Chapter Text
The sun shields on the windows were deactivated that afternoon, and the late afternoon sun filled the penthouse living room with bright city light. Daniel was cleaning up his notes on the previous night’s session, but halfway through, he deviated from his task and opened up a document on his desktop he had titled: “Armand: the Artist Formerly Known as Rashid.”
Armand was sitting on the opposite sofa with his legs crossed. Daniel knew he was definitely pretending to read the book that was open in his lap (asshole). He was dressed in a white Armani shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, highlighting his pec cleavage in a way Daniel had definitely not noticed, and black Armani slacks. A classic look. There were dozens of rooms in the penthouse, some Daniel imagined he didn’t know about or that were hidden, and yet Armand had chosen to sit here. In the living room. In his direct line of sight.
Daniel glanced over the top of his laptop and frowned, before making a note about how Armand’s entire wardrobe had transformed overnight from Cult Assistants “R” Us to billionaire sheikh–or chic, if he wanted to be politically correct. Had he taken a runway closet’s worth of Gucci and Tom Ford out of winter storage? Where did he retire his Rashid cosplay outfits? If he did? What does Real Rashid think about all this freaky shit, Fake Rashid? he projected defiantly. Armand laughed softly and Daniel ignored him, continuing to tap at his keyboard.
The coffee table between them was heaped with dishes of western and Middle Eastern fare: fresh fruit, kunafa that Armand had insisted was from the best bakery in Dubai, mini sandwiches, olives, dates, cheese, and honey. He leaned forward toward the granite coffee table and stabbed a piece of pineapple with a fork and popped it into his mouth. The vampire looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. Daniel froze mid-chew.
“Stop.”
“What?” Armand asked innocently.
“Stay out of my head,” he warned in a flat voice.
Armand looked back down at his book with a small smirk.
“There is no need for me to enter your mind, Mr. Molloy, when you project your thoughts so…loudly.”
Daniel swallowed the piece of pineapple and dropped the fork with a clatter. He had always prided himself as having no filter, but his week with the vampires had proven that he filtered quite a lot. A lot he would have liked to keep private. Like how now that Armand had revealed himself as a vampire, Louis’ neon advertisement of “honey and pineapple” had taken on a whole new meaning in his mind. Part of him wondered if vampire’s blood tasted as good as Louis had made it out to be in the interview sessions. Or with the dramatic, sensual slurping from a few days before. Almost as theatrical as Armand’s who-dunnit reveal, which would have put any mid-tier community theater production to shame. Almost.
“He wasn’t doing that for dramatics,” Armand said, turning a page of the book he was pretending to read. “I really taste that delicious.”
Daniel clenched his jaw.
“Enough of that.”
Armand closed his book with a flip of his hand and gazed up at Daniel with his otherworldly orange eyes. The absence of color contacts that had turned them a normal Rashid-umber was unsettling.
“Do you still want to find out for yourself?” Armand asked.
Daniel felt a flush of heat swoop through his chest. Had he wondered that bit too while Louis had been feeding on who had originally presumed to be his boytoy? Probably. And now the medieval apex predator sitting across from him was going to use it to toy with him.
“Still?” Daniel deflected.
A laugh stretched a lazy and confident smile across the vampire’s face. His white teeth gleamed wolfishly. He had started styling his hair differently since his reveal, sweeping it back from his face, and it was much more flattering. He truly was stunning. An ethereal demon.
“Mr. Molloy, the compliments…”
“I told you to stay out–”
“Yes, yes. And I’ve just now told you how loudly you think. That doesn’t answer my question.”
Daniel stared back for too long, knowing his dumbass probably looked like a pineapple-eating deer in the headlights. He was a journalist. Prolonged eye contact was expected. It showed he had a spine. It showed dominance. Armand squinted slightly and tilted his head up, revealing more of his neck. Daniel finally broke eye contact and ducked his head to stare at his laptop screen. He fiddled with the keyboard, feeling Armand’s fiery gaze burning a hole into the top of his head. Fuck these vampires.
There was a whoosh and suddenly Daniel found himself laptop-less and face-to-face with Armand. He jerked back as Armand snapped the laptop closed with savage finality and tossed it neatly onto the far sofa.
“Hey!”
“Oh, it’s fine.”
Armand leaned in until he was eye-level with Daniel.
"You were thinking…what these vampires?”
Daniel balked.
“You know what I meant.”
Without warning, Armand slid fluidly onto Daniel’s lap. Daniel pulled back in shock.
“H-hey man, what the hell are you doing?”
Daniel tried to push the vampire off, but the immortal was immovable, like a slender ton of bricks.
“I think the lady doth protest too much.”
Armand grabbed Daniel’s arm with vampire quickness and raised the man’s wrist to his mouth. His lips drew back as his little fangs slid out. Daniel jerked his arm back fruitlessly.
“No! No! Don’t.”
Armand paused,resting his weight on Daniel’s lap, and to Daniel’s surprise and relief, actually listened to him.
“No?”
Armand widened his eyes and retracted his fangs. Daniel let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Sweat prickled at his brow and glanced around the room. Where was the help when you needed them? Or the other vampire in the penthouse?
“N-no,” he breathed out shakily, feeling the phantom pain of Louis’s bite all those decades ago. He gulped, already feeling embarrassed about what he was about to ask. “How…how does your drinking my blood give me a taste?”
The telltale tremor started up in his hand. God-damned Parkinson’s. Armand tutted like he was a poor babe that had fallen down and scraped his knee outside in the rain, and Daniel’s wounded pride flared in response. Something else flared in his lower belly as Armand began to massage his hand, finding each spot that had become sore from writing cramps ease as if he’d done it before.
Oh.
Decades before, Alice would massage his hands after he’d finished a particularly grueling writing assignment. He had been a typewriter purist until the 2000s, much to everyone’s annoyance, but she had put up with it–with him. She had known all his pain points, which had come in handy during their divorce. Armand was massaging his hand in just the same way, finding the exact same spots that still seemed to harbor a deep ache after all the years. It somehow felt more intimate than Armand straddling him. It was when he opened his eyes that he realized he’d closed them.
Armand was staring down at him with those bright, unnatural pupils blown wide like he wanted to eat him and/or fuck him, and a strange sense of déjà vu tugged insistently at the back of Daniel’s brain. And then…well apparently the back of his brain was connected to his dick.
Daniel stared back, transfixed despite himself. “Hey Fake Rashid,” he said. “You need to stop looking at me like that.”
Armand shivered deliciously, so slightly, it looked like a tremor had shimmered through him.
“I promised you a taste,” he said.
Daniel didn’t remember agreeing to that promise.
“It’ll make sense in the end. You can tell Louis if you agree.”
Shit. He forgot about Louis.
“Agree on…what?”
“My flavor profile.”
Armand turned Daniel’s hand over and sucked the index finger into his mouth.
Daniel let out an undignified grunt and felt a dark heat stir in his groin, and something else dark stir in the back of his mind. Armand kept eye contact as he sucked and swirled his tongue around the digit.
“Erm, well, that’s pretty forward of you,” he managed to say evenly, in hopes he was playing off how alarmed he was. “But I don’t…I don’t see how…” he trailed off.
He was too old for this shit. He needed to get out of there before Armand decided he wanted to eat more than his finger. He needed an exit strategy, he needed a–
Armand began to simulate a blowjob, and whatever the man was thinking dissipated. The whole ordeal was, in truth, unbelievable. Armand had been uptight and combatively differential as Rashid, uptight and haughty after his reveal, and now…this. Daniel found himself getting hard despite the lunacy of the situation, and deliriously wondered if a real blowjob might be on the table, for journalism purposes. Go to Dubai. Interview a vampire. Get blown by his boyfriend (who is also a vampire). Somehow talk his way into leaving Dubai in one piece. Easy. It could be its own book. Armand laughed in his chest at this and Daniel winced as a sharp prick of pain bloomed in his finger.
“You bit me,” he said, almost dumbly.
Armand popped the finger out of his mouth, and the tip was red with two bloody pinpricks.
“Yes,” he said breathlessly, before putting the finger back into his mouth and sucking hard, and Daniel knew he was drawing out little threads of blood.
Daniel felt those threads tug on his physical heart as if Armand were commandeering his very lifeforce. His back lifted off the sofa with one especially powerful suck. He knew there was no science in it, but he was sure Armand could pull his heart out through his index finger if he really wanted.
“I did the same to my maker after he made me,” Armand said, after briefly taking Daniel’s finger out of his mouth. “You couldn’t believe my appetite. Pulling on the heart the first time I fed from him. He laughed from how much he loved it.”
“Is this the one who abducted you from a brothel when you were a kid?” Daniel asked, feeling short of breath. He really couldn’t stop himself. “And… educated you.” He imagined the finger quotation marks in his head.
Armand bristled.
“I was a teen, not a child.”
“I’d say fifteen is still a child.”
“I told you that off the record. He took me under his wing.”
“And into his bed. How old was he?”
“You’re ruining the mood.”
“What mood?” Daniel snipped. “Ouch!”
Armand had pricked him again, harder than necessary, and resumed sucking. The blood began to flow more freely from his finger and Daniel bit back a groan.
“That feels…”
His finger began to tingle pleasantly, and then his hand, and then his arm, until the tingle traveled his whole body and then up into his brain, making him shudder. This was nothing like when Louis had bit him. Absently, he realized he was rubbing his sock-covered feet back and forth over the plush carpet. Overstimulated. This must be what all the ADHD Gen-Zers were always yapping about sans-vampire.
Armand pulled back and bit his own lip with one of his fangs. If Daniel wasn’t so terrified and disoriented, he might have admitted that it was a little bit sexy. Armand poked his tongue out to scoop up the little bit of rich, dark blood that had welled up from the puncture in his lip.
“Ready, Mr. Molloy?”
This guy really liked to draw it out , Daniel thought, wanting the vampire to shut up and keep sucking. His gums began to itch the way they used to when he tied a band around his arm before heroin. The anticipation.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, princess,” he said cagily, lacking his usual venom.
Armand popped Daniel’s finger back into his mouth and rubbed his tongue, and his vampiric blood, over the pinpricks in his finger. The unfurling of pleasure was exquisite.
“Jesus” Daniel wheezed.
His entire body thrummed from this little brush with blissful oblivion. Daniel’s vision shimmered slightly around the edges, but not before he saw Armand’s eyes going glassy. Armand moaned, and Daniel felt heat coil in his lower belly. Just a few drops of Armand’s blood and Daniel was feeling a door inside of him that he didn’t know was closed begin to open. No, that wasn’t right. There was a door where he hadn’t even known there was a door. It might as well have been a wall. But it was a door and it was opening.
The steady eye contact between them made him feel hot all over and he felt the strange, phantom urge to cup Armand’s face with his other hand. Luckily, his other hand was occupied squeezing a throw pillow within an inch of its life, and if he could have squeezed any tighter, he would be tearing it into little pieces.
This must have been what Louis meant when he described Lestat feeding on him for the first time. “Un petit coup,” but this was only a shadow of that. Barely a sip and it was overwhelming. Fuck. Louis was going to kill him. Daniel broke eye contact and let his head fall back on the sofa, suddenly unable to keep it up. Through the full-body buzzing, he realized he was completely hard in his jeans. He realized this was the first erection he had managed in nearly eight months–and the last one had barely counted as a semi.
Armand let Daniel’s finger slip from his mouth, and while the journalist’s body continued thrumming on the same sweet frequency, the hot all-consuming focal point was gone. Daniel lifted the lead weight that had become his head to protest, but his vision was still faintly shimmery, and the vampire was an unexpectedly debauched vision. Armand gazed at him, his eyes still glazed, but there was a tinge of something else there. If Daniel wasn’t out of his mind, he’d have said sadness. Could this be reminding him of Louis? He imagined the vampires’ marital bed was on the cold side.
“Daniel, you have no idea what this–” Armand didn’t finish, and ducked his head to press a kiss to the palm of Daniel’s hand as if to stop himself from blurting something out.
Daniel tensed. His brain got halfway through cobbling together a snarky reply, but he was too bewildered and fuzzy to finish it and open his mouth, let alone yank his hand away. In truth, he yearned for Armand to kiss his palm again and then his wrist. To wherever he could get to.
“I can do that,” Armand said with a small laugh, and pressed his lips to Daniel’s palm and then to his wrist two times.
Daniel’s mouth went dry. This was crazy. Armand nuzzled his wrist like a cat, probably desperate to finally sink his fangs in, and then looked up at him with those deceptive doe eyes. Daniel had the distinct suspicion that he was now Armand’s favorite new mouse to play with.
“Do you want the real thing now,” he practically purred, his voice going a little gravelly. Not a question.
Daniel could barely hear Armand over the sound of his heart pounding and the blood rushing in his ears, let alone know what the hell he meant by “ the real thing,” but it seemed like his body did. He was halfway to the promised land. If “the real thing” meant getting all the way there, he wanted it.
“Fuck yes. Give it to me.”
Armand bit his lip again, worrying it so the blood would come.
Fuck he looks sexy when he does that, Daniel thought before he could stop himself.
“Mr. Molloy, are you flirting with me?” Armand asked, bearing his weight down on the obvious bulge in the journalist’s pants.
Before he could respond, Armand leaned forward and captured Daniel’s ready mouth in a kiss. Armand pushed the blood in with his tongue in, and an entire galaxy exploded forth inside Daniel, firing every neuron to the moon and back. He whimpered, and before he knew what he was doing, Daniel had grabbed Armand’s hips and rutted up against him. Armand yelped in surprise into the kiss, but he was hard as well began to grind his hips down in rolling thrusts in response, sending jolts of pleasure up Daniel’s spine.
He thought blood might taste bad like this, coppery and sharp, but Armand’s was verifiably sweet. So sweet. Tropical. Dizzying. Welcome. Familiar. He sucked Armand’s bottom lip into his mouth, nipping at it to get more of the blood into his mouth. Then he sucked on Armand’s tongue, just to get the vampire’s tongue into his mouth. Armand continued to grind his hips down into tight circles all the while making needy, mewlish moans that drove Daniel crazy. He wasn’t sure how long they kissed like that, in a frenzy. Armand bit his lip and his tongue at least a couple times again, eagerly feeding Daniel his blood until the man was borderline delirious.
Daniel wasn’t sure where he went, but by the time he came back down to earth, he had both hands buried down the back of Armand’s Armani slacks grabbing as much of his pert, fleshy ass as possible, a couple of his fingers dangerously close to being somewhere indecent. He hadn’t kissed this nasty since the nineties.
He shifted and felt the sticky mess inside his own briefs. Had he not still been reeling from Armand’s blood, he might have felt the smallest twinge of abashment. He was still hard, so he must have ejaculated like a teen at prom and gotten hard again like a teen at prom. Wonderful. He couldn’t deny was thirsty for more, and Armand was still hard and wanting. They panted against each other’s mouths, and then Armand pressed their foreheads together. The intimacy of this, even more than the blood sharing, made Daniel’s chest tighten and expand, and his stomach flip. He finally noticed Armand’s cologne–elegant and masculine and inhaled deeply. Something cloudy in the back of his mind began to unfold uncertainly, even as his body kept singing. He was beginning to feel the earth disappear from under him again.
“This is a crazy question, but…have we done this before?” Daniel asked, feeling underwater.
Armand pulled back with a grin on his face that was halfway between gentle tenderness and the cat who ate the canary.
“The odyssey of recollection," he practically crooned.
“What?”
Armand slipped his tongue back into Daniel’s mouth and Daniel shivered as another drop threatened to send him floating off across the stratosphere again. His eyes began to roll into the back of his head and he forgot his first question.
“So what was all that finger nonsense? Foreplay?”
“You didn’t think it was nonsense.” Armand said. “So? What’s your verdict?”
Daniel hummed and slid his hands from where they had been inappropriately placed on Armand’s ass up the smooth skin of his lower back. He wouldn’t have guessed that vampires would feel so fleshy and human.
“If heroin had a baby with a cornucopia of…just pineapple,” Daniel said, less eloquent than normal. “Like a tropical smoothie with crack–”
“I take your meaning.”
“Sorry, it’s just...Look, I’m fucking loaded right now, and I’m supposed to be sober, so I don’t know what this means. But I take back what I said about Damek. You’ve converted me. Happy?”
Armand made a little grunt of triumph and preened.
“You can tell Louis you agree with him then.”
Armand’s words doused Daniel in cold dread. Well, that’s one way to kill the mood.
“Shit. Your boyfriend.”
“It’s fine,” Armand said dismissively, his eyes flickering away for the first time.
“I’m pretty sure he’s going to kill me,” Daniel said, pulling his hands out from under Armand’s shirt, and placing his hands on his legs in a reluctant display of restraint, as if that undid the fact that he had come in his pants with Armand straddling him only moments before. He managed to squint to drive home how serious he felt. “You gonna stop him this time too?”
“You’re his favorite boy. He won’t touch you.”
“I’m not his boy.”
“No.”
The you’re mine was so heavily implied, that Daniel heard Armand speak it into his mind. It made part of him want to run. Another part–the part that had landed him in drug dens and worse, waking up still high in alleys with no shoes and no money, the part of him that drove him to travel to every corner of the world as if he were being stalked by a shadow, carry a tape recorder everywhere, to be a journalist, to be himself even when being himself took him to the edge of the abyss, and into it–wanted Armand to sink his shiny little talons into him and lay claim. Déjà vu stretching the void of nirvana.
Armand turned back and regarded him.
“So, how about something for me?”
“Something for you?”
“Yes,” Armand said, rolling his hips again against Daniel’s persistent erection.
Daniel suppressed a grunt, and resisted the urge to buck his hips.
I can be on my knees in a second . The words bubbled up inside him unbidden, and hit him like a punch in the gut. Then suddenly his mouth watered, and he desperately wanted to know what else Armand tasted like.
“Maybe that another time,” Armand said, and Daniel flushed, remembering through the glittering high that the lanky vampire could hear all of his thoughts.
“What do you want then?” he asked, feeling oddly rejected.
“What I want is a little drink.”
“Yeah?” Daniel breathed. “What makes me the lucky girl? That I’m a warm body that apparently DoorDashed myself to you?”
“I admit that I’m curious about you. Daniel .”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Does that frighten you?”
Armand traced a finger down the side of his face. Daniel’s heart pounded with renewed vigor.
“Yeah,” he said plainly.
“Don’t you trust me?”
Daniel laughed. “Fuck no.”
Armand looked so enthralled at the prospect of biting him, that he didn’t even pause to look injured by Daniel’s words. A light sound rumbled in Armand’s chest. Something like a reminder tugged at the back of Danie’s mind again, at the base of his neck. He likes the chase, the second unbidden thought said, bubbling up. Daniel shivered.
“I’ll make it good for you. I won’t abuse the bite like Louis did.”
“Hey, how about you stop talking about your boyfriend and just bite me.”
A triumphant smile tugged at Armand’s lip and he bared his teeth, which gleamed through the haze Daniel still found himself enthralled by. Armand’s little fangs slid out, and Daniel had to admit to himself that they looked cute, or borderline cute, even if they were attached to a five-hundred year-old maniac. Didn’t prey animals naturally flee when a predator bared his teeth? He should have wanted to run.
Armand leaned forward. He rested his weight against Daniel’s body, so that they were touching chest to groin. He laced his fingers into the gray curly hair at the back of his neck and gently pulled his head to the side, exposing his neck. Daniel couldn’t believe he was letting this happen. That he was glad of it. Encouraging it.
“Your veins are jumping,” Armand whispered.
“Armand, just do it–”
He wasn’t ready for the sharp zing of Armand’s fangs sinking into his neck, for the pain. He felt the first pull of his blood flowing into Armand’s mouth. Armand moaned. Daniel gasped, suddenly unable to breathe, and clutched at Armand’s hips, frozen.
Breathe, Daniel, Armand projected into his head.
The journalist gulped in a lungful of air, but was still frozen in fear, some animal part of him overriding his logical brain, as a mythical apex predator made a meal out of him.
Relax , Armand coaxed. Breathe. I’ll keep you safe. Breathe.
And then he began to drink. They both moaned as Armand swallowed the first mouthful of blood. It was too much. Euphoric. Wrong. Perfect. Daniel squeezed Armand to him, as his entire awareness shrank down to the rhythmic throb of blood that their bodies had become. The one their bodies had become. He couldn’t fall so long as Armand’s bite, the sweet pain, kept him connected. They writhed together. He could die there.
Not today, Armand projected.
Armand retracted his fangs. Daniel felt dizzy and lightheaded, and there was something deliciously vulnerable about how Armand quivered in his arms post-drink. His mind felt light enough to float away, but his body was still anchored to the earth and ripe with need.Apparently, Armand was too. He felt a bulge pressing against his own erection through the layers of clothing.
“You’re still hard,” he said into Armand’s ear, and the vampire shivered.
“Hmm?”
Before Armand could protest, which for some reason he knew the control freak would do, he reached between both of them to unbutton Armand’s slacks. He yanked down the zipper, and shoved his hand inside to palm him. Armand gasped.
“You don’t have to–”
“Shut up, I want to.”
Armand bit back a whine and arched his back as Daniel wrapped his hand around his throbbing erection and began to jerk him off with languid strokes. The journalist liked the way Armand felt in his hand far more than he should have: substantial yet slender like the rest of him, and hot to the touch now. He teased the foreskin with his thumb, and watched greedily as Armand’s Adam's apple bobbed, taking in the long, dark exposed neck and chest. Armand came quickly, bucking with tight, needy thrusts into Daniel’s hand. Daniel’s eyebrows went up in surprise as thick spurts of blood shot out, painting Armand’s chest and white shirt. The tension in Armand’s body melted away. Daniel gave the vampire’s spent cock a last squeeze.
“You know you come blood, right?”
“Hggnn? Yes.”
“And it’s normal?”
“Yes. Normal.”
“Coulda warned me.”
Armand dragged a hand through his hair breathlessly. His fangs were protruding post-orgasm.
“I’m a vampire. What else would be inside me?”
Me , Daniel’s brain supplied unhelpfully. God damn it.
Armand raised an eyebrow and settled his weight back on Daniel’s lap, and by effect, the man’s erection.
“A little blood play and you already want to be inside me?”
Daniel half-smiled in chagrin, but it was no use trying to hide his thoughts.
“You’re free to disregard my private thoughts if they’re not to your liking.”
“Strike it from the record? Hmm. You’re already inside me, Daniel.”
Armand cut his index finger with his thumb nail until a large bead of blood welled up. He touched it to the puncture wounds in Daniel’s neck. Daniel got a last tingle of whatever euphoria was singing in Armand’s blood before he felt the holes close up. He touched his neck in wonder. Fully healed.
“You’re coursing through my veins right now,” Armand finished.
“Yeah, well. That’s certainly more poetic than what I was thinking, Dursa Arha.”
Armand scoffed, looking miffed.
“He wasn’t even from the same region. And besides, I was in Rome by then.”
“No, he wasn’t…” Daniel trailed off as his attention fell to the blood-cum (or maybe just blood?) streaked across Armand’s chest and white shirt.
Daniel traced his hand through the red mess and brought it curiously to his mouth. Armand snatched Daniel’s hand away.
“No, Daniel.”
“Hey!”
Armand stared Daniel down with a smoldering look as he licked the blood off himself instead. He sucked on Daniel’s fingers and licked his palm clean, sending a sharp thrill down Daniel’s spine and straight to his cock.
“Fucker,” Daniel grunted.
“We don’t want to drive you mad before you’ve finished the interview.”
If I survive the interview…
“You’re saying your cum will drive me crazy?” Daniel scoffed.
Crude, Armand thought.
Armand smirked down at him and raised both eyebrows as if to say it wasn’t even debatable. Daniel shook his head.
“Fucking vampires…”
He attempted to drag his fingers through the blood on Armand’s chest and stomach again, but the vampire stood up in one fluid motion and tucked himself back into his dress slacks.
“It looks like you are still unsatisfied,” he said with Rashid-like formality. Weirdo probably had kept the outfits. “Earlier you were wondering if a real blowjob was on the table.”
“You’re just trying to distract me from the blood.”
“Yes. It seems I’ve spoiled you already if getting on my knees is a distraction.”
I could be on my knees in a second . Daniel squeezed his eyes shut at a sudden needle of pain through his ecstasy–addled brain. In the moment it took to clear, Armand had sunk to his knees as if he had practiced.
“I promise you, your heart wouldn’t be able to take it,” Armand finished.
“Sounds like reverse psychology to get me to blow you.”
Armand chuckled. “That would be quite mischievous, wouldn’t it?”
Armand began to unbutton Daniel’s jeans. He gulped and tried to steady his breath. Okay, so this was happening.
“Right.”
Daniel glanced around, the buzz finally fading enough for awareness to sink back in.
“Not to sound like a prude, but how long will this room be empty? It would probably be catastrophically traumatic for Real Rashid or one of the other rent boys to walk in on us.”
“This room will be empty as long as I want it to be. Please, let me–”
Armand tugged down his zipper and the briefs with rough eagerness. Daniel’s erection all but sprang out and lightly slapped against his belly. Armand emitted a low, strangled moan from the back of his throat.
“Oh,” he said, eyes lighting up and fangs sliding out.
Daniel felt a swell of relief and pride. He usually felt confident but it was hard to know how he’d measure up to four hundred years’ worth of sex partners. He almost said something about making a girl feel special, but instead he said, “fangs away, please.” He mustered up every bit of self-control to keep his voice even. God, when was his last blowjob?
“Just four years ago. You old dog .”
“Stop that!”
Really, it had been four years?
“I like that you’re uncircumcised,” Armand continued, completely unbothered.
“My parents weren’t what you call, super orthodox.”
“I don’t want to talk about your parents.”
Armand leaned forward and sucked the tip into his mouth.
“Don’t…don’t feel bad if you can’t fit the whole thing in your mouth, sweetheart. Plenty have tried and–nnghh!”
Armand had dipped his head down and deep-throated him in one.
“Oh fuck ,” Daniel cursed, his head falling back.
Armand began to bob his head and drag his tongue along the sensitive underside of Daniel’s dick, bracing his hands on the man’s jean-clad inner thighs. As promised, his fangs were safely retracted. Daniel tried to watch him, mind blown as Armand sank all the way down until his nose was buried in Daniel’s trimmed pubic hair and inhaled –Jesus Christ this vampire was going to kill him–before swallowing around the length that was squeezed down his throat.
Daniel made an utterly disgraceful sound and reached for Armand’s head, but found himself hesitating. Too much. Getting blown by an ancient twink vampire while on the job and a guest in the home of said vampire’s husband who had attacked him fifty years before was a-okay, but holding the vampire’s head so he could thrust into his mouth was apparently past the line.
Armand looked up at him with his piercing amber eyes as if to egg him on, and Daniel threaded both hands into the vampire’s wavy curls. Armand whimpered, the sound reverberating down Daniel’s cock, and Daniel tightened his grip until he was yanking at Armand’s scalp and the vampire was moaning and his eyes rolling into the back of his head.
Slut , Daniel thought viciously.
Armand only moaned louder and bobbed his head faster, the dirty, wet slurping alone threatening to send Daniel over the edge. The vampire shifted and removed one of his hands from Daniel’s inner thigh. Shame. Daniel was hoping Armand would dig his sharp nails through the jeans, mix a little pain with the pleasure. Armand obliged and squeezed with the other hand until Daniel felt the pinch. Daniel grunted. He tried to hold on, to make it last, but then he looked down and caught a flash of Armand’s hand working between his own legs, and came down Armand’s throat with a shout. Armand swallowed with ease, and his body jerked as he must have come again himself. Armand pulled back with a gasp and brought his hand to his mouth to lick the blood off his fingers while Daniel watched. Selfish . A lazy smile pulled at Armand’s mouth and he held out his still blood-dappled pinky. Daniel reached for Armand’s delicate wrist, but the vampires snatched his hand back and sucked the last bit of blood off his finger.
“Asshole.”
Armand smirked and leaned down toward Daniel’s wet and slowly softening cock. Daniel watched as Armand cleaned him with little kitten licks and looked up at him with a dreamy disheveled look that stirred something deep and long-undisturbed inside of him, like sediment at the bottom of a pond. It made him feel untethered. He wanted the sediment to lie still along the murky bottom so he could finish enjoying the bright moment swimming on the surface in the sun. Only God knew how long he’d be alive after. He was still breathing heavily and desperate to catch his breath.
“Jesus Christ, you sucked the soul out of me.”
Armand hummed.
“What can I say?” His voice was scratchy. “I have a skill.”
“No kidding.”
Louis was definitely going to kill him. And Daniel would be thinking about this blowjob until he did.
Armand was still keeping up with the little licks, and despite how hot Daniel thought it was, he was starting to get oversensitive. He winced as Armand licked roughly over the slit.
“Hey,” Daniel said tiredly. “I don’t think I have another one in there. You juiced me good.”
He couldn’t feel his legs. If he were a little saner and a little less high, he’d be a little more concerned about the circumstances he’d found himself in, such as the fact the his dick was out in some random Dubai penthouse, and the vampire Armand–who had been the boytoy/assistant Fake Rashid only a few days before–was still kneeling in front of him streaked in his own cum-blood like a sexy demon. And his boyfriend…Daniel blamed it on all the vampire blood he had consumed, and according to Armand, it hadn’t been all that much.
“Do you want to know what you taste like, Mr. Molloy?” Armand asked, licking his lips and tucking Daniel back into his pants. Then he did the same for himself.
Daniel raised an eyebrow, unsure where he found the strength to even do that after Armand had sucked it all out of him.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Molloy, again?”
Armand cocked his head with a small differential smile that Daniel knew wasn’t differential at all
“Because now it just sounds kinky,” Daniel continued.
“Really? Not me asking if you want to know what you taste like?”
“There’s a hierarchy of kinkiness.”
“You’re getting sassy again.”
“I was always sassy.”
Armand tilted his head the other way like a cat. “Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Daniel said, and Armand smiled toothily at that. “What do I taste like?”
“Well, I supposed I could be glib and say pineapple, but…well. I’ll tell you next time.”
“Next time?”
Armand raised his hand again, revealing a glob of blood?–cum? blood-cum?–still on his thumb. He licked it off and held it on the tip of his tongue like an offering. Daniel was mesmerized as Armand leaned forward to kiss him and slip his blood-covered tongue into his mouth. The effect was instantaneous; Daniel got hard again so quickly it almost hurt. He groaned and shuddered into the kiss, the sweet taste of Armand’s blood spilling down his throat and lighting up his entire nervous system. His toes curled and he grabbed unabashedly at Armand’s waist, pulling him close and sucking on his tongue, not wanting the ride to end.
He realized he had lost time again, when he came back to his body, which was writhing and buzzing with pleasure that was on the knife’s edge of too much. He couldn’t take it. He had to come down or go back up, and he wasn’t ready to come down. He tried to bite Armand’s tongue, and Armand hissed and pulled back, anger flaring in his eyes.
“Greedy boy! Still.”
Still? Daniel was trembling all over like his entire body had become afflicted with Parkinson’s. He lurched up to capture Armand’s mouth in another kiss, but Armand pulled back and held him down, pinning the journalist to the sofa while he rode out the ache of the come down.
Armand was haloed in light, his skin shimmering. He looked like some ethereal creature out of a Renaissance painting. Daniel could see it now. Like an angel.
Or a satyr, as my Master liked to call me, Armand projected into his mind. An insatiable cherub .
Daniel took a deep breath as the pleasure died down to the point that it was not blasting his neurons out of time and space, but was instead a manageable hum. He realized with a sudden onset of exhaustion and the familiar post-coital tingling, that he must have orgasmed again at least once, but he was still rock hard, and the insides of his briefs had not been dampened again, thankfully. A dry orgasm then.
“O-oh my god,” he finally choked out once he could speak.
Armand regarded him with a soft, strange look. He looked vindicated, and as though he was disappointed about that.
“As I told you. More than that would drive you mad.”
Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. He should have been worried about relapsing–that he had effectively relapsed, but he wasn’t. Deep down inside, below the “recovered addict” shield he had built inside himself, there was a deeper and more primal voice. The voice of the actual addict panicking, in despair, because once he left Dubai, no black tar, no dragon chasing, no designer powder would ever compare to this. After leaving the penthouse and the two vampires who should definitely get divorced, he would truly be in recovery. Not by choice, but because what would be the point of shooting up when he’d have that last taste of Armand living in his mind? This would haunt him. And beyond that, the feelings Armand’s blood had awoken in him were just…
“If it’s too overwhelming,” Armand said, glancing away. “I can take away the memory of that last taste–”
“Don’t you dare,” Daniel snapped, and then more softly, “I’ll be fine.”
To Daniel’s surprise, Armand relaxed, turned toward him and gave him a chaste kiss, making his lips tingle. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?
“Alright. You’ll have time to fix yourself up before Louis awakens for the next interview segment.”
Panic cut through the humming ecstacy. How could he look Louis in the eye the same day this happened? He’d need one day to gather himself at least. And shower. And take a nap, or three–
“No use in avoiding Louis to try to hide your thoughts, Daniel. It’s impossible for a human to do so. He’ll get every lascivious detail as you think and imagine them. As have I.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Fuck.” He knew this, of course, but hearing Armand say it out loud made it all the more real.
He’d have to put on his big boy panties and face the wrath and humiliation like a man. His appetite should be dying down to age-appropriate modesty, not ramping up to whatever gluttonous pinnacle he was racing toward, and getting him into lethal trouble. His family, if they cared about his shame, would be ashamed.
Armand leaned forward to touch Daniel’s face. “He’ll be mad at me, not you. He’ll tease and dig, but that’s all.”
“You’ll be my vampire shield?”
Daniel really didn’t want to die behind a blowjob...and some mild blood-drinking, and heavy petting, and finger sucking…
“Yes, although, given his past recreational activities, he has no right to be angry with me.”
Armand glanced back at the coffee table, and gracefully stood from Daniel’s lap.
“Finish your pineapple and get cleaned up,” Armand said, buttoning up a few of the buttons on his blood-streaked shirt, and turning away. “One of the staff will come here in an hour to clean. Oh, and drink plenty of water. You’ll need to replenish your fluids.”
These vampires were going to kill him.