𝕃𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤 ᵒᵘᵗ || ƒᴇʀᴀʟ x ᴇʀᴇʙᴜs || 𝔽𝕀ℕ

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

Valerie did not rise to the bait, nor to the challenge. She looked both squarely in the eyes and said, sotto voce: "That depends entirely on you."

As the beautiful snake shed its skin, Valerie was hypnotized in an instant, charmed. She stared, bare-faced and shamelessly. Recall her incurable fascination for the arts, and the conclusion was plain to see. The stranger was no longer a human body commandeered by signals from the brain but a walking and breathing personification of sheer artistry. It was the amalgamation of the souls of master craftsmen who spent decades perfecting their work, pouring blood, sweat, and tears into every nook and cranny.

She knew of people who knew people who would do unspeakable acts to have this woman mummified and strung up for display. But nowadays, buyers had a moral backbone as rigid as their wallets. It took a truly disgusting individual to tread that gory path. That was good news for Zuki and, by extension, Valerie, who hated getting her hands messy - more so when friends were involved, however shortlived. This was for her selfish gaze, a fact which pleased her immensely, more so than any other mundane sight her companion had offered tonight.

Hungry for more, Valerie peered a little closer. A sakura tree bloomed gorgeously in the center of two Tuscan suns, pink branches spilling out like water. On a pale limb, a mottled carp splashed up a waterfall aimlessly. A tiger and dragon were locked in a fearsome battle in a tapestry largely reminiscent of other great works. When Zuki turned, the heavy steam had already obscured part of the back but by then, she was already musing on the healed wounds and weaving her own sordid tales. An errant bear trap covered in autumn leaves, bullets coated in silver; mayhaps a whip coated in arsenic, or simply an impudent child with a Bic lighter and unsteady knees.

Because her brain was busy admiring, she did not do the math. One plus one did not equal two. Yakuza were the Japanese mafia and highly respectable folk who had a stereotypical relationship with swords and smuggled Slavic guns. They also (mostly) had severed finger joints in an incredulous act of repayment; this was the most important fact. Zuki had all her digits intact, so one plus one did not equal two. It equaled, instead, a window of opportunity. But the window was gamely shuttered tight and boarded with hammer and nail.

It should not have come as a surprise when the canvas pushed past her; it should not have shocked her when the canvas was warm. She was surprised and shocked by both. "There is nothing boring about logic," Valerie managed to say; unfortunately it was mostly to empty air, a silent room. Unnatural. This was the first time, in a very long time, that she found herself truly alone. Without family, dead or alive; without guards, without the halting whispers of the night. There was that boredom creeping on the hinges, curling long fingers around the frame. There was curiosity cowering in the corner as suspicion loomed, the white-hot knife of indelible emptiness accompanied by the sharp twang of a wire.

She ducked her head and trailed politely after the onsen's proprietor, and the doubts slithered away as the claustrophobic interior opened to an oasis. The scene was picturesque, lifted straight from an oil impression. Instead of dirty city puddles and gummed-up sidewalks, there were large, uneven stones flat as pancakes marking the trail. Instead of corporate buildings inlaid with pulsing neon lights, there were trees she could not name. It was a vast upgrade to the constant petrol-and-diesel notes, the gentle burble of heated water subduing the tremor.

"I won't," Valerie said, unwise to the thought of the hypothetical and rhetorical unless it was borne first from her lips. "Begging is a human right - it should be done from the heart." She did not think she could make Zuki do anything, and that did not rankle her as much as it might have in the past. It was this place, having not seen a single soul but the birds and the cicadas -- and could not begrudge this tiny village for its being. On the contrary, she almost felt some strange fondness toward it - the way a butcher might look upon a mud-soaked pig.

The pool rippled outward from the first touch of her foot, quite literally testing the waters, and found the temperature lacking. It warmed her from the inside out, loosening the tightness of her muscles and flushing her blood to the surface. She was almost content to sit and splash her legs back and forth, but the night air was cool, and even Valerie found herself vulnerable to the rapid heat drop. The rest of her body followed after, the towel quickly sticking tightly to her skin. Valerie had decided not to take it off. Despite Zuki's adamant announcement, etiquette was the last thing she wanted to damn.

Submerging herself, she was not quite within touching range of the other woman, but close enough where she could continue her admiration of those tattoos without having to squint through all that heavy fog. At its shallowest, the water bobbed below her shoulders. Hair as fine as blue silk floated around her, spun cotton on air. The liquor had long since left her system and the pleasant blanket layered over her consciousness was gone. Now it was just white noise.

Content to soak for a while, Valerie breathed out. "It is... adequate," she finally admitted, sliding her palm down the smooth length of her arm. "Kanbetsu has one redeeming quality. What shall we talk about next?"​

 

[ƒeral]

---

Kazuki tracked Valerie through the steam, eyes lidded but no less keen. Nearly a leer, when they roved over the exposed throat and collar, drifted across the graceful slopes of shoulders, and paused at the perimeter of the towel. Contemplative, for just a moment, before sweeping down to admire the way cotton adhered to those shapely contours beneath the water’s surface. Sinful curves, some might say. Funny how humans liked to pin the blame on anything and everything, as if deflection could eradicate the inherent sinfulness of their own impure urges.

Kazuki considered herself far more honest than that. She couldn’t profess the same level of interest in the arts as her companion, but she could certainly appreciate beauty. As a self-professed hedonist, she preferred to appreciate beauty through all five of her senses. It was base - a blatant disregard for the sophistication humans liked to play at. It was raw, visceral - undiluted animal lust that she did not, would not, disguise as anything else. It was sinful, but on her terms.

Since Valerie opted to meet her only halfway, Kazuki supposed that it fell upon her to bridge the difference. The other possibility, where Valerie might have actually wanted to soak a while and talk, as she stated, did not even cross Kazuki’s mind. The yakuza fancied herself a hunter; now that her prey had willingly followed into her domain and stripped down to nothing but a fluffy towel, it was time to go in for the kill. Of course, nothing quite so literal, despite what the French had to say about it.

She rose halfway, enshrouded in fog and haze, enshrined by water-soused hair that drew arbitrary patterns over the tattoos encroaching beneath her collarbones. Perhaps it were on account of her impressive stature, but she was more lanky than muscular. Lean, in the same way carnivores who ran their prey down for miles were lean, all sleek lines and hidden muscle potential. She carried herself the same way, with a casual confidence that stretched those same number of miles, uncaring of her partial nudity. Not quite flaunting, but with enough of a curve at the corner of her lips to suggest that she most certainly knew what she was doing.

Wading the few scant steps to bridge the distance, she towered over the submerged foreigner. A hand braced against the surrounding stone for balance, and she leaned down, close enough that a few strands of night flirted with those of the sun-kissed sea. For another, that would have been plenty bold as is, but Kazuki climbed desolate temples for fun, her idea of boldness was quite a way beyond that.

“I’ve shown you two of my favorite spots now.” Her inflection dipped, voice quiet, merging with but rising just above the ambient noise. “But you’ve only shown me one of yours.” Those thin but powerful digits Valerie favored pressed into her sternum, pushing back, before ascending. Palm flattened against the suppleness of throat Kazuki favored, thumb measuring the protrusion of jugular. She did not apply more pressure, not yet, a hold that was not quite lax but not quite tight either. “That hardly seems fair to me.” She tested her grip then, not on the airway, her fingers easily enclosing around the entire front and extending beyond. They bore against the muscles on the sides of Valerie’s neck, more than enough to be felt, but not enough to impede her breath. That ever watchful gaze scrutinized for a response, before Kazuki squeezed hard enough to steal a single breath, arrest a single heartbeat.

“So tell me another. You wanted to talk, yes?”
​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

Her companion might have fancied herself a hunter, but Valerie was the impassive audience sat behind a glass wall, a silent watcher only slightly invested in the show. Zuki was a scroll unfurling from the tube, uncoiling its ribbons and edges with a passive sort of disinterest, the art scrawled on her body rippling, warped from the steam and the stretch of skin and muscle. But because she was only slightly invested, she did not stare harder than she needed. Having already passed by this particular exhibition and committed it to her memory banks, she could close her eyes and trace every inch in disturbing detail. No, she should not have lit up like a neuron supercharged on adrenaline.

And yet. Yet. Her body did not follow that same line of thinking. Instead, it was alive with tension and eagerness for attention. It was not quite temperature raising, but it did haul her bodily over barely lukewarm. That is to say, she had crash-landed deep in enemy territory and unwillingly found sanctuary in the bone-deep comfort of a stranger's personal hot spring. This sort of... untoward behavior would have her dusty family gnawing at the ropes in a desperate, hopeless bid for her escape. She would tighten the noose herself and toss it to the pale hand reaching for her -- if only to say she could.

"Have I?" Valerie mused quietly, her breath gentle against the puffing heat.

The water had soaked her aquamarine hair two shades darker - from crushed robin's egg to a rich Persian blue - and served as a sort of swirling scarf as she leaned back against the tiled rocks. Zuki's fingertips fluttered on the stark wing of her collarbone, the light touch sent a tingling sensation to the back of her neck. It was alarming how the mere thought of danger was enough to enrapture the nightwalker who, by all accounts, was only ever really in danger when she was fully clothed. This was the sort of danger that had mortals smiling from ear to ear. It made the mouth and tongue dry with anticipation, it had the limbs twitching in anticipation.

Because she was not mortal, none of this happened to her. Valerie felt the rope tighten and welcomed it with a joyous heart. Her skin was pliant and soft as any other. She swallowed if only to add texture to the whole affair, one arm rising like a dredge line from the spring to rest on the back of Zuki's hand. Curious, perhaps, to know what it was like being so full of vitality and ignorance. To feel the slow pulse as Zuki would, their skin warm and wet where they met, her own fingers trawling the digits encroaching her neck, pressing along the slender shape of them one knuckle at a time. Her heart did not stutter, but her breath overlapped with a sigh.

"It is hard to talk when my vocal cords have been arrested. The air cannot pass to the lungs." Valerie was talking fine, though. She turned her exploration to the length of Zuki's forearm, traversing the damp river of veins but she could not reach the elbow. Not unless she wanted to lean into that vice grip. So she stopped and looked up at the figure shrouded in white vapor, her nerves howling from the overabundance of touch and heat. It was always in the eyes, the eerie implosion of copper and golden glass surrounding a black, yearning pit. She looked at Zuki with prehistoric greed.

Water strung and fell like diamond droplets from her arm, cutting into pockets of silence before Valerie spoke up again. "There is a lovely aquarium that has been closed for years. It is a mausoleum for sea life and imported coral. It was my cousin's." Then something terrible happened. She smiled, and the act lit her face like a god-killing star. It was the perfect juxtaposition of the pink curve of her lips and the faint beginnings of a flush on her cheeks. It was the contrast between the sincere pull of emotion and the utter disregard in which she gripped Zuki's wrist hard enough to bruise, hard enough to soak in the steady thrum of rich pumping blood.

"But I suspect you are not interested. Will you kiss me again?" It was not a request. ​

 

[ƒeral]

---

Not a request, nor, judging off of the previous strands of conversation, an entreaty. Then what, a demand? Now there was a thought - to regard Kazuki from a position of authority, whilst dallying in her province, submerged in her pool, and seized in her grip. The bruising squeeze around her wrist did not give her pause; if anything, it just widened her grin. Because, as far as Kazuki was concerned, there was no perfume more attractive than ego. And Valerie was perhaps the only to match Kazuki ounce for ounce where ego and danger was concerned. An attraction that was, by all accounts, most likely predisposed towards fatality. Just how she liked it.

Valerie wanted a kiss, and so, a kiss she shall receive. That being said, Kazuki was hardly about to abide by such flagrant arrogation. Towering over the seated foreigner, she locked her free hand into the persian tapestry, gripping a handful of hair where scalp met neck. The strength of her hold coaxed blood towards the surface, pinpricks of pain contrasting the gentleness of her lips as she dipped and granted Valerie’s wish. A kiss that, for a time, might have even been considered romantic but for the placement of her other hand. It remained put, subjugating that pale column to her whims. Tongue flicked against the plumpness of lips, and fingers fluttered against the vulnerability of throat.

That Kazuki was a woman used to issuing orders was readily apparent in the way she kissed. Her hands steered Valerie as she pleased, tilting her midnight sweetheart a notch sideways for easier access. She swept past the plush barricade, lapped against those pearly corals, before urging them apart with ever increasing ardor. It was almost like she had a grudge against oxygen, with the way she sought to eradicate the same every which way. The commanding grip, the assailing tongue, the tight cinch collaring the larynxes. She asserted herself upon Valerie, fulfilling the prompt with no shortage of declarative intent.

But, her autocratic mannerisms notwithstanding, there was fliration in great abundance as well. She invited Valerie to twine, alternated between a rapacious and coy tempo, and flexed her experience in pursuit of a good time. Time ebbed, measured in shared breaths and an uptick in heartbeats. A kiss that became two then three until the number ceased to have any meaning. Kazuki pulled against the hand upon her wrist until the grip slackened, finally releasing that fragile throat. Her hand trailed down, remapping collarbones and sternum until she hit the barrier of that towel once more.

Smirking with all the rakishness of a wandering ronin, she hooked her index into the fold of fabric and loosened the same, allowing the sodden cotton to slowly unfurl. Her gaze dipped, engrossed in these wicked games they played, appraising and admiring the prizes she won. She relinquished her hold in Valerie’s hair, combing through the saturated shade before parting.

“I did as you bid, does that make it my turn?” Her voice, huskier now for want of air, remained languid, juxtaposing the zealousness of her gaze. Ascending the built in elevation, she seated herself besides Valerie, hip nudging against hip. A hand patted her thigh, the towel wreathed around her waist halfheartedly playing at modesty. “My lap is infinitely more comfortable than this ledge. Why don’t you come see for yourself?”​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

Nay. Valerie was a woman second, an entity first. Not a request or demand, but something similar to a question. Like asking a child what it had in its grubby little fist. It was an open-ended forum for discussion, where Zuki's intentions were put on the stand for close inspection. As an entity, she examined the body with surgical precision, her shallow breaths even between the hammer and anvil. As a woman, she held onto that wrist like a bracelet two sizes too small. She was the poisonous stone studded in a diamond necklace; the serpent jewel wrapped around the crescent cartilage — a textbook study of effortless Pride, and the solution all at once.

Her stranger's interpretation of her question made her exultant. The slight lick of pressure and pain at the base of her skull only served as fuel to the spark and flame. No matter her resilience to forms of harm, of course she could feel this. It was not the product but the intent: the almost unbearable discomfort of follicles desperately clinging to the root and skin, the way those interconnected nerves sent alarm bells through the body all the way down to the toes. It made her thighs tremble and her shoulders tense in anticipation not for the searing heat down her spine but for the silky warmth pressed against her lips. A kiss, and so it was ordained.

She opened the doors to the temple of her, a temple bound in skin and flesh and by a mirrored Ego. Zuki held her down like an animal waiting for the needle, and she was both slack and firm in that tight grip. Valerie did not loose her fangs, not yet. Not the bite of her hand nor the wicked points caged in her mouth. They had kissed before and twice was enough to recall the map of tongue and mortal teeth. Her neck would bruise beneath those rough fingertips; a pretty violet coaxed from broken blood vessels would bloom corpse blue to an earthly pale. The water sloshed against her ribs as she shifted, refusing any and all gifts of air when they came.

As a woman, Valerie gave as good as she got. There was the age-old dance as she fell into familiar habits. She sought the citrus aftertaste and scraped her teeth against a lower lip and soothed any aches and pains by way of apology. They parted and reunited without fail, a soft rumble building deep in her chest. It was Desire - Lust - that subjugated Ego. It was the horse without the chariot thundering into a shattered horizon, Valerie's plans for the foreseeable future collapsing onto a single unit like a tiny nova. Her hand fell away at Zuki's prompting, splashing noisily into the hot water as the woman's touch blazed down her skin, searing straight to the bone.

Dizzy with heat, she let the towel fall away from her body. It must be hard to see anything through the steam, but the way Zuki was looking, Valerie had to think twice. The reveal was a revelation. An unmarked place of holy worship, the bruises already fading on her neck. She drew her hands up as if to cover her exposed chest, but modesty was not a word she employed regularly. Instead, they went to her hair, slicking her fringe away from her face, wiping the moisture from her lashes. Her companion was seated beside her, having whisked away the comfort of soft kisses and a steel touch, saying something in a low voice that fumbled at the ossicles.

"Mm." Valerie said, her eyes shining, half-lidded as she looked at her reflection in the water. The nightwalker beheld herself as if she had never done so before. Her lips were raw and pink, too much attention. Her cheeks were of a similar shade, and stray locks were plastered to her temples. She saw the hard light of her irises, molten and blown mad with greed. She did not elaborate. Her transition from stone to lap was a singular motion, cutting through the water with ease. She rose and fell like a kingdom come, perching on the ruin of mortal kind like it had been made for her.

Only then did she speak again. "It is hard to see in this mist," Valerie leaned back, her hands searching for treasure beneath the water and finding it in the slender wrists she once claimed. Guiding them to her hips and waist, she trapped them firmly against her body in a mockery of a loving embrace. "I cannot claim royalty, it is a comfort not fit for a king." Two hands became one, cuffing the wrists together as she edged herself back, brushing against the obvious and ignoring it. Her free hand skimmed Zuki's thigh curiously.

“Hypothetically, what would your turn entail?"​

 

[ƒeral]

---

This was the second time now.

What should have been an illicit composition of scattered plum and petaled carnation faded into the pristine canvas, a paleness that was pleasing and jarring to the eyes all at once. It irked Kazuki. She did not give permission for her handiwork to be eradicated thus, and would not stand for the proof of her greed to be vanquished with nary a thought. The implication of Valerie’s supernatural healing was not lost on her, but she said nothing of it, unwilling to spoil the mystery. Instead, she allowed her gaze to linger heavily on the once more unblemished column of throat as Valerie fulfilled her request, eyes narrowing with malcontent.

“I am not a dealer of hypotheticals,” Kazuki’s hands interlocked behind Valerie’s lower back, fingers fanning and investigating the hot spring warmed skin. “You can hand me the reins and find out.” Pressing against the dimple where the spine met derriere, she brought Valerie flush against herself. Water-slickened skin met water-slickened skin, akin to a rendezvous of varnish and veneer, similar yet distinguishable. The flimsy barrier of the towel refused her the pleasure of skin, but the pressure and proximity still had her licking her lips, bodily pressing forward and against. “Or, if you would not, then hop on and show me what you learned from riding my bike earlier.” A win-win, as far as she was concerned, because the house always stacked the odds in its favor.

And, because avarice warred with pride for the top spot in her long list of sins, she added. “Or both, in whichever order, you did say that the threat of a heatstroke depends entirely on me, no?” Her hand slid lower, palming a rear and squeezing with a heady mixture of impatience and rapacity. She could be patient. She had been patient. But Kazuki was only human, and humans had a certain reputation to uphold. Like the newborn calf who knew not how to fear, or perhaps like the proverbial serpent, sleek and coiled, she coaxed, also for the second time now. “What do you have to lose, right?”​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

Oh the heavens wept, the light dazzled with a thousand eyes and one to behold the Lilith at its center - the seed from the fruit of sin.

It was the prerogative of a mortal to seek the touch of the divine, having subsumed the flesh of their creator, though their sensibilities would say otherwise. Their shortened, jellified lifespan would wobble uncertainly as they laid their naked gaze upon the quick knit of exploded vessels, bruises erased with a swipe of a thumb in a single breath. Valerie felt displeasure rolling in unhappy waves off her companion's skin; the radiation of nervous energy had her trembling like a leaf desperate not to fall.

"A pity," she replied, boredom shoving at the seams. “Hypotheticals can be attractive.”

Valerie kept her hands on that lean, muscled thigh as Zuki sought for purchase somewhere in the small of her back. Her spine arched briefly at the touch, the skin sensitive from overstimulation. "I learned nothing." Her eyes fluttered shut with an air of finality, wet lashes kissing wet cheeks, to steady her breathing. It was the traitorous steam filling her lungs, caressing her neck and the top of her head. It made her shiver as a breeze struck her skin.

More importantly, she was uninterested in whatever flirtatious play Zuki had in mind. "Hypothetically, my life," Valerie answered, pulling the other's hands away to twist in her womanly seat. The soaked towel snagged at her skin, the cotton made rougher from the water. Leaning back, she took up those beautiful hands again to rest in her lap, fingers idly playing with each knuckle and nail as if they were simply bathing -- as friends.

But Valerie knew the boundaries were being pushed. It was an overfull box. It was the end of a measuring tape, the swerve from a broken road straight into a ravine. It was a loaded gun on its last bullet. She rested her head back against Zuki's shoulder. "Hypothetically, your life." There was that muted sound, bubbles trapped beneath the surface as she took the towel and rendered it obsolete with zero flourishes. Tatters of the cloth rose drunkenly to float away into the dense thicket of grey fog.

It was her little party trick, and the quirk of her lips said it all. "But I like you, Zuki, so let us dispense with hypotheticals." And like a samurai to her sheathe, swiftly sought the stranger's blade between their thighs and brought the woman's hand to her breast in a single motion, encouraging mutual exploration. A swift roll of her hips back against that delightfully hot frame, drops of dew pearling in her hair.

Valerie opened her eyes. "Surely it won't be this easy?"​

 

[ƒeral]

---

The steam, right.

It was the steam caressing along naked skin, groping with impunity. It was the steam embracing and being embraced in turn, shadowing the contour of jaw and up to tease the cartilage of ear. It was, most definitely, the steam that was to blame for parting Valerie’s thighs. Jutting straight and in between, a proud and obscene monument of sinful intent.

But what of the arm that looped thrice tighter around the softness of belly, encircling and pinning that deceptively fragile frame back against lean shoulders? What of the arch of back, bow-curved, pressing Kazuki’s less generous but indubiously soft front into Valerie’s scapulae? And what of those blunt but equally greedy human teeth sampling along the throat, nudging strands of hair out of way with the tip of nose and reasserting her ephemeral claim?

Kazuki consented to being a throne of sorts. Regardless, there would be no mistaking, nor remedying - depending on how you looked at it - their significant height gap. It was still Kazuki angling down, waterproof mascara earning its keep as she tilted Valerie back and into a kiss. Unlike the once bruising grip cuffing her wrist nor the negotiating encouragement that encircled it now, Kazuki moved Valerie as she pleased with firm but modulated insistence. “Easy means I’m doing it right.” She allowed her hands to roam, mapping out the supple lines of stomach, indulging in those far more considerable curvatures above, and fanning over collarbones. “I am a master at making everything あさめしまえ*, like the way I stole you into the night.” Her hands squeezed around the throat, but did not linger this time around, already making their pilgrimage back down to prey upon every inch of this most delightful house of prayer.

Kazuki drifted along the sharp delineation of collarbones, followed the gentle swell down, and entertained herself with sculpting those enticing dunes with the gaps between her digits. A handful, just about. They might have spilled past that had she been any less adored by fortune with the genetics to handle a gun, katana, and evidently, the various assets of this foreigner turned friend. Her exploration did not end there, not with her keenness pressing up and against where she longed to traverse. That being said, patience was something she had in spades, and a slow ramp suited her present mood. Besides, it was just about time for…

The drapes to the entrance of the onsen parted, and one of the staff, a matronly lady just shy of her golden years, approached with the clacks of bamboo slippers. She held a tray in front of herself, equipped with a deference that was painfully Japanese. That deference bowed her head, rounded her spine, and echoed in the way that her gaze never raised above the cobblestones. Kazuki made no move to disentangle herself, nor to offer forth explanation. She didn’t even stop the rather insistent way she captured and abused those stiff capstones. Fact was that she liked sake with her onsen dip, and that her uncharacteristic behavior of inviting a plus one did not mean she saw fit to change her habits. The tray was left upon a rock flanking the pool, the servant bowing deeper in response to a lazily muttered どうも.

Beaded with sweat from the chillness of it, the tokkuri was a simple gradient blue. A single shot glass of a shade deeper came with, which would have been enough to tick off mother dearest, who always insisted upon the traditional wooden masu. But, her turf, her rules.

Now, pouring a shot, that proved an exercise in acrobatics with the way her arms were wrapped around Valerie still. Being taller had its advantages though, such as being able to see what she was doing. “Hypothetically, this could be poison.” She filled it to the rim. “Hypothetically, this could be delicious. Give it a shot?” Condensation dripped from glass, and she raised it in offering, amusement lacing her tone at her own wry attempt at humor.

---

*before the morning meal. Meaning, so easy that it could be done before breakfast​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

It should not have been so thrilling to have those mortal teeth continue their impudent snapping; it was old news. But it was nostalgic, it made Valerie's gums itch with envy. She allowed this because of the steam. Her hair floated freely about them, blue ink rippling. Suminagashi. An unexpected marbling of colors bobbing to the surface. She allowed the kiss, because of the steam. No gentler, because it was old news, but nice because it was nostalgic. "Easy means you are taking the paved road," she murmured against Zuki's lips, arching into the exploratory touch. Zuki, she noted with a vague sense of familiarity, had a similar morbid fascination for her body. It was as if she had never touched a nightwalker before, with their paler-than-pale skin that did not break, their bodies a study in ancient architecture. After all, they had years to perfect it, accelerating the natural process of evolution.

Thousands upon thousands of years, for Valerie to say: "You did not steal me. There was consent."

Pinned as she was by two strong arms, and despite the thousands of years, it was Zuki the exotic invertebrate, the real-deal skeleton lovingly arranged behind layers of tempered glass walls. Those knuckles (she touched them reverently) bruised, ripped, knobbled from scrappy, human fights in a whirlwind of arms. Nails (wondered, at the blunt edges, at the ridge and let herself imagine cuticles pure as crescent moons) cut, with steel, to suit their purpose. Valerie wandered the plains of the wrist, searching the bird-like bones there (how easy it would be to snap them!). Infatuated, hyper-fixated, as if she had never seen the wrist - a wrist before.

When the intruder entered their sacred space, it was only by Zuki's grace did the golden-eyed serpent remain lethargic, doused in a comfortable haze. Even when Zuki's attention was pried, momentarily, she did not sulk or grow cold and bored with her current climate. Her stranger had become a nostalgic centerpiece, the gushing fountain in the foyer. Nor was she concerned by the way Zuki's hands did not still in their motions, ravaging the tips and tops of her breasts, in the face of an audience. Embarrassment was not in the cards. It was not in the same stratosphere. She did not register the woman's departure, though she did know her for a woman - had it been a man, she would have ripped his throat out and returned to the solace of sentimental arms.

She looked at the crying pitcher, at the limbs moving away from her to pour, at the lazy arch of a brow and ill-advised humor in those dark eyes.

"Hypocrite," Valerie accused. She was, upsettingly, easily excitable at the prospect. "You white sepulcher. You gorgeous specimen."

Tossing the rest of the hypothetical away, she leaned back first with a sigh, pondering. She considered that her forearms were still submerged in the pleasant, well-crafted warmth, and would be loath to break them free. But the Tanuki seemed a thousand years ago, and she could no longer feel the blurry fuzz on her tongue, those sweet tones of tomato and sugar since wiped clean by a question mouth that spoke such nonsense. That siren gaze turned to the glass again thoughtfully. Sake was not her first poison of choice. It would not be her fourth or fifth, but she was a notoriously fickle fiend and prone to bouts of melancholic displeasure.

Here, in her cozy cocoon, she would acquiesce.

"I did not pen you for a romantic," Valerie said as she puppeteered Zuki's hand, the one holding the liquid bullet, watching the stuff swish and swirl. "What is this time? Strychnine? Ricin?" She did not wait to listen, eyes sparkling as she tipped the contents into her mouth in a single pour. It was too finicky to be pretty, too awkward in the way the body was placed. Limbs and laws did not operate on a similar wavelength here. There was mathematics involved, angles considered, all to maintain eye contact. But as the drops spilled over the side of her lips and trickled down her chin, she snaked an arm around Zuki's head and pressed her down. Gravity meant her throat worked overtime, unwilling to choke on the warm liquid trickling down to warm the pit of her stomach. But she did her best to share the burden.

And when that was all said and done, she waited to die.
​

 

[ƒeral]

---

Some things did not translate. White sepulcher, for example, made absolutely no sense in Japanese. But that nonsensical quality, combined with a dulcet foreign accent, made sense in and of itself. The guiding touch came, entirely unnecessarily, because Kazuki was already leaning down, intent upon igniting the burn of proofed liquid. Valerie swallowed, but that did not prevent Kazuki from chasing the dredges. Tongue scraped, and teeth grazed, but did not collide. For this was not their first kiss, nor second. There was a growing familiarity there, a familiarity that conveyed a sense of entitlement. A prerogative, if you would, for more, for a blowout befitting the ambient temperature and scorching liquor.

And what Kazuki wanted, she took.

It didn’t matter if the angle was awkward, or if limbs and laws did not wish to cooperate. Limbs she coerced with hers, and laws she broke with gusto. In the same span of time it took for that stray droplet to bead from Valerie’s chin and spill into the once pristine hotspring, Kazuki transposed their positioning. She was still behind Valerie’s back, only now, instead of serving as a cozy seat, her unyielding frame bracketed the much shorter girl against the edge of the pool. Legs, steady or not, were obliged into standing, before her hand coaxed a knee up to brace against the ledge that she formerly seated upon. Her other hand sought for purchase along the dip of waist, the curve of hips, grasping and pulling that pleasing rear back against herself.

“I take it that you are not a fan of the paved road?” They said the devil never forgets, and Kazuki was, in some respects, absolutely not beneath a little tic for tac. That water-slickened obelisk - unpainted, but no less heretical for want of ink - pushed up against the still pristine temple, menacing in heft. “Alright, I won’t make it easy then.” Her hand mapped its way up, from the outside of the knee along the length of the thigh, over those enticing hip bones and further north still. Nails scraped across the stomach, inscribing yet more temporary marks. Up, four perfectly spaced stripes decorated Valerie’s flawless skin, ascending all the way past collarbones until Kazuki's fist was wrapped around the throat once more. Only this time, there was nothing exploratory about her motive.

“Your voice is beautiful, but your words cut.” Fingers squeezed, harshly, absolutely enough to strangle, a controlled power that spoke to years and years of experience. Work. Play. Either or both. Neither the carotids nor the tracheae were spared from the imposition of her will. But this wasn’t about violence, a fact made clear as she released her hold after mere seconds, growling low and guttural. “I am a romantic, and this is my idea of romance, can you handle it?” Kazuki did not wait for an answer, far more interested in the pulse beneath her fingertips. “You bait me, pretty girl, repeatedly.” Pressure seized upon the vulnerability of throat, a second or two longer than last time. Testing the waters. “I think you want me to punish you, hm?”
​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

What goes up must come down. It is gravity; it is mutual attraction. Even a bird cannot fly forever; when the wings slacken and their eyes droop heavy for want of sleep. A fired bullet hits the ground sooner than later. Feet planted firmly, waves anchored to the moon. It is the slow dance of liquid down the throat, blazing a new path of heady fire chased by electrifying touches that seared interconnecting nerves. Valerie moved willingly, once again finding herself rearranged in the quaint dipping pool.

Steam rose in smoky ringlets around her; comets, shards of shattered asteroids torn asunder to gravitate around the holy body. Held steady by the flat of her palms, Valerie crooked her elbows just so, to dampen the sudden jar that threatened her teeth. The curve of her belly bumped against the side of the river rocks, jagged edges smoothed by decades of gentle rocking water. Her knees knocked against the bowl, buckling slightly against the weight draped over her back like a cloak. Heavy is the crown, and there it was, insistent against the backs of her thighs.

"I do not care for roads," Valerie sighed, having already said too much. She looked behind her shoulder, squinting beneath her damp hair. Zuki was a silhouette in motion, a shadow box for sin. Her long fingers were decadent as they swept over the fine ridges of her ribs, scoring fading marks into her stomach and past the swell of her breasts that mourned the lack of attention. Her neck fared better, and she almost joked that if Zuki liked her throat so much, should she make a gift of it?

But there was a thought. A soft wheeze tumbled past her lips. She swallowed beneath the tight grip, her throat flexing with difficulty. While they did not need to breathe as many times in a second, it was a habit. Valerie was greedy and took the first gasp that was offered. Water dispersed through her lungs, and blood coursed powerfully to her cheeks. Water dripped, plip plop plop, clear like crystal bells. First, she did not answer, then she could not answer. She took this time to think, to focus on the thick pillar winking at the gates, all the while her nails digging soft cracks in the flat stone.

She said: "You punish yourself," the tattoos, the alcohol, the flesh; the searing water licking up her legs as Valerie moseyed backward, just a little, as if shying away from the flexing hand and nudged the belly of the beast upward, stroking and tempting the underside daringly. She was pink and dripping, and not solely from water. A full-body shudder rippled through her. She felt like she was melting like something was eating at her; she was sticky with it.

When Valerie looked back at Zuki, the tendons of her neck stark, her eyes were bared scapolites, Tanzanian gold cut with Stygian rays, blown dark with self-realized desire. Her shoulders flexed beautifully as she dropped from two palms to one elbow, forcing her throat against that brutal palm, trapped air throbbing.

She could not say: "I've taken worse." But she smiled, the tip of a pointed canine peeking over her swollen lip, and that said it all.
​

 

[ƒeral]

---

Shitsuke. Discipline. Sustainability. ‘Do without being told.’

But shitsuke was more than a state of self-discipline, it was also the process of getting there. The training, if you would, for straightening out the misbehaving sort.

In Kazuki’s not so humble opinion, there existed no other word quite as fitting for what she intended to do with her foreigner. Because she knew that look, as surely as she knew the inviting gaze and the cajolement of that rear pushing back against her. Keen. Upon the challenge, upon the girl, upon the humid air and the torrid affair. Stygian rays flickered away from Tanzanian gold, down to linger upon the bloodless glint of fang. The incisor, much too sharp to be human, bared its carnivorous efficacy, and for what? To goad?

That spurred her into action.

She kept a handhold upon the front of Valerie’s throat, because yes, she did love it so. So much so that her teeth found themselves embedded into the tendons flanking the side and back once more, equal parts greed and equal parts irony. Nightwalker was not a familiar concept in Kanbetsu, and had one not literally stared her in the face, throat bobbing against her palm, Kazuki would have never believed in such myths and legends. But she had ‘prayed’ for luck upon the ruined pagoda, so surely, there was no harm in pushing the limits of such prayers.

Her reprisal came not in words, but in the brutal efficiency with which she lined herself up. Because Valerie had taken worse, so there was no harm in burying every eye-watering inch in one go. A low rumbling growl vibrated against the bowed spine, katana scraping along scabbard in a decisive stroke. Only, unlike lovingly hand-carved wood, traced and contoured to accommodate the blade, this required much more of a stretch. “Good girl,” praise that was, in a way, unearned, with the way Kazuki simply took what she wanted. But praise nevertheless freely offered, admiration and wonder for the moonlit silhouette arcing from the force of her free hand locking into spilt ink.

She pressed Valerie harsher into the water-warmed stone, panting, not with exertion, but with carnal excitement. There was no mistaking that ingrained desire for violence, cultivated and honed like the weapon she embodied. When adrenaline coursed and dopamine ramped, sex and murder were really not all that different. A disparity perhaps only in degree, and Valerie had practically given her carte blanche - nay, dared her - to be worse. Kazuki pulled back, respite short-lived as she hilted once more, chasing after the high. The hot water lapped against her skin, disturbed by the headlong motions, much tamer in comparison to the way she crashed against Valerie. A hand remained upon the throat, while the other one roamed. Southbound to attend to those swells that mourned the lack of attention, her rough ministrations contrasting the smoothness of her fingertips.

Her teeth snapped against flesh anew, more violently in spite of - or perhaps as a result of - their relative bluntness. And this time, she scraped hard enough that blood beaded from supple skin. Her tongue lapped against the mark, and her laughter spilt low and blithe. “I would have guessed a lot of things, but never would I have guessed sweet.”​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

Tendons were not soft and tissue and sinew was a tough cut, chewy against the teeth, and rough going down the throat. But Valerie, ah, that bittersweet soul, Valerie was pliable. After one drink, after ten, sous vide in a pot of pleasant, steaming water. She was the knife required to butterfly a breast, a cleaver for the thighs. Her eyes were yellow steel and her muscles were bunched, tense with anticipation as that dangerous hand continued to flex and grip. Perhaps, she might fancy herself with thoughts of gasping for air and scrabbling her nails bloody on the stone.

Or perhaps not. There was no simple way to describe the sigh that spilled from her. Like a furnace venting heat, it was a hard sound that echoed in her ears, ending in a light grinding clench of the molars. It was a reminder of where she was, and what she was doing. Who. It was grounding, the way her heart beat so loud it drowned the gentle fall of stray droplets. Valerie would give her body for the night, so she decided. But she had already given Zuki the keys and code. It was no longer hers by right and this loss had her gasping into her shoulder, her fangs digging into her bicep as her stranger took the first masterful cut.

Even as the bruises faded on her throat, new brands of passion and ownership were wrought. Her thighs shook unfaithfully, her nerves fraying into multiple instances of rapid breaths. Valerie ignored the praise; it was never earned or expected, rather a repercussion of actions taken with some modicum of responsibility. All she had done here was present herself like a human in heat, and Zuki, following the most primitive of building blocks in her DNA, had taken the bait. Wetness smeared at the juncture made the next stroke too easy, the broad hilt of it battling roughly with the intense heat punching her gut.

Valerie's cheek pushed against the rock, the minute crags digging into her skin relentlessly. She bared her teeth with a soft grunt, her spine arching wonderfully as her hands scrabbled to stay afloat. Her mind wandered between the cool air tickling the backs of her knees and the foreign sensation of being so full it hurt to think. She was clenching and squeezing her legs together, but had no say in the matter when Zuki withdrew; she did not fall prey to a whimper. One eye remained open instead, blurred from stray water, amber trapped in crystal.

Her blood was a ruby bead against the silk of her skin, a dark crimson and fresh as any warm-blooded omnivore. Her lower lip was bloodied in a similar fashion, her fangs having dug into the supple flesh to bite back a wayward sound. The skin had already knitted together under the smear of red. Valerie's smile was almost unhinged if not for the way her hips rutted and stuttered in tandem with Zuki's own ferally precise movements. She had nothing of importance to say but thought she might say something anyway.

Should she describe the way she felt, rippling and twitching like an addict? Should she say that she was a good girl who never told lies and hisses her pleasure into the open sky? Maybe she could have lied and proclaimed her midnight lover dead in twenty seconds, for a nightwalker's blood was synonymous with nightshade. Any seductress or sadist might have taken those paths, but Valerie, she was a sore loser and a miser who hid her pleasure from prying eyes and proved it now when her backside pressed right up against the firm muscles of the other's stomach, taking without asking.

What I would do to get a taste of you.

Valerie said, entirely unjustified, "I hope you fuck better than you guess."

​

 

[ƒeral]

---

Kazuki couldn’t claim to be an expert on nightwalkers. She knew about as much as the next person, which was to say, very little. And, up until a few hours ago, was entirely convinced that they were fictitious beings. That being said, fiction generally seemed to agree on a few traits. Pale being one - that checked out. Supernaturally attractive being another - alright, she would concur with that. Wickedly fanged and gluttonous - heh. A glutton for punishment, maybe.

Far from being ticked off, Kazuki could only grin at the willful provocation. She had squeezed hard enough to forcibly expel oxygen, mounted Valerie in a fashion more beast than man, and still the foreigner goads her! An incredulous laugh might have followed had she not immediately bit down again, her rebuke swift and decisive, asserting her dominance through the most primal method possible. Vampires fancied themselves hunters, no doubt, but Kazuki was a master at defying the ‘natural’ order of things.

“You prod at me, and yet bleed your own lip?” Her voice came muffled on account of being near permanently attached to every patch of skin she could assail. “Biting back a whimper, or because you are that desperate for the taste of blood?” Copper and iron coated her taste buds, a flavor that should not excite a human but did. It was the violence of it, the savagery and dominion both.

Kazuki did not become such an excellent killer from practice alone, and that was evident in the way she fucked. She pinned Valerie against the smooth stone face, breath sharp and the snaps of her hips sharper. It was in her genomes, the inborn brutality and cunningness that propelled humans to ascend over every other animal. Ordinarily, a hefty dose of good sense and consideration tempered those impulses. But at present, the alcohol igniting her veins and Valerie’s words rousing her temper were doing a spectacular job shoving those concerns to the wayside. No, she excelled at killing because she enjoyed it, because she relished the thrill of hunting the most dangerous game. Craved the control, the vim and vigor, the barbarism that humans hid so well beneath their polished exteriors.

Vengeful were her hipbones crashing against Valerie’s rear, every thrust driving forward with relentless force. She hissed her pleasure from the forceful coupling into a mouthful of shoulder, teeth making a sorry mess out of clean lines and pale slopes. Another time, and perhaps she might have drifted a hand lower, might have investigated the source of that steady-flowing river and coaxed the lonesome pearl to play. But that was well off the table from Valerie’s behavior, or lack thereof. Severe was her grip sinking into Valerie’s hips, nails cresenting skin and flesh and holding her foreigner in place for the fucking she so imprudently demanded of Kazuki.

“You want to hold your voice back, hm?” It wasn’t really a question, and she didn’t care for an answer. Her other hand drifted up from the throat, index and middle forcibly parting Valerie’s lips. “Here, let me help.” She buried them two knuckles deep with little fanfare, aiming less for depth of penetration and more to subjugate that disobedient tongue. As much as she enjoyed the constant mouthiness, it was also high time that she corrected such behavior. However, as much as she was capable of wielding the stick, she could also appreciate the carrot’s allure. Brattiness notwithstanding, Valerie was taking her incredibly well, warm and wet and gripping around the soft steel of her cock. And so, the yakuza ended with generosity. She dragged the sides of her fingers against those pointed incisors, a shallow cut, but enough for blood to seep.

“Be a good girl for me, suck.”​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

​

"We are not so different, you and I."

Truthfully, Valerie never thought of them as separate entities. Only, perhaps, a branch below those that had reached the very top. So it was not with degradation did she speak those words, nor did she think less or more of herself. It was merely the natural order of things. She cleaned her lip of the blood, spreading the tang behind her teeth and swabbing the insides of her cheeks with it. It was an illicit aphrodisiac, an act that would have any hopeful matriarch rolling in her tombstone.

Zuki was the rubber band pulled too taut, where pigmented sulfur grew pale at the stretch and snapped at the seams. Valerie breathed in deep through her nose where the mist further fogged her senses and set her thoughts reeling from a death of heatstroke. While the meager drops of alcohol she had imbibed had long since evaporated, her body found other ways to act the fool. Her stranger's addictive sense of danger and lack of sense, for one, and her supreme confidence that Valerie might very lose those war of attrition and fall apart.

She would not. Her hips were greedy, the water was mischievous. Muscles rippled and flexed, taking and giving in equal measure. She pressed back when Zuki retreated and slipped forward when Zuki bullied forward, the stone scraping new marks into the front of her thighs and knees. There was an imperceptible tremble in her legs, not dissimilar to the same sort of quiver that remained after dismounting that dreadful vehicle. In fact, this whole performance she could liken to the midnight ride, though she hoped --

"I don't--"

-- the destination would be more interesting than a broken-down temple. Valerie at least had the wherewithal not to bite down immediately on the pair of invading digits. It would have left Zuki two fingers poorer. She scolded her tongue into flattening, to retreat as her mouth remained safely open. It was no use, her fangs would brush against the tender skin and feel the bone, either way, she would leave the woman intact. Instead, she tried to speak around it; leaving a question unanswered, rhetorical or not, left a nagging sensation like oily residue on the surface of her brain.

Drool, instead, dripped down the corner of her mouth, and after a particularly well-placed thrust, Valerie was beginning to forget her reason for being so charitable. When the first drop of mortal blood pooled in her mouth, it was suddenly impossible to ever remember. A flash of red seeped into the whites of her eyes (as if gold could rust at the edges) before vanishing just as quickly. The command was blasphemous, to debase her and dangle this muted ambrosia so close to a parched throat!

It was enough to make anyone sick to the gut.

Her lips closed around the fingers and her jaws clenched and trembled. Zuki had hit a sore spot. Then a sweet spot. She groaned messily, her teeth scraping with such desperation it must have been a sight to see. It was an indescribable taste -- it was more of an experience. An itch so desperate to be scratched that vessels burst beneath the nails, a balloon that had swelled too large. A rubber band. To call it mere satisfaction would be to do it a disservice. To bite now would be to supplicate herself before a sapling, a mountain bowing to a storm. She could only arch her spine and shudder, her self-imposed restraint only making the feedback loop more potent.

Valerie whimpered then as the stone cracked beneath her palm.

​

 

[ƒeral]

---

Were they similar? There was none of that hard-nosed stubbornness in Kazuki, at least, not the inflexible kind. Whether storm or cloud, both were ever in motion, rolling across the horizons in perfect synchronization with the other elements. Mankind thrived in its adaptability, and Kazuki was a prime example of the same. She could lean, could pivot, could move with the motion of the current instead of against. Valerie, on the other hand, was perhaps the most attractive ass - in both senses, but of course - that the yakuza ever had the pleasure of knowing. Still trying to dissent even when fingers pressed down against the tongue, demanding its obedience. Couldn’t follow directions, either, with the way spittle dripped into her pool, intermixing with the slick of their coupling and irrevocably defiling the purity of the onsen.

It was almost enough to make Kazuki sigh; would have too, had she been any more sane. Instead, she simply smirked and forced those teeth to part by jamming her fingers against the blunt rows. The tip of her index roved over the sharpened canines, marveling at the razor sharp points. Such…potential. So much power contained in so slender a frame, brandished only upon the very unfortunate rock framing the onsen. For a few minutes more, she was content to keep at this punishing pace, to explore those delightful fangs in the same way one might inspect a pedigreed mare.

The onsen’s heat was perfectly juxtaposed by the night’s chill, and the potentiality trembling beneath her fingertips was an amusing accompaniment to the softness of the frame crushed beneath hers. Valerie, with her stinging colloquy and nit-picking demeanor, was cooperating beautifully, pushing back against and inching away in harmony with the rapaciousness of Kazuki’s zeal. And that, the shudder, the barely audible whimper, that was perhaps the sweetest victory of all. Kazuki answered with a growl muffled into the trapezius, biting ungently and without reserve. She was the dauntless storm battering against the groaning mountain, unceasing and unrelenting. That pulsing pillar of human vitality bludgeoned into the well-revered temple, stormed its vaulted gates and defiled every inch it scraped against. Barbaric, savage, utterly human. The pleasure obliged her harsher into Valerie, racing towards the inevitable but far too hedonic to slow, much less to stop.

“So much better behaved with your mouth full.” She didn’t think any more or less of her foreigner, but this was play, and a little tic for tac never hurt. For all of her bravado, even she could not sustain such a frantic pace for much longer. The heaviness throbbed uncertainly inside the narrow passage, tightly embraced on all sides and forcing just enough of a stretch. Bliss licked at her consciousness until every other breath was a jagged pant. Her heart rate thundered at multiple points of contact, and a part of her was far too curious about if she could make Valerie split the rock. But, curiosity aside, that was her rock, and Kazuki was absolutely possessive about her things.

And so, with regret, she pulled herself out, stepping backwards a step to the splashes of water. Her cock protested the suddenness of cold air, something she was quick to remedy as, for the upteempth time tonight, she repositioned Valerie again with awe-inspiring impunity. They started in the water, and they would finish the water, because Kazuki wanted to assess how much brighter those solar rings were. The face of danger was exquisite, a prized snapshot burned deep into her retina, locked inside her memory. She would sit, for stability, for warmth, because she was feeling oh so generous, and because her foreigner was behaving oh so beautifully.

Pulling Valerie down with her and parting those thighs over her hips, Kazuki didn’t bother with politeness or patience before all but compelling that rear to sink against herself. The onsen was hot, but that snugly clinging heat was hotter. Kazuki could only grin as she stared at the fun-sized predator astride her lap, with the same adoration a human might bestow upon a domesticated murder machine. She wouldn’t be so crude to voice that particular comparison though. Instead, she wove her fingers through those striking locks, bringing her foreigner closer, even as she tilted her jaw and bared her throat, her jugular prominent from the intensity of their continued activities. A verbal invitation was hardly necessary, but it amused her too much to leave it unsaid.

“It’s not polite to refuse a drink in my culture.” Her grin widened enough to show teeth, as if it was not her balancing on the precarious brink, toying with death. And, because she found humor in the strangest of things, “let us consummate our friendship, Valerie.”​

 

[Erebus]

now ive got your teeth on my tongue,
see, i told her,
the devil is a lie.​

---

Valerie might really divest Zuki of her fingers. If if became would, and if would be manifested in the supernatural ability to read minds, then being compared to a mere horse of all breathing things might have tipped her over the edge. She had her suspicions. The surgical investigation of her mouth like it was a crime scene; pearl white tape to hide the blood, and glass daggers on the roof; leave none alive. Her teeth could carve a cookie-cutter circle if she wished, but she was a glutton, ecstasy firing on all cylinders as her brain deciphered the gut-wrenching pleasure and drip-feeding it straight into her amygdala. Her nails had taken root on the surface of the rock, granite crumbling into fine grey dust right into the onsen.

Every bite made her flutter, her mouth moving in tandem. Mockery, the greatest form a compliment could take. Her tongue pressed between the invading digits, raw muscle on smooth skin yet unbroken. It always came back to that. The incessant need to draw blood and feast, but Zuki was doing a very good job distracting her from the itch. Valerie might have said something, with her tongue pushed down into submission, into the depths of her mouth. It might have been another groan falling flat as telling wetness seeped down her stranger's bony wrist, drooling and wanting on all fronts.

Her hips never stopped. It was automatic and habitual; Valerie was a fast learner, more so when it hurt. The broad plunge always edged close to unbearable, and either through luck or perseverance did she maintain half her wits. Or at least enough not to spit Zuki's fingers from her mouth and foam at the lips when she was suddenly mournfully cold. She was clutching at empty air, battery-powered left to run overnight in a box, slick, and shivering. The water lapped up her thighs as she moved back just enough to turn her head. It did not even occur to her that Zuki would stop. It was not even in the realm of possibility.

There was no punishment she could exact that would fit the crime. It was now that Valerie bared her teeth, fangs protruding over her lower lip. The golden quartz of her eyes was strikingly pale at midnight, the sinister reflection of dark eyes blown like a fuse in return as she stared unblinkingly at the foreign deviant. She could see the tattoos in washed-out greyscale in their watery graves, the way they crawled back to colorful life at the shoulder. Even when she was rightfully lowered and the stretch made her body shudder, she looked down at Zuki without shame, though she had no say in the blood rushing to her extremities. The encompassing heat scraped along her most sensitive parts, and she rocked forward just so as to capture the high that made her head dizzy.

Free to speak, Valerie found she had nothing to say at first. Her gums itched and her legs were sore. There were bits of gravel studded in her palms which made them callous as they roamed over Zuki's neck, traversing the nape, her fingertips balancing on the knobbly bone at the top of her spine. She cut her tongue snaking them around her own canines, a world apart from the woman who, to put it crudely, would boast that she could rock it.

"Careful," she cautioned, her hair a noose and leash. A sigh.

A single breath on a house of cards. Valerie did not lunge forward, she simply... fell. As if she had gone unconscious, her forehead landed against Zuki's shoulder, breathing in the human stink like a true hedonist. She heard the quick thump of an excited pulse, her breath hot when she mouthed over the stark vein with full intent to bite down. It was lip service at its finest. Kissing with reverence up the throat as her hips moved with blasphemous lust. The storm, the mountain. Her chest rumbled as she sank her fangs down into the muscle, as her nails scored red stitches down Zuki's back, pushing the tall stranger back into the rock -

- and oh, everything was so sweet as blood flooded her mouth at startling speed.

Streaking the skin in crimson ink, Valerie gave in. Her eyes were squeezed shut, cutting light from the source. The water was in turmoil, churning as she moved like a being unchained. She had nothing left but breaths around her mouthful of flesh, the wanton bliss rising rapidly as she rode the crest as warm blood coated the insides of her cheeks. And it was only in the aftershocks did she release her quarry, Zuki's shoulder left an ungodly ruin of red and two puncture wounds.​

Valerie beheld her work, and saw that it was good.
​

---

 

[ƒeral]

 

And so, in the seventh hour, she completed her work and rested.
Having created her tour de force and subdued the serpent of yore.

Languid but investigative, Kazuki thumbed at the puncture marks upon her throat, grinning.
“I hope these scar. I would love to memorialize them with new ink.”

Already that ancient serpent, the one prophesied to lead the whole world astray, stirred from its temporary respite.
“We’ve hours to go 'til sunrise. You won't snooze after just one nightcap, right?”

And so, that was the beginning, and the end.​