I prefer to buy blood for regular feeding. If I end up sleeping with someone, I’ll feed off them, and then they think I simply got a little nippy during sex. I do get consent for biting, blood play, and “feral play.” I never take more than a little from them if I feed from them.
Of course, I can’t tell them I’m a vampire. Are you mad? I don’t like to wipe minds more often than necessary. I always make sure I’ve fed well before being with someone I intend to play with, so I’m not hungry. I refuse to make mistakes.
Have I killed people?
Countless.
Wish I was kidding about that.
Most of them in battle, or people who deserved killing—the worst of humanity.
While I’m sure early on there are likely deaths of innocents on my conscience, in the last seven or eight hundred years, I have not killed anyone without clear cause.
Or, in some cases, to put them out of their misery. There were quite a few in World War II who met that standard, mortally wounded and suffering, and I hastened their departure while giving them pleasure in the process.
Unlike some vampires, I refuse to kill humans for sport.
But I require my sexual partners share my interest in kink. Even if all I do is spank them and give them rough sex, vanilla really doesn’t do it for me anymore. I’ve been alive a long time. Missionary position gets awfully boring, after a while.
I’ve been to plenty of BDSM clubs around the world and have done far more in private. I especially love shibari, subduing a partner with intricate rope patterns, not even needing to use my powers on them to drop them into subspace and sweeten their blood—it’s exhilarating.
My skills with other implements are equally adept.
I have a lot of time on my hands to practice.
Lucius has decided to pair a blood club with a BDSM club, to give his special clientele more fang for their buck, if you’ll forgive the turn of phrase. They’re willing to pay to access sweetbloods—humans drunk on the high of subspace, their veins coursing not just with blood but endorphins and dopamine and adrenaline, along with all the other lovely natural chemicals that are intoxicating to my kind.
Ingenious. It’s a wonder more vampires don’t open BDSM clubs. In the wake of popular fiction taking theFifty Shadesphenomenon mainstream, you’d think this kind of cash cow operation would be a draw for our kind. A lucrative business paired with nearly unlimited feeding opportunities.
Driving past the club first to appraise the location, I see a line for entry stringing halfway down the block. Lucius told me to walk up to the doorman, who would admit me immediately. Vampires never have to stand in line. But to also give my name, and one of his men would show me around.
Nightclubs like this aren’t my preferred hunting grounds, but since my only chance to find out more about the source of that particular vintage Lucius teased me with last night is through attending tonight…
Well, here I am.
I find a parking spot for the Audi Q3 a block away and walk back. I opted to wear a suit and blazer tonight, and the collar and top button of my shirt lay open. When I walk up to the entrance, I’m barely given a glance by the vampire manning the door before the velvet rope is opened, and I’m waved in.
“Dexter Van Sussex,” I say to another suit-clad vampire I assume is a bouncer, who stands in the entry to the coat check room.
“Yes, sir. You are expected. Please, follow me.” I figured he’d lead me downstairs to the dungeon, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leads me inside, past the dance floor, which is teeming with humans who don’t know they’re being hunted by several vampires among them. The DJ has them bouncing around and the air is thick with sweat tinged with alcohol, desire, and hunger. We continue on past the bar, where a blue-haired waitress not dressed like the rest of the servers is currently taking care of customers, and into a back hallway.
There, he punches in a code to unlock a door to the stairwell, and I’m led upstairs, where he unlocks another door and leads me into an office suite. A faint, pleasant scent tickles my nose, but I don’t have time to pause and savor it before I’m being led down another hallway and through another door into an office.
The vampire king, of course, occupies the largest office.
“Ah, there he is.” Lucius stands and rounds the desk he was sitting behind to shake with me. No cheap IKEA flat-pack desk, either. This Brobdingnagian monstrosity is totally Lucius, easily six feet across, ornately carved mahogany and polished to a luxurious sheen. It’s too large to fit up the stairwell I just ascended.
“How in holy hell did you even get thisuphere?”
He proudly smiles. “Do you like it?”
“It’s…you.”
He smirks. “They built the office around it. Literally. It was brought up and then the stairwell enclosed, and the walls built.”
“You always were one to put on a show.” The walls are ornate wood paneling with built-in bookshelves, making it look more like a study that belongs in a mansion instead of a nightclub office.
“What’s the use of having this long life and all these funds if I can’t be a showoff on occasion?”
