Love Affair With Darkness

Alyssa Bounty led her fashion house from the penthouse of a building that looked like a block of polished onyx. She’d spent decades dressing bodies she never touched and dressing wounds that never showed, a vampire who wanted more than hunger—she wanted a wife who would fuck her with the same precision she used on a pattern cut. Then a portfolio landed on her desk: Amirah Adara, twenty-four, raw talent and the kind of hands you notice. The girl had stitched silk so tight it could pass for skin. Alyssa phoned her. Four evenings later Amirah stepped through the frosted-glass doors wearing yesterday’s train ticket on her sleeve and tomorrow’s ambition in her eyes. Alyssa watched the pulse beat at the hollow of her throat, already hearing how that throat would sound when it surrendered. She gestured toward the chaise where bolts of couture velvet lay, half-unrolled. «Show me how you handle cloth,» Alyssa said. Her voice carried the command of centuries, smooth as chilled champagne and just as intoxicating. Amirah’s fingers trembled only once. She lifted the heaviest bolt, swung it across her hips, sliced the scissors so close that the air itself parted. Alyssa’s nipples tightened beneath her silk blouse, a sharp, private pain she savored. She crossed the room slowly, the heels of her boots marking the boards like heartbeats. «I’ll hire you,» Alyssa said, standing close enough that the girl could feel the lack of human warmth pouring off her skin. «And if you earn it, I’ll give you everything. The house. The nights. Me.» Amirah swallowed once. She placed the scissors on the table with the same delicacy she might soon use on Alyssa’s own wrist, baring the vein for them both. Outside, Fashionville glittered, indifferent, like expensive jewelry flung across a black velvet sheet. Inside, two women who had never touched before decided the first touch would be on purpose.