Neomodern Nosferatu

"You seem particularly distressed tonight. What's wrong?" Clive cooed with a genteel British lilt. He tossed back the long raven strands of his wig over a bared shoulder as he moved beside Gina to slip a lean muscled arm around her narrow waist. His eyes glimmered like emeralds set in gold glitter rimmed by lashes lacquered with mascara.

"Nothing." Gina jabbed her fork at the fruit salad on her plate. She found his kinky getup disturbing and embarrassingly alluring.

He sucked in her pheromones through his ultra-sensitive aquiline nose. "Well, you're not menstruating, so it's not PMS."

Gina slammed the fork onto the plate. "PMS is not the only thing that makes a girl irritable."

"Shh-shh-shh, easy," he soothed. "I meant no offense." He hovered closer to gather in more of her scent. "I see," he mused through glossy red lips. The points of his fangs protruded from the corners of his rapturous mouth.

Her left cheek sitting cockily atop the knuckles of her hand, she cast him a surly eye to query, "See what?"

He reached up to fondle her fine strawberry tresses. "It's obvious."

"It is?" She looked down at the melon she had mutilated.

The tips of his painted lips tickled her right ear. "Yes."

"Hey, back off, will you?" She swatted at him like she would any biting insect.

Clive caught her offending hand before it collided with his powdered face. He held it snuggly and whispered, "You're lonely and very, very, very horny." He planted a soft kiss on the back of her neck just below her right ear.

Gina separated from her seat with the push of an imaginary ejection button. Her kitchen chair with the autumn-leaves-patterned vinyl toppled over onto its back. She ran to the counter and opened a drawer from which she pulled a small serrated knife. "Stay away from me or I'll...." She looked at him then the knife and realized the ineffectiveness of her defense. She dropped it to the floor with a clatter and cried, "Oh, hell. I knew this arrangement wouldn't work. I kept telling myself it would only be a matter of time before you'd give in to your unnatural urges. Go ahead then. Make me one of your nightly meals." Squeezing her eyes shut, she tipped back her head. "Just get it over with – quickly."

He approached slowly. Wrapping his arms around her, he stroked her silky hair. "Lambchop, I've told you over and over I'm not going to feast upon you." He gently pulled down her chin. "Open your eyes." He met her fretful gaze with assurance. "Besides, you're so puny, you wouldn't make a very satisfying meal. Maybe a nice snack." His lips landed dove-soft upon hers.

Wiping his lipstick from her face, Gina eased away. She flushed with desire. "What's the matter with me?" she squeaked, "This isn't right."

"Why isn't it?" He set his slender fingers with their long black press-on nails upon her hot round cheek.

"It's not as nature intended." She hesitatingly pried his hand from her face.

"What does that mean?" He twiddled the tiny gold crucifix suspended around her neck between his thumb and forefinger. His pinkie subtly stroked her left breast.

"First of all, when we met that fateful night behind the dumpster in the alley off of Bonifant Street – remember? You were hiding from the vigilante harpooners, and I was ducking from a pair of female night fliers."

"Yes, the Lesbovamps. They only drink the blood from human women who fit a particular profile. Twenty to thirty-five. Single. Childless. Working the late shift. Very limited in range, in my humble opinion. Why drink a domestic brand of such a young vintage when there's a world of full-bodied, properly-aged wines and spirits?"

"Whatever. My point is, when we cowered together and poured out our scared-stiff souls to one another, you told me – in fact, you insisted – I wasn't your type, as in chromosomes, not blood."

"Did I? I don't recall." His groin pushed up against her pelvis.

Gina's vaginal lips burned from the heat inside the crotch of her jeans. She arched her back against the cool kitchen counter. "So, uh," she swallowed, "was that just a bunch of bull to convince mortal ol' me that you'd be safe to harbor in my humble home?"

He maundered a vague, "hmm-hmm," and let go the crucifix to bracket her between his strong arms with his palms pressing down on the smooth tile surface of the counter.

"Well, isn't that enough to make a double-X type like me have concerns?" She ran her small hands over the sensuous satin of his pearl chameuse tunic.

"And what's second of all?" He playfully nibbled her left earlobe.

"You're an undead who makes his living sucking the life from the living. It really creeps me out to imagine where those lips have been." She grimaced through the long wig hair tickling her face.

"Did you like my kiss or not?" His ripe cherry lips poised to drop upon hers.

"It was nice." Her tender breath tried shaking down a fruity kiss.

"Nice?" He dangled the word wetly over her mouth.

"It made the blood rush to my cheeks." Her pink lips parted in quivering anticipation.

"Only your cheeks?" Sliding a hand between her thighs, he rubbed her zipper with his thumb. "Look, I suggest you don't think so hard about it and simply take me up on the sumptuous treats I have to offer." A plump juicy kiss fell to her mouth.

As though tasting fruit unripe for the plucking, Gina sputtered, "This is bogus. You like dressing up as a woman and sucking on men. How can you come on to me? How can I–? " she stopped.

"How can you what?"

"How can I want you," she stammered, "knowing what I know and seeing you like... like this?"

Clive sighed before launching into a diatribe. "Gina, I am over five hundred years old. In that exceedingly long time I have had thousands of lovers of both genders. It doesn't matter to me which way I swing as long as I feel for that person and she or he does me." He clasped her hands in his. "I don't know why, but after having shared the confines of this – no offense – derelict apartment with you for the past two months, I have developed profound feelings for you. That's not to be taken lightly coming from an immortal being like me. Most humans bore me to tears with their tedious fleeting life stories. I treat them with the same affection I do the cockroaches crawling around this kitchen every night." Without taking his eyes from hers, he reached over to smack one skittering across the tiles. "But you, Gina, my love, are different. You have worked your way under my non-decaying skin. Maybe it's your sweet vulnerability; maybe it's your unquestioning generosity toward the unfortunate. Or maybe it's because you accept me for what I am and are not after me for the immortality I have to offer like so many pathetic mortals who court my favor – as if I were a heavy-metal rock star or the blasted Pope."

Gina scrunched her smooth brow in bemusement. "That doesn't make sense. If you're gay you're gay. If you're straight you're straight. Those are the fundamental determinations of nature's hardwiring as empirical studies have shown."

Clive chuckled. "Gina, my naïve little short-lived mortal, it has never in all of human history been as black and white as that. There are many gay men who have loved women and fathered children in this world. I happen to be one."

She recoiled from his enlightenment. "I hope that's not what you're after!"

"No, no, no," he assured. "I fathered mine when I was a mere man with limited longevity eons ago. As a vampire, I can no longer procreate. My seed duly expired upon conversion." He stepped over to the sink and rinsed off his bug-crushing hands.

"That was because a vampire bit you, right?" He shook the water from his fingers then dried them off with a paper towel deftly torn from its spool. "As the story often goes, I was seduced and fell in love with my mentor/transformer."

"Who was she?" Gina ventured.

Toying with her crucifix pendant, he clarified, "He was a powerful lord in fifteenth-century England. He found me cast upon the shores of his coastal estate after my ship foundered in a storm. I was the sole survivor, or so I was told – although I later learned he had drained my crew dry and discarded their desiccated husks of flesh into a deep well. Smitten by my dashing good looks, he spared me..." he paused to reflect, "in a perverse sort of way. I was on the brink of death, and he offered me eternal life – to the risk of his own, I might add. We became centuries-old lovers until the changing times and diverging points-of-view forced us apart. I won't get into that now." Smiling at its mythos, he left the tiny cross to dangle powerlessly about her slender neck.

"And you can create other vampires with your own bite, right?" She reached up to touch the glistening points of his fangs with her fingertips.

His mouth pursed against her fingers, "That is the tradeoff," then plied her lips, "for the forfeiture," before juggling kisses down along her throat, "of fertility." The thumb of his left hand ventured over her cotton tank top to tease a perky nipple.

"Keep away from there!" Gina yelped. She threw up her hands as a shield.

"What?"

"My neck. You... you don't go near it with... with... those." She pointed at his fangs.

"Only the fabled Dracula and his followers are neckophiles. As for me, I prefer to place my bites in anatomical areas unseen." He winked and resumed his labial ministrations with gentle squeezes to her firm round breasts.

Gina fought the swoon he stirred in her. "Wait. I...," she lapsed and gently pushed him back.

"Now what?" He took a deep breath to stave his frustration.

"What about STDs?" Gina blurted.

"STDs?"

"Sexually transmitted diseases. I would think with all the screwing and bloodsucking you do, you'd be rife with the stuff. And me being a mere mortal, I wouldn't want to be infected then die some miserable agonizing death." She let go a jittery cackle.

"If you let me transform you, you could avoid both agony and death." He kissed the back of her hand. "Forever."

"I told you that I'm a vegetarian. Remember? I don't eat the flesh of any living creature, and I certainly don't ever want to drink any poor critter's blood. I'd rather die – agony aside."

Clive took her by the hand and led her back to the table. "Sit," he ordered before opening a cupboard and pulling out a bottle of Beaujolais and two jelly glasses. "Ugh," he commented with a roll of his eyes. "We have got to get you appropriate stemware." He offered an answer to her question as he poured wine into one of the glasses and bought it to her. "And I told you – when you asked me about possible contagion when I first moved in with you – we vampires produce powerful germ-killing antibodies."

"Yeah, but that explanation didn't exactly cover the topic of intimate relations which wasn't even a consideration at the time you gave it," she determined.

"I assure you, it's urban legend. It has never been scientifically proved that vampires spread infectious disease," he said as he opened the fridge and pulled out a packet of blood. He squeezed it to half-fill the other glass, added the wine then stirred the cocktail with his index finger. He sucked the concoction from it. "Mm-mm, delectable," he purred. He picked up the fallen chair and sat down next to her. "Drink up."

"You think getting me drunk is going to change the issue?" She eyed the rich red substance with suspicion.

He took a sip and licked the thick crimson line edging his upper lip. "I just think you need to relax. You're suddenly very uptight."

"I see men haven't changed their strategies when it comes to getting laid – at least in the past five hundred years." Gina sniffed at her drink.

"It's not bloodied." He noted her sustained caution. "Nor is it drugged."

"Damn the torpedoes to hell then." She kicked back a hard swallow and exhaled. She downed the glass and grabbed the bottle for a refill.

"Whoa! Why so rash?" he warned.

"You want me plastered don't you? So, I'll be numb to your intended teething on my tender loins." She kicked back another glassful and poised the bottle for another dose.

He snatched it away then reached over to fondle a curl fallen across her brow. "Gina, I assure you –having sex with a vampire doesn't have to," he sought the appropriate vernacular, "bite. Don't be afraid. Don't deprive yourself of one of the greatest pleasures you will ever know." His eyes trailed his hand down to her breasts.

Her bosom heaved beneath his tender squeeze. She slugged back what she had managed to pour. "I suppose it's the wine affecting my better judgment, but I'm willing to believe you."

He pried the glass from her fingers and gently drew her hand to the bulge in the crotch of his black spandex skirt. "Sweet Gina, your life is so very short. Don't let your youth and beauty get covered over in cobwebs and crumble up waiting for the right man or moment. Take it from my half-a-millennium's worth of experiences – it doesn't happen that way."

"You won't hurt me or turn me into... you know?" She lightly stroked his throbbing penis with the knuckle of her forefinger.

Clive clamped her hand tighter around his organ and searched her eyes. "My sole intent is to carry you up to breathtaking orgasmic heights."

"You're not hypnotizing me to make me do your bidding, are you? I mean, that wouldn't be fair." Her vocal cords tweaked to a high pitch.

His nostrils flared at the relish of her adrenal-driven lust. He breathed heavily under her manipulation of his hardening dick. He closed his eyes and honed in on the muffled sounds of her rapidly thrumming heart coming from deep within her breast. His eyes opened to reveal his desire. His intense stare bore into the core of her soul. "No, it wouldn't be fair to deprive you of shrill ecstasy by placing you under a spell."

With her other hand, she pulled up his tight skirt and reached in to finger the hot moist flesh of his groin. A timid groan climbed up his throat to squeak past his bared fangs. He realized the effect his preternatural powers were having on her and pulled her tantalizing hands from his yearning genitalia. "If I did," he explained with a hard swallow, "you would only recall our passion as a fading fragmented dream, or perhaps not at all. I want you alert and alive, but not a nervous wreck. So," he poured a dash into her glass and passed it to her, "you sip slowly and get mellow – not mashed – whilst I ready the conjugal chamber." He gave her a peck on the cheek, finished his drink, and disappeared into the bedroom.

Gina was feeling the buzz of the wine and the rush of hormones. She puzzled over the how and why of her attraction to the forbidding man in feminine apparel who kept her place pristine, set a fresh rose in a vase with every breakfast, and understood her womanly needs. She pondered their strange arrangement – he, a cross-dressing bloodsucking burlesque performer with the stage name "Dragula," and she, a straight Wonderbread-fed American girl who worked as a data-entry drone for a government contractor. They shared her tiny one-bedroom apartment in the Takoma Park area of Washington DC. He slept in her walk-in closet by day while she drew the covers of her double-bed up over neck by night. She promised to give him haven from harpoon-wielding vampire killers while he saw to protecting her from hungry exsanguinators. She shuddered at the memory of how close she had come to becoming a midnight lunch to a pair of lesbian vampires the night they met.

She flinched at the touch of his hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see him sans wig, clean of cosmetics, and devoid of pointy nails. His wheat-colored hair flowed in feathery waves around the chiseled contours of his face. Fine silky hairs covered his bare chest. The taut musculature of his abdomen drew her eye down trim lines to his erect organ.

"Come," he invited and led her into the bedroom. The spartan room glowed red through crimson gossamer draped over the two nightstand lamps bracing the bed. He wrapped his arms about her willowy frame and his mouth around her puckering lips. Passion stirred his blood and engorged his penis. He swirled her onto the bed and began stripping her down. Their limbs entwined. His lips peeled back from hers with a succulent pop. "Now, I will lead you into rapture. However, we will need to use protection," he quietly advised.

"But you said you were sterile... and disease-free," she added for reassurance.

"I don't mean that sort of protection." He reached down to the floor and pulled up a chain connected to the leg of the bed frame. On its end was a padded metal cuff. "There's one on each side. And here," he reached over to pick up a leathery device on the nightstand.

"Wha... what's that?" Gina asked with trepidation.

"It's a butterfly gag."

Gina shot up and ran for the door. In a lightening-fast black streak, Clive moved to block her way. Looking back at the bed where he had been sitting nanoseconds before, she swung her jaw on its hinges. "How did you move like that?"

"Gina, you don't understand. The bindings aren't for you. They're for me."

"I don't care. That's twisted!" She tried pushing past him but found her arms firmly pinned to her sides in his powerful hold.

"No, it's necessary if you don't want to be bitten." He read her terror and confusion and responded, "When a vampire is in the throes of passion and fully erect, he naturally wants to bite his lover, and usually, although not always, the lover wants to be bitten. Since that is not your case, you'll need to prevent it from happening. You know, safe sex – sort of."

"But that's not...," she flustered. "I mean, it's really one-sided... I mean, I like it when you kiss and caress me," she softened. "I want to feel your hands and lips on my body. Can't you just wear those fake human teeth you use to hide your fangs from the sight of mortals instead of that... that thing?" Gina shot a look of loathing at the mouth plug in his hand.

Clive relaxed his grip and guided her to the bed on whose creaky edge he gently made her sit. "The urge to bite is too great. I could still draw blood even with the prosthetic teeth, and then I'd have to fight off a frenzy. No, this is the best prevention," he dropped his eyes to the wide black band, "until I ejaculate. After I am spent –as we used to say in the day – you can release me, and I will be most delighted to fondle and kiss you in the most stimulating manner. But first, you must do your part to get me to climax." He strapped the gag tightly over his mouth and snapped it at the back of his head. He clasped a cuff to his right wrist and motioned with his eyes for Gina to cuff his other hand to the chain fastened to the other side of the bed. Prone in a crucified position, he eyed her helplessly.

Gina stroked him from neck to groin. She kissed his face and nibbled his nipples. She slathered his cock with her tongue and sucked in its essence. Vaginal juices oozed down her inner thigh. She straddled him and slid up and down his rigid pipe to her vocal eruptions of fiery pleasure and searing passion.

Clive let forth an unearthly ecstatic moan. His body shivered violently. The metal frame rattled with such ferocity that its bolts burst free from their nuts. The bed collapsed to the floor with a bone-jarring crash.

Clive's stifled breathing fell with Gina's sighs into a post-climactic lull. She laid her sweaty brow on his heaving chest. "God almighty," she exclaimed.

He gently nudged her head with his chin and curtly grunted. Gina looked up to see his eyes pointing toward the small key on the nightstand. She took it in her fingers and unlocked the cuffs. He pulled the gag from his lips and set them to covering her mouth. His freed hands cupped her pillowy breasts and caressed her creamy thighs and buttocks. Taking care not to pierce her skin with his fangs, he worked his tongue and teeth around her nipples. He tickled her clit with the fingers of one hand while he captured Gina's shrieks of orgasmic joy in the palm of the other. Throughout the night, he devoted himself to serving her pleasure culminating with a candlelit ablution in the bathtub followed by a soothing massage of scented oil into her soft skin.