Chapter One. Maria in Athens,
Greece Summer 1976.
FROM A MUSCLE-DRAINED, deep sleep, laying comatose on my back, my stomach muscles spasmed, hinging me through ninety, sending my head upwards with arms crossed over my boobs, to settle into a sitting position in… maybe my bed, maybe my partner’s. With eyes still closed, the sense of space all around me told my radar that a large en-suite bedroom surrounded me, not the bedroom of my small bachelorette flat. I’d been woken for a reason.
The non-human, vampire part of my brain, my back-brain, had alarmed, talking to me in that creepy, internal voice that it has, the voice of a sun-dried, village widow, who’d smoked all her life and never smiled.
“Wake up Maria dear, you need to read this brain.”
I held onto a thin covering of perspiration. The heat in Athens at this time of year being almost unbearable and I yearned, for the cool island breezes of my youth. That voice-wake had triggered those strong abdominals to place me into a more defensive position, ready to read a brain, listen, to learn something important.
The large house of my partner, Jenny, being in the posh part of Athens, meant that all nights were silent, spookily quiet even with open windows. The thrumming area of my human body, reminded me of the previous night’s action, involving two sets of those most feminine of core muscles, and slowly, the vamp transformation and the biting of Jenny formed itself in my memory as my front-brain activated. Back-brain neurons drifted into human frontal lobes, nourishing sweet smiles as blood pumped upward to reach again into my head, now high above the bed.
Letting go of my biceps, my arms unfolded to drop by my sides and eyes forced themselves into slits. Clothes had been strewn over a chair, spotted out of the corner of one eye slit, the bathroom door had been left open and the light left on by one of us sleep-walking our way to a night-pee, caused by worn out abdominal muscles. The mirror on the dresser in front of me, easily ignored, shone through my watery, blurred eyes.
Back brain alert is all about me and my survival, but the power of my love defends Jenny. My concern for her in my human brain is greater than my concern for myself, but, I guess, that’s what true love is all about. Both my brains are tired out. I’m still losing sleep over the number of my fellow Greek women going missing, with me not being able to do anything about it. I think it’s that feeling of helplessness, combined with a fear for Jenny’s safety that woke me? I know we tire ourselves physically to help us relax mentally, through a disturbed sleep. My nightmares are usually about her being kidnapped, taken just as other women are being taken, but that hadn’t been in my waking dream. Sleep is supposed to shut out the worry but sometimes magnifies it.
Without looking down, I knew my flat stomach had hardly creased as it had compressed to make by body ‘L’ shaped, and that made me feel smug. On the down side, I knew that night-sweat clung to my neck, gluing loose wisps of blonde hair to my nape and taking my attention away from my view of the furniture in front of my seated body.
Hair on neck, short bob, neglected and grown out. Too busy work-wise and socially to arrange an appointment to get length and colour back to the blonde it should be. Maybe tomorrow. Saw a picture, short back, longer front, cool neck. Going blonde was supposed to be temporary, while the police and my parents searched for me. Everyone loved it so to change now would annoy people, annoy Jenny.
I forced my eyes to be wide, to be awake. They returned themselves to lead-lidded slits, winning the battle, as if those lids were on counter-weights, protesting that dark brown eyes should not have blonde hair surrounding them.
Due to some sort of primal fear, no doubt harking back six or seven years to my human female days, I had a concern for the decency of my clothing. My usual night attire, a long tee-shirt made for a man, large and loose in the stuffy Athens humidity, had wrapped around me, too tightly, and underneath me at bum level. The tee-shirt collar gripped my sweaty neck at the point of the scratchy label, but stretched downward at the front, as if trying to force my breasts through the cotton material. I had many men’s tee shirts. The English words on the front of this one, words that I didn’t understand, were stretched so that even an English-speaking person would have difficulty. Jenny called them trophies, but they were bought recently and I knew she teased me of my man filled past for fun.
My eyes came to focus, at last, on the bleak picture in the mirror in front of me. The reflection of a tired woman with blood-stained cheeks and smudged, red lipstick, jolted me back into the memory of frantic sex, frantic feeding of Jenny’s blood from her shoulder muscle, and falling asleep in her bed without bothering to wash away bodily fluids or makeup. We’d gone close to the edge. Jenny’s edge. Maybe too close. I felt as if I hadn’t slept or had woken hung over. It would be my job to wash all this stained bedding.
Replenishing drink. Shit, did I lap too much from her? God, she acted hot last night and begged me to take her to that dangerous cliff edge, just before death, implored me to keep her orgasm going, to take her there and to keep her there, to extend her for as long as possible. “No Maria, don’t you dare stop lapping my blood” she’d screamed over and over. Gladly, I took her to the edge and was willing to seek that cliff for her and not only because I loved her sugar-rich blood during her climactic writhing. But, did my lover fall into oblivion through exhaustion and because of a lack of blood?
I looked to my left in a slow-motion pan, Maria the film camera, concerned for my lover, and concerned for my neck muscles that hadn’t yet woken up in sympathy with the stronger abs. I satisfied myself of her breathing by watching that inviting chest motion, the rising and falling of her breasts being metronomic, reminiscent of waves in the sea that invite you in with their curling fingers. I resisted the urge to dive in and smiled as I watched her sleeping on her back, her eyes fluttering as they acted out a dream sequence. My eyes had returned to being screwed up, but this time because of the early morning light that forced itself through the material of the bedroom curtains behind her. Jenny’s thoughts, Jenny’s dreams, were vivid enough, sexual enough, to have woken me up in alarm. And that was the key word, alarm. My back brain didn’t say ‘you’ll enjoy this’ it distinctly woke me with ‘you need to read this’.
I had to wake fully and concentrate because, judging by the expression on her sleeping face, an expression I’d witnessed many times before, Jenny could soon orgasm-wake, and it seemed likely. There was no rush to read her sexual thoughts because my back-brain had been in record-mode for some time and would release slowly, whether I wanted it to or not.
I smiled, a toothy grin maybe.
Jenny loves me and proves it daily with the risk she takes, loving another female, loving a vampire, both things placing her high-level government job in jeopardy. I prove my love to her by biting her and using my vampire saliva-essence to extend her orgasm for the length of time I lap, knowing she can’t do the same for me, even though my sexual appetite far exceeds hers.
Her sweet, sleeping face turned slightly towards me, maybe at my bidding, and I marvelled that her makeup could still look so perfect, compared with my own red mess. Even her soft-pink lipstick, intact on her plump and pouting lips, looked fresh. Her chosen lipstick colours were used purposely to remind me of her other edible lips, and I knew she wore pink to tease me. It was our code. Sometimes, wearing that colour gave a clear signal that she wanted to be eaten and if she applied a clear gloss as well, it was like a pink rag to a horny bull, and she knew it. Red indicated no pleasure, office work only.
Turning onto my side, feeling a little calmer, I leaned closer to my Jenny with my elbow pushing into my top pillow. The fact that her face looked so perfectly feminine told me that we’d slept, straight after I’d taken her blood, but she seemed, always, to sleep without the kidnapping worry that racked my brain.
Lifting my hip, I pulled to straighten my tee-shirt, and then I ran my hand between my hair and neck to free those strands that needed trimming. I seemed to be making myself more presentable for her, for when she woke, but I’d overlooked my facial mess. Her own hair, naturally dark and long, always pinned up in the office, flowed loosely and sexily, framing her face and making me smile.
My vampire nose twitched and drew air in slowly and deeply. It took in her strong scent, hoping the aroma of her slowly increasing wetness was from her remembering the heights I’d taken her to the previous night. I started listening to her thoughts, those seeping into my front-brain, allowing my back-brain to carry on recording. Watching her flickering eyelids, I didn’t dare touch her, for fear of waking her, but the urge was great.
The warm bodily scent, provided by her erotic dreaming, fought with the separate smell of the dried blood. It stained her skin around the closed wound near her thin nightdress strap, beautifully fresh teeth marks on a bare, golden shoulder. My essence, and what it did for her on entering her bloodstream, meant I had complete control over her, and she could never leave me. Ordinary sex from another woman would be no good to her now, sex from another vampess would make her twice-bitten, almost turning her, too close to a final three. So why had my brain felt agitated? Men, she’d told me, had dangly bits that horrified her and she had no wish to be penetrated by what she called a dangler. So, why the back-brain alarm?
Her sleep, still active, those two red spots on her tanned skin turned me on, even more than the stolen view down the front of her nightdress, where one visible nipple was erect and calling out to my lips. Her cup size, the same as mine, but supported by an extremely narrow back, made her boobs look bigger, tastier, with nipples, fatter than mine, that I wanted to chew now. Those boobs were non-biteable with fangs, obviously, but always looked tasty.
The need in me to hold her, to touch her beautiful body, to take that nipple into my mouth was only slightly less powerful than my need to hold back and listen to her dream, the one she dreamed so intensely, it had woken me. I concentrated on her present thoughts and would read those back-brain-stored thoughts later on.
She stirred again, groaned and turned fully onto her back, disobeying me and probably enjoying that she disobeyed me. My head turned, drawn by her leg movements under the sheet and I listened to her exhale on the flinch of her lifting her hip area. If her eyes had been open now then her eyeballs would have disappeared into the top of her head, spinning to the intake of breath, she was that close to her dream orgasm.
Greg from the office, a bloke who I knew fancied me more than my lover, and knew it because of his extremely open and constant sexual thoughts, made love to her in her dream and she loved him being deep inside her. I felt sick, I felt betrayed and cheated, lied to. She mumbled a few unintelligible words, screwed up her nose and then gave him that little, feminine, pleading, gasp that she normally gave only to me, when her climax was close. Then she screamed and woke. The fast-motion, seconds before her waking, recorded themselves in my back-brain and as her eyes opened, she saw me watching her and immediately backed away, her hands flailing about looking for grip on the tight sheet, reversing herself as far as she could without falling out of our bed. It was either through the guilt over her realistic dream or from seeing my face covered in lipstick, blood, and smudged mascara. Or maybe both.
She looked both frightened and guilty, so I smiled to reassure her. For a moment she looked frail and vulnerable, the pretty white lace edging to the neckline of her nightdress, that only half covered her, drove me wild. Her breathing, still heavy, looked uncontrollable. I stopped smiling and removed my now-normal teeth, from view when I realised that they may look creepy alongside my facial colours. An evil clown came to mind.
Sometimes she could look overly feminine, as in doll-like with those big eyes of hers. She needed to be protected, needed to be consumed and owned by me and she was now portraying a person nothing like the stern boss she acted as in our office. I wanted to punish her for screwing Greg in our bed, force her and then bite that ass of hers.
We stared at each other and I gave her time to figure out where she was and why she’d woken so dramatically.
It’s not so much the sex with Greg that worries me, not even the fact that it was sex with a man, which is supposed to disgust her, it’s her waking thoughts of whatever else they may have shared together. Those few minutes of rem-sleep, speeded up into a climax of waking, powered their way into my back-brain, processed themselves and are now seeping into my human brain in a slowed down version. I wish they weren’t. She lost the climax she so desperate wanted and there’s no way I’m going to finish her off while she’s thinking about Greg. The bitch doesn’t deserve that and can suffer in her frustration. Forcing her now would be a mistake, giving her what she wanted. I’ll watch her hands, hold them if necessary. Maybe spread her legs without touching her, watch her suffer.
I analysed the condensed-time confusion that all waking beings experience and I wish Jenny hadn’t experienced. In her dream picture, the echoing bang from the chromed pistol that killed Jeffrey, my ex-husband, preceded the slow-moving bullet, spinning out of the gun barrel, travelling through his library, moving at the same slow pace that Greg slowly eased himself outwards, ready for his next exquisite thrust into her, the one she tenderly begged him for. The gasp at seeing the bullet move forward coincided with the internal gasp while his shaft bent out over her clitoris, the hip movement I’d witnessed was as she bore down onto his shaft looking for friction. At the very second Greg thrust hard, back into her, the bullet penetrated Jeffrey’s forehead with the same amount of force. The red mark to his forehead formed as Greg’s body and Jenny’s clit collided. Full speed and continual thrusting into my lover by Greg replicated more bullets to the chest area to make sure Jeffrey couldn’t possibly survive. Jenny may have felt guilty about wanting more bullets, about wanting more thrusting, about wanting her climax. The pistol’s chamber now empty, the impotent trigger clicked twice.
In Jenny’s dream she’d been watching all this happen to Jeffrey, with her neck muscles lifting her head off her lover’s pillow, looking over Greg’s muscular shoulder, her arms wrapped around his neck, as he climaxed, warmly and deeply, inside her while the room became splattered with Jeffrey’s warm blood. As Jeffrey fell, limp to the floor, sliding down the wall in slow-motion, Greg withdrew, leaving my beautiful lover unsatisfied.
Good.
She’d wanted Greg to love her longer and harder, but, in her complicated dream, she now had to deal with a murder, knowing she’d have to file a report. Enough frustration to wake any girl, I thought.
Her waking scream had coincided with her realising it was me holding the gun, smiling at my ex-husband’s demise, smiling to my lover under Greg, the pistol still in my hand. No wonder she’d backed away from me on waking. She didn’t look downward through guilt, she’d looked for a gun in my hand to go with my bloodied face.
I wondered if her first waking thought had been ‘will she kill me, Greg or both of us?’
Is that what he told her happened that day? Me pulling the trigger? Or was her dream-state a mass of confusion? Am I in danger from Greg? Are we in danger from Greg? Is that why my back-brain alarmed? Could Greg accuse me of murder and take my lover for himself when I’m out of the way?
It was a government hit-man that had pulled the trigger, in reality, all those years ago, admittedly under my instruction because of Jeffrey being a rogue vampire with two women held captive in his cellar. That was the official line anyway and everyone had seemed to believe it, at the time. Apparently, Jenny Jenkins, my boss as well as my lover, knew it might as well have been me pulling the trigger, and the frightened look on her face now, showed a fear that she may get the same treatment, if I really knew about her passion for Greg.
It was an easy passion for a woman to have and one I shared on occasions. Greg, a fine-looking man with a typically male shoulder, with a large, blood-filled, muscle, the type my teeth hadn’t sunk into for years. Sometimes, in the office when others were eating lunch, his upper arm in a shirt sleeve, made me think of the taste of a rare-cooked, rib-eye steak with garlic butter spread over it and melting into it. Jenny’s arm was weak but that meant my essence filled her quickly. Jenny told me repeatedly that man-sex disgusted her and she wouldn’t even allow replicating toys into her house. I differed with regard to men and to toys but had settled, for years, with my partner who, this time, happened to be a gorgeous female.
The worry of women going missing affected our work life but had became a social worry also. We both fitted the profile of those kidnapped women and we each worried about being taken and each worried about our partner being taken. I wondered, yet again, whether I should do some investigative work on my days off, the days that were so precious to me and relieved me from a full-time job at the office and a busy domestic life at home. Our problem was, the department wasn’t officially investigating the ‘missing women case’ because no evidence of vampires being involved had yet surfaced, and until it did, our vampire-turning department, that didn’t officially exist, was powerless.
Jenny, I decided, had nothing to fear from me, but the expression on her face at that moment showed a combination of what could have been fear, guilt, confusion and sorrow.
Okay lover, talk to me, you know I can read you but you have no idea of the detail involved. Explain to me your love of Greg’s dangly bit inside you so that I can decide on your punishment.
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