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It was the count’s custom, after he fed, to curl up with a good book by the fire in the library, enjoying the warmth in his veins for the little while it was stronger than the hunger. Sarah had been a distraction the last few times, sometimes pinning him to a wall before they could even reach the library, but this evening they had made it there relatively quickly. Maybe she was tired.
She was lovely, too, resting on the divan beside him, sprawled out with one leg hooked over his, one hand playing sleepily with his hair. She had rid herself of all but a black silk chemise, let her hair down to fall in loose tangles over her shoulders. Blood still stained her lips, her arched throat, and Krolock fought to keep his eyes on the book and temptation at bay.
It was not an easy task. Sarah was full of energy even at rest, attention-grabbing, gorgeous. Delicious. She shifted, tugged Krolock’s hair absently with the movement, giggled at his gasp.
“Has the blood brought the breath back to your lungs, lovely?” she mumbled; and Krolock smiled even as he sighed.
“Perhaps.”
He looked over and Sarah was eyeing him from the corners of half-lidded eyes. “Still getting reaccustomed to their function, I take it.”
The count hummed, leaned over to kiss Sarah’s wrist, the pretty divot under her thumb. She sighed audibly, twitched under the touch of his lips and he smiled against her skin. He was failing at not being distracted, pressing kisses along the soft inside of her arm, one hand abandoning the book to slide up her thigh. He ran his nails through short, soft hairs; Sarah shivered, hummed pleasantly and Krolock tried to take his other hand from the book, slipped, and felt the pad of his finger sting as it glided against the edge of a page.
He breathed in sharply and Sarah moved in response just as sharply, reaching for his face and then his hand as he stared at it, almost affronted.
Blood welled up on the pad of his pointer finger and Sarah’s eyes widened looking at it. He saw her throat move, her lips purse briefly before she opened them to murmur. “You poor thing.” And she did sound really concerned, but she also sounded hungry. Barely restrained, eager. “Let me … take care of you…” trailing off, she bent her lovely head to lick up the drop of blood making its way down his finger with the tip of her tongue. She looked up at him through her lashes then, as if waiting for permission, and Krolock raised an eyebrow curiously. Sarah smiled, pressed a kiss to the tip of his finger before letting her lips close over it, her tongue pressed to the wound and then gone.
She was hungry still, then. Krolock threaded the fingers of his free hand through her hair as she drank what little blood she could from his papercut, as her breathing grew ragged and she pulled back his sleeve to kiss his wrist where the veins ran warm for now. To linger, holding his arm to her mouth as if it soothed something.
“You are getting carried away, starlight…” he whispered, and her lips curled into a smile, pressed to his veins.
“Not my fault you’re delicious and clumsy,” said Sarah, her lips parting against his skin, teeth scraping over the place where fresh blood ran. He was a little affronted at being called clumsy. More than a little endeared at her boldness.
“You had your share,” he said, teasing, and Sarah looked at him out of the corner of her eyes with a surprising amount of indignation for someone with her mouth still flush against his wrist.
She sighed, kissed it. “Fine,” she said, trailing more kisses up his arm, his shoulder. He leaned back and she untangled their limbs to climb into his lap, cup his face in both her hands and grin at him, lick some of the dried blood from her lips. “I’ll leave you your meal.” And she leaned in and kissed him, and he wrapped an arm around her to pull her closer, to feel her false warmth as her back moved under the touch.
He kissed her chin, her throat, licked up some of the blood still staining her collarbone, the curve of her neck. Through shudders — “Which of us is greedy now?” she sighed, but held him, kissed him more fervently when he returned to her lips.
At last she broke away in giggles — a strange habit, maybe, but one the count loved — and rested her head on his shoulder, smiling up at him. Her hair was soft, her expression softer, and he brushed a curl out of her face idly and pressed his lips briefly to her forehead.
“Sated?”
She considered, caught somewhere between levity and momentary, gentle pensiveness. “Never. Especially not when it comes to you.” A wink, and anything solemn in her face was gone. “But content.”
Contentment was easier to come by these days, Krolock thought, even if satisfaction was as difficult as ever. He had thought the two must come together, but had evidently been wrong. Sarah was falling asleep, pulling his discarded cloak from the back of the divan to drape over them both, humming softly to herself, and he had never known happiness like this.