Chapter Text
Working with vampires meant tricky business. Especially when that business was porn.
Not professional porn, by any means. Poe was one of the most charismatic friends she’d ever had, but he was allergic to proper planning. Last week they ran out of latex-free condoms. The week before that, he looked confused when Rey shook a tray with three de-crusted cucumber sandwiches and asked, “Where’s the rest of it?”
“Hold on.” Tapping mute, he rested the phone against his cheek. “Where’s the rest of what?”
“The food!” Her voice climbed too high with panic. “You’re filming a dwarven gang bang in your basement. This—” she shook the tray again for good measure, “is going to start a riot. Number one: it’s too green. Number two: it’s not meat. Number three: it’s nowhere close to enough. Didn’t you call the caterer?”
He slowly pointed to the phone with his free hand.
“That’s who you’re talking to?”
“I thought you said I needed to order a whole roasted pig?”
“I said that last week. They’re going to finish filming in five minutes!”
Poe looked concerned for a grand total of two seconds. Then he clapped his hand on her shoulder, grinned broadly and said, “God, I’m glad I have you, Rey. Credit card is in my office.”
She’d never run to the gas station quicker in her life. Thank fuck that dwarves were very on board with roller hot dogs and taquitos. She flew back into Poe’s converted garage with sweaty armpits only to interrupt an absolutely raunchy beer-pong tournament. By the time the winners were crowned, the dwarves had forgotten all about their delayed lunch.
“I have the best ideas,” Poe crowed, because of course he managed to placate hungry, horny dwarves. Of course he could pull off the impossible.
Rey really needed to find a different source of income.
It had all started as a favor. Poe was starting a new business and no one was shocked that it was porn. In a matter of days, he had successfully roped Finn into editing, Rose into shooting with a rented camera, and Rey into picking up the slack. Mostly she just spent time worrying. And quitting. She’d quit quite a bit.
Frankly, she didn’t need the extra stress. She was still working on getting her Master’s (albeit slowly and with wildly diligent financial planning) on top of working part-time at the university gym on top of dog-walking for a few very sympathetic professors on top of Shipt and Lyft. Rey barely had time to breathe, much less patch up Poe’s bleeding trail of sex-fueled mistakes. Somehow, she did it anyway.
But this was too far.
“I hate vampires,” she whined.
Poe’s face was illuminated by the glow of his laptop. Without moving his eyes from the screen, he said, “Untrue.”
“Fine. I hate working with them. Do you not remember what happened the last time? Do you know how many times I had to wash those sheets?”
“I told you to buy new ones,” he said absently. She could tell he was looking at some kind of list: he had the annoying habit of clicking the down arrow instead of scrolling like a fully functioning adult. “You were the one who insisted they were salvageable.”
She plunged forward. “Vampires are picky.”
“You can’t fault someone for having a diet.”
“And it’s awkward. They go all mind-meldy with whoever they bite.”
“Is that a technical term?”
“Every vampire I’ve ever met has been broody.”
“You like broody.”
“It doesn’t matter what I like,” she said hastily. She wasn’t ashamed of her taste in men; she just wasn’t proud. “I’m only warning you that I foresee myself coming down with a contagious illness the day you decide to shoot. And for the love of god, use the scroll wheel.”
The clicking stopped. His eyes broke away from the screen. “The what?”
“Goodbye, Poe.” She turned to leave.
“Wait!”
She almost didn’t pause, but she was far too curious not to hear his counter-offer. The key to winning with Poe was disinterest. Too eager and he’d have her disinfecting dildos. If she could pretend to be unimpressed, he’d probably hand her a check. “Yes?”
“You remember the elfin maiden shoot?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You mean the time I had to peg Kaydel’s cousin because your brawny warrior forgot to check in with his probation officer?”
Poe clapped once, delighted. “That’s the one! You were a star.”
“You told Rose to shoot from the waist down. My ass was the star. Hold on.” There was something suspicious about Poe’s eyes. They radiated a concerning amount of innocence. “You’re manipulating me. You want something.”
Even caught, Poe didn’t have the decency to look ashamed. “Here’s the thing.”
“I knew it.”
“As you mentioned, vampires have a very particular palate.”
“Poe,” she warned.
“I’ve got a guy that’s willing to sign a contract. An old buddy of mine, actually. There’s just one minor hold-up.”
Rey raised a hand, palm facing forward. “If you’re about to say that I should fuck a vampire because he’s never heard of acting, you should save your breath.”
Naturally, Poe was undeterred. “He’s only open to biting someone with a very specific blood type. And as the person in charge of maintaining our records base—” so that’s why he’d been scrolling, “—you’re aware we keep everyone’s lab report on file. Including yours.”
Rey cursed. Getting tested was mandatory in the industry. As someone who intended on spending her time behind sets and not on them, Rey hadn’t needed a clean bill of health, but she wanted to keep her options open. Occasionally it had come in handy. She liked her body, she liked sex, she was one hundred percent aware of just how unglamorous porn could be, and she was—above all—broke. She’d stepped in on various shoots in the past. Never in any long-term capacity and never as a star, but often enough that Poe’s idea didn’t lack historical precedent.
“…done this before, so I think it’s safe to expect profit. And I’m only thinking one bite. Maybe two. Just enough to sell it. Then everyone walks away happy.”
She dug the tips of her fingers into her temple and closed her eyes. The longer she looked at Poe’s face, the more tempted she felt to punch it. “You know how you always bring in radishes on Monday and how they’re always gone by Friday?”
“Yeah?”
“You know who makes them disappear? Me. I hate radishes. I’d rather soak a papercut in salt water. But I eat them anyway because I’m a grown-ass woman and food is food.” She opened her eyes again, suddenly weary. “Whoever this vampire is, he can pretend to enjoy someone else’s blood. Give him a bucket so he can spit it out. Or better yet, have him flash his teeth for the camera and film with some creative blocking. Pour a gallon of dyed corn syrup on her neck and call it a day.”
He was already shaking his head. “People aren’t that stupid. They’d never buy it.”
“My grocery store only recently started leaving their Tide Pods unlocked. People are absolutely that stupid.”
“Not with porn, they’re not. Half the appeal is the bite itself. We’d catch hell if we tried to fake it. Not to mention….” He made a little stabby motion with two of his fingers, a clear you know what I mean? that she returned with a frown. He let his hands fall. “Wait. You’ve fucked a vampire before, right?”
No. “Of course.”
Poe slowly rose from his seat. He walked around the desk until he could lean back against the front. A lawyer prepped for cross-examination. “Then you know how it works.”
“Absolutely,” she said, perhaps a bit too loudly.
His head cocked slightly to the right. “How blood and sex go hand in hand? They can’t help but bite. It’s in their nature.”
“Who says they have to bite a person?”
“Uh, biology? Last I checked, pillows don’t have veins.”
Unhelpfully true. Before he could ask anything else, she dodged. “Who is this guy, anyway? If he’s this demanding now, aren’t you worried about what will happen when he signs? He could be a raging asshole.”
“He is a raging asshole.” Poe almost said it fondly. “And I’m not sure demanding is the right word. You didn’t bat an eye when the merman demanded his ionized water and kelp. Or when the dyrad insisted she fuck on a specific strain of Kentucky bluegrass. The vampire only asked for one thing.”
“Me!”
“Not you, specifically. Just your blood.”
“Same difference,” she mumbled.
“Except not really. Look,” he stepped toward her, settling one hand on each of her shoulders. “You don’t have to say yes. I could tell you were lying, before. Fucking a vampire is…” He seemed to waffle between twenty different words, “an experience. And it’s not for everyone. But speaking as someone who has? I’d do it again for free.”
That wasn’t saying much. Not from a man who’d fucked a rusalka, almost drowned, and woke up in a hospital only to call it a “thoroughly repeatable joy-ride.”
While she’d dealt with the aftermath, she hadn’t actually seen the last vampire in action. She’d watched porn of her own, though, and tried to remember what she’d heard. The biting wasn’t as intimidating as the connection that bloomed afterward—some diluted version of ancient vampire magic that made it easier for them to have a second helping. A temporary thing, but widely different from person to person. Impossible to truly anticipate.
On the other hand, she was endlessly curious. She hadn’t been fucked in half a year. And hadn’t Poe mentioned something about broodiness? Her sad, sad weakness?
What the hell.
“I won’t do it for free,” she said firmly.
Poe gave a cheerful hoot of triumph. “As you shouldn’t. Now come sit down. Let’s talk numbers.”
--
Rey trudged into her apartment ten hours later, thoroughly exhausted. She’d made bank on her last Lyft ride of the evening, but ended up on the opposite side of the city. Halfway back, her phone rang.
It was Poe. His picky vampire wanted to sign sooner rather than later, and in a rare moment of foresight, Poe asked if she’d be willing to meet tomorrow to hash out a plan for their shoot. Rey didn’t have a contract of any kind, so rules had to be established. Boundaries delineated. After, they’d hash out the bones of the scene—where they’d start, which positions and angles might work best, a general mood.
“The market’s saturated with hardcore,” he’d said, his voice tinny on her shitty Bluetooth. “How do you feel about romantic? Something softer. We could use the same set from the pixie shoot. I swear to god I had the blanket dry cleaned.”
“The one that shed all over my car?” She peeked in the rearview mirror, half-expecting to see tufts of glittery white. It had taken her ages to get it all out. “I don’t know. I guess I’m open. You think your vampire’s going to go for that?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
She shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see. “White sheets, white blankets, fake white fur. Feels a little antithetical, given the usual vampire aesthetic. He’s probably expecting far more black.”
“Nah,” Poe said, brimming with certainty, “Vampires dig white. Kind of a power trip for them, seeing the blood.”
“Right,” she said faintly.
“The cameras wouldn’t pick it up, either. The viewers go wild for that shit.” He paused. “Hey. What about auctioning off the sheets once the video goes live? Too medieval?”
She cringed. “Too fucked up. On multiple levels. You are not selling my post-fuck bloody sheet like it’s abstract art.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Speaking of art, do you remember what Rose wanted for her birthday? And should we plan something? By that I mean: should you plan something?”
Rey sighed, and the conversation officially took a more familiar path.
Home now, she was tempted to flop into bed. She’d finished her homework during her shift at the gym. In between Shipt deliveries she’d managed to stock her own fridge and pick up the reinforced headboard Poe had sent to the fabricator. A light jog had happened at some point. She must have remembered to eat, too: there was a thick stain of yogurt smeared directly between her breasts. So lovely.
Sleep felt imperative, but not as imperative as research. They weren’t actually filming tomorrow, but Rey wanted to have informed opinions. She knew next to nothing about vampire sex.
She rescued her laptop from the couch.
Google was largely unhelpful. All of her searches (“vampire sex rules” and “vampire dos and don’ts” and one very self-indulgent “average vampire cock size big?”) linked her to dated top ten lists written by anyone other than an actual vampire.
Twenty minutes of frustrated scrolling eventually led her to a supernatural dating forum. The website was horribly aged, but still active. Questions were tagged, which meant that it was easy to narrow down her search. Vampire, she clicked, and Sex.
Eleven hundred entries. Very respectable. Feeling encouraged, she scanned the first page.
>>about to have my first period since we started dating. vamp boyfriend says he’s excited to try oral, but like…what’s the mindset? is he eating me out? or just eating?
>>Curious about the effect of diet on blood flavor. She swears she can’t tell a difference, but she almost puked mid-thrust the night I ate curry.
>>I don’t even want to type this but…….dick biting?
>>Never knew a vampire before my bf. He’s the absolute sweetest but totally struggles to tell me what he likes in bed. Where should I start?? I learned the hard way about ncb… :(
Rey frowned at her screen. Ncb? She quickly opened up a new tab and reloaded the same website. Thankfully, someone was once just as clueless.
>>Totally new to the site. Great tips so far, thx! But what’s ncb?
>> >>glad you’re here. yeah…we should prob make a dictionary at some point. but it’s non-corporal biting—when your vamp’s aroused but bites something other than you. not recommended.
Rey scanned the rest of the response, feeling mildly alarmed.
Simply put and utterly obvious: vampires had fangs for a reason. Water was wet; sometimes lube just wasn’t enough; and vampires bit their partners during sex. Not biting invited a whole host of problems. Pain seemed to be the most prevalent. Anger. The closer they were to biting, the louder their instincts roared. Living in the modern world had done a lot to teach them restraint (Rey couldn’t remember the last recorded attack) but evidently vampires were never closer to being vampires than when they fucked.
She kept reading.
If they knew what they were doing, biting ranged from painless to pleasurable. Blood-sucking could be as casual and impersonal as shaking a hand to deeply intimate. The experience itself depended on quite a bit: the vampire’s mood, how recently they’d fed, the level of attraction, body chemistry, how comfortable the blood donor was with being bitten in the first place, and—for reasons Rey did not fully understand—ambient lighting.
One of the few things she already knew was that biting initiated a temporary two-way bond. Additional research made it frustratingly clear that there was a wide variety of variation. Some reported a keener sense of their partner’s emotions; some said it was nothing more than an annoying, shared thirst.
Rey stopped herself from worrying. There was nothing for it: the biting had to happen. That the bond existed was unfortunate, but she couldn’t find a single testimonial that claimed it lasted for more than a few hours. The only exception was couples. The more a vampire bit a particular individual, the harder it was to scrub away the connection.
At least she didn’t have that to worry about—even if a porn set wasn’t the unsexist place to meet someone, Rey didn’t fancy the idea of dating a vampire. One werewolf in undergrad had been enough for her to swear off supernaturals entirely.
Either widely idolized or feared by the general public, most of them had glaring personality defects. Narcissism ran rampant. Arrogance. As a whole, they tended to be a possessive lot—hoarding fame or fortune, and jealously guarding their mates. Chances were that her vampire would only be more of the same.
There was just one last thing she needed to do.
Opening up an incognito window, she found some porn.
She picked Poe’s site, mainly because she didn’t have to pay for an account. They’d shot a few vampire scenes in the past. She clicked on the one titled Carlos and Amanda.
There wasn’t a script. No specific lines to say or marks to hit. The set and costumes were incredibly over the top (Rey decided she would sue Poe if he tried to make her suck cock on bedazzled kneepads), but the couple had chemistry and Finn had done an excellent editing job. Even though Rey knew they’d stopped dozens of times for close-ups and adjustments, the finished product looked smooth.
It started with kissing: Amanda nipping at Carlos’ neck, the barest hint of fang scratching his skin. His moans were a bit too forced at the start—only noticeable because there was a marked change as soon as she grabbed his cock.
Rey skipped through the rest of the heavy petting and the endless rounds of oral. There was something in particular she wanted to see.
Amanda’s fangs had grown too long to keep behind her lips. She’d progressed to nipping, Rose zooming in on the indented-but-not-broken skin as Carlos whined about needing to come. That, apparently, was Amanda’s cue to turn his head, open wide, and bite.
The effect was instantaneous: Carlos’ unimpressive moans ratcheted up to a bold scream.
Rey felt it. Her cunt throbbed in sympathy and desire.
Us, her brain bleated, That’s us, that’s going to be us, we’re going to be bitten, that’s going to be us. Us.
She lost her focus. Amanda painted a pretty red picture on Carlos’ thighs and Rey let her laptop slide to the floor because what the fuck had she done.