Safe Sex

He would never consent to meet her at her own place, nor would he ever tell her where he lived, if indeed he lived anywhere. The bar was where they had first met, and where they always met. It was off the radar, the police didn't know about it, and a lot of illegal activities happened here, but in spite of all that, it was a safe place; the safest. It was a place that knew his kind–and also her kind–and helped them.

He approached her from behind, and bit her bare shoulder gently by way of greeting; his needle-sharp canines barely denting her skin. She shivered, gooseflesh rising on her arms and breasts, and looked back over her shoulder at him.

"I wondered when you'd be by again," she said. "I've been coming every night for two weeks. I missed you." She smiled.

He smiled back, leaned forward and kissed her lips, a dry, close-mouthed kiss, but still something that was rarely done in public by his kind. "I missed you, too. I wanted to come, but–" He glanced around. "Let's get a private."

The private rooms here were expensive, but worth it. They were not precisely private, because the watchers could see through the two-way mirror on the wall, and would come through the door at the first blush of trouble.

"Why couldn't you come before?" she asked him. She sat in the room's only chair, her bare feet elevated, a needle in one arm, into the skin, into the plump green vein. She unwound the rubber tourniquet and her blood began to fill the clear poly bag, slow and dark.

"It would have been dangerous," he said, crossing the room to light the candles in the brass sconces on the wall, to distract his mind from the immediacy of her pierced, wounded flesh. "I needed you so much. I might have hurt you."

"What did you do?" she said, squeezing the rubber ball she held in her hand.

"Went out of state. Bought some livestock. Stayed away." He clenched his teeth twice, three times. "Sheep's blood will keep me from biting you. But I still want you. Just for you."

"I wish we could do this right," she said, squeezing the ball again. Her blood coursed through the tube, swelled the blood bag. "I know this isn't the same."

"It is satisfactory," he said, shaking out the match he had used to light the candles.

She smirked as she retied the tourniquet one-handed, cutting off the flow of blood to the bag, and then hooked the tube up to a second pint bag. "Can you take this?" she said, holding up the first bag.

He took it, inhaled its fragrance, shuddered and looked away from her. She wished he wouldn't turn away, wished he would let her see the desire in his eyes. Instead, he sighed, sealed the bag and placed it into a large bowl of hot water to keep warm. She unwrapped the tourniquet again and let the blood move. He continued to face away from her while the second bag filled; she knew it was hard for him to watch when he couldn't put his mouth over the wound, lick her warm skin and taste her salt, for fear of fluid transfer, enough to infect her with his affliction.

"How do you feel?"

"I feel fine," she answered him. "How much more will you need?"

"You could stop now, if you were so inclined."

"I can do some more." She squeezed the bulb again.

"Go ahead and stop; I want you to have your strength." He unwrapped a pad of gauze from the blood kit, soaked it with rubbing alcohol, and reached to remove the needle. She stopped him with an upraised hand, and he handed her the gauze. She removed it herself while he backed away, watching.

"Will it be enough?" she said as she taped her arm. "I mean, will you feel something?"

A drop of blood ran down onto the arm of her chair; his breath caught and he turned away fast, turned his back to her. "I feel something for you every time. All the time." With anxious haste, he moved the blood kit off the foot of the queen-sized bed, set it on the left night stand.

"That's not what I meant," she muttered. She bit off the tape and sealed the bag, then placed it in the hot water bowl where the first pint of her blood was keeping warm. He breathed deeply, relaxed slowly, before turning to face her again. She relished the sight of him reacting to her, becoming aroused for a taste of her body, her life's blood.

She took a few steps closer to him, her hands at her back, reaching to unzip her dress. He closed the distance between them, put his arms around her body, placed his hands over hers. Then he kissed her, openmouthed. She knew in his kind the feeling was so much more intense in the lips and tongue, making a kiss much more personal than in humankind; as personal as sex. She let her hands relax; they dropped from her zipper. His remained there, and he unzipped her dress for her; she felt it loosen and drop, baring her breasts. He touched her bare back along the spine, just inside the zipper, slow and light, kissing her deep and hard, sharing her breath and stealing her heat. His mouth and hands chilled her, made her quiver and break out in gooseflesh again, her nipples hardening against his chest, drawing up tight into little nubs. He finished unzipping her dress and let it fall at her feet, and lifted her out of it, naked, like a child out of a bathtub. She gripped his shoulders, wrapped her legs around him, kissed and nipped at his shoulder and neck, until he exhaled harshly, a voiceless moan of desire, desperation. He put her down on the bed and knelt in front of her on the floor.

She leaned back on her elbows and let her head roll back, her eyes roll up and closed. She felt him kiss and nuzzle at the insides of her thighs, quivered in anticipation as she felt his breath and cold mouth gently exploring the network of blood vessels underneath her skin. His lips next found her labia, and she gave a gasp at how they chilled her there, in that pocket of heat between her thighs. He pushed his icy tongue inside her and she moaned behind pursed lips and clenched teeth, felt her body tighten down in reaction. He gently pinched her swollen clitoris between two frigid fingers, and her toes curled, her calf muscles clenched; when he reached for her breast and found her heated little nipple, fondled her and began to move his tongue back and forth, she gasped his name, tangled her hands in his hair. He found a rhythm that made her whole body clench and quiver, and kept at it, rapid and relentless, until she cried out, her body convulsing, the skin of her face and upper chest flushing with heat.

He eased off as her orgasm did; withdrawing his tongue and fingers when the contractions of her muscles slowed. He rose up to bend over her, still fondling her breast, kissing her mouth, her heat and the taste of her sex lingered on his lips and tongue. She felt lightheaded and odd after coming so hard. He could tell.

"You gave too much blood," he admonished her. "Your heartbeat is irregular."

She grinned. "Too late to put it back now."

"Don't think I won't try, if I think you need it," he said, kissing her again. "I'm watching you."

She met his eyes, her own eyes shining, cheeks flushed, lips moist. "Get it," she said. "I want you. I missed you so bad."

He kissed her again, seeming to travel miles away at the feeling of her heat on his mouth, but remaining careful not to cut her with his sharp teeth. Despite his hunger for blood, she felt his sex stirring next to her leg in reaction to the kiss, half-hard already, though a ghost of its potential self. He sat up, a little unsteady, and reached for the water bowl on the right night stand, drew out a pint of blood, warm as her body. He broke the seal and took a single sip, hardly a tablespoon, and moaned aloud; not the moan of a man enjoying a meal. She was already in his lap, undoing his pants. He raised up so she could push them off his hips, stepped out of them and out of his sandals in one motion, and kicked them away.

He took another sip of the blood and sealed the bag again, not to let any blood go to waste, and set it back into the bowl. She felt his hands on her face then, on her scalp and the back of her neck, tingling with warmth; she was facedown, her lips open to gently mouth his scrotum, feel the round testes through the skin with her tongue. She kissed and sucked him there until she felt his erection take its shape and full size beside her cheek, rubbed her hot face against his cool, now lukewarm, sex. She heard a familiar plastic package being torn open. He gently took her hand, placed a still-rolled, unwrapped condom into her palm and closed her fingers over it.

She pinched the tip of the condom and rolled it down over his length, following it down with her mouth, licking and stroking him with her lips and tongue. He was enormous, too thick for her to fit her mouth around comfortably. She didn't have to try for very long. He touched her face and neck, his fingers almost too hot now as he came into the bloom that blood brought on. He raised her up, kissed her; his arms wrapped around her body, drew her up into a bone-cracking embrace. He put the sealed blood bag to his mouth just over her shoulder, sat her astride his lap, and entered her fully in a single hard thrust. She cried out in pain, and tangled her hands in his hair and clenched her fists, muffled her openmouthed yell against his forehead. He rocked her soothingly, lightly stroking her back, giving her time to adjust to his size and force, and she felt him drinking from the blood bag, which he had bitten into at the same time he thrust into her. She thought about how it would feel if he had bitten her neck instead, teeth in her jugular vein, his dangerous sickness mingling with her bloodstream, the endorphins triggered by a chemical in his saliva making her feel light and faraway. The thought made her shiver with arousal, and she moved her hips back and forth, letting him know she was ready to continue. He dropped the emptied blood bag on the floor and reached for the full one, drew back to let her see him bite it. She hardly ever got to see his teeth; it made her nearly insane with desire. She moved faster on his lap, watching him drink her blood from two punctures in a plastic bag, getting even hornier wishing it was from two punctures in her own body. Her slick sex moved with his, and she felt the friction building again, building to climax. But he stopped her, held her still, while he emptied the second blood bag, making eye contact the whole time; he let her watch this time while his pupils dilated until only black could be seen, and his face became savage, one animal preying upon another.

Then he turned her around on the bed, so he was in the superior position, gripped her hips, and began to move inside her, pumping in and out of her to the pace of her heartbeat. He touched his forehead to hers, his teeth bared, her blood on his lips, snarling, panting, heated. She clasped at his back, digging her fingers in, not shying away from his monstrousness, but meeting him, glare for glare, growl for growl and stroke for stroke. When he snapped at her with huge teeth, inches from her face, it brought her to a sudden orgasm, stronger than the first. Hers brought on his own; when he came, he threw his head back, teeth bared and clenched, squeezed his eyes shut, groaning once, deep and gravelly, with something like agony. He throbbed in her strongly, and came hot, almost unbearably hot; burning hot. So hot she worried that the condom might break.

After a moment, he seemed to think the same thing, and gently withdrew to take a look. It seemed all right, for what a glance from the naked eye was worth. He slid the condom off and dropped it into the trash can by the bed, and wiped his body clean with a handful of tissues. He was careful to swab his hands thoroughly with alcohol from the blood kit, and then he lay next to her on the bed, gathered her up in his arms.

"How much time do we have left?" she asked him.

"I got us the whole night. You'll be with me all night, and you'll be safe."

She smiled, hugged him. "Thank you. That's the second best present you could ever have given me."

"What's the best?"

"Coming back. To see me. I was afraid you wouldn't."

He nuzzled her ear, and said, "I'll always come back to you. As long as you live."

She smiled faintly, eyes closed. "I love you," she whispered.

He smiled, too.