Chapter Text
⚠️⚠️ EXTREME CONTENT & TRIGGER WARNINGS ⚠️⚠️
Uncle/Niece sexual dynamic; Large age gap; Sex while intoxicated; Explicit sexual content; Incest
*
Elizabeth laughed with one of her ghouls as she stepped into the bar. The ritual had been a demanding one, and the low hum of music and alcohol felt like a release she’d earned.
He paused just inside the doorway instead of following her further in. “Ya sure ya don’t want me to stay? I could have one drink with ya. Make sure you’re settled 'fore I head out.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said lightly. “You’ve done your duty. You've escorted me here safely just as my father asked of you.”
“Alright, if you’re sure.”
“I am,” she replied, watching as he finally turned and left her there—alone, and very much aware of it.
She had already stripped away her paint and now wore civilian clothes. She did not want to be recognized. Not now. Not here, especially not so soon after a ritual. Fortunately for the Emeritus bloodline, no one ever seemed to recognize them without their masks and ceremonial attire. She had even gone so far as to slip in blue contacts, masking her trademark mismatched eyes.
After the Pepe scandal, she had no desire for any more negative press.
Tonight’s look was simple. Flared jeans, a fitted sweater, and black-and-pink platform boots. Her hair had grown long again, falling past her shoulder blades, soft and fluffy now that it was free of pins and hairspray.
She stalked up to the bar and slapped her palm down. “Bartender,” she called, as though she were the most important patron in the room. When that failed to draw his attention, she lifted a wad of cash and gave it a deliberate wave. That did the trick.
“Good evening, madam. What’ll it be?”
She tucked the rolled bills neatly into the bartender’s pocket. “You’ll tend to me whenever I need a drink. If any of your more unruly patrons bother me, you’ll step in. And if you see anyone trying to take candid photographs of me without my consent, you will inform me immediately.”
“Absolutely,” he said quickly. “If you need anything else, my name is Jeremy.”
“Thank you, Jeremy. I’ll start with a whiskey sour, please.”
“Coming right up.”
She leaned back in her chair and checked her watch. Eleven o’clock. One drink, then back to her room, she told herself. She wanted to turn in early. There was a meet and greet in the morning, and she wanted to be fresh for it. Plus, her father would kill her if she was late.
Jeremy set the glass in front of her, some of it sloshing over the rim as he released his grip. “Thank you!” she called after him as he moved on to the next customer. She leaned over the glass as if it were an old friend, then lifted it with one hand, her fingertips resting lightly on the rim as she idly twirled it.
She let the scent rise, savoring it for a moment before finally bringing it to her lips and taking her first sip.
And then she heard it. That voice.
“Hello, Elizabeth.”
She closed her eyes, willing it to be nothing more than her imagination. Surely, she was hearing things. She took another quick sip of whiskey, trying to ground herself, but then she felt it. Hands settling on her shoulders.
Her heart stuttered to a halt as she froze, every nerve bracing before she slowly began to turn.
Her mouth fell open as her eyes lifted to him. There he was. That face, carved in cold, sculpted intensity. All sharp planes and restrained emotion. His deep-set eyes watched her from beneath a heavy brow, unblinking.
His high, rigid cheekbones looked a shade paler than she remembered, and that unforgiving bridge of his nose was just as severe. He was smiling, but somehow that only made him more threatening. And those dark curls were still there, framing his beautiful face in loose waves. The same curls she saw every time she looked at her daughter.
Her brow creased, and she shook her head so subtly only he could have noticed. She tried to speak, but only a few broken sounds escaped her. The darkness rushed in, swift and overwhelming, and she did not try to fight it. Her lashes fluttered once before her eyes slid shut, and Elizabeth tipped sideways in her chair.
Perpetua was already moving. He caught her cleanly, strong arms locking around her to keep her from crashing to the floor.
“Elizabeth?” He shook her firmly. “Elizabeth?” Then a little harder. He adjusted her in his arms, guiding her back into the chair so she appeared to be sitting upright. His hand came up and he gave her cheek a few brisk pats, the softness of her skin jiggling slightly beneath his touch. “Eliza, you cannot pass out in a bar."
Jeremy noticed the commotion and hurried over. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“No,” he answered quickly. “No problem at all. She just… she hasn’t seen me in a very long time, and I’m afraid I startled the life out of her.”
Jeremy looked unconvinced, but before he could press further, she stirred.
“Wh—what, where…?”
“Miss,” Jeremy said carefully, “do you know this man? Is he bothering you?”
Elizabeth blinked up at him, disoriented, then her gaze slid to V. With visible effort, she forced herself back into awareness and gave a slow, deliberate nod, the kind you give when the answer costs you something.
Satisfied with her answer, Jeremy returned to making drinks. Perpetua loosened his hold on her, allowing her to sit on her own again before pulling an empty chair close and settling into it beside her.
“Why, hello there, dear.”
“How did you find me?”
“As it turns out, it isn’t very difficult to track an Emeritus while they’re on tour. Same hotels, familiar patterns. And after fifteen bars, I finally stumbled upon your lovely face.”
Her breath hitched. “Have… have you come back to kill me?”
“No! Eliza, I love you.”
She shook her head, as if she were prepared for this confrontation. “No. Your kind of love is not the kind I am looking for, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve changed, Elizabeth.”
Her eyes narrowed, a smug curve touching her lips even as something wounded lingered beneath it. “So you’ve had time to reflect on your behavior during your torpid vampire state?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Could you hear me?” Her eyes brightened despite the sadness in them. “When I spoke to you in the crypt? Did you know I was there?”
He smiled and reached for her face, but she recoiled instantly, jerking back so abruptly the chair’s legs tipped.
His smile faltered at her fear, though his voice remained steady. “I like to think that anything you said to me seeped into my subconscious.”
She stared daggers at him refusing to be the one to move the conversation forward.
“How old is my daughter now, dear?”
Without breaking eye contact, she grabbed her glass and downed what remained in a harsh swallow. Her chest heaved as she inhaled, Whiskey burning its way down. A thin trail of liquor slipped past her lip and down her chin as she coughed and set the empty glass down with a sharp clack.
“Jeremy,” she called hoarsely, “another. Right away.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Elizabeth, you know you can’t handle your liquor. Perhaps you should—”
She cut him off by lifting the fresh drink the second it hit the bar and taking a fast, defiant sip.
“—slow down.”
As she swallowed, she answered flatly, “Persephone is two now. She lives with Addeline. I see her when I feel up to it, but I’m too busy to be a mother. Ministry duties keep me occupied. So does touring. So does writing lyrics. So do music videos. I have far more responsibilities now than I did when I was just a foolish teenager sitting around waiting for you to fuck me.”
The words hit him hard enough that he visibly swallowed.
“She thinks I’m her sister,” Elizabeth went on casually. “And I prefer it that way.”
Perpetua shook his head, disappointment settling across his features. “With Addeline? Does that mean…”
“Yes. She no longer resides at the Ministry. She remarried.”
“Remarried? To whom?”
“I’ll give you one guess.” She took another sip, this one deliberately arrogant.
“The ghoul?”
“Of course! They got hitched around the time I signed over custody. Though you know she can’t help but have a go at your brother whenever the chance arises.”
“So, your Papa is—”
“He's not my Papa. But yes, your brother is alive and well. He needed a blood transfusion last year after a nasty fall. Yours truly provided it. Now he’s biologically fifty again, which officially means he and Addy have met in the middle.”
Pepe nodded slowly. “Incredible.”
“I rather thought so as well. But do not fret over your darling, spoiled brat. The Taylors make excellent parents. And you will be pleased to know that she is very American sounding.”
Elizabeth studied him in silence. She could not remember ever seeing him look quite so uneasy, and the sight of it stirred something warm and intoxicating in her chest. It pleased her. Her confidence swelled at the realization, though whether that strength came from the power of the moment or the alcohol settling into her veins, she could not have said. She lifted her glass again and took another steady sip of her cocktail.
“Are you seeing anyone?” V asked.
She paused with her whiskey suspended midair. “No,” she said after a beat. “No, I find I haven’t the time to meet anyone, let alone properly date. As I told you already, I’m deeply involved in Ministry business now. No more fun and games.”
“So, you’ve remained untouched since the last time I touched you?”
She parted her lips so only her front teeth showed and tipped her head in a small, almost mocking bounce. Then she looked away, as if she needed a moment to decide why he even deserved an answer.
“I have enlisted the loyal service of a battery-operated device to keep me satisfied.”
“A poor substitute. But I suppose one must survive however one can.”
“What have you come here for, Uncle?”
He drew in a slow, deliberate breath. “You have something of mine. I turned your room upside down, yet I couldn’t find it.”
Elizabeth was already signaling for her third drink. “Your… your mask?”
“Why do you have it, Eliza?”
She had taken his mask from his decrepit remains after she and her father destroyed him, reducing him to nothing more than a dried-out husk. She took it because the past was not so easily forgotten, not what had been done or what had been survived. She took it as a reminder of where she had come from and how far she had clawed her way forward. And she took it because, no matter how deeply she buried what he had once meant to her, the mask was still a fragment of him, and she had never truly been able to let that fragment go.
The drinks kept coming. One after another. The sharp burn softened into warmth, and then the warmth into a loose, drifting haze. Her words began to wander before her thoughts could catch them. She laughed too loudly at nothing. Tilted too far back in her chair. Spilled fragments of stories between slow, careless sips.
She told him about his daughter. How she slept crooked, how she laughed in her dreams, how Addeline hovered over her as though she were guarding some fleeting miracle. “She’s here! Would you like to meet her?”
Then Addeline herself became the subject. How she still believed in love even when it bruised her. How she chased impossible endings and called them destiny. Elizabeth spoke as though she were narrating someone else’s life entirely, distant and detached, as if none of it truly touched her.
“And Father,” she slurred, swirling the ice in her glass, “he wasn’t even truly upset when Addy left. Relieved, actually. More than I’ve seen him in years. He’s done with women now. Especially after Annaliese disappear—”
Her voice drifted off mid-thought and something clicked—hard.
“That’s it! Annaliese. She brought you back, didn’t she?” Her glass tipped as she laughed, incredulously. “She gave you Asmodeus’s blood, didn’t she? Un—fucking—believable.”
She finished another drink too fast and jabbed a sloppy finger in his direction, nearly pitching forward. He caught her by reflex, steadying her before she could slide from the chair.
The bartender started to approach again, but V lifted a hand at once, cutting him off with a firm, dismissive gesture and silently barring her from any more alcohol.
“But not really that unbelievable,” she continued weakly. “She’s hopelessly head over heels for you. Completely… bloody—”
She hiccupped mid-word and broke into crooked laughter, head lolling as the room continued to spin.
“Elizabeth, darling… I think we ought to get you back to your room.”
Her face went rigid. For a moment she sat utterly still, as if the words had turned her to stone. Then she turned to him slowly, eyes glassy and unguarded in a way they had not been all night.
“Uncle, I’ve missed you terribly. Every second of every bloody day, I’ve missed you. It’s been so hard.” A shaky breath slipped from her. “I can’t even bear to look at my own daughter, because all I see in her… is you.”
Perpetua lifted a hand though it didn’t quite reach her face. He didn’t opt to pull her close, only brushed his thumb beneath her chin, tipping it upward just enough so that she had to meet his eyes. The gesture was intimate and devastating in its restraint.
Eliza lifted her eyes to his, her face tight with effort, as though the words themselves were cutting their way out of her. Her mouth trembled before she forced them free. “Sleep with me.”
“Excuse me?”
"Oh, Uncle, take me to bed right now. Two years—two years without anyone touching me. I've thought about you every single night, lying next to me, kissing me, making me yours." She pressed herself against him, grinding her body onto his. "I physically ache for you. Please... I can't take another second of this emptiness. Just sleep with me."
Perpetua had promised. He had sworn he would not harm Elizabeth. That had been the condition of his return. But the question gnawed at him now, twisting in quiet justification. Was it truly harm if she was the one reaching for him? If what she wanted would momentarily dull the ache in her chest? Or would the greater cruelty be to leave her like this—shaking, undone, stranded in her desperation as she begged him not to turn away?
He rose with her, one arm steady at her back as she swayed unsteadily to her feet. They had barely taken a step before the bartender moved in their path.
“Hey,” Jeremy said firmly. “You’re not taking her anywhere like this.”
Perpetua didn’t argue. He simply reached into his coat and laid a far heavier stack of cash on the counter than Elizabeth had earlier, the bills fanning out with finality.
The man hesitated for only a second before his fingers closed around the money. With a quick glance away, he stepped aside and made a shooing motion with his hand, turning his attention pointedly back to the bar.
*
Elizabeth's back hit the hotel door as Perpetua's mouth found hers in a kiss that was uneven and breathless. Eliza reached behind herself blindly, her fingers fumbling for the handle while she stayed locked to him. The door gave suddenly under her searching hand, swinging inward just as her balance failed.
They tumbled backward together, lips breaking apart as they staggered into the room. Elizabeth landed first with a startled laugh, dragging him down with her as the door slammed shut behind them.
She climbed on top of him, straddling his abdomen and tore his shirt open, buttons scattering across the floor. She bit down on his collarbone hard enough to leave marks.
“Ouch!” he winced, but she only laughed and dug her nails into him.
“I want you to use me! I want you to touch me like I’m the only thing you ever need to touch.”
Perpetua's voice dropped to a rasp. "Keep talking that way, Eliza, and I won't make it to the bed."
Elizabeth held his gaze as she lifted her shirt, revealing inch after inch of skin he'd once known by heart. And when she unhooked her bra, letting it fall away, Perpetua's breath caught at the sight.
She had changed since he'd last seen her, when she was just shy of her nineteenth birthday. Her breasts were fuller now, at least two cup sizes larger, her hips wider, and there was a softness around her middle that hadn't been there before his child had grown inside her.
His eyes lingered on the silvery stretch marks across her stomach—badges of the journey into motherhood he'd set upon her when she was barely more than a girl.
At twenty-one, she carried herself differently now, owning every curve he'd helped shape.
It was surely turning him on now.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted. It’s you I think of when I touch myself at night, Uncle.”
“You look so pretty underneath me, Contessa.”
He scooped his niece up from the ground, his arms secure around her womanly frame as she latched her legs around his waist. She peppered his neck with kisses, her soft fingers finding their way into his hair, gripping with the determined authority only a lover could command.
“I’m so wet for you, Uncle. I’m dripping through these jeans. Get them off of me now.”
He dropped her onto the bed, fumbling with her pants until the button gave way, then yanked them down her legs in one swift motion that caught her underwear in their descent.
He tore off his own shirt, kicked free of his pants and dove between her legs. Then he buried his face into her folds, breathing her in—that scent he knew so well—before his tongue found its rhythm against her. He moved through her, his nose gliding through her slits as he took mouthfuls of her flesh.
She was already moaning before he’d barely begun. But this wasn’t what she wanted from him. It had been too long, and she wanted him inside of her. She reached down and grabbed his hair and pulled him up like he was a dog on a leash.
She felt his hard cock graze her legs, her thighs and finally the outworkings of her womanhood until he finally rested on top of her chest.
“Put it in, uncle, please put it in.”
He kissed her neck, sucked on it hard, “What’s wrong? Can’t take a little teasing?”
“Stop,” she laughed, “St—stop leaving marks on me. I have a meeting first thing in the morning. I can’t have fans thinking I’m a whore, now can I?”
“Then I can leave marks here,” he said, taking a breast into his mouth and sucking it as hard as he could.
She winced in pain but didn’t stop him. She grabbed his face and brought him back up to her mouth, “Bloody hell, just shut up and fuck me already!”
“You sound so good begging for it, Piccola.”
“Do I still appear that little to you, Uncle?”
He dug his fingers into her hips like talons, breaking skin despite his trimmed nails, leaving needle-shaped wells that filled with blood. He lined his erection up with her waiting core, “You will always be my little one, Elizabeth,” and then he jammed into her with such force that it sent her body up the squeaky mattress by at least a foot.
Liz locked one leg around his back, her calf muscle tensing against his spine, while her other leg flung outward, trembling in midair as he drove into her with increasing force, each thrust striking that perfect place deep inside of her, restoring the magic she remembered all too well, the same spell he broke the first time he finally gave in to her.
“So… you touch yourself to the thought of me, eh? I’d like to see that someday.”
“Ah—mmm… yes, your face is the only f—face I can cum to.”
Pepe could tell the girl wasn’t going to last much longer. He caught her hand and lifted it to his mouth, his lips closing slowly around her fingers. His tongue traced over her skin in a languid, teasing sweep before his teeth caught the tips of her fingers in a gentle bite.
“Don’t scream too loud, Contessa. I don’t want to be found out just yet.”
She nodded, though she had little control over the pitches of pleasure coming out of her. But she tried, biting back what wanted to be a cry of abandon into something softer—a restrained groan that bellied the years of not being fucked by him and the sudden fullness of him now.
His hand traveled down, beneath her rear and he lifted her slightly to meet his hips. She felt so good, still so tight. He felt it when she came undone and he stared into her eyes as she let go for him. She honored his wishes not to be too loud, but the confined moaning that slipped between her clenched teeth told him everything.
“That’s it, my love, there you go.”
Her suspended leg fell to the mattress, the other sliding from his back as her body softened into the sheets. Her eyelids grew too heavy to keep open. The room tilted pleasantly, those five gin and tonics finally claiming victory. His movements continued somewhere distant, beyond the warm fog enveloping her, but consciousness was already dissolving, sleep pulling her under before she could register whether he had finished or not.