The Nightlife: San Antonio

by Travis Luedke

  Again, and again, he rowed that boat ashore, thrusting hard and deep, hammering so far up in her that it felt like his cock was the reason her heart beat. Without warning he shifted all his weight to one arm and slipped his left hand down between her legs to find exactly what she hoped he was going for.

  * * * *

  She was so damn tight, felt like a crime to dig that far into her. But he would gladly break that law over and over. She didn’t look like she was in pain, not exactly, but she squirmed non-stop, squealing every time he moved. And when he found the wet, juicy nub of her clit, she began moaning, almost purring.

  He knew when he sent her over the edge, because she went off like a firecracker, grinding her hips, crying out, and grabbing ahold of him like a drowning woman. He rode the wave of her orgasm, until he simply couldn’t hold back anymore.

  The feel of her convulsive, wet squeeze, seeing his effect on her, Adrian sunk it all into her, thrusting hard enough to make her grunt, then he unloaded. As he groaned with the pleasure of her slick, hot glove, she reared up and latched onto his neck, again.

  He was too far gone to speak or even try to pull her off him, too lost in the moment. She bit in hard and deep with those chompers, and that’s when he was truly lost in a sea of sensation, a heavenly bliss like nothing else.

  Sometime later, he found himself laid out on top of her in a dazed stupor. Must have blacked out or something. She was breathing hard and smoothing her fingertips over his back as she crooned with a weird humming sound. His weak arms barely found the strength to lift off of her, but as soon as he started to pull back she grabbed him tightly. “No, don’t move!”

  So he stayed there, propped on shaky hands, still buried inside her wet squeeze, his mind a fuzzy blur. “What did you do to me?” His own voice sounded slurred, drugged, like someone else speaking from his mouth.

  “Hush, it’ll be okay. I just needed something to sink my teeth into for a moment. You were … very good.” Her pupils had dilated so wide her eyes seemed solid black. He had heard of women who reacted to sex like a drug, they actually got high from it, but he had never seen the phenomenon firsthand.

  If he didn’t move, he was going to fall on her. The room tilted off kilter, a slow-moving merry-go-round. She whimpered and shuddered when he slid out of her and sat back on his heels. The damn room wouldn’t stop swaying. “Did you give me something?”

  He fell over sideways on the bed.

  “Shit!” She was up and on top of him, a look of alarm on her face. “Are you okay? Did I take too much?”

  He was so tired, and the spinning ceiling made him nauseous every time he opened his eyes. “Please talk to me, tell me you’re okay. I don’t even know your name. What’s your name?”

  “Adrian … I’m. I’m okay. I’m just tired. Let me sleep.”

  * * * *

  She felt like such a whore, a mercenary using her body as leverage to get what she wanted, and worse, she needed more from Adrian than a simple roof over her head. She had already claimed him. This last feeding went a little too far, but he would recover.

  The man was hers now. He just didn’t understand that yet. Bloodslave was the word that came to mind. She had no idea where she knew this, yet she felt certain he was already her bloodslave.

  Would that be enough? She needed him to care enough to risk his life for her, no matter what happened. An unwilling bloodslave was a liability, and would only slow her down.

  This man was so very strange, so distant and cold at times. Was he even capable of giving her what she wanted? Surely he was strong enough to handle her. Plenty strong. But could he really ever care for her, like she needed him to care, to take a bullet if necessary?

  Guilt wrapped around her chest and sunk in deep. She had no idea what kind of life she must have lived to attract this police attention. Her uncertain future left her totally dependent on Adrian for food, lodging, and protection. If what the police said was true, that she was being hunted by drug lords, then her selfish claims on Adrian might put him in harm’s way. She may very well ruin his life. She gritted her teeth and steeled her resolve. If it all went wrong, she’d have to live with this decision, with the consequences.

  She cuddled up close to Adrian, slipping the covers over him, savoring the scents of their love, his musky smell from all that exertion. She found him fascinating, a study in contradictions. Spooned up against his back, with her arms around him, she wished there was some way she could just start over with this man and leave behind whatever shit-storm she might have created in her previous life.

  Wishful thinking?

  * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Adrian woke to his cell phone going off on the floor next to his bed. He checked the time on the clock. Barely noon. “Who the hell is calling me so early?”

  He accidentally answered the call when he snatched the phone off the floor. Mom? She knows better.

  She had that same worried tone of voice she always had. “Adrian, are you there? Is that you? Honey, answer the phone, it’s your mother!”

  He hung up. She’d call back in a few minutes, just like a snooze button.

  Buzz, buzz, buzz, his phone went off again.

  He snatched it up and clicked the green button, “What do you want?”

  Silence … “Bro, sorry to wake you up, man–” Jose?

  Bang, bang, bang. Someone smacked on the front door.

  Adrian groaned. “Dammit!”

  “Adrian, are you there?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” He took the phone from his ear.

  He pushed her cool limbs off him, glanced briefly at the pale woman in his bed and then slipped on his boxer shorts and headed for the door.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  He flung the door open and cocked back, a fistful of cell phone, ready to smash somebody. Detective Coronado backpedaled to the railing. Again.

  Adrian growled in his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The cop slipped one hand to the back of his pants, as if he was about to draw. If that hand moved even an inch, Coronado was going over the railing with a broken nose. “Calm down, Adrian. I don’t know what your problem is, but you got a messed up way of answering your door.”

  His hand didn’t move, but Adrian could see it in his eyes, the man wanted to pull. Adrian dropped his cocked fist and relaxed his stance, waiting for the detective’s next move. “I guess you didn’t listen when I told you that I work the night shift. This is when I sleep. Right now.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be here if you had showed up as promised.”

  “There’s nothing to report. You and the feds are wasting my time.”

  “The feds were here too? Damn!” He didn’t look too happy about that one.

  “What do you want?”

  “I just got off the phone with your partner, the driver, Jose Ruiz. You know what he told me?”

  “You’re an irritating asshole?”

  “That’s real funny. I bet you still think you’re the shit, eh? Big-shot soccer player, tough guy in the military. In the real world, I’m the big-shot. I put assholes like you behind bars all the time. We’re not in high school any more, Adrian.”

  Then it clicked where he recognized Coronado from. Chango. Monkey. Coronado was once a sweaty little creep who had an unfortunate nickname given early on, and it stuck, all the way through his teens. Adrian remembered Coronado as a teenager, vaguely. The kid was a loser, and a whiny puke. Guys like that gravitate towards jobs of authority so they can finally prove to the world they actually have a pair of balls between their legs. They spend their entire careers trying to prove it.

  Chango kept on rolling with his little I-am-the-law speech, “Unlike you, Jose has respect for officers of the law who can put your ass away. He told me you spoke to the woman, and she said something to you.”

  Whoa. Shit. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember if she had said something.” He closed his eyes for a second and then stared straight at the detective. “Nope,
no recollection of that. Looks like you already have my report. Guess I don’t need to come see you.”

  He turned to slam the door in Coronado’s face, but the creep grabbed his arm.

  “Not quite, Adrian. I’m not so sure I believe you. I remember how you cheated off Linda in Spanish class. I sat right behind you, South San Antonio High School. I know you. You’re a liar, and I am starting to think maybe you got something to hide. Maybe you know this girl from somewhere, and that’s why you don’t want to tell the truth.”

  Coronado peeked around Adrian’s shoulder into the apartment. Oh shit. He moved up into the detective’s face to block his view.

  “Sounds like you got a theory. Too bad it’s based on crap. Good luck with that, Chango.”

  “Oh, man.” Coronado’s face lit up in surprise, which quickly morphed to fury. “These games are going nowhere. I’ll find whatever you’re hiding. Your girlfriend in there ain’t gonna like it when you get arrested for obstructing my investigation.”

  Fucker had seen her leg uncovered on the bed. This shit was getting way too close for comfort.

  “Why don’t you spend your time finding drug dealers and murderers, and leave me the hell alone. I got nothing to say to you.”

  Adrian spun back into his doorway and slammed it shut. Goddamn that was close.

  “Jose and his fat-ass mouth.”

  Adrian twitched as his cell phone buzzed again, forgotten in his hand. He spun and looked through the peephole to see the detective, once more, making his way down to his unmarked blue Ford Crown Victoria. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Everyone knows a Crown Vic with a little spotlight on the side is an undercover cop car. Five year old children knew that.

  Buzz, buzz, buzz. He looked at the phone to see Jose’s number, and answered it. “Yeah, he was just here. Thanks for trying to warn me before you sent the pig to my house.”

  “Adrian, I didn’t know he was gonna be like that. I just told him what I saw. Tell him what he wants to know, and it’s all good.”

  “Yeah, sure thing. Next time you talk to police about shit like this, give me a heads-up before they hit my doorstep.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Uh-huh. I gotta get some sleep. Later.” He disconnected the call.

  Looking at the line of sight into his bedroom from the door, he realized the cop caught a little more than a flash of leg. The covers were off her all the way to the middle of her back. She lay there sprawled out. Asshole cop caught a crotch shot of the woman he was looking for and didn’t even know it.

  “Ha! Fucking Chango.”

  Chango had become quite the pushy detective. Something about this didn’t feel right. Why was this girl such a big deal? Why was Coronado so desperate for the slightest detail? Something didn’t make sense.

  They didn’t even know who she was for sure. Neither did Adrian for that matter. Drawn to her miraculously flawless skin, he headed for the bedroom. He slid his hand up her calf and inner thigh, and grabbed the ass of San Antonio’s most wanted.

  She was cool to the touch, and didn’t move at all. He pulled the blanket away from her head and shoulders, and slid her tousled black hair away from her face. The slightest wisp of breath came from her nose, indicating she was still alive. So soft, pale, fragile.

  He wondered if she really was a vampire. Instinct urged him to accept all the strange evidence of what she admitted. Definitely something unique about her, otherworldly. Anyone else would be laid out on their deathbed after a shooting like that, but here she was, fit as could be. Since he brought her home, he hadn’t seen her drink a drop of water or eat anything, except from him, his blood.

  She had to be a vampire, nothing else made sense. He found her utterly fascinating, a nameless, homeless, naked vampire, sleeping away the day in his bed, wanted by state and federal police.

  What the hell was he thinking messing with this woman? He shook his head and wondered while his fingertip slipped down into her mouth to feel the edges of her teeth. Those babies packed a real punch. But all she had at the moment was a set of pointy canines, nowhere near as long as he had seen them before, when she had thrown all her cards on the table to offer herself up to him in this strange bargain.

  And a virgin, too? How the hell? He shook his head again, wishing she would wake up, wishing he could feel her tight little squirming body beneath him, wishing she’d bury those teeth in his neck again.

  He smacked her gently on the cheek. “Wake up, wakey wakey.”

  Nothing.

  He smacked her harder. “Wake up already. It’s two in the afternoon.”

  Nothing.

  He wanted to punch her awake, anything that might make her wake up and take notice. “Come on girl, lemme see those wicked teeth!”

  He shook her hard.

  Nothing.

  The woman was damn near comatose, sleeping like the dead. Or undead. He sniffed her, to see if she smelled like a corpse. She smelled good, like a woman, a living breathing woman who needed a shower after a night of hard sex.

  Five more hours until sunset. If he was to believe all the rumors and propaganda, that’s when she would wake up.

  Then he decided to try something, just to see what would happen. He grabbed the curtains and pulled them back, and peeled away a little bit of the tinfoil coating his windows to block out the sun. Working the night shift, he had permanently blacked out his bedroom windows so he could sleep through the day without being blinded every time he rolled over in bed.

  A single shaft of sunlight spilled into the room and hit her right hip like a searing laser. Her skin started to smoke, almost sizzle, and a small whimper escaped her lips, but she didn’t move.

  “Shit!” He quickly covered the window, smoothed over the tin foil and replaced the curtain.

  “She’s a no-sun-having, blood-sucking vampire. Holy shit!” He checked her hip where the sun had struck, and found a third degree burn. Two seconds of sunlight had cooked her ass. That’s so fucked up.

  Anxious, hands shaking for … something, he decided to go work off the daylight at the gym. It had been too long since he had a good workout, and he definitely needed something to take his mind off her naked body lying in his bed for the next five hours.

  * * * *

  Adrian ran the treadmill until his legs burned and sweat soaked the back of his t-shirt. No matter how long he ran, he couldn’t shake this anxiety, this need for her. He stepped off the machine, half-staggering, breathing in heaves, and turned it off. Death-by-treadmill wasn’t going to solve anything.

  He toweled off his face and headed to the rowing machine. He dug into the machine like a man crossing the Pacific in a rowboat. He worked up a rhythm and kept rolling along, pushing harder and harder to get her out of his head.

  No matter how intense the workout, he couldn’t stop thinking of her lying in his bed, waiting for him. He couldn’t shake the memory of her teeth sinking into his flesh, and that wonderful feeling of utter joy. For the first time ever, Adrian had it bad. Is this what love felt like, this constant need for someone else? He had never said the words to any woman, not even when a couple of them begged him to say I love you. He’d never wanted the strings that went with it, either. He hadn’t wanted any damn connections to this vampire beyond the few days she planned on hiding out at his place. The plan from the start was hit it and quit it. Same plan he’d always had.

  If this feeling he had was love, then love sucked ass.

  Jane Doe vampire was the last woman on earth he should ever get involved with, but he couldn’t stop obsessing about her. If he let go the handles of that rowing machine, he’d race right back to his apartment and sit there like a lapdog waiting for the sun to drop.

  “Fuck that.”

  He kept on rowing.

  * * * *

  Chapter 11

  Perspiration dripped from his forehead and stung his eyes while the rest of his body hummed from the flush of blood coursing through well-used muscles. He felt good, sore, but loose and slight
ly less edgy. He strolled out to the gym parking lot in the fading sunlight. His internal clock counted down the minutes to sunset as he sped towards the I-35 frontage road, and home to his apartment. If she wasn’t awake and ready for him when he showed up, there would be hell to pay.

  This was not the deal he had made, this funky obsession. She was supposed to hide out, suck on his blood once in a while, bang him till she could barely walk, and generally be a decent houseguest. By the time he pulled into the covered parking in front of his apartment, right at sunset, he was so anxious to dash inside he almost missed the blue Camaro that pulled in after him. Out the corner of his eye he caught the driver’s arm hanging out the window, wife-beater tank top, with a distinctive solid black handprint tattoo on his shoulder.

  Any other day, that wouldn’t have meant anything to him, but today, Adrian had seen that same guy, same tattoo roaming around Planet Fitness, not doing much of anything but checking him out. Now he conveniently shows up at Adrian’s Apartment? Just so he could roll past all slow and easy, looking cool in his old-school Camaro?

  Not.

  The tattoo worried Adrian the most. He knew of a certain group of people who wore those tattoos for a reason, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

  Suddenly, he wasn’t in such a hurry to get inside. Adrian shut off the truck, wiped his face and hands with a wet wipe, and tried to look casual about watching the Camaro as it parked a few cars down from him. He had that feeling again, that yucky feeling when something just wasn’t right. Why the hell would this guy be following him, and who the hell sent him?

  He slipped from his Chevy truck and assessed the advancing darkness. Just far enough into twilight he might be able to catch the guy unaware. Adrian snagged a roll of quarters he kept in the ash tray and wrapped his hand around it tightly. He walked past the Camaro, away from the front porch of his apartment. The man sat in his car, hadn’t made any moves like he intended to get out. Adrian walked further down to the end of the apartments, near the alley, and heard that sound, the clang of a car door closing. He went straight to the door of the last apartment, and stood at the porch pretending to look for his keys. Wife-beater wasn’t much for stealth. Adrian could hear his footfalls along with his breathing.