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When Vox wakes, the bed is warm and cosy. Alastor had denounced her very sexy, very expensive silk bedsheets a while back for a cotton comforter. Much as Vox is loath to admit it, Allie was right: this is more comfortable.
Alastor is asleep beside her. Vox nestles into Allie’s back, where her skin is soft and warm, and kisses her shoulder.
“Good morning,” she mumbles.
Allie makes an irritated noise and twitches away from her. “Your screen is too bright. Dim it.”
Vox instantly switches to Total Power Saving Mode. “Is this better?”
“Minimally.” Allie yawns and stretches her long legs out. Typically she sleeps curled up like a little fawn. It is painfully cute, as are most things about Alastor when you ignore the serial killing and cannibalism, and when your name is Vox.
She permits Vox to snuggle up against her. Alastor smells like the perfume she wears to bed; fainter now, but still present. Vox inhales the comforting powdery smell. “I dreamt of you last night,” she says.
“Did you now.”
“Uh huh.” Vox presses closer. “You and I were on the beach, and you were rubbing suncream into my—”
“If this,” Alastor says pleasantly, “is your way of asking me to wear a bikini…”
“No! It's not!” Fuck, but Allie is scary when she does that radio-dial thing with her eyes. “It's my way of saying I want to go to the beach. With you. You don't have to wear a bikini. You can wear a one-piece or swimming trunks or a fucking, I don't know, nun outfit or something. And we can, like… go swimming and get ice cream and stuff.”
“I don't like ice cream.”
“Fine. Sorbet for the lady.” Alastor is snickering. “What?”
“You'd probably like the nun outfit.”
Vox whines at her miserably.
Damn it. Vox would. She doesn’t say that, though; instead she just whines miserably until Alastor takes her hand. Heh. Always works. Alastor plays with her claws idly, running her thumb over the sharpest points. “We'll see.”
Yes! That has got to be a yes. Vox kisses Allie’s shoulder again in victory.
“Don’t you have a meeting today?”
“Ughh. Let me forget about it.” Vox closes her eyes. Warm bed. Warm Allie. Warm hands on hers.
They’re interrupted by the meeting reminder Vox set lighting up her screen. Vox groans and silences it.
“Your meeting is in twenty minutes,” Alastor says unhelpfully.
“Yeah, thanks, I got it.”
Vox gives herself ten more precious seconds of warmth before she forcibly detaches herself from Allie and rolls in the other direction. She brushes her teeth and wipes her screen in their ensuite before returning to their bedroom. Alastor is sitting up now, stifling a yawn in her hand.
Vox’s heart squeezes painfully. Allie is so fucking cute in the morning. She’s removed the bonnet she usually wears to bed, her red curls soft and inviting in the morning light. Vox ducks down to kiss her head. Allie flicks an ear at her and bats her away, saying, “If you miss your meeting I’ll never hear the end of it. Get dressed.”
Vox gets dressed with Allie’s eyes on her. Alastor’s kind of creepy in that way, Vox thinks lovingly as she changes out of her pyjamas – panties and an oversized Jaws t-shirt, the opposite of Allie’s pretty 30s-style sets – and into her suit. Fuck, Vox doesn’t miss having to wear a skirt every day.
“Remember our reservations tonight,” she says as she’s adjusting her cufflinks (silver deer antlers today, courtesy of a certain someone).
“Seven o’clock. I remember.” Alastor says. She must have magicked her makeup back on at some point; her lips are stained dark red. She tilts her head at Vox. “C’mere, darling.”
Vox is never immune to a c’mere from Allie. She kneels on the bed in front of her.
Allie takes Vox’s face in her hands. Vox stills. Alastor is like a cat; she chooses when to be affectionate, so whenever she’s in the mood Vox adopts the tried and true method of staying still and saying nothing. Alastor smiles at her.
“Mm,” she murmurs fondly. “My silly picture box.” She kisses Vox’s forehead, then her cheek, and then she's kissing Vox all over her screen, making Vox laugh delightedly.
“I gotta go to work,” Vox says.
“Would you like me to stop kissing you?” Kiss.
“No. It's just—” Kiss. “I can't be late. I have a meeting with Val and Velvette in five minutes —” Kiss. “And I — Allie, you're playing dirty.”
“Am I? Oh, dear.” Another kiss. “Alright, my darling. You may go.”
Vox mourns the loss of Alastor’s kisses as soon as she stops. Alastor leans back, arms still slung around Vox’s neck. The corners of her smile quirk up into something more genuine.
“Dante’s Inferno, wasn’t it?” Alastor says.
Vox nods. Dante’s one of their favourite shared spots. She specifies shared spots because Allie’s real favourite restaurant is a place in Cannibal Town that serves creatively-presented human meat. The food comes in six courses, sorted around a particular theme of the month – last month was ‘Lost in Paris’. It has precisely three vegan options. They are all miserable.
Anyway, Dante’s is a reasonable compromise because 1) it has food that Vox can eat and 2) Alastor is not free with her praise, so to find a place she likes is like finding fucking gold dust. Vox had tracked down the chef and promised to pay his daughter’s tuition money if he sold his soul to her. Easy win. The restaurant is stocked up with kobe beef for the rest of its days, and Alastor is satisfied.
Alastor traces a claw across the side of Vox’s monitor. “Don’t be late, darling,” she murmurs.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Vox manages. Ugh. Allie is so pretty. Vox longs to lie in bed with her, and pet her fluffy ears or her soft curls or–
“Take a picture, Vox, it’ll last longer,” Alastor says. She cuts her eyes up to the clock. “Two minutes.”
“Shit!”
By the time Vox steps out of the elevator she is not panting. She’s just a little exerted. Her internal systems tell her that her breathing is only 20% heavier than usual, so there’s no reason for Valentina and Velvette to be staring at her when she walks in.
“What?” Vox says defensively. “Okay, sorry, I’m a minute late.” Valentina opens her mouth, and Vox interrupts, “I know I’m always complaining about you being late, Val, but this is one time.”
“What were you doing that made you late?” Velvette says, arching an eyebrow.
“I had… reports to look over.”
“Ooh, ‘reports’,” Valentina says, leaning back in her seat. “If that’s what we’re calling it, then I was looking over reports allll last night.”
“Gross, Val,” Velvette says.
“What? We just got a sex swing in the studio, are you expecting me not to use it?”
“You had sex in the studio?”
“Uh, yeah? That’s where the sex swing is.”
“What are you two talking about?” Vox snaps.
Velvette smirks. “Might wanna look in the mirror, Vee.” At Vox’s puzzled expression, she rolls her eyes and snaps a picture. “Here.”
She holds up her phone. Vox stares blankly. Stamped across her screen are kiss marks, in the precise shade of Alastor’s lipstick.
Valentina is laughing at her. “Get it, Voxxy!”
Vox can feel the blush on her screen, damn it. She digs screen wipes out of her inner pocket – she always keeps some on her, after the Ketchup Incident of 1986 – and rubs at her face. “It’s not like that,” she says weakly.
“Sure, babe,” Velvette says.
“I thought it was cute!” Val coos at her. “The Radio Demon leaving her mark on you! Hey, Vel, you should do something like that for your next Valentine’s shoot. Are there any other sinners with screen-heads?”
“There’s a Vinsta model whose head is shaped like a photo frame,” Velvette says, fingers flying across her phone. “Totally cheating since she can just swap out whatever picture she wants, but lipstick would probably show up well on the glass… Hey, babe! It’s Velvette – yes, that Velvette, what other bitch is trying to use my name? I saw your page and I loved your look…”
Velvette’s already wandered to the other side of the room to take her call. Vox sits down next to Val.
“At least it wasn’t a shareholder meeting,” Vox says distantly.
“Or an Overlord meeting,” Val says. She’s snickering. “But I’m pretty sure they all know about you two. I saw on socials you were playing footsie under the table last time. And you say I’m unprofessional?”
“We were not playing footsie,” Vox says loudly. Velvette flaps her hand and points to her phone, scowling. Vox lowers her voice. “Alastor was just…”
Running her foot up Vox’s leg, yes. But it was to feel the bite marks Allie had left there! They’d hurt like a motherfucker; the night before Alastor had pinned Vox to the bed while she was kissing/biting/gently mauling her neck, and Vox had thrown her legs over Alastor’s shoulders, and so it just… happened. Alastor got a kick out of making Vox lose her composure, the little sadist.
They’d hid out in a bathroom stall after. Alastor had pressed on the bruises she’d left and said Vox was such a willing little victim, her favourite pincushion, and Vox had said more, and Allie had asked oh, darling, do you really want me to hurt you again? And Vox told her anything you wanna give me, Allie, I wanna take it all, and Allie had smiled and called Vox her sweet, stupid girl, and bit her neck until Vox’s knees went weak and wavering before shoving her out of the stall and telling her brightly that she had business to attend to, darling, you can make your own way back home, can’t you?
“It wasn’t footsie,” Vox repeats firmly.
“Uh huh.” Apparently bored with this conversation, Valentina has returned to drawing in her sketchbook. She flips the page around to show Vox. “Artist’s rendition.”
Cartoon-Vox has eyes the size of planets and a constellation of lipstick marks across her screen. “Ha,” Vox says, and tries to snatch it out of Val’s hands.
“Nooo! Voxxy! This is a new sketchbook, you’re not crumpling these pages, I swear to God–”
“Tear it out then!”
“No, it’s cute!”
“Ha!” Velvette says triumphantly, snapping her phone shut. Flip phones are ‘in’ right now, whatever that means. Vox should tell Allie, she’d be thrilled. “Secured our new model. Thanks for giving me the idea, babe.” She addresses this to Valentina, who blows her a kiss.
“Great,” Vox says. “Glad we worked that out. Now can we get to the point of the meeting?”
At that moment there’s a knock on the door.
“What?”
Edith’s wavering voice speaks up. “Ms. Vox, I’m sorry to interrupt, uh, ma’am, but you have a meeting with legal in five minutes…”
“Fuck!” Vox says. “Okay. Meeting postponed.” Neither seem to care; Velvette is back to scrolling and Valentina is busy drawing hearts around her Vox sketch. She checks her reflection again in the front camera of her phone — lipstick-free. “Remind me what the meeting’s about, Edith.”
“It’s about the new VoxPhone, ma’am. There are concerns about, uh, spyware? And, um, breaches of private data which the public was promised wouldn't be sold to shareholders…?”
Fuck.
She really wishes she'd stayed in bed with Allie.
It’s a chilly night as Vox steps out of her limo. Alastor is already there, unfailingly punctual as always. Vox marches up to her and says, “You did it on purpose!”
Alastor blinks at her, unruffled. “Come again?”
“With my screen!” Flustered, Vox shoves her hands into her pockets. It really is cool out.
“Your screen?” Alastor pretends to peer at it. “What about your screen? It all seems in proper working order to me. You still have your silly picture box display working, don’t you?”
“You know that’s not what I meant. You left… lipstick marks,” Vox says. Her face flushes just saying it. Alastor always makes her spell things out; she likes it when Vox is embarrassed. “When you kissed me.”
“Oh, yes,” Alastor muses absently. “I see how that could have happened.”
“You see how–! You did it on purpose!”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, dear,” Alastor says. “Besides, is that any way to greet a lady?”
Vox grumbles, but acquiesces. Alastor looks resplendent in a silky white blouse and a scarlet skirt that falls to her ankles. Her curls gleam blood-red in the night. Vox kisses her on the cheek and says, “Hi. You look really beautiful tonight.”
“Thank you, darling. You look lovely as well.” Alastor shivers a little.
“Are you cold? You should have worn a jacket, Allie.” Vox drapes her own over Alastor’s shoulders and Alastor smiles at her coquettishly.
“Such a gentleman.” Alastor hooks an arm through Vox’s. “Shall we head inside?”
They go in. The table is under Vox’s name – she likes flashing her card around and ordering Allie the most expensive meat she can find, so sue her. A mouse demon escorts them to their table, looking terrified when Alastor grins at her with all of her sharp, gleaming teeth.
“How was your day?” Vox asks once they’re seated and looking at the menu.
“It was pleasant,” Alastor says. Her smile turns a little dreamy. “The special guest on my show truly put up a fight! Did you know, Vox, that in some cultures they believe the meat tastes better when the animal dies slowly?”
“Do you believe that?” That would explain a lot. Allie likes to play with her food.
Alastor shrugs one shoulder. “A meal is always more satisfying when you’ve truly had to work for it,” she says. “But I don’t believe it actually affects the taste. Rosie’s free-range, protein-fed offerings are very good.”
“Free-range?”
“For ethical purposes.”
“Why would cannibals care about ethics?”
“Are you implying that I don’t care about ethics?” Alastor places a hand to her chest, aghast.
“You gutted a guy down the middle on live radio this afternoon,” Vox deadpans. “So, no, I don’t.”
“Ah,” Alastor says. “Someone tuned into my show today. I thought you had work to do?”
“I get a lunch break.” (This isn’t true. Firstly, Vox spends most days cramming a sandwich into her mouth at 2 p.m. while replying to the world’s most boring emails. And secondly, she didn’t listen to Allie’s broadcast while having lunch. She’d listened while typing up a report that she probably should have paid more attention to. Eh, fixing typos can be Edith’s job tomorrow.)
“Mm,” Alastor says, unconvinced. She runs her claw under a section of the menu. “They have beef tartare as their special tonight. Did you have a hand in that?”
“Maybe.” Yes. Tartare is one of Allie’s favourites – she loves raw meat, the little freak – and it turns out that chefs are very accommodating once you own their souls!
Alastor’s smile is a knowing one. They split a bottle of wine, and Allie clinks her glass against Vox’s in cheers.
Dinner is very nice. True to form, Alastor orders the tartare and a steak so rare it’s still glistening when she cuts into it. “How did your meeting go?” she asks.
“We didn’t have a meeting,” Vox says. “The girls were too distracted by my screen.”
“Oh, dear,” Alastor says sympathetically. “Well, it’s alright, darling. I happen to think that your current model is very fetching, although I do miss that boxy–”
“Alastor,” Vox says. “I’m talking about the lipstick kisses you left all over my display.”
“What about them?”
“It was embarrassing!”
“Oh, don’t pout, my dear. I happen to think you look very fetching with a bit of colour on you.”
Vox fiddles with her tablecloth sulkily. She’s never able to resist a compliment. “Yeah?”
“Of course. My pretty girl.”
Alastor always knows when to go in for the kill. The tension leaks out of Vox’s shoulders in double-time. Allie’s words have this effect on her; they make her go soft and pliant on the inside, every time.
“And to think you were so embarrassed this morning,” Alastor says. Vox is wearing wide-legged pants; Allie nudges the tip of her heel under the fabric, traces it up Vox’s skin. Vox’s tongue goes dry in her mouth. “Poor girl. I know, I’m so cruel to you.”
“Not in public,” Vox manages weakly.
“Oh? And why not?”
“You know why.”
Alastor’s smirk is, in fact, very knowing. “Alright, darling.” She moves her foot away. Vox is torn between relief and disappointment. “How did Valentina and Velvette react when you walked into the meeting?”
“They laughed at me.”
“Did they?” Alastor is smiling, the sadist. “What did they say?”
“Well, Velvette thought the lipstick idea would be good for her next photoshoot. And Val said…” Vox shrugs, the wine making her that touch more honest. “She said you wanted to leave your mark on me.”
“Mm.” Alastor takes a sip of wine, her eyes never leaving Vox’s. “And what would you say?”
“I’d say you didn’t have to. Everyone knows I’m yours.”
“Ah,” Alastor says. “But isn’t it so nice to have a reminder?”
Alastor’s red eyes are dark and inviting, her long lashes casting shadows across her cheekbones in the dim light. Her foot nudges Vox’s leg again, teasing over where she’d left the bite marks.
Vox flags down the nearest waiter for the bill.
Usually after a date, Vox either likes to walk Allie home (she’s a romantic, what can she say?) or take her back in Vox’s very cool and sexy new Voxtek limo (she’s rich as fuck, what can she say?). This time, she zaps them through the nearest electricity socket. When they get back to Vox's room in the tower, she can't keep her hands off Alastor. She kisses her desperately until Alastor parts her lips to let Vox in.
“Please,” Vox mumbles against Alastor's lips, and hears her laugh.
“Please what?”
“Please mark me up again?” Vox says. She kisses Alastor again, breathless. “Kiss me. Hurt me. However you wanna leave your mark on me.”
“Someone’s needy.”
“I’m asking nicely.”
“You are,” Alastor says. “Very good manners, darling. Good girl.”
Vox’s knees go a little weak. “That’s mean.”
“Hm?” Alastor places an open-mouthed kiss to her neck. Alastor’s clever mouth, her wandering hands as they slip under Vox’s shirt. “How is that mean?”
“You know it makes me…”
“Aww,” Alastor says. Her smile is mocking. “Does it make you flustered?”
Vox covers her face with her hands; Alastor laughs at her again. “Silly girl,” she says fondly. She runs her hands up Vox’s sides until she gets to her gills. They serve as air vents, fluttering and open now with the increased heat rushing to Vox’s system. Alastor dips her fingers inside of their slick warmth.
Vox arches her back. “Allie.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“More.”
Alastor digs her claws in, just a little, and Vox whimpers. “Ask nicely.”
“Please give me more,” Vox says. “Make me feel good. Hurt me. Whichever. Everything. Anything.”
“You’d be willing to take anything I gave you?” Alastor asks, and Vox nods.
“I’m yours. Isn’t that what I told you earlier?” She cups Alastor’s face in her hands. “I’m all yours, Allie.”
Alastor smiles at her. It’s a real, genuine smile – the kind few people but Vox ever get the privilege of seeing. She kisses Vox’s forehead and says, “That you are, darling.”
She guides Vox to the bed; Vox falls down on her back with a whump, Alastor crawling over her on her knees. “Let’s see how much you can take, shall we?”
Vox nods fervently, reaching up to kiss Alastor again, twining her hands in her soft red curls. “Please,” she says. Please kiss me. Please hurt me. Please, please, Allie, keep your eyes on me.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Alastor says lovingly. And then she bites.
The next afternoon, Vox smiles to herself as she traces over the marks on her neck.
Fuck, but Allie really had gone wild last night. There’s nothing Vox loves more than lying on her back, letting Alastor have her way with her using her claws and teeth and occasionally her shadow powers, and last night she got that in spades. It still hurts when she presses down on them.
Vox sighs dreamily as she recalls the night before. She’s so lost in the dream, in fact, that she completely misses the voice calling for her until–
“Ms. Vox…?”
Vox jolts. She looks up wildly to see Edith standing there, fidgeting with the papers in her hands nervously. Vox straightens up in her desk chair.
“I-I’m sorry, ma’am,” Edith says. “Uh, you granted the elevator to give me biometric access to your floor unless purposefully restricted, which it wasn’t, so I just assumed… Um, is this a good time?”
Vox stares at her. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You looked a little, um… lost in thought, ma’am.”
“I’m fine. Come here. What are these?”
“Ah. They’re reports from legal, after yesterday’s meeting? They’re saying that the concerns about VoxPhone spyware have increased.”
“Well, new phone users read the terms and conditions, don’t they?”
“That’s just the thing, Ms. Vox. The terms and conditions do state that users must consent to VoxTek devices having full access to the user’s camera, audio input, audio output, location, activity–” Edith takes a breath, “personal data, keystrokes, medical information–”
“I get the idea, Edith.”
“But they don’t mention the device having access to the user’s financial information? So there have been complaints about bank statements showing unauthorised payments to VoxTek Limited? And, uh, I got a notification saying that my salary had been ‘halved for the month’ for ‘temporary VoxTek financial rescheduling’, so I think it might have happened to me, too?”
“Edith,” Vox interrupts, “I don’t care. Can they fix it?”
Edith looks down at her notes. “Well,” she says, “It seems so. They’d need your approval for plans going forward, and it’d be a bit of a pain in the neck, but…”
Pain in the neck. Vox smiles as she brushes her fingers over the marks on her skin again. It had hurt so much when Allie bit her, but Vox had taken it. Alastor had called her a good girl and kissed over the marks this morning. She’d told Vox that she’d have to have a ‘proper examination of the damage’ that evening. Maybe Allie would bite her again. Maybe she’d prick Vox with her claws, make her bleed. Maybe she’d kiss Vox’s throat and say I’m sorry, darling, I can’t help it. It’s just so fun to hurt you.
“Ms. Vox? Ms. Vox…? Do you want me to set up a meeting…?”
Vox sighs happily. She’s one lucky sinner, that’s for sure.