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see-arcane · 1 year ago

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Kiss Him No More

“Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.”

In which the connection between a sea-bound vampire, his new wine-press, and her husband is put to intriguing use.

Ao3 link here

He was on the water when it happened.

His hold on the woman was already in place, but hardly of use in that hellish period between Piccadilly and the ship. Too much to think of while preparing his final box, hardly a word worth eavesdropping on, and a general miasma of dull irritation blotting out his attention in-between. The only respite came when he allowed himself a dip into the day’s torpor to keep himself from turning ragged enough to lash out at the chattel. One of his sweeter dreams involved a future at the far end of this improvised game of limp-and-lure in which he made his return to fair England and treated himself to twisting off a few heads he’d so graciously allowed to stay on their owners’ shoulders despite their rudeness.

The charming fellow at the port for one. Perhaps the man tending the wolves for another. The latter was, if nothing else, a proper admirer of his beloved creatures. He might die quicker. Then the wolves could head to his seaside friend’s abode and eat the man down to the bone. Starting with his tongue. It was one cozy thought of many he nursed as he tried to smooth down his own hackles over this most insulting snag to an otherwise pristine entry to the country. Yes, he would return. Yes, he would untangle the snarls made of his precious tapestry. He knew, he knew.

Still, mortification burned in his chest like a coal.

Years of planning smashed like glass by idiot children. It enraged and embarrassed in the same blow. Would he have been so blindsided a century ago? Two? Three? He would swear he felt the ghosts of every foe jeering at him from the grave.

How low he has fallen! How lax he is! He would not notice the laurels he squats on have been swapped for wild rose until there was a holy rash on his backside!

Such would surely be his reception once he made it back to the castle. Oh, but his harpy loves would laugh until their crystal cackling turned hoarse. They would all have their penance to pay once he got home.

It was their fault, damn them. He had grown idle? He had let his guard down? He, who had spent an ordinary man’s lifetime arranging everything to exactness for England’s sake, was the lazy one when the most they could be bothered with was grudgingly consenting to learn the tongue? No. No, no, no. If anyone was to receive a lion’s share, pardon, a lioness’ share of guilt for this mess, it had to be the three pampered cats who had whined and paced and kicked up such a maddening fuss about having to be patient for two whole months to get their promised toy, only to let him vanish right out from under their claws.

No doubt they would have some excuse. They would huff and sniff and laugh. We searched so diligently for a whole half a night! Honest! He was just too fast for us!

He would hear it all patiently just prior to wringing them out like yowling dishrags.

“He was fast,” he murmured to himself in the box. The torpor was thinning now as sunset passed over the ship. Still a corpse, but one who might move. Just as he had once upon a time, turning his head for a parting smile at his good young friend with the spade in hand, complete with a little tickle of paralysis through the eyes. A gesture that had earned him his own farewell in the form of the scar still resting on his brow. A heavy strike for one with such depleted veins. It had been easy to laugh off then; blood for blood. His new playmates would surely have cheered the boy had they caught him.

Instead, Jonathan Harker had fled the castle and cut through the Carpathians like a knife to make it back to his England. To his woman. To a blade that would have seemed absurd to picture in his hand only a season ago, but had proven to fit him like another limb. Fast. So fast. So…

The memory flashed in him again, raw as the burn on the woman’s head.

The stalwart shepherd dogs’ hands weighty with the Cross. Jonathan’s strangling the kukri knife. How a single night had changed him! The dark locks gone silver-white, the eyes bright as melting coins. He had flown with his steel, a rush of speed and strength that would have unsewn a mortal man into a bleeding pile with one strike. Indeed, he had almost been that fool. Surprise and, yes, fine, he admitted it, laxness had him standing still and stupid as a doe not recognizing a hunter’s rifle. But he had moved at the last, losing a great cascade of wealth from his purse. Better that than his entrails.

Even when he was out the window and shouting his bile up at their whole lot, there had been no pause for the blazing Thing that was now Jonathan Harker. That Thing having taken advantage of the diatribe to slither out the broken pane and creep down the house’s side, a spider coming to share a helping of venom from its eager fang. Realization had struck in a cold and nearly dizzying blow as he watched the descent.

Where the solicitor’s fellows might mean to corral or corner, Jonathan Harker fully intended to kill him in broad daylight. Witnesses or no. This, when he could have no clue as to how his corpse would disintegrate to its rightful state. Jonathan could only think that he would look like a madman slaughtering a nobleman in a crowded street. And he did not care.

All this just for the woman.

The epiphany had struck like a strange boiling poison in his bowels. It did not cool even as he shot away, locked the gate at his back, and vanished into the crowd. Nor did it settle with the night, with the day after, or any of the hours to follow. The feeling was only ignored as he worked toward shipping himself back to his territory, dangling himself and the woman’s fate just enough so that she and the clever little cogs in her brain could turn and come to the obvious conclusion as if the daft old Count could surely never have thought to have his connection turned against him! He would leave the door open for her a good while before shutting her out. Let them scramble about on the Continent awhile until they thought they had a chance in the chase again. Follow the lame wolf, everyone, never mind his teeth.

He thought of Jonathan Harker’s teeth. Blunt and white and bared in a livid rictus of hate, hunt-maddened as those finest breeds born to cull the pests of farmers and rend the throats of bears. He tried to picture them as they should have been by now. Sharp as darning needles, the lips bloodstained, curled up by choice or command at the sight of him. A grin that should be waiting in the castle for him.

There was the boiling poison again. Its heat thawed the cold of him so wretchedly it might have liquefied him from the bones out. A poison that seared hotter with every thought of Jonathan Harker.

Jonathan Harker, who escaped.

Jonathan Harker, who hid away a full account of that summer stay and all the information worth gleaning out of his cordial host.

Jonathan Harker, who gave the vermin his name. His properties. The architecture of his entire endeavor, served on a silver plate, parsed out for swift consumption and destruction by the woman.

Jonathan Harker, whose company had, with bitterest irony, turned out to be the most pleasurable stretch of time he could recall out of the past six months. The Demeter had ended sloppily with the captain’s obstinate trick of the rosary, the ghost ship forced to crash. His first conquest on English soil, his supple Lucy, had annoyed almost more than it satisfied with those damned pet lovers circling her, all ended with she and her tomb now lost. Even the woman, his canny wine-press, had turned sour on his tongue.

He had at least seeded the expected despair. A crash of woe and a blow struck as first payment for the fools’ intrusion on his affairs. Plus a fine incentive to bring things to the necessary head in Transylvania. The bitch and her fellow dogs were duly kicked, now spurred to hunt him even as it enticed them back to his land of power. A game of keep-away put to the extreme. Come get me or I get her!

Supposing they did not put her down outright as they had his poor Lucy. But they would hold off, he knew, soft things that they were.

Even if they were otherwise, she still has him to make them reconsider. Or else deliver them into their own pits in the earth before they can think to scratch her with a stake.

He betrayed himself by grinning.

A man willing to skin a gentleman in the street for defiling his woman was also the same man to slaughter a friend who dared to raise a killing hand to her. Another happy hypothetical to mull over, though it too boiled. His grin faltered back to a sneer in the earthen dark.

Jonathan Harker, Jonathan Harker. What wouldn’t he do for his woman? More pressingly, what wouldn’t he do for his Master once she was reduced to his cudgel and collar? The notion brought a different warmth to him. A juvenile one that might have made him chuckle in better circumstances. Here he was again, an old man made abruptly young as Mr. Harker started strumming old desires awake.

But thoughts of those summer nights chafed as much as soothed now. All the delight was tainted with the haranguing of his future self: Now! Do it now! Don’t dally, don’t savor! Drink him as you take him! Let the women have their taste if you must, but finish it before he can slip into the wind!

All too late.

It was all he could do not to ram his fist against the dense wood of the lid. He was free to move now and it took true effort. Sunset had been and gone, the woman’s prying gone with it. She heard water. She felt his stillness. Through her eyes he could see them all: the shepherd dogs.

The old man he pictured with his skull bashed open, his scholarly acumen spilled like gruel upon a brick wall. The doctor he could see drunk dry and sent toddling back to the asylum, feasting through his patients like a plague. The little lordling would be ordered to wring the necks of all his dogs prior to opening a few dozen polished doors to his good friend Count De Ville. The American he would shoot full of holes before and after his turning, followed by sending him off to make arrangements on that further colonial shore.

And Jonathan Harker?

His dearest and most daring friend?

He would have a positive wonderland of activities to endure. His vocabulary would be whittled down to precisely three words in the years to come.

Mina! Master! Mercy!

The ship lurched to one side and shouldered him against the left of the box. He chewed on a curse and sent up a demand to the sky to settle its breeze down. Then, scenting that there were no crewmen among the cargo, he let himself leak out. Man to mist, mist to man. He stalked where there was space to stalk and climbed where there wasn’t, simply needing to move. This came with the needling memory of the zoo and its wildcats sulking and skulking behind their bars. Another curse was caught in his teeth. A third, a fourth. He almost struck out at a random crate when something struck him first:

A sudden flare of sensation from the woman.

Curiosity made him reach out before he’d even registered what the sensory shock came from. Surprise slapped into him when he found himself wearing the woman’s face as Jonathan’s fastened on it, lips sealed into each other as tears rolled. A familiar sight, a familiar taste. Nor was it so from borrowing her senses on previous occasions. He had known this and so much more of the young man back when his hair was dark as a chestnut.

The shock came from the feeling of a deft hand grazing the woman’s thigh. Fingertips skimmed inquisitively along the skin where the femoral artery pulsed and blood rushed in expectation toward—

“Jonathan.” Her head shook. “We can’t. We shouldn’t…shouldn’t…” The hand came away from her thigh and joined its brother in cupping her face. Jonathan’s gaze rested solely on her eyes, refusing the Wafer’s scar so much as a glance. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“How much of anything in this past week has been right for us? For you?” Here the choking throat bobbed. Brown eyes gone wet as glass. “I just—I want to do something for you. To give you all that can be given as we are.”

“As I am. You are not the one marked, unclean—,”

“No. You do not call yourself that. Please, never insult the woman I love with such a word again. Marked, yes, but never, ever unclean. Nor unworthy. Nor anything less than sublime.”

“That isn’t true, Jonathan.”

“Wilhelmina, it is. Whether you believe it or not.” Jonathan bowed forward until, gentle as a feather, his brow rested against the burn. “If you cannot, I shall simply know it twice as hard for us both.”

“Such is sweet to hear. But there’s more to consider. You know it.”

“So there is. And I care more for you than any other consideration or hypothetical element. You are here and real and whatever else may come into it is inconsequential as vapor. If you tell me you truly do not wish me to touch you, to give you what comforts I can beyond a held hand and our shared bed, then I will drop the matter. We shall be chaste until,” again the leap of the throat, “all is settled. But before we swear to abstinence, I want you to tell me, from your heart, that you wish it because you deem it a true desire and not merely another act of deprivation for—for its own sake.”

In the dark, a tongue clicked and tutted. A close call, Mr. Harker. Can’t let it slip whose eyes you pretend not to see on the other side of hers.

“Would you wish to engage in such intimacies were you in my position?” was Madam Wine-Press’ counter. “I have read it all. Everything you bore—,”

Here an outright cackle was stifled in a dirt-powdered sleeve.

Ha.

‘All.’ As if he had not thumbed through the diary entries himself before tossing the papers on the fire. Such wide gaps between so many dates, dear Jonathan. Whatever for?

“—everything you were prepared to risk rather than stay eternally in the presence of those Weird Sisters. How can I, being what I am, becoming worse, make you pantomime your way through any such act with something that may soon cease to be your wife?”

Ah, the melodrama of the martyr. A fine save, wine-press. No other cause to pause in the coital fumbling. None at all.

In answer, Jonathan pulled away an inch, still staring straight ahead. Love softened most of the look, but an edge of whetted steel hovered in it too. Seeing her and seeing past her. It was almost like watching a magic trick as the expressions of the gallant lover, the loyal knight, and the hunting dog all overlapped together with a radiation of purpose in every angle. All the while, the hand that had risen from her thigh began to descend.

It did not fall immediately, but walked. A steady trek down the cheek to the lips. From lip to throat, swiping past the tell-tale bite. Smoothing around the hill of the breast and its pointed cap. Along the bend of the waist, across the shelf of the hip. Home again on a thigh that was still hot under the nimble fingers. Perhaps warmer.

“Tell me to stop if you want me to stop. But only if it’s for your sake. Not mine. Not God’s. Not any hesitation born of what some intangible other might think.” The hand began to roam again. “I love you, Mina. Always.” The fingers crept. Slipped. Traced. “There is no force, no change, no decree on Earth or beyond it that will make me feel otherwise.” The entire hand was at work. Tirelessly. “If my words are not enough to prove it, if action is not enough, if my own nightmare left on paper has skewed the matter, I ask that you let me verify it in the flesh. If you will let me.”

Faster. Faster. Faster. A speeding cradle of muscle and bone rocking up, up, up, in, in, in—

“Will you let me?”

The answer was a single breathless vowel chased by a burst of damp heat, hands locked tight on Jonathan’s shoulders.

Out on the sea, in the dark, a second body shuddered and locked his teeth against a gasp. Later he would try to mock himself for the reaction. He wasn’t a stranger to the ‘Weird Sisters,’ as his Harkers called them, and their own play. They would all borrow each other’s climaxes given the opportunity. And yet this one had struck deeper.

In the present he tried to shake off the tremors still thrumming up and down his legs. Instead, he locked himself more fully into the woman’s senses. The heat of her, the breath, the tingling across her lap. Then, whispered back, woven with equal resignation, determination, and want:

“Will you let me?”

“Yes.”

And so the woman’s hand—his hand—made its own route along Jonathan. She was as deft as her husband. Though he flattered himself that his own experienced digits had worked the young man far more expertly. It had been necessary to wring it out of him in his less than enthused condition. Regardless, it was a pleasant return to better memories and a charming prelude to their trio’s unique and sprawling future together.

There was a satisfaction in seeing the young man come undone as the body usurped the mind, pleasure blasting out all the sentiment of love for one heady moment. Yet it returned within a blink. As did his lips upon hers. A sweeter heat flooded the woman this time. No tears, only the taste of each other, the feel of hands held or hands grasping, the heart twisting with such mingled agony and rapture that it might have popped.

Her teeth grazed Jonathan’s lip.

Sharp.

Do it, he found himself suddenly thinking at her. Urgent. A bootheel pressed to a phantom throat. Do it. Do it now. He wants it. We both know it. We know he will not live without you. If you are undead, he shall be too. If you are ended, he will fall on his blade. Save time. Save him. Keep him. Just a taste. Go on.

She pulled away. Doing so, she saw that delicious, that delirious, that most divine truth in her husband’s face.

Yes. He would let her. Be it now or tomorrow or at the far end of her change. He would let her.

And if not you? Do you think he would deny my offer a second time if it meant joining you? Or should it come from your Sisters? They were so looking forward to a new pet of their own. Do it now and he can be ours alone. Do it and save everyone the pain of waiting. To stall the inevitable only makes the hurt worse. I know from experience. Take him. Now.

Her voice tried to crawl up her throat. He collared it.

Now, Wine-Press!

Silent, she looked at Jonathan. Jonathan read what couldn’t be heard. The next kiss went to her knuckles. Her palm. Then he laid the latter flat against his heart as it beat steadily on.

“It’s yours. Always.”

Yes, my friend. I know.

And that was the sum of it for that evening. Damn them.

Night came, night went. He slipped back into his box as the sun crept up. They would want another trance, perhaps, and it was best he be an idle carcass when the time came. As he settled in, he treated himself to a parting glimpse through the woman’s eyes. Here was Jonathan again, standing before the mirror and seeing to the mechanics of shearing his stubble away. The woman caught herself staring at his throat a moment too long and snapped her gaze back up to the concentrating face in the glass. Perhaps wondering when she would lose her own reflection. Just as well. There would be more noteworthy views to come.

He pondered them as hard as he could, illustrating them in his mindscape for express delivery to her dreaming mind once sleep took her. It wouldn’t do to have all her rest come so peacefully. Not when there was so much excitement to come.

As a start, he would show her how he had taken Jonathan for the first time. Followed by all the ways he had taken him after. On back or belly, folded over or splayed wide, gasping or pleading. Always quick to please his Master, but always so teasingly shy about letting himself be pleased. Always thinking of a future that should not have existed: the one where he lived and left as a human being, crawling home to the daydream of his waiting lady.

This would be followed by merrily running him through that gauntlet again, albeit with Madam Wine-Press held at bay as neatly as any of his beasts. Jonathan would be no less obedient as the caveat would be that any disobedience would result in his wife tragically coming in contact with one of the Dutchman’s convenient Crosses. Ideally slotted as deeply in her as Jonathan’s Master was in him.

He could have her do it. If he was doubted, he would gladly demonstrate. For solidarity’s sake, perhaps he would also blunt and oil up one of the hunting party’s stakes. It would be interesting to see how far Jonathan might take it in as she watched.

So it would go for the opening act. Next, the dining hall. Her Sisters would be long since parched and deserving of some gesture of reconciliation after their own punishment. Madam Wine-Press could observe as Jonathan was shucked bare as a roast, drained at the neck and the loins until he was all but dry. Ah, still no taste for her yet! Come, to the marriage bed.

Not hers, of course.

Theirs.

The climax of Lenore and Wilhelm, consummated in the crypt where he had left the ebon coffin waiting in its proper place. There Jonathan would be laid, half-alive, feeble as a kitten. His Master would climb over the waiting bridegroom and order the woman to shut the lid for them. And she would.

All this and more danced just out of reach, a brilliant horizon far more precious than any mere silver lining. The visions were enough to scour away the last of the clouds in his mind. This detour would have a happy ending after all.

A pain reached him.

Small, but there. Incessant.

The woman was making two fists. Her nails cut hard into her palms as if she meant to gift herself stigmata. She was standing before the mirror as she did so. Jonathan had gone to the wardrobe and could be seen over her shoulder. Half-dressed, the landscape of his back and the lines of his throat stood out in mesmerizing relief. The woman regarded this, then herself. For the first time since it was bestowed on her, she did not spare a look for the burn. Just the eyes.

Not her own.

Pretense of ignorance or no, she saw her Master as much as he could ever be witnessed in a looking glass. Her voice came in a low crisp note, almost crystalline. A whisper glazed in poison:

“This man belongs to me.”

He smiled back at her and hoped she felt it. At the same time, a delightful thought occurred to him. He allowed his hands to travel. Under his shirt, below his belt, circle, tweak, tickle, stroke, pump. He imagined still being busy with this bit of maneuvering when it came time for the woman to have her sunrise trance. Would she speak honestly about her borrowed experience under the hypnosis? Better yet, would her own hands be forced to travel along the corresponding routes before her gawking audience? Could he manage opening the buttons of a blouse and the flipping of a skirt? Oh, to see dear Jonathan’s face during it all! To see it after she came awake!

It would be good for a laugh…but it would give him away too soon. He was to be no more than an ignorant drowsing lump in his dirt, after all. So he settled for finishing himself off as she stood before the mirror, glowering away as if it mattered. Jonathan came up to her a moment later. Hands were held and eyes were met with stinging tenderness.

In the dirt and the dark there was a last sigh before he settled himself into stillness like a good corpse.

Yes, Wine-Press, he belongs to you for the moment. Until he is returned to his rightful owner, be sure to kiss him for us both.

And she did.

#it's been ages since I did anything with a splash of smut in it #but then I started thinking about how Dracula might abuse his end of the psychic link with Mina #especially if/when the Harkers were trying to have some private time #first he takes her husband then her girlfriend then her blood #now the thieving bastard is even piggybacking off her senses while Jonathan [REDACTED]#content warning for some depictions of a coital nature #and references to past and implied future assault #give or take a few grislier revenge fantasies from the Count #anyway #jonathan harker #mina harker #dracula #my writing #re: dracula #dracula daily

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