Winter’s Tale
20 Ninth night, Part 4 — Betrothed
A snap of pale fingers dragged us back to our senses.
“I understand and obey,” we responded in harmony.
Our shared fetish for mindlessness rapturously rewarded the return from oblivion. Slave and I found ourselves on the ground, legs entwined, my quim jammed against hers, both of us grinding out a relentless, needful rhythm. Realising we could not stop ourselves brought our other ordained fetish to the fore and sent us over the edge.
Sovereign had stripped me of my dominance over Slave, but the extraordinary bond she had forged between us remained, more tangible than ever. We looked at each other, barely believing what we experienced. I knew what my twin was thinking, how she felt. We moved in harmony. It was weird but intriguing, like a waking dream.
Our beloved towered over us, naked save for her sigil, lazily fingering herself. We could not recall when she had disrobed but were delighted to view her luscious body. We licked our lips and fantasised about being inside her.
“It is real, yes? My bridal gift. The union you sought,” she announced with a satisfaction that touched our hearts. She loved us so much she had crafted this link between our minds. Her affection was as unquestionable as our devotion.
Since we were very young, we spent countless hours learning to speak, move and think as one. We hoped that had contributed in some small way to the enchantment our Sovereign cast to make our oldest wish a reality.
The new parameters of our existence were strange. Being a single person in two bodies with two sets of senses would take some getting used to. I was still myself but was also Slave. We were ed so seamlessly that we had the same thoughts at the same moment. No longer were our notions our own. Individuality was now something we must share.
We drew strength from the knowledge that Master had wished this fate for us. The confusing issues of identity it raised were precluded any serious examination by the distracting compulsion to rut.
“Yes, Master. We are one,” we spoke. Our heads turned towards each other with unnerving synchronisation. When I moved, she moved, when she moved, I moved, with no delay, no following. We both lifted a hand and rolled it around at the wrist, flexed our fingers in perfect time.
Running hands along our own sides, it was peculiar to feel Slave’s scar under her fingers, as she felt the unsullied skin of my flank under mine. We both gasped as she brushed the sensitive punctures from last night’s bite bordering her old injury.
Struck by the same instinct, we found we could move independently with a little effort. Our new bond spiced our incessant rubbing and brought us to rapture again. Even our involuntary shudders were the same, but we could still not stop thrusting.
“You show great aptitude. Both ruthless in your dominance and the application of the magic I channelled through you. I am so proud of you,” Master beamed. “It bodes well for the sort of vampires you will become.”
“Thank you, Master,” we gasped, gratification at her praise encouraging our grinding. “We only want to please you. We live to serve your will.”
That was all that mattered. We would be whatever our Sovereign wished, forever.
“Now, I believe I have additional promises to keep. I marked Slave, but last night’s… unpleasantness… meant I left Thrall dissimilar. I must preserve the uniformity of my brides’ bodies, yes?” Master queried, hand-waving her crisis like it never happened.
“Yes, please, Master,” we implored, rooted in our contemporary carnality.
“Your skin is so perfect, Master. Will we carry the scars from your sharp kisses after you make us like you? After we die?” I asked. There was no need for Slave to voice the same question, yet it seemed peculiar when she did not echo my words.
“Ah, death. The ultimate moment of a mortal’s life, but not for you. Through my blood, you will slip its grasp and discard all imperfections of the flesh, save for my blessings, as you call them. Those you will bear forever, a reminder of these precious nights. All colour will drain from your skin, as it has from mine. Alas, your hair will lose its lovely, golden shade. You will be remade in my image. Is this acceptable?” Master asked.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” we confirmed as we writhed, gradually building our pleasure again. “We would be honoured to ornament your pale beauty.”
“How gratifying, my sweet bondslaves,” our beloved replied with a warm smile. “The magic that binds your souls as one is delicate. The more associations I create between you, the stronger it becomes. So, I must dine upon you twice more tonight, Thrall, that you may match the tale my teeth have written upon your twin.”
“Lucky bitch,” Slave added with mock-jealously, leaving unstated our t curiosity at what it would feel like for her if I was bitten under our current sympathetic condition.
Amused by my sister’s slur, our Sovereign grinned at Slave and knelt beside us. Her eyes flashed from my sister’s scar, just below her ribs, to gauge where to target her bite to match our blessings perfectly. We watched fascinated but could still not slow our writhing, driving us towards the next rapture.
“As ravishing as I find your fucking, I must be precise. Both of you be still,” our Sovereign commanded. We froze as if caught in a gorgon’s glare. Unexpectedly, we remained aware. Only our astonished eyes, sweeping in their sockets, and the heaving breath of our chests disturbed our complete rigidity. Master’s incontrovertible control was so casually applied. Our fetishes feasted and we raptured without so much as a tremble. Only a flare within our glowing pupils marked its crescendo.
Having lost count of our orgasms that night, our trembling quims enjoyed the respite. It was clear we would rejoice in many more before we saw the dawn one final time.
Across nine nights, we had transitioned from two innocents, ignorant of what sex could encom, to the ravenous sluts our beloved wished us to be. The coming-of-age ritual in the spring had not made us worldly. Master had exploited our naivety, but it was her who had truly made us adults.
With care, our Sovereign marked the relative position of the bite on Slave’s side, then did the same on mine. After one last check, she bent forward and stabbed her fangs into my flank.
The initial spike of pain and the ensuing ecstasy flew through us both, as we had hoped, sharing the dark joy of being drained. Slave knew her wound afresh as mine was created. Sovereign drank from our soul and there was nothing we could do but roar our mutual orgasm into the night.
Oh, by the dark goddess, we wanted to die right then and there. We could wait no longer. We wanted eternity now.
Before we could voice our self-destructive desires, Master caught our thoughts on the ephemeral currents that flowed between we three. She grasped them with ease, like wet clay in a fist, permitted us to keep the instinct but reshaped it, obliged us to wait until the dark of the moon for our demise. We would obey. We lived only to obey.
After three leisurely licks upon my flank to seal my dwindling blood inside, our beloved knelt up. With face raised to the stars, stroking her neck as she luxuriously savoured another morsel of me.
Our gaze woozily traced the line of Master’s throat. Her loose white tresses fell back, painted bright blue by the unnatural light. From my side, I spied the quadrangle of faint scar-points upon her neck that my lips had detected in our intimate moments. Her skin was flawless save for those four marks. We could only wonder what creature had bitten her to alter her so profoundly. The same indicative inscription would be written upon our throats forever.
Lowering her face, tongue cleansing teeth behind closed lips, she had that languid calm only blood gave her eyes. This was as close to placating her hunger as she ever got. It was our destiny to share that need. So be it.
“You may move again, slaves,” Master permitted with a snap of her fingers.
Immediately, we resumed roiling our hips against each other as if there had been no interruption. The precision of our response to her command enticed us to push harder towards our next rapture. We peered with debauched pride at my new bite, raw but otherwise identical to the one that framed Slave’s scar.
To bear Master’s sigil was our honour and duty, but to have our flesh punctured by her fangs fulfilled profound, perverse fantasies she had implanted within us. Our generous beloved was the source and fulfilment of all needs.
“More?” Master offered, her thirsty gaze drifting to my breast.
Though already weakened by blood loss and our exertions, we disregarded the nausea I was beginning to experience and nodded like fools, eager for the addictive pleasure only her bite could bring. We had no care for the toll it was taking on us, nor how close it drew us to our end.
“Are you beginning to see the benefits of what I have done to you, my darlings?” Master asked quite disingenuously.
Despite our deference, we could not help but giggle at her preposterous question. That made our quims jiggle, which, in turn, provoked louder laughter. Yet still, we could not stop grinding and that only made the situation funnier. Privy to our every thought, Master understood and laughed with us, conceding that we had recognised her vanity in fishing for subservient compliments.
“Yes, lover, we are very aware or what you have done to us and are endlessly grateful. Our every moment exists on a spectrum of bliss because we are your enchanted, doting slaves. If there is anything we can do to show our gratitude, please tell us and we shall obey,” we said, perfectly happy to indulge our Sovereign.
The twin trick of speaking as one had previously been restricted to short phrases from well-practised cues, so it was odd, but pleasing, to find it trivial to do so at length.
Master’s expression was the most contented I can recall seeing grace her gorgeous face, but it was soon supplanted by a focus we recognised as the concentration that heralded her spell craft. She held out her hands towards our faces, fingers outstretched, those guttural, arcane syllables spat forth once more. Our marks began to prickle then, with clenched fists, she clasped us in body and mind.
Silent impulses pushed me on to my back, hands laid above my head, while Slave repositioned herself to hold down my wrists. It seemed unnecessary, as I possessed no desire to resist and found the restriction greatly pleasing, comforting even. I spread my legs, and, in a moment, Master was upon me.
Fangs slid like thick needles into my breast, tongue flicking the nipple between them. My twin’s sense memories of last night fleetingly unfolded in our heads as she watched. The excruciation lingered longer than expected. Master fixed my sister in her stare. Slave’s breath hitched as she felt pain in her own breast, part memory, part mine, coated in an arousal at my suffering that caught us both unawares.
Our beloved dragged my breast half an inch upwards by her teeth. The pain was a blinding thunderbolt.
As was her custom, Master dwelt on the eyes of the sister who was not receiving her physical attention. This time, though, our senses were linked, so I realised she was looking at me through Slave. The expectant look our beloved offered was a silent challenge. Would I endure this pain for her? Would I indulge her darker needs?
Why was she even asking? She enjoyed hurting us, we could not stop her, and she could make us want literally anything. Our permission was surely superfluous.
Suspended in that excruciating moment, the searing pain brought a purifying clarity. This was happening because Master loved us in her twisted, wonderful way. Perched on all fours over me, my breast like a bird in a mountain lion’s mouth, she awaited permission to go further.
We did not consider our breasts to be among our best features. There was nothing wrong with them, they were pretty, in their way, but were smaller than all the fully human women of our age in the village, which made us feel inadequate. Master’s were perfect, of course, but she loved ours and wanted to do this to mine. So, I had to know if I could abide the pain her paying them special attention required.
Yes. Anything for our Master. Anything.
As I regarded my sister, her face framed by the stars above us while she held me down, gaze fastened to our beloved’s, we both nodded our agreement.
I closed my eyes and breathed, “Hurt me.”
Fangs dug deeper. Fuck, it was a struggle not to scream. At first blush, I hated it, but knowing it nourished her darkness, lent me a fragile determination to endure. I tried to shut out the world, but that only made what Slave saw clearer to me. The modest orb of my breast distended into a cone in Master’s maw. Sheet lightning flashed across my sensorium, a driving torment that induced a devotional and darksome madness.
Wet drops fell upon my forearm. Slave’s breast had started bleeding as she relived the bite she had received while mindless last night. She had the most peculiar, wide-eyed expression; pain suffused with dominated adoration.
“Please, please, please,” I murmured, unclear what I was begging for. The pain to stop? To continue? To increase? To suckle the blood from my sister’s bosom? My words come out of Slave’s mouth, as everything blurred and my mind began to disintegrate under the agony.
In the very moment I feared lasting damage, it all dropped away as Master lowered her head, easing the terrible pressure and the divine relief of the exsanguination began. At once, my pain was validated as the balm exceeded all expectation.
The unique rapture of blood sacrifice took me over. My hips bucked wildly against Master’s immovable thigh between my legs. Familiar rivers of blood carried me far from that blanket by the bonfire. I lost my special with Slave, with my body, with everything but timeless bliss.
It was the circling of Master’s miraculous tongue about my nipple that brought me back to my senses. Slave released my wrists and leaned across me, offering her breast for our lover to lick. Exhausted but recovering, I pined to be the one sucking at my twin’s teat. How quickly I had come to yearn for blood.
Was that some new aspect of my own darkness, an impulse Master had implanted in me, or just a futile urge to replenish how much I had been drained?
Fearfully looking upon my breast, it did not seem as terrible as I the white-hot hurt had suggested. Either Master’s healing abilities were greater than I imagined, or the torment had been deceptive. The nipple was unharmed and the four neat punctures surrounding it seemed incapable of delivering the distress I had experienced. Confusingly, I found myself wanting her to bite me again, not just for the bliss of being imbibed but, confusingly, for the pain.
With a satisfied smile, Master looked upon me with approval, which I found nourishing. I had ed a test.
“Will you hurt me more, please, Master?” I begged, surprising myself at the insistence of my craving.
Slave remained silent. She could not take her eyes off our beloved’s face. I sensed she had been fully enthralled, deeper than I, while I had been fed from. Her fascination had a magnetism of its own, drawing me into the same mindset, what little willpower I still possessed deliciously draining away.
“In time, Thrall. We have so many nights ahead of us. Thank you for your forbearance. I love that,” Master itted, showing a charming, momentary hint of her coyness. “Now I wish to fuck.”
“Yes, Master. We will fuck you,” we responded as one, our minds sliding into mesmerised alignment once more.
Master sat across my hips, pinning me down. Meanwhile, my sister shifted position to kneel over my head, blinding me with her posterior, as she faced our beloved, bringing her quim level with my mouth. They kissed at once, almost as if I was not there, introducing me to the new delight of being used as their bed, as an object.
Needing no instruction, I sought my sister’s sex with my lips, while blindly reaching up for their breasts to grope and tease. In response, Master kindly slipped a hand behind her to investigate my quim, hooking a finger inside my sopping sex.
Like the extensions of Master’s will that we were surely were, she hurled us into a fever dream. Time stuttered into broken glimpses, a loosely connected patchwork of mesmerised moments teeming with lust. We were repositioned repeatedly. Lips and fingers scampered in a desperate rush to cherish flesh. Master’s pale limbs flowed , tender when she wished, undeniable when she desired.
Still new to separating Slave’s perceptions from mine, it grew even harder as we writhed like a nest of serpents. Our tongues invaded each other. We tasted quim; Master’s, sister’s, mine. We switched again and again, all in a swirling circle of delirious lust.
Half-elf thralls and a vampire queen, all three ravenously grinding and thrusting and tonguing and grasping and rubbing and clutching and squeezing. Rapture after rapture after rapture. Losing ourselves to blood and holes and bliss.
My mind was a candle being lit and snuffed so frequently I could form no thoughts, only burn in the outer reaches of amaranthine sex. All sense of self and perspective was torn from us, time and again. We had no limits. We were capable of anything. We had never felt so free.
There came a series of moments when I was faintly aware of staring but seeing nothing, head empty, save for the will of our Sovereign. No fragment of me remained. I had no identity, not even Thrall, only infinite patience. I existed and that was all.
The pleasure of having no mind peaked in the instants before oblivion and then again, the moment a fragment of awareness returned to me. It was an endless cycle of deep, prolonged orgasms and nothingness. Perhaps I was being fucked during this sequence, I hoped so, but I really had no idea.
When something more akin to intelligence was bestowed upon us, we were kneeling side-by-side before our Sovereign. Slave’s hand was in mine, holding tight. We were one being once more, still collared but otherwise naked and could see only our Sovereign, hear only her words. There was nothing else in our world except the sharp throb of our bites and the weight of her sigil. Worshippers, anointed by our goddess.
“My darlings, listen and understand,” she began, holding us rapt with the exotic timbre of her voice. “My love for you is the most real part of me, more real than my hunger. It has altered me, confounded me, made me… vulnerable, like a proper, heartsick fool. I have expended so much to make you one in scar and soul.”
She ran her hand over the fresh bite on my side, which made me wince but did nothing to disturb my focus.
“Thank you, blessed Master,” we voiced, our words a little slurred from fatigue and nausea, each grew harder to ignore.
“To think, I once considered you a novelty to be seduced, enslaved and destroyed. It would have been such a grave mistake to merely kill you both,” Master explained as she paced in front of us.
She was more inhumanly beautiful than ever, with eyes of burning gold, that significant sigil adorning her brow, painted like ours used to be, not as weighty as ours had become.
“We would die for you, Master,” we said in unison, quite sincerely.
“Of course, my dears,” Master continued, her gorgeous smile inflected with a hint of danger by her proud fangs. What an honour it was that she no longer felt any need to conceal them.
“It is a true rarity to let love into a heart as old as mine. Such bounty is to be cherished. I have not cared for another as I do for you in well over a century,” she hinted at her true age. “One grows wary of love’s potential for treachery and what it may cost. But you cannot betray me now. You have become more than I ever dared hope, my brides. Morrow night, I shall kill you both, sacrifice your souls and make you mine forever.”
“Forever yours. Thank you, beloved Master,” we said, our hearts somersaulting at the prospect of our death under our Sovereign’s fangs at last. We had never felt closer than in that moment, united in our one true Master’s perfect domination of our unified soul. “We will die. Our soul shall be yours. Our fate is set.”
For most of our lives, we had dreamed of great journeys, discovering majestic vistas, sharing untold adventures. Those phantoms were long gone from our priorities. Had there been a time when we had felt sorrow at their loss? We could not recall. Master had engraved obligations of far greater import upon our hearts. Serving her was all we wanted. It was all we could ever want.
Our beloved looked conflicted, saying, “Your devotion is such honeyed sweetness, my thralls, but I must caution you on the eve of our union. I need you to understand the significance of what the change will do to you. It will mean abandoning the sunlight and dwelling in darkness for eternity. You will know a thirst that can never be fully quenched. You will come to see the living as little more than distractions, diversions or food. You will never know what it means to be a mother, at least not in the traditional sense.”
“All we need is you, Master. Life is meaningless to us without you in our hearts,” we urged, incapable of seeing the value of what we were on the verge of losing forever.
“Trust me, the death of love is the most awful loss, and I would spare you that mournful lesson. It is desolate to wander the world alone, to gradually forget what love means,” our Sovereign declared, the dying echoes of past sadnesses in her words. “You shall never suffer that, I promise. You will always love me, your hearts chained to mine forever.”
“Yes, Master. We will always be chained to you, gladly,” we said as one, our enslaved hearts urging the words from our mouths. We probably would have said them anyway, had we not been enthralled to do so.
“Oh, my precious darlings, you breathe new life into me. But the levy of immortality is steep. Over time, you may find it harder and harder to see the joy, the worth, the value in anything but myself. Your hearts may harden to everything outside our troika. I will teach you how to endure such an existence, but you will become wicked. You will become killers,” she warned, as she gazed into the fire at bitter, long-held histories beyond our sight.
“Then we shall become wicked. We shall become killers. If we are your creations, it will be enough. We live only to obey,” we said. Our entire existence bound into a single sentence.
“Yes, yes, my beloveds,” Master said, vexed, “but only ever hearing my own words parroted from your mouths would become tiresome. I want the parts of you that I have fallen in love with to know what I am demanding of you. To make the choice, yes?”
She reached forward and flicked our foreheads simultaneously. The adamantine grip she held over our minds evaporated like a dream upon waking. We were ourselves again, more so than we had been all evening, perhaps in days.
We felt violated, not at the depth of Master’s control but at the lack of it.
What was there left of us without Master squatting in our minds, guiding our every moment? Our birth names returned to us but felt ill-fitting. We tried to assess and saw precious little beyond our love for this great woman, a gorgeous vampire who fulfilled our every fantasy. But were they our fantasies at all? We knew she had sculpted our souls to make us crave a great many things and they still held power over our hopes and dreams. Was that truly us?
“So, my lovers, what do you say?” she asked, indifferent to the turmoil she had released in us. “Your minds are your own once more. Do you understand what it means to choose to be mine forever? To walk at my side always, but only in darkness? To abandon your souls, die and be reborn as leanan sidhe?”
Why was she giving us this choice again? How many times did we need to make it? What was she looking for?
Though the reassuring hand of Master’s control had rudely vanished, its dark pleasures lingered, their potency undiminished. We looked to each other and were reassured by the sight of her sigil upon our foreheads, still comfortingly nested in our corrupted flesh.
So, who were we now? Shared thoughts of sex, bloodletting and control were our only concerns; needs only our Sovereign could fulfil. We had drunk blood and recalling its taste made our quims clench. Was this yet more of Master’s vanity or another of her tests?
Were we willing to die to become undying? To sacrifice our blood to become blood drinkers? To discard our souls for an eternity with our lover? As choices go, it seemed no choice at all.
Thoughts now freely swimming between us, we decided upon a demonstration. As I began to fondle my sore breast, Summer said, “Everything you have done to us has brought rewards beyond our ability to imagine. If becoming your brides means becoming creatures akin to your magnificence, then we bid farewell to the sun with no regrets. Walking in these woods in your arm at night has enriched our hearts more than anything we have ever done here in daylight.”
I took over our acceptance by adding, “To us, it is more precious than all the world’s jewels to have you control us, fuck us, drink us. You are our religion. We have learned more from worshipping you than any other opportunity life has ever presented us.”
My groping became aggressive as I welcomed the hurt like a new friend. Master watched, mouth slightly open, as I squeezed hard enough to reopen my wound. As soon as I felt the wet warmth over my hand, I smeared the blood in a single stroke across my chest for our Sovereign’s delectation.
Unrecognisable to myself, ten days ago I had been innocent. Now I was our vampire’s depraved harlot daubing myself with my own blood to tempt her to kill me. “Your love has already corrupted us. We adore it. If our transformation means we will become killers, we know it shall be erotic in ways we cannot conceive. Take us with you into darkness. We will serve you until you kill us, then we will obey you faithfully forever.”
Master’s lips curled back into the beginnings of a snarl, her fangs glinting in the gloom as her eyes followed the spread of my blood. She was having trouble controlling herself at my display, which, perversely, I found empowering. Her eyes emptied of triumphant love, leaving only a predator, and I was her prey.
Perhaps it was folly but, in that moment, I truly had no fear of death if our Sovereign would be the one to kill me.
Not to be outdone, Summer leaned back, spreading her kneeling legs as wide as possible, both hands framing her sex, pulling her labia wide to expose herself. “This belongs to you, Master, and always shall. It is your slave as much as I. What are you waiting for? Use your slave’s cunt. We would serve you for a hundred years if you would but control our minds and fuck us for a single night.”
Blood, sex and slavery. It was what we were for. It was all we wanted.
Distracted by our offers, perhaps even rattled, our Sovereign ran her hands through her wavy, white hair, down her pale neck and over her alabaster torso. It was gratifying to see our declarations affect her so unambiguously. It was even better to see her imperturbable cool begin to melt from our wanton displays, which stoked our desire to push further. Sadly, she scrunched her eyes tightly shut to regain her composure.
“Enough. Cease your games,” our Sovereign commanded, so we fell silent.
Shaking my head to restore focus, I was veering between arousal and queasy dizziness. Nonetheless, it was comforting to realise freedom had been an illusion. Our reins had been relaxed for a short spell, but we both remained properly, permanently bridled.
For an all-powerful vampire who could dominate us in an instant, our Master certainly needed a great deal of reassurance about our devotion. Having struggled with doubts myself, I recognised insecurity when I saw it. Master was normally supremely self-confident, so where did this hail from? Had someone hurt her once? Perhaps she would tell us one day.
“You convince me. Your fate is decided,” Master confirmed. We had fantasised about where our mad romance was heading since it started: elopement, marriage, death, and many other options had been considered. It was our Sovereign’s decision to make, and we trusted her wisdom. “You shall become as I, transformed into creatures of blood, bound to me, thralls forever.”
“Thank you, Master,” was all we could say. It was perfect, exactly what we wanted. Something in our final affirmations had cemented the decision in Master’s mind, which in turn locked it into ours. Euphoria washed over us as we looked at our owner in adoration for long moments and repeated our thanks over and over. We bowed before her, touching our sigils to the ground in devotion several times. Imperiously, she accepted our worship.
With a flick of her fingers, we were instructed to stand, so we rose, shoulder to shoulder.
“Know that you will need to sacrifice more than your freedom for the changes that are to come, more than your love, more than your lives,” Master explained.
“We will sacrifice anything,” we intoned, and it was not her direct control making us say it. We spoke from our hearts, graven to desire eternal slavery above all else. We meant it. We wanted it. It was our creed.
“You will sacrifice everything. Very well, then,” Master leaned close and licked my nipple. It was stimulating but purely practical, quickly staunching the wound I had reopened. She did not linger.
“Slave, clear the blood from your sister’s chest. It is… distracting,” our Sovereign ordered. A shame she did not wish to do it herself. A pity.
Slave set about licking the dark smear from my torso as if it were the normal way to clean one’s sister. It was a peculiar thrill to be attended to in such a fashion and all I could do was ively wait while she tongue-washed me. At least I got a second-hand taste of my own blood. She nodded when she thought I was clean enough and resumed her position beside me.
“What I give unto you now is a promise and a preparation,” our Sovereign told us. “Receive a part of me that you may become wholly one with me at the dark of the moon.”
She opened her mouth wide and let her fangs emerge. As much as we loved what they did, seeing her canines sharpen to a point still scared us for some reason. Ostentatiously, she drove her tongue across a fang, slicing flesh and drawing blood.
Swivelling her head with slow deliberation to face Slave, Master leaned close, embraced my twin and spun her around in her arms, allowing me to see clearly. It was an uncomplicated joy to watch such devoted lovers drawn together in a ionate kiss. I knew I would never tire of seeing them engaged like so, but this time it had the added thrill of feeling our beloved’s tongue slip into my sister’s mouth. Her blood was thick, tepid and rich, with earthy, salty tones, tasting far grander than ours. Like her bite, the initial impression did not prepare us for its full effect.
As it coated the interior of Slave’s mouth it sucked the warmth from her flesh, with a numbing, penetrating chill. It was invigorating and heady and I wanted some.
Master looked me in the eye mid-kiss, as was now customary, but the intense finality in her stare marked this occasion out. When Slave swallowed the blood, the chill plunging down her throat, Master closed her eyes and gave herself over fully, saving no attention for me, beyond the vicarious sensations shared with Slave.
A potent narcotisation crept into Slave’s awareness and our connection began to numb and fade. Unsure what that meant I did not have to wait for long as Master withdraw from her embrace, steadied my sister on her feet, then turned to me.
Slave looked a little stunned, her thoughts now silent, her expression dreamy. With half-lidded eyes she gave a faint smile as Master took me in her resolute arms and I responded eagerly with a newfound appetite.
Up close, I scrutinised her tearing her tongue open upon a keen tooth once more. I watched the blood pool and overflow and licked my lips with a thirst that was novel to me. Amused at my fascination, Master drifted her lips to mine.
Barely had our mouths met, than she thrust her tongue in and out, moistening our lips. Soon she began to slather and writhe inside me, sloshing across my welcoming tongue.
Already aware of the flavour from my twin’s kiss, I was delighted to discover deeper complexity than I had realised. It was better than my sister’s blood, superior in every sense.
Its intricacies deliciously unfurled like I had always imagined an expensive elven wine might. It brought a familiar but less aggressive chill to my mouth, which swiftly spread into my lips and throat, a creeping numbness edging throughout my head. My eyes rolled back at the graceful onslaught of Master’s expertise.
It was not what I expected but sublime all the same, as the liquid cooled my stomach. We lingered, as lovers do, in the kiss but, all too soon, she withdrew, leaving me dazed. I had never tasted anything so wickedly good.
My vision returned to see Master pricking the tips of her middle and ring fingers upon her lower fangs to draw fresh blood from one hand and then the other.
“Spread your legs,” she bade, so we did.
Our slick wetness stung in the night air but grew colder still when our Sovereign drove her fingers into our welcoming sex as when she first took us.
Working us slowly, the chill spread from our quims down our legs and up into our bellies where it met the descending coolness of the blood we had imbibed. We did not shiver. It was not unpleasant next to the heat of the bonfire. It seemed as if the very meat of us was accepting our Sovereign’s dominion.
The cold sunk into my bones and spread its stilling numbness. Though I was aware fingers still relentlessly drove into me, the pleasure was distant, like an idle fantasy about someone else being frigged. My breathing slowed, all sound muted, all vision dimmed to black. Thoughts slowed to a frozen stop, but this was not mindlessness.
I was nothing.
But then, as the distant rumble heralds the storm, a dull, tingling pulse emerged, growing into a rhythmic thudding, spreading outwards to permeate my core, my body, everything. The awareness accelerated into an eruption of colour and sound and smell and taste, bursting upon my senses, abruptly hyper-sensitive as if I had never truly perceived before.
Vibrant greens and browns of the forest over the luminous shoulder of our lover, bathed in the intense blues of the false firelight, daubed the greys of the night in vivid detail. My heartbeat thundered in my chest between echoing gasps of breath. Our wounds glowed like burning coals buried beneath the skin, spitting out scintillating, ruby sparks of pain. What was happening?
Whatever we had imagined we had wanted from this, it was far too much, too soon, but we were defenceless. Our Sovereign kept thrusting her blood-soaked fingers inside us, injecting her essence into our own. Fear and violation fused with ecstasy and need.
All that I focused upon was revealed in overwhelming detail. Try as I might, I could not force my darting eyes to shut. My senses flew beyond my comprehension to exceed the furthest limits of what could be called understanding. Everything everywhere was orgasming.
A fragment of my awareness was astounded I was not thrashing in wild spasms. Instead, Slave and I were perfectly still. I could take no more, yet remained utterly helpless to resist, my body melted and suffused into the entire world about me. I feared my mind would shatter, as it was bombarded with visions of my own death under my Master’s fangs, revealed in a thousand tiny instants until my perception began to flicker between totality and the void. I was obliterated.
I was nothing once more.
Perception returned in great, languorous waves as oblivion ebbed. Our Sovereign planted a kiss upon our foreheads and lips. I felt each planted upon my sister’s flesh as keenly as upon my own. She slid her fingers out of us and finally, with a shudder, we could move.
Disappointingly, Master removed our collars, leaving us perishingly cold and truly naked.
“Death comes for you. Prepare to embrace it,” we were told, her voice resonant. “The coming day will be an ordeal, but you will endure. You must. It is my command. Morrow night, you shall be ended and begun anew.”
We nodded mutely. We were done for now.
Master picked up her clothes and stuffed them into her bag. With a complex wave of her hand the azure bonfire guttered, extinguished and vanished, taking its welcome heat, leaving only unblemished ground. The eerie fluorescence in our eyes faded and died with it.
She nodded to us both, turned on her heel and walked off into the woods, leaving us very alone.
We gathered our discarded clothes and dressed. It took a while as we were sore, enervated and peculiarly disconnected from our bodies. Ours wounds had benefitted from Master’s blood, looking substantially improved but they still hurt.
The sky’s sacred darkness began to dissolve into profane grey as we stumbled back to the cabin, and it was clear something was very wrong with us. We regretted not wrapping ourselves for warmth in the blankets Master had left behind. Exhaustion had made us stupid.
The toll of the night’s experiences came crashing down hard upon us. Waves of nausea rolled over me. My hands were icy, yet a thin, dank sweat washed my face. My legs gave way and I fell on all fours. Summer helped me up but only a few yards further on, I fell again. This time I vomited. She held my hair out of the way.
She tried to get me back on my feet but fainted dead away at the effort to lift me. I roused her and we exchanged worried looks. Her thoughts and perceptions were lost to me now, but we recognised each other’s fear that we were beginning to die.
Summer, ashen faced, nodded once. Without Layla’s presence the prospect of death was no longer a grand, romantic adventure. It was harrowing.
As the sky shed its gloom, shade by shade, we dreaded the dawn’s approach. We imagined we might never see another but were intimidated by the prospect of the sun’s judgement and spurned the chance to welcome one final sunrise. A vast sadness settled upon us. All we wanted was sleep.
The final steps back were drudgery, a forced march with nothing left emotionally or physically to drive us beyond instinct. We were unable to process anything. After rest, we would talk but now we had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Incapable of our usual caution, we stumbled to the cabin and the promise of bed. As quietly as we could, Summer helped me gracelessly clamber through our window. I looked about our room and froze in terror.
Dumbstruck, I tried to warn Summer but my mouth would not work before she climbed in behind me. Our parents stood there, waiting for us.