NOVEL NEXT Just One Bite – Chapter 1
Roxie's was, as per usual, absolutely packed. The only thing louder than the din of its patrons was the harsh, blaring punk-rock which constantly permeated the bar. Camille liked it that way; the aesthetic of the bar gave her the perfect excuse to act distant and aloof, she was just that cool goth bartender who rarely said more than a few words to any of the customers. That was for the best, to be honest, whenever people got to talking with her she had a tendency to slip up and reveal things she wasn’t meant to reveal. But, for the most part, Camille had kept her secret nice and safe. There was really only one persistent thorn in her side with regard to ensuring nobody found out she’d been alive since the late seventeenth century. Unfortunately, said thorn just so happened to be walking through the front door with a shy, but eager look on her face. Rolling her eyes, Camille huffed and hung her head as that nuisance of a girl caught a glimpse of the vampiress, blushed, and began to scurry toward the bar. Admittedly, this had all been her own fault, it was her own carelessness which had gotten her into this mess.
* * *
On a warm July evening, Amanda found herself nervously lingering outside one of her city’s reputably gay bars. She’d only recently come to realize herself as a lover of other women, and was very much what many would refer to as a “baby gay.” Finding herself far too shy to enter the bar of her own volition, Amanda instead made a few awkward sweeps past the front door, only to turn around and hope that this time she’d work up the courage to enter. It was while doing this that she heard a sound in the alleyway behind Moxie’s akin to a yelp, hiss, then what may have been a stifled moan. Now, Amanda wasn’t one to go looking for trouble, but some drive pushed her to investigate, call it a sense of duty to look out for those in need. That was how she first lay eyes on Camille, hunched over with her fangs buried in the neck of a young woman whose blood she greedily partook of. And there was this look to the girl: her eyelids half lidded, lips oh so slightly parted, knees weak as she leaned all her weight against Camille’s taller frame while staring blankly ahead with empty, dreamy eyes and dilated pupils. Her entire body had shook with pure unbridled pleasure, and Amanda had stood frozen in place, just watching.
The rational part of her brain had told her to run, here was what appeared to be a literal vampire, draining someone’s blood. If she finished feeding off this woman and turned to see some strange girl standing at the entrance to the alleyway just watching her there was no telling how she might react. But Amanda’s feet remained firmly planted right where they were as, despite the fear and shock telling her to run, two other feelings completely overpowered her: arousal, and envy. The woman before her looked so absolutely awash with pure sexual bliss. But beyond that, there was something else. She looked at peace. Without any worries, lacking a single care, perhaps even thoughtless in the face of the all-consuming pleasure she was locked in. And no matter how loudly her fight or flight instincts screamed at her to run, some other primal part of Amanda’s brain wished desperately to feel what that woman felt as the vampiress drank from her.
That wistful moment didn’t last; it had barely been a few moments when, consumed by her own fantasies, Amanda exhaled, and along with it came a needy little whimper. Without missing a beat the vampiress had gone rigid, straightening out and turning abruptly to follow the noise. For the woman’s part, a light moan escaped her lisp as the fangs left her, but she otherwise didn’t react. Her face retained its vacant expression as she teetered helplessly without the support she had previously been afforded. It was hard to take her eyes off that woman, off of how completely blissed out she looked, but at the sound of the vampiress clearing her throat, Amanda’s eyes snapped back to the tall figure looming in the alleyway. “This isn’t what it looks like,” her voice cut through the silence, authoritative, sharp, but clearly nervous. Amanda shook under that gaze, but the same part of her brain which kept her from running before still held her firmly in place. It was also then which Amanda was able to catch a glimpse of a Moxy’s nametag pinned to the vampiress’ tank-top, and learned Camille’s name.
“Um, o-okay,” Amanda stammered. Given the two very clear bite marks on the ‘victim’s’ neck, the elongated fangs, and the blood still staining Camille’s lips, that was very clearly a lie, but Amanda wasn’t one to argue with a literal fantasy monster. Instead she just trembled in place, finding it impossible to ignore the warm, melty feeling that rose in her core when that icy gaze was fixed upon her.
When Amanda didn’t simply nod and go on her way, Camille wiped her mouth and glanced down at her pale, slender bloodstained hand. Sighing, she slumped her shoulders and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay look, she and I were just engaged in some roleplay, alright? This was all completely consensual. She’s my girlfriend, right, babe?” Her eyes fell upon the dazed woman in the alleyway, before rushing to catch her as she nearly toppled over.
“Mmm, yes Mistress.” Perhaps for most, the distant monotone of her voice, the complete lack of any sort of change in her body language or response besides her words, the trail of drool trickling from her parted lips, would have sparked fear and doubt. Obviously Camille’s story was unconvincing. This was no simple roleplay, and she was no simple woman. Regardless of whether or not they truly were lovers, the woman on the receiving end of Camille’s bite was in no state to make any claim to consent on her own, she was clearly just mindlessly parroting what she’d been instructed to say. Surely for most that would be a terrifying thing to say, a person so completely empty, so weak, so totally dominated both in body and mind. But whatever new, strange feelings Camille had awakened in Amanda screamed otherwise.
Realizing that Amanda was clearly still staring at her enraptured victim, Camille sighed again. “I’m not coming off as very convincing, am I?” Frozen under the vampiress’ gaze, Amanda simply shook her head silently in reply. Camille groaned, pressing her palm to her forehead before rising up and squaring her shoulders, fixing Amanda with a heartstopping gaze and striding across the alleyway to her purposefully. With hardly a foot of distance between the two, Camile pressed in closer, cornering Amanda against the wall and blocking her on either side with her extended arm and towering, but gorgeous, slender frame. Up close, Amanda could appreciate the vampiress’ beauty properly. Her chin-length jet black hair was cut asymmetrically, swept forward and to one side so as to nearly completely cover one side of her face. In the dark of the alley, her uncovered eye glowed a deep green. She stared down at Amanda, fixing her with an intense gaze that made her helplessly squirm in place. “Alright, you want the truth? Yes, I am a vampire. Congrats, you caught me in the act. But what I said about her being a partner was true. She agreed to let me feed from her. Hell, she likes it. So here’s what’s going to happen, you’re going to leave us alone and not say a word about this to anyone. Cause if you do, I’ll drain you til you’re under my thrall the same way she is right now, except, unlike with her, I’ll keep you that way.”
Now, like just about everyone, Amanda had had her share of undignified moments in life. She’d made a fool of herself her fair share of times. But nothing else in her life seemed to hold a candle to when, trembling under the raw power of Camille’s gaze, thighs clenching and knees shaking, Amanda’s horny brain involuntarily pushed out a just barely audible whimper of “please.”
“What?” The vampiress blinked in surprise, jerking her head backward and narrowing her eyes.
“I um, bye,” she squealed, then ducked under Camile’s arm and scurried out of the alleyway, all while fantasies of being chased down and tackled to the ground, then fed upon until she was an empty-headed, drooling thrall ran rampant in her mind.
* * *
Ever since that fateful night, Amanda had been a pest. She wouldn’t come by every day, nor necessarily even every week. But she was a persistent little fly who inevitably would always come back around to buzz in Camille’s ear eventually. Apparently she had it in her head that since she knew Camille’s secret, that gave her the right to ask Camille to convert her into a thrall—that wasn’t the word Amanda used, but it was ostensibly what she wanted. Not that Camille was a stranger to such requests, many had come to her in her unlife asking to be granted the immortality and power that came with being enthralled by a vampiress, expecting her to just give it out to anyone and everyone.
While Amanda had the energy of a bubbly, if shy, college co-ed, her persistence in pestering Camille proved that deep down she was just another vain human clamoring for a taste of eternal youth with no sense of self preservation. Had Amanda just not believed Camille when she threatened to leave her a permanently empty-headed fuck-puppet? Admittedly, the idea of doing that to the girl did have some appeal. She was gorgeous, skin like porcelain, gorgeous wavy red hair and curves that would catch the eye of anyone in their right mind who happened to lust after women. She would certainly make a good decoration, but Camile’s days of doing that to people were behind her. The women she had enthralled when she was younger and stupider and more cruel were long free from her grasp, and Camille had gone through the painstaking process of actually allowing herself to be vulnerable around people in order to build up new, consensual relationships with women whose lives she actually valued this time around. It was tempting, though, to punish a greedy soul seeking some irresponsible personal gain from her by reducing said greedy soul to a mindless pleasure slave. Granted, it wasn’t tempting in a way that Camille would actually pursue, but in a way that tugged on the darker impulses which she knew she would never actually listen to.
Amanda was approaching the bar then, and Camille narrowed her eyes and flicked her gaze to the backdoor of the building, calling to a coworker that she was going on break and storming off into the alleyway. She leaned against the old brick and lit a spliff, inhaling deeply as Amanda trailed behind. “What do you want?” She asked, exhaling the smoke into Amanda’s face as she approached. The girl shivered.
“Y-you, um, the same thing as always. I was wondering if you wanted to drink my blood,” she stammered, blood rushing to her cheeks, as though to tempt a sample.
“Why do you keep coming back here? Every time you’ve asked I’ve turned you down.” She rolled her eyes and took another drag.
“Well, um, b-because every time I come here you take me out here for privacy l-like you um, want to talk to me? And also I’ve s-seen the way you look at me. I th-think you want t-to um, y’know, drink my blood. I think you have the hots for m-me just as much as I do for you.” The poor girl was barely audible, just a squeaking, stammering whisper by the end.
“Wait, explain to me why
you want me to drink your blood? You know I threatened to melt your brain when this all started. I would think that would make you less interested in annoying me.” She narrowed her eyes, studying the girls quivering lips and reddened cheeks.
Pressing her fingers together and looking away, Amanda screwed up her face in thought, then shuddered. Her face only redded further, before she stamped her foot impetuously and began to shout. “Because it was hot as fuck, okay? Ever since that night I haven’t been able to get that girl you drank from out of head. The blank, mindless look on her face, the distant, empty sound of her voice, the way she was completely at your mercy, a willing puppet for you to do whatever you want with. It was hot as hell, okay? And I swear to god more and more it’s been all I can think about. I don’t know why but it’s just been burrowing deeper and deeper into my thoughts. I can’t even get off anymore unless I’m imagining myself as a blank, empty vessel for pleasure and obedience, okay?”
Camile did a double take, then shook her head vigorously to clear the stupor she’d found herself in. “Wait, hang on, you don’t care about the immortality? You’re just really kinky?”
“Wait, you can make me immortal? And then could you just like, keep me? For years on end and use me however you want whenever you want?” She began to pant, legs growing weak as she fanned herself. “Holy fucking shit that’s hot.”
For a moment, Camille indulged in Amanda’s own fantasy, and imagined the girl sitting perfectly still, naked on her bed with empty, thoughtless eyes and a placid, distant smile as Camille took whatever pleasure she saw fit from the girl turned toy. She tipped her head back and puffed again, inhaling deep, then exhaling slow, then lowered her eyes to meet Amanda’s gaze. “Fine. We can work something out, but let’s make sure you can handle it first.”
