Blood Ex Libris Read online

  “‘A dab’ll do ya,’” I interjected, reaching for levity out of nervous tension.

  “Just so. However, there is vhoon-drinking, and then there is sharing each other. In our language, we call this ‘vhoon-vayon.’ It is not a thing an am’r finds every day. It’s like how kee have trouble finding true love and compatible sexual partners.

  “If we do not…no, let me go back. As it has been, I have regularly needed to find—the word we use is ‘izchhaish,’ but let me call them ‘donors’—for, let us call them ‘blood infusions.’ It can be cold and clinical. If it would make you more comfortable, I derive no more pleasure from drinking from an unknown kee than you would get from eating a satisfactory but not incredible meal.”

  Good, I thought jealously and selfishly. “What about blood-borne diseases?” I had to ask. “Can you get sick? Can the blood you drink make me sick? Could you carry anything in your blood I could catch?” And why didn’t I ask this before we exchanged blood? Or before the next time we exchanged blood?

  “Am’r do not get diseases. That is for kee. As for you, draga mea, I would do nothing to harm you. The vhoon you get from me has been...transmogrified. It is no longer vhoon-kee, so it cannot harm you as things carried in vhoon-kee could.”

  “You are a good filtration system, is what you’re saying.”

  “Ha! You have a special skill at rephrasing things, Noosh. But yes. I will be your personal filter.”

  “My own walking, talking Brita filter. I love it! What more could a girl ask for?”

  “A walking, talking, fucking ‘Brita filter,’ I should think!” he countered. He had become uncoupled from me as we talked, something which I’d noted with great sadness at the time, but I was driven to learn more. However, it seemed it was now time to recouple. I felt a brief pang of regret that I hadn’t gotten more info from him, but it was drowned by arousal. There would be time to talk about everything else later.

  This time he scrunched down the sofa, ending up between my legs. Ah. Now was the moment for him to spend some quality time down there. I settled into a position both comfy for me and which gave him plenty of access. But I realized—“Sandu! Um, I’m not cleaned up down there from last time!”

  He had been running his eyes over my naked and spread body with a delight which made me feel there was no limit on how shameless I could be, but now he looked back up to my face with an even wider grin. “Creatură senzual, I shall not mind drinking back that very vhoon I gave you in this most intimate way. I intend to drink all those sweetest fluids down there.”

  And he made good his promises. He laved the drying blood from the insides of my thighs. I wonder if flaked dried blood might be a gourmet vampire seasoning, like shaved chocolate. That thought made me giggle, which made him dig in even more enthusiastically. He licked and nuzzled at my labia, but what drove me mad for more were the little nibbles. I think both my inner and outer lips soon had little puncture marks in them, but I no longer cared: sensation was all. His teasing ensured that he had plenty of the local fluid when he got to the main point, a main point he licked in every speed, direction, and pressure until he’d figured out all of my favorite combinations.

  When he had me up at the top of the cliff—the one you fall off of when you have the better sort of orgasm—he pulled back the slightest bit, changed the shape of his mouth, and went back down with fangs and tongue out. It meant my perceptions went from “Oh-god-oh-god-almost-there” to “Wha—Yeeowch—Ohhhhhhh!” As before, the pain of his teeth sinking into my skin worked to intensify the pleasure and take it to a next level I’d never even imagined.

  I screamed. I called out to random assorted deities. I think I even ululated. I most certainly bucked about like a bronco, but he held me down, and let only the smallest amount of hip-thrusting work in rhythm with what he was doing, to take me even higher yet again.

  I came back down only partially, to notice he had climbed up my body, and was more than ready to get with the impaling. Oh no, I’m not sure I’m ready for—was all I had time to think before he was sliding inside me.

  It is amazing how the act of thrusting (and removing and thrusting again) a rigid extremity into a lubricated cavity can entirely fail to get old. The range of sensations can differ from stroke to stoke. I know I must have been high as a kite on brain chemicals, because I was actually thinking exactly that, oddly removed from the situation, as he fucked me with intense thoroughness and precision. And also: Maybe a vampire lover really is insatiable. I’m looking forward to getting used to this.

  He bit my neck, and again, thought stopped. I was becoming a real connoisseur of penetrations, because I swear the same things I’d just thought about his cock were true of his rigid incisors sliding into the other lubricated cavities even as he created them.

  Afterward, I felt drained. My limbs felt heavy; even my eyelids did. I was oh-so-ready to drift to sleep, but Sandu wouldn’t let me. I mumbled, “Lemme sleeeep...” and tried to ignore him.

  “Anushka! You need not open your eyes, but you must open your mouth. Now—” A wristful of hot blood was spurting into my mouth. In my dreamy delirium, it compared to drinking chocolate: rich, thick, coating your mouth and throat with flavor. And it seemed I’d acquired a taste for it: I was gulping the salty-metallic goodness down as if I’d had been tippling the ol’ sanguinary all my life.

  A new high came on. Fuck, but I was high more often than a wake-n-baker these days. The world seemed full of gold dust, sparkling in the air, gleaming along Sandu’s skin, twinkling like galaxies in his eyes. He was patiently affectionate with the utterly stoned me, letting me caress him and wriggle around in lively cuddling as I relished the astonishing sensations of his skin on mine with the soft leather of the sofa underneath us. I babbled the whole time, sharing my every thought and feeling with the same innocence as a child who’d just learned to speak, assuming he’d want to hear it all. He smiled warmly at me and let me pour it all out to him.

  A final gift, when he was ready to tuck in for the morning. “Lay back, draga mea, and I will soothe you to sleep while cleaning up after myself.” As he spoke, he scrunched down in a fluid way, like a jaguar backing up, and slowly laved me clean, finishing as he had started, but in a soporific rather than arousing way. I faded out in a soothing, gently erotic cloud of being.

  Chapter Ten

  I awoke sometime in the late afternoon. I supposed I could fire up his computer to find the time, or dig out my mobile from wherever it had fallen since Sandu’s antiques did not extend to clocks of any sort.

  With a horrible start, I realized it must be Sunday, and I had to go back to work on Monday. It was a nasty intrusion of the real world into what had been the most incredible fantasy ever, and I did not want this bubble to pop! Well, I had a day, and I could enjoy it and then get Sandu to run me home after he woke up tonight.

  After a nice juicy final round of sex and drugs!

  I did not want to go home. I did not want this dream to end. I just could not see myself shelving children’s books, and how the hell could I chat with Andre and Zuzu about my weekend? “How was your weekend, guys? Me? Oh, not much. I just had a non-stop blood-drinking orgy and took the Real Vampires 101 hands-on course.”

  How the hell can I go back to normalcy after this?

  Oh well, I didn’t have to do anything about it until Sandu got up from wherever it was he bedded down for the day. It was past time for a proper clean-up out in the “cabana.” On the way to the shower, I rediscovered the huge wooden Japanese tub out there, surrounded by vine-hung trellised walls. Even during the day, with the flowers sleepily furled, this was an unexpectedly beautiful garden. It occurred to me to wonder if I needed to worry about a gardener showing up and finding me walking around naked in the late afternoon spring sun.

  And is this me, wandering around outdoors comfortably naked?

  Today was a day for emotional jolts. As I became conscious of one kind of comfort, I also became aware that the nippy May air bothered me no
t in the slightest. I wondered if my inhibitions had gone to the same place as my body’s concern for temperature.

  Last night Sandu had not lit a fire, and I’d been totally comfortable—and seen perfectly well in the dark. And…wait a minute, my glasses! I didn’t know where they were. Me, who scrambled blindly for them immediately upon opening my eyes in the morning. I hadn’t even thought about them since I awoke. I didn’t need them anymore.

  My emotions jumped in all directions at once. My sense of what was good or what was bad was a wildly and uselessly spinning compass needle. A hot shower was the obvious resolver of all problems, for lack of anything better or more certain. As the scalding water pounded on my body, I was glad I could still appreciate the joy of heat, even if the lack of it wasn’t a bother. The fluffy black robe was a sybaritic pleasure, tickling me where it touched my body.

  I devoured three frozen meals one after another. They were as tasteless as ever, but once I started putting food in my mouth, I couldn’t stop. Then I consumed the entire tub of ice cream. As I ate, I started composing a list of questions for Sandu: What the hell changes have been wrought in my body, and will this wear off, or is it forever? and, What the hell will happen if I keep drinking your blood? Could there be a problem with us continuing as lovers? After eating, I wandered into the library looking for pen and paper and immediately got distracted by the books. Seriously, when faced with what seemed like a first edition of Galland’s Les Mille Et Une Nuits, Contes Arabes Traduits En Français, one had to have priorities.

  Sandu found me there, hours having melted by. I caught a whisper of his movement this time, and when he swooped down on me and caught me up in his arms, I was able to lay the volume down gently.

  Am’r didn’t seem to have morning breath, or else they had special blood-toothpaste that left the mouth perfectly kissable with no minty scent.

  “How was your day, draga mea? What texts have you devoured? Ah, that is a personal favorite, although I prefer the Hazār Afsān.” He interrupted himself and potentially me by kissing me some more. I was delighted he did not seem to be getting any less passionate.

  But when the passion seemed to be heading in the direction of sex, I pulled away. “Sandu, there are things to talk about. I need to go home tonight, you know, and there are changes in—in me.”

  “Shhhh, micuţo, I understand, I understand. You must forgive me. It has been a long, lonely time since my heart has awakened. I just want to show you how I feel; I want to let go. But I am being thoughtless. Come, would you like to soak with me? I should have shared one with you last night, but you distract me, dragă Noosh. I think I shall blame everything on how delicious you are.”

  His special brand of flattery worked, and where better to have a potentially weird—well, weird was my new normal—discussion but in a long, hot soak? “I’ve seen the tub. It looks wonderful!”

  “Then we shall be in it together, draga mea, and I shall faithfully answer any question you put to me.”

  He was leading me by hand as he said this, and I was towed along to the Japanese bath. He was an overgrown boy in some ways, no matter how many centuries he’d seen. It was funny to think about Dracula like this. It was not a side of him which I’d have anticipated, had you asked me a week ago what I thought Dracula’d be like. Not an adolescently-overeager horndog, although I guess most literary and cinematic vampires did have the whole “appetite” thing in common.

  We went out to the tub, and he shed his pajama bottoms and I my robe. I looked at him as he swung himself into the steaming water. He had a wonderful body, with lean, wiry muscles moving under his smooth olive skin. I felt a rush of emotions, just looking at him. Could I be in love with him, or was this a result of the chemicals of lust?

  He was looking back at me; indeed, he positively smoldered at me. It was weird to be living in a romance novel, but there he was, ready to be on the cover, and either he was supremely exhibitionistic or supremely un-self-aware. Granted, he came from a time when nakedness was seen differently—and he was a guy, and it’s always different for them—but I’d have to be pretty stupid to assume he’d lived all this time without realizing how well-built he was and the effect it could have on people who liked that sort of thing.

  Likewise, I’d also have to be particularly stupid not to realize I was very susceptible to “that sort of thing.” I’d never gone for his type before, but what type was it: hot, or vampire? I guess it sort of didn’t matter why someone was looking all romance-novel hot for you if they were doing so in the flesh.

  “Come here, draga mea. You look like a hungry cat. I shall be a canary which does not fly away.”

  “Hah! Let’s see, who’s more like the cat, here? And who did the eating last night?”

  “I did not hear you complaining. Shall I not do it again...?”

  “Well, if you must, I suppose I’ll be gracious and let you, from time to time.” I let myself be helped into the tub. Although I had never felt spryer. Perhaps I was feeling a bit cat-like, after all, at least in terms of muscular litheness and an overall sense of being able to leap door-tops in a single bound.

  I’d like to blame Sandu for starting things up again, but it was me this time. It was just too fascinating to touch his silky smooth skin, delicious hard muscle moving right under the surface. And of course, it was ever so tempting to press my lips to just where I’d been caressing, feeling his skin with my lips, smelling him.

  Smells now meant a good deal more to me. It was like the scents were layered, with “outer” information about the skin and what it had come into contact with, and “inner” information coming up from underneath the surface. I could even smell the blood moving under his skin.

  “There is something you need to know, draga mea, before we go any further.” For a moment, the words were just the pleasurable sound of his voice, nothing more. The water lapped sultrily against us, its fluidity an erotic contrast to his unyielding body against mine. The scent of night flowers was as thick as incense in the air.

  Finally, the meaning of his words penetrated my sensual trance. “What? Why? Um, what do you mean?”

  He distanced himself, not physically but emotionally. It left me with an aching sense of loss and a desire to do anything to get back to the connected place we had just been and to do the things we had been just about to do. “You need to hear this, Anushka. I must tell you. Trust me that I do not welcome this interruption any more than do you.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My brain was mostly shut down as surplus to requirements for the moment, and this did not sound like it was going to be good news. I felt a rush of realization of how stupid I had been, madly, repeatedly having the most unsafe-sex of all time with a complete stranger who also was a vampire. What price will I now pay for it?

  I think he could see the panic rising in my eyes, but we both needed him to press on. “There are rules to becoming am’r. Perhaps ‘rules’ is the wrong word. Facts, details, events, but none of those quite fit, either. Regardless, we have shared the most passionate gift twice now.” He paused. “There are the few side-effects, of which I have told you.”

  I nodded. Yes, I’d been hungry. Actually, there were side-effects he hadn’t told me about: seeing in the dark, recovering 20/20 vision, something I’d not possessed since first grade, getting a major upgrade to my olfactory system, and no longer being bothered by the cold. They were obvious perks to drinking vampire blood, but he hadn’t warned me.

  He continued, “If we never...loved each other this way again, I think you would eventually be as if this never happened. You would be as, ei bine, as unaltered as you were before you knew me. Or so I believe, Noosh; I do not know personally. I have never shared my vhoon with anyone who was not am’r or who did not become am’r-nafsh. It is not a thing done lightly.”

  Well, that was nice. He didn’t do this with just anyone. But was this at the level of engagement-ring-rare? I felt frustrated at not knowing enough to even ask the right questions.

&nb
sp; He had my full attention. What the hell would he say next? He looked almost uncertain. I’d stopped breathing, and I would not breathe again until I heard his voice, his explanation.

  “Draga mea, what I need to say is…” His voice trailed off here and then started again, “is if we perform vhoon-vayon, if we make love and exchange blood one more time, you will become am’r-nafsh. And it would be irreversible.”

  The world spun a bit, but not as much as I might have expected. I mean, this was the sort of thing you expected to hear from a vampire, right? They made those sorts of pronouncements. Consorting with vampires always led to a human being dead or, well, “undead, undead, undead.”

  And to think I’d been worried about STDs.

  “Sandu. Vlad. Sandu. What does am’r-nafsh even mean?”

  “The closest in English is ‘living vampire.’”

  “Not the translation. I mean, what would it mean for me?”

  He let out a deep sigh, and a part of him came back to me. I guessed I had passed some sort of “not running away screaming” test. My reward was the slight re-opening of his emotions. I was naked and soaking wet, and I wasn’t even sure where I was, beyond “a creaky old Victorian well outside of Blackacre in some direction,” so running off screaming was not a practical option, but I liked getting points for not having done it.

  His hands started sliding up and down my back. It was comforting, but my body started reawakening and responding. Focus, foolish girl, focus!

  “Ah, dragă Noosh, it would mean many things for you. For one, you would still be a living being. But when you died,” he looked purposefully into my eyes, “you would come back as am’r. In a way, it would make you immortal without making you less alive. A ‘life insurance policy,’ if you like.”

  “While you remain alive, however,” he added slowly, “there would be some changes. You would have more stamina, greater physical strength, your responses would be faster. You would see improvements in your vision, your hearing—all your senses. And your thinking would, over time, become faster, better. Never as rapid or powerful as am’r, but above kee abilities.”