Blessed be the hour when day surrenders,
When shadows stretch like longing limbs,
And hearts unfasten under velvet skies,
Where sin wears perfume and death, silk.
🩸🌹🩸
Amalia stood at her bathroom sink, toothbrush dangling from her mouth, gaze unfocused on her own reflection. She'd barely noticed the foam at the corners of her lips. Her thoughts were elsewhere. Two days elsewhere. Trapped in a moment she couldn't shake no matter how many cold showers or distractions she threw at it.
The woman...
That woman.
The blonde vampire.
She hadn't given a name. Yet, she'd carved herself into Amalia's memory like a signature etched into glassimpossible to polish away. And no matter how much she told herself she was fine, that it had just been a moment, a thrill, a twisted interaction; it wasn't fading.
She rinsed her mouth and leaned over the sink, pressing her palms into the marble counter. Her honey-colored eyes met her own in the mirror, dark lashes smudged from yesterday's mascara. Her long brown hair fell in loose waves over one shoulder, a few strands still damp from the shower. She was thin, yes but there was strength in the way she held herself, in the elegant length of her neck, the fullness of her lips, the tilt of her jaw.
At 1m62, she was petite by most standards. But she knew how to take space. When she wanted to.
Right now, though, she felt small. But not in the way that hurt. In the way that made her feel coiled. Like something inside her was stirring awake.
She dried her hands and padded barefoot to the bedroom, wearing only an oversized shirt that hung off one shoulder. The apartment was quiet, save for the faint hum of traffic beyond the windows. Her bed was unmade. She hadn't been sleeping well.
How could she?
That moment kept replaying. The vampire's hand on her thigh. Her voice like poison wrapped in silk. The raw confidence. The way her eyes had looked at her like they already knew what she tasted like.
She exhaled slowly and lay back against the pillows. One hand came to rest against her lower belly, absentminded, but not innocent.
She hadn't been with a woman before. Not seriously. Not intimately.
She'd kissed one once at a party, on a dare. It had been warm, and soft, and unremarkable. At the time, she'd written it off. Said she wasn't curious. That it was just a fun little rebellion, drunk and fleeting.
But now… she wasn't so sure.
Because this wasn't rebellion. This wasn't a game.
This was fascination.
What did it feel like, really? To have a woman's hands on her? A woman's lips, a woman's body curved against hers, knowing exactly how to touch and how to be touched?
Was it different? Was it gentler? Or was it sharper, deeper, like a mirror turned inside out?
And what about a vampire?
What would it feel like to be fucked by something so still, so ancient, so inhumanly composed? Would it be all slow ruin and hypnotic destruction? Or would it be like the way the creature had spoken to her: commanding, obscene, unbearably precise?
She bit her lip, dragging her nails lightly down her thigh. The silence in the room was thick.
It was just curiosity, she told herself. But even she didn't believe that anymore.
🌹🩸🌖🌑🌕🩸🌹
The day belonged to humans.
It belongs to the sound of car engines coughing awake, to the shriek of coffee machines, the thrum of hurried footsteps and the smell of exhaust tangled with perfume. It belonged to office lights and bus stops, to grocery lists and baby strollers, to laughter that rose like steam from café terraces.
The day was practical, noisy, messy; full of things that could be held, scheduled, consumed. It was where life clung tight to the rules of physics, to logic, to familiarity.
And in that blinding ordinariness, humans felt safe.
Because the night… the night was something else.
The night wasn't governed. It seduced. It coiled around the soul like silk soaked in wine, smelling of moss and danger and secrets you didn't know you'd buried. The night was velvet and teeth, it was music without sound, a hunger without language. That was when they came out, the ones who didn't belong to daylight. The ones shaped like beauty, but made from something far older and far more ruthless.
Vampires.
Creatures built to ruin the rational mind. They didn't shimmer. They didn't melt in sunlight, though they avoided it all the same , not from fear, but out of instinct. They were of the dark, not because the light hurt them, but because the dark worshipped them. And in that worship, they thrived.
But the daylight?
It didn't care about worship or hunger or ancient instincts.
It just moved forward, fast and bright and oblivious.
Amalia stepped into that brightness, sunglasses on, her bag slung over one shoulder, a hot coffee in her hand. The air was already warm and dry, sun shimmering off the pavement, and the city thrummed with its usual rhythm. Her boots clicked along the sidewalk, her figure cutting a confident path through the scattered morning crowd.
She felt better, in a way. Sleep had still been elusive, but she'd forced herself out of bed, showered, done her hair. Pulled on one of her favorite outfits, sleek black pants, a loose white blouse tucked just right, a thin gold chain at her collarbone. She looked… composed. Like someone who belonged entirely to the day.
Her mind? That was another matter.
Still, she shoved it aside as she arrived at the salon. The place was already humming by the time she stepped through the door. A couple of stylists were tending to early clients, a nail tech chatting while painting rhinestones onto someone's impossibly long acrylics.
She smiled and waved, making her way toward her little corner by the tall window. Her station was immaculate: brushes cleaned, mirrors polished, products arranged in rows like tiny soldiers. This was her sanctuary. Her art.
Makeup wasn't just color. It was architecture, transformation, confidence in powdered form. And she was good at it. More than good, she was exceptional.
Her first client arrived shortly after: a woman in her forties with pale skin, fine lines around her eyes, and the unmistakable weariness of someone who hadn't had a proper vacation in five years.
🌹 "Let's bring the goddess out."
She said warmly, gesturing for her to sit.
She set to work. Moisturizer first, then primer, her fingers gentle and practiced. She worked with the same care a painter gave to canvas: enhancing bone structure, softening shadows, coaxing light back into the skin. A touch of concealer beneath the eyes, foundation blended so seamlessly it looked like second skin. Her hands moved like they'd been born knowing this.
Powder. Blush. Brows sculpted to frame rather than dominate. Soft neutral tones on the lids, lashes curled and lengthened with inky black precision.
The woman looked at her reflection with a quiet gasp.
đź“Ť"God. I didn't know I could look like this."
The woman whispered.
🌹 "You always could," Amalia said, a hint of a smile at her lips. "I just helped remind you."
More clients came. A younger girl wanting something dramatic for an evening out. An older man who shyly admitted he had a drag performance later and needed help with contour. A bride-to-be with trembling hands and an uneven skin tone, whose face Amalia turned into something out of a dream. She worked tirelessly, heart in every sweep of the brush, every shimmer of highlighter and smudge of kohl.
And with each transformation, she felt a little more grounded.
In the mirror, her own reflection would glance back from time to time: the slight curve of her brow, her honey-brown eyes, her dark hair falling just over one cheek. She wasn't trying to distract herself. Not entirely. But she welcomed the distraction all the same.
Because somewhere in the corners of her thoughts, in the silence between each client's gratitude, "she" was there: the memory of those ice-colored eyes, that mouth, the heat in her belly when she remembered the crude words whispered against her thigh.
And the terrifying truth that she wasn't repulsed. She was intrigued. Captivated. Curious.
Even now, as she reached for a shimmer palette, her fingers paused. What did it mean to crave something so alien? To wonder what another woman's lips might feel like against hers, not as a game, not as a phase, but as an honest, consuming possibility?
What did it mean to want?
She shook her head and focused on her last client, blending a deep plum into the outer crease of the woman's lid.
The day was nearly done.
And night would come again soon.