Chapter 2: Vibrations & Violations: The Midnight Toy Store
The dress Klaus had tossed her was black, thin, and ended mid-thigh. It was less a garment and more a suggestion of one. Niamh wore it without underwear, the memory of him still slick between her thighs. The borrowed shirt—one of his own soft, dark henleys—she’d tied around her waist like a makeshift shield. It smelled of him, which was somehow more intimate than the sex had been.
Stefan Salvatore met them in the penthouse lobby, his posture coiled tight as a spring. His eyes, green and troubled, swept over Niamh, taking in her state of undress, the fresh mark on her throat, the defiant set of her jaw. A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“You got her,” Stefan said, his voice flat.
“I acquired her,” Klaus corrected, smiling broadly as he stepped into the elevator, pressing the button for the parking garage. “There’s a difference. She’s coming willingly now, aren’t you, darling?”
Niamh leaned against the mirrored wall, feeling the cool surface through the thin dress. “My options seem to be ‘willingly’ in your sports car or ‘unwillingly’ over your shoulder. I prefer to walk. And to shop.”
“Which brings us to our first stop,” Klaus said, as the doors opened to the cavernous, concrete garage.
The car was a low-slung, vintage muscle car, all gleaming black paint and predatory lines. Klaus slid into the driver’s seat as if claiming a throne. Stefan got in the back. Niamh took the passenger seat, the leather cold through her dress.
They drove in silence for twenty minutes, leaving the sleek towers for a part of the city where the lights were garish and the sidewalks were sticky. Klaus pulled up in front of a place called Velvet Vortex. The sign, in pulsating pink neon, depicted a woman in a cascade of abstract curves. The windows were fogged, the bass from inside a physical tremor in the air.
“A sex shop?” Stefan’s voice was disdainful from the back. “Really, Klaus?”
“Our companion requires… amenities,” Klaus said, killing the engine. “And I require entertainment. Come along.”
The inside was a temple to cheap sensation. The air was thick with the cloying scent of synthetic vanilla and plastic, undercut by the faint, acrid smell of chemicals. Racks held outfits of lace and patent leather. Shelves displayed gadgets in brightly colored boxes. A bored-looking attendant with multiple facial piercings glanced up from a magazine, her eyes widening slightly at the trio that walked in.
Klaus moved through the aisles like a curator in a museum of the absurd. He picked up a pair of fur-lined handcuffs, raised an eyebrow, and dropped them with a clatter.
“This is pathetic,” Niamh stated, running a finger along a row of vibrators. “Mass-produced junk. No craftsmanship.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer something bespoke?” Klaus mocked. Then his eyes caught on something on a display torso. It was a corset, but not like any she’d seen. It was made of black latex, ribbed with flexible metal boning, and had a small, wireless remote control clipped to the hanger. Intricate patterns were cut into the material, revealing hints of skin beneath.
“Ah,” he said, pulling it off the mannequin. “Test this one.”
“What?”
“For structural integrity. You’re wearing that... regrettable fabric. I’d prefer to see you in something with a bit more spine.” He held it out. “Put it on.”
Stefan had hung back near the door, a silent, uncomfortable sentinel. “Klaus, this is unnecessary.”
“Everything is necessary until I deem it otherwise,” Klaus replied, never taking his eyes off Niamh. “Well?”
Niamh stared at the corset, then at him. A slow, understanding smile spread across her face. He wanted a show. Fine. She’d give him a fucking opera.
She took the garment and turned, not towards a changing room, but towards the center of the shop. There was a display there, a faux leather saddle mounted on a sawhorse, ostensibly for demonstrating riding crops.
“Privacy isn’t really your thing, is it?” she said, pulling the henley shirt off her waist and dropping it to the floor.
She reached back, found the zipper of the cheap dress, and pulled it down in one smooth motion. The dress pooled at her feet. She stood naked in the lurid glow of neon and fluorescent light, completely unconcerned with the staring shop attendant or Stefan’s sharp intake of breath. Her skin, pale and smooth, seemed to absorb the garish colors, transforming them into something ethereal.
She stepped into the corset, shimmying it up her body. It was cold and stiff. She turned her back to Klaus. “A little help?”
He was there in an instant, his fingers surprisingly deft as he laced the back, pulling it tight. The latex compressed her waist, lifting her breasts, the cut-outs framing her nipples, exposing the curve of her hips. It was both armor and extreme vulnerability. He clipped the small, vibrating bullet to the inside, right against her clit, and handed her the remote.
“Structural integrity,” he murmured, his lips close to her ear.
Niamh climbed onto the display saddle, swinging one leg over so she straddled it. The leather was cold and slick under her thighs. She positioned herself, the hard ridge of the saddle’s pommel pressing insistently against her core. She could feel the cool air from the cut-outs against her sensitized skin.
She looked directly at the shop attendant, a young woman whose name tag read ‘Maya’. Maya was frozen, her magazine forgotten, her cheeks flushed.
Niamh let her power breathe.
It wasn't charm, not the magical kind. It was something deeper, more biological. A pheromonal aura, a visual symphony of promised debauchery. She arched her back, making the corset creak, letting her head fall back. She pressed the button on the remote.
A low, insistent buzz filled the space between her legs. It wasn't gentle. It was a direct, persistent thrum against her swollen clit. A sigh escaped her lips, long and shuddering. She began to move, a slow, grinding roll of her hips against the saddle, mimicking the motion of riding. The hard leather rubbed against her, the vibration blurring everything into a single point of intense, building pleasure.
Her eyes stayed locked on Maya’s.
“See something you like?” Niamh’s voice was a husky thread over the music.
Maya couldn’t look away. Her hand, seemingly of its own volition, drifted from the countertop to the front of her own jeans. She swallowed hard.
Niamh increased the speed. The buzz became a furious hum. She moaned, loudly, unashamedly, one hand braced on the saddle’s horn, the other trailing down her own stomach, dipping into the top of the corset to pinch and pull at her own nipple. She was a spectacle of self-possessed carnality. Every movement was calculated, obscene, and utterly mesmerizing.
“Fuck,” Stefan whispered from the doorway, the word torn from him.
Klaus watched, arms crossed, a predator’s grin slicing his face. He was enjoying this, but not in the way Maya was. He was enjoying the control, the degradation, the public proof of his ownership.
But Niamh was feeding.
She drew the voyeuristic lust from Maya in thick, heady waves. She drew Stefan’s conflicted, heated guilt. She drew Klaus’s dark, appreciating voracity. It all swirled into her, stoking the fire in her belly. The saddle wasn’t enough. She needed more.
Her hips moved faster, riding the pommel in earnest now, her wetness slicking the leather. The vibrations pushed her higher, teetering on a peak. She was panting, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
“Come here,” she breathed, not to Klaus, but to Maya.
The girl, ensnared, took two stumbling steps forward.
“Touch yourself,” Niamh commanded, her voice layered with compulsion—not magical, but purely, powerfully sexual. “Show me.”
Maya’s fingers fumbled with the button of her jeans, slid inside. Her eyes were glazed, fixed on Niamh’s writhing form, on the shiny latex stretched over trembling flesh.
Niamh let her own climax approach, let it tighten every muscle. She watched Maya’s hand move frantically in her underwear, saw the girl’s back arch against a shelf.
“That’s it,” Niamh gasped. “Now come for me.”
With a broken cry, Maya shuddered, her body convulsing as she climaxed right there on the shop floor, driven to a hands-free peak by sheer, projected sensation. The rush of her release, pure and uninhibited, hit Niamh like a drug.
It was the final trigger.
Niamh’s own orgasm ripped through her, violent and silent for a heartbeat before she cried out—a raw, guttural sound that drowned the music. Her body clamped down on nothing, spasming around the insane stimulation of the vibrator and the saddle. Lights danced behind her eyes. She rode the wave until she was spent, slumping forward over the saddle’s horn, the remote falling from her limp fingers to clatter on the floor.
The buzzer continued to drone. Klaus walked over, plucked it from the floor, and turned it off.
The sudden silence was deafening. Maya was leaning against a rack of costumes, breathing heavily, her face a mask of shock and embarrassment. Stefan looked like he’d been struck.
Klaus approached the saddle. He ran a single finger up the inside of Niamh’s thigh, collecting the evidence of her climax. He brought it to his lips, tasting it, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Structural integrity confirmed,” he said, his voice low and smug. “We’ll take it. And that.” He pointed lazily to a black leather travel bag on a shelf.
He tossed a wad of cash onto the counter, far more than the items were worth. “For the display,” he said to the stunned Maya, not looking at her. “And the cleaning bill.”
Niamh slowly dismounted, her legs unsteady. The latex corset felt like a second skin, a sweaty, demanding trophy. She pulled on the leather travel bag over her shoulder, not bothering to get dressed further.
As they walked out, the cool night air hitting her heated skin, Stefan finally spoke, his voice taut with unnamed emotion. “Where to now?”
Klaus slid into the driver’s seat, waiting for Niamh to get in. “West,” he said simply, a kingdom of malice in his smile. “We have a long drive ahead. And our passenger has proven she can… sustain herself.”
The car roared to life, swallowing them in its dark interior. Niamh stared out the window at the passing blur of neon and shadow, the throbbing between her legs a constant, pleasant reminder. She had fed well. But the hunger, she knew, was a permanent tenant. And the road ahead was very, very long.