CHAPTER 1
Iro
“My love, you know I adore when you do that,” Cassia said and ran a hand through Iro’s short, black hair. “It’s been far too long.”
Iro wasn’t sure about that last part. It had been years, yes, but they’d been apart for longer, much longer than a few years before. They’d been apart for decades at a time. They had always returned to one another, though. This time hadn’t been a planned reunion during their relationship intermission, but Cassia had invited Iro to join her in Florence, the city of Cassia’s birth. Iro had been in Paris on business, and because her boredom with the world, while ever-present, had been worse recently, when Cassia had suggested they interrupt their separation for one night, Iro had flown on Cassia’s private plane and had arrived a few hours later.
Her tongue slipped between Cassia’s folds, and she licked her the same way she had licked her for hundreds of years now. She had once believed it would never get old, touching, stroking, licking, and sucking the woman who had made her, but their times apart had begun to span longer than their times together, and she knew why, even if they hadn’t spoken of it to one another.
“Yes, Iro,” Cassia encouraged, holding Iro’s head in place as Iro sucked on her clit. “You know what I want. Do it.”
Iro moved her mouth to Cassia’s inner thigh and called her fangs forth. They emerged on cue from her upper and lower canines, and she bit down hard into Cassia’s skin, letting the blood drain out and onto her lips, coating her tongue. Some rolled down Cassia’s thigh and stained the white bed sheets beneath.
“Oh, yes,” Cassia let out as Iro sucked. “Taste me, my love.”
Vampire blood wouldn’t sate her in the same way human blood would, but Iro had given that up a long time ago, so drinking from a vampire’s vein or artery was the only way she’d get fresh, hot blood that tasted close enough to the human variety. She sucked and sucked, reveling in the taste of it, and listened to Cassia, who was moaning. When Cassia eventually began rubbing the back of her head, Iro let go of her and let her fangs recede. She licked at the holes she had created as blood continued to trickle out of them until they began to heal and disappeared altogether. Then, she moved her now-bloody mouth back to Cassia’s clit and sucked just as hard.
“Yes! Yes!”
Cassia came seconds later, like she always had, but Iro didn’t stay between her legs long enough to help her come down. She didn’t climb on top of Cassia to fuck her how she would have in the past. Instead, she stood, wiped her mouth, walked naked into the luxurious bathroom she’d used a million times before, and started the shower.
“Where are you going?” Cassia asked, following her into the shower after Iro got in without waiting for the water to warm. “I haven’t had my way with you yet.”
“Cass, I’m showering.”
“And I can’t shower with you?” Cassia pressed her to the wall. “Let me taste you, baby. It’s been too long. I need to feel connected again.” She moved her fingers into Iro’s folds andstarted to stroke while digging her teeth into Iro’s flesh at the base of her neck. “Fuck. You taste like no one else.”
Iro let her suck and watched as red drained down with the clear water until Cassia finished both with her neck and with giving her an all-too-brief orgasm.
“You barely made a sound,” Cassia accused, wiping her mouth and looking into Iro’s eyes with her deep gray ones as water rolled over their bodies. “Was this merely a warm-up?”
“I’m good,” she replied.
“What do you mean, you’re good?” Cassia asked, moving her thigh between Iro’s legs. “My love, we’ve been apart for a long time. We need this now that we’re back together.”
“We’re not back together,” Iro told her, moving out of Cassia’s grasp and more under the direct spray to clean herself.
“Of course, we are. It’s been since 2020. We’ve been apart for–”
“Cassia, you were here, and I was in Paris, so it was just a quick trip and sex. I’m not ready to get back together.”
“Why not? Is there someone else?”
“No, but you live here, and I’ve been bored of Florence for centuries.”
“You loved Florence.”
“When we first moved here after you turned me, yes. I don’t want to live here anymore. You love it here. Your family is still revered. You know I have business. I–”
“Insist on living in the human world,” Cassia scorned, interrupting her. “I don’t understand why.” Her hand reached for the faucet, turning off Iro’s shower. “They’re so very… mortal,” she added, unaffected.
“I don’t live intheirworld. I live intheworld,” Iro said. “And I wasn’t done.”
She turned the water back on.
“Iro, just come back to bed with me. We can talk about your melancholy all you want over a meal. I’ll find you a nice blonde. You still love blondes, don’t you?” Cassia asked and rolled her eyes, likely because of her own dark-brown hair.
“I don’t–”
