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It’s a quiet night, as far as Saturday nights go, and in addition to the usual boredom she feels slagging through her days, Agatha Harkness feels something far more dangerous. Restlessness. A need for constant motion. A need to be entertained. To take risks. To break the glass of the carefully crafted snow globe that’s become her life.
Every day is the same. She wakes up, alone, drained and hungry, still recovering from the previous night. Makes herself something to eat. Watches the news. Spends her time reading because she doesn’t have the energy to do much more. Waits until Lilia’s opens, goes to work. Rinse and repeat.
It’s fine. It’s been fine. It works for her. She makes enough money to be comfortable and doesn’t have to have a nine to five. But recently, there’s been something in the air. Maybe it’s a harbinger of things to come, or maybe she’s just approaching her limits when it comes to stagnation. She just… wants more. Wants to feel excitement snake through her blood. Wants to wonder if she’ll survive until morning. Wants to hover on the edge of a cliff above razor-sharp rocks until the threat of dying makes her feel alive.
Lilia’s is nearly empty tonight, and Agatha finds herself reflecting on the early days while she waits for a client.
“You are aware what we do here, Ms…?”
“Harkness. And yes, I am.”
“You look a little young for this kind of work.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“And why do you want this job?”
Agatha remembers feeling smug as she answered.
“I like getting people off. It’s a rush.”
“Your clients won’t exactly be people, Ms. Harkness.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Indeed. We have a strict five-per-night policy to avoid untimely deaths. Will you accept that and sign a binding agreement as to such?”
“Can I get paid enough to live comfortably on five a night?”
Lilia had laughed. A rich, melodic sound that carried condescension on the wind. “Yes, my dear. Quite comfortably.”
That had been five years ago and was the beginning of a beautiful working relationship that had eventually blossomed into a beautiful friendship.
She leans forward, elbows on the table in front of her, chin resting on her hand, and glances around the den.
She doesn’t have time to do more than sweep her eyes over the velvet floor before the doors burst open and a cluster of potential clients roll in together.
The night is looking up.
She gets to her feet, about to descend the short flight of stairs to the subfloor when the hair on the back of her neck stands up, a chill blanketing her bones. Something else is coming.
She shudders and pops her neck without really meaning to, eyes trained on the closing doors, body stock still, anticipation bleeding her dry.
And when the object responsible for the feeling steps inside, Agatha is not disappointed.
The woman turns sideways to slip silently over the threshold without having to touch the doors. She’s absolutely fucking gorgeous, and she’s dressed like a fucking rockstar.
No capes and suits for this undead specimen. She’s wearing a long-sleeved lace shirt over a black bra – the shirts that have holes to put your thumbs through, which, Agatha notes, she has done. Her fingernails are dark green and long enough to scream either straight girl or sadist. Agatha prays it’s the latter. Dark hair is swept up in a tangled mess on top of the woman’s head, more of it than not sneaking out of the bun and sticking every which way.
Her lower half is sporting black cargo pants with an abundance of chains, and black leather boots peek out from the baggy hems.
Jesus fucking Christ.
She’s in motion before anyone else can poach her new favorite client. Because she doesn’t feel like committing colleaguicide tonight. Not tonight.
She stops in front of the woman and puts what she hopes is a smile on her face, but she can’t really feel her face, so she’s not sure what expression she’s making. “You’re new,” she says simply.
The woman’s deep brown eyes flash with something Agatha can’t read, and a smirk parts black-painted lips, revealing a small gap in the woman’s front teeth that just adds ten thousand points to her level of appeal. “And how would you know that?”
Oh god. Even her voice threatens to knock Agatha dead. It’s flat, yet clearly amused, belittling Agatha and toying with her at the same time. She’s never been so wet just from meeting someone. It’s ridiculous, honestly. “I work every night. I’ve never seen you.”
“Let me guess. If you’d seen me, you’d remember?”
“Fucking right I would.”
The woman laughs, a light, airy sound, and Agatha’s instantly taken with it. “Are you my new… handler?”
It’s just barely suggestive, but for Agatha, the woman may as well have grabbed her by the throat and put a hand in her pants. “If that’s agreeable to you,” she forces herself to say, because the clients at Lilia’s do have a choice of who they want to feed from.
“What’s your name?”
Well that’s new. Most clients don’t care. “Agatha.”
“Agatha,” the woman says, as if trying out the name on her tongue. “Agatha. Well, lead the way, Agatha. I’m Rio.”
For fuck’s sake, even the woman’s name is hot. Agatha cannot wait to see what she looks like when she comes. “Follow me, Rio.”
The sounds of the den start to fall away, not just because they’re pushing through the curtain into the back, but because all Agatha can focus on is the heavy cadence of Rio’s boots as they walk.
She opens the door to her private room, a small booth-type enclosure with a purple velour sofa and a tiny round coffee table sporting several bottles of water and some chocolate bars.
Rio sits down like she owns the place as Agatha shuts the door behind them, and when she turns back around, Rio’s got one boot propped up on the coffee table, leg bent, and the other foot on the floor. And she’s staring at Agatha. “Get comfortable and take off your shirt,” Rio says.
Agatha’s step stutters and she stands in the middle of the small room with an error message running code through her brain. “Excuse me?”
Rio puts her other boot on the floor and rests her forearms on her knees, hands coming to clasp together. “I feed below the heart. So you can either take your shirt off, or your pants. Up to you.”
To her utter horror, Agatha feels her cheeks heating up and knows she’s blushing. “That’s not standard protocol,” she manages to say as she edges her way to the sofa and sits at the opposite end from Rio.
“But it’s not against the rules, is it?” Rio says, tilting her head in a manner that would be infuriating if she wasn’t so goddamn hot.
And she’s right. It’s not against the rules. So Agatha has to decide what’s better – taking off her shirt or taking off her pants.
It doesn’t help that Rio’s staring a hole right through her as she’s trying to decide. “If I take off my shirt, where are you going to feed from?”
Rio inches closer until she can reach out a hand and tuck two fingertips between the ribs just below Agatha’s heart. “Here,” she says, then removes her hand and places it firmly on Agatha’s hip. “Or here.”
Rio’s hand is freezing, but Agatha’s skin feels so hot at the touch she’s surprised there’s not steam rising from under her shirt at the contrast. “I think I’d prefer my hip,” she says, not even bothering to ask where Rio would feed from if she took off her pants. “Can I just pull the shirt up?”
Rio looks at her from under hooded eyelids, fluttering her lashes. “You can… but I’m a messy eater.”
“Mess… what…” Agatha says, dumbfounded as she stares at the other woman.
Rio’s mouth quirks up at the corner. “I’ll get blood on your shirt,” she spells it out like Agatha’s intelligence is in question.
“You’ll get blood on my pants, too,” Agatha says, if that’s the reasoning behind removing her shirt.
Rio leans back and spreads her hands out in front of her in an inviting gesture. “If you want to take your pants off too, by all means. But I am actually hungry, so would you mind if we get to it?”
“You’re trying to get me naked,” Agatha says with a frown.
“Perhaps I’m just nostalgic for the days when sex work involved actual sex,” Rio trills, one lace-covered hand pushing up the hem of Agatha’s shirt as she gets on her knees on the carpet and ducks her head. “Probably before your time.”
“Wait. I’ll take them off,” Agatha says, and when Rio lifts her head, her eyes are sparkling.
“That I don’t mind waiting for,” she says as she lets her fangs drop, running her tongue over the tips.
Agatha pulls her shirt over her head and kicks off her shoes, already breathing harder than she should be as she undoes her jeans and pushes them down.
Rio helps her finish taking off the pants and runs a hand up the inside of her leg, making her gasp. Once again, cold meets hot and leaves fire in its wake, her skin singing everywhere Rio touches.
And then a long fingernail hooks under the seam of her underwear, tugging it away from the crease of her thigh. “And these?”
“Fuck,” she exhales forcefully, not sure what to say or do. The idea of having actual sex with a client isn’t completely unheard of, it’s just never even come close to happening to her. “I don’t know.”
Rio licks her lips and tugs a bit more, stretching the fabric, then lets go and the elastic snaps sharply, making Agatha jump. “We’ll leave them for now,” Rio says, her voice low and promising, and Agatha wonders if this woman is a harbinger of death and destruction.
She’s certainly killed all sense of social norms and destroyed Agatha’s equilibrium.
Rio kisses the jut of Agatha’s left hip, and Agatha tenses in preparation for the puncture. That’s always the hardest part. Once the venom disperses, the pain subsides, but that puncture is always agonizing.
“By the way,” Rio says, and the casual, offhand way she’s speaking is surely meant to be disarming, but all it does is ramp Agatha up for whatever fuckery the woman’s about to unleash. “I don’t come when I feed.”
And then she bites.
Agatha doesn’t have time to react to the words because she’s writhing in pain, hips bucking into Rio’s mouth in an instinctive attempt to dislodge the fangs from her skin. It’s burning and pulsing, sharp and dull in the same breath, until Rio’s venom spreads through her system and numbs the hurt.
Agatha relaxes with a heaving breath, and the longer Rio feeds from her, the more time she has to gather her wits and address the ridiculous statement hanging in the air between them.
“What do you mean you don’t come when you feed?” she finally asks, voice a little broken, but whose wouldn’t be with the hottest woman on the planet sucking on her hip, drawing sustenance from her blood? “What’s the point of coming here and paying me, then?”
Rio doesn’t answer, because she’s eating, and holy god was she right about being messy. There’s blood everywhere. Smeared over the entirety of Rio’s lower jaw, dripping down her chin, staining Agatha’s underwear, coating her hip and her belly and somehow even spattered across her bra.
Rio moans, but it’s not orgasmic, it’s lazy and soft.
And then Agatha feels fingertips dancing up and down the soaked gusset of her panties, the touch so light she could almost be imagining it, but she’s not. She knows she’s not. Rio is stroking her cunt through her underwear, not nearly enough pressure for anything to happen, but the touch itself is making her so profoundly turned on that a rhythm throbs around the edges of her clit.
“I—I’m supposed to be g—getting you off,” she protests weakly, squirming her legs because she can’t squirm her hips with Rio’s mouth attached.
“I am getting off,” Rio promises, the words quick so she can go back to her feast, drawing out more and more blood, clearly not caring how much makes it down her throat and how much wrecks their clothing and the furniture.
“It’s—it’s too light, can you go harde—”
She stops mid sentence because a finger slides under her panties and contacts her bare skin. She’s so wet it’s obscene, and Rio’s finger slips easily inside her, and she hasn’t been fingered in ages, and how did she get so lucky to have the one client on earth that wants to actually fuck her?
Rio’s adept at multitasking, continuing to feed and make a horrendous mess while being the softest and gentlest with her movements inside Agatha, and the conflicting sensations just heighten everything to a fever pitch, and before she can even understand what’s happening, she’s tightening on Rio’s finger and quivering as she comes.
The moment she reaches that peak, it’s like Rio can taste the difference, because a litany of moans reach her ears and Rio starts swallowing more and more, making less of a mess, containing the blood bath until she slowly siphons off and rests her forehead against Agatha’s flank.
Agatha just lays slumped against the arm of the sofa, dazed and blissed out and woozy from the blood loss. Rio’s not feeding anymore but she’s still inside Agatha, and Agatha finds herself dreading the moment she’ll lose that comfortingly erotic touch. And dreading the moment Rio will finish up, pay, and leave. She has never wanted anything more with a client than to do her job and be left alone afterward. But she doesn’t want Rio to go.
The thought is slightly unnerving. “You don’t have to pay me,” she says suddenly, her mouth turning traitorous. “You didn’t get what you came here for.”
Rio licks the jagged wound on her hip and grins up at her. “I very much got what I came here for. I am very satisfied with your services, Agatha. I am no longer hungry, your blood tastes divine, and you came apart so beautifully for me. I don’t need to have an orgasm to get my money’s worth.”
Agatha doesn’t know what to say. “You’re so different,” is what she finally comes up with.
“And thank goodness for that,” Rio says, and Agatha whimpers when she starts to withdraw her finger.
Rio’s eyes go darker at the sound.
“Agatha,” she tuts, shaking her head. “I can’t stay inside you all night. Don’t go getting attached, hmm?”
Agatha’s cheeks warm at the gentle admonishment and she shakes herself out of her apparent stupor, reaching down to adjust the crotch of her panties where it’s pressed uncomfortably between her lips. Jesus, she’s still so wet. “Of course not, I just… it’s different,” she says lamely, half repeating her prior sentiment.
“Different,” Rio says, the initial sound pressed out through her teeth, and she wipes her hand on her pants as she gets to her feet. “Do I pay you directly or pay your boss on the way out?”
Agatha wishes she could get up to walk Rio out, but she can’t move yet. “You can pay on your way out,” she says, reaching for a chocolate bar to replenish some energy. The question of whether Rio will return is on the tip of her tongue, but after the comment about getting attached, she thinks better of asking it. “Good night,” she says awkwardly, and Rio blows her a kiss before disappearing out the door, shutting it firmly behind her.