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Jonathan sighs as he finally closes his journal for the night, sits back, and rubs his eyes. His entries are becoming shorter and shorter by the day. Then again, his mind isn’t really at a place where he can concentrate on the minute details of their evening meetings. Seward and Mina have a much better handle on that. It’s a relief that Seward has been keeping notes, too. Then he won’t have to feel so guilty about missing out on things.
Mina.
The promise he made to her comes back to him and wraps its claws around his throat like a vice. He had acquiesced in order to please her, and there is nothing he won’t do to please her. But there’s no way he could ever actually do such a thing. And, honestly, she should know that, too. He’s never been a very good liar.
She sleeps peacefully on their bed as if nothing can more right with the world, her auburn curls spilling over the plush snowy pillows. Warmth stirs in his chest as he watches the curve of her shoulder steadily rise and fall ever so slightly with each breath she takes. Her bangs have fallen over her face, hiding the scar that screams on her forehead in such an angry red.
Jonathan is unsure how to comfort her, if he even can. When he moved to embrace her just after they had retired for the night, she pushed him away with a vigorous shake of her head. “We can’t...” she said with a choking swallow, her hands gripped tight on his loose shirt. “I... I’m unclean. Tainted.”
He wanted to say something brave then. How he’ll just have to wash that taint away. How she can never be unclean in his eyes. How he doesn’t care... well, he does care, in that he cares that this is something hurting her and forcing her to feel this way about herself. But that doesn’t make her any different than before! Or something. But he said nothing then, and perhaps that was for the best. The sorrow in her voice, the way she refused to meet his eyes with her own, the scrunch of her shoulders as if she was trying to make herself seem as small as possible... he knew then that nothing he could say at that point, if ever, would comfort her. All he can give her is time to come to terms with what happened that horrible, horrible night.
I brought him here.
A disgusting thought he can’t stop from creeping across his mind. But it’s true, isn’t it? Because of his cowardice at the Castle, his inability to finish it when the Count was helpless and vulnerable in his unholy coffin. If only Jonathan had just a bit more nerve, more resolve. But Jonathan was not enough, and now Mina is paying the price for it. That hideous mocking sneer flashes in the back of his mind, mocking him even now. He can’t do anything. His poor wife has gone through a wretched, traumatic ordeal right in front of him, and he can’t do anything.
“You’re still awake, darling?”
Jonathan snaps out of his brooding and turns in his chair. Mina is sitting up in bed. Her eyes are a vivid green in the lamplight as she gazes at him. Despite it all, she looks so beautiful, that his breath catches. “Are you all right?” she asks with a curious tilt of her head, her hair falling over one shoulder. Part of her nightgown has slid down the delicate curve, and the lamp paints her skin in a soft golden glow. The laces that usually hold her gown together have come undone. The whole gown could simply fall off her body at any moment.
Jonathan swallows and glances away, forcing himself to focus on her question. “I just finished up my entry for today,” he replies softly, and pops the journal into the drawer without another thought. The old thing is tattered, pages torn, and brown leather stained.
Her pink lips curl in a slight smile. “Anything interesting happen?” She asks as though she wasn’t present for the after dinner vampire meeting they have every night, but her husband indulges her all the same with a somewhat exasperated groan.
“No, just another one of Van Helsing’s boring lectures that I didn’t bother paying too much attention to so my entry isn’t very long.”
Mina giggles, hiding her amusement behind a delicate hand. “Jonathan!” she admonishes in a delighted whisper. “He’s not boring!”
“Says you. You were dozing off!” he fires back. They speak in sharp whispers, like gossiping children, voices barely raised in case the old coot himself could hear them perfectly.
She raises her cute nose in the air. “Only because I am not feeling well, as you know.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“You can’t prove it.”
Mina squeals and hides under the duvet when Jonathan all but leaps across the room in a single bound to tackle her on the bed. The mattress groans loudly at the sudden additional weight. For a moment, as he attempts to tickle her, and she’s a laughing mess scrambling to get away, they look for all the world like a twenty-something couple enjoying a blissful first year of their marriage.
They finally settle in a tangled heap, clinging to this brief moment of normalcy. With her hands splayed against his chest, her body curling into his, he impulsively kisses her and swallows her gentle gasp of surprise. Yet, she does not push him away this time, but instead pushes her mouth into his. The kiss slowly grows with sweet eagerness between them, and his tongue slides along her own to seek her taste. He can feel her heart beat heavy as his palm cups the thin fabric of her gown that covers her left breast.
Let me comfort you. Let me make you forget just for tonight.
“Jonathan, wait.”
He pulls away immediately, searching her face, suddenly worried that he has done something wrong. But she’s smiling up at him, the way she smiles at him when she’s feeling playful and devious. That smile hasn’t changed since they were kids. He sits back as she rises up on her knees. Her nimble fingers skillfully release the buttons on his shirt. At the feel of her skin brushing his, a bright blush colors his cheeks hot and his breath quickens. No matter what initiative he takes, or how much affection he gives, in the end, he is the shyer of them both.
Her eyes. He can’t look away from her eyes. Not that he wants to, ever, but he is captivated by her gaze in a way that he has never felt before. Those eyes glow almost red in the lamplight as she leans closer to him.
He’s experienced this feeling before, so different from what he usually experiences with his beloved Mina. But he can’t place where.
His brain is heavy with fog, anticipation, need. He can’t think, and he suddenly doesn’t want to. He just wants to lose himself in this desire overpowering his senses.
Mina pushes the fabric of his shirt further down one of his shoulders, exposing the deep olive skin of his neck. His shivers at the feel of her sweet breath against his collar. “Mina,” he sighs, longing, yet hardly able to summon the strength to lift his arms to embrace her. He feels so heavy. Like he can just sink into this blissful oblivion.
Her body presses into his, her supple, soft breasts squish against his chest, and then her tongue rolls up the racing pulse of his neck. He moans, shivering with ecstasy, hot and cold all at once. Her gown slides up bare, milky thighs as she climbs onto his lap and settles on his arousal. He would rock his hips into hers for delicious friction, but he can’t move. A mysterious weight keeps him perfectly still.
“Jonathan,” she whispers between kisses up and down his neck, and her voice sounds musical like tingling glass. “Jonathan.” One of her hands snake through his dark brown hair, tilting his head more and more to the side. “Do you love me?”
“Of course.”
What a silly question.
He can barely hear his own voice.
“Always? No matter what?”
His eyes close as the haze thickens. Why would she ask such things? “Yes, my darling. Always.”
She kisses his neck more, coaxing him deeper into that blissful fog. “You remember that promise you made to me, right?” Her voice is like leaves in the wind on a cold autumn day. Her nails trail across his jaw, and their sharpness against the bristles of his five o’clock shadow make his skin tingle with delight. “When you said you would always stay by my side? That you wouldn’t let me go into that dark, terrible place all alone?”
Has he made such a promise? In his own heart, yes. A secret that no one knows.
”Mina?”
A small thrill of clarity pierces through him. An instinct that humans can never deny. That of a prey animal caught in a trap. But then she shifts in his lap, letting him feel the soft wet heat of her sex, and he doesn’t have the strength to fight back anymore. He’s so, so tired. Where better to rest than in the arms of the one he loves most?
The sudden pain is sharp, like a pair of tiny knives sinking deep into his flesh, tearing into the vein of his throat. Yet somehow sweet, dissolving instantly to something unimaginably pleasurable as heat rushes toward the wound and the smell of old copper fills the air. Her arms wrap tight around him. Her long nails stroke the back of his head as she holds him in place with a strength that doesn’t come naturally.
His ears fill with the sound of her drinking greedily, as his blood rushes down her throat with each desperate swallow. His skin blazes hotter and hotter as he trembles in her arms.
And yet.
There is no hint of terror like he once experienced. With Mina, there is nothing to be afraid of, not even this. He thinks he remembers something, something one of those awful Brides said to him. That the sweetest blood actually comes from lovers, from which lies between innocence and sin. Or maybe he’s read that somewhere. He’s not sure. It’s so, so difficult to think through this crimson haze that thoughts quickly retreat back into before he can fully grasp them.
That’s okay.
Use me, use me, use me.
He summons enough strength to place his hands on her waist and pull her closer. “I love you, Wilhelmina,” he whispers, her name he reserves for only their most intimate moments. Wet heat dribbles wantonly down her chin and splashes fat drops onto his chest, staining his shirt bright, bright red. Maybe his last words. Maybe not. He will have no regrets either way.
He’s dizzy when she’s finished with him. Black teases the edges of his red vision. “You taste so sweet, Jonathan,” she breathes.
He’s thrilled that he’s managed to please her. She kisses him with ruby red lips and he tastes his own blood for himself. Yes. Sweet. His tongue chases her when she pulls away. “In just a moment, my love,” she says, placing her finger against his mouth to hold him in place. “We need to take things easy. I...” The blush in her cheeks reddens. “I may have taken a little too much.”
“Uh-huh,” he replies stupidly.
With a beautiful ruby smile, Mina sits back on the bed and lets her gown drop from her shoulders to pool at her waist. With a long nail, she cuts a small line over her left breast. Crimson beads trail over the mound. Then she holds out her arms to a barely conscious Jonathan, tender and inviting. “Come, my love. My husband. Let’s go into this dark eternity together.”
Without hesitation, he collapses into her embrace and presses his lips into the wound on her breast.