I shrugged, unconcerned. “Okay, cool. In that case, follow my lead.” I did a slow three-sixty, my eyes falling on a cute guy with emo hair, standing alone by the bar. The dude’s eyes were fastened on Rans with the kind of look I’d seen countless times before from both sexes. I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. “Hi,” I said, and gestured to Rans. “My boyfriend’s a real vampire. Can he bite your neck and drink your blood while I watch?”
Emo Dude’s pupils dilated as the real vampire in question wandered up to join us. “Uhh...” he said.
Rans smiled, showing fang.
“Going once,” I prompted. “Going twice...”
“Yes, please,” the guy squeaked.
“Splendid,” Rans said, his smile growing wider.
Ten minutes later, Emo Dude stumbled away from the shadowed hallway in the back where he’d led us for some privacy, a goofy grin spread across his white-powdered face.
“Okay, this is almost too easy,” I observed, as Rans swiped a smear of blood from his lower lip.
“Mm,” he agreed. “It does rather take away some of the challenge of the hunt, doesn’t it? Ah well. Come along, pet—we might as well go put on a proper show for the rubes.”
* * *
I was dancing, swaying to the heavy beat—my hips grinding against Rans behind me while his lips and teeth toyed with the side of my neck. It was... nice. Judging by the trails of animus wafting my way from the growing number of people in the crowd who’d turned to watch us, they thought it was nice, too.
It wasn’t quite accurate to say that I’d unearthed a streak of exhibitionism over the course of the past few weeks. I mean—I didn’t fantasize in my spare time about other people ogling me while Rans and I had sex. As far as I could tell, it was more of a growing association between situations where a crowd was perving on me, and the pleasure of a good feeding.
Mind you, tonight I was scoring fewer than half of the interested eyeballs. And that was fair. Despite what he often told me, I knew full well that Rans outclassed me in the sexiness department. The man should come with his own warning label or something.
‘Danger of motor function loss. May cause uncontrolled drooling.’
That was fine, though. At the end of the day, I was the one who got to take him home... wherever home might happen to be at that moment... and I was also the one who—
Fangs slid into my skin, pulling an unashamedly sexual noise from my lips. The animus that was directed my way surged, and then surged even higher when a cool trickle of blood slid down the side of my throat to pool above my collarbone.
Rans was not, by nature, a messy eater. The spill had been a calculated move, designed to play to the crowd we were performing for. I let my head roll to the side, allowing Rans to support more of my weight as I dragged his hands to rest in places that were just shy of indecent. His low growl of approval vibrated through my neck, stoking the flames of my own feral nature.
A deep pull of my blood had me gasping. That hadn’t been for show, and given the effect of succubus blood on vampires, it was pretty clear I was going to end up getting fucked within an inch of my undeath at some point tonight. Resolutely, I put aside the niggling thought that it might be the last time we had each other in such a way.
I felt like a conduit, life force pouring into me from the crowd, then out of me and into Rans via the medium of my blood. It was heady. In other circumstances, I would have been tempted to let myself go completely and fall headfirst into the strange sensation. As it was, I knew I needed to maintain at least some awareness of our surroundings... but it was still making me weak in the knees.
By the time Rans released his bite, I was noticeably drained. Undead Viagra jokes aside, he wasn’t messing around when it came to powering up tonight. It went without saying that I wouldn’t be messing around, either. I let my eyes flicker open, eyelids at half-mast. It was a bedroom gaze... or maybe a ‘just got drained by a vampire’ one. A short, curvy girl was dancing in our orbit, her gaze riveted on us, and her desire palpable.
I levered myself away from Rans, still feeling pleasantly floaty from blood loss. His hands slid free, leaving behind the illusion of warmth despite the fact that both of us resided firmly in the realm of room temperature these days. The girl orbited closer, until we were dancing with each other, moving to the pounding bass.
Whirling her around, I fit myself against her back and guided her head to one side with the barest suggestion of a touch to her jaw. The scent of perfume heavy with spice and musk filled my nostrils as my fangs sank into her, making my nose tickle, but her blood was thick and sweet. She moaned with ecstasy as I drank, careful not to take too much.
I’d been right; this was almost too easy. I steadied her as we swayed to the music, scoring my tongue on a fang and using the blood to close her wounds, then licking away the evidence before breaking the seal of my lips.
She wouldn’t even need to be mesmerized.
The way she looked at me afterward, with gratitude shining from her unremarkable brown eyes, honestly freaked me out a little. A short distance away, Rans had followed my lead and was draining one of the shaved-and-tattooed-skull brigade. Other people seemed to be getting bolder, dancing closer until
