Naked Came the Vampire (Hypernaturals 1)

Healing

Jessica's condo is in the middle of a snow skiing community. There is a core of locals who live here to ski and work in businesses to be able to afford their passion. The area and the culture also attracts musicians and artists who come for the inspiration, and the opportunities a rich tourist crowd brings. As someone who needs a programming assignment and a laptop, I could live here too. Write my code year-round. Be far away from the bustle of the big city. I thought about doing it many times. My friends and my house are in Austin, and that made me a ski tourista.

That is going to be different now. If I am going to live a very long time, I will also have a chance to live in very many places and do many different things. It will be a requirement.

My Vampire lover and I are well hidden here in the condo. We checked the news on the Internet and there is nothing about nationwide person-hunts. No one came to the door asking about us. A large number of people who own ski condos are transients. They live somewhere else and show up for a few weeks a year, and the rest of the time a management company rents out their property. Not quite ski season yet, so the population is pretty low. The people that live here year-round did not seem to remember Jessica from whenever she was last here, and I have never been here. As a place to drop out, the Condo is custom made.

I rested and healed. I consumed protein like it was going out of style. It is not overnight or magical healing, but there is no denying I am healing fast. Jessica did not complain about how many of eggs I consumed for breakfast. She kept shoveling them, along with pills full of vitamins and minerals. My favorite in terms of humor potential is the prenatal vitamins. I am not growing a baby, but it seems I am one.

I offered to cook breakfast every morning, but Jessica always said 'no'. "Sit. Drink your milk. Recharge." she always directs.

I teased her once. "Yes, mom."

I tried to convince Jessica to let me help. "I am not used to having someone cook me my meals. I am a pretty good cook, Jessica. Usually, by the time I have slept with someone for the third time, a milestone we are well past, I'm doing most of the cooking." I made a dismissive gesture "The chef I dated doesn't count: She was tired of cooking all the time and probably just happy if what I made was edible."

That got one eyebrow raised. "Really? And with these myriad scores of other lovers are you often beaten to within an inch of your life prior to that?" She did not even pause for a moment as she scrambled another batch of eggs with cream cheese.

I had to concede that point. This is a new experience in so very many different ways.

Lunch is a repeat of breakfast. Jessica cooks. I drink milk. Take more vitamins and minerals and fish oil and all sorts of things. If Jessica tells me to take it, I do. Jessica's vitamin stock was as if someone backed the vitamin section at Vitamin Shoppe up to the condo, but it was not that random. Jessica would look at a bottle, look at me, maybe smell me, and decide if I needed something or not.

As I plowed Sloppy Joe after Sloppy Joe I asked about something I noticed. "Everything you have is unscented. The bath soap. Your deodorant. I noticed from the bathroom, and of course from direct personal and detailed observation, you wear no perfume of any kind. Not that you need it, mind you. You have a unique scent that is all yours. Not to compare you to former lovers but you are the first woman I have been with that does not have lots of scented things. Vera had all these sweet-smelling soaps she liked. And scented candles: So very many candles. We were set in case the power went out, even for weeks."

"Are the unscented things really unscented to you anymore, Adrian?" Jessica eyed my plate to see if it needed refilling. She always tracked my food intake closely. It is like having my food monitored at the hospital. "Think about the gangrene in the hospital. You were only eight days old as a Vampire and already you could smell things the humans around you could not. The fact that you could detect my scent when you were human is interesting in and of itself."

"I have always had a strong sense of smell." I explained. "And you! That first day was just so... Well, you smell more like you... more distinctively you, than anyone I have ever known. Not just later, on the boat. Even on the shore, the breeze would carry your scent to me. Amazing. It made everything about that time even, shall we say, harder. I wanted you so much, right then and there."

Jessica smiled, admitted wryly "Yeah: I noticed. Why I picked you. You were waving at me." She steered back to the main topic "Scented things are scented for lessor senses than what we Vampires possess. Than what your senses will become or that mine are. To our kind, artificial scents are too in-your-face. Cloying. Choking. At some point, the chemicals used to create the scents become the thing you smell, not the scent they were going for. It's like artificial sweetener. It is not really sweet. It is perceived that way by humans. You will not be able to stand them now."

"Makes sense. I like the way you smell, Jessica. A great deal. Then and now. Maybe even more now, if that is even possible."

"Good thing, since you are stuck with me. Seriously though, it's all part of your change. Like we talked about: your brain is getting more olfactory receptors." She said 'brain', but pointed at the bridge of her nose. "The receptors are more numerous, more sensitive. You are building new brain structures that interpret the molecules. You cannot make the inputs increase without having a way to deal with the new inputs."

She tapped her nose again, then pointed up, to her forehead. "The sense of smell is utterly primal. The brain drops nerves into the sinus passages. Processing the molecules of any odor bypasses the higher brain functions so that you are instinctively able to tell things from the smell. That is how our pheromones work so well on humans, and why at the same time they don't work the same way on other Vampires. Vampires bypass the modern mind and brains interpreter functions and go directly to the lizard brain."

"Your pheromones work on me something fierce." I noted, reaching for another Sloppy Joe from the pile on the plate.

"Eat some veggies too. I know your body is yelling for protein right now, but you need some of the trace elements too." Jessica insisted, then added "For the record: I have never intentionally used pheromones on you. They exist at a basic, residual background level of course, but we learn to control them. This is a thing that is different from humans. Very different. Vampires consciously control our skin. The glands therein. The new glands you will get. Releasing a scent is an unconscious response in a human. Sexual stimulation the cause and scent the result. I may have leaked a few when I was having an orgasm, but that is YOUR fault. You rather insist upon them. In any case, Eventually, you will be able to decide consciously to open your pores and fill a room with pheromones or just your targets nose if you are close enough. How much scent will be under your willful control. They are amazingly potent and are how we disarm our human prey and get in close. If I used them on you on the beach, you would not only have had that physical reaction to me that you did. You would have tried to fuck me right there in front of the world and you would not have cared. In retrospect, that would have been fun. No, my horny little Vampire creation, that hard-on I had to help you with, poor me because you made me wait, that reaction to me was all you."

I reached for the veggie plate to obey her food commandment "I was not going to neglect the veggies. That broccoli is trembling in fear at its fate."

I looked at her as I ladled. "I scented you at the beach. You were upwind. Same scents as when we were in the shower at the little overnight place. In bed here every night. Right now. You. I smell you and my whole body wants you. It pushes through the pain and the injuries, and I get this soul-gnawing hunger for you. You have been kind enough to satisfy that desire far more effectively than this meal is satisfying my hunger. Thank you."

"Just because you are a strumpet doesn't mean I am not as well. The pleasure is mine." Jessica replied with a Mona Lisa / satisfied cat smile. That look speared immediately behind my eyes. It is not just her scent. It is everything about her.

"Hurry up strumpet." Jessica encouraged. "You need to reward me for my cooking."