2021-12-29 Ringless and Found

Ringless and Found

Participants: Jean-Jacques

Storyteller: Hamelin

Location: Drop the Mic

Date and Time: December 29, 2021 10:42 pm

Summary: Jean-Jacques goes hunting at Drop the Mic on a fairly routine evening

It's pissing and pouring rain outside still, and its not like Jean Jacques can dodge rain drops. Fortunately, he's not dressed in his usual suit this evening; instead opting for something more suitable for the type of crowd that frequents this club. A simple white shirt with black denim jeans and a pair of white sneakers. His hair is down instead of pulled back, and the long locks frame his face nicely while being accented by his full and neatly trimmed beard. A soft smile slowly bleeds across his lips as the music of the place mix with the lighting and saturate him to the bones.

It's a good night to prowl for a meal.

The interior of Drop the Mic is a haven from the dark and the wet outside. Here, the subdued tones of night are replaced with flashing and sweeping lights that dazzle with a kaleidoscope of color. Throngs of people, pressed tightly to move to shared rhythms, felt in the chest as much as heard, seem to move as one chaotic, uncoordinated entity. Others flock together with drinks in hand or in mind, their conversations creating a murmur beneath the drive of the music.

A herd on the dance floor, and flocks by the bar; it is a world of possibilities for the predator moving undetected amongst them.

The club has all kinds of people in it, and Jean-Jacques's ebon eyes flit from the dance floor to the bar, and that smile of his bleeds across the man's lips as he sees a middle aged woman sitting at the end of the bar by herself, her head bobbing to the music while she plays with her phone between sips from her drink. Walking up to the bar and flags down the barkeep. Loud enough for both the woman and the bartender to both hear, he lets his creole accent fill the air, "Hey, can I get a bourbon on the rocks?"

The woman looks over, alerted to the sudden presence of a nearby, accented voice that carries with clarity, above the noise of the place. She has sandy blonde hair, cut in a style that was trendy a decade ago, and she's deeply tanned, like any good sun-worshipper from Southern California, though her skin on her left ring finger has a circle a couple of shades lighter. The skin is even indented a little, from the memory of a ring, now removed. "Hey," she greets, her hand moving automatically to darken her phone, before that elbow props on the bar. She tilts her head to the side, unconsciously exposing the length of her neck. "You gave me a bit of a startle!" she chides with a smile.

The bartender, meanwhile, is busy with another drink but looks over at JJ's order. She gives a smile and a nod, while she continues making several other drinks at the same time. One must be sure and efficient to survive behind the bar at Drop the Mic.

The man returns the bartender's nod before turning and grinning at the lady next to him. "Sorry about that, didn't mean to startle you." His eyes glance down, deliberately at her ring finger before he slowly looks back up at her own eyes. "I'm Jean-Jacques, let me buy your next drink to make it up to you?" he offers, spreading the grin on his lips back into a warm smile. "It's the least I could do afterall."

The woman gives a smile that melts a few years away. She shifts a little on her barstool, even giving her hair a little flip. "Well," she answers, eyes quickly doing a down and up assessment, which evidently meets with her approval. "All right, Jean-Jacques. I'm Claire, and I *think* that should do the trick. I'll take a martini." She glances toward the bartender, then looks back with a faintly lifted brow. She's about to add something when the bartender chimes in.

The bartender, who's wrapping up with the previous order just now, and looks over to ask, "Got a kind of bourbon in mind, hon?" This place won't have the true top-flight options, but there is some selection available.

"Angel's Envy if you have it." He replies to the bartender before glancing back over to Claire. "If I'm going to be drinking with a lady whose smile can bring a tear to an angel's eye, I might as well drink their envy." He flashes that winning smile at her again before turning back to the bartender. "Or 1792 if you don't. And I'll cover Claire's martini."

There's no doubting Jean-Jacques' magnetism. The line he offers, off the cuff and invented, is enough to bring a subtle flush to the woman's skin. And, though the attention is welcome, it seems that the recently-unringed woman is not without reservations at actually progressing, from a flattering greeting and the idea of a drink in theory, to the practice of it.

There's that warm reaction, a lowering of lashes and a looking away, before the warring emotions run their course for a moment or two. Finally, she looks back to Jean-Jacques and her smile is a little more consciously-constructed. Still, she's smiling; he has overcome that resistance. As the bartender busily makes the martini and - marvel of marvels - a glass of Angel's Envy, she settles in for the conversation. "So, tell me about yourself, Jean-Jacques," he bids. "Where you from? What do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a corporate smuck." Jean-Jacques replies with a grin before shaking his head and laughing. "Ok, so that's mostly dishonest. Devil in disguise might be closer to the truth. I'm actually a lawyer. Just moved here for work from Mississippi. Got scouted by Magadon and came out here to their LA offices." He takes the drink when it arrives and raises it slightly between them in a toast. "To new friends and fresh beginnings." Taking a small sip from the glass, he sets it down and looks back over at Claire. "What about you? South Cali native I'm betting."

Claire tilts her head, actively listening while her hands make little adjustments to her hair, flitting lightly and subtly in a display of interest. She smiles and nods along, arching brows and offering 'ooohs' at all the appropriate points. As their drinks arrive, she takes hers and favors Jean-Jacques with a smile, clinking her glass to his and then takes a measured sip. Not too much.

"Yeah. My family moved around a bit when I was a kid - military brat. But I moved out here for college and... well, I just fell in love with it. You can surf any day of the year, if there's enough waves!" She smiles again, warmly, and adds, "As for what I do... I'm kind of getting back into the job market after a couple of years off. Substitute teaching for now, until I get back full-time, hopefully in September." She has to lean in a little as she speaks, the place has a tendency to drown out some of the conversation, despite voices raised against the din.

"An important vocation, shaping young minds for the future of our society." Jean-Jacques replies with that winning smile of his. "I wish you the best of luck in returning to full time soon." A sip is taken from the glass of bourbon before he returns his gaze to the woman, consciously but subtlely positioning himself so that he's always appearing to look up at her to catch her eyes. "So, other then sculpting our country's future and captivating the attention of dashing laywers in a bar, what else do you do for fun?"

Claire offers another lowering of her lashes and an uncerain smile. Her hand fidgets lightly, toying with the stem of her martini glass as she answers him. The conversation moves on, and Jean-Jacques learns some details about her - that she's in a stage of re-discovery after a bad relationship that seemed to consume her life the past few years. She's back to surfing as often as she can - a true passion of hers that she left untended for time that she now regrets. She has a dog, and she's getting back into trail-running with her, something else sacrificed at the altar of a relationship she's moving on from, while she still has some life left in her. She reads, she has an interest in movies - Hollywood, box office fare, a guilty pleasure.

She asks him questions back, skillful in this social arena, even if unpracticed, lately, with the parry-and-thrust of barside flirtation. He keeps her on the line, though, through it all.

Eventually, it gets to the point where the conversation progresses to convincing her to a more private setting to continue the talk. The music is great, and the atmosphere is fun, but the allure is starting something fresh and new and exciting; and that means atleast more privacy then is easily available in the club. Plying her with alcohol and his charms for a couple of hours of conversation, eventually he asks her to somewhere more private.

With patience and charm, Jean-Jacques has worked through th ewalls she built for herself against establishing true connection. It is one thing to want attention and confidence, borrowed from interest and the opening remarks of a charming strnager; it's another to agree to take a walk, and to feel those butterflies of possibility as she steps out into the night, alone with this near-stranger. And yet, his charm is enough for the task.

They move along, at first apart, and soon enough with her leaning into him, secure within the curl of his arm. Soon after, she's offering tentative, martini-tinged kisses that only warm more with his skilled manipulations. Before the second hour turns to a third, he has her pulled into a shady alcove off the street, all hot breath and encircling arms and pressing lips, one separated from the herd and ripe for the taking.

It starts soft, gentle. But as the two make out, he gradually becomes more passionate. His lips leave hers, first to her cheek, then to the jawline where the neck meets, then down the neck, eventually reaching the nape at the collar bone. The kisses turn into playful bites and sucking.

Then there is pain as he bites way harder then he should even if he was trying to leave hickies on her neck. The pain probably scaring her for that moment, as he holds her against the wall in the alley with the weight of his own body, pressing down on her collar bone with his own teeth hard enough to break the skin even with his dulled fangs, until the blood starts to pool there and he starts to drink from her, holding her struggling body until the kiss can finally take effect and he's then supporting her body against the waves of esctacy.

She cries out, hands starting to scrabble and push at the brutish feeding required by Jean-Jacques limitations. Soon enough though, he's able to crush down hard enough to break the skin in just the right spot, and the coppery taste of her blood rushes into his mouth. She sags against him, her resistance growing weak and kittenish before she's swooning, propped up against a cinderblock wall, giving shivering moans into the night as a monster steals some of her health and vitality.

It's not quick. Nothing is more pleasurable for a vampire then feeding. The blood is life. It's sex, and chocolate, and a day spent at an amusement park, and all the best drugs...all rolled up into one. And he doesn't feed nearly often enough to get bored of it, so he restrains himself. Not so much drawing the blood from her as letting it flow in pumps naturally. The result is that both him and her get to experiance their own personal esctasy for nearly 10 full minutes before he's had his fill and licks her clean; and the wound closed. Experiance has told him that after experiancing the kiss for that long, the odds she'll be able to stand on her own are non-zero, but not much higher then that. So he's still bracing her and helping her stand as he draws back, looking her in the eyes.

"Making out with you is like kissing lightning. I'm tingling all over." He says softly, using a free hand to brush her hair out of her face. "I think though, maybe going any further might be best saved for our next date. Can I call you?"

She offers an unsteady, warbling laugh, clinging on to Jean-Jacques and allowing him to guide her out, and to hail down a cab for her. Those few moments of panic, of struggle, with the violence of the bite were washed away in the rapture of the Kiss. She's quick to provide her number, and even to tell him again, so she's sure he has it right. And then, wobbling and feeling so light-headed that it must be love returning to her after years of absence, she slumps into a cab and finds herself driven out of his life once more.