DISEASE TRANSFUSION
VALERIA GARZA X FEM!READER, 10.5K
TAGS - Age Gap, Dubious Consent, Non-Negotiated Dom/Sub, Non-Negotiated Pet Play, Overstimulation, Gore, Explicit Sexual Content, Scissoring, Minor Character Death
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SUMMARY - “That was me, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” you say, flushing with shame.
She hums, contemplative, lifting one hand to smooth some hair out of your face. “Well, what do we say?” she prompts, leaning toward you.
“I’m sorry,” you say, after a moment, heart ticking up. Her hand still on your waist squeezes, as if to catch it before it runs off.
“Good girl,” she says, cupping your cheek in her cold hand, thumb on your bottom lip before she pulls back and steps into your father’s office.
//
Or: the one where your father invites a guest over for business but she has a strange fascination with you. CARMILLA!AU
read on ao3 here
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Even the flies are dying in the thick summer heat this year. It’s clogging up your lungs, waking you up in the night, sweat slicking every movement.
It’s the type of heat that you think that you’ve lived in your whole life, fogging up your mind, dragging your limbs down.
Valeria is a rush of cold water, doused over your head and you blink awake for the first time, wide eyed and shaking like a new born lamb.
She arrives on a Tuesday, late into the evening. Her husband - now deceased - had some kind of business with your father that she has inherited and must now sort. The details are lost on you, irrelevant with the knowledge that there will be another woman in your home.
Half-cooked daydreams of linking arms with another young girl, braiding each other’s hair. You imagine that she will have all of the same interests as you, and there won’t be any gaps of conversation, not when it can be filled with the sounds of both of you laughing or whispering.
You and your father stand outside, waiting to receive Lady Valeria. Your father supports your arm. It’s hot, but you could still take a chill like it was easy. A servant waits just behind you, ready to rush you back to bed if you have another dizzy spell.
The carriage rumbles up the path, a dark black thing pulled by horses that you can already see huffing.
“Has she travelled far?” you ask, but your father shushes you, giving you a vague pat on the back of your hand.
Your palm is crushed in the curve of his elbow, but you don’t say anything further. There have been a few times that you’ve gone down and only snapped away from the ground by the grip that your father has on you.
Your father wants the image of a dutiful daughter beside her father when he receives his visitor, so you know what to do. You ignore the pinch of an oncoming headache as it needles your temple, holding yourself still and quiet beside your father.
The carriage finally reaches you both, kicking up dirt and muck.
A woman steps out of the carriage and daydreams of a girl who will giggle with you at dinner flee your head.
She’s beautiful, in the way that you imagine a man would want his bride to look. Coy eyes peer out from beneath a dark veil. She’s older than you, most likely your father’s age, but her hair is still dark under her bonnet. Your father gets a cursory glance, but she lingers on you as a slow smile stretches across her face.
“Apologies, for the late hour,” she drawls. You feel your father bristle beside you. Her tone is hard to place. The words are correct, but she speaks like a cat with a mouse in its paw.
Your father waves her apologies away, ever the diplomat and guides her inside. A servant takes your arm in his place and helps you back into the house.
Valeria looks over her shoulder, and you see one of her eyes beyond the veil. Dark and sharp, honed in on you. She gives you a conspiratorial smile, before she turns back to your father.
You aren’t sure what to do with it, bowing your head and stepping lightly up the steps into the foyer.
The two of them disappear into the sitting room for a drink before bed but you are guided past to head up to your room.
Frozen in time, you peak into the doorway as you walk past. Your father’s strong back as he walks towards the table. And Lady Valeria, looking right back at you as if she knew that you were watching.
You keep walking and the sitting room drops out of sight, but you feel her gaze chase you up into your room.
-
Valeria sets herself up in your home like a spider in the corner of your room. You go downstairs for breakfast and startle at the sight of another person at the table.
Your mother has been gone for years, breakfast is usually spent quietly as your father reads the newspaper and you lightly sip some tea.
Early morning sun usually warms the space, beating on the back of your neck to chase away any of the chill that lingers at night.
This morning, the curtains are drawn sharply over all the windows and the candles are lit earlier than usual. You blink, wondering if you’ve slept in, all the way to dinner.
“Good morning,” Valeria greets, standing up and gliding over to you. The veil is gone, giving you complete access to her face. Her eyes crease at the corner, her lips still painted that same shade of red they were yesterday.
“Good morning,” you respond, able to remember your manners at least. You don’t think you’ve seen anyone as beautiful as her before, unsure what to do with yourself now in the face of it.
She reaches over and clasps your hand in her own, guiding you over to the table. “I was saying to your father that I’m grateful to you for opening your home to me,” she says, her mouth twisting with a smile.
“Of course, whatever you need,” you say, eyes darting toward your father who nods.
“So kind,” Valeria muses, her thumb on the back of your hand. Her skin is dark but colder than you think it should be. You could outline the shape of her thumb without looking given how distinct the cold is from your own skin. She smooths it over and you feel it, as sharp as a smear of acrylic paint.
You take a seat and she sits next to you. She isn’t meant to, the rare guests that you’ve had are meant to sit next to your father, across from you. You glance over at your father, his mouth set in disapproval but he stays quiet. “If there is anything I can do to help you settle in, please let me know. We rarely get visitors out here,” you tell her, tucking your skirts under your legs.
Your hand is still clasped in her own but she lets go when your fingers flex nervously. “It was the same in my estate. I think my husband brought in a visitor once every few years if we were lucky,” she replies, giving you a smile when you giggle.
You cannot gauge what age she is meant to be. She’s older than you, and you had thought her close ages with your father outside, but under the flick of candlelight, and when she smiles, she transforms into someone younger.
Her and your father take their leave after breakfast. “Is there anything I could help with?” you ask, placing your fork down.
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” your father tells you, patting your hand as he stands.
You hunch your shoulders before you force them back, refusing to cause a scene in front of a guest. You turn and catch Valeria watching you with keen eyes as your father leads the way out of the room.
She follows and you’re left in the dining room, alone. Valeria’s plate sits, full, next to you. Perfect triangles of toast, jam on the side. The knife, freshly cleaned and untouched.
You take the toast and bite into it, leave it on your plate and cover it with a napkin. Each crumb is like grit in your gums and you feel it even after you wash your mouth out later.
-
A servant is found dead in the woods next to your home. A young man, someone who worked in the gardens. You barely knew him, but you feel your vision swim when you hear the news.
You almost go down, your father banging his knee against his desk when you stumble, but it’s Lady Valeria who catches you. Your arm yanks, caught in her grasp. There’s an inane moment where you feel like a fish caught in a reel, your father’s office turned liquid around you while you try to steady yourself.
“I’ve got you, there we go,” Valeria murmurs, pulling you back up to your feet.
Your father rounds the desk, holding up the back of your shoulders. You can barely see, vision thick with tears, but you feel Valeria’s grip dig into your arms when your father tugs you closer to him. Fingernails into skin, past it and into flesh where no one has touched you before.
Then - gone, and your father is holding you. “There we go, let’s get you to bed,” he murmurs and you’re guided away and up the stairs. Rag doll, your feet useless and catching on each of the steps.
“I don’t understand, what happened?” you try to ask, but your father just shushes you and lays you down. You try to cling to him but he shushes you again, making your cling to yourself instead.
“She’s very sensitive,” you hear him murmur and you curl up on your side. The door shuts and you’re left alone, staring at a spot along the side of your wall.
The door cracks open but you don’t look at him.
A pressure on the bed, dipping it behind the curve of your knee. A cold hand on your hip and you stiffen up. Valeria clucks her tongue at you, leaning over you to peer down at your face. “What has made my girl so upset, huh?” she asks, bracing her other hand on the bed, caging you in.
You blink, unsure what to address first. “Someone died, that’s horrible,” you say, confused.
Her hand slides up your waist, smoothing down the wrinkles of your gown. “And why does that upset you so much?” she asks, thumb along the seam of your gown.
She sounds genuinely curious, and when you turn your head to look at her, there’s none of the mocking look she usually has. Her eyes peer down at you, wider than you’ve seen them. “His life has been cut short?” you reply, trying to match her genuine question, but unsure how to explain why death is upsetting.
She doesn’t look as if she has heard your response. Her hand comes up to your arm, thumbing at the flesh there. Pointer finger on the soft skin beneath your upper arm. Holding the thud of your pulse there. “All that caring, no wonder you’re so poorly,” she coos, leaning down and pressing a kiss to your forehead. She lingers, lips dragging. You inhale shakily, level with the hollow of her throat. “Such a sweet girl.”
You don’t know what to say, open your mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Valeria pulls back, just enough to look you in the eye, your face level with her own. She raises a perfect brow, but you flounder, closing your mouth and swallowing harshly.
Her hand comes up, cupping your cheek. You flinch a little at the touch but you’re caught in the web of her fingers. She smiles at your skittishness. “Your father said you were sensitive,” she muses, eyes flicking between your own. “And you are, aren’t you, cielo?”
You don’t want to agree, even though you know that you are. It feels like a failing when your father says it, but it sounds sweet coming out of Valeria’s mouth. You nod, despite yourself.
She leans in and presses a kiss to your lips, pulling back before you can register it. It feels wrong but you don’t know why.
“Why don’t you rest for the day, alright? I’ll get someone to bring up some dinner for you later,” she tells you, and you find yourself nodding again, mindless until she’s up and away.
The heavy heat sweeps in after she leaves, clogging up your pores and leaving you listless. The curtains are drawn over your window even though they were open this morning, but you don’t have to strength to get up to get the sun on your skin.
Your lips tingle, a chill lingering. You lick them and it tastes like cold metal.
-
Your father is vague about what it is he and Valeria need to sort. “There’s some issue of the land lines,” he tells you, frowning over a piece of paper in his office.
You shuffle your feet and stop because you know he hates when you do that. A terrible habit from when you were a girl and would sit in this office with him for hours. Precious little else for a child to spend their time when everyone is too hold to play with. “How is it being sorted then?” you ask.
Your father looks at you, blinking in confusion in the same way that you do. “That’s what we’re discussing,” he says, a tick in his brow. “I thought you would appreciate the companionship.”
You do, or you think you do. You’re not sure how to feel. Everything has muddied since Valeria has arrived. It’s only been a week, but that’s what your father had said she would be here for, and the time has come and went, unmarked.
You say this to him but he just blinks, heavier, as if he’s just woken up. “That was an estimate,” he sighs, rubbing a thumb along his eyes before replacing his glasses. “I’m sure it will be sorted soon, but these things are complicated.”
It doesn’t seem as if it is. His room is dark, no light peering in through the windows. The candlelight needles at your head, so you excuse yourself rather than sit in that stuffy room.
You step out of his office and into Valeria. She catches you, hands firm along your waist. “Ah, mi vida,” she says, thumbs along your ribcage. Her eyes are dark, you almost cannot tell where her pupils are.
“That was me, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” you say, flushing with shame.
She hums, contemplative, lifting one hand to smooth some hair out of your face. “Well, what do we say?” she prompts, leaning toward you.
“I’m sorry,” you say, after a moment, heart ticking up. Her hand still on your waist squeezes, as if to catch it before it runs off.
“Good girl,” she says, cupping your cheek in her cold hand, thumb on your bottom lip before she pulls back and steps into your father’s office.
If your father saw anything, he doesn’t remark on it. Valeria shuts the door behind her with a resounding thunk, closing you out in the dark hall.
-
You find a mouse, dead on its back on the path back up to your house.
You frown, staring down at its small paws, stuck up in the air, small snout still. There isn’t any physical damage, no blood. You’d have thought it was sleeping, curled up to face the sun.
Another one of God’s creatures, you scoop it up in your glove and place it in a flowerbed, nestled between the roots of bluebells.
Valeria watches you from the dining room window as you walk back into the house.
You step back inside, exhaling roughly. It’s still so hot, even later into the evening as it is now. The heat leaves its mark, lingering in the stone slabs, hot even through the soles of your shoes.
“Should you be walking outside alone?” Valeria asks, making you jump. She smiles when you turn to look at her, a flash of teeth as she bites her bottom lip. She always has red lipstick on and you never know how she doesn’t stain her teeth with it.
“It’s alright, it’s close enough that if anything should happen, I won’t be far,” you say, embarrassed. This is like the woman that your father wanted for a daughter. Capable, assured. Able to walk for more than a few metres without a dizzy spell. You feel like that mouse in the pathway in comparison. So fragile, so easily squashed.
Valeria hums in response. “Still, I worry. How about you let me know and we can walk together, yes?” she offers, her head tilting. Her hands reach up, smoothing the collar of your dress down. It’s an older gown, perhaps fashionable over a decade ago, but Valeria has a fascination with it.
Her hand on your chest, above your breast and into the bone. Your heart flutters, unsteady and half-working as it always is. “Yes, that would be nice,” you reply, trying to smile, but painfully aware of how wide-eyed you must look.
A finger tucks into the collar of your dress, nail dragging across your skin. Just on the edge of where the flesh turns from skin to breast. An invisible line, but one you feel keenly as her nail rasps over it as if it doesn’t matter. “You are a delicate creature,” she muses, demeaning and strangely flattering at once with the way she says it.
You wonder how she was with her husband. Your father has raised you with the understanding that you will one day marry a man and he will run the estate while you mind your children. Valeria doesn’t seem like the type of woman to have listened to any man, and she smiles, amused, as if she can read your thoughts.
She releases you, her hand out of your dress. The fine chill that had been spreading dissipates, almost knocking you over with its abruptness. “I have to speak with your father, but don’t go out without me, hmm?” she asks, and you almost knock your head off with how fast you nod.
She sweeps away, the dark cotton of her dress swishing around her ankles. You swallow harshly, your throat rough. You step out into the hall and when you wander to the sitting room, you don’t see anyone else.
-
The heat breaks finally, a hard rain that batters against the roof and the windows, chasing away any memory of warmth.
You sit in the library and watch the rain wash away summer. Your father had been listless at breakfast, the corner of his paper in his tea and he hadn’t noticed until you had pointed out.
He’d stared unblinking at it for a few moments until Valeria had gestured for a servant to come over and help him up. “Maybe a lie down for a few minutes would help, your colour isn’t very good,” she’d said, squinting at his face.
Sitting in the library, you worry, You’ve never seen your father sick your whole life, and wonder what it could mean.
“You know, I get so sad to see you not smiling, pretty girl,” Valeria says from the doorway, making you jump.
“Sorry, I was lost in a dream there,” you say, trying to give her a smile.
“A sad one, by the looks of it,” Valeria muses, joining you at the other armchair.
“Yes, I’m just a bit worried about my father,” you admit, watching her expression. It doesn’t move, frozen perfection, looking back at you with a curious smirk.
“You love him,” she says, and it sounds blank, like she has no familiarity with what she is saying.
“Yes, he’s my father,” you answer, confused.
She tilts her head, and you get a queer sensation as if you are a bug in her palm. “Even though he disregards you?” she asks. It’s pure curiosity, but you take it like a slap to the face.
“He doesn’t - that’s not,” you splutter, staring at her in disbelief.
She blinks back at you, face placid. “He doesn’t include you in any of our conversations, even though you are his heir and old enough. Is that not odd?”
You shut your mouth with a click, chewing on your words. Her words sear, and her still face as she regards you is the final nail in the coffin for your anger. “Excuse me,” you say, voice barely on this side of polite, standing up. She is your elder, and a guest, you cannot argue with her and act like a schoolgirl.
She doesn’t move, although you see her hand twitch on the arm of her chair. You leave and though she doesn’t follow, you get the queer feeling that she knows every step you take before your foot connects with the floor.
A bug in her hand, scuttled off and in the garden, but she’s planted each pot and she knows the one you call home.
-
You wake up in the throes of a nightmare one night and there’s a knock on your door.
Heart pounding, you stumble up and open the door enough to peak your head out.
Valeria stands in the hallway, face flickering in the candlelight that she has brought with her. “Are you alright, I could hear you screaming?” she asks, pushing a hand on the door until you open it wider.
“I was?” you ask, rubbing your forehead to force back a headache starting to force its way forward.
She steps toward you, the chill of her hand on your shoulder as she enters your space. Closer than anyone who isn’t family should be, her chest brushing your own before she shuts the door behind her back. “Yes, has something happened?” She asks, her hand lifting to push your hair out of your face. A sweeping chill, cooling the sweat on your face.
“It was just a nightmare, I don’t even remember it now,” you admit, leaning into the cool of her palm before you catch yourself. “I’m sorry for waking you.”
“Sweet girl,” she coos, setting her candle on your dresser. “Nothing to apologise for at all. As long as you’re alright.”
You nod, fervently. “I am, I swear,” you promise, trying to give her a smile.
“Still, maybe I should stay, make sure you sleep through the night,” she offers, but there’s no lilt in her voice to signify a question. Her hair is tucked behind her ears, down for once, a sight that you feel like you shouldn’t be seeing.
“Oh, you don’t have to do all that, I’ll be fine,” you stammer, watching as she turns towards your bed and pulls the sheet down.
“Nonsense, it’s not an issue,” she replies, and that seems to settle the matter.
You aren’t left much choice but to go along, letting her into your bed as you lie stiffly next to her.
The anger of the day before has dissipated since you haven’t seen her. Besides, she isn’t wrong. Your father thinks you’re too weak, too fragile to truly regard you as equal to the task of managing the estate. With no marriage prospects, you suspect that you are looking down the barrel of the rest of your life, following your father around as he manages everything, perhaps even from beyond the grave.
She sighs as if you’ve irritated her, and you feel like a small, shameful thing. “Mi vida, surely that is not how you sleep, huh?” she asks, kissing her teeth when you shake your head but make no other movement to readjust yourself.
She kisses her teeth again and reaches over to roll you onto her side facing her. These are the moments that you had daydreamed about, curling up like girls under the same sheet and whispering to each other into the little hours of the night.
There isn’t anything innocent about this, it’s stepped shy of intimacy and into danger. Like you’ve placed your hand on a hot stove and your body doesn’t know to pull it back yet. “You sleep with your eyes open?” she asks, and laughs, rough and deep when you immediately squeeze them shut.
You don’t know how you’re able to fall asleep, but it happens at one point. Her nail drags up and down your inner arm that lies in the space between you. When you dream, you dream of her hands as she outlines you on an autopsy table. You’re made up of a loose heart, broken ribs and the rest of your organs are on a tray next to you, but when she runs her hands along each part, you take shape and breathe a hacking cough into life.
You wake up and she’s gone, sitting at the table for breakfast as if nothing had changed.
She comes over in the middle of the night now, knocking on your door just before you sleep.
“Just checking that you are sleeping well, cariño,” she says, stepping into your bedroom. “Do you want me to stay with you?”
You always say no, but she ends up in your bed anyway, watching you until you fall asleep.
These days, she doesn’t bother with the pretence of going to her own room, just walks with you into your own.
“I don’t know if father would want us to,” you start, one night, shuffling uncertainly in your nightgown.
Valeria is taking her hair down in front of your mirror, her eyes cutting over to you with a raised eyebrow. “What is the issue?” she asks, placing a hairpin down with a faint clink. “We’re like sisters sharing a bed, no?”
You aren’t overly familiar with siblings, but you have read books where girls share a bed and no one bats an eye. But, there’s that tone of Valeria’s again, teasing as if she means the opposite. “We’re not sisters though,” you point out, voice weak as you’re afraid to offend her.
She lets her hair down, shorter than it seems when it’s up, a silky dark wave down her back. “You’re right, we’re not,” she grins, her teeth sharper than you remember them being. You shiver, and turn away, embarrassed for some reason.
Her nightgown is black, silky and rippling with every move she takes around your bedroom. You feel dressed for a different occasion, standing in your pale cotton shift.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” she amends, and you can see the flash of her tongue behind her teeth as she reaches you, taking your shoulders in her hands. She’s cold still, hands carrying a chill that worms into your skin.
“Yes,” you say, uncertainly. “I’ve never had a friend like you before,” you add, confessional.
“I’d certainly hope not, cariño,” she tells you, rounding your shoulders to clasp your upper arms. Like she was moulding you, shaping you out how she wanted. Loose heart and broken ribs.
Everything is exactly how it was last night and the night before when she stayed here. You lay on your side, watching as she pushes her hair back behind her shoulders. “Your hair is lovely,” you say.
You’re rewarded with a smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Sweet girl,” she responds, leaning down and giving you a kiss.
Nothing overly strange, she’s kissed you enough that you don’t flinch at the brush of her mouth on your own. But this time she lingers and you freeze, inhaling sharply as she leans closer.
Pressure, then her lips part and she kisses you again, her hand framing your jaw to hold you in place. You stay still, like a scruffed kitten.
Intimacy is like a bubble around you until her tongue touches your bottom lip. Then, intimacy is a shackle, forcing you back into the bed, flat on your back. Like some deep buried animal instinct, your eyes shoot open as you’re pressed down with your vulnerable belly up. “What -?” you start, tucking your chin to look up at her, bewildered.
“Have you never been kissed before?” she asks, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do. She doesn’t have a hair out of place, but you feel dragged up, flushed and messy.
You have been kissed, by her no less, but never like this. “Well, yes, but -”
“Then there’s not an issue, right? You worry so much, sweet girl, just relax, yes?” she says, voice firm in that way that you know will disappoint her if you don’t obey.
Her mouth drops back on to your own and her lips part your own. Her tongue dips into your mouth and brushes along your own and you swallow a strangled noise that she seems to try and chase.
This is beyond innocent, there’s nothing like that in any of the stories that you’ve read. Just as you try to gather the strength to pull back and try to push her back, she tilts her head with a sigh that sends a bolt of heat through you.
You feel hot, burning up and wild. She seems to know if the way that her mouth curls against you is any indication. Her nails drag over your scalp and you hiccup a sound, your tongue brushing against her own.
There’s a winding movement and you feel yourself lulled into it. Her tongue, slippery against your own, licking against your own, pulling away but coming back again. You reciprocate, thighs flexing at the wet sound of your mouths as they separate again and again. She always comes back, something needy and wanting opening its eye deep inside you.
She pulls back and you lean up, chasing her mouth. She laughs at you, and you’d be hurt if she didn’t give you another slick kiss to tide you over before she pushes you back again. “Such an eager puppy,” she croons, rubbing a thumb along your bottom lip, a spark of pain as you realise how swollen it’s gotten. “You look warm, do you feel well?”
“I don’t know,” you answer, truthfully, heaving in a deep breath just to sigh it out.
She tilts her head at you, eyes sharp and cutting. She brings her hands down and you jump when she cups your breasts. You start to fuss and she cuts you an annoyed look that has you settling down. You’re rewarded with a thumb on each of your nipples where they poke through the fabric.
You inhale shakily, the point of contact enough to fry your brain and leave you a mindless, panting thing.
“There’s a girl,” she coos down at you. She reaches a hand up to cup your face, her thumb on your bottom lip. “Now, are we going to be good?” she asks, her thumb slipping into your mouth and pressing down on your tongue.
Your eyes widen, looking up at her hovering over you. A slip of time, felt in the ripple after you saw her carriage coming up the path. Maybe you could shake your head and have it be done with, but you aren’t standing on the edge of a cliff anymore, you’re already off of it, smacked into the hard dirt and looking up at Valeria, dazed.
More importantly, in the faint candlelight and the quiet of the house, even though you know you shouldn’t, you find that whatever she wants to do is what you want to do.
You nod. She smiles and pulls her slick thumb out your mouth and leans back to smooth your nightdress up your thighs.
All bravado leaves you, your hands clenching in the sheets beside you.
Valeria pushes your skirts up to pool at your waist and pushes your knees apart. “Valeria, I don’t know if we should…” you start, thighs flexing as you try to close them, but her arms don’t even shift, keeping them apart effortlessly.
She says your name, sharp and quick, which has you cringing back down. It’s louder than she’s been with you, her voice lighting up the room for a second. “You’ve been so good up to this point, do you want to spoil this?” she asks you, and you look away, ashamed, the pinprick of tears in your eyes.
You stop trying to close your thighs and listen to her sigh to herself, her cold hands sliding up and pressing into the crease where your thigh meets your sex. “You are so jumpy,” she murmurs, almost to herself, spreading her hand around the tendon in your leg. “Now, be a good girl for me.”
There’s not a threat at the end of it, but you feel it implicitly as her nails drag up your sensitive skin.
She shifts down your bed, crouched between your legs to peer at your sex. It’s shameful, having someone look at you in such a way, but she seems endeared. Her hand comes up, and you can hear the wet sound as she spreads your folds. “Oh, mi vida, what a pretty pussy you have,” she murmurs, her wet thumb touching your hole and dragging the wetness there back up.
You jump as her thumb connects with your clit, trying not to buck her off. “S-Sorry,” you mutter, face so hot that you feel feverish.
Her other hand wraps around your leg and braces across your belly. Your apology mollifies her. “Sweet girl, you just need to be eased in, I’ve got you, don’t you worry.”
She lowers her head and you can barely believe what you’re seeing. Half of your view is blocked with the bundle of fabric around your waist, but you see the crown of her head lower until you feel her tongue on you.
You have half a mind to protest, biting down on your tongue hard to stop yourself from saying anything that may anger her in any way. All thoughts are exhaled sharply when she tongues your clit. “Oh Christ," is all you can manage, hips jolting but not getting anywhere.
You try to hold still, but your hips twitch, wriggling in her hold. She doesn’t seem to mind, her arm becoming a band over your hips, stone that is immovable. You’ve touched yourself in the night before, known that it was something dirty and you shouldn’t do it. This is something else. Valeria lets the flat of her tongue against you, easing up enough so you’re bucking against her for a moment before she stills you again, arm pressing you back down.
She ducks lower, her tongue dipping into your hole and your vision goes red. You squeeze your eyes shut, almost sobbing as she presses her tongue in as deep as she can get but one thumb rubs at your clit. Behind your eyelids is a spiderweb of your veins, burst apart and brought back together.
“Valeria, I can’t,” you cry, heels digging into your mattress.
She hums in response, and you feel it vibrate into you.
There’s a building of heat, the pressure point of fever, curling in a ball in your groin. She pulls her tongue out of you, taking your clit back into her mouth and sucks harshly.
The fever breaks, the snap of a band, and you slap a hand over your mouth to catch your shriek as you back bows.
She chases after each wave, relentless, until you’re panting to catch your breath.
She lets your clit go, giving it what feels like a sweet kiss before she laps up the wetness that you can feel gathered at your hole.
“You taste lovely, mi vida,” she tells you, lifting her head as she crawls up to meet you. She dips her head to slide her tongue against your own so you can share it. You’re boneless, at her mercy and she laughs, nudging her nose against yours. “Poor puppy,” she coos, degrading but you can barely twitch in response.
She tugs your night gown down and pulls you onto her chest. You throw your arm around her waist, settling down once she smooths your hair back and pets you.
“I’ll teach you, don’t you worry,” she murmurs, her hand lulling you to sleep. You have half a mind to ask what she means but you’re gone before you can find your voice.
The next night, she has you between her thighs as she instructs you to slide two fingers into her.
She’s pretty down there as well, her curls dark and soft beneath your palms.
She tells you to curl your fingers and she curses sharply when you do. “Good girl,” she murmurs, and something deep and rotten in you lights up.
-
Father doesn’t come down for dinner for a while, a fact that has you fidgeting. “How is he eating?” you ask, looking around the room, but no one will meet your eye.
“He’s having his meals brought up to him,” Valeria says, unfolding a napkin before she looks up at you. She kisses her teeth at your worried look over at the door. “You should let him be, mi vida, he needs his rest.”
“If I could just see him,” you say, looking at her pleadingly.
She sighs, resting her chin on her folded hands and regarding you. A thorough exam, the seconds stretch and elongate, turning terrible and long. “I’ll see if he’s up to it, but today he is too tired, alright?” You nod, agreeable and she smiles. “Good girl. Now, please eat, I don’t want you to get sick as well.”
You eat your dinner and the two of you head up the stairs. You glance over to the side of the house where your father will be, but Valeria steers you towards your room with a firm hand. Two paths, split on the stairway.
That night, Valeria has you suck on her breasts while she works herself over and she rewards you with her head between your thighs.
The next morning, she finds you waiting in the dining room, standing. “Is he up for visitors?” you ask, hopeful.
She looks at you, mouth twisting in a frown. “I’m sorry, cariño,” she says, catching you before you can turn away, your expression collapsing. “He’s a little worse today, he doesn’t want you seeing him like that.”
“Did he say that to you?” you ask, trying to swallow the shake in your voice.
“No, he told one of the servants not to allow any visitors, even I cannot get in,” she answers.
You lower your head, defeated. You don’t want to speak, know that you will cry if you do.
“You must eat, you cannot be poorly as well,” she says, an echo of the day before.
You let her steer you towards the table, where someone has already left some porridge.
You eat while she watches you, her eyes intent on you. You barely taste anything, only doing it so she will be pleased with you.
The two of you spend the day in the library, although she excuses herself in the middle of the day. You wander outside, not far, close enough that you wouldn’t even consider it a turn around the garden.
You feel as if there are less and less people around. Standing still in the opening of your home, you realise that mostly everything is deadly silent, no footfalls, or shuffling as people work.
You turn the corner to the stables, catching sight of another soul and smiling.
The stable-boy greets you, letting you look over the horses and feed them from your palm.
He’s a nice young man - you remember nurturing a small, childish infatuation with him that you haven’t thought of since.
The sun on your face is invigorating, the breeze cleansing in a fresh way that leaves you feeling renewed. It’s early Autumn now, and you had barely noticed the change in the weather, still warm, but chill enough that you would need a coat in the later hours.
A prickle on the back of your neck and you turn, catching sight of Valeria at one of the windows. She turns before you can catch sight of her expression, but you feel the drop in your stomach as if you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t.
You excuse yourself, heading back inside. The house is quiet but you can feel her irritation as if it is vibrating through the walls. The doors shut behind you and the sun is firmly closed out, dosing you back up on candlelight again.
You climb the stairs, your head lowered in the picture of a bashful, misbehaved pet.
You open the door to your room and find her standing in front of your mirror, re-applying her lipstick.
“Valeria -” you start but her hand cuts through the air to stop you and you halt, trembling.
“Go lie on the bed,” she tells you, voice waspish.
You do as she says, tucking your shaking hands under your back.
She finishes re-applying her lipstick and studies her own reflection for a moment before she turns to look at you. Although her face is still, you can see the fine crease of anger around her eyes, pinched.
She leans over you, knocking your head back roughly so your neck is arched back. “Is that what you want?” she asks, glaring down at you. “Some fumbling stale-boy?”
You whimper, horrified to find yourself titillated by the curl of disgust around her mouth. You did like the stable-boy, didn’t you? It had been innocent, a childish fancy. But, there’s something vicious in the way that Valeria says it, like it’s dirty and wrong.
Her hand slides under your skirts, sure and steady as it always is. A cold balm for your fever. You flinch as if struck when she cups your sex, thumb sliding down, skidding through slick. “Is this for me, or at the idea of him?” she asks, her voice genial enough but her eyes are sharp.
You’ve displeased her at some point, and you don’t know when. You reach for her wrist, fingers seeking comfort but only find cold and unfeeling flesh. She is stone, scowling down at you until you wither. “I’ve never thought of him like -” you start, squeaking when she slides two fingers into you, her other hand pushing your thighs apart to make room for her. “Like this, never, I swear, only you.”
A heavy pause, her gaze hard on your face. Then, like melting ice, she leans down and nudges her nose against you. A thumb rubs the peak of your sex, a spike of heat that shudders through you. The treat at the end of the rope. “I believe you, darling, you wouldn’t lie, would you?”
You shake your head so hard that your teeth rattle and you’re rewarded with a smile that she presses into the soft flesh under your chin.
She works you over until you come, thumb relentless until you’re shaking, then she stops leaning back to look down at you. “Take these off,” she tells you, tugging on your skirts.
With legs like jelly, you stand and fumble with the stays on your front, loosening them and yanking them off.
You toss everything behind you, all of your skirts and linens in a rumpled pile. You hesitate on your shift, but when you look over, Valeria is also undressing. Slower, folding her clothes over your foot-board, but her eyes keen on you even as she pulls out each stay. She’s using the finger that had just been in you, a fact that has you shuddering.
You toss your shift away as well and step back towards her. Even though you’ve seen her bare a few times now, the sight always gives you a dry mouth. Dark nipples, the curve of her belly and the dark curls beneath the crease of her thighs.
She places her hands on your hips, admiring you in return before she tugs you over until you’re flat on the bed again.
She drapes her leg over you, straddling you sideways and you shudder when she presses her sex to yours.
“You know,” she says, winding her hips and you whine as the slick grind between the two of you. “This isn’t the most effective way for us.” She grins when you start to frown, any words cut off when she grinds down on you and all you can feel is heat for a moment. “But it’s a little bit of fun, and you’ve been good, haven’t you?”
You nod, almost knocking your head off. “Yes, please, I have, I have.”
Her grin is fierce and she rolls onto her back and you feel flung up until you’re the one straddling her instead. “Then take what you need, pet,” she tells you, reaching a hand up to pinch your nipple and make you cry out.
Your movements are clumsy. You try to mimic the sultry grind that Valeria had, but you don’t know how successful you are. You lean down until you feel the bump of your clit against hers and drag them against each other.
You’re rewarded with her chest rising and exhaling out, slow and pleased.
There’s no effective word for your movements. You hump against her, desperate to feel good and to make her feel good in return. You’re a sick dog, mindless and huffing, dragging your hips up then down, again and again until there’s a pearl of heat in that you’re nursing.
Valeria’s breasts rock with the aggression behind your movements. She reaches up, cups both of them in her hands while she watches you. You wonder if this is doing anything for her, but one grind has her hissing out, eyes impossibly darker.
You curse, feel a sick hand as it works up your spine and holds you by the back of your neck. Fevered dog, you work for it, the pearl inside you getting shinier and shinier until it pulses.
“Oh, Valeria, can I, please, can I -?” you stutter, dragging your cunt up again and almost whiting out your vision with the strength it takes to hold back.
“Go on, you’ve earned it,” she coos, and with your eyes on her breasts as her wrist twists to pull on her nipple, you erupt.
Liquid heat pulses out of you and you ride it out, gasping and whining, almost sobbing as your cunt wrings you out for all you’re worth.
Finally, you stop, panting for breath, sweat in the dip of your back and there is a string of slick between you as you lift up.
“C’mere, lovely,” she tells you and you stretch up to bring your face closer to her own. “You were beautiful.” You glow, almost reaching down to kiss her but you’re stopped with her fingers on your chin. “Now, clean up the mess you made.”
Her legs spread. You nod, and lower yourself back down her body until you can kiss her cunt that’s covered in your come and her own wetness.
She sighs, stretching out on your sheets, watching you as you take her clit into her mouth. Her mouth opens with a sigh as you curl your tongue around it. Desperate to please, you set to work.
-
Everything spirals out of your control, a ball of yarn tumbling round and round and out of your palms. You rush after it, always too slow and fumbling to get it back to its original shape.
Your father stops coming down for dinner and you feel sick at the sight of his empty chair. Valeria smoothes her cool hands down your back, comforting and confronting all at once.
Your dinner is already on the table, but you didn’t see who lay it there. In fact, you haven’t seen anyone but Valeria in days. You try to jump up, wanting to see whoever has been bring your father his meals, but Valeria’s hands become restraints on your arms and you aren’t able to buck further than an inch away. “Please, cariño, don’t fuss,” she says, voice like iron until you still.
“Please, I don’t -” you start but she shushes you, grasping your hands in her own.
She snaps your name until you go quiet. Her jaw works, a physical effort to be patient with you. “I know you are worried, but you are worrying yourself sick as well. Settle down and eat your dinner,” she tells you, strained as she places your hands next to your plate.
“Please, is he dying? I have to see him please, I have to,” you sob, trying to grasp her hands back but she snaps them away from you, her chair screeching as she pushes it back.
“Enough!” she snaps and you do as you’re told, whimpering. You always have been a beaten dog, head on someone’s lap, looking up imploring and lasting yourself on scraps. “Perhaps I have been too soft on you, and you’ve forgotten how to behave like a lady. But, this type of behaviour is unseemly, you will not embarrass me as well.”
She sweeps away from the table, a swirl of dark cotton. She slams the dining room doors closed, and when you try to open them after her, they’re locked.
No one is in the room with you. You throw yourself at the door, crying yourself sick. “Valeria! Valeria, please come back, I’m sorry, please let me out,” you sob, ratting the doorknob over and over uselessly.
Nothing from the other side of the door. The servants that you have been raised with are all gone, the house may as well be empty and you are a sick girl haunting it.
Your father’s empty chair taunts you, dust along the back of it. You sit in it, looking down the length of the table.
You are a terrible heir, you hate the view.
You crawl into your own chair and stare down at the broth that has been made for you. Chunky vegetables float in it. You lift the spoon with a shaky hand and swallow a few mouthfuls, a few tears still running down your face.
You push the bowl away and lay your head in your arms, and stare at the crack in the table that has been there since you were little.
Time chases itself away until you imagine hours must have passed. Maybe you slept, or perhaps you are just lulled into a stupor, your tears drying on your face and making you feel like a husk of yourself.
Only now, do you realise that you don't even feel dizzy, even after exhausting yourself. Even upset, you're terribly alive.
The door creaks open, but you don’t even stir at the sound.
The click of heels until they reach you, then Valeria’s face appears as she bends down to look at you. You imagine that she must consider saying something, but you’re so listless, she decides it’s not worth it.
With a strength that surprises you even as you can’t express it, she reaches down and lifts you up.
A new born babe, you let her carry you up the stairs and back to your bedroom where she lays you down, smoothing your hair out of your face. “I know you are upset, cariño,” she tells you when your eyes focus on her. “But, I will not tolerate any more tantrums. You rest up and tomorrow you will be good, yes?”
Her nails dig into your hairline until you nod. Her thumb on the delicate skin beneath your eye, she leans down and gives you a sweet kiss on your forehead.
For the first time in weeks, you spend the night alone and you wake up in the morning and try to be normal.
You keep darting glances up the stairs to your father’s bedroom, but you eat when Valeria bids you to and answer her when she speaks.
You’re rewarded with your legs folded into your chest and Valeria between your thighs as she makes you come over and over again until you can’t bear it anymore.
You pass out and wake up to her sucking on your nipple, her thumb still on your clit, rotating in light circles.
You try to tell her that you can’t do it again but she drags her teeth on your nipple and you come again, liquid heat spraying out of you and soaking your lap.
You sleep like you’re dead through the night and you barely remember to worry about your father when you wake up to Valeria kissing your neck.
“You’re warmer than anyone I’ve ever known,” she murmurs, her hands cupping your breasts. “It’s maddening.”
You moan and she takes that as well, sucking your tongue into her mouth as she grinds down on your thigh.
You sleep through the day with her, both of you not bothering to get dressed. You dream of cutting your heart out and presenting it to her. With a hand under your skirts, you watch her take a bite out of it and you come when she kisses you and makes you drink your own blood.
-
Your desperation is glass and it finally breaks when Valeria leaves you alone one afternoon. You disobey Valeria and go up the stairs to your father’s room. There are no servants in the hallway, none in the kitchen, none in the stable.
No one to catch you and report back.
You knock on the door lightly, pressing your ear up against the wood. Silence from the other side.
You are a young girl again, leaning up and straining for the door handle. Peering through the key hole into the world of grown ups.
You are a woman grown now and you don’t have to strain yourself when you reach for the handle.
The door swings open, soundless and the room is darker than everywhere else in your home.
You can make out the faint line of a bed, a dresser, where the curtains are pulled over the window. The sun is a force outside, you can see it bearing down against the other side anyway, creating a slight glow.
The room is still silent, no breathing or signs of life.
“Father?” you ask, stepping inside. If he hears you, he doesn’t respond.
There’s a shape on the bed, and you creep towards it, freezing as it shifts. There is the rattle of an inhale, held then released again before stillness reinstates itself.
You feel tears in your eyes but you aren’t totally sure why yet. You reach the edge of the bed and peer down, eyes burning as they try to adjust as quickly as they can.
You know your father’s face, the only face that you know better than your own. You know every expression he’s ever made.
You don’t know this one.
His mouth is open, his eyes are blank and staring up at the ceiling. You hover your face over his, try to line up his eyeline, but he doesn’t even twitch.
Then - that rattled inhale, in through his mouth, held then released. Then he’s as still as a corpse.
It sounds painful, like he’s sick with something that you can’t understand, some foreign virus rending up him mute and still.
“Father?” you ask, reaching a hand up to his cheek. You try to hold him, but even the lightest pressure of your hand sends his head rocking to the side and with a sickening crunch, it rips.
You barely comprehend what you’re seeing, grateful for a moment for the dark. Then your mind catches up to your eyes, rationale catching up and an explanation is provided. Your father’s neck in front of you, the inside, with all of his veins and his throat. His head is still connected on side, but you can see the skin straining.
There’s a hunk of flesh missing, that’s what caused this, the start of a tear on his throat. There’s no blood, not like you would expect given his head is about to fall off of his shoulders.
That’s all you’re able to comprehend before you start shrieking, a rip of a sound up your throat and dragging out of your mouth.
You fall backwards, trying to scramble away and your heels get caught in your skirts and you’re tangled for a heart-stopping moment before you can get friction again.
You throw yourself up, slamming against the door, your hand smacking senselessly until you can grasp the door handle and wrench it open.
The hall is still empty but you’re still screaming, even as you end up in a pile on the floor.
The door is left open, but the bed is shrouded in darkness. You can picture the horror in there perfectly now, as if there is a candle in your mine to illuminate it.
You crawl away, screams petering off until you’re heaving, retching as your body tries to exhume everything that you’ve ever put in it.
You give up at the top of the stairs, clinging to the bannister. Sobbing without sound, tears hot and fevered on your face.
That’s how Valeria finds you, staring through the bannister, listless. She kisses her teeth, irritated.
“Stand up,” she tells you, but you can’t make your body obey her. There’s a growl of frustration, and her hands on your arms, yanking you up. “You are a silly girl,” she snaps at you, perfect face cracked with anger. You barely have it in you to respond, staring back at her, empty.
She drags you down the stairs and you barely have the wherewithal to stop yourself from falling down them. The doors to the dining room are open, and she drops you in the bottom chair, opposite your father’s chair.
The doors shut behind you, a loud slam that wakes you up. “Do you enjoy disobeying me, huh?” she asks you, kicking your chair out to make you look up at her.
“What have you done to him?” you ask, giving voice to a horrible fear that you’ve been nursing under your breast.
She pauses, eyes flicking around your face. “He was alive when I left him there,” she tells you, pointed.
“What was wrong with him?” you ask, voice thick.
She rolls her eyes and you smart at her irritation, flinching back into yourself.
“You know, your home is better placed than my late husband’s?” she asks, a question she doesn’t want any answer to. She walks away, the click of her heels as she runs her hands over the back of the dining room chairs. Covered in dust if the way that she flicks her wrist after is any indication. “Smaller, sure, but the land is richer. I made the mistake of going for marshland before. Your father has tenants, but my husband didn’t.”
You blink away tears as you stare back at her. “So, you never wanted me, you just wanted my father’s house?” you say, voice little and pathetic. You meant it to be an accusation, but it comes out as a question. A plea. Horrible, to think about yourself in this moment, but you can’t claw the words back into your mouth so you try to stand by them.
Valeria regards you, as still as she always is. Before, you had thought that it was the good breeding of a lady that caused the frozen flesh. Now, you recognise it for what it is. A predator, knelt in short grass, watching you. Still, even when you spot her, but you can see the power belying her flesh.
“Well?” you demand, wavering but righteousness forcing you to speak.
“I don’t understand why it has to be one or the other,” she muses, eyes dark on you. She crosses the room in less steps than you know it must take. She takes your chin in her hand and you hold back a whimper as her nails dig in.
“Can you bring him back?” you ask, voice small like a child.
She tilts her head, faux-sympathy. “No, mi vida. He’s gone now.” You feel your chest contract with a sob at her words. She scrapes her nail against your chin.
“What was wrong with him?” you ask, not wanting to know but understanding you have to ask.
Valeria regards you, her other hand dropping to your neck, where the missing flesh on your father’s neck was. “You were so upset about that gardener,” she muses, thumbing over your pulse, holding the fat thump of it in her palm. “I didn’t want my sweet girl crying herself sick over the help. If you’d left your father be, he’d have been back to himself in a few days. Human blood comes back so quickly,” she tells you. That mocking twist in her tone, but you hear the bare honesty as well.
You don’t know what to do, barely able to comprehend as a monster tells you the nature of what it is. Your mind is a muddled mess, anger and hurt and disgust as her hand caresses your throat and pulls forward arousal just as it did before.
You’re frozen by it, unable to function as your mind trips over itself. Valeria gives you a pitying pout. “You’re the heir to the land now,” she tells you, taking a seat on your lap, leaning her face closer to your own.
“I don’t want it,” you sob. You’d thought that you had run out of tears on the stairs, but they’re back, hot and heavy, dripping down your face and you had barely noticed.
She grins, and you can see the sharpness of her teeth. “Well, sounds like something we can negotiate then.” Her head drops down to your neck and when you sob, she licks the jump of your throat as if to taste it.
-
You bury your father just as Autumn takes its leave for Winter. The men you hire struggle to dig into the earth that is starting to freeze but it gets done.
The service is exactly what your father would want, the priest reads from the bible.
You are the only one in attendance, given all of your staff are gone and none of the tenants were told. If it’s an odd procession, the funeral workers don’t say anything.
Afterwards, you stay, looking at your mother and your father’s joined gravestone. There is a space at the bottom for your own name one day.
You place your hand to the cold stone and whisper a prayer to yourself before you leave. There isn’t anyone in the stables anymore to saddle your horse or drive you a carriage, so you walk.
Your dizzy spells have lessened, you feel as if you could chase the sun down and catch it, hold it in your jaw.
The wind is crisp, even in the early afternoon. Winter is creeping in, nipping at your heels. You taste the air and it tastes like snow that will fall soon.
Your house is quiet and still when you get back, all of the curtains are drawn, with only candlelight to aid you as you make your way around.
You set about getting dressed for the evening now that it’s dark out, discarding your coat and your shoes and your funeral dress. There’s a dress laid out for you on the bed, a deep crimson with a low neckline.
As soon as you step into it, you can hear the front door as someone knocks on it.
You step down the stairs, your skirts held up with one hand. It’s an old fabric, but beautiful and rich, thick layers that sweep as you move. You catch sight of yourself in a mirror and you look like the lady that you wished you would be when you were a girl. There is a bite mark that has bled a little with your movement but you leave it be.
There isn’t another knock, but you can sense her impatience in the back of your mind.
Your arm strains as you reach for the door handle and pull it open.
Valeria stands there, in her black gown and her black veil, smiling at you to see you wearing the right dress.
When she steps towards you, you let your mouth open for the drop of water that is on her tongue. It is granted, because she is so kind and you are so very good.
