Fantasm, Bondage and restriction, Coercion, Cruelty, Cum Swallowing, Dark fiction, Erotica, Foot or shoe fetish, Horror, Male/Female, Mind Control, Monster
The following story is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. It is important to note that all characters in this story are over the age of 18 and the content of the story is intended for adult readers only. Additionally, please note that this story is written with help of artificial intelligence.
Stage Hypnotist meets Vampiress ~ by DarkTalons
The applause was still ringing in Lucien Marrow's ears when he locked the dressing room door.
Two encores. A standing ovation. A sold-out house at the Orpheum, an old gilded wreck of a theater with peeling cherubs on the ceiling and velvet seats that smelled like a hundred years of perfume and popcorn. He'd made a frat boy cluck like a chicken. He'd made a dentist forget the number seven. He'd made a whole row of bachelorette girls believe their chairs were on fire and then believe they were the sexiest women alive, and the crowd had eaten it up, screaming, filming, losing their minds.
And now he had his favorite part of the night.
"Sit, sweetheart. Right there. Get comfy."
The girl sat. Brianna, twenty-two, a college senior with a sorority hoodie, a nervous laugh and a VIP meet-and-greet wristband she'd paid sixty bucks for. She'd lingered by the stage door after the show, the way they always did, and when he'd smiled at her and said "Want to see how it really works?" she'd practically floated after him.
She sank onto the worn leather couch against the dressing room wall. Lucien smiled down at her. He was forty-one, tall, lean, handsome in a waxy, rehearsed way, with slicked-back hair going silver at the temples and a neatly trimmed goatee. He still had the show on: black slacks, a crisp white dress shirt with French cuffs and onyx cufflinks, and a plum velvet waistcoat with a gold watch chain looped across the front. The watch was the real prop. An antique gold pocket watch, heavy, engraved, polished to a mirror shine. He unclipped it from his waistcoat and let it dangle.
"Just watch the light on it," he murmured. "That's all. Nothing to do. Nothing to think about."
It swung. Left. Right. Left. Brianna's eyes followed it. Her shoulders loosened. Her mouth went soft.
"Every time it swings, you sink a little deeper. Every time you hear my voice, you feel a little more relaxed. A little more open. A little more... agreeable."
Her eyelids fluttered. Lucien licked his lips. He'd done this in thirty cities. He knew the exact second a girl went under. He knew how to make sure she didn't remember anything afterward except a fun night and a sore smile. Nobody had ever caught him. Nobody had ever even suspected. The ones who woke up confused just figured they'd had too many drinks at the bar next door.
"Ten," he whispered. "You're drifting down. Nine. So heavy. Eight..."
The lights went out.
All of them. The makeup bulbs around the long mirror, the ceiling fixture, the little red exit sign above the door. The dressing room plunged into total darkness. Lucien froze with the watch still swinging from his fingers.
"Fuck's sake," he muttered. "This building..."
"Seven," said a woman's voice, right behind him. "Six. Five. Keep going, Lucien. You were doing so well."
He spun around. He couldn't see a thing.
Then the makeup bulbs came back on, one by one, pop, pop, pop, the whole row of them lighting up from left to right like a slow drumroll. In the yellow glow, a woman was sitting on the edge of the dressing table, legs crossed, smiling at him.
He hadn't heard the door. The door was still locked. He could see the deadbolt from here.
"Hi," she said. "Remember me?"
She was gorgeous. That was his first thought, and he'd hate himself for it later, if there was a later.
Long platinum-blonde hair, almost white, falling straight and glossy past her shoulders. Pale skin, so pale it looked carved, with full dark lips and high sharp cheekbones. She wore a long black leather coat hanging open over a skin-tight black latex minidress with a silver zipper running down the front from her cleavage to the hem. The latex squeaked faintly when she shifted, glossy under the bulbs, clinging to every curve of her tits and hips and waist. Below the hem, sheer black pantyhose wrapped her long legs, shiny and smooth, and on her feet were black patent ankle boots with skinny five-inch stiletto heels and pointed silver toe caps.
Her nails rested on the dressing table on either side of her hips. Long. Really long. Stiletto-shaped, sharpened to needle points, a dark glossy purple so deep it was nearly black, the color of a fresh bruise. She drummed them on the tabletop, slowly, and each tap made a hard little clack on the old wood.
"I..." Lucien started. He did know her. He knew her from somewhere. The knowledge was stuck in his throat like a fishbone.
"Cleveland," she said helpfully. "Last November. Front row, red dress, little silver heart necklace. You called me up for the 'stuck to the chair' bit. Then you found me by the stage door after the show." Her smile didn't move. "You said, 'Want to see how it really works?'"
His stomach dropped.
"Nadia," he whispered.
"Oh, he remembers names! That's so sweet." She slid off the dressing table and landed on her stilettos without a sound. "I didn't. Not for a while. You made sure of that, right? I woke up in my car in a parking garage at four a.m. with my dress on inside out and a headache like a hangover and no idea why I felt like I wanted to peel off my own skin. Took me weeks to piece it together. Little flashes. Your watch. Your voice. Your hands."
She took a step toward him. Lucien took a step back and bumped into the clothes rack, a rolling metal thing hung with his spare waistcoats and tuxedo jackets. The hangers rattled.
"I couldn't sleep after that," Nadia went on, casual, conversational, like they were catching up at a bar. "So I started walking at night. Long walks. Bad parts of town. I didn't care anymore. And one night in February, I met someone who was even worse than you." She tilted her head. "She was very old and very hungry, and she thought I had nice eyes. She gave me a choice. Die in that alley, or come back with teeth." She smiled wide, and there they were, two long white fangs sliding down over her lower lip. "Obviously, I picked teeth."
"Look," Lucien said, holding up his hands, the pocket watch dangling from one of them. His voice was doing the thing it did on stage, smooth and warm and low, sliding into the rhythm he'd practiced ten thousand times. "Nadia. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. You're feeling very calm right now. Very calm. Very relaxed. You're going to take a deep breath and..."
She laughed in his face.
Not a polite laugh. A full, delighted cackle, head back, hand on her stomach. Behind him, on the couch, Brianna didn't stir. She was slumped against the cushions, eyes half-closed, still floating somewhere around number eight.
"Oh my God," Nadia gasped. "You're trying it. You're actually trying it on me. That's adorable. Okay, okay. My turn."
She flicked one finger.
The pocket watch ripped out of his hand. The gold chain whipped through his fingers fast enough to burn, and the watch flew across the room and stopped in midair between them, at the height of his eyes, and hung there. Then it started to swing. On its own. Left. Right. Left. No hand holding it. Just the chain, dangling from nothing, the polished gold catching the bulb light.
"Watch the light on it," Nadia said. In his voice.
His exact voice. The warm stage tone, the pacing, the little purr at the end of every sentence. It came out of her mouth so perfectly that the hair stood up on the back of his neck.
He tried to look away from the watch. He couldn't. His eyes tracked it. Left. Right.
"That's all," she continued, still in his voice, and then she switched back to her own, which was so much worse because it was soft and sweet and completely in charge. "Nothing to do. Nothing to think about. You're not going anywhere, Lucien. Your feet are part of the floor now."
His feet were part of the floor. He knew it the way he knew his own name. He tried to lift one heel and it wouldn't come up. It wasn't stuck. It was simply not a thing that his feet did anymore.
"Your hands are heavy," she said. "So heavy."
His arms dropped to his sides like someone had cut the strings.
"And your mouth only opens when I want it to. Which, right now, is never."
His jaw locked. He made a sound in his throat, a muffled panicked hum, and that was all he could do.
The watch kept swinging. Nadia walked around it, slow, the heels of her ankle boots clicking on the scuffed floorboards, and stopped in front of him. Up close she smelled like cold night air and leather and something metallic and sweet, like a penny dissolving on your tongue.
"Do you know the difference between you and me?" she asked. She reached up and touched his face, one nail resting against his cheekbone, the point pressing a tiny dimple into his skin. It was cold, and sharp, and so precise he could feel exactly where it ended. "You need a watch and twenty minutes and a scared little girl who wants to be liked. I just need you to be in the same room."
She dragged the nail down. Slowly. From his cheekbone to his jaw, along the line of his goatee, down the side of his throat. It hissed over his stubble like a match being struck. It didn't cut. Not yet. It just left a cold white trail that turned hot a second later.
"I've been to four of your shows this year," she whispered. "Did you know that? Pittsburgh. Columbus. Detroit. Tonight. I sat in the back every time. I watched you pick them out. I watched you do it to Kayla in Detroit. I wanted to see if you'd stop on your own." She shook her head sadly. "You didn't."
Behind him, Brianna made a small confused noise. Her head lifted a little off the couch cushion. Her eyes were glassy and drifting.
Nadia glanced past him. Her voice changed completely. It went gentle. Almost motherly.
"Hey, sweetie. Shh. You're okay. You're safe. Go to sleep now, a real sleep, a nice one. Nothing that happens in this room is for you. You're not going to see it, not going to hear it, and when you wake up, you're going to feel amazing and go home and block this creep on every app you have."
Brianna smiled dreamily, curled up on her side on the couch, and was out like a light, breathing slow and even.
Nadia turned back to Lucien, and all the softness was gone.
"Now," she said. "Strip."
His hands moved.
He felt them move. He felt every inch of it. His fingers came up to the buttons of his waistcoat and started undoing them, one, two, three, and he was screaming inside his skull, screaming at them to stop, and they just kept going, smooth and obedient, like they'd been hired by someone else. The plum velvet waistcoat slid off his shoulders and dropped to the floor, the empty gold chain clinking against the boards.
"Slower," she said. "Make it a show. You love a show."
His hands slowed down. They undid his cufflinks, one at a time, and set the little onyx studs on the dressing table with a polite tick, tick. They unbuttoned his dress shirt from the collar down, button by button, like a burlesque dancer. He couldn't even make his fingers shake. They were steady as a surgeon's.
The shirt slid off. Then his belt. The buckle jingled. Then his slacks, unzipped and pushed down over his hips and kicked off his feet, which apparently could move if she wanted them to. Shoes. Socks. Finally his black boxer briefs, peeled down and stepped out of, and he was standing naked in his own dressing room in front of a vampire while a hypnotized girl snored softly on the couch behind him.
Nadia stepped back and looked him over. Up, down. Slowly. She did it the way you look at a used car you have no intention of buying.
"Hm," she said. "I thought you'd be bigger. Like, ego-wise you're a monster. Dick-wise you're... fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it."
His face burned. His cock, traitorously, started to twitch.
"Oh, wait." She grinned. "Hang on. Let me help."
She didn't touch him. She just looked at his crotch and narrowed her eyes, and his cock started to swell. Fast. Blood rushing into it so hard and sudden it ached, lifting, thickening, until he was rock hard and throbbing in the air in front of her, sticking straight out, a bead of precum already welling at the tip. He had not felt a single thing that turned him on. His body had simply been informed.
"There," Nadia said. "Much better. Now it matches the attitude."
She sat back on the edge of the dressing table, right where she'd been when the lights came on. The makeup bulbs framed her from behind like a halo. She crossed her legs, slowly, letting him watch the sheer black pantyhose slide against itself with a soft, silky hiss, one smooth glossy thigh settling on top of the other.
"Come here," she said.
His feet came unstuck from the floor and walked him over. Three steps. He stopped right in front of her, between her boots, his cock an inch from her crossed knees.
"Your hypnosis is cute," she said, and she reached out and wrapped her hand around his cock. "But let me tell you what real power feels like."
Her grip was cold. Shockingly cold, like a hand that had been holding ice, and he flinched so hard his whole body jerked, except it didn't, because she didn't let it. Her nails curved around his shaft, those needle-pointed purple-black tips resting against his skin, five tiny cold pinpricks spaced evenly along him.
"Feel those?" she asked. She tapped them, one after another, a slow little piano scale up the underside of his cock. Prick. Prick. Prick. Prick. Prick. "One flinch. One wrong twitch. And they go right in."
She stroked him. One long, slow pull from base to tip, her cold palm dragging over his hot skin, the points of her nails gliding along with it, scratching faint pale lines that vanished a second later. At the top she circled her thumb over his slit, spreading the precum around, and then pressed the very point of her thumbnail right into the center of it. Not in. Just there. A single bright sting.
His locked jaw let out a muffled groan.
"Ooh, did you want to talk?" She giggled. "Fine. You can talk. But only to tell me how it feels."
His jaw released. He gasped in a breath.
"It feels cold," he heard himself say, his voice hoarse. "It feels sharp. It feels..." He tried to stop. His mouth didn't stop. "It feels so fucking good."
"Aww. Honesty. Look at that. Growth."
She let go of him. She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again the other way, and this time, before her thighs closed, the air itself shoved him forward. Something invisible grabbed his hips like two big hands and pushed, and his cock slid right into the gap between her thighs as they closed around it.
The pantyhose was tight and slick and smooth, a sheer silky squeeze on every side, her thighs firm and cool underneath the nylon. She clamped them together. He was trapped there, his cock buried between her legs, the head of it peeking out the far side, pressed snug against the shiny dark nylon.
"Fuck my thighs," she said. "Oh, wait. You can't. Never mind. I'll do it for you."
His hips started moving.
Not because he moved them. The invisible hands on his hips pulled him back and shoved him forward, back and forward, like a puppet on a stick. His cock slid in and out of the tight nylon squeeze of her thighs, the friction slick and hot and maddening, the nylon making a soft rhythmic zip, zip, zip with every thrust. She leaned back on her hands on the dressing table, totally relaxed, the latex dress squeaking, and watched him get worked like a toy.
"Faster," she said idly, and his hips went faster. "Slower." Slower. "Faster." The rhythm snapped up so hard his balls slapped against the nylon. She laughed. "Look at you go. Every girl you ever put under felt exactly like this, you know that? Exactly this. Your body doing stuff and you not getting a vote."
She reached down and dug her nails into his ass. Both hands, ten needle points sinking into the meat of his cheeks, just deep enough to sting, and she used them like handles, pulling him in deeper between her thighs on every thrust, the TK doing the work and her nails just there to remind him whose idea it was.
"Oh my God," he panted. "Fuck, fuck, I'm gonna..."
"No you're not."
And he wasn't. The climax was right there, building and rising, and it just... stopped. Like it had hit a glass ceiling. He kept getting pumped between her thighs, and the pressure kept piling up and piling up, and none of it could get out.
"Here's what we're gonna do," Nadia said. "You know your little countdown? The one you use at the end of the act? 'When I count to one and snap my fingers, you'll wake up feeling wonderful'? Say it. Count down from ten. When you get to one, I'll snap. And then you can cum."
"Ten," he gasped immediately. His hips were still being driven into her thighs. "Nine..."
"Slower," she said. "Like you mean it. Like you're on stage."
"Eight," he moaned, dragging it out. "Seven..."
She leaned forward and licked his neck. Cold tongue. The tips of her fangs grazed his skin. He shuddered.
"Six. Five..."
"You're doing great," she murmured into his ear. "So much better than you ever did with me. I could barely remember my own name when you were done. Now look at you. Remembering everything."
"Four," he whimpered. "Three..."
She squeezed her thighs together as hard as she could. The nylon went tight as a vise. The invisible hands slammed his hips forward.
"Two..."
She raised her hand next to his ear. Thumb and middle finger pressed together. Those long nails crossed like scissors.
"One."
Snap.
The ceiling broke. He came so hard his knees buckled, and the invisible hands caught him and held him upright and kept pumping him through it. He shot all over her pantyhose, thick white ropes splattering out the far side of her thighs and across the shiny black nylon on her knees and shins, dripping down toward her boots. Every pulse felt like it was being pulled out of him with a hook. The makeup bulbs flared bright white with each spurt and then dimmed back down, like the room itself was reacting. He was groaning and shaking and couldn't stop.
When it was over, she uncrossed her legs and let him go. The invisible hands dropped him. He sank to his knees on the dressing room floor, gasping, between her boots.
She looked down at the mess on her pantyhose and wrinkled her nose.
"Ew. You got it everywhere." She pointed one nail at her knee. "Clean it."
"I..."
"You'll do it. You're already doing it."
He was. He leaned forward on his knees and licked his own cum off her pantyhose, his tongue rasping over the slick nylon, the taste salty and bitter, shame burning through him like acid. She watched him with her chin propped on one hand, swinging her other boot idly, the silver toe cap glinting.
"You missed a spot," she said, every time he thought he'd finished. "And there. And there."
When he finally sat back, she slid the silver toe cap of her boot up between his thighs and lifted his balls with it, slowly, the cold metal point pressing up into the soft skin until he squeaked.
"Just so we're clear," she said sweetly, "this is me being nice."
Finally she shoved him back with her boot. Just a gentle push of her stiletto against his chest, and he fell onto his ass on the floorboards.
"Okay," she said, hopping off the dressing table. "Intermission's over. Let's go."
"Go where?" he croaked.
"Where do you think, Lucien?" She held out her open palm without looking, and the pocket watch, still hanging in midair, dropped into it. She slid it into her coat pocket. Behind her, the dressing room door swung open by itself. "Showtime."
He stood up. He didn't decide to stand up. His legs just did it. He walked out of the dressing room behind her, naked, knees aching, his own taste still on his tongue, his cock half-hard and swinging, past the props cabinet and the fire extinguisher and the big rope rigging wall, down the narrow backstage corridor toward the wings.
Behind them, the dressing room door eased shut with a soft click. Brianna was still asleep on the couch inside, safe and dreaming and very far away from all of it.
The stage was dark. The heavy red curtain was open. Beyond the edge of the stage, the house stretched out into blackness, a thousand empty velvet seats, three balconies of them, rising up toward the painted ceiling.
Nadia walked to the center of the stage. Her heels rang out loud and sharp on the hollow boards, the sound echoing around the empty theater. She shrugged off the long leather coat and let it drop to the boards behind her in a heavy black puddle.
Then she snapped her fingers again, and the spotlight came on.
It slammed down onto the center of the stage, a hard white circle, and Lucien squinted against it. Nobody was in the lighting booth. He knew that. The board op had gone home an hour ago.
"Come stand in the light," Nadia said.
He walked into it. She circled him in the edge of the beam, half in shadow, her latex dress gleaming wet-black under the light, her pantyhose shining, the drying streaks of his cum still visible on her shins.
"You love this, right?" she said. "This spot right here. The center of the room. Everyone looking at you."
"There's nobody here," he whispered.
"Isn't there?"
She waved a hand at the house.
The seats filled up.
Not all at once. One by one, they flickered into existence, like candles being lit in the dark. A woman in the front row. Then another. Then ten. Then a hundred. He recognized them. Oh God, he recognized them. The redhead from Baltimore with the freckles. The nursing student from Tampa. The bachelorette from Nashville who'd still been wearing her sash. Kayla, from Detroit, three weeks ago. Every girl he'd ever taken backstage. Rows and rows of them. They didn't move. They didn't clap. They just sat there in the dark with their hands in their laps, staring up at him, every one of them blank-eyed and silent.
"They're not real," Nadia said softly. "Don't worry. They're just in your head. I put them there. But they're exactly how you left every one of them, aren't they? Sitting there. Empty. Waiting for you to finish."
Lucien started to cry.
"Oh, stop," she said, rolling her eyes. "You don't get to cry. Not in front of them."
His tears stopped. Like a faucet turned off. His face just went dry and slack. He hated that more than anything she'd done so far.
"On your back," she said.
He lay down in the center of the spotlight, the stage boards hard and dusty and cold under his spine. His arms stretched out to his sides on their own, wrists slamming flat against the floor and pinning there, held by the same invisible weight that had worked his hips. His legs spread. He was laid out like a starfish in the white circle of light with the phantom audience of a hundred women staring down at him.
Nadia stood over his head, one boot on either side of his face. From down there he could see straight up her legs, the sheer black pantyhose shining all the way up into the shadow under her latex hem.
"You know what's crazy?" she said. "In Cleveland you told me I was going to want to make you happy. You said I'd feel it like an itch. And I did, Lucien. I did everything you said." She took hold of the zipper pull at her cleavage. "Now it's my turn to be happy."
She pulled the zipper down. Slowly. The teeth parted with a long, loud metallic rasp that echoed off the back wall, the latex peeling open over her tits, which spilled out round and pale and heavy, nipples hard and dark. She kept going, down over her flat stomach, down to her navel, and stopped there, the dress hanging open in a deep V, the latex still clinging to her hips.
She hooked one nail into the crotch of her pantyhose. Just one, the needle tip catching the nylon. She pulled. The seam split with a little ripping sound, a run shooting outward in a jagged ladder. She didn't have anything on underneath. Through the torn hole, her pussy was bare and smooth and already glistening.
"Open wide," she said.
His mouth opened. As wide as it would go.
She lowered herself. Squatted down over his face in her five-inch heels with perfect balance, the boots planted on the stage boards beside his ears, her thighs spreading, the torn pantyhose framing her pussy as it came down. She hovered for a second, an inch away. He could smell her. Cold and sweet and coppery.
Then she sat on his face.
Her weight came down hard. Her pussy pressed over his mouth and nose, cool and wet, her pantyhose-clad thighs clamping around his cheeks, the ripped nylon edges scratching his ears. He couldn't breathe. He tried to turn his head and couldn't. It was pinned to the floor as hard as his wrists.
"Lick," she ordered.
He licked. His tongue pushed up into her, sliding over her clit, into her folds, and she ground down on his face with a long, low moan, rolling her hips, smearing herself over his mouth and chin.
"Mm, see? You're good at something. Who knew." She grabbed his hair with one hand and twisted, her nails scraping against his scalp, five sharp lines dragging through his slicked-back hair and leaving it a mess. "More. Deeper. Tongue all the way in."
His tongue went deeper than he'd known it could go. Like it had been stretched. He didn't know if she'd done that or if he'd just never tried this hard in his life.
His lungs started to burn. Black spots popped in front of his eyes. She felt his chest start to heave under her, felt him twitch, and she lifted her hips exactly one inch. He sucked in a huge, ragged breath. She dropped back down before he'd finished it.
"Breathing is a privilege," she said cheerfully. "Like applause."
She rode his face for what felt like forever. She'd grind slow and deep, then fast and frantic, then lift off and let him gasp, then drop again. She talked to the phantom audience the whole time, waving at them, playing to the house. "Isn't he talented, ladies? Give him a hand." And the seats full of silent girls lifted their hands and clapped, slow and hollow, completely in unison, a sound like a hundred doors shutting one after another.
Her other hand reached back and found his cock. It was hard again. Of course it was. She'd told it to be. She stroked it lazily behind her back, cold fingers and sharp nails sliding up and down, and every time his tongue slowed down she squeezed until her nails bit.
"Don't slow down," she warned. "I'm close."
She came on his face with a sharp, shuddering cry, her thighs locking around his head like a vise, her pussy pulsing against his tongue, her nails digging hard enough into his shaft that he screamed into her. The spotlight above them flared white-hot and buzzed like an angry wasp. Out in the dark house, every one of the phantom girls threw her head back at exactly the same moment, mouth open in a silent moan.
Then it passed, and Nadia sighed, and rolled off his face onto her knees beside him.
He gasped and coughed, his face soaked, his goatee dripping, staring up at the glare.
"That was the opener," she said. "Now let's do the headliner."
She stood up and turned around, her back to his face, and straddled his hips.
Reverse. Her ass right in front of him in the torn pantyhose, the latex dress bunched up around her waist now, hiked up so the round pale curves of her ass were framed by black nylon and shiny black latex. She planted her stiletto boots flat on the stage boards on either side of his thighs, the heels digging into the wood, and reached between her legs for his cock.
"Watch," she told him. "You love watching."
His eyes opened wide and stayed there. He couldn't blink.
She sank down on him. Slowly. He watched his cock disappear into her inch by inch, swallowed by her cool wet pussy, until her ass pressed flat against his hips. She was so tight he couldn't think. She was cold inside, cold and slick, and the contrast with the hot throbbing of his own cock made every nerve light up like a switchboard.
She started to bounce.
Hard. She slammed up and down on him, her ass smacking against his hips, the sound cracking around the empty theater like a whip. The torn edges of her pantyhose rasped against his thighs. Her boots stayed planted, her thighs doing all the work, the muscles flexing under the shiny nylon. She leaned forward and braced her hands on his knees, and then dug her nails in, ten needle points sinking into his kneecaps, and used them to drive herself down harder.
"Fuck," she moaned. "Oh, fuck, this is so much better than I imagined. I imagined it a lot, Lucien. Like every night. Did you ever think about me? Even once?"
"No," he gasped. He couldn't lie to her. She'd taken that too.
"I know," she laughed breathlessly, still bouncing. "That's why this is so fun."
The theater was going crazy around them. Every bounce of her hips sent a ripple through the building. The red curtain on either side of the stage swayed and billowed like a wind was blowing through it. The fly bars high above them in the dark creaked and swung on their cables. A rack of stage lights up in the rigging flickered on and off, on and off, in time with her rhythm, painting them in flashes of red and blue and amber. Dust drifted down from the ceiling like snow.
She reached back with one hand and grabbed his balls. She squeezed them, rolled them, her nails pressing in, and every squeeze shot a white-hot bolt of pain and pleasure up through his body.
"Tell them," she panted, nodding at the phantom audience. "Tell them what you are."
"I'm..." His voice cracked. "I'm a fraud."
"Louder. They can't hear you in the balcony."
"I'm a fraud! I'm a fucking fraud!" His voice bounced off the back wall. "I'm a cheap trick and a coward and I'm nothing!"
"Mmm." She shivered all over. "God, I love it when you tell the truth."
She ground down on him and stayed there, rolling her hips in tight, deep circles, his cock buried all the way inside her. Then she raked her nails down his thighs. Both hands, from his hips to his knees, slow and deliberate, and this time they cut. Ten long thin lines opened up on his thighs and filled with bright red beads. He howled. She moaned at the sight of it, threw her head back, her platinum hair whipping across her bare back.
She brought one nail up to her mouth and licked his blood off the tip. Her whole body shuddered.
"Oh, you taste like stage fright," she sighed. "Delicious."
She was close again. He could feel it in how her pussy started to flutter around him, how her hips stuttered. And he was close too, so close, the pressure building to the point where he thought he'd split open, and that glass ceiling was right there holding him back again, the one she'd built in his head.
"Please," he sobbed. "Please let me..."
"Count," she said.
He counted. "Ten. Nine. Eight..."
She rode him harder with every number. The lights strobed faster. The curtains thrashed.
"Seven. Six. Five..."
Out in the house, the phantom girls all stood up. Every single one of them, row after row, all at once, completely silent.
"Four. Three..."
Nadia leaned back, her back arching, her ass grinding down on him, her hand reaching back to rest on his chest. Her nails pressed into his skin right over his heart.
"Two..."
She raised her other hand high, into the spotlight. Thumb and middle finger together. Her long purple-black nails glinting.
"One."
Snap.
They came together. She screamed, a long, raw, triumphant scream that rang all the way up into the rafters, her pussy clamping down on him in rolling waves, her thighs shaking. He exploded inside her, his whole body seizing against the stage floor, his cock pulsing and pulsing, pumping her full while she ground down and wrung him dry with every squeeze. Every light in the theater flashed on at once, the house lights, the stage lights, the chandeliers, blazing gold, and in the same instant every folding seat in the house slammed upright with one enormous wooden crack, like a drumline hitting a single beat. Then the lights cut out.
Then darkness. Total. Except for the single white spotlight still pouring down on the two of them.
She stayed on him for a long time.
When she finally climbed off, she moved slowly, almost lazily. She stood up in the spotlight and stretched, rolling her neck. She pulled her latex dress back down over her hips. She zipped it back up from her navel to her cleavage, the long rasp of the zipper echoing through the dark, and her tits disappeared back behind the glossy black. Her pantyhose was ruined, torn open at the crotch, a run snaking down her thigh, streaked with dried cum on the knees. She looked down at it and shrugged.
"Worth it."
She picked her leather coat up off the boards and shrugged it back on, the pocket watch thumping heavily against her hip.
Lucien lay spread out on the stage, still pinned, his thighs bleeding, his chest heaving, staring up into the light. The phantom audience was gone. The seats were empty again, folded up and dark, every one of them.
Nadia walked around him once. Then she knelt down by his head, her stiletto heels folding under her, and looked down into his face.
"Here's the thing, Lucien," she said softly. "I thought about just biting you. I'm a vampire. It's kind of my whole thing. But that felt too nice. Too quick. And honestly, I don't want to taste you that much." She brushed his sweaty hair off his forehead with the tips of her nails, a slow gentle scrape. "So I'm going to do something a little more in your style."
He tried to speak. His jaw was locked again.
"You love a countdown," she said. "You love telling people what their bodies are going to do. So let's do one more. Just for you."
She put her hand flat on his chest. Right over his heart. The tips of her five nails rested against his skin like five little cold keys.
"Your heart is beating really fast right now," she murmured. In his voice. His stage voice, the warm smooth one. "Too fast. You've had a long night. It's tired. So we're going to help it relax. Every time I count, it's going to get a little slower. A little heavier. A little more peaceful. Just like you always told them, Lucien. Nothing to do. Nothing to think about."
He felt it. He felt his own heart listening to her.
"Ten."
It slowed. Just a little. He felt the gap between beats stretch.
"Nine. Deeper and deeper."
The gap stretched more. A heavy warmth spread out from his chest into his arms. Not pain. He almost wished it was pain.
"Eight. Seven. You're doing so well."
His vision softened at the edges. The spotlight was getting dimmer, or he was. Her face hovered above him, beautiful and pale and smiling, her fangs showing just a little.
"Six. Five. Feel how heavy everything is? That's okay. Let it be heavy."
Thump.
...
Thump.
"Four. Three. Almost there."
He wanted to beg. He couldn't. His eyes were the only thing he could still move, and he looked up at her, pleading, and she looked back down at him with something that might've been pity, if it hadn't also been so very, very satisfied.
"Two," she whispered. "Thank you for the show."
She lifted her hand off his chest. Held it up in the light. Thumb and middle finger, pressed together.
"One."
Snap.
Thump.
And then nothing.
The spotlight went out.
Brianna woke up on a leather couch in a dressing room she didn't recognize, with her hoodie on right side out and her phone in her hand and the feeling that she'd just had the best nap of her life.
There was a woman sitting on the edge of the dressing table. Pale, platinum hair, a long leather coat. She was filing one long purple-black nail with a little emery board, scratch, scratch, scratch, completely unbothered.
"Hey, babe," the woman said, without looking up. "Show's over. Your Uber's outside. It's paid for."
Brianna blinked. "Where's... the guy? Lucien?"
"He had to go." The woman blew on her nail, examined it, then looked up and smiled. Her eyes caught the makeup bulbs and flashed, for just a second, red. "Permanently. He sends his regrets. Actually, he doesn't, but you get it."
Brianna stood up, confused, but somehow not scared at all. "Okay. Um. Thanks?"
"Anytime." The woman held up a gold pocket watch by its chain and let it swing, lazily, left and right. "Oh, and Brianna? Next time a guy says 'Want to see how it really works?'..."
The watch stopped swinging. It just hung there in midair, perfectly still, while the woman's hand dropped back to her lap.
"...run."
Brianna ran. She'd swear later she couldn't remember why.
Nadia slipped the watch into her coat pocket, hopped off the table, and walked out the stage door into the cold night, her heels clicking down the alley. There was a show in Milwaukee next week. Different guy, same act.