Chapter Text
For the second night in a row, you wholly consume Terzo’s thoughts. After he feeds from you, after he bandages your wrist and makes sure your fragile human body is hydrated and fed, you doze off on the couch. Rather than wake you and usher you off to your room, he watches you sleep with a kind of tender fascination. You’re a vision, disheveled in a beautiful dress with your hair and cheek smushed into the velvet cushion. Your face is slack, and your relaxed expression makes emotion flutter in Terzo’s chest, right where his heart lays still.
For the short time Terzo has known you, there’s been an ever-present furrow between your eyebrows, like you’re deep in thought, worrying about what comes next. He wonders what your life was like before desperation drove you to his door. He’s never concerned himself too much with the minutiae of human life, but what little you’ve shared with him about yours doesn’t sound easy.
It’s a foreign feeling, to be concerned about human troubles. Losing a job, losing an apartment – things that he has ever had to worry about. He wants to make sure you never have to trouble yourself about anything like that ever again.
While you lay asleep on the couch, Terzo settles into the matching velvet armchair and pulls out his phone. His eyes dart around the room, and when he’s well assured no one is lurking in the shadows, he types how to care for a human pet into the search bar.
The first thing he reads his a listicle called Twenty Things Your Pet Needs to Thrive, which gives him more affiliate links to online storefronts than it does actual information. He remembers a trick Copia taught him some time ago, something about adding Read-It to the end of your search inquiry to get real results. It takes him a few times to get the spelling right, but his efforts eventually lead him to a CompFeed forum. He exhales, suddenly feeling very nervous.
He’s really in deep now.
While he listens to the soft rasp of your breathing, Terzo scrolls and scrolls and scrolls. Information rushes past his eyes: things he already had an inkling of, like the best diets for humans, but also endless recommendations and testimonies for human enrichment and comfort. He suddenly feels woefully boorish for not bothering to ask what scents relax you, or if the sheets on your twin bed are scratchy on your skin. As much as he wants to wake you and pour over every detail of your life and your interests, he lets you sleep.
Eventually, his searching and scrolling and tapping leads him to a forum called CompFeed After Dark. Once more, his eyes dart around the room before opening the site on a new tab. He feels the same heady rush of emotion that a human would associate with a pounding heart. He clicks on a photo of a human woman in lingerie. Her face is out of frame, and she wears a matching collar. A matching leash is wrapped around the fist of her owner.
Terzo takes a sharp inhale through his nose. His dick twitches with interest at the thought of you dressed like that, dark lace over your soft skin; the gleam of a collar on your pretty neck. The leash wrapped around his hand, you down on your knees looking up at him with your big, pretty eyes–
“Terzo,” you mutter, shifting on the couch as you wake. “Sorry. How long was I asleep?”
He places his phone screen-down on the arm of the chair and turns toward you. “Not long at all. Nothing to worry about,” he says, voice as smooth and even as ever. He pauses a beat, then decides to test the waters. “You’re beautiful when you sleep.”
Your mouth crooks up at the corners. “You watched me?” you ask, amused.
“Only to make sure you didn’t croak on me. Strictly business,” he replies. “How lovely you look is merely a bonus.”
You roll your eyes, but your smile remains firmly in place. You slowly sit all the way up and rise to stand. Terzo watches you intently, ready to jump to his feet to steady you if you wobble. You’re stable, though, and you wipe your palms down the front of your dress before turning to look at him where he sits.
“Thank you for dinner,” you say, almost sheepish. “It feels silly to have gotten all dressed up and then go right back to bed but–”
“Don’t worry about me,” Terzo replies. He hopes he doesn’t sound overeager. “I’m used to spending my nights alone.” The look on your face makes him want to put his foot in his mouth. He want to apologize, but he bites his tongue. He clears his throat. “Hundreds of years. You become very comfortable with keeping yourself occupied.” A pause. He clears his throat again. “Can I at least walk you to your room?”
“You’re such a gentleman,” you say, sauntering over to him in your tight little dress. You offer him your hand, and he takes it as he stands. He can feel the warmth of your skin through the white satin of his glove.
The halls of his home are always quiet, but they seem especially so tonight. Terzo wonders how his brothers are occupying their nights now. Do their halls ring with conversation with their new pets? What do they even talk about? What could a human and a vampire possibly have in common with each other?
He glances over at you. He wants to know; he wants to learn from you.
When you reach you room, a not-small part of Terzo hopes that you invite him to cross the threshold of your doorway. Tonight, though, is not that night. For some strange, endearing reason, you decide to shake his hand as you say goodnight. He wants to hold you, he wants to capture your lips with his own, but he’ll take anything you give him.
For the second night in a row, Terzo takes himself in his hand and strokes himself quick and dirty, lost to the single-minded determination to come. For the second night in a row, he comes with your name on his lips.
The days and weeks pass, and you and Terzo fall into an easy rhythm. Terzo takes better care of you than you ever did – your meals and macros are fastidiously tracked, and every meal is planned for you. A fully nocturnal schedule remains out of reach, but you adapt the best you can. Each day, you rise at dusk and ready yourself for dinner. Terzo likes to see you dressed up, and beautiful garments begin to overwhelm your closet. Your new wardrobe is a far cry from the athleisure and cheap business casual clothes you brought with you in your suitcase.
Each night, you eat, and then Terzo eats you. While you recover on the couch, Terzo talks to you, the same idle, half-nonsense chatter an old roommate of yours would coo to her cat.
“So sweet,” he murmurs. “So good. Who made you so good for me? Did the Unholy Father make you just for me?”
Despite your post-feeding haze, you try to fight how warm and fuzzy his baby talk makes you feel. It’s a futile effort.
A few nights later, your head finds its way into Terzo’s lap after he feeds from your wrist. You feel unusually dizzy, and Terzo beckons you closer. His legs are cold beneath his clothes, but he’s a grounding presence regardless. The next night, Terzo runs his fingers through your hair for the first time as you lay your head in his lap. If you were a cat, you’d be purring.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he asks. He’s wearing black leather gloves with sharp, gold fingernails tonight, and he scratches at the crown of your head. A pleasured shiver runs down the length of your spine.
You barely suppress an incredulous, sarcastic little laugh. “I’m very boring,” you say. Over the last several evenings, he told you about the years he spent in France, about the discotheque he opened in the seventies in Italy with his older brother and the ensuing bacchanalia, about his sneaking suspicion that his exploits led to the ban of absinthe in several European countries. Nothing you share with him can possibly measure up to the exciting unlife he’s lived.
“Boh!” he huffs. “Don’t deny me.” He teases out a tangle in your hair with his fingers, and the gesture makes you want to moan.
“When have I ever denied you?” you ask. “I think I’m contractually obligated to give you what you want.”
His fingers catch another tangle, and he inadvertently pulls your hair. Your brain goes all staticky, and arousal pools low in your belly. What a damn fool you are to feel this way.
“Humor me,” he replies. “All the time we spend together – is it really that absurd that I’d want to know something about you?”
You hum; he has a point. “What do you want to know?”
“Are you still afraid of blood?” he asks, as light and breezy as if he was asking about the weather.
The question brings you pause. “No,” you say after a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“Why’s that?”
You chew on your bottom lip. “Why aren’t I scared anymore? Or why was I scared to start with?”
“Both.”
You press yourself up from the couch, lifting your head from Terzo’s lap. You look up just in time to see his tongue dart out and wet the enchanting swell of his lower lip.
“Well,” you start, turning to face him. “I don’t think shaking and crying and wanting to throw up every night at dinner time would be fun for either of us. But–” A pause, a brush of your knee against his. “–I know you won’t hurt me. And that helps tremendously.”
“Oh? Is that what it is?” There’s a self-satisfied, catlike gleam in Terzo’s eyes. Normally you would bristle and ask what was with the impromptu psychoanalysis, but as is often the case with Terzo, you feel strangely at ease.
“Yeah,” you admit. “I watched some horror movie when I was way too young. I can’t even remember the name of it now, not that it matters, but there was a scene where the heroine dies. The vampire villain catches her, and he drinks all the blood in her body. You’re watching her get whiter and whiter while he drinks. The camera zoomed in on her, and she’s pale and stiff on the ground, and her mouth is open in this silent scream. Then you see him, and his mouth is stained with blood–”
“What happened next?” Terzo asked. His eyes are wide, and he sounds absolutely riveted.
You playfully bop him on the arm. “I don’t know. I never finished the movie. I had to leave the room because I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was like a switch flipped inside me, this realization that I wanted all of my blood–” You gesture broadly over the length of your body “–to stay inside of me. From then on, when I saw blood, and I felt like I was gonna puke.”
“And yet, here you are.”
You sigh, exhaling all the air you didn’t realize you were holding in your lungs in a big whoosh. “Here I am. Desperate times, desperate measures. Et cetera, et cetera.” Terzo is looking at you like a seductive predator, all big enticing eyes and encouraging looks. You swallow and decide to take a risk. “I do like it here. I like the time we spend together.”
A nearly imperceptible jolt runs through Terzo’s body. He was not expecting you to say that, at all. “Do you really?”
You laugh. “Don’t act so surprised. You’re a good host. Or boss. Or carnivore. Whatever.”
Inside, Terzo lights up. Outside, he’s as suave and cool as ever. “I like to pride myself on my hospitality,” he says. You don’t need to know that at the end of ever party he’s ever thrown, he’s ended up alone at the end of the night.
“Now I get to ask you something.” You lean in a little, and he can smell the sweetness of your breath when it fans across his face. A bolt of desire runs through his body.
“Anything,” he replies. He means it.
“Have there been others like me before?” The earnestness of your question takes him aback.
“I’ve had my share of favorites over the years, from the flock. I’ve shared nights with more than I can count. But no,” Terzo says. “Nothing like this before. No one like you.”
His highly attuned senses pick up on the involuntary changes happening in your body: the prickle of sweat under your arms, the increase in your heart rate, the slight dilation of your pupils. His mouth waters. He wants to eat you alive.
“That’s… really sweet. I don’t know if it was meant to be, but thanks.” You smile kindly at him and pat him on the knee.
“Don’t you know, Agnellina?” he asks. If his heart could beat, it would be thumping away in his chest. “You’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever known.”
When you retire to bed past midnight, you dream for the first time in weeks. In your dream, you are asleep, nestled in a sea of pillows in a four-poster bed, shrouded in gauzy netting. The one window in the room is open, a sheer curtain twisting in the breeze. A full moon illuminates the night sky, and its light casts your room in a dim blue glow.
Your hair tumbles loose around your face, and you wear a pale silk negligee the color of a pearl. Its thin strap has slid down your shoulder, leaving your collarbone fully on display. In a darkened corner of your room, a shadow stirs, and the vampire emerges into the cold light of the moon. On cue, you blink your eyes open, watching as his dark form outlined in silver light creeps closer to you. His face is still obscured by shadow, but your heart thumps as it registers that Terzo is the one stalking you from the shadows.
He draws closer and closer, step by agonizing step, and his face emerges into the pale moonlight. When he reaches your bed, he swings himself onto the mattress, all ease and predatory grace. He settles himself over you and noses down the cord of your neck. Your heart races with delicious anticipation, not panic. Terzo’s body is a cold, heavy weight on yours. He brushes your hair away and licks a fat stripe up your carotid artery. You press your lips together and whimper, writhing and trying to press yourself closer to him.
His teeth pierce the tender flesh of your neck, and you gasp. There’s a momentary flash of pain that soon melts into warm, all-encompassing bliss. Terzo consumes your senses – the cold flick of his tongue against your skin, the ozone and cemetery dirt smell of his body.
“Terzo,” you murmur, threading your fingers through the back of his hair. “Take me. Take what you need.”
Terzo makes a soft, satisfied noise, and he sucks harder in your neck. You moan quietly, gripping his hair tighter, and your body twists against your silky sheets. As he consumes you, your head gets light and your eyes roll back. At this point, you’re achingly wet, and your filmy nightgown clings to the slickness between your thighs. Your body pulses with want, with a hunger as all-consuming as his is.
“Please,” you rasp, not sure what you’re asking for. Terzo hasn’t even laid a hand on you, but you feel the slow, steady build of an orgasm regardless.
He pulls his face away from your neck and leers down at you, mouth curled into a wide grin. His teeth are stained with your blood, and some dumb joke about Terzo being black and white and red all over flits through your brain. He’s a gruesome sight, a spitting image of that horror movie villain, but you’re not afraid.
“Please,” you repeat. “Finish me off. F-fuck, Terzo, please.”
He bows his head back down and returns to feast on your neck. His hand snakes down your body, finding its way between your legs. He teases the hem of your nightgown up and cups the whole of your sex in his hand. As he drinks, he traces two fingers around your clit before curling them into cunt. You gasp, and your back bows off the bed. The wet squelch of Terzo’s fingers inside you and his mouth suckling at your neck are an obscene chorus in your ears. You feel like you’re going to float away, and despite the chill settling over your body, you’ve never felt so content.
Your hips chase his clever fingers, and your orgasm crests and breaks at the moment Terzo drains you dry.
You bolt awake, cunt clenching around nothing, half-disbelieving that your macabre little fantasy actually made you come in your sleep. You wonder how the real thing measures up to the make-believe, and, feeling reckless, you throw off the covers. Your feet hit the floor, and like a woman possessed, you start walking toward Terzo’s bedroom.