Thread: Cold Heat (Kaybee x Sugo)

The floor hummed with conversation, just barely audible over the low thump of the beat. It was -and was not- like a heart, for Joanna Klei knew the sound of a beating heart well, and the music did not hold that same two-tone rhythm with all it's fluctuations and bodily interactions of love, and fear, and anger. To one whose heart had not beat for centuries now though, it was at the same time something of a solace to feel a pounding that reverberated in her chest like this did, and thus, perhaps it was not a human heart, but it was a close enough replacement to a vampire, and she had often wondered if this sensation was why so many of her kin spent their time in nightclubs. Joanna hadn't always been 'Joanna' though she'd always held some variation on the name, and this corporate empire was hardly the first kingdom she'd seen over either, though it was in many ways both the smallest and the largest. She'd been born 'Josiane' in 1522 -a backwater daughter of a backwater noblewoman in France- and had fallen for the affections of a charming traveller who had later revealed himself a vampire and turned her. At first immortality and power had been fun toys, but she had begun to chafe at his control, and when he was captured and killed by hunters in the late 1600s, she hadn't wept a tear at the freedom she had gained by his death. From there on, she had operated on her own, never aspiring to marry a king or beget a rebellion as so many of her kin she came to know dreamed of doing. She was content to rule prosperously in little baronies and the occasional duchy, places where disappearances and strangeness were not so easily detected. By all accounts she'd done well for herself, having survived all but a handful of those turned in the same time frame as her, making Joanna one of the oldest vampire living in the western world, and to make things better, one of the next oldest was one she had turned herself, which in many ways added his power to her own. At present, Joanna was a businesswoman, head of a small but prosperous corporate empire, known well, but not well known, which was precisely how she preferred it. She held sway over six childe of her own, each of them all the more devoted for the personal attention she could grant them in a way that would not be possible with a larger host, and she had thought those six would be sufficient for the forseeable future until a young man had crossed her path, one of her workers. At first, he'd captured a moment of her notice with looks, a rare feat to a woman who had seen some of recorded histories greatest beauties, but he'd proven intelligent and dedicated, and she had begun to consider bringing him into the fold as time had gone on. Tonight was to prove in part an excuse to talk with him, and take his measure personally in a setting more relaxed than the corporate office of day-to-day interactions. Damien... Joanna had paced the edges of the party for some time, exchanging pleasantries and talking with those who might otherwise get no chance to speak with her were she to remain amongst the highest echelons of her company in the center of the floor and now she approached him slowly, a slightly wider than merely polite smile on her face. Are you enjoying the party so far? She shifted her weight slightly as she came next to him, standing just a little closer than could be considered platonic but not so close for it to be considered improper...