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Illi’s room is what would happen if a vampire got evicted from a satanic church dungeon and had to make do with a simple computer desk from Staples. Frank thinks this with profound admiration.
The bed is done with black sheets and covers, obviously. The walls are also painted black, while purple fabric covers the small basement slit under the ceiling. There are black and red candles everywhere that she is definitely not supposed to light, because her mother said she’s going to burn the house down one of these days, but the wicks are blackened anyway. Movie and band posters litter every free vertical space—The Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, Blade, The Cure, NIN, The Smashing Pumpkins, and many more. A printout of some pale, long-haired anime guy that Frank doesn’t know but has decided to resent on principle, because Illi keeps saying his cheekbones are elegant.
Her school blazer lies crumpled on the floor, St Matthew’s crest face down, as if it had died in shame.
The chunky computer at her messy desk is making its usual laboured buzzing sounds, the huge black monitor glowing in the dim room. The AOL connection had finally booted up five minutes ago, while Illi sat cross-legged and contorted into inhumane positions in her chair, waiting impatiently for the forum to load.
Frank is on her bed next to the desk in his socks, one knee bent, oversized pants freshly changed, fucking finally, after a whole day of the stupid uniform he hates.
He is not looking at her legs.
Okay, that is a lie. He is very much looking at her legs constantly, since they switched, and she now has his skirt on. It’s very much too tight on her, and the button she’s not able to close is undone and hidden under her untucked shirt. It’s also much too short for what their teachers would consider decent, given that she’s taller than he is. She recently got obsessed with shaving every bit of body hair she can, so they’re all pale and smooth except for the few raised pink bumps and the healing scrapes at her knees. Personally, Frank thinks she looks amazing either way, but he can understand why she does it.
Everyone at school still sees a weird Way, the weird, creepy gayboy goth Way, the older brother Way, draws too much gore in margins, vampire freak Way, gets called in to the counsellor’s office once a month Way. Frank knows better. As do Mikey and Ray. A very short list for now.
Illi.
She’d told him over a year ago in Ray’s garage, drunk on warm Coke with vodka, and the thrill of finally being eighteen.
“Like, Illi,” she said, twisting the pull-tab until it snapped. “Maybe. I dunno. Sounds stupid.”
Frank looked at her, the way she was fidgeting with a strand of her black hair, and her eyes had gone huge under the one bare bulb, and thought with the clean, terrifying certainty of a divine revelation, ‘I would burn down the entirety of St Matthew’s for you if you asked nicely.’
What he said out loud was, “Not stupid at all.”
The way she beamed at him is still sealed on his retinas.
Now she clicks through a thread titled ‘REAL VAMPIRISM: ENERGY FEEDING VS BLOOD FEEDING, NO POSERS’, grinning as though she’s found scripture.
“Okay, so this guy is full of shit,” she laughs, leaning close to the monitor. “Like, terminally full of shit. He’s talking about psychic feeding, but he can’t even spell psychic.”
Frank squints, moving to look over. “He spelt it with an F.”
“I know. Incredible.”
“Maybe vampires spell differently. You know, old spelling rules.”
Illi turns in the chair to look at him, scandalised and delighted. “Don’t defend him. He’s embarrassing us.”
“Us?”
She flaps a hand at herself, then the screen, then possibly the entire gothic underworld. “My people and I.”
“Your people being vampires?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not a vampire.”
She glares at him over her shoulder. It’s a very good look. Frank feels it in his stomach first, then lower, which is inconvenient because he has been trying very hard not to think about that. He’s on his period, and everything has the miserable, overlit feeling of a body refusing to be ignored. His skin is oily and oversensitive, his lower back aches, and the waistband of his pants keeps biting wrong. He can feel body parts he’d very much like to forget he has.
“You don’t know that,” Illi argues.
“You were eating Doritos ten minutes ago.”
“Vampires can have snacks for fun.”
He giggles. “And orange dust on their fingers?”
She glances down at her fingertips, then slowly licks one. His brain freezes and blanks out.
She doesn’t even mean to do it in a sexy way, that’s the thing. She’s just being funny. As if she still doesn’t understand that there are entire sections of his head dedicated to her mouth.
Or maybe she does mean it, a little? Sometimes, Frank thinks she must.
They did kiss at Gabe’s party two months ago in the laundry room with the dryer thumping behind her back and some guy throwing up on the floor behind the door as their soundtrack. Illi had tasted like cherry soda, and Frank had even gotten a hand under her shirt, getting a feel of her soft stomach, and she made a little sound like something inside her had cracked open.
Then someone yelled for more paper towels, and they had broken apart, flushed and embarrassed, neither of them talking about it since then.
They had made out again in Ray’s car after a show a month later, cramped in the back seat while Ray and Mikey bought gas station coffee, and pretended very loudly that they were not aware of anything happening. Illi had climbed into his lap, skirt riding up her thighs, and Frank had held her hips as though he knew how. Like he wasn’t just some stupid Catholic school disaster with a fake smile and a nickname everybody thought was just a joke.
Frank—not Frankie. Never ‘Frankie’, except out of Illi’s mouth, because she says it differently.
“Frankie is cute,” she told him once, when he made a face at his legal name written across a worksheet. “It’s a cute version of Frank.”
He had stared at her. “Officially, it’s the other way around.”
“No.” She had tapped the worksheet. “This is the cute one. Frank is the serious one. Like a little guy with a switchblade.”
“You think I’m a little guy with a switchblade?”
“I think you’re a very fun little guy with a very big switchblade.”
Frank had laughed for three minutes, and then gone home and thought about it until he wanted to punch himself in the face.
Now, Illi scrolls down the forum thread. “Oh my God,” she exclaims. “He says he Awakened after watching Interview with the Vampire.”
“Didn’t you watch it five times?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I have taste.”
Frank snorts. “You said Lestat was hot.”
“Lestat is hot. That doesn’t mean he’s spiritually accurate."
“Spiritually accurate,” Frank repeats, laughing.
Illi spins back toward the computer, long hair falling forward around her face. In the salt lamp’s glow at her desk, she looks unreal. Hands down better than any of the hot vampires in her posters. Those people are made up, ideal images of ethereal, unreal beauty, while she’s actually here and perfectly imperfect with her weird posture, chipped nail polish, bite marks on the cap of her pen, faint acne on the side of her jaw, a few millimetres of brown roots under the black hair dye, and the soft slope of her shoulders under the black cardigan.
Frank’s whole body aches with wanting to crawl inside her chest and stay there forever.
He shifts on the bed, and a particularly bad cramp pulls at his stomach, mean and sudden, making him grimace before he can stop it.
“You okay?” Illi asks, regarding him.
“Yeah,” Frank rushes to reply.
She stares at him intensely with her big hazel eyes. “You sure?”
“Just cramps,” he mutters.
“Oh.” She frowns, and Frank braces for the tiny awkward blink people do. ‘Oh, right, girl stuff.’ That look makes him want to peel his skin off and mail it to a shitty politician.
Illi nods like he just said he has a headache. “You want aspirin? Or uh. Something. We got the good non-chalky kind. Mikey hoards it because his bones are made of wet cardboard.”
That makes Frank laugh, “I’m okay.”
“I could get the heating pad?”
“You have one?”
“Of course.” She grins, looking at him.
He stares back and loses track of his thoughts. It’s quiet, beside the whirring of the computer fan, and the sounds of birds and cars outside. Mikey’s gone for the afternoon, as are Illi’s parents.
Frank clears his throat, looking back at the screen and trying very hard not to blush. “So what do you like about it?”
“About what?” She looks at him, confused.
“Vampires.”
Her face lights up, and her eyebrows lift as if he’s just asked both the easiest and most important question in the whole universe. “Everythiniiing.”
“Yeah, but—“ He picks at a loose thread on the bedspread. “Like, why?”
She turns in her chair and hooks one heel on the edge, folding herself up. She’s wearing brown, see-through tights with a run starting at her knee.
Frank wants to put his mouth there. He wants to put his mouth everywhere and never admit it out loud.
“I don’t know,” she replies, smiling coyly, which means she knows exactly and is trying to figure out how much of herself to hand him. “They’re just… cool.”
Frank smiles. “Cool.”
“And powerful. And tragic. And hot.”
“Hot,” he repeats stupidly.
Illi gestures helplessly. “They are! They get to be beautiful and disgusting at the same time. They’re dead but not dead. They can be monsters, but like, elegant about it.”
“You wanna be elegant about being disgusting?”
“Desperately.”
Frank laughs again, but his throat feels tight. Illi keeps going, spilling loose now, hands moving around as she talks. “They don’t have to do normal human shit. They don’t have to fit in. They don’t have to sit in religion class while Sister Mary talks bullshit about purity. They don’t have to get old in the way everyone expects, or get married, or have boring, horrible normal jobs where they die a little every day for forty years before they can finally die for real.”
Frank’s smile fades slowly the more she speaks. Illi looks past him, at the poster above her bed. Her voice gets strangely strained, too casual in a way that suggests she’s not casual in the least. “They can just say ‘fuck that’, and leave, pick something else. Pick a new name, family. Turn into smoke and bats. Bite people who deserve it.”
Frank watches her, not moving. “Yeah,” he says quietly.
She turns back towards him, her gaze sliding over his whole figure. He wonders what she sees.
“Do you think I’m cool?” he blurts, face heating up.
She blinks, taken aback, and fuck. Frank wants to crawl under her bed and possibly die there.
He sits up straighter. “Never mind. That was—”
“Yes,” she says at once.
He looks at her; she’s staring at him with this unbearable expression, like he has said something obvious and sad. As if he has shown her a bruise, she wants to press with her thumb.
“Frank. You’re the coolest person I know!”
Heat crawls up his neck.
“That’s stupid.”
“It’s true.”
“You literally know Ray.”
“Ray wears cargo shorts.”
Frank chokes. “Fair.”
“And Mikey is cool, but he’s my little brother, so I’m legally not allowed to say that publicly. Seriously, cut that shit out. You’re awesome.”
Frank is smiling now, even though he doesn’t mean to. It feels dangerous. Everything feels dangerous when she is looking at him like this, knees drawn up, one hand curled around her ankle.
“And hot?” he asks before he can stop himself.
Illi is still again, her hand frozen at her elbow. He sits up straighter, too rushed, and the mattress squeaks under him as if trying to rat him out. “Forget I asked,” he says. “That was stupid.”
She’s quiet as her stark brows furrow. Her eyes are very wide, turned almost black in the semi-darkness of the room, and there is something on her face Frank doesn’t know how to interpret, as his brain is currently too busy screaming.
Illi suddenly unfolds herself from the chair and climbs onto the bed. She crouches there beside him, one knee sinking into the black covers, skirt riding higher on her thick thighs. Frank looks at her face with the rigid moral discipline of a saint undergoing temptation, which is bullshit, because none of the saints had to deal with the sight of Illi McMillin in his skirt.
“Yes.”
Frank could swear his heart skipped a beat. “What?”
Illi raises one eyebrow. “You asked me a question.”
“I was joking.”
“No, you weren’t.” She leans closer on the bed, slowly enough that he could stop her, close enough that his lungs forget their job.
“Frank,” she prompts.
“What?”
“Yes.”
Their noses are almost touching by now. Up close, she seems terrified, too, which helps a lot for some reason.
“Yes,” she repeats. “I think you’re hot.”
Frank tries to laugh to mask his nervousness. “Weird taste.”
She grins. “I think you’re hot and cool and handsome and pretty,” she goes on, eyes fixed on his. “And funny. And a little mean. You look like you should be smoking outside a gas station at night in a movie where everyone dies beautifully.”
Frank’s chest hurts from everything trying to get out.
“That’s… specific?”
She smiles, showing her small front teeth. He can feel her warm breath on his face.
“Do you…” she starts, and then stops.
Frank waits while she glances down at his lips. He’s so hot under his collar that there should be steam coming out of his ears.
“Do I what?” he asks, voice barely working.
“Wanna make out?”
It should be easy; they already kissed before—multiple times. Badly, secretly, frantically. Always under the guise of a wild night, where they could blame the party if needed. But this is very different, having her ask; they're all alone at her house, with no distractions or noise, or the world’s least subtle chaperones in the form of their friends.
Frank gives a tiny nod, still staring at her. She doesn’t waste time and grabs his face with both hands, bringing them together. Their lips smack against each other, and he lets out a yelp, but she doesn’t let go. They part after a moment only to do it again, and again.
Frank lets himself be bolder and grabs at her shirt, as her hands wander into his hair. Her mouth opens into the kiss, and fuck, he can’t deal with this. She crawls even closer, half in his lap now, one hand braced beside his hip, the other gripping the back of his head. The skirt rides up even higher on her thighs, and he realises that holy shit, he can finally touch them. He runs his palms all the way over them and up to her ass, making her moan and lick deeper into his mouth.
The computer fan is still running overtime beside them. Somewhere on the screen, NightRaven666 and FsychicBloodMaster, or whoever the hell they are, are probably still embarrassing the entirety of vampirekind. Still, her attention is blessedly fixed only on him for now. She giggles as he gets both his arms around her and hauls her against him, so that she ends up seated on his hips, black hair spilling around both their faces.
Illi’s mouth moves from his lips to his jaw, then his neck, and this time it’s him who can’t help moaning. She opens her eyes, smiling in satisfaction, then dives back in to nip at the place behind his ear that makes his fingers clench stupidly in the back of her shirt.
“Aha!” she exclaims, delighted.
“Don’t,” he says weakly.
She grins and nips harder at the spot just above his pulse, then drags her teeth over the hollow of his throat. He arches his neck instinctively, giving her better access, and she bites. Not all that hard, more of a test than anything, but Frank has to grab the bedcovers because he might ascend from his body altogether if this continues. The bite sends a hot and humiliating rush all the way down his spine, and his hips grind up into hers without his control.
She lets out a hot breath against his skin, watching him, them doing it again, just a bit harder.
Frank’s eyes shut. “Ah!”
Illi shudders above him at his gasp, and kisses the place she just bit, then bites again just below it, close to his collarbone. His whole body feels overheated and strange, oversensitive in that miserable period way, except now it’s not all that miserable anymore.
“You like being bitten,” she murmurs, amazed.
“Shut up.”
“No,” she laughs. “God, I fucking hit the jackpot.”
Before he can process that, she bites again, much harder this time, and all his thoughts blank out. He whimpers under her, instinctively pushing at her shoulders, then letting go when he realises what’s happening and that he doesn’t want her to let go.
“Too hard?” she asks, shifting back.
“No, shit—” He takes a few laboured breaths. “Do it again.”
She beams, moving to catch the opposite side of his neck between her teeth, first running her tongue over the heated skin before obliging. He nearly screams this time, and it stings like hell, but a strange, pleasurable warmth follows the pain, making his head spin.
Illi’s lips travel up and catch Frank’s again, and he only stills as her hand palms his crotch.
“Too much?” she asks, pausing.
“No,” he replies quickly. “No, I just—”
She waits. Doesn’t make him chase the sentence. He hates and loves her for it.
“I’m bleeding,” he mutters.
Illi’s eyes widen as Frank’s face burns. “So if that’s gross, or whatever—”
“It’s not gross.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m not saying it because I have to.” Her hand tightens slightly in his hair. “I’m saying it because it’s not.”
His mouth twists. “It’s pretty fucking gross.”
“Frank.”
“What?”
She looks at him for a long second. Then she smiles, very wide and very strange.
“I want to be a vampire.”
The laugh punches out of him before he can stop it.
Illi’s smile widens, fangs imaginary but somehow present. “I’m serious.”
Frank laughs because it is the only thing his body can figure out how to do.
It comes out too high, too cracked at the edge, and Illi’s grin turns sharper like she hears all the parts of it he is trying to hide. She is still leaning over him, hair falling around her face, mouth red from kissing, eyes gone huge and bright in the ugly glow of the computer screen. The Real Vampire forum is still open behind her, full of badly punctuated declarations about blood hunger and dark awakenings, and Frank has the stupid thought that none of those people have any idea. None of them are even close.
They do not know what it is like to have Illi McMillin kneeling over you in her bedroom with her hand on your crotch and a smile like she is considering eating you alive.
“Jesus Christ,” Frank says.
“Probably not the right guy to invoke.”
“You’re so fucking weird.”
“You like it.”
“I never said that.”
“You implied it by letting me put my hand on your dick.”
He chokes. “It’s not—”
“It is,” she says immediately, and the joke goes soft around the edges.
His face is on fire. His whole body is on fire, actually, but not in any direction that makes sense. He is embarrassed, turned on and mortified by the fact that he is turned on. He wants to shove her off and pull her closer. He wants to disappear. He wants to ask if she really means it. He wants never to talk again and let her do whatever insane vampire thing she is smiling about.
“You can’t just say that,” he mutters.
“I can.”
Frank laughs again, helpless, then bites it off when her fingers flex where they’re still resting against him with just enough pressure to make his stomach drop.
“Is it okay?” she asks. “Still?”
Frank swallows. He can feel the pad in his underwear. The awful bulk of it—the proof. His period had started just before religion class that morning, because God is real and personally committed to making Frank’s life a theological prank. He’d spent all day feeling mean and damp and wrong, snapping at teachers, slouching through hallways with his tie loose and his blazer buttoned over his chest because the binder was pinching weirdly. He had almost cancelled coming over.
Now, Illi’s hand is between his legs, and she is talking about vampires like blood is not a problem, but the whole fucking point.
“Yeah,” he says, then, because his voice comes out too small, he digs himself deeper by adding, “Unless you’re gonna, like, write a poem about it after.”
Illi’s expression turns into pure delight. “Oh my God, I should.”
“No.”
“Ode to Frank’s—”
“I will kill you.”
“—forbidden sanguine—”
He grabs a pillow and smacks her with it. She collapses against him, laughing uncontrollably, hair in her face, hand slipping from his crotch to his hip. It should break the tension, but it only makes it stranger because now she is warm and loose on top of him, giggling into his neck, and Frank’s hands have found her waist like that is where they live.
When the laughter fades, her mouth is very close to his ear.
“You don’t have to,” she whispers. “I mean it. We can just make out. Or stop. Or I can get you that aspirin, and we can pretend to be normal for ten minutes.”
He snorts. “You can’t pretend that long.”
“Hmm, no,” she admits. “Probably not.”
Frank stares up at the ceiling. There’s a scatter of plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck above her bed. He has looked at it before, during other parties, other almosts, other times Illi got too close, and then they both pretended nothing happened.
He says, “I want you to.”
She shifts to watch his face.
“But if you make it weird—”
“I’m already making it weird.”
“Yeah, but, like. Bad weird.”
Her face is serious now. Illi is never solemn without looking like she is playing a doomed prince in a school play, but she’s careful now. Wanting and careful with it.
“I won’t,” she promises.
Frank believes her, which is terrifying. He nods again, and they kiss. It’s disgustingly sweet this time. The kind of kiss that would have made him furious from anyone else, because it asks him to feel something instead of just surviving it. Her hand slides down his stomach, over the waistband of his pants, and pauses there. He sucks in a breath.
“You good?” she murmurs.
“Stop asking like a youth pastor.”
Her mouth twitches against his. “You good, you freak?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Better.”
They get his clothes off with all the erotic grace of two people who have lied to themselves for months. The shirt stays on. He keeps it that way, fists dragging it lower when it rides up, though Illi has already kissed his stomach and did not make him feel bad about it.
The underwear is worse. He looks away when she tugs them down, fiercely, violently away, as the wall near her dresser has just become the most interesting thing in New Jersey. There is a crumpled sketch taped there, a girl with huge black wings and blood trailing down her chin. Illi did it in ballpoint during class. Frank had watched her from two desks over, as Sister Mary droned on about chastity while Illi shaded in the girl’s features.
He finally looks at her. She is holding his underwear and pants out of the way, and her face is flushed, lips parted, her hair messy from his hands.
“You’re seriously okay with it?”
“Frankie,” she says.
He shivers.
“I have spent, like, the last three years wanting to be a vampire girl so bad I joined forums full of forty-year-old men named NightRaven who think drinking animal blood from a shot glass makes them aristocrats.” Her cheeks go pinker, but she keeps going. “I’m not scared of your period.”
“That is the worst reassurance anyone has ever given.”
“It worked, though.”
A laugh slips out of him, small and broken. Illi smiles, and the room loosens. She drops his clothes near the bed and moves back, hands settling on his knees. “Can I?”
“Yeah.”
Illi bends down and kisses his inner thigh, making him squirm. She holds his legs in place as the urge to writhe around under her lips takes over. She is too much of a freak, too much of an artist, and too much of an asshole to give him the mercy of speed. She licks the inside of one thigh, then the other. She nips him there, soft and testing, then harder when his knees twitch open. Her hair spills over his skin. He can feel her breath, hot and uneven.
She kisses higher, mouth open now, and Frank’s hand shoots down to grab the blanket. Her hot tongue finally lands on his clit, and his system fully crashes.
“Oh,” he gasps stupidly.
Illi lifts her head half an inch. “Okay?”
He grabs her head and pushes her back down. She looks up at him from between his legs. There is already blood at the corner of her mouth, not much, just a faint red shine, and Frank’s whole body goes liquid with embarrassment and desire.
Frank covers his face with one hand. “If you stop, I’m jumping out the window.”
“We’re on the second floor.”
“I’ll live and then kill myself from shame.”
“Very Catholic.”
“Shut up.”
She just giggles in response, and then starts licking and sucking in earnest with this little pleased sigh, as though the taste surprises her and then delights her, and Frank almost kicks her in the shoulder by accident.
“Fuck, sorry—”
She grabs his thigh and pins it down. Hard enough that his mouth falls open and nothing comes out. Illi pauses, eyes flicking up, as Frank stares back, breath stuck.
“Do that again,” he says.
She smirks and presses his thighs wider with both her hands. It should make him feel exposed, and it does—It makes him feel so exposed he almost can’t stand it. But Illi’s face is between his legs, and her nails are digging through the soft skin of his thighs, and her mouth is wet and red and open on him, and there is nowhere for shame to sit without getting swallowed too.
There’s no other way to describe it than her devouring him, ravenous and delighted. She makes a mess of herself within minutes, blood smeared over her lips, her chin, the side of her mouth where she keeps grinning against him like she cannot help it. Every time Frank dares to look down, she looks so fucking happy. Crazy, freaky vampire girl happy.
It should be the most insane thing that’s ever happened to him. It probably is. It’s also horribly, terribly endearing.
“Oh my God,” he says, because he has no defence left. “You’re so into this.”
Illi pulls back enough to grin at him, mouth red, eyes wild. “I told you,” she says, full of pride. “Vampire.”
“You look insane.”
“You look turned on.”
“I am turned on, genius.”
Her grin goes soft at the edges, pleased and shy all at once, like every direct admission from him is something she wants to collect and keep in a box. She licks her bloody lips, over the top on purpose, and Frank groans at the sight.
“You done this before?” she asks.
He shrugs badly. “Not really.”
“Not really?”
He scowls at the ceiling. “A girl at summer camp touched me for, like, twelve seconds and then cried because she thought she was going to hell.”
Illi’s mouth opens.
“It wasn’t great.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, but there is laughter caught under it.
“It’s fine. She was kind of annoying.”
“Did you like her?”
“I liked that she liked me.”
Illi nods like that makes sense. She props her chin on his thigh.
“Have you?” he asks.
She hesitates.
His stomach tightens before he can tell it not to. “You don’t have to—”
“Yeah,” she replies.
“Oh.”
Her face goes red under the smear of blood, which is such a deranged combination that Frank almost laughs and almost begs.
“Yeah,” she says again. “I mean, not a ton. But. Some.”
“With who?” He asks and curses at himself internally. “Scratch that.”
“No, it’s okay.” She looks down, running a finger along his stomach. “There was this guy from Bergen who used to come to shows. He thought I was a gay boy, which was, like…” She makes a face. “Partly wrong and partly right in a way he did not get.”
Frank’s jealousy twists into something stranger.
“And a girl from the art program last summer,” Illi adds. “She had pink hair and said she could read auras. She could not read auras. She could, uh.” Illi clears her throat. “Do other stuff.”
Frank stares at her. The shape of her changes in his head, expanding rapidly. Illi, who everyone at school calls a gay virgin nerd with too many vampire drawings and no social skills is the same Illi who once spent forty minutes straight explaining the historical inaccuracies in a Dracula adaptation to a visibly frightened freshman, and the same Illi has sucked dick and eaten pussy, apparently, and is now kneeling between Frank’s name with blood on her face and absolutely no shame.
It is kind of crazy how wrong everyone is about her—their loss.
“Wow, you’re experienced,” he says, trying to make it sound way more nonchalant than he feels.
“Not like, a lot.”
“You’re more experienced than me.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“No, it’s—” Frank stops. His hands are sweating, so he wipes one on the sheet. “It’s kind of hot.”
Illi’s mouth opens a little. He looks away because he can’t survive her face. “Don’t get smug.”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“I’m above that.”
“You’re literally between my legs, covered in blood.”
“Right,” she says, solemnly. “So I’m beneath that.”
Frank groans. “I hate you.”
Illi laughs and then kisses the inside of his thigh again. “No, you don’t.”
No. He really doesn’t.
Illi gets her mouth back on him before he has to figure out what his face is doing. It is different now, or maybe he is different. A little looser. A little more willing to believe the bed will not open and drop him into hell for wanting this. Illi uses everything she has learned from whoever had her before him, and Frank hates them all for knowing and blesses them all for teaching her.
She uses her tongue until his hips start jerking, then her mouth, then her fingers spreading him open carefully while she licks and sucks and hums like she is enjoying herself so much she forgot to be embarrassed. The wet sounds should make him die. They almost do, as every time he hears them, heat claws up his chest, but then Illi groans against him, and he stops caring about anything except how to get closer.
His hands find her head again, fingers tangled at the roots of her hair. She momentarily glances up, then twists her tongue, and Frank’s hand tightens without permission, tugging her closer. She moans. Actually moans, muffled and messy and right against him.
Frank’s vision goes white at the edges.
“Fuck,” he says. “You liked that?”
Illi nods without lifting her mouth.
He does it again, testing, and she presses down harder, hips shifting against the mattress.
Frank laughs, almost out of it at this point. “You’re a slutty vampire.”
Illi pulls off him just enough to glare, face shining red and wet. “That was so bad,” she says, but he can see how much she liked it. Time gets weird for a while, as she works him over, and he’s getting close, so fucking close, until she suddenly pulls back.
“Fraaank,” she says, grinning.
He makes some humiliating sound that might be her name.
“Come here.”
“I’m already here.”
“No.” Her hands slide under his thighs. “Here.”
His brain tries to work and fails. “What?”
She tugs him closer to the edge of the pillows, then lies back partly beneath him, hair spread over the bedding, looking up with her blood-smeared cheeks and her terrible shining eyes.
“No,” he says immediately.
Illi stops in an instant. “No?”
“I mean—fuck.” He covers his face. “I’m gonna crush you.”
“You are not.”
“I am.”
“Frankie.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. I want you to.”
He peeks between his fingers. Illi is staring up at him as though she has never meant anything more in her life.
“Come on, you’re a stick figure twink. No offence. You’re not gonna crush me.”
He snorts, laughing hard, because only Illi of all people would say shit like this in the middle of sex.
“Tap my thigh if you need me to move,” he says, because the words make him feel less like he is about to dissolve.
Illi nods quickly. “Okay.”
“Like, actually.”
“I will.”
“And don’t be stupid.”
“I’m always a little stupid.”
“Illi.”
“I’ll tap. I’d tap that ass anytime,” she says, and he can’t not laugh again.
That is how he ends up over her mouth, knees braced on either side of her head, one hand on the headboard, shaking so hard he can hear the wood creak under his grip. Under him, Illi looks blissed out before she even touches him.
Frank’s embarrassment comes roaring back, flushing his face. “Don’t look so happy.”
“You’re on my face.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
He almost combusts when Illi’s hands grip his thighs, pulling him down, and she moans into him like this is the whole point of being alive.
It’s too much, all of it. The angle, the pressure, the obscene devotion of it. Her nose presses into him; her tongue works hot and eager; her fingers dig into his skin. Every time Frank tries to hold himself up, she drags him back down.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “Illi, fuck, I can’t—”
She hums, and his hips jerk down without his input. She does it again, deliberate this time, and one hand slides from his thigh to his ass, urging him forward.
Ride her face, his brain supplies, and then immediately tries to fling itself down a staircase. Illi, because she is terrible and psychic and the coolest girl alive, squeezes his ass and pulls. He gives in and moves, desperately gripping the headboard, moaning so loud he’s really fucking glad they’re alone in the house. The sound she makes under him is filthy. Happy and triumphant.
“Oh my God,” he gasps. “Oh my God, you—”
She wants it. She wants the mess and the weight and the blood and him losing his mind above her. So Frank lets himself ride her face properly now, not holding back, on the brink of losing it. It feels like falling. Like blasphemy. Like the best kind. His shirt sticks to his back with sweat, and his binder feels too tight, but it disappears from his awareness entirely because there is only Illi’s mouth, Illi’s hair under his hand, Illi’s eyes rolling shut while he uses her face and she loves it.
“Illi,” he gasps, gripping the headboard. “Illi, I’m—fuck, I’m gonna—”
She wraps both arms around his thighs and holds him there. He comes so hard he nearly sobs. It tears through him bright and humiliating, his hips stuttering against her mouth, thighs clamping before he can stop them. Illi keeps kissing him through it—Small, messy, devoted kisses, like she is not done tasting him even when his body goes weak and over-sensitive and stupid.
“Stop,” he finally breathes, and she does instantly.
He shifts back, clumsy, horrified by his own legs, by gravity, by the whole idea of having a body. Illi helps him without making it a thing, hands on his hips until he collapses to the side on the bed instead of accidentally kneeing her in the eye.
For a while, Frank cannot move. He lies on his back with his pants tangled around his ankles, shirt rucked up, one hand flung over his face. His heart is pounding in places a heart should not be. He feels emptied out and too full, like somebody cracked his ribs open and poured pure light inside.
Illi is very quiet. That is the only reason he manages to look. She is lying on her back beside him, breathing hard. Her face is a disaster: blood smeared across her mouth, chin, and cheeks. Her eyeliner is smudged to bits, and her hair is stuck to her damp forehead. She looks as if she crawled out of one of her own drawings and lost a fight with something infernal.
She also looks happier than Frank has ever seen her.
“You’re smiling,” he whispers, as his chest aches with feeling.
“I know.”
“You look crazy.”
“I know.”
“Like, actually crazy.”
“Ha.”
He laughs weakly. “You’re not supposed to be proud of that.”
“I’m a vampire now.”
Illi turns her head toward him with a sappy smile. Suddenly, everything is too tender, and he can’t take it. So he looks away, down the bed, anywhere else.
That’s when he notices. Illi’s skirt is rucked up around her thighs. Her tights are still on but twisted, one knee laddered completely now. Her hips shift, tiny and unconscious, and there is a dark wet patch between her legs, unmistakable once Frank’s brain is calm enough to recognise it.
He blinks, then looks at her face. Illi notices him noticing, and the smile drains.
“Oh my God,” he says.
“Don’t.”
“You came?”
“Shut up.”
“You fucking came in your pants.”
Illi covers her face with both hands, which only makes the blood situation more insane because now she smears some across her fingers too. “Frank.”
He sits up on one elbow even though his entire body has turned to loose wire. “You did.”
“I said shut up.”
“You didn’t even touch yourself?”
“No,” she admits, muffled behind her hands. “I had your thighs around my head and your hand in my hair and blood in my mouth, what was I supposed to do?”
He stares at her in wonder and surprise, then starts laughing, and Illi groans as if she's being murdered by it.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“Yes, you are.” She pouts.
“I’m laughing because you’re so—” He stops, because the obvious word is there and dangerous.
Illi peeks through her fingers.
“So what?”
Frank looks at her.
Blood on her mouth. Shame in her eyes. Want is still all over her, no matter how hard she tries to hide it. Illi McMillin, who everybody thinks is some creepy gay boy virgin, lying in her vampire bedroom after coming untouched from eating him out on his period.
The coolest girl in the world.
“So hot and gross and awesome,” he finishes.
Her hands lower.
“Oh.”
He grins, still shaky. “Yeah. Oh.”
Illi rolls her eyes, but she is smiling again, and Frank’s heart threatens to burst out of his chest, and he’s pretty sure he knows why that is now.
“Come here,” he says, because apparently coming once has made him insane.
Illi blinks. “I’m right here.”
“Closer.”
She climbs over him again, careful at first, then less careful when Frank gets both hands on her hips and pulls. She makes a tiny, surprised sound against his mouth, and he eats it up, kissing her like he can make a home out of her noises if he collects enough of them. Her lips taste like iron as the mess from her face spreads to his, and he wonders how gross that must look like from the outside, yet something about it is also turning him on so much, he’s surprised it’s there as quickly as it is after he already came so hard just now.
“Fuck,” Illi whispers.
It is not exactly like before. Before had the momentum of Illi’s mouth, the vampire joke, his embarrassment turning inside out until it became wanting. This is after. This is with all of that known now. Her face red from him. His body open and aching. Her skirt damp because she came untouched while he rode her mouth. No plausible deniability left in the room.
They want more, and the desire sits between them like a whole other person, breathing hard.
Frank asks, “What do we…?”
Illi lifts her head. Her eyes are dark, pupils huge, eyeliner smudged under one eye. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“I mean.” She swallows. “I have ideas.”
“Of course you do.”
“Shut up.”
“Vampire forum probably has diagrams.”
“Geez—.”
“Dark sacred rites of getting laid.”
She laughs, then goes quiet again, teeth worrying her lower lip. “What?” he asks softly.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
Her mouth twists. “It’s different when it’s me.”
Frank’s fingers still.
The sentence has teeth.
He knows what she means because he has been living under the same kind of sentence his whole life. Illi looks down at herself like she is already apologising, and Frank hates everyone who ever made her do that.
“Hey,” he prompts.
She does not look up.
“Illi.”
Her eyes flick to his.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“I know.” He rubs his thumb over her cheek, careful, because there is still a streak of dried red near her jaw. “But you don’t have to be brave about it.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay.”
Then, because too much gentleness will kill them both, Frank adds, “Also, if you say something mean about yourself, I’ll tell Mikey you joined NightRaven’s blood aristocrat thread.”
Her mouth falls open. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“That’s private.”
Illi leans over and kisses him before he can reply, then gets off him to undress, which is devastating because it means she is not touching him anymore, but the sight makes up for it. She does it, facing half away at first, fingers clumsy on the cardigan buttons. The black knit slips off one shoulder, then the other. Her white school shirt follows, wrinkled and already half-open. Under it, she is wearing a black bra, and Frank stops breathing.
It is not fancy. Not lace or satin or anything from one of the catalogues the girls at school giggle over while pretending not to understand what they are looking at. Plain black cotton, stretched a little at the band. It has something to hold only because Illi is soft there, because she is chubby in a way Frank has never understood people being cruel about.
He really, really cannot understand it now.
Her body is beautiful with an almost aggressive unfairness. The soft rolls on her stomach, broad pale shoulders. Dark hair falls over the side of her face and the curve of her chest. Frank’s mouth goes dry.
Illi folds her arms over herself.
“Don’t,” he says immediately.
She freezes. “Huh?”
“Do that.”
Her face gets almost as red as the blood still on it. “Sorry.”
“No, I mean—” He sits up. “I mean, don’t hide. Unless you want to. I mean. Fuck.”
Illi’s expression wobbles.
“You’re beautiful,” Frank exhales hard.
She looks away, pouting, cheeks still flushed.
He panics. “Is that okay to say?”
“I—yeah.” Her voice catches on the word. “Yeah. I just…”
“What?”
“Nobody says that.”
Frank feels rage so pure and useless it makes his hands shake.
He wants to go to school on Monday and fight every person who has ever snickered when Illi walked by. He wants to bite them, actually. Maybe she is onto something with the vampire thing. Maybe fangs would solve a lot.
“They’re stupid,” he states firmly.
Illi laughs once, brittle. “That’s your answer?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone is stupid except you?”
“And Ray. Sometimes Mikey.”
“Very generous.”
“Everyone else can get fucked.”
Her shoulders lower a fraction.
Frank reaches for her, then stops short, palm hovering. “Can I?”
Illi nods, so he touches her waist first. the soft part, because he wants to, and because he refuses to act like it is something to be avoided. Illi sucks in a breath, and her palm closes over his. Encouraged by that, Frank leans forward and kisses her right in the centre of her chest, and the squirm she lets out is just lovely.
Frank looks up. “Good?”
“Mhm.”
He kisses her again, lower, under her ribs. Her skin is warm and smells of sweat and her lavender-scented deodorant. When his fingers find the clasp of the bra, he looks up as she shakes her head.
“Keep it on?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Relief flickers across her face so nakedly that he has to kiss her again. She raises herself briefly to tangle out of the skirt and tights, nearly falling over, which saves him from combusting for three seconds. Then she is standing there in the bra and underwear, and the wet patch is darker now, and beneath the thin black cotton—
Frank looks away so fast his neck cracks, feeling hot all over.
“You can look, you know,” she says, giggling, one hand over her stained mouth. He risks glancing back, and there she is: flushed, almost naked, laughing in the weak light like some impossible thing he has been allowed to see by mistake. His gaze drops again despite every heroic effort to not make a big deal out of it, but, well.
He can’t not notice that she’s big. The shape of her through the underwear is enough to make his brain crash into a wall. He catches her eyes again, and she’s watching him with a face halfway between mortification and pride.
Frank says the first thing his idiot mouth can manage. “Vampire curse.”
She blinks.
He gestures vaguely, face burning. “Like. Enhanced. Whatever.”
Silence.
Then, Illi collapses onto the bed laughing so hard she curls around herself.
Frank groans. “Forget I said that.”
“No.”
“Illi.”
“No, I’m keeping that forever.”
“Please don’t.”
“Enhanced vampire cock,” she gasps.
“I’m leaving.”
Illi laughs until she has to wipe at her eyes, and Frank’s embarrassment breaks apart under it. He crawls toward her on the bed and kisses her because her mouth is open and because he can. She kisses him back, still laughing, one hand sliding into his hair.
Her body presses closer until he can feel the hard line of her through the underwear against his bare thigh.
Frank groans.
Illi freezes. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” His hand tightens on her hip. “Yeah, fuck.”
She bites her lip.
“What?” he asks.
“I have stuff.”
He blinks. “Stuff?”
She points down, smiling widely.
“At your dick?”
“No, oh my God.” She smacks his shoulder. “Under the bed.”
Illi rolls away from him and leans over the edge of the bed. Frank takes the opportunity to yank his pants off the rest of the way before they cut off circulation to his ankle and kill him in Illi’s vampire boudoir. When he looks back, she is dragging out a battered shoebox with a bunch of stickers on the lid. Band logos, a bat, a glittery star, and the words ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT MIKEY’S BUSINESS!!’ written in black marker.
Frank’s face heats before she even opens it.
“Illi.”
“What?”
“Why does it say that?”
“Because it isn’t.”
She flips the lid open, and that’s it; Frank’s going to die. Condoms, first. Lube. Fine. Normal. Expected, though still enough to make his stomach do an embarrassing little victorious flip because Illi is prepared for sex like a deeply perverted Girl Scout. But there is other stuff too.
A small bottle of something he cannot read because she snatches it partly under a shirt. A couple of toys wrapped in clean cloth. A pair of cheap plastic vampire fangs, because of course. Something that looks like a collar, maybe, or a bracelet, and Frank refuses to investigate further for now, he’ll burst into flames.
She flicks a glance at him. “What?”
“I just—” He points helplessly at the box. “You have, like. Equipment.”
“Equipment?” She sounds deeply offended. “I’m not fixing a sink.”
“You could, with all that.”
She looks into the box, then back at him. Something wicked flickers over her face, though it is still shy underneath. “What, wanna try it out?”
Frank’s whole body goes tight.
Illi’s eyes widen slightly, like she hears the change in his breathing.
He wants to be cool. He wants to smirk. He wants to be the kind of guy who sees a box of sex things under the bed of the girl he is obsessed with and does not immediately feel like his soul has exited his body and is hovering near the ceiling screaming.
“What is it?” he asks, aiming to sound sly and hitting somewhere around ‘strangled’.
Illi unwraps one of the cloth bundles, revealing a purple silicone dildo. “Do you want to?”
“Like on… you?”
“Mhm.”
His heart is trying to punch through his chest. He has never done this. He is incredibly aware of that. He is also aware of Illi half naked in front of him, soft and flushed and hard between her legs, asking with her whole body.
Frank reaches for the toy. “Show me.”
The words come out more confident than he feels. Illi hears that too. Her eyes go a little glassy as she smiles coyly. She hands him the lube and lies back, spreading her legs before him. Her ink-black hair spills across the pillow, and her stomach and chest are rising and falling quickly. Her underwear is gone now, too, kicked somewhere near the desk, and she is hard against her belly, flushed dark and wet at the tip.
Frank looks, and this time does not avert his eyes at all. He touches her carefully first, because even with the toy in his hand, even with the lube warming over his fingers, he wants to feel her respond to him. Her legs part wider, as her hand twists in the sheet. When he presses one slick finger lower, she inhales through her teeth.
“Good?”
Illi hums instead of responding, eyes closed. He presses in, and her mouth falls open. She looks so beautiful that she could fit into a baroque painting of passion. She makes a sound, quiet but there, and Frank’s confidence surges out of pure, spiteful need against the whole world that keeps trying to make him smaller. Illi wants him. Illi is letting him. Illi is making those sounds because of his hand.
He adds another finger carefully, watching her face. She arches, fingers flying up to cover her mouth and then dropping again when he gives her a look.
“Sorry,” she gasps.
“Don’t be.”
“You’re bossy now?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, my God.” She laughs, but it breaks into a moan when he curls his fingers experimentally. “Fuck.”
Frank grins, getting more confident. “There?”
“Yeah, yeah, there.”
The toy is next. He goes slow, so slow it makes his arm shake, and her hips twitch impatiently. Illi keeps looking down, then away, then back at him, as if she cannot decide whether watching is too much or not enough.
When the tip slips in, she grabs his wrist, and he stops, looking at her.
“Good,” she says quickly. “Good, I just—”
Her grip loosens, and Frank leans down and kisses her knee, because it is the nearest part of her and because he needs to do something with the tenderness before it eats him alive. Then he pushes a little farther, making her whimper.
He watches the toy sink into her, slick and impossible, and imagines it is him.
The thought hits so hard he has to close his eyes.
“Frank?” Illi whispers.
He opens them.
She is watching him. Breathless. Bright.
“What?” he manages.
Her mouth curves, trembly and mean. “You look jealous of a dildo.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“I’m concentrating.”
“You look like you wanna fight it.”
“I might.”
She laughs, then moans when he moves it in shallowly. The laugh collapses into pleasure so fast it goes straight to his head.
“Wish I had a strap,” she says, dazed. “So you could fuck me right now. We’re getting one ASAP.”
Frank stops moving.
Illi blinks, then seems to realise what she said. “I mean—so you could feel it too. Not like—”
Too late.
Something in Frank straightens; his pride. His stupid, fragile, starving pride, which has been kicked around all night and then hand-fed compliments until it now apparently thinks it can conquer Rome.
“You think I can’t?”
Illi’s eyes widen.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Implied it.”
“I literally didn’t.”
She stares at him for half a second.
Then she smiles.
Slow.
“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”
Frank narrows his eyes. “Don’t ‘oh’ me.”
“You’re gonna prove something?”
“Maybe.”
“To the dildo?”
“To you.”
She smiles widely, showing her teeth. “Oh, Frankie.”
He grips the base of the toy and thrusts, hard enough to make her breath punch out. Her hands fly to his arms, gripping hard enough to leave marks from her nails.
Frank feels the movement in his own body, like some phantom line connects the toy to him, as if he imagines it enough, he can feel her around his cock that he does not have and somehow still does, in the charged dark theatre of his head.
“There,” he says, voice rough. “That good?”
Illi nods frantically. “Yeah.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Yes. Fuck, yes.”
He loses all inhibitions he’d unconsciously had about this. He fucks her, with his hand, with a toy, with spite and want and imagination, but it still counts because her body says it counts. Her knees draw up, and her back arches, as the bed squeaks under them and scratches against the floor. Her eyes go unfocused, her mouth open, and every time he thrusts, she makes another whine he wants to keep.
Illi’s hand slides down to touch herself.
Frank catches her wrist.
She freezes, eyes snapping to his.
He does not know where the impulse comes from. Maybe the same stupid place as all the rest of it. Maybe because she got him off without touching herself, and he wants, suddenly and viciously, to make her lose it from him too.
“Ask,” he says.
Illi’s mouth falls open. Frank’s face burns at his own audacity, but he stands by it.
Then, Illi whispers, “Can I?”
“Okay, show me, girl.”
She wraps her hand around herself with a broken little exhale, and Frank thrusts the toy in at the same time. The sound she makes is so obscene, he bends before he can overthink it and puts his mouth on her, and she practically sobs.
Her cock is hot and heavy against his tongue, slick with her own wetness, and he thinks again, absurdly, huge, then stops thinking because she is in his mouth and the toy is inside her and she is shaking apart under him.
“Fuck, Frank—”
He pulls back enough to breathe. “Good?”
“Good. Good. So good, more.”
He is not going to survive this girl.
He takes her back into his mouth, awkward at first, then better when he lets instinct take over. He cannot take all of her and does not try. He uses his hand for what his mouth can’t manage, tongue sliding over the head, lips closing around her while he keeps fucking her with the toy. Illi’s hips jolt between the two sensations, caught and helpless.
Her hand tangles in his hair, and Frank moans around her, while Illi’s whole body jerks.
“Oh fuck,” she gasps. “Don’t—do that again.”
So he does, as her head tips back on the pillows. The black bra rides up a little with the arch of her body, and her stomach tenses, soft and beautiful and trembling. Frank wants to see all of her and wants to be buried in her and wants to crawl up beside her and be held and wants to keep her like this forever, ruined and wanting because of him.
The toy slides in with wet, rhythmic sounds. His hand aches. His jaw aches. He does not care.
Illi’s grip tightens in his hair. “I’m gonna come.”
Frank pulls off with a gasp. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Fuck, Frank, I—”
“Come then.”
She stares down at him. He has no idea who he is right now—apparently someone who can say that. Apparently, someone, Illi, wants badly enough that it works, because after a few more thrusts of his hand, she comes with the toy inside her and Frank’s hand wrapped around her, mouth returning just in time to catch the first pulse on his tongue. Her body locks up, then shakes, thighs trembling around him. She makes a small, desperate noise and tries to muffle it with her own wrist. Frank keeps moving the toy gently through it until she grabs his shoulder.
“Stop. Stop, oh my fuck.”
He slides off her, panting hard. They stare at each other, catching their breaths until Illi starts laughing.
Frank looks up, alarmed. “What?”
She covers her face. “Nothing.”
“What?”
“You got so serious.”
“I was doing a good job!”
“You were.” She laughs harder, shaky and affectionate. “You were doing a really good job. That’s why it’s funny.”
He sits back on his heels, offended and extremely pleased. “You’re laughing at my sexual competence?”
“I’m laughing because you looked like you were trying to win.”
“I was.”
“You did.”
That shuts him up. Illi lowers her hands from her face. Her cheeks are flushed. Her mouth is soft. Her eyes are still glassy, but her smile is so tender it embarrasses him worse than the box did.
“You did,” she says again.
Frank looks away, grinning despite himself. “Yeah, well.”
“Very impressive.”
“Shut up.”
“No.”
“I still have your vampire blood on me. I’m dangerous.”
“That is my vampire blood now, technically.”
“Ew.”
“You loved it.”
And he can’t argue with that. He crawls up beside her after cleaning the toy enough to set it aside on the towel, because even in the middle of life-changing sex, there are logistics. Illi reaches for him immediately, then hesitates like she remembers he might not want to be grabbed.
Frank solves that by dropping half on top of her, making her wheeze. “Too heavy?” he asks at once, lifting.
“No.” She wraps both arms around him and drags him back. “Stay here.”
So he stays.
For maybe thirty seconds, it is quiet and almost peaceful.
Then her thigh slides between his again.
Frank groans. “Are you kidding?”
Illi’s voice is muffled against his hair. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You moved.”
“I have limbs.”
“Stop having them.”
She laughs. “You stop having them.”
“Mine are busy being traumatised.”
“From winning?”
“From being around you.”
Her hand slides down his back. It should be too soon. He is sensitive and tired and still kind of stunned, but her skin is under his, her body warm and slick in places, and the bed smells like both of them now.
“Again?” she whispers, half awed.
Frank hides his face against her chest. “Don’t sound so proud.”
“I am proud.”
“You would be.”
“My vampire thrall has stamina.”
“I’m breaking up with you.”
She freezes for a second, as does he when he realises what he just said: Breaking up implies dating. Dating implies something to break.
He lifts his head slowly. Illi is staring at him.
“Not that we’re—” he starts, but she kisses him before he can finish ruining it. Frank laughs nervously against her mouth and then stops laughing because Illi rolls them, awkwardly, so they end up side by side, tangled thigh to thigh. Her cock slides against his cunt, slick and hot, and both of them gasp.
“Oh,” Illi says.
Frank’s hand grips her shoulder. “Yeah.”
They try to move together and immediately fail. Too much wetness, wrong angle, elbows everywhere. Then, as they continue kissing, not caring about anything but being closer, as close as humanly possible, it gets better, then good, then fucking great. Just the slide of her against him, hard and slick between their bodies, rubbing over the places Illi’s mouth has left aching and open. Frank’s hand goes between them to guide her, and Illi bites his shoulder through the shirt when he gets the angle right.
“Fuck,” she breathes. “There.”
“There?”
“Yeah, please.”
He is going to become unbearable if she keeps saying it.
They move together, messy and close, foreheads pressed, mouths catching at each other whenever they can. It is intimate in a way that makes Frank feel almost panicked. There is nowhere to put the feeling. No joke big enough. No mean little comment fast enough. Illi’s face is right there, pleasure opening and closing across it with every movement, and she is watching him too, like she cannot stop.
“Frank,” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
“Frank.”
“I’m here.”
Her eyes squeeze shut.
He kisses her cheek. Then her mouth. Then the corner of her jaw. The tenderness builds under his skin until it feels like a fever. He starts moving harder because that is easier. After all, he wants what he understands better than softness. Illi hooks one leg over his hip and pulls him in, and the friction turns sharp enough that his breath goes ragged.
“Again?” she asks, dazed.
He nods, unable to speak.
Her hand finds the back of his neck. “Good.”
He groans against her mouth.
“Yeah?” she whispers, and there is the vampire girl again, a little wicked through the wreckage. “You like being good for me?”
Frank bites her shoulder because answering would kill him.
Illi moans, hips jerking.
They come close together this time. Not synchronised, but close enough that Frank is still shaking when Illi gasps and presses her face hard into his neck, her body pulsing against him. He feels the wet warmth of it between them, feels his own body answer, and the second orgasm is smaller but deeper somehow, dragged out of him with her name caught behind his teeth.
After, they lie in absolute ruin. The bedsheets might be beyond saving. Illi’s hand moves lazily over his back. Up and down, up and down.
Eventually, Illi stirs.
Frank makes a noise of protest.
“I gotta clean you up,” she murmurs.
“You’re the one covered in everything.”
“I’m a gentleman vampire.”
“You are not a gentleman.”
“A lady vampire?”
“Closer.”
“A pervert vampire.”
“Oh, that definitely.”
Illi grins, then slides down the bed.
Frank props himself on his elbows, suspicious. “What are you doing?”
She looks up at him from between his legs.
His stomach flips, exhausted and interested and horrified by both.
“Illi.”
“What?”
“You just came twice.”
“So did you.”
“I am a fragile Victorian boy.”
“You are a very annoying vampire thrall.”
“I’m sensitive.”
She kisses his inner thigh. “I’ll be gentle.”
The softness of it undoes him more than another joke would have.
He lets his head fall back.
She is gentle. Not trying to get him off again, thank God, because he might actually perish. Just slow little licks and kisses, cleaning him with her mouth because she is disgusting and romantic and fully committed to the bit in a way that makes his heart swell until it hurts. When he twitches, she pauses. When he breathes out, she continues.
It is the most loved he has ever felt in his life, which is embarrassing, because she is licking blood and come off him while making happy vampire noises under her breath.
“Do not make slurping sounds,” he says weakly.
Illi lifts her head with grave dignity. “I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“I’m being sensual.”
“You’re being Dracula’s weird cousin.”
She bites his thigh.
He yelps. “Ow.”
“You like it.”
“I do, but ow.”
She kisses the bite. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” she agrees, smiling. “I’m not.”
When she finally crawls back up beside him, Frank is loose-limbed and dazed, like his skeleton has been replaced with warm laundry. Illi flops half on top of him, bra twisted, hair everywhere, one hand planted dramatically over his heart.
“I have decided,” she announces.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It is. I have decided you’re going to have to let me feed regularly.”
Frank turns his head to stare at her.
She looks exhausted, smug, and radiant. “For my health.”
“Your health.”
“Yes.”
“You came in your pants because of it. I think you’re doing fine.”
Illi’s cheeks go red, but she powers through. “Exactly. I have discovered an essential dietary need.”
“You need my period blood?”
“I need you,” she says, then immediately looks like she wants to throw herself out the window.
Frank goes silent.
Illi’s fingers curl against his chest. “I mean. As your vampire mistress.”
“Oh,” he says faintly.
She nods too fast. “Yes. Obviously. It’s a whole thing. Very gothic. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Because I’m just the thrall.”
“Exactly.”
Frank looks at the ceiling, at the array of glowing stars. He thinks about Monday, when they will probably stand three feet apart around other people and pretend not to know what Illi looks like when she comes. Pretend he has not tasted her. Pretend she has not put her mouth on the parts of him he tries hardest to hate, and look happy about it.
He thinks he might not survive pretending.
Then, Illi shifts against him, anxious in the silence.
Frank catches her hand.
“Fine,” he says.
She lifts her head.
He keeps staring at the ceiling because looking at her will make the feeling too big to manage. “You can feed regularly.”
Illi’s smile happens slowly. He can feel it against his shoulder before he sees it.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. For your health.”
“Very generous.”
“I’m basically a saint.”
“You’re definitely not.”
“A martyr.”
“My bloody little martyr.”
Frank groans. “That was awful.”
“I know.” She kisses his shoulder through the shirt. “I’m keeping it.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He turns his head.
Illi is looking at him as if she already knows the answer but is afraid to trust it.
Frank reaches up and touches her mouth with his thumb. Clean now, mostly. Still swollen. His freaky, amazing, vampire girl.
“No,” he says softly, smiling widely. “I don’t.”