I think Vlad is secretly plotting my demise for all this torture I put him through.
Warnings for brief vaguely sexual behaviour. Though by now I assume anybody reading my Vlad/Ingrid stuff expects that.
-YD-
Well, Vlad could honestly tell Ingrid he didn't dream about her.
Because he had to fall asleep to dream, and every time he closed his eyes, he felt her mouth on his, tasted her kiss and twitched with the memory of her body fit snug against his own. No matter how many times he tried to bring himself off, Vlad only ended up more frustrated and tense and aroused.
He just about managed to 'think it down' so he could leave the coffin next evening, imagining his wedding night with Adze the most effective boner-killer in the world. Tired and irritable before the night had begun, Vlad perked up only at the prospect of seeing his son again.
Even if it involved Ingrid constantly smirking at him, knowing she had left him hard, bereft and at a loss for how to deal with her. He reckoned she could tell he hadn't got a wink of sleep, watching him practically chug down soy blood until it energised him enough to function. Mostly.
Adze coming home didn't help, her and Ingrid sharing threatening looks between themselves at any opportunity. Vlad had to approach her like a caged animal, hating every second of it. He had been able to just tolerate Adze and his life, crawl through the boredom. With Ingrid back to throw fire into every second... it wasn't that easy anymore.
"What do you want?"
"Relax, I'm just coming to remind you we have events coming up. You hate not having at least a week to pick a dress."
"What events?"
Adze practically spat her words. Vlad supposed his answer said much about the state of their marriage.
"My birthday. And then there's that networking thing for the Trans-Siberian vamps."
His wife didn't know when his birthday was. Although... he didn't know when hers was either.
"Garlic awful yokels. Fine. I'll be there."
Neither were happy about it - they had to touch and act like they didn't hate each others dust. But appearances had to be maintained - Adze wanted the perks of his title attached to her, and Vlad wanted her to stay far away from him and his son otherwise.
"Are your sister and her brat attending?"
"Mind your tone, he's the heir to Dracula. You are a Dracula. They might be there for my birthday... they do live here after all."
"Thanks to you."
"Yeah, nothing to do with you is it? Not like you're the one sleeping around and not 'producing heirs' for me."
Adze turned away, crossing her arms and scoffing dismissively.
"You shouldn't be so repulsive to look at."
"Oh, the feeling is completely mutual my darling wife. Every time you fuck somebody else, I'm counting my blessings that I don't have to endure that torture. But you don't get to blame all of this on me. Now go take a bath would you? Only you stink like Corbit."
Corbit was one of Vlad's favourite staff at thw VHC - he felt so guilty about having sex with his bosses wife that he was quiet and compliant all the time. He had a very distinctive smell of horses as a keen rider, and he could smell that all over Adze.
She scowled, baring her teeth and a couple of lightning bolts sounded outside the windows.
"Finished? Good. I'm going back to my unlife, you to yours."
Vlad turned on his heel and flitted away from her, taking a few deep lungfuls of air that didn't smell like his cheating wife or his alluring sister. Feeling shaken but stable enough, Vlad headed back to his son and his sister. Adze only compounded how badly he wanted Ingrid - thinking of the lacking sex life with his bloodwife often led to thoughts of how much he missed Ingrid's touch. He could still feel the ghosts of her fingers in his hair...
"Vlad? You ok?"
"Fine Adam, just got a bit of a headache coming on."
"Oh. I hope you feel better soon."
"Thank you."
Adam smiled, raising Vlad's mood considerably. Everything else was less important - his son was in his home. The boy was about the only thing that could really take his mind off Ingrid, even though he felt her eyes on them when Adam asked if they could play chess together. Vlad sucked at chess, always had and always would, but Adam's cheering as he won was plenty of reward.
"You aren't just letting me win, right?"
"Nope. I've just never played against anybody as good as you."
He beamed, looking achingly like a young Ingrid for a second and Vlad's heart stuttered in his chest.
"Mum taught me. She's better than me but sometimes she lets me win."
Vlad couldn't help raising an eyebrow in her direction, seeing Ingrid painting her nails delicately over on the drawing table in his 'relaxation' room.
"I didn't know you could play chess."
"I could fill a crypt with what you don't know about me."
Vlad bit back his reply, not wanting to say something in front of Adam that he would regret. Turning back to the board, they reset their pieces.
"Best of three?"
Sleep deprived and sexually frustrated, Vlad laid in his coffin that morning tense and stiff in more ways than one. It didn't help that he spent much of his time in the coffin remembering when Ingrid used to crawl into his coffin, undoing his trousers and straddling his hips with intent but often without ever saying a word.
He managed a couple of hours broken sleep but it did nothing for his tension. A hot shower eased some of his stiffness, his hand and a memory of the first time Ingrid surprised him in the shower easing the other. For now at least.
Hell, it felt as though Ingrid wanted him to break and try to make a move on her. Wearing a knee length dress in a velvety shade of deep purple - Vlad's favourite colour on her - paired with heels that could make grown vampires weep, leggings with a few artfully made tears to let peeks of pure porcelain through.
He shook the thoughts off. If Ingrid wanted him, she would make it known herself. She wasn't shy about getting what she wanted in the slightest. Vlad remembered her holding nothing back when he was clumsy and inexperienced during their first sexual encounters, though they had always been fairly compatible in that regard.
Adam's schedule arrived, with it a name Vlad recognised as another ghost of his past. He could turn it down, demand a replacement tutor... but the fact was, Bertrand was good as a teacher. Maybe even great. Vlad couldn't deny his son that based on his own childish desires to forget much of that life.
"Adam, your tutoring begins next week, night after my birthday celebration. Here's your schedule. It'll get fuller as you get older I expect, but you're only a boy now."
Big Dracula blues scanned the parchment, nodding to himself.
"Thanks Vlad."
Ingrid naturally wanted a look, eyes widening slightly at Bertrands name, Vlad suspected anyway.
"Did you not keep in touch?"
She waited until both Adam and Adze had disappeared for the day to bring it up with him.
"With Bertrand? No. You left. Erin left. Even the ferals left, but they turned up for the new SCRAP lessons here at least. I figured if everyone was so eager for me to have a clean break, I was going to take one. I don't know what to expect from him after eight years."
Ingrid shrugged as though she were completely disinterested, despite the fact she initiated the conversation. Vlad didn't take it personally, Ingrid usually feigned disinterest unless caught off guard, or with their son. Bertrand was going to meet his son. Bertrand, who had been around when Adam was conceived, who could full well take a guess at his parentage. Could spot Vlad's desperate need to know the boy.
Great.
Barely containing a sigh, Vlad waited to see if Ingrid had anything more to say. His skin prickled with the proximity of her, her perfume filling his lungs in small wafts of torment. She didn't, leaving silence in her wake as she vanished off.
Adze didn't hang around, disappearing again with only a note to say she would be back for the 'party', and not to dispel her lie when she said her father was absent from Vlad's birthday due to illness. It was practically a birthday present, Vlad thought to himself.
His birthday gifts were usually crates of vintage blood everyone knew he would never touch, artifacts he had no use for and on occasion priceless artworks he sometimes displayed in his castle.
That year, he got a handmade picture from Adam that Vlad was certain he would treasure for all eternity, a childish drawing of the two of them playing chess. He even drew a wolf in the corner, which brought a tear or two to Vlad's eyes. It wasn't his birthday celebration until the following night, but Adam's reasoning was that Vlad would be too busy then to enjoy his gift.
Vlad hadn't expected a gift from Ingrid.
He got one anyway.
Adze was home, sleeping in her own room of course, in preparation for the event the next night. Vlad was just getting ready for bed at dawn, laying out his clothes and grooming products when Ingrid's presence invaded his sanctuary. She hadn't set a fang in his room (that he knew of) since she arrived in the castle, and the sight was hard to ignore.
"Did you want something?"
"Sit down."
Confused but long-conditioned to do as Ingrid told him, Vlad sat on his desk chair. His dead heart threatened to kickstart when she draped herself over his lap, mouth mere millimetres from his own and it took Vlad an embarrassingly short time to react to her sitting there. Ingrid smirked, tracing one pale finger from his hair line all the way down his exposed neck before trailing off at his collarbone.
This was just Ingrid's latest game to mess with him, Vlad was sure. At least until she leaned in even closer, whispered "happy birthday" so softly he felt more than heard it, and sealed her lips against his own.
Powerless against her Vlad responded immediately, hands filling that dip in her waist to hold her in place as they kissed. Her hands tangled in his hair, a gasp of surprise echoing between their mouths as she pressed closer and Vlad's hips jerked in response to the pressure. He froze, terrified to have broken the spell or pushed Ingrid's boundaries, but she merely dragged his mouth back against her own.
He was certain he was dreaming, would wake up sticky and alone but Vlad didn't care, resolving to make the most of it since it all seemed so vivid and real. Ingrid's fingers tightened in his hair when his hips rolled up again with no consult from his brain, but she didn't stop kissing him. Those soft little whimpers from the back of her throat were pure evil, stoking the fire in Vlad's gut until the heat was almost unbearable.
When Ingrid tugged the strands of hair she was holding, Vlad couldn't take any more and let the embarrassment of coming in his pants roll off him, basking too much in the fact it wasn't his own hand for the first time since he got married. Ingrid's mouth slowly separated from his, letting him suck in those panting breaths he didn't need but couldn't stop.
"Seriously?"
"I haven't had sex in eight years, excuse me for being a little hair trigger."
Certain she would only mock him and disappear, Vlad felt shame bubble in his stomach at basically handing her new material to bully him with.
"So you and Adze never-"
"Once. Wedding night. Horrendous. Never repeated."
Ingrid considered him, still smirking and her hands still in his hair. Vlad felt his scalp tingle just because her fingers were touching it, body not failing to respond to Ingrid even though he was technically satisfied.
"You must really not like her then. Or maybe you just lost your touch."
If Vlad didn't think it ridiculous, he would say Ingrid was challenging his sexual prowess when she knew full well the extent of his experience included her, Erin and one horrific night with his wife. Swallowing his nerves, Vlad managed to quip back.
"Only one way for you to find out really."
Ingrid didn't waver. Ingrid never did.
"Well, what are you waiting for? A written invitation?"
"Like you would ever leave a paper trail."
Nerves buzzing beneath his skin, Vlad trailed a hand along Ingrid's inner thigh, breath hitching when he found her bare beneath her dress. Her expression didn't falter for a second, not until Vlad actually touched her. Then it was all the reactions he remembered, the reward of her eyes falling closed as she bit her lip, rocking into his hand and gasping softly.
If there was one thing Vlad had made sure to remember no matter how many times he told himself to forget, it was what Ingrid liked. Because her responses were just about the hottest thing Lucifer had ever created, and Vlad let himself forget how she loathed him for the few minutes he was allowed to touch her.
Her fingers tightened in his hair, thighs shaking on top of his own and Vlad would know that sound she made anywhere as he successfully brought her off, basking in the seconds after she came where Ingrid didn't scowl or quip, when her whole body relaxed and her mouth formed that soft little 'O' shape.
Vlad felt a wave of shame and loss roll through him when Ingrid got up, righting her dress and leaving him there, sticky and confused and, if he was honest, feeling a little used. Peeling his soiled clothes off, Vlad showered and put his laundry on before he returned to his coffin. Better than anyone finding his clothes with the mingled scents of him and Ingrid on.
And by anyone, he meant Adze. Somehow he suspected him cheating on her would deserve far more anger than she came to expect for her cheating on him. Not to mention the whole sibling thing... especially when he didn't want Adze thinking too much about Adam's parentage.
He barely got a wink of sleep that day, devoting himself instead to the pointless task of trying to work out Ingrid's motives. Sexual gratification seemed unlikely when she could have just about anyone falling over their fangs to have her. Vlad suspected it was far more to torment him, her getting off just some added bonus.
Because now he had had a taste... he would only crave Ingrid more.
Instead, he had to get up and let the caterers and the band in, dressed formally and trying to remember how he was supposed to look as though he wanted Adze within more than a hundred yards of him.
Adam and Ingrid turning up to the party didn't ruffle many capes, as the VHC knew she was there having invited her to throw Vlad's world off completely. Adam was the youngest by near two decades, but he stayed close at his mothers side and offered Vlad smiles whenever they caught each others eyes. Adze stayed in her 'spot', both of them cringing inwardly with revulsion as Vlad kept an arm around her waist, pretended to be perturbed when someone commented about how Vlad was a lucky vamp, and that they would like to steal his wife away.
Vlad was fairly certain at least three quarters of those saying such things already had carnal knowledge of his wife. Were probably getting a kick out of dangling themselves in front of the Grand High Vampire.
All the while Vlad's skin felt too hot, Ingrid's quiet moans reverberating in his head over and over every time he caught sight of her. Usually surrounded by a dozen or so hopeful males, but Adam provided quite the deterrent as Ingrid paid close attention to her son and nobody else. Even her torturous stares at Vlad were few and far between.
There was no dawn visit from Ingrid that day, leaving Vlad distressed and angry at himself for caring so much. He was alone save for memories in his coffin, twisting as dozens of thoughts ran through his head, each more lunatic than the last.
Why in the name of all that was evil did Ingrid have to be the pinnacle of desirable? Why couldn't it be someone who wasn't his sister, who didn't hate his guts and who didn't try to hide their son from him?
Then he thought of her whisper of "happy birthday" before she kissed him, of her allowing he and Adam to spend time together.
Hellfire, Ingrid was a mystery, wrapped in an enigma and dressed in skintight leather. Addictive, intoxicating and more tempting than sanity dictated. Then again...
Vlad hadn't been sane since the first time Ingrid threw him against a wall and kissed him until he couldn't think straight. And that was nearly a decade ago.
-YD-
I went from on a writing roll to a total slump, and its taken every bit of effort to get my chapters out this week! Still, here we go. Let's hope next week is better.