.
Upon learning I would be dodging her for yet another evening, Ceria became clingy. She stayed by my side the entire time Dilorè and I reported on the battle and the apparent resolution of the Greenwater conflict.
But Allia was badly fatigued, so the meeting ended without any discussion about the divination or other matters. Talene dragged Arken and Dilorè along to go meet with the Arelian commander whom we would be following into the Tabad, and the others headed out to get a little combat training in. But the room where the women were sleeping was going to get crowded with Dilorè and I, once I returned, so I went to rent an additional room. Ceria and Melione chose to stay with me.
I entered the new room with a pretty good idea what Ceria had on her mind, and thankful that Melione had decided to tag along.
I leaned my sword and harness against the wall, then sat on the bed to remove the ankle boots I had been trying to break in and peel off the thigh-high socks. The boots were still stiff and new and nowhere as comfortable as my silk slippers, so it was a relief to get them off. I made a mental note to ask Talene to consider inventing the sneaker.
Melione and Ceria watched as I massaged my feet, but I wasn’t going to start the conversation. Ceria’s conversation started, as it turned out, with undressing.
“What are you doing, Ceria?” I asked. This wasn’t a strip-tease or such. It was more like she was preparing for bed, even though it was still early afternoon.
“Giving Melione some courage,” she answered. “I definitely want to know what happened, Lady, but I’ll wait for you to tell me. Today, Melione needs to discuss something.”
Meanwhile, Melione leaned against the door, preparing her thoughts. When she noticed me waiting for her, she pulled in a courage-bracing breath and let it out, then moved to stand before me and gave me a curtsey.
Holding it, with her head bowed, she requested, “My Lady, please allow me to feed you.”
Surprised, I stared blankly at her for several seconds. It probably looked like I was stumped, but in reality I was thinking very rapidly and intensely on whether I had accidentally thrown some new charm on her. I mean, this was Melione asking to feed me…
My silence was long enough for now-topless Ceria to come up behind her to put her hands on her shoulders and start teasing. “Your resolve is good, but your approach is terrible. Maybe I should have my little sister give you some seduction lessons?”
Melione went red. “S…seduction?”
Ceria giggled, then came out from behind her to slip onto the bed next to me. Leaning into me with her arm across my shoulders, she told Melione, “Lady’s different from Bruna. If Bruna doesn’t need to feed, she just has regular sex instead. Lady’s a little shy, so you have to approach her differently.”
Ceria reached across and pulled the tie loose on the neckline of my blouse. I caught her hand before she proceeded to the next tie down.
I said, “Ceria, please hang on for a bit. I want to understand what’s going on with Melione.”
“She already told you, Lady,” Ceria answered with a playful grin. “She wants to feed you.”
“That’s what I’m talking about! The Melione I know wouldn’t…”
Ceria put her finger on my mouth. “Don’t say that, Lady. Please. You don’t know what she’s been going through.”
So there was a deeper story here than just my vampire magic messing with their minds? Or… maybe that was exactly what was happening, but in some way I didn’t understand?
I nodded slightly, then told Melione, “Okay. Sit with me. Let’s talk about this.”
“No,” Ceria immediately overrode. “Mel, finish what you’re doing.”
Although I didn’t like getting countermanded like that, I was happy to hear Ceria acting like her old, independent self instead of the happy airhead she had been playing since we bonded. I waited.
Melione bit her lip, then quickly loosened the lacings of her kirtle in order to shrug out of it.
In the past, she had always worn a country girl’s crude chemise beneath, but now she wore a very modern-looking bra slip. A very pretty one, frankly.
She had been about to unhook herself, but seeing the surprise on my face, she hesitated. “Does it look weird?”
“No!” I said, shaking my head. “It looks good on you.”
“We went shopping in Bray,” Ceria explained. “Girl’s just too big to run around with those things flopping loose.”
Melione probably didn’t want to hear such a thing from a girl who was bigger in that dimension, but she didn’t react. She went ahead and undid the hook behind her back and wriggled out of the slip. Now down to panties, she took a seat on my other side. She held an arm across her bust, and she was blushing, so I avoided looking too much at her. Instead, I contemplated the painting of a mountain framed by apple blossoms that was hanging on the opposite wall.
I remembered my aunt telling me how I should interact with these two. I was the one who did this to them, so I must respect their wishes if they wanted to serve me. Even so, I needed to understand what they truly wanted, as opposed to what vampire magic might be forcing them to do.
“Melione,” I said, “tell me clearly. Has the bond been causing problems for you?”
“I… I want to say it isn’t the bond, but of course that’s where it begins, right?”
I nodded. “Of course. Does the bracelet not work well enough? You’re using the one I commissioned for you, right?”
Arken’s had been a crude jury-rig, but I had paid Ceria’s mother to custom build proper magic tools for these two before I left Bray.
“My mother’s bracelet works better than the old ones, Lady,” Ceria declared.
“That’s true,” Melione nodded confirmation, but then explained, “The thing is, ever since I learned that Ceria fed you before you left, I’ve… felt confused.”
“Confused?”
She hung her head. “I felt guilty about not having offered to feed you, and envious of Ceria, and lonely that you hadn’t asked me, and angry at myself for feeling all those things.”
“You never wanted to be a Servant in the first place, so naturally you’re angry.”
She tipped her head. “Servant?”
“That’s right, I never told you two. My aunt calls those like you ‘Servants’, because ‘Blood Slaves’ suggests the wrong kind of relationship. I decided to use that word as well. You two aren’t my slaves. You’re Servants.”
“Just like a Servant of the Stregas…” Ceria mused to herself. She sounded pleased.
It occurred to me that eventually I would have to tell her that she actually was the Servant of a Strega.
I took Melione’s hand. “Melione, you are absolutely never to make yourself do something that you do not want to do.”
“I…” she started, then frowned. “What I do not want?”
“That’s the wrong question,” Ceria said. “Melione, tell us, what do you want to do?”
Melione nodded to her, and then told me quietly, “You’re my friend, My Lady, and you’ve given me a wonderful gift. Regrowing a limb ought to require a huge team of healers, so it’s almost never done, and yet… I was able to do something as amazing as that, all by myself!”
She smiled. “But I’m only taking from you. I’ve fed you twice, and the first time wasn’t even a proper feeding, right? You stopped once you realized what you were doing. I could feel a big difference, the second time I fed you.”
After moistening her lips, she then stated, “And to tell the truth… I was really happy, that second time. Becoming bonded to you was a wonderful feeling. I was becoming part of you while receiving pleasure from you. I’m sure that’s why I’ve been envious when Ceria gets to feed you.”
Pressing her glasses into place just like a certain angel, she looked me in the eye and stated, with certainty, “My Lady, I want to feed you.”
I nodded. “Alright. Since I’m not especially hungry at the moment, I’ll have to take a little longer to get started. Is that okay?”
After a glance over to Ceria that made me wonder what these two had discussed previously, she asked, “Do you need to do what I think you do?”
I reached up and brushed back her hair, then caressed her arm while giving her an impish smile. “Of course, I need to work up an appetite.”
I leaned closer to her face as her blush came back. I moved slowly so she would have time to object. As it became clear where my lips were headed, she looked for a moment like she might do so, but then she closed her eyes and let me kiss her.
She wasn’t aggressively reciprocating like Ceria would, but she began participating, and didn’t flinch away when I moved my hand to her shoulder, then the side of her chest, then pushed her other arm out of the way to reach her breast.
I wasn’t rejected, but she did finally break the kiss, to ask, “Is that really part of it?”
“If you dislike it, I won’t do it.”
Her blush was increasing yet again, as I fondled it. She shook her head. “It’s just hard to understand why it helps you.”
“Vampire babies start out feeding on these,” I told her with a small squeeze. “It’s only natural we come back to them. I even still feed there, sometimes.”
Her eyes grew, and she shook with a surprised giggle. “Really?”
It became necessary to detour a little, since I was still dressed, but my Servants made short work of my clothing as a team, with Ceria even robbing me of my panties while Melione had my arms entangled in my chemise.
“Yours too, Mel,” Ceria said as she removed her own. “Trust me.”
I crawled onto the bed and beckoned to Melione, letting my Vampire Charm begin to touch her. “Come.”
She hesitated, then removed her glasses and set them on the nightstand before joining me.
“You’re going to watch?” I asked Ceria, who was taking a seat at the foot of the bed.
“You bet!” she answered with a grin. “Bruna says it’s crazy hot.”
I shook my head in resignation. Serera, the elven maids and others had told me the same thing, so it must be true.
Melione leaned back on her hands, leaving herself fully revealed. She was blushing still, but she said, “You asked me before to make myself look more delicious. Do I look delicious right now, My Lady?”
I might be a little dense, but she was making herself awfully clear. I smiled and leaned in, taking one fruit in hand while my mouth settled on the other for a kiss, then a brief suckle. I kissed my way from there back up to her ear while my hand continued to stroke, then whispered, “Very delicious. I think I shall have a little Melione, after all.”
She giggled, and cooperated as I returned to her mouth, even letting my tongue invade some. It was tentative and clumsy, different from the highly experienced girls I normally fed from, but she never once tried to stop me, and she slowly began reciprocating. Her hand even began tentatively exploring my shoulder and chest as we continued.
Once I grew my fangs and began to feed at last, I felt a release of tension in her, and heard something from her like a cross between a soft cry of happiness and a sigh of relief. She began stroking my hair and making little contented noises. When I began to softly massage her breast, she first covered my hand as if to stop me, but then moved to do the same to mine. We continued like that until the end, when she began riding a wave of uninhibited pleasure, and the last of my anxiety over what I had done to her back in Cara Ita finally melted away.
As she slipped off to sleep, Ceria snuggled up behind me, her hand finding my bosom, and whispered into my ear, “My turn.”
“I know what you’re thinking, and no,” I told her. “But it has been just barely long enough to let you feed me, so we’ll do that.”
She moved, and wound up on top of me, tabby tail waving in the air. For a moment, I thought she would pursue her other ideas, but she smiled and relented. “That’s fine, this time, Lady. But you can’t run away from me forever.”
