ushered Daniel into the bathroom.
She made Daniel strip in front of her and step into the stream of water before it was warm enough.
“You gonna join me?” Daniel asked, scrubbing shampoo into her hair and motioning for her toothbrush. Armand grabbed it from the cup on the sink and applied a dollop of toothpaste on it. Then she rolled up her sleeves, tightening the fabric above her elbow, and reached through the threshold of the shower to Daniel.
“Not this time. Let me help you?” Armand asked, and Daniel nodded, eyes closed to the water as the shampoo washed out of her hair and suds ran down her face. She expected Armand to scrub her hands into her hair, claws on her scalp. Or to draw soap over her shoulders, paw at her breasts. What she didn’t expect was Armand coaxing her mouth open turning Daniel to face her.
Instead of her fingers as Daniel expected, Armand slid her toothbrush past Daniel’s lips.
Daniel jerked back, coughing, and spat.
“What the fuck man? Here, I can do that,” Daniel said. A red flush rose to her face and her chest. Armand stared openly at the change in coloring, especially at the skin of her breasts.
“My eyes are up here,” Daniel joked and opened her mouth under the water to rinse.
“Let me brush your teeth. I want to see what it looks like,” Armand said again, and Daniel knew better than to refuse. She was sweet to her, her angel of death with a feather-light touch. Armand led with both the carrot and the stick: demands were given in the form of unavoidable pleas, embarrassing heaps of praise and instruction, and the rare and occasional show of force.
She could make her do it, Daniel thought. She could make Daniel do anything she wanted, use her in any way she pleased without the show of care and gentle touch.
Daniel faced Armand again, her arms dropping obediently to her sides. Armand grabbed her chin and opened her mouth, starting at her back molars and getting all sides of the teeth and up her gums. Daniel unfocused her gaze and concentrated on breathing through her nose like she was at the dentist’s office.
“If you don’t take care of yourself then I will,” Armand said, moving to the top row of Daniel’s teeth and repeating the exercise. Daniel scoffed and tried to speak around the toothbrush but ended up making a series of inarticulate noises.
I take care of myself , she projected in her head, imagining the words in her voice and intonation. Armand smiled at her. Clever.
“How did you get these?” Armand asked, pausing at three of Daniel’s back teeth, filled with silver.
Oh, one time when I was a kid my mom took up a job at the school, so I was home alone all summer. I collected or stole old bottles with my friends and we bought up the drugstore’s supply of mallo cups and long boys. I think we rotted a full set of teeth out of our heads between us all , Daniel trailed on, lost in the memory. It was probably the best summer of her young life, ten years old and roaming the streets with neighborhood boys. It was the last summer she could stay on the childhood cusp of boy and girl; after that, she had been hard-pressed to trade her corduroy shorts and overalls for skirts and dresses.
“So you were always like this when left to your own devices. My wild child,” Armand smiled, guiding Daniel’s jaw shut as she brushed her front teeth. Toothpaste dribbled down her chin and Daniel moved to wipe it away before Armand shook her head.
Just that movement, that tiny command, and Daniel was back in her place. It occurred to her that maybe shame or annoyance was an emotion she should feel, standing naked in the shower while Armand brushed her teeth for her like she was some kind of child.
“Spit,” Armand commanded, and Daniel turned to the shower drain and let the foamy toothpaste fall past her lips. Daniel rinsed her mouth and then gargled shower water, and when she looked back Armand was rifling through the cabinet under the sink.
“What are you uh, looking for?” Daniel asked.
“Washcloth,” Armand said.
Daniel pointed to the tray under her towel holder, a repurposed tobacco tin on its side. Armand wet the washcloth at the sink, which struck Daniel as inefficient since the water was running right there, but who was she to make edits to the scene?
Armand then filled the sink with water, plugging it, and then grabbed the bar of soap from its tray in the shower. The edge of her sleeve got wet with water and, before Daniel could protest, Armand reached for the shower knob and shut off the water entirely.
“Okay, where are you going with this?” Daniel asked, chilled in seconds. She shook her hair out like a disgruntled dog, and Armand cast her a look of both patience and sweetness.
“I’m going to clean you up this way,” Armand explained. Daniel watched entranced as she scrubbed the bar of soap into the warm water, suds forming around her hands and in the sink. She wondered if Armand would smell like her after this— normally Armand didn’t smell like anything except the scents of soap or perfume or detergent on what she wore. It upset Daniel sometimes, that there wasn’t a scent of pheromone and flesh to her that Daniel could imprint upon. She was just a body, piloted by a demon that would not come back to life.
But that didn’t stop Daniel from worshipping at her altar. She phased out the switch in her brain that second-guessed desire a long time ago— around the time she started cutting her hair and switching to jeans in the school bathroom and beating off to the women in Life magazine next to recipes for meatloaf.
“I’m cold,” Daniel complained, whiny and petulant on purpose. Armand looked at her and, for effect, Daniel pressed her bottom lip into a pout. Armand’s lips quirked up into a fond half-smile and Daniel grinned. She loved the early acknowledgments of their play, these on-the-nose flirtations that signaled safety. Like a kitten rolling up to show their belly as they fought with a litter-mate, bringing laughter into their space. If she could Daniel would roll over and purr in Armand’s lap.
“Well,” Armand said, scrubbing soapy water into the washcloth and then stepping back towards the shower, “It seems to me we might have to find a way to get you warm again.”
“Seems like it,” Daniel said. Armand took one of her hands and started agonizingly slowly at her fingers, her palms, working soapy water up past her elbows and then to the globes of her shoulders. Armand periodically returned to the sink, and the bar of soap, and then came back to scrub at Daniel’s skin.
The look in her eyes— Daniel wanted to describe it as fascination. She didn’t expect there was anything special about her, outside of the objective peculiarity of her desire, anything Armand couldn’t get from any other human. It had to be a quality in Armand then, a perpetual joy and wonder at the living world that had not faded in half a century. Daniel thought she must be the strongest immortal in the world.
Armand turned Daniel around and scrubbed her back, taking time on the muscles of her shoulders as Daniel tipped her head back and sighed. Then she worked down to her waist, and her legs, noticeably skipping Daniel’s groin in favor of bending down to her knees. There was a splotch of paint or marker on one of her shins that Armand dutifully scrubbed at, taking the bar of soap in her other hand to replenish the washcloth.
Daniel shivered under her touch, tensed in the cold hair. The warm water of the washcloth cooled as it hit her skin, leaving the soap there filmy and wet.
Armand soaked the washcloth another time and, when she returned, made a curt motion of her head that indicated Daniel ought to turn around.
Daniel received no warning when Armand grabbed her hip and dragged the washcloth over the muscle of her ass. Daniel squeaked and nearly wriggled out of her grip as she swiped the cloth between her cheeks and down the inside of her leg.
“Jesus— babe give me a little warning, yeah?”
“What, for all of it?”
Armand rose to rinse the washcloth a final time, working fresh warm water over it.
“For getting all up in my asshole,” Daniel grumbled and looked over her skin, still soapy, and the fading red mark of Armand’s fingers on her hip. She realized she hadn’t even kissed her yet, and with the realization she was dying for it, on the edge of pleading for it before the opportunity to ask presented itself. Daniel would die if Armand didn’t kiss her soon, anywhere, everywhere, however, she wanted her.
Armand smiled, letting out a short laugh and looking surprised at herself for it.
“You’ve put your tongue inside of me Daniel. Forgive me for not seeing the intrusion.”
Daniel blushed at Armand’s bluntness, her body stupid and horny and not complying with her will to resist degradation until the last possible moment.
“You like my tongue,” Daniel teased, chancing boldness. Armand smiled at her, a flash of all-human teeth on display.
“I do,” Armand admitted, “I like that it gives you something useful to do with your mouth.”
Daniel could have swooned.
She stepped back to the shower and, also without warning, drew the washcloth down Daniel’s front and over the already sensitive skin of her cunt.
Daniel cried out at the sensation, grabbing Armand’s arm for balance as she sucked in one weighty breath. Armand didn’t tell her off for touching her, which was a good sign, a sign of levity and desire.
Armand rubbed the thatch of hair at her pelvis, then over her pubic bone, and then the skin around her cunt with gentle movements.
“Okay, let’s get out of here maybe?” Daniel asked. Armand raised her eyebrows; she was really far gone if she was already making entreaties to Armand’s pleasure instead of her patience.
Armand turned the water back on, cold, and Daniel backed against one tiled wall until the water warmed up and she scrubbed the soap off of every nook and cranny of her skin.
“I’m going to set out some towels on your bed,” Armand said.
“What should I do?”
Daniel shut off the water and accepted a towel Armand handed her, dragging it over her legs and then her hair. She wrapped it around her waist and followed Armand into her bedroom.
She stood in the doorway as Armand laid towels on the bed, haphazard protection from fluid and blood.
“I’m going to get your shot from the living room, and— may I do it?” Armand asked suddenly, eyes still fixed on arranging the towels. Daniel was reeling from the experience of Armand’s hands almost on her, of the hot and cold of the shower, so it took her a moment to puzzle out Armand’s meaning.
“You want to take testosterone?”
“No,” Armand clarified, “I want to administer it for you.”
“Oh,” Daniel said, and then: “Oh.”
She rushed to Armand’s side and took her hand, overcome by the need to throw her down on the bed and press every inch of their skin together, melting into Armand’s body so she could feel Daniel’s adoration for her.
“Shit, yes. Kiss me?” Daniel asked, and Armand obliged.
She slid one hand to the small of Daniel’s back, a cool hand against wet skin. Armand captured Daniel’s lips and Daniel melted into her, sighing into her mouth like all of her worldly concerns had been lifted. She opened her mouth and felt the bump of Armand’s tongue on her bottom lip, slick and smooth.
The clammy coolness of her skin and her mouth only enhanced the squirming anticipation in Daniel’s gut. It meant she hadn’t fed, would be hungry, would slide her teeth into one of Daniel’s veins before the day was up.
Armand broke the kiss before Daniel was ready for it to end, and she bit off the edge of a whine ready to escape her lips. Daniel gripped Armand’s shoulders, already feeling dizzy.
“Baby what’s—“
“Get your shot, and then I’ll explain. I’ll give you a treat,” Armand said, a mean glitter in her eyes.
Daniel fetched the needle and jar from the coffee table, taking each careful step as quickly as she could. Armand had pulled another pack of 20 gauge needle tips from her nightstand and placed them next to Daniel’s alarm clock.
“Here,” Daniel gave the syringe to Armand and then the jar. She sat on the edge of her bed, back straight, posture perfect.
“Eager girl,” Armand said and Daniel chuckled. She looked down and wiggled out of her towel, throwing it to the floor.
Armand took in a breath and Daniel realized she was smelling her. Need throbbing in her cunt like a second pulse, maybe Armand could feel that too?
Daniel expected to explain the dosage and the working of the small syringe, but Armand held the instrument like she was familiar with it.
“Have you done this before?” Daniel asked as Armand pulled past her dosage and stuck the needle into the rubber stopper. She watched liquid fill the syringe and air bubbles rise out as Armand tapped it.
“I’ve researched it, and I’ve seen you do it,” Armand said. Daniel was unexpectedly touched that Armand had paid attention to her in that way, memorizing the habit of her routines.
“Which side?” Armand asked. She kneeled between Daniel’s legs and used her shoulders to spread them farther than they needed to go. If not for the sharp object—- fuck, even and especially with the sharp object, Daniel wanted to rub herself against Armand’s face, her tongue, her perfect nose.
“Left,” Daniel said and then tapped that leg.
Armand drew one hand up and down Daniel’s right leg, getting dangerously close to the insides of her thigh and the joint of her leg where she went sensitive. With her other hand, she rolled the plastic body of the syringe against the injection site of her thigh. Daniel watched the sharp glint of the needle twirl in the air, crossing wires between its metallic gleam and Armand’s fingers teasing her skin.
Daniel tossed her head back and held very still, afraid to jerk this way or that and stab herself. In any other situation, she would be trying to dry hump the air and get Armand’s hands on her mouth.
“Daniel,” Armand whispered, “Tell me when.”
Daniel looked back to Armand between her legs. Her hair was slightly frizzed from the shower steam and her eyes were dark like halves of a plum. Daniel reached out and cupped her face, the side of her jaw, and nodded.
“Okay, do it.” Daniel clutched the bedsheets and looked away as Armand drove the needle into her thigh. She removed her hand to slowly plunge the oil into her, staring so single-mindedly at the syringe that Daniel got to observe her for a change.
Her dark eyes fluttered, rimmed in kohl. Daniel looked at her lips and saw them slightly pressed in concentration. She barely noticed when Armand removed the needle and disposed of it in Daniel’s container until Daniel saw the thick line of blood drip down her leg.
“Aw shit,” Daniel said and drew a hand to the side of her thigh to stop the spread.
“Happens sometimes, can you?” Daniel gestured at the blood to Armand, who was standing back at her side and smiling.
Armand crouched to Daniel’s side and removed her hand from her leg. She drew her tongue up the line of blood, methodically right back to the injection site. She tongued the small wound until it closed.
The sight of crimson painting Armand’s tongue caused a Pavlovian kind of reaction in Daniel, and she surged forward to kiss her.
Armand met her hunger, consuming, and controlling. She stood without breaking contact and crawled bonelessly onto Daniel’s lap, settling her legs to either side of Daniel’s hips.
“You did that on purpose,” Daniel whined, and Armand bit her lip and then laved over it with her tongue. Daniel whimpered, honest to god, and Armand grabbed her by the jaw to stop the kissing.
“I said I’d reward you,” Armand said, and Daniel perked up at that. A treat sometimes meant getting to eat her out, drink her blood, or both.
This time Armand gently nudged Daniel onto her back and sat back on her haunches. She undid her belt, tossed it to the floor, and then wiggled out of her jeans.
Armand wore blue cotton briefs, so mundane and human and sweet that Daniel’s jaw ached to taste her even more. It was like playing house with Armand, the steps they went through between pretending and not.
There was a tiny spot of red on the fabric, something that Daniel was entranced with the first few times they fucked.
She had stared incredulously at Armand’s cunt while crowding over her, preparing to finger her:
“So it’s all blood? If you get wet it’s like, that could be your period. Oh shit, is it like being on your period forever?”
Armand snickered.
“Decisively not. It can be annoying, stain removal sprays are the best thing to come out of this century.”
Armand pulled her underwear down as far as it would go while she straddled Daniel and then did a complicated move of kicking either leg out to discard the fabric.
“Is this the surprise?” Daniel asked, half hoping for even more and half content with the gift of getting to lick blood-slick from Armand’s folds.
“No,” Armand said, crawling on her knees to position herself above Daniel’s face. Her skin, normally unscented, smelled like Daniel’s soap with an undercurrent of iron. Daniel’s skin was on fire, her hands were restless, and she was sure her clit was going to fall off once she actually fucked Armand.
“What’s the surprise?”
Armand sat down on Daniel’s chest, letting out a performatively exasperated sigh. The wet skin of her cunt pressed onto her tit, her nipple, and Daniel was possessed with the imagined sensation of Armand rubbing her clit on her nipple, twin pleasure points so intense she was sure sparks would fly.
She smiled at Daniel and gently grasped her cheek.
“Tempting. Keep it for a rainy day,” Armand said.
“The surprise is a new idea. Something to hurt,” Armand explained. Realization settled onto Daniel and she relaxed with the knowledge. This was how she and Armand had introduced heavier aspects to their sex— although once they started with drinking blood and telepathic bodily control everything after that was gravy.
“Cool,” Daniel said lamely. She couldn’t have thought of a stupider answer if she tried, and attempted to communicate telepathically or just with a wide-eyed stare that it was not from a lack of interest but a lack of blood in her brain.
Armand gave her face a gentle pat before sitting back up and guiding her cunt right over Daniel’s mouth.
“Can I?” Daniel muttered, almost surely not needing permission but craving it anyway. On rare nights Armand delighted in performing a museum exhibit’s motto: look but don’t touch. She licked her lips.
“Yes,” Armand breathed, the first sign she was being undone as Daniel was. Daniel needed no other instruction.
Daniel had never done this with another woman before. Not the sex, though some things in sex were new, but being on the receiving end of direction. Daniel wasn’t a full leather dyke or one of those perfect Eisenhower-era butches, but when she fucked she was in charge. She seduced with the false shyness of a girl but wouldn’t tolerate being treated like one in bed until Armand came along. Only with Armand did she crave the bruises, the ache, the sweet patronizing control.
“I want you to— mhm, to open me up with your mouth,” Armand instructed as Daniel licked a few tentative strokes over her labia. The iron taste of her filled Daniel’s mouth, her throat, into her nose. Daniel moaned into her and grabbed Armand’s hips.
“Anything baby anything. You’re—“
“Shut up,” Armand whispered and Daniel stifled a cry by suctioning her lips over her clit. The words were like a slap in the face, in that, well, they both turned Daniel on.
Armand sucked in another breath, and Daniel shifted her neck so she could tongue at her and rub her clit with the bridge of her nose. She nodded her head slightly as she slid through the broad side of her tongue over her and then nudged the tip into her opening. Each stroke of her tongue was a direct line to her own clit. Daniel found herself planting her feet on the mattress and squeezing the flesh of her thighs together.
The bed creaked and Armand moved forward. Daniel felt her knees positioned on either side of her head as she began to thrust against Daniel’s movements, meeting the slow strokes of her tongue. Each time allowed Daniel to slip a little further into her, tasting more and more of her sweet blood. A dribble of it ran down Daniel’s chin as she pulled away to spit, a messy shove of saliva out of her mouth and down the side of her cheek.
Just as Daniel was getting able to fit half of her tongue in her, thinking that Armand might ride her face, Armand pulled off and wrapped a restraining hand around Daniel’s neck.
She sat back on Daniel’s stomach, red trailing down her legs. Daniel gasped at the rush of air and then whined at the loss of sensation.
“Come back,” she pleaded, sitting up. Blood and spit ran down her chest, messy. Something in Armand’s eyes softened.
“Darling, my beautiful girl,” Armand crooned, wrapping Daniel in an embrace that had Daniel’s face pressed to her tits, still covered in her silk top, now ruined with fluid.
“Would you like to see what I had in mind?” Armand asked, wiping away blood from Daniel’s lips and chest with a stray finger and then licking it up like cream.
Daniel nodded and then whined when Armand detangled herself from her arms.
“Where are you going?”
“To clean you up,” Armand said before returning with a warm washcloth and, strangely, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol.
Daniel let her wipe the blood from her chest as if in a daze, fixed on the bottle. Was it to clean something? Her bong? Her dick— no she had soap for that.
Armand glanced at the needles on her table and the pieces came together in Daniel’s mind like train cars colliding.
For sterilization.
“You’re gonna inject me again?” Daniel asked, confused. What was the sex appeal of an overdose of testosterone?
“I’m going to stab you again, pierce through the top layer of your skin, and leave the needles inside you while I sit on your cock,” Armand said.
“Oh fuck ,” Daniel moaned, squeezing her thighs together. Armand noticed and roughly yanked them apart.
“Do I have to tie you down?” Armand asked, wild impish energy in her eyes. Daniel shook her head, meaning it. If she wanted she could play that card, but she sensed Armand’s mind wasn’t totally on restraint today.
“Will you let me do it?” Armand asked, voice soft and low. She ran a hand on Daniel’s chest, even pressure over her tit that was soothing as it was sensual. Daniel took a breath and considered.
“Where will you put them?”
Armand drew a lazy circle on Daniel’s chest, a small flat area under her collarbone but before the flesh of her breasts.
“Here, a dozen of them. I will mark where they will go and talk you through the movement. It will be like a doctor’s exam,” Armand said. Maybe Daniel was lying about that shame switch because Armand’s description of medical ease made her stomach flip.
“I’ll show you,” Armand said, squeezing Daniel’s tit and then unwrapping a needle.
“Wait wait—“
Daniel’s protests weren’t needed; Armand pinched the flesh of her forearm and drove the needle through one side and then out the other, shallow in the skin. She held the arm up to Daniel with the needle sticking there, protruding like an arrow wound.
“Did it hurt?” Daniel asked. Stupid question, she was cozier with the penetration of a needle in her arm than anything near her cunt.
“It will bleed quite profusely when I take them out since they will be in a sensitive patch,” Armand explained like she had a wealth of experience.
Armand gripped the plastic end of the needle and yanked it out of her arm. Immediately twin beads of blood bloomed on her brown skin and she thrust the arm to Daniel.
Daniel gasped like the air had been punched out of her.
She suctioned her lips over the sites, sliding her tongue on the skin like she was still eating her out. Her heart was pounding against her ribs so loud Armand must have been able to hear it.
“Enough.” Armand snatched her arm away and opened Daniel’s other drawer.
“Where is your phallus rig?” Armand asked. Daniel snorted, licking the film of blood from the back of her teeth.
“In the top dresser drawer. Gotta rinse any lint off of it,” Daniel said, attempting to get up. A force like a phantom hand shoved her back onto the bed as Armand took the contraption to the bathroom. Daniel heard once more warm water running and then Armand was back, helping Daniel step into the leather straps of the harness and settle the clear silicone dildo against the ring.
Daniel had chosen the clear, the glass, the light colors. Before Armand, she had stuck with a trusty black replica, knobbed at the top and bottom. These showed Armand’s blood better.
Armand grabbed a handful of Daniel’s ass as she adjusted the straps. Daniel half laughed and half gasped.
“That fucking tickled,” Daniel complained and Armand kissed her, slow and deep and dragging their tongues together in a sticky mess. Daniel attempted to grind against her leg but the dildo got in the way.
“Lay down,” Armand demanded, her voice soft but her intent iron.
Daniel obliged as Armand straddled her hips and brought the pack of needles to her side.
In one hand she held something that poked Daniel’s skin.
“Hey what’s—“
“A pen,” Armand snapped. Oh.
Daniel looked at the marks Armand had drawn on her chest. Twelve notches in the shape— in the shape of a heart.
“You’re sweet, you know that?” Daniel said, grinning and unable to stop even when Armand rolled her eyes at her. She wiped alcohol over Daniel’s skin, a rush of impersonal cold that made Daniel’s toes curl.
“You like me,” Daniel preened while watching the ink of the drawn heart smear.
Armand grasped Daniel by the sides of her head, bringing their faces close enough to kiss. Their noses touched, and Daniel went cross-eyed trying to properly stare into her glowing eyes.
“You’re mine,” Armand hissed, and Daniel’s mouth fell open nodding in agreement.
“Yes, yes. Oh my god, yes.”
Armand kissed her again, tilting Daniel’s head this way and that. She sighed into Daniel’s wet mouth, another small breakage that set Daniel rabid with the need to devour her.
“I adore you,” Armand whispered, delivering the words into Daniel’s mouth like a cool breeze.
Daniel kissed her, licked into her mouth, constantly aware of the hard length of the dildo strapped against her cunt quickly becoming flesh in her imagination.
“Do it, stick me up,” Daniel urged, grinding the base of the harness against the back of Armand’s thigh.
Armand unwrapped the first needle, pausing.
“I’ll start here,” she said, tapping the base of the heart drawing.
“Breathe in and out when I tell you to. You can hold onto my leg.”
Daniel grasped the flesh of Armand’s thigh, digging her nails into the skin. The edges of her eyes went blurry as she tried to move them, a swelling feeling took root in her stomach like she was on a roller coaster.
“Your heart rate is elevated. You’ll have a vasovagal response if you don’t calm down.”
Daniel scoffed, tensing the muscles in her hand and staring at Armand and not the needle. Armand who still had her shirt on, smeared with Daniel’s spit and blood. Armand traced Daniel’s gaze and undid another button on her shirt, putting the full form of her tits on display.
“Easy for you to say,” Daniel grumbled.
“Look at me, Daniel. At me.”
Daniel barely felt the first needle slide in, but she did feel it the moment after.
She tried to look down at them, panicked, and Armand shushed her.
“Breathe in. Hold it. Out. In again. Feel your heart slow? You control it.” Armand coached her through the second needle like that.
Armand pinched the skin at the incision site, making a neat fold for the needle to slide through. After the third Daniel tossed her head back and closed her eyes, breathing as Armand had instructed her to. The needle was a familiar, sweet pressure. Penetration without all the baggage, the only form of entrance and exit she could tolerate. And it was Armand sliding these cool instruments through her, all the numerous glints of them.
It was like getting drained, like getting high, almost better than fucking. The needle was her old friend, a companion of self-induced pain before Armand came along and gave it to her with love. It was the first kind of hurt she began to love, virginal masochistic introduction, the syringe in her elbow drawing smack into her blood and then booting it back and forth, in and out of her body. It felt like Armand was fucking her.
“You’re taking them well. That’s four.” Armand’s voice came as a faraway wisp, a sound carried on the wind from another time.
“How many more?” Daniel’s tongue felt numb in her mouth.
“Eight,” Armand said. Daniel groaned and tried to twist away. The movement pulled the skin of her chest taunt against the needles and she cried out.
“Fuck shit, shit .” A warm line of blood dripped down Daniel’s chest.
“Don’t move, relax. Think about fucking me,” Armand demanded, and Daniel was about to protest before she registered the depth of the command. It wasn’t just a technique to coach her through the pain to the pleasure, Armand could view and verify Daniel’s obedience.
“How?” Daniel asked. The warm thrum of pleasure was back, blood rushing to her clit.
“The way we are now. Your skin is warm, your cock is hard. Hurts the way you want it to, chipping away at yourself. Think about me letting you inside.”
Daniel shivered. Armand’s voice now came closer to Daniel’s ear, and she opened her eyes to see Armand a few inches from her face, intent on the needlework. She frowned at her and placed her hand over Daniel’s eyes.
“Okay, I won’t see ‘till it’s done.” Daniel closed her eyes again.
“You’d better not. How do you like to fuck me best?” Armand asked. Daniel breathed in, held for a moment, and on the exhale felt a sharp prick. The light weight of the needles before began to grow in her mind, the pain itself paling in comparison to the phantom intrusion.
“You know this already,” Daniel complained. She licked her lips and rolled her ankles. “You’ve—- you’ve got in my head.”
“I asked you a question and I expect an answer,” Armand replied blithely.
Shit okay, better not make the vampire sliding needles into her skin mad.
“Um, when you’re on my lap. Or when we—“ Daniel broke off as another needle slid through her skin and she jumped. Armand stroked her cheek with her thumb, shushing her.
“Continue.”
“When we’re standing and I can get you on my hand. I like that,” Daniel said. This kind of admitting felt more shameful than the needles, more shameful than letting Armand brush her teeth.
“What do you like about that?” Another needle. Slide in, weight pain, protrusion like another cluster of limbs.
“Fuck, I don’t— I like you. I like when our heads are uh, together,” Daniel said, trying to describe.
The sensation of intrusion, breaking through the skin, and gentle manipulation of Armand’s fingers on her chest sent Daniel into a slippery space without walls, without borders between her basest desires and the articulation of her thoughts.
“I like— I love it when you ride me and all I can do is watch you. How sometimes you ignore me, or you hurt me,” Daniel mumbled, embarrassed still about this part. Pain with the accessories of sharp objects or fangs or claws. She swallowed back the dry cracking of her voice.
“I like watching your tits bounce when you’re on me when you get loud, and it feels like I’m inside you. I like it when you—“ Daniel arched her back and moaned. Armand had slid another needle and, in adjusting herself, put hard pressure on the dildo.
“When what?” Armand asked. If Daniel opened her eyes now she bet she would see Armand grinning and preening like a peacock.
“When you— how many?”
“One more, but I want to hear what you were going to say.” Armand’s fingers grazed over her tits, eerily symmetrical movements. She fingered the hard buds of her nipples and pinched them gingerly. Daniel cried out and gritted her jaw hard enough to turn her teeth into powder.
“Oh god, I can’t, I can’t— please do it, please get it through me, I want to see you,” Daniel begged. She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, green and yellow specks of light against the darkness of her eyelids. Daniel’s head was filled with helium.
Armand, in an increasingly regular display of pity, pinched the last piercing site and slid the needle through. It felt like coming home.
Daniel opened her eyes and felt tears squeeze out of them. Armand was smiling at her from ear to ear, joyous, giddy. She wiped the edge of Daniel’s eye with her thumb and kissed her nose.
“ Mon trésor, look at you,” Armand breathed.
“Open your eyes, Daniel. Come back to me, that’s it.” Armand guided her back to consciousness, to the land of the living. Daniel leaned into Armand’s palm against her forehead, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth.
“Mmh,” Daniel moaned, pressing her lips together and feeling the endearment tumble from her mouth like a loose tooth, “ Mommy .”
Armand continued to stroke her forehead, then gently scratched her scalp. Daniel whimpered.
“My sweet boy, my beautiful girl. J e t’aime de tout mon coeur. ”
Daniel glanced down at her chest at the patchwork of needles. From the angle of her own eyes, she could discern no shape to them, and the needles and their plastic caps stuck through at intersecting angles. Tiny beads of blood welled around one where she had disturbed the entrance site and bled.
“Jesus,” Daniel breathed, “You really got me, huh babe?”
Armand hummed and ran her fingers in gentle circles over Daniel’s nipples.
“Where’s your camera?” Armand asked, planting a wet kiss onto Daniel’s tit and then swinging her legs onto the floor. Daniel wanted to protest, to move, to yell, but she was afraid of any kind of sudden movements. Her own body had become a pack predator to her; anything could disturb it, anything could hurt her, and she almost wanted it to.
“On the dresser, I think,” Daniel said. Armand moved aside a picture frame, and a bottle of beer, and grabbed the Polaroid camera with unbridled glee.
She crawled gingerly back onto the bed, still wearing her ruined silk shirt that now did nothing to hide her full breasts. One of her nipples was visible past the button of the shirt, areola dark and sparsely hairy and hard. Armand set the camera to the side and then, without telling Daniel she was doing it, arched over the dildo and sank down onto it.
Daniel threw her head back, jaw slack and pained from the tight sensation of the array of needles.
“God, oh my god,” Daniel sputtered. She drew her knees apart so Armand had to spread her hips wider, which of course was no problem for her. Armand was staring unabashedly at Daniel, going from the needlework to her tits to her face and then back again as she drew two fingers around her clit.
“What were you going to say?” Armand asked, and Daniel couldn’t even understand the question.
“What?”
“You were going to say something you liked about fucking me, after—“ Armand pressed her lips together and groaned. It was the sweetest sound Daniel had ever heard.
“After how you liked feeling inside me.”
Daniel wracked her brain, infinite ideas coming to mind. Armand licked her lips and started breathing in shorter bursts, occasional sighs, and hums of pleasure. Daniel watched her circle her own clit with her fingers, drawing through her dark thatch of pubic hair and the crimson slick caught in it. She widened her legs and took the length of the dildo, pressed to Daniel’s cunt. And as always Daniel swore she could feel Armand gush and twitch around her.
“I like when you use me,” Daniel whispered. Armand ground down onto her, a swift movement of her hips that made a deliciously soft and wet noise.
“When you hold onto me and make me bleed. I like when you come in my mouth and I can taste you at the back of my throat. I like when you call me pretty, when you tell me I’m a good boy.”
Armand opened her eyes then and stared at Daniel with such sadness that Daniel wondered if she had done something wrong. She couldn’t tell, her skin was fried, her brain was on fire, and she was going to transcend physics and biology with this fucking dildo and spill inside Armand.
“Smile,” Armand said, stilling her movements and grabbing the camera. Daniel, late with the response, looked up at her dumbly and thought she blinked at the flash.
“Put your arms over your head if you can, by the headboard,” Armand instructed. Daniel did as she told, raising them slowly so as not to tug the skin on her chest. She held them across each other in fists, the way they would be if Armand tied her. She stared at the camera, wide-eyed.
Another click, a flash, a photo Armand put face-side-down on the sheets.
Then Armand shrugged her shirt off of her shoulders, throwing it to the corner of Daniel’s bed. She bent forward, holding one hand over the needles.
“I’m going to remove them so you can have a better range of motion now that I’ve captured you. I’m going to go in the same order they started. You’ll bleed,” Armand explained.
“Will you drink from me?” Daniel asked, hope spread across her face.
Armand, by way of answer, took the first needle and pulled it from her skin. There was more pain of it going out than in, though that might have been due to Daniel looking at it. Blood welled up at both ends. Armand worked her way quickly but not ungently through the rest of the needles, throwing them in a dangerous pile on Daniel’s nightstand. Blood quickly pooled down her sternum between her tits and even down her chest as the needles released the flow they had been holding back.
When the last one came out Daniel didn’t even have a chance to stretch before Armand was on her, dragging her tongue over her skin and mewling like a kitten.
Daniel was going to die there, she was sure, Armand lapping blood from her piercing sites as nipping lovely bites onto the flesh of her breasts. Armand placed both hands on Daniel’s shoulders before she laved her tongue against her nipple and then sucked on it, tongue against its underside.
Daniel’s hands flew to Armand’s hair, tangling in its curls and feeling the dull warmth of her skull. She hitched a breath in and out as Armand licked her, up from her breasts to her neck and jaw and then finally claiming her mouth. Every time Armand kissed her it was like Daniel had missed her for years, decades, and had finally gotten her back. Daniel outright cried into her mouth and kissed her back, sloppy, trying to form words with the head strike of Armand’s tongue and failing.
She only stopped when she felt Armand touching the entrance and exit wounds of the needles. Armand backed away, taking another photo closer to the spots of blood. A flash, a wince.
“Hold your breasts for me,” Armand asked, and Daniel did, palms to her nipples and spreading the skin of her chest just slightly so the marks oozed blood. She bit her lip and Armand took the picture, flash, print, whirl.
“Can I have one of you?” Daniel asked, either brave or so ready to come she was stupid.
Armand smiled at her and handed over the machine.
Daniel tried to pose it at the right angle but her hands shook as she held the camera and it took her a while to get it in place. Armand stared dead-eyed into it like she was a figure from centuries ago in a death mask portrait.
Daniel shifted her hips, faking readjustment for her sake. Armand closed her eyes and furrowed her eyebrows at the movement, and then Daniel snapped the photo.
Armand thrust her pelvis forward, leaned back, and braced herself on her arms behind her back. She rocked herself onto the dildo, slow at first and then gaining flexibility.
Daniel raised the camera up over her head, completely guessing at the angle but wanting with a savage desperateness to get Armand’s semi-nakedness in the picture, to see in blurry and saturated rendition her blood-wetness on Daniel’s cock.
A flash and she took one.
“Will you look at these when I’m gone?” Armand asked, and even the sting of her inevitable departure couldn’t temper Daniel’s desire.
“ Yes ,” Daniel promised. Armand raised a hand to pinch her own nipple and Daniel took another photo. Click, flash, polaroid falling out of the camera and onto Daniel’s stomach. She grabbed them and threw them in the waiting pile.
“What will you,” Armand broke off in a moan, sweet as fresh mulberries staining Daniel’s fingers. Her eyes were closed like a sleeping angel’s. “What will you do with them?”
Daniel gripped the camera so hard she thought she might break it. She remained still to get the clearest image before snapping a last photo, shoving it and the camera to the wayside, and grabbing onto Armand’s waist for dear life.
“Keep them here, where I sleep. Beat off and think about you,” Daniel muttered. She met Armand’s thrusts, following the fast and low rhythm of her core. Daniel’s hair was both still wet and sweaty against the edge of her pillow, and they kept slipping down her mattress.
“How I wish you were here like this, ‘cause— oh damn , shit, Jesus,” Daniel whined, “God, Armand, ‘cause no one— no one can fuck me as good as you.”
Armand leaned forward to tuck her head onto Daniel’s shoulder for a moment, and Daniel grasped the back of her neck, thinking so hard Armand had to hear it: Eat me, bite me, take me, murder me, take everything, I’m all yours. I belong to you.
Armand let out a cry like she was being tortured. The bed frame creaked with their movements, heavy thrusts that Daniel did nothing to calm.
“If you come in me,” Armand bargained, panting, and Daniel dug her nails into Armand’s scalp, “I’ll bite you.”
In a less detached head-scape, Daniel might have something clever to say about that. But as it was she nodded and tightened her legs, closing her eyes and trying to be quiet as Armand let loose a string of punctuated sighs with every thrust back onto her cock.
After waiting on the edge for so long, all Armand had to do was ask. Daniel felt a pressure building in her like a rising wave, an electric current moving through her until she was right at the peak, waiting for that last thrust to grind against.
“Baby,” Daniel muttered and wrapped her arms around Armand’s shoulders, “Baby.”
She came while sucking onto Armand’s skin, absolutely twitching and vibrating in every muscle group below her waist. Daniel pressed the sides of their heads together and willed Armand to feel it, the intensity of the release as Daniel’s clit pulsed out what could have been spurts of come into her.
Armand rocked back onto the dildo a few more times before stilling and sinking her teeth into Daniel’s neck, sudden and blunt exactly the way she had taken her in.
The pain gathered the sputtering dregs of her orgasm and threw Daniel headlong into another one, wracking her body like the thrumming pull of morphine. Armand’s fangs were sharp, small, and precise. Daniel felt blood flow from her with a sensual fervor, Armand’s lips growing warm against her skin as she fed and fed.
This, Daniel thought, was probably even better than how guys described getting their dick sucked.
Armand pulled off Daniel and spilled a mouthful of blood onto her chest in laughter. She rocked with it, the bottom half of her face covered in blood and her eyes yellow with pinhole irises. It was a cartoonish burst, the way of a very entertaining circus performer. She was utterly inhuman, and insane, and Daniel dreamt about spending the rest of her mortal life with this undying, voraciously handsome girl.
When Daniel could get her voice to work again she coughed, and then: “Let me keep going?”
Armand tensed her stomach and hummed, grinding down onto her in shallow circles.
Daniel raised a shaking hand to the join of their hips and pressed her thumb to Armand’s clit, following the movement of her hips. Armand bent double to Daniel’s chest, making touching her difficult but Daniel would walk on coals for her, what was joint pain?
She lapped up the spilled blood as Daniel fingered her, and then she gripped Daniel’s shoulder and pulsed around her cock, sucking on the wound at her neck. Armand’s movements slowed every so often when she twitched through the shocks of one orgasm and then riled herself back up to another then came back down again. The strap’s base ground down against Daniel’s overstimulated flesh, shocks of movement and forceful pleasure knocking through her limbs like a pinball machine. She stared unabashedly as Armand wrenched her eyes closed and panted above her, the curves of her skin and muscle twisting like a venomous snake’s. Daniel’s head swam as once more she drove her fingers against Armand’s clit with shakey strokes and Armand pressed the crown of her head under Daniel’s chin, forcing her to look up and strain to keep her body in one piece.
Eventually, slowing her pace, Armand snaked a hand between her legs and tilted the dildo downward, so she would slowly sit back and pull off of it. Daniel watched as the surge of blood-slick from Armand coated their legs. Such a bright, sharp smell. The entire strap was coated in red. Armand undid the clasps and Daniel wriggled out of the harness like a fish in a net.
Daniel swallowed to coat her dry throat, raw from so much crying out. Armand pressed down on her, head on her chest and clawed hands grasping the bedsheets as she calmed down.
“We should do that again,” was the first thing Daniel said, drawing a hand up Armand’s torso and rubbing the muscles on her back. Her skin was flushed, warm from Daniel’s blood, and Daniel felt a rush of pride at giving to her, nourishing her, being worked into a part of her.
Armand chuckled into her skin, at odds with the evidence of her monstrous self.
“Already? We should put you in the Kentucky Derby,” Armand mused. Daniel scratched the base of her neck, blunt nails on Armand’s scalp.
“How do you know what the Kentucky Derby is?”
“I love the Kentucky Derby,” Armand said, suddenly serious. She shifted her weight onto Daniel, resting her chin on Daniel’s chest and staring at her with those firefly eyes.
“The horses are miraculous. You told me about it. We saw it on the television set; we should go this year.”
Daniel grinned, lulled into a sense of perfect bliss off the high of sex and needle-point and being drained.
“Give me a minute and I’m all yours. I meant the needle stuff. I’ve got enough of them,” Daniel joked and then pretended not to see Armand’s face fall.
“You frighten me with this,” Armand admitted, and Daniel didn’t have to ask her what she meant.
“Pot, kettle, et cetera,” Daniel said. Armand crawled off of her and stood up next to the bed, extending one hand to Daniel. She was a vision, naked with flushed skin and blood between her legs, Daniel’s blood on her mouth.
Daniel rose, overestimating herself. She tugged on Armand’s wrist, ready to stand and pull her into a kiss until her vision went dark and her head went light, light as a feather.
Daniel opened her eyes to the hardwood floor of her bedroom under her nose and started giggling. She had fallen completely, and taken Armand down with her as they were both sprawled across each other on the floor.
“Are you alright?” Armand sat up and cradled Daniel’s face as she gathered herself into a sitting position. Genuine concern was plastered over her face. Daniel didn’t like to see it but had to admit Armand wore it well; worry and fear made her look like an ancient statue, a timeless troubled heroine.
“Peachy. I’m a little…” Daniel waved a hand in the air. Armand nicked the pad of her thumb on one of her fangs and drew it across the puncture wounds on Daniel’s neck. Daniel hummed at the feeling of muscle and skin healing over, a last fizzle of remembered pain But when Armand went to the pierced holes on her chest Daniel grabbed her hand and stopped her.
“Let me keep these,” she pleaded, taking Armand’s thumb into her mouth and gently licking the puncture closed. If Daniel could concentrate, liquify, and shoot up Armand’s blood, she’d swear off everything else forever.
“They’re small, they’ll heal fast. I want something to remember you by.”
Armand relented, slinging one arm over the mattress and grabbing the camera.
“One more,” Armand said, eyeing the display. She set the camera on the floor and rubbed one of the wounds on Daniel’s chest. Daniel tensed against the new, dull pain as a drop of blood formed and crested over.
Armand swiped up the blood with her little finger like a painter and smeared it to connect the lingering blood of the other piercing holes like a gorey connect-the-dots.
“How do you want me?” Daniel asked, now sitting cross-legged. She kicked her wastebasket out of the picture’s frame.
Armand was good at direction, in every sense of the word.
“I used to be a model, and then a director,” she had explained once. Daniel believed it. Armand had a face meant for playbill covers and plaster frescos.
“Bring your chest up, like so. Non , here. And turn this way,” Armand said, swapping their positions so Daniel leaned against the bed frame. With Armand’s staging, Daniel sat with her feet together, elbows defiantly on her knees, chest out with the poster of a tropical bird.
“Don’t look at the camera,” Armand said, adjusting the flash.
“You should be off-center from the lens. Look at me.”
Daniel already was.
She barely waited until the photo ejected from the camera before crawling into Armand’s lap and tumbling them onto the floor, on the dusty hardwood and the stray piles of clothes.
Daniel crowded over Armand’s space and attached her lips to her neck, against the smooth and timeless skin where her jugular would be. Dead veins, dead skin, a frozen relic brought to life only through violence and damage—this, Daniel adored.
Armand made a noise that could have been either acknowledgment or dismissal.
“Again?”
“Again,” Daniel confirmed. She drew her legs up and put her knee between Armand’s thighs.
Armand grasped her face and drew Daniel up to kiss her. The power Armand held over her did not diminish as the sensation of her grew ever more familiar. Rather Armand’s casual and intimate touch heightened the magnetic pull of her power and her scope. She was dead. She was warmed with blood. Daniel wanted to crawl inside of her ribcage and make a home for herself between the ventricles of her heart.
“Don’t give up on me for a while, okay?” Daniel asked, repositioning her legs so as to inch her mouth down Armand’s torso. Armand leaned back onto one elbow, using her free hand to tug at Daniel’s hair.
“Look at me. Look at me when you have me in your mouth and I’ll consider it.”
Daniel, tasting hot blood on her lips, arousal between her teeth, licked up Armand’s clit and never broke her eye contact. Spit dripped onto her chin. She was dizzy, blackout drunk on Armand sitting with her legs spread and smirking down at her. Here was where it got dangerous, more so than the draining and the choking and the ropes that drew blood: there was no line between the play and the real, the make-believe and the manifestation of Daniel’s sharpest wants. Armand could only be playing her role, or she could be serious. In any case, it drew a direct line for Daniel between performance and winding Armand into staying with her as long as she could take.
Daniel was sure Armand could feel the muddy, bubbling pool of her own yearning. The childish desire for an approved performance, to do better, to be the best she could so that Armand would reason to keep her. If not that, then smashing glass objects and throwing herself into danger so Armand might scoop her up and cradle her to safety.
“Will you talk to me when I do?” Daniel asked, pausing. She pressed the tip of her tongue against Armand’s entrance and stuck her tongue out, stock-still against Armand’s warmth. What she was asking for was Armand’s attention, Armand’s anachronistic and poetic musings, Armand’s billowing praise.
Armand, strands of hair stuck to the sweat on her face. Armand, digging sharp circles into Daniel’s skin from where she grasped the back of her neck, easing her forward. Daniel wanted to be her, to hold her power, to bask in that unyielding strength until the moon split apart. Daniel’s most loathsome want: Armand, to keep her, forever. Daniel’s deepest fear: Armand, bored of her. Weary of this human entertainment, this amusing hobby project with its junkie tendencies and lack of preservation.
“Yes. I never tire of you cara mia. You know this. Never.”
She ate Armand out with dreamy reverence, her senses a dance of the slow blood-high and the sharp tactile response of her body. In the haze of pleasure, Daniel almost believed her.