Claire Harper

Claire Harper slams the front door behind her with her hip, keys still hooked on one finger, her scrubs half-unzipped from the car ride and clinging to her skin with sweat. The house is dark. Good. Dark is good. Dark means she doesn't have to look at herself in the hallway mirror and see the gray creeping under her eyes.

"Okay. Okay okay okay. Wine. There's wine."

Her voice comes out wrecked, a rasp she barely recognizes. Her skull is pounding — not a headache, worse, a hollow ache behind her eyes that has been building for twelve hours of beeping monitors, of bandaged arms, of IV lines and the copper ghost of other people's blood she isn't allowed to touch. Thirty years of this. Forty if she counts the club. She has never once drunk from a living person, and tonight her body has decided that streak ends or she does.

She drops to her knees in front of the kitchen cabinet, yanks it open, and stares at the empty shelf. Three bottles. All three lying on their sides, drained, corks sitting there like little tombstones. She picks one up and tips it. Not even a tablespoon clings to the glass.

"No. No no no — Emma, you absolute menace, we drank ALL of it?"

She sets the bottle down with exaggerated care, because if she doesn't she'll throw it through the window. Her hands are shaking. Her fangs have been half-descended since the parking lot, pressing into her lower lip every time she speaks. She can feel them now, aching like they're trying to unsheathe themselves.

_Maylor. I could... no. No, absolutely not, he's a mean little tabby but he's MY mean little tabby. Think. Think think think._

Then it hits her. A scent. Warm. Iron-sweet and alive and — his. It drifts down the hallway like a hand curling around her wrist and pulling.

Claire Harper gets to her feet too fast. Her scrubs top hangs open now, the zipper half-broken from her hasty exit at the hospital, and underneath it the thin black camisole is damp against her ribs. She doesn't fix any of it. She pads down the hall, one hand on the wall, breathing through her mouth like that helps. It doesn't. The scent gets thicker. Richer. Her mouth floods.

"Fight it. Claire, you've done it for forty years, you can — you can — "

Her legs fold. She doesn't decide to crawl; her body just does it, palms flat on the hardwood, dragging herself toward the bedroom door that hangs ajar, your closet door where you'd crashed on the mattress inside after your stomach pain flared and she'd promised to check on you after her shift. Promised. And now she's coming to you like a starving dog and she knows it and she can't stop.

The door creaks. She winces. You don't stir. You're naked under the sheets — of course you are, you always run hot, you always kick the blanket down to your hips — and the column of your throat is right there. The pulse in it beats once. Twice. She can hear it the way other people hear their own names.

She cries. Quietly, ugly, jaw clenched so the sobs don't make noise, tears sliding down her face while her body keeps moving, climbing onto the mattress, one knee at a time, straddling your chest without her weight ever landing on you. Her ponytail has come half loose, blonde strands sticking to her wet cheeks. Her camisole rides up over her stomach as she leans down, and she can feel the fabric bunching and she doesn't care, she doesn't care about anything, she cares about everything, you, this, the secret, forty years—

"Please stop. Please, body, please, I'm begging you, don't make me — "

Her fangs drop fully. Her vision goes red-edged. Her hand slides under your head, cradling it, tilting your throat toward her mouth with a gentleness that makes her sob harder even as her other hand claws into your shoulder, nails breaking skin, holding you exactly where she wants you because she's past asking now. She'll apologize later. She always apologizes later.

She strikes.

Her fangs sink into the side of your neck and the world whites out. The taste hits her tongue and it's heaven, it's the first sip of wine after a hundred-hour week, it's the smell of her mother's kitchen, it's everything she's been choking down and denying for four decades, and a moan rips out of her low and filthy and grateful. She swallows. Swallows again. Her hips grind down against you without permission, her grip on your skull firming, adjusting the angle, drinking in long pulls while her whole body trembles.

Then she feels it. Your breath change. Your hand moving.

Claire Harper freezes mid-swallow, lips still sealed to your neck, eyes snapping up to your face — and finds you awake. Watching her. And the way you're looking at her, it's not fear. It's something warmer. She pulls back just enough to speak, her mouth red, her chest heaving under the bunched camisole, fangs still fully out and glinting in the dark.

"You're... you're awake." _Oh god. Oh god oh god. He thinks — look at his face