He pouted, suddenly contrite. "I'm sorry," he said. He picked up my hand and kissed it, then got up and slid into the other side of the booth with me and put his arms around me for a while. His body was very warm and firm, his touch on my damp hair gentle, and I lay my ear against his chest. I heard his heart beating quite solidly, distinctly. I hadn't known until then that vampires had hearts.

A waitress finally came, sparing me any more dramas, and Daniel ordered food and hot tea for both of us. When she was gone, he asked, "Should I go back to the other side?"

"No," I said.

He kept holding me, cheek pressed against my hair.

"Why are you so warm? Why does your heart beat so loud?"

"Because," he said, "I am genuine. I do not deny myself anything."

"You mean you're a killer."

"I take what I want," he restated.

"You gonna kill me?" I looked up at him. It must have been seductive, and I didn't even mean it that way, but I looked up at him through my curly lashes like he was some kind of Superman who had just saved me. Kind of disgusting, now that I think about it.

"That's up to you," he said. "I like you. I don't want you to die. I saved your life. I want you to stay with me for a while."

The food came.

"Your heart's still beating so hard," he murmured against my temple. "I don't think that's fear happening now." I pushed him away then, and cleared enough space between us so that we were no longer touching. He smiled down into his vinyl lap disturbingly.

We ate. God, it was weird watching the vampire eat people food; he ate mostly with his fingers, except for the soup, continually licking bits from between his fangs and his first set of molars. "Do you have to floss?" I asked curiously.

"No," he said. "My teeth don't decay. I sometimes floss, just for the hell of it. I can't imagine why so few people do it regularly. I think it's a blast. I mean, who ever came up with this concept, dragging a little thread between your teeth? He must have been one crazy son of a bitch."

The food both strengthened me and made me sleepy. "Can I go back to bed?" I asked in a small voice, leaning against Daniel as he played with spilled salt on the table.

"Why?"

"I'm tired," I said.

"Well, you don't want to go back to that wretched infirmary. That's just for folks who need it."

"Do you get a lot of those?"

"Nature of the beast, I'm afraid. Sometimes I go a little too far."

"So, what, do you have this little tribe of medical gnomes at your beck and call to fix up people you've 'gone too far' with?"

He laughed faintly. "Not exactly," he said, not volunteering more. "You're very welcome to stay at my apartment, in my bed. It's nice, I have a groovy wave generator across from it, it's very hypnotic. I won't disturb you. I must go ranging afield tonight anyway."

"Yeah, I think that'll be fine." I was fading already.

He paid the sizable tab, and half carried me back to the black Coupe de Ville. He even changed the tape-he ditched the industrial for the soothing nonsense of the Cocteau Twins. "You have good taste in music for a ninety-year-old guy," I murmured.

"Some people are simply born in the wrong era. I am lucky to have lived long enough to get to some music I can stand. I wasn't very impressed by music I didn't make myself until I saw the Doors at the Whisky in 1968. I thought I was going to lose it." He seemed deeply amused by my comment. "A hip ninety-year-old. I never thought of it that way before. I'm a pretty happenin' senior citizen. Maybe I'll move to Palm Springs."

His apartment complex was built in a horseshoe shape, of lovely old red brick, with a marble fountain in the center. At eleven o'clock, it was completely quiet except for the faint tones of someone playing a piano. "Ah-Mozart," Daniel ascertained, "that crazy fat Austrian bastard. Will I never escape him?" He unlocked the door of number three, and led me in.

Inside was dark except for the wave generator, a transparent Lucite rectangle with some viscous blue fluid inside, slowly forming tides and then waves against itself, rocking back and forth ever so gently. It was completely stultifying, and Daniel had to tap me to get my attention. "Ariane, darling, get in bed."

I sat on the edge of a black-flannel covered futon, and stared up at him. He was changing his shirt. The clean lines of his shoulder blades became complex further down the back, and the six faint swells of his belly shone out for a brief second before a black polyester cowboy shirt covered them. "You're welcome to anything," Daniel said, tucking the shirt into the waistband of his wacky jeans. "If you need me, pick up the phone and press one, star. That'll ring me. If you get hungry, there might be something to eat in the fridge, and there's some pepper vodka and some lime juice and tonic in there, and there's cable, and you can call phone sex or psychics all night if you want, I never pay my phone bills anyway... you OK?"

"Thank you," I said, my throat feeling slightly tight.

I saw his eyes moisten slightly. "That's all right," he said. "You need me."

I crawled under the cover, wriggling out of my dress and socks. I heard him leave and close the door. The piano played on softly, coordinating with the blue waves as I fell asleep.

I slept; I dreamt; of what, I've forgotten now. I half woke, then went back to sleep, sliding myself out of my cotton panties, rubbing my pubic fur against the sleekness of the flannel. The temperature was perfect-the bed was just slightly cooler than my body, the pillow hard under my chin, chilly like spring rain. I know everyone has had moments like this, where you are overtaken completely by the sensuality of a comfortable bed and an erotic dream; you diffuse, your sensuality fills the room, every sensation of comfort is taken as sexual stimulation. I was all wound up-I wanted to come, but for some reason it was not quite possible. I needed help. I thought to myself, I should wake up and masturbate.

When I woke up it seemed that I already was-a hand was stroking my cunt in exactly the way I do it when I don't want to get off right away, but want to prolong the pleasure for as long as I have time. But both my hands were under my chin. A warm sleek smooth body was pressed against my side and I felt lips caressing my neck, my cheeks. I turned over and embraced the body, pulling it tighter to me. The hand squeezed me, and I felt a claw poke gently against my anus. I held up my own lips to kiss, and they were kissed.

I felt for identifying genitals. A penis; thick and full, mostly hard, rooted in very dense, smooth hair. I heard a faint hiss in my ear, and a whisper of a chuckle. "Careful." And more kisses against my mouth. The mouth tasted sweet and salty at once, quite pure, clean. A sharp point pricked my tongue and almost brought me out of my fog, but it didn't quite. Salt became the dominant flavor in our mouths.

The hand below paused in stroking me, and instead spread the lips apart. I heard the moist smacking and it aroused me further. I had a firm hold on the cock now, bringing it near. Just before it brushed against my belly, I opened my eyes.

Daniel lay against me, half on top, his skin slightly imperfect this close; he had open pores on his forehead, a trace of a scar coming down out of the hairline. His eyes were focused on my face, the pupils clicking open and closed, like the sphincter of a camera shutter. "I heard you dreaming," he said. "I thought you might have some need of me."

I kept my eyes fixed on him as together we helped his cock find its purchase inside me. I felt like I was being stabbed slowly-the pain was sharp at first, then slackening. His face transformed with pleasure. Gone was the cynic's slight smile, the brightness of the observing eyes; now he was all one purpose. I rocked upward until we were completely joined. He paused with his back arched, poised for a second; then all at once, he had gathered himself and thrust in again.

I was wracked with orgasms almost immediately. He didn't stop fucking me; rather he kept a hand down with a fingertip pressed tightly against my clitoris, trapping its retreat, making it face one defeat after another. He understood the female orgasm probably better than anyone I've ever known-that it's not simply a function of the cunt and cervix, nor a purely clitoral event; the entire system ought be be involved. After a few minutes our thighs were bathed in liquid.

He let me be for a while, and concentrated on the work. He didn't seem to be working to any particular goal; he was like a man taking a class for the fun of it, rather than for credit. I could not have come any more if I wanted to. I was content to hang onto his sleek back, admiring his nubile form, his delicacy, his tendency to fuck to four corners inside me. I didn't doubt that he had made Ricari violently jealous.

We stopped for a moment so I could have a bathroom break; then we resumed again, tangled in the sheets. We giggled and wrestled, and he pulled me on top of him, the covers over us. Dizzy in the stuffy hot air, I protested, but he murmured, "Sunlight coming through the blinds," arching his hips in a drowsy, but professional, motion.

After a few lifetimes I groaned, "Don't you ever fucking come?"

"When I want to."

I lay back against him, wondering how I was ever going to walk again. His cock was still stiff as a poker, curved up against his belly, covered in a pinkish sheen. We had fucked till I bled. When I showed him, he held me down and licked at my wounded cunt the way an animal licks at a sore spot. At some point determined by him, he stopped and pronounced, "All better. Your turn."

Without complaint I bent over his penis. Oh, Daniel's penis, what a work of art, it belongs in the Louvre, in the Guggenheim of genitalia; thick and longish, just on the verge of being too big, with a prow-shaped tip poking through the delicate veil of foreskin. His skin was so translucent that his erection was dark violet, like berry stains-and the taste-like a strange vegetable, raw, the juice from a broken stalk. Daniel seemed to drift into a contemplative reverie, and I almost thought he was bored, but when I began to slow down, he seized my head and forced it back down.

At once he drew in his breath tightly, and gave out a throaty, clear, sharp cry. His issue flooded my mouth in a great copious stream that dribbled out of my lips and splashed on his lean white perfect thighs. "Swallow," he commanded. I shut my eyes and swallowed what I had caught-a big mouthful, the flavor of dry white wine, the texture of last night's avoglemono soup.

It burnt slightly in my stomach.

I lay beside Daniel, who had his eyes closed. I glanced at a red-numbered digital clock-it read 2:45 P.M. "I don't think that was fair," I murmured against the skin of his inner arm.

"No? But you were dreaming about me."

"I don't remember dreaming about you."

"Your pussy was wet. You were in my bed. And you were as tight as a virgin-when was your last time?"

"Months ago. But that doesn't give you the right."

"What gives me the right," he said, opening his eyes, "is that you grabbed my Johnson, you sucked me off, you wanted me. Naughty child."

"You're pure evil," I said, tracing the halo of long dark fine hairs that ringed his aureolas, the only hair on his chest. He kissed my hair and trailed his claws gently across my thighs.

"Ariane, will you consent to start falling in love with me, so I don't feel like so much of an idiot for being in love with you?"

"What the hell are you in love with me for? All we did was screw." But I blushed violently.

Daniel kissed me. "I love the taste of my cum in your mouth. Has nothing to do with screwing. That was inevitable. There is more. I can talk to you. You don't take me seriously. Plus, we've both been through Ricari University. And there's more besides that. You have such perfect breasts, did you know that? And a perfect round belly. And a perfect ass... you have the kind of body that I like... a Theda Bara body. A surrealist body."

"Jesus Christ, Daniel."

"Tell me you'll stay with me. Please?"

"Is there a Denny's around here anywhere? I really want some french fries." I began wiggling away from him, into the comparative coolness of the air.

He gave a patient sigh. "We're going to buy you some clothes first. Then we can go to Denny's in West Hollywood." He slid out of bed and stood there in the semidarkness, gloriously nude, stinking of me, hair tousled.

"When? Now? But you can't go out in the sun."

"Yes, I can. I've got long sleeves, sunscreen, and a hat. I needn't be outside for long-I know where we're getting your clothes. I hope you like black. I hate just about every other color."

I shrugged. "You're paying."

We didn't bother to wash at all. I sat in my dress and my pool of drying honey and watched him pull on a long-sleeved black shirt, black Levi's, fine leather gloves, and a black ten-gallon hat. When he was done I stood up and kissed him ravenously on the mouth.

It was a bright hot clear day, but Daniel, behind his Jackie O shades and gloves, didn't seem to mind. He drove like a demon back through Hollywood, blasting Snoop Doggy Dogg from the car stereo, and fondling my bare pale thigh.

Sometime after we started driving, but before we reached our destination, I felt a change seep into me, slowly but growing more rapid, like a drug, or a glass of liquor after dinner. I thought of my old clothes-the gray fisherman's sweaters, the hiking boots, my favorite pair of blue jeans that I wore until the crotch needed patching-and I didn't miss them at all. I didn't miss my apartment, or my students, or my dead rats. They seemed like old TV shows that I used to never miss when I was a kid, but that I forgot as I grew up. I tried to picture John's face, or his body, his belly, or his penis-and I couldn't get more than an impression. He was gone. All of it was gone. And I felt light, slightly dazed, happy in a European way. I stared at Daniel until we reached a stoplight. Then he looked over at me and picked up my hand and sucked one of my fingertips into his mouth. "Will you stay here with me?" he said.

I said nothing. I smiled, stroking the velvet texture of his tongue with my pinky.

He turned back to the road and smiled to himself.

So he bought me clothes at some pretentious Gothic chamber of a basement boutique-five pairs of black jeans, some T-shirts, some short uncomplicated dresses, chunky black Doc Martens shoes-and then zipped off to Denny's in the orange afternoon sunlight.

We sat in a booth at the back where the sun didn't reach, and immediately began to grope.

You must understand that I never felt like this before. I was deeply in love with John when I first met him, but what went on between us was rarified, mainly verbal sparring, understanding, and sex that was comforting and delicious; we never had a time when we couldn't keep our hands off each other, when sex was continually threatening to jump out of the woodwork. Some will disapprove of such public excesses. Honestly, we weren't trying to gross out the other patrons of Denny's #45312 (or at least, I wasn't), those hapless travelers and Grand Slam diners who stared at us with naked distaste. There was simply an ectoplasm oozing out of Daniel, creeping over and enfolding me, tormenting me into making love with him in public. It didn't help that he kept up a running narrative of obscenities in my brain, which I shall not try to replicate. It doesn't sound half so nice coming from me.

The barely-of-age waiter came over and glared at us. "Are you, like, ready to order?" he snipped.

Daniel turned his smoky eyes on the boy, and I saw the waiter wilt, a sweat visibly breaking out on his forehead. Daniel's lust was fucking contagious. Daniel gave the yellow uniform a frank appraisal, then said, "Nothing for me. The lady will have French fries with ranch. And coffee."

"Are you ever going to let me order?" I whispered to Daniel.

"Should I?"

I answered him by locating his nipple through his shirt and biting it.

"You clean up real nice, baby."

The waiter lurched off to the kitchen, crippled by a sudden boner, and I sat back arid regarded my lover Daniel with a smile. He eased his hand up my skirt a few inches further. "I'll be honest with you," he said softly. "When you swallowed, I enslaved you."

"What?" I asked, laughing.

"It's a few steps away from my blood," he said. "You're mine now. I can talk to your mind. I can talk to your body. You won't want to leave me. You can, if you want, but you won't want to. It's the only infallible love potion I can think of."

"You serious?" The smile melted from my face.

He nodded.

"That's why I feel like this?"

"It'll wear off. But you are closer to me now, for a while, than you could be otherwise. I don't know how it works. Something, probably, on the cellular level. My cum... burns, doesn't it?"

"Yes. In my stomach."

He licked a curl of my hair. "I noticed it with Ricari."

"You-?"

"Oh, well, of course. He didn't know. I didn't either. I just wanted to go down on him. I was terribly, terribly attached to him-I had his semen all through my body, in my mouth, up my ass, everywhere, his sweat, his tears. Every drop of his body I tasted held me to him more and more."

"I can't... imagine... Ricari fucking anyone up the ass..."

Daniel laughed. "Hmmmm," he said, raising his eyebrows. "I wasn't the first. Usually he was a taker, from what he told me. He hustled quite a bit in those back streets of Paris, did you know that?"

"I thought he mainly went with women."

"He wasn't that picky."

I shivered. Daniel stroked the gooseflesh on my arm until the fine brown hairs lay smooth again, kissed my hand where the green veins stood up, fat and nervous. "Orfeo and I... used to fuck... for hours, like you and I did. We did nothing else for days. I would run afield, and bring home young men for him to kill and feed upon, and then we'd make love with their staring bodies propped up in the corner. Sometimes they'd die right when we were climaxing. I loved it."

"How many people do you kill a week?"

"I don't know. On average?" He stretched along the booth. "Three?"

"Three people a week?"

"That's an average. Some weeks I don't kill anybody. Some weeks I kill twenty."

"Did you kill someone last night?"

"Only myself," he said, touching his hand to his chin poetically. He chewed gently on the back of my hand. "Eat your fries, my darling. I want to have you in the car during sunset."

He did too; in the parking lot of the Rotting Hall, while the sky went through its daily convulsions of scarlet and puce, he raised and lowered me like a flag on a pole, holding my hair out of my face so that he could watch me. Heavy-metal people passed within inches of the car without seeing us writhing around back there. "I'm going to come inside you," Daniel told me, half starting up, jamming himself so tightly inside me that I felt something nearly give way.