He raised his head a little farther and turned his head to look at me, and I saw the stagnant-pool color of his eyes change to bright emerald green again. I remembered that the first time I’d seen his eyes, the night at the lake, they had been stagnant-pool-colored; how had I not remembered that transformation? Probably because I hadn’t seen it happen. That had been back in the days when I believed myself to be fully human, and when I couldn’t look into a vampires eyes.
He was also getting warmer. He was now no colder (say) than a hibernating lizard. This was still a little chilly from where I was though.
I felt his chest expand, and his first breath drifted across my face. I remembered being carried back from the lake, leaning against that chest, recognizing breathing, not recognizing any rhythm to it.
He’d taken his weight onto his elbows, so I could breathe more easily.
I remembered thinking, on the long walk in from the lake, that I wouldn’t have been able to match my breathing to his. But he was matching his breathing to mine, now. I also abruptly realized that I was feeling his dick growing long and hard against my leg.
We were both naked.
I knew that vampire body temperature is at least somewhat under voluntary control, like circulation of the blood is. It is, perhaps, a bit variable, especially, perhaps, under stress. He’d gone from dead cold, you should pardon the expression, to what you might call normal human body heat, in about a minute. I’d known—I’d been pretty sure—he was in trouble; that’s why I was here. Perhaps I’d—er— roused him too suddenly. Perhaps he was in what passes in vampire biological science for shock, and his control systems weren’t responding.
That didn’t explain the dick though. It was responding.
He was now suddenly hot, as hot as if he’d been in a kitchen baking cinnamon rolls in August. I already knew vampires could sweat, under certain conditions, like being chained to a wall of a house with sunlight coming in through the windows. He was sweating again now. Some of his sweat fell on me.
I’ve always rather liked sweat. On other occasions when I’ve had a naked, sweating male body up against mine, I’ve tended to feel that it meant he was getting into what was going on. This usually produces a similar enthusiasm in me. Not that there was anything going on…exactly. Yet. Remember how fast and suddenly this was all happening. And if he was in shock so was I. Maybe my brain hadn’t fully come with me in that zap through the void, like my clothes manifestly hadn’t. With a truly masterful erection now pressed against me I turned my head again and licked his sweating shoulder.
What happened next probably lasted about ten seconds. Maybe less.
I don’t think I heard the sound he made; I think I only felt it. He moved his hands again, to tip my face toward him, and kissed me. I can’t say I noticed any fangs. I had the lingering vestige of sense not to try anything clever with my teeth, which with a human lover I would have. But I was nonetheless busy with tongue and hands. I wriggled a little under him. I kissed him back as he tangled his fingers in my hair. I arched up off the floor a trifle to press myself more thoroughly against him. I was undoubtedly making some noises of my own…
I always thought the earth was supposed to move when you arrived, not when you’d only started the journey.
One second I was raising my pelvis to meet him—and believe me, he was there—and the next second he had hurled himself off me and thrown me from him, and I was flying across the floor to fetch up with a bruising whap against the wall. He bounded to his feet and disappeared.
I lay there, considering. Point one: wherever the hell I was (and I hoped this was not too literal a remark), it had a smooth, glassily smooth, stone floor. The wall I had caromed into at a guess was the same material.
Point two: what the hell had happened?
Point three: where did I want to start counting?
I hoped I was going to have the opportunity to tell Yolande that she didn’t have to make me anything special, that the herbs and candles had worked fine. If you wanted to call this fine.
I remembered, with an effort, that when I’d arrived—so to speak—Con had been cold and not breathing. But for all I knew this is merely the vampire equivalent of a nap. Lots of humans are cranky when they’re woken unexpectedly. No. I didn’t think his eyes would go stagnant-pond-colored for a nap. Okay. Maybe I had accomplished my mission—that he’d been in some kind of vampire trouble and I’d got him out of it.
I should have been embarrassed. I should have been paralyzed with embarrassment. I was sitting—no, I was crooked up—naked on a cold stone floor in the dark, having been cannoned off the wall by a…well, a creature…that I had been under the impression I was about to have an intimate encounter with. Maybe I should try to be grateful at having been spared intimacy with the most dangerous of the Others.
Gave a whole new meaning to the phrase under the dark.
I wasn’t grateful. You want to talk cranky, coitus interruptus takes me well beyond cranky. My engorged labia felt like they were pressing on my brain—what there was of my brain—and if I didn’t get to fuck someone, something, now—a vampire would do—I was going to fucking explode. My cunt ached like a bruise.
Beyond cranky, rather fortunately, doesn’t transmute into embarrassment. It transmutes into fury. As my blood pressure began to rearrange itself to a more standard unengorged pattern I was seething. I couldn’t care less that I was also naked and alone in the dark of I had no idea where. Well, I couldn’t care much. Not very much. Really.
It was a large room. Empty—except for me—and the ceiling was so high even my dark-sighted eyes couldn’t make it out. No furniture. No windows. No anything. Funny sort of place for a nap. Or maybe for a solitary siege. But then I wasn’t a vampire.
It was at least as dark as the inside of my closet. So nothing flickered when I looked at it. What there was to look at. Wow, what a bonus. I would try to control my euphoria.
He reappeared. He was wearing what I was beginning to think of as his standard get-up of long loose black shirt and black trousers. No shoes. I couldn’t be sure but I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in shoes. He was carrying something else, which he came close enough to hand over without looking at me. I unfolded it and discovered another long loose black shirt. When I had pulled it over my head it came nearly to my knees. Gods bloody damn it all. I was not in a good mood.
He was still not looking at me. I was still seething.
“I beg your pardon most profoundly,” he said.
“Yeah.” I said. “Nice to see you too.”
He made one of those quick vampire gestures, too rapid for human eyes. My no-longer-quite-human eyes could about follow it: at any rate they registered frustration. Good. That made two of us. Although on second thought, or maybe semi-thought, I doubted he was indicating physical frustration. Uncomfortably I began to be glad of the long black shirt, which probably made me look like death, especially in this light, er, this no-light: black is not my color, any way you hang it. But then looking like death might be very attractive to a vampire. In which case there was even less to explain why…My anger was subsiding. I didn’t want it to subside. I needed the warmth. But he’d thrown me away, hadn’t he? Whatever his dick said, he didn’t want me. Anger was much better than misery. Misery approached. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.