Work Text:
The birds slept and the moon was high when he felt his mattress shift beside him.
Jonathan had gone to bed early, or what passed for early in this dreadful, timeless castle. What was there to do, truly, but to eat and sleep and read and worry?
There was nothing. Nothing at all.
He’d sat across from the Count at a fully set table that evening, his eyes fixed downward as he avoided the Count’s. They were pretending, the two of them. Jonathan pretended that this plate of food had been prepared by some servant deep in the bowels of this castle, that the Count had not laid this cutlery out himself with a care and dedication that did not suit him. That the two of them weren’t all alone in this maze of stone and shadows.
Well. Almost alone.
And The Count, for his part, seemed to be pretending that all was well. He'd asked Jonathan questions about his home, so many damn questions, and while he had not partaken of the food himself, he'd watched Jonathan do so with a queer sort of attentiveness that seemed to glow in the darkness of his eyes.
He’d poured Jonathan rich, lush wine, and his fingers had brushed against Jonathan’s as he’d leaned in close.
Jonathan hadn’t shuddered that time. What use was it, after all? The two of them were pretending.
He thought about that now, the smooth-rough skin against his own, the icy chill that seemed to repel the comfort of the fire that sat to their side. The electricity, cold and sharp and wholly unfamiliar, that had snaked down his spine.
He felt that electricity now, too, and he would have opened his mouth to whisper a name, but the words did not come. His lips were as still now as they had been then as he’d sipped at his wine and kept his eyes down. Away.
The blankets shifted, and Jonathan shivered as cool night air infiltrated his bed. Something thin, sharp traced the lines of his throat where it met his nightshirt, then below.
Finally, finally, Jonathan managed to open his eyes. There, hovering above him, was the Count, and whatever froze Jonathan now, it was not surprise.
Count Dracula sat there beside his prone body, idly running those fingers down the buttons at Jonathan’s throat, and he did not seem perturbed to see the whites of Jonathan’s eyes.
“Good evening, my friend,” he said, and his voice was low, soft, sweet in a way that Jonathan could not quite lay his finger on. The electricity seemed to seep from the air into his skin, his bones, and he felt his lips fall open with the force of it.
It was the heavy weight of hands on silk, of a desire that lay far away beyond the safe reaches of his mind. It had felt like this, too, when those beautiful, savage women had knelt around him, and Jonathan felt his heart clench cold in his chest even as his stomach began to heat.
It felt like being wound in a spider’s web, caught in a lion’s gaze, held tight in a snake’s coils. It was the gaze of a hunter, Jonathan realized all at once, and he was the prey.
What manner of creature was it, he wondered, that could make its dinner beg for the honor of being eaten? What predator was it that could — he gasped as the Count’s fingers flicked open the top button — what predator could make its quarry delight in being prey?
Satan, he remembered them whispering. Witch.
Vampire.
“You…” he whispered, and the Count’s thick eyebrows raised.
A smile quirked at those lips now and pleasure sparkled in the Count's eyes even as he leaned in close, close. “You’re stronger than you seem, aren’t you?” he murmured.
The electricity intensified, fairly crackled along Jonathan’s skin, and he gasped at the pure power that ran through his heart.
“Does it feel good?” the Count asked him softly. “I’ve never felt it myself.” He brushed his fingers down along one cheek. “It will feel better if you give in.”
Jonathan did not ask what he meant, nor did he need to. It was enough to feel. There was a wickedness to the heat that seemed to drip from ice-cold fingers, and he could feel himself going flush with it. He was no stranger to this heat, to the shy licks of desire that seemed to bite at him from the inside out, but usually it was something that he could force down. Ignore. These were the feelings that a man restrained for the good of all, but the walls that held them back were beginning to crack, and Jonathan could feel that heady, forbidden fervor spilling from the leaks.
He’d almost given in before, when those women had approached his still form with foul teeth and sinful tongues bared. They had promised pleasure and oblivion in equal turn, and it had only been the arrival of his host that had saved him from their dark sup.
Now, though… Now it was the Count’s eyes that pinned him to his pillow with fire and ice in their stare, the Count’s hand that teased at the space above his heart. And God! God, the fire that spilled through him, liquid heat and alien longing... Jonathan’s fingers twitched at his sides.
“Do you wish to touch?” the Count asked, that whispery voice almost a croon, and Jonathan shut his eyes against it.
No. No. He didn’t. He couldn’t want such a thing. There was death in those eyes, and Jonathan knew them now for what they were. This was a creature of the night that dealt in traps and seduction, that would bleed him dry and enjoy every minute of it.
One who had designs that Jonathan couldn’t quite see the shape of, not yet.
And still… Jonathan’s hands twitched upward again, and he could no longer deny what they wished to hold. He’d cast his eyes away from men in the past, content in the end with what he had, but this electricity that these creatures seemed to carry with them, sweet and deadly fire, seemed to awaken in him what he had put aside. Locked away.
It was as if in a castle full of locked doors, the Count carried with him the key to every secret that Jonathan had ever hidden. And his body itched to be unlocked.
Eyes shut as they were, Jonathan didn’t see it when the Count dipped his head, but he felt it when hot breath tickled its way along his neck. He tensed, remembering those cruel, sharp teeth he’d seen on that woman, that beautiful, awful woman, and braced himself for the pain.
But it did not come.
Instead, Jonathan felt cold lips and a warm tongue against his throat, and the contrast was enough to drive another gasp from his lips. He could feel those lips tilt up in a cat’s smile against his skin, and then—
He cried out as the Count sucked, no doubt marring hitherto pristine skin, and just like that, all at once, he could move. He wished he could say that he pushed the monster back, pushed him away, but instead—
Instead—
Jonathan heard a rumble of amused pleasure even as his hands fisted in the Count’s finery. He wasn’t dressed for sleep, Jonathan noted faintly, but nor was he dressed for company. A simple shirt quickly becoming crumpled between his fingers, plain black trousers. That was all that covered him now, and Jonathan knew all at once that this had been planned.
From the start, this had been planned.
The Count pressed those red, red lips of his in a line up Jonathan’s throat, and all Jonathan could do was hold on, his fingers curled up in a rictus of desire against his sides. If this had been a snare from the start, then he was well and truly trapped.
The fear that thought inspired lingered there at the base of his skull, but it was quickly being clouded out by the haze of pleasure that Jonathan could no longer wish away. Fear mingled with a sort of sordid excitement until Jonathan could no longer tell the difference between the two, and he felt the last bit of resistance that he contained within his heart begin to splinter, fall away.
And when the Count’s mouth finally reached his own, Jonathan gave in.
Jonathan had been kissed before, chastely and less so, but never anything like this. The Count’s kiss repelled and intoxicated him both, and the frisson of excitement it instilled in him was like nothing he had ever experienced before.
His hands moved without his permission at all, clutching at cloth, at flesh, at skin, anything at all he could use to ground himself against the storm raging within. And then they weren’t moving at all, and Jonathan blinked in surprise.
The Count held his wrists up on either side of his head and squeezed them once in an iron grip. “Keep these here,” he said, and his tone brooked no argument.
The strength present in those icy hands of his filled Jonathan with a sort of dizzy terror that, to his shame, went right to his cock. He could explain it no more than he could excuse it, but the Count’s eyes, when they flicked back towards the movement, only shone red with a sort of hunger that made Jonathan desperate to be devoured.
Those steel fingers of his left Jonathan’s wrists where they lay, and he could have used this opportunity to get away, should have, but he did not. He flexed his fingers once experimentally, finding that he did indeed have the power to move his arms if he so chose, but…
Keep these here. The command rattled around in his head, and with some mounting horror, he found that he wanted to follow it. To lay there willing and docile as the Count took from him whatever he pleased. To give him all.
It was wrong, Jonathan knew. An abomination on every possible level. But that did not cut away the desire in him, nor did it dampen the flame that threatened to roll through every part of him, from those wrists to his stomach and further still.
The Count pushed away the last of the blankets and Jonathan could feel him then, fine cloth rubbing up against Jonathan’s naked legs as the Count crawled over his body. He blocked out the moon, the stars, all light coming from the window over in the corner, and there were only those dark, dark eyes, filled as they were with an infernal scarlet light, filling Jonathan’s vision.
There was only the Count, and what the Count wanted him to feel.
There was a peculiar beauty that Jonathan could see in the lines of his face now, like moonlight-limned crags in the cliffs along the shore, and Jonathan traced them with his eyes even as he felt ice-cold hands sliding up his legs and under the long, white nightshirt that he wore to bed. He shivered as his skin was exposed to the night air, his clothing bunching up around the Count’s clever hands, then shuddered as those hands slid under his ass.
The Count squeezed gently, and then not so gently at all. “My dear Jonathan,” he murmured, and the horror of it all was that he sounded as if he meant it. “I will have you tonight.”
There was no question in his voice, and Jonathan could provide no argument. There seemed to be nothing for it but to nod.
The smile that earned him was a bit too cruel to be reassuring, but it lit Jonathan up all the same. There was no heat to be had from the night or from the fingers that were exploring his skin, but there seemed to be more than enough boiling over from within.
Maybe it was feeling that heat for the first time in too long that had the Count sighing like that, surprisingly soft for a creature so fey, and then leaning in to press those scarlet lips to Jonathan’s stomach, his chest.
It felt so strange, alien indeed, to feel hot breath from cold lips, to have them both trailing along the lines of him as the Count kissed him, but Jonathan could not deny that it was exquisite. Occasionally he felt a glance of something sharp in the Count’s kiss, and rather than alarm him, that whisper of danger only heightened the pleasure that was beginning to rise up in him like the tide, inexorable.
These monsters, these creatures of the night, were the masters and mistresses of seduction. Jonathan had learned that well and early the night he’d come upon those women. He was as vulnerable to their wiles as any man there was, and it was impossible to say no to such wide, dark eyes, such enchanting lips.
But, he wondered as the Count sucked a biting kiss into his skin, making him squirm beneath him, did that seduction extend to the pleasure that he felt now? Or was that all clever fingers and hot tongue skillfully giving him all the things he’d never dreamed of requesting?
Was this — ah — the sly allure of witchcraft or simply the pleasures of the flesh? An ecstasy imposed upon him or simply one that the Count had drawn from the darkest recesses of his mind like thread from wool? Jonathan shut his eyes and moaned low in his throat. There was simply no way to know.
He had his suspicions, though, and they scared him almost as much as the fearsome light he knew lit up those dark, endless eyes every time they looked upon him.
The Count’s hands had been exploring his hips, his thighs, his ass, painting his skin with ice and fire, but now his fingers ventured further, sliding up the cleft of him to probe at his entrance with no shame, no hesitation, and a gasp was torn from Jonathan’s throat at the intrusion.
His fingers were slick, oily, and Jonathan had no idea when that had happened, too focused on that mouth to have watched the fingers. All he knew was that they were sliding up against him, slick and knowing, and the Count’s wrist brushed his cock with a casualness that made his breath seize up in his lungs.
Jonathan knew his heart was pounding like a wild thing, could feel its fevered beat beneath ravished skin, but there was nothing he could do to slow it. Not when those fingers were sliding up inside him, slow, sure, and cold, cold skin was pressing up against his heated cock.
“Please,” he whispered, the word sounding hoarse, foreign in his throat. He hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t meant to encourage whatever sinful magic the Count was working with those fingers inside him, but he was like a man possessed by witchcraft and pleasure and a thousand other wicked, delicious things.
The Count, for his part, simply raised those eyebrows of his, a pleased gleam showing in his eyes, and then drove his fingers up and in with a strength that took Jonathan’s breath away.
It was a pleasure like nothing he had never known, blinding in its heat and intensity, and it took Jonathan a moment to place those desperate cries as his own. He — he didn’t sound like himself anymore, not as the Count’s fingers fucked up into him again and again, but more like one of the Count’s beasts. A wolf howling in the night.
It felt bestial, the desire ripping through him now, and he had wanted before; of course he had wanted. But he had never known need like he did now, not until the Count twitched his fingers just so, undulating inside him and against a place that Jonathan had not even known existed up until this very minute.
But the Count had, and he pressed his advantage unabashedly. He fucked him until Jonathan was writhing beneath him, begging with an abandon that would have horrified him in any other place, on any other night.
This was the Count’s bed, though, like every other bed in this thrice-damned castle, and this was the Count’s domain. His power here, Jonathan had learned most thoroughly, was without limit.
Jonathan longed to reach down, to take himself in hand, to end this exquisite suffering the only way he knew how, but the Count’s firm command pounded in his head still with every heartbeat.
Keep these here.
So he kept his hands up by his head, grasping at nothing but the night air as he desperately tried to hold on to any last vestige of control he had left. There was no use to it, though, none at all, for now he could see the Count pulling his hands away to grapple with his trousers, and what little air he had left in his lungs quickly disappeared.
The Count did not seem to be worried overly with getting his trousers off, but instead only pushed them down enough that he could pull his own cock out into his hand. It was heavy with arousal already, long and thick and pale in the moonlight, and he gave it a loose tug or two as he looked down at Jonathan with intent clear in his eyes.
Jonathan knew what the Count was after now, and he knew of it. Of course he knew of it. But he’d never thought to — he hadn’t even dreamed of—
No, Jonathan was forced to admit as the Count settled himself between his thighs, he’d dreamed of it. He’d pushed those dreams away, consigned them to the darkest parts of his subconscious, but the Count clearly saw no need to do the same.
He comported himself like a man of experience, and he showed no hesitance as he fitted himself up against Jonathan, then in.
It was — it was so much, and he could feel his nails digging into his palms as he struggled with the weight, the heft of the intrusion. The Count had broad fingers, but they were nothing like the magnitude of the cock stretching him to his limits right now.
It was uncomfortable at first, unfamiliar, but he could still feel that electricity trickling down his skin, shocking little bits of arousal, and he no longer knew how much of it was the Count’s power and how much of it was something all his own. He breathed in slow, holding himself still as the Count seated himself, and found that he luxuriated in the stretch.
They paused there for one panted breath, two, and Jonathan was almost used to it when the Count snapped his hips forward with an unearthly growl and fucked the very last of Jonathan’s resistance up and out of him.
Jonathan shouted, ecstasy smoothing over the roughness of the thrust, and it was another two, three, four thrusts before he realized that he’d hooked his knees up and over the Count’s hips, his legs holding him close as he took Jonathan thoroughly and with vigor.
He couldn’t have imagined that it would feel like this, that anything could feel like this, as the Count took his pleasure from Jonathan's lithe body. There was a savagery to it, a coarse rhythm that seemed older than them both, than time itself, and the Count pressed open-mouthed kisses to his chest, his collar, his neck as he fucked him.
Jonathan's fingers wound in the sheets as a frenzied bliss overtook him, a wild pleasure tinged with something like joy, something like terror. The Count was pressing up into him again and again, each thrust bringing them both closer to completion, and Jonathan abandoned the last of his modesty as he writhed beneath him, practically sobbing with the force of the desire coursing through him.
The Count, for his part, did not seem to be content with anything less than total possession, and his face was contorted with a sort of animalistic hunger, his own rough cries riding low in his throat as he took from Jonathan exactly what he pleased.
It was too much, not enough by half, and Jonathan gasped out pleasure and pleas with every touch, every thrust, every glance of teeth against skin. “Yes,” and “please,” and an increasingly desperate ”touch me.”
The Count ignored this, however, keeping one arm on the bed for balance and the other pressed up against one of Jonathan’s thighs to splay him wide, wider for his own enjoyment.
Jonathan simply had to content himself with the occasional scrape of the Count’s shirt against his aching cock, and it wasn’t enough, wasn’t quite enough until—
There was a brief flash of fire, of light, against the back of Jonathan’s eyes as pain shot through his body. The Count — the Count had bitten him, had no longer been satisfied with kisses and bruises and sweat-slick skin, and Jonathan could feel him stealing his warmth with frenzied abandon.
It should have been a horror. It should have been a violation. But all Jonathan could feel was blinding pleasure as climax overtook him. Pressure at his throat, inside him, all around, and the dark certainty that he had been claimed, it all built together to carry him through the most intense orgasm he had ever experienced.
Even as Jonathan stilled, though, sagged beneath the Count’s ministrations, the onslaught continued. The Count’s iron grip against Jonathan’s skin did not falter, nor did the inexorable rhythm of his hips, and Jonathan’s pleasure had just started to be replaced with a dull ache when he finally came to a halt, his chilled hands clutching Jonathan close as he came inside him.
It was long minutes before some sort of sense came back to Jonathan, and by then, the Count was lazily lapping at the wounds on his neck and had softened inside him. It had been an exchange of sorts, Jonathan thought dizzily. Blood and seed, each the essence of life, transported over a sea of bliss.
The thought froze the afterglow inside of him as the magnitude of what he had just done finally sank in. The Count was a vampire. Jonathan had cheated on his fiancée with a vampire, and it had brought him the kind of rapture that he’d previously thought to be a myth.
Mina, he thought, his words still hazy in his mind, forgive me.
Jonathan knew that even if he traveled home the very next day, even if he held his beloved close in his arms and married her tomorrow, even then he would never truly belong to Mina again.
The confoundedly smug look on the Count’s face told him that he knew it, too. “My dear Jonathan,” he murmured, not sounding nearly exhausted enough after what they had just done. “You are mine.”
The Count had said something similar the night before to those cursed women with their curves and laughter like pealing bells. Had this been the source of his fury then? This instinctual need to stake his own claim before they could take him? Before Mina could take him?
Jonathan whimpered softly, the only reply he could make to the Count’s declaration. There had been such grim finality to it. Such savage victory.
They both knew that he was right.
Despair cut through the fucked-out lethargy that seemed to hold his body captive, and he closed his eyes.
He did not open them again, not until that cold weight had left his bed and morning light spilled through his window.
Jonathan blinked in the comforting light of day, wondering for a moment if he had dreamed all that he had experienced. Could it be that terror and desperation had fed to him a dream spun from monsters?
He shifted then and winced, his body telling a story that his mind had shied away from. It was a pleasant ache that seemed to suffuse the entirety of him, and when his fingers crept up to his neck, he sagged against his pillows as they found what they sought.
Two little punctures that meant far too much.
Jonathan lay there for a moment, feeling the sun slowly warming the deathly chill from his body, and then he sighed.
The doors were locked. The windows looked out over sheer cliffs. There was no escape from the bed in which he now lay.
So Jonathan got up to face the day.
And he pretended.