Blood Ex Libris Page 4

  And there I was, in the darkened entry hall of Dracula’s house.

  Nothing unusually dramatic happened immediately, although Alexandru did light a candelabrum and, turning to me with a wry grin, said, “I do of course have electricity. I even like it. But this is more romantic, isn’t it, draga mea? Allow a man who has lived as many centuries as I a little eccentricity.”

  Since Dracula going home to a raised ranch and turning on the light switch to showcase a house full of neutral decor and Swedish home furnishings would have seriously killed a couple decades of vampire fantasies for me, I was willing to allow him such fitting eccentricity. The car and house were both making me feel somewhat vindicated in trusting that he was a vampire, or at least an extremely rich weirdo. Even if he was just an extremely rich weirdo, this was better than the living-in-his-parents’-basement type of weirdo.

  He was a man—a vampire—of his word and led me through the dark house to the library—where I promptly forgot about him. He might not have had the Gutenberg Bible, but he did have a first edition of the Gustav Dore illustrated one. Beside it was Biblia de la Bucureşti, 1688, and the 1667 printing of Paradise Lost in pristine condition. And fascinating old maps. I could have poured over Novissima Et Accuratissima Toti Regni Hungariae, Dalmatiae, Croatiae, Sclavoniae, Transylvaniae, Cum Adjacentib Regnis Et Provinciis Tabula for the rest of the night. I didn’t get to the selection of books in what looked like it might be Arabic. I was distracted by thinking I saw a manuscript titled Decameron when Alexandru gently pulled me off the rolling ladder. “Come, dragă Anushka. There will be many other nights for you to read and reread all this. Come see my home. Come be with me.”

  He’d rudely awakened me from my Aladdin’s-cave-of-books daze, and I turned on him. “What are you doing about preserving these rare…these invaluable works? I assume light isn’t an issue, but temperature, humidity—what are you doing about those? Do you have a thermohygrometer? Have you checked for red rot or mold—or worms? Just one infected book could destroy this whole collection! And have you scanned them or archived them in any other way? Those candles! What if there was a fire? You could lose all of them! And—”

  “Noosh! Taci, micuţo. That very question is one of the matters I needed to discuss with you and why I outed myself to you. You shall fix everything and make it as perfect as only you can conceive, but the library will wait one night, nu?”

  “Well, I guess.”

  “You overwhelm me with your enthusiasm for my humble company.”

  I had to laugh, and he joined in. He had the richest, most resonant laugh I’d ever heard. It made my happiness greater and prolonged the moment.

  Alexandru led me, thankfully taking the dangerous candelabrum away from that astounding collection, down the hall and into a large study that looked properly lived-in: comfy chairs and an overstuffed and well-used leather sofa, all with reading lamps—electricity, finally—and side tables, and a huge desk covered in piles of papers, old tomes, battered modern paperback books, a laptop, and empty wine bottles with candles stuck in them. A little tacky, I thought, but there were no skull paperweights at least, although one paperweight looked suspiciously like a real gun. Eeep!

  Heavy velvet curtains hung down to the floor over what I assumed were windows. The walls were papered in velvet-flocked wallpaper, which, when Alexandru lit a fire in the fireplace, turned out to be dark red on gold. The curtains were a matching incarnadine.

  The fire cheered me. The house was cold, and the heat made me realize how chilled I was. Drawn to the fireplace, I sat on a huge gold-velvet well-padded ottoman that was “warm your feet” distance from it and held my cold hands out to the flames. Alexandru installed himself in the chair to which the ottoman belonged. I stared into the fire.

  “Noosh,” he said in a gentle voice, “you have asked few questions. Your patience is admirable, but since I am more than willing to answer you, why not ask what you like?”

  “To be honest, I’m afraid to learn too much. Is there a point when I know too many vampirish secrets and you have to kill me? Also, I don’t understand why you’re telling me in the first place, Alexandru-Solin-who-is-Vlad-Ţepeş. Why me?”

  Alexandru leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder, which made me reluctantly stop staring into the fire and turn to look at him. His skin was a warmer olive in the light from the fire. Once I met his glowing gold-green eyes, I could not look away.

  “Ei bine! You believe me! I sensed your doubt, but I thought the books might ‘sell you,’ as they say.” At my lack of response, he added, “At least you are willing to go along with my unusual notion.”

  “Why me?” I asked again, not wanting to talk or think about whether I believed him or not. I was all too afraid I did.

  “Draga mea, why not you? You are a keeper of knowledge and a student of history, yet open-minded about new things. That alone would make you a good person to tell if I was going to tell anyone. But why do you not hear that I wish to share not just information with you, but much more than talking. How can I show you this? I do not wish to ‘go too fast,’ as the expression goes, but I’m not used to seducing women without using, how would you call them, my powers of persuasion. I find myself not knowing how to proceed. Please tell me how. End this uncertainty for me.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “You haven’t been using your…your powers of persuasion? If you haven’t, I can’t imagine why I’m here! I’ve never just gone to a guy’s house for a booty call like this before!

  “And I’m sorry, but I can’t see the Prince of Darkness having trouble in matters of seduction. You’ve had five centuries of practice!” I belatedly realized I didn’t sound overly understanding or empathic. I tried again: “Not that I think you’re lying.”

  At least, I wasn’t going to admit it if I did. “But again, why would you have the least bit of problem seducing me? I haven’t been seduced in years. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever been properly seduced!”

  I was still looking into those glittering eyes, but small crinkles of laugh-lines appeared around them and a smile played around his mouth. “Ha. So far, only my books have seduced you. But, since you ask for it, I am not averse to seducing you properly.”

  I just had time to think, “I’ve asked for it? What have I gotten myself into—” before he leaned forward, swept me into his arms, and settled back with me sitting sideways across his lap. One arm was still around my back, and my legs hung over the other arm of the chair.

  He reached up with the arm not holding me and ran a finger softly over my cheek. “You look like a proverbial deer caught in headlights.” Then he chuckled, although I didn’t find the statement particularly funny. “Ah, da, draga mea! Now I see the flash of lightning in your stormy eyes. Sexy!” He traced his fingers over my lips with such the lightest, most delicate touch. I found myself pressing them to his fingers, asking for more.

  He tipped me at more of an angle towards him and brought his face as close as we could get and still look into each other’s eyes. The glittering fire in his eyes became my world.

  I had never felt this hot in my life, as if my whole body was on fire—not burning, as part of the flames. “Te rog, săruta-mă,” he murmured. “Come to me, draga mea. Kiss me...”

  Moving as someone bespelled, I brought my lips to his. My eyes closed against the golden firelight, to be replaced by the supple warmth of his lips against mine—at first just pressing lightly, building up from small teasing brushes and pressures to movements simultaneously insistent and yielding. Our mouths opened at the same time, and the hot, wet urgency of tongues brought intensity, depth.

  He tasted of iron and salt. Not surprising, but surprisingly not off-putting. Certainly better than some guys I’ve kissed! It was a tingly sort of taste, the kind where you think, “Hmmm, I know that flavor, let me taste this again,” although once you’d been kissing for a while, you didn’t taste it anymore.

  I don’t remember the moment when my tongue brushed the sharp can
ines because my brain had melted into an organ capable only of considering the current and immediate next aspect of the kiss. As if I’d been kissing vampires for my whole life, I adjusted how I moved my lips and tongue to accommodate the extra toothiness and continued in blissful unconcern for anything except the best kiss of my life.

  If I had been capable of it, I might well have thought, “He is a vampire!” To be honest, I had bought his line from…OK, OK, from the first time he said, “I am what you would call a vampire.” Hasn’t everyone been waiting their whole lives to hear someone say that?

  Alexandru’s hands were not idle, although he seemed to be putting his whole self into the kiss. Perhaps his hands were on autopilot as they traced curving caresses along my back and arms, down one leg to my knee and back up the other thigh, up my stomach to my breasts.

  Feeling the sensation of his fingers through the fabric of my shirt and bra made me moan. That encouraged him to pull back from the kiss, lift me, and arrange me so I was straddling his lap facing him. He could lift me as if I were a doll, which just added to how turned on I was.

  He pulled my head back down to his to continue the kiss, and this time my hands started moving of their own will, running over his arms and shoulders and chest. Under the black silk, he felt like warm stone carved into utterly masculine shapes. I desperately wanted to see what was under the shirt. Black silk was classically sexy and all, but I had a feeling just plain Alexandru was even better.

  “Yes, take off my shirt,” he whispered against my mouth, which might have startled me if I’d been capable of rational thought. At that moment, however, his knowing what I wanted made perfect sense.

  It took me a while to get the buttons undone, because my focus was being engaged on so many other levels. His hands now had access to my back and my ass, which he was massaging in a way both relaxing and arousing.

  The shirt I was wearing had cleavage well beyond risqué, so when he started kissing along my chin up to my ear, and down my neck, he encountered no fabric-based obstacle. He faced no obstacles at all—except for my whole body tensing abruptly. Which he caught at once, and murmured into my ear, “Nu, nu. You have nothing to be afraid of. I will not damage you. I will bring you joy. Relax.” His hands kept massaging me, emphasizing the message: trust me.

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  I let my head tilt back, let my chin turn away. True to his word, he kissed and licked and gently nibbled my neck, but did not immediately chomp his teeth into it. Those sharp canines simply teased and tantalized and teased some more, until I was actually longing for him to be a little rougher, bite a little harder.

  At this point I discovered the entire front of my shirt had been unbuttoned, as he began sliding it off my shoulders. I shrugged backwards to help, and he suavely had my bra unfastened in one try. I was just conscious enough to wonder how many centuries that skill had taken him to acquire. But then my bra was gone and his lips and teasing teeth found my breasts. And conscious thought pretty much ended.

  With my previous lovers, my breasts had been pretty useless. Literally: pretty and useless. They just weren’t sensitive. Decorative, not functional. When guys played with them, I encouraged them on the notion that future lovers would not much appreciate it if I discouraged the male of the species from any amount of foreplay. Sooner or later, this lad would be with someone whose breasts couldn’t get enough licking/stroking/pinching—but that just wasn’t me.

  Maybe my breasts had changed over the past (mumble) years, or maybe Alexandru was just especially good. I melted into a jelly-like puddle of girl, making incoherent noises and writhing around shamelessly on his lap. This encouraged him to amuse himself with them for a period of immeasurable pleasure. Just around the time those sensations became too frustrating, he started teasing the buttons of my fly open, only to discover my trousers were far too tight to allow him any access. He brushed his fingers up and down the inseam, and I could see him contemplating how best to remove the obstacle. I myself could not cogitate at all, and was consequently astonished when I found myself back on my feet, supported by one strong arm, as he forcibly tugged all the offending clothing off. At this time my glasses fell off. I had been wondering when and how to get rid of them, anyway. I decided I profoundly did not care where they had gone—potential future crunch noises be damned! I helped not at all, as I was simply holding on to him with both arms and kissing whatever I could reach, namely the bicep and pectoralis muscles, which were moving agreeably under his unnaturally smooth skin.

  When I nipped at his skin with my (much blunter) teeth, he made gasping noises, which really worked for me, so I experimented with nips and licks while he attempted to get his own trousers off. I probably doubled the amount of time it took, but I was having way too much fun to care. I felt tipsy: giddy and careless and mischievous. It was an almost forgotten sensation. I had no urge to speed things up.

  I got my teeth around his nipple around the time he got his slacks to his ankles. This led to us falling over, and I am pretty sure only his vampiric agility saved us from ending up in a heap on the floor. “Fir-ar sã fie!” he growled, but our chaotic tumble of arms and legs magically ended up with me straddling him again, knees on either side of him. While it was the same position, now something impressively hard was jutting into my lower stomach—uncomfortable, and probably not only for me.

  He reached around the projecting obstruction, and began to explore a now rather damp bit of my anatomy with the pads of his fingers. I had become just as impatient as he obviously was. “More of that later,” I murmured, as I didn’t want him to think I would never be interested in a future patient and thorough exploration, but there were more important things in my mind. I lifted up off his lap, and tilted my hips forward. He was right with me, and grabbed my hips, eagerly guiding me towards him.

  He was brushing against my labia. He was sliding inside me. Having not been warmed up by his fingers, I was just slightly too snug a fit. The small discomfort was in its own way a pleasure, making us go slower, making us work together to fit every millimeter of him inside me.

  By the time I sat fully pressed against him, encompassing him, I was panting. His breath was more even, but his heart was pounding. Indeed, I could feel a strong pulse lower down.

  Is that truly his cock throbbing with each heartbeat?

  I had closed my eyes while focusing on getting Tab A into Slot B. Now I opened them, and met his eyes, which flickered in the firelight like jewels in the face of the statue of a god. If he had been holding back from mesmerizing me, his control was gone now. I fell forward into the flickering iridescent depths, irretrievably lost to any world outside of him-and-me.

  We had started moving together slowly, and I felt an incredible orgasm start roiling up inside me, building with each movement. It came on like waves, and I don’t know if each wave was its own “little death,” or if they were all just part of one grande petite mort. Possibly they were both at the same time, in some kind of sex wave/particle duality thing.

  While this was going on, Alexandru was getting ready for his big moment. My head was thrown back in utter abandon, which if I’d been thinking would have realized says, “Come on and bite me, big boy!” to a vampire. But when he did bite me, I was far too gone on an intense cocktail of brain chemicals to be frightened, or even particularly concerned.

  The bite became an integral part of the sex, the penetration of his fangs vital to the penetration of his cock, and vice versa. It took my ongoing orgasm up to the point where I couldn’t even process the sensations. I saw stars, and got that shivery feeling you get when you’re about to pass out. At some point in time, I heard him cry out, the sounds muffled because his mouth was full of my throat. We collapsed together like marionettes who, in the exact same instant, have all their strings cut.

  Chapter Six

  Some while later, one of us stirred. It was hard to tell who, though, because we were thoroughly entangled. Like, when you’re cuddled close with someone
and a tummy grumbles, and you have to ask, “Was that you or me?”

  I felt hungover, which was fair because I’d certainly been intoxicated. Movement made me remember I had a body and led me to do an all-over check. All over, I was sore. I think even my toes were sore. Especially sore were the places which had been penetrated. Those were not the almost-pleasing soreness of an intense workout, but the twinging ouchie which makes you wince.

  Alexandru seemed to be in much better shape, but of course, he was a vampire.

  He’s a vampire. He’s Dracula. I just had sex with Vlad Dracula. Wow. Oh wow.

  He was murmuring what I took to be Romanian expressions of tenderness, the “mon petite chou” sort of thing, as he picked up rather useless me, and carried me over to the huge sofa on the other side of the fireplace. He settled me down in his arms, as tenderly as if I were as breakable as I felt. “Draga mea, I do not know what to say. You have made me deeply happy. I do not have the words for how magnificent you are, not in this clunky bastard language.

  “You are quite weak now. I have drunk a good deal of your exquisite blood. You could recover on your own, but I should like you now to drink from me. It will make you stronger and help you heal faster. Also, I would enjoy sharing my blood with you.” He’d paused several times as he spoke, sounding surprisingly shy, as if he feared rejection or expected me to run away screaming. Not that I could have run anywhere at that moment. “To feel you drink from me would mean a great deal to me.”

  How could I say no? After all the scary-wonderful things I’d just done and felt, I wasn’t able to consider the greater ramifications of anything. I’d just gone through the best, most intense sensations of my life and felt more alive than I’d ever been. I was flooded with well-being and a wish for this goodness to go on forever and ever.

  “Alexandru—”

  He laughed. “Noosh, my Noosh. Maybe you should call me ‘Sandu’ now. I think we have reached a certain level of informality with each other.”