Title: Her Game
Author: walkwithheros
Pairing: Darla/Faith
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 1,423
Disclaimer: Joss owns all.
It still startled her - waking up and realizing that she wasn't breathing, that her skin was like ice - but she was promised that the initial shock would wear off, and that even the habit of sleeping would, in time, fall away.
Even more surprising than waking up still and cold was the very intensity of her senses; the new level of sensation reminded keenly of when she'd first been called as a slayer. Everything around her seemed brighter, louder. Faith hadn't thought that was possible.
She didn't need to roll over to know that the other side of the bed was empty, Faith could feel her absence.
Across the room and several feet out the door Darla's slender frame stood leaning against the balcony, silhouetted against the city lights. Blonde hair curled up around the frame of delicate shoulders - the only thing obscuring the view of a pale, bare figure; and if Faith didn't know better she might have thought she looked a vision of gentle, angelic beauty.
If she didn't know better.
"Hungry?" Darla's voice, soft and low, left her lips without a turn of her head.
Faith grunted a response, taking a few tentative breaths of air that she knew she didn't need and stretching her body out in one long, catlike arch. Sitting up against the pillows, she answered with the smile of innuendo "I could eat."
A few blond curls bobbed with a shift of the head, and Faith new that on the other side was a smirk.
Swinging her legs out past the sheets, she slunk smoothly across the room, stepping out onto the balcony. Cool night air blew over naked skin, and beneath them sprawled a first class picture of moonlit LA.
"How's the view?" Wrapping her arms around Darla's waist, she pressed her bare body against the blonde's back.
"Not nearly as good as the one they're getting," a lazy gesture pointed to people in the street below, faces here and there squinting up at them.
Cold hands rubbed up and down the slant of Darla's stomach and hips - the skin was warm to the touch; borrowed warmth.
The scent of blood was heavy; Faith could smell it on the other woman and taste it in the air. Lips against Darla's ear smiled "Eating without me..where are your manners?"
Her Sire twisted in her arms, lips curved in a smile. Placing a few deceptively soft kisses down the slant of Faith's cheekbone, Darla spoke with a demonstratory nip at her throat, "You didn't miss much, room service left something to be desired." Pulling away Darla sashayed back inside the room, finishing over her shoulder, "People never get their iron anymore."
On the floor of the room the contents of several suitcases, all the same tacky shade of orange, had been poured over the floor and picked through. Most of the clothing was almost as bad as the painful Hawaiian-pattern ensemble the married couple had been wearing when they had checked into their suite.
That was the beauty of hotels, Darla had explained, the occupied rooms came with a complimentary meal.
"Here," Darla pushed a small mass of clothing from the not-painfully-tourist pile into her hands "get dressed. We're going out on the town." It wasn't a question.
Several minutes later Faith stood looking down at herself with a raised brow, stretching out her torso to admire just how much of it was showing "Ya' know, I've bought women wearing more clothing than this."
She reached out with ease to catch the leather jacket being tossed her way, pulling it on as Darla's voice trailed out nonchalantly from the bathroom where she was digging through another of the tacky orange bags, "There's lipstick in the pocket."
Uncapping the small tube Faith slid into the bathroom beside Darla, leaning in instinctively towards the mirror for a moment before remembering that her reflection had taken off with her heartbeat.
A small, strong hand took the lipstick from between her fingers, her Sire brushing against her with a smile as she traced the curve of Faith's lips and leaned in for a brief kiss, pulling away with her own lips a dark shade of scarlet.
The music beat through her like a pulse, and the heat of bodies moving around her, against her, pressed warmth into her skin. The whole club was heady with the scent of pheromones, and each time a human body rubbed against her she could feel the blood pumping through their veins.
The very temptation of having so many bodies so close was intoxicating.
Her Sire swayed and curved and rolled her hips against her with a practiced fluidity that Faith suspected had much to do with her original profession, casting her half-lidded, lusty looks over her shoulder as their forms moved together on the dance floor. Other bodies, hot and pulsing with life, pressed in around them, filling their heads with more tempting smells - perfume, cologne, and human sweat mixing and mingling in the air.
Suitors, mostly men, came and went through the crowd, acting as temporary, willing props for the vampires as they parted to move against warmer, eager bodies. Once again Faith found herself pressing back against a tall, male body swaying in rhythm behind her.
The same body that, once Darla had finally had her fill of the game, followed them with an ignorant smile to a back room in search of a more private place.
She could have just as easily killed him on the dance floor - let him scream until she drained him for all he was worth and dropped his body in a crowd thick with fear. She could have fought their way out if she had to, because she knew that no one in that room stood a chance against the two of them. She could have cut out this lengthy game of cat and mouse and be satisfied, but Darla professed that the brute, artless kill was the amateur's pleasure, and was only half the fun.
So Faith led the boy with a seductress's smile into the back room as Darla had a word with the confused, protesting janitor. The quiet crack of the man's neck snapping reached Faith's ears from beneath the closed door.
No sooner had Darla returned with a sweet, soft smile - all cleavage and leg and school girl look of innocence - and the boy had eagerly undone the buttons of his pants than Faith was on him, and not nearly in the way he had imagined. Darla's hand considerately smothered his scream as Faith's face changed into something that put terror in his eye, and coaxed the scent of fear from his trembling, shrinking form.
One arm around his waist to hold him, the other in his hair to tilt his head, and her teeth sunk into his jugular, his warmth pouring into her.
Darla pressed in behind her, holding the man's wrist to her own lips and drinking, free hand stroking affectionately over the nape of Faith's neck - electrifying the sensitive skin and sending shivers down the length of her body.
Faith's whole being hummed with pleasure. The thick, warm blood flowed easily past her lips, and she was certain that nothing in life had ever felt so good.
Darla's slender body pressed closer against her back, small hands stroking lightly down the curve of her sides.
Well, maybe one thing.
"That's enough.." A firm hand cupped her chin, pulling her away from the no longer struggling body, long before the hunger in her stomach had been satsified. Golden eyes smiled at her, and a delicate finger brushed a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth "You want to save room for later, I have things to show you."
Something low in Faith's stomach clenched, and a smirk took her lips. The corpse dropped from her arms with a thud.
"And what about the things I want to show you," Her hand rubbed up the other woman's stomach firmly, as she pushed Darla back against the wall.
Darla's voice left her incredulously "I'm over 400 years old, you really think you can show me something that I haven't-unngh"
She cut off in a groan as Faith's hand pushed forcefully up past the hem of her skirt, and failed to contain her delight as her still golden eyes flickered shut, the undead slayer's lips brushing her ear in a whisper "We've played your game all night, lover. This, we're doing my way."