Chapter 2

Béla stood in front of the Target Club wondering how she was going to get into her upstairs apartment. Her keys were in her coat pocket and she had no idea where her coat was. It had disappeared somewhere between the time Matthew had surprised her behind the club Friday night and when she woke up a few hours later in his private little sanctuary. It was probably in his car, wherever that was.

She wasn’t sure what day it was, but from the traffic, it was probably Monday. She hoped it wasn’t already Tuesday. From the putrid condition of what she’d slept on, she estimated she’d been unconscious for at least a day, maybe two, while her body continued to heal and regenerate.

She’d used Matthew’s shower to wash herself off, then took his coat and left, unable to find any other clothing that hadn’t been ruined in their violent encounter. She had wandered around for awhile, looking for a car with her coat in it, but finally gave up.

Finally recognizing where she was, she had walked the three miles back to her club from the industrial area in which she’d found herself. She walked along the gravel road barefoot, with her hands dug deep into the big, loose coat pockets, her shoulders hunched against the bitter, early spring wind.

In the last hour of her journey, cars began going by in the opposite direction; first shift factory workers on their way in to work. Some of them honked at her, but no one offered her a ride. There were penalties for being late to work.

The cold wind whipped up under her coat, reminding her, once again, that she had nothing on underneath. Barefoot and shivering in the cold, she banged her fist on the door of her club. Her hand hurt from the cold and seemed tiny and ineffectual. The noise her soft flesh made against the hard wooden door seemed to go unnoticed.

It was getting light. The overcast sky promised one last dying winter storm. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees in the last hour of her journey. Her bare feet and legs were numb and at the same time burning from the cold, plus her feet were sore and bruised from walking on all those rocks. Her hands were cold enough so that pounding on the door hurt her fist, but she banged on the door anyway; harder, this time.

“Frank? Are you in there?” she yelled.

Frank was her bartender, manager and on-again, off-again fuck buddy, currently ‘on’. She knew he was still crazy about her even though they had ‘officially’ broken up years ago. Whenever she went off on some weekend escapade, he would usually hang at the club finding things to do until she came back. Béla wasn’t too concerned about Frank’s inability to ‘move on’; privately, she liked having a backup available for when her own plans fell through, and he seemed to like having someone around to walk all over him.

“It’s about time somebody got here,” a female voice said from a car parked at the curb.

Béla turned around and looked. A head of thick, blond hair partially covered a face with too much makeup. As she walked toward the car, she heard the latch turn with a loud click on the club door behind her.

“Hi,” Béla said, putting her hands back in her pockets. Smiling curiously, she walked to the car window. A buxom blonde with shoulder-length, teased hair looked out at her. “Can you tell me what day it is?”

A fresh gust of wind whipped up under her borrowed coat, causing Béla to hunch her shoulders and shiver violently.

The woman in the car smiled, almost laughing as she noticed Béla’s bare feet and the thin men’s coat she wore.

“Fun weekend?” the blonde asked.

“You have no idea,” Béla answered, still shivering. “Sorry, I should introduce myself.” She pulled a hand out of her pocket and stuck it into the warm air coming out of the open car window. “Béla Wilson. This is my place.”

The blonde shook Béla’s fingers briefly. Her hand felt soft, warm, and moist; especially warm to Béla’s cold stiff fingers.

“Tanya Hastings,” she said briefly.

“Oh, you’re our new feature act this week,” Béla said, suddenly more cheerful. “Can I help you with your stuff? There’s rooms upstairs and a private bath – all the comforts of home – with carry-out.”

“You can get carry-out at seven in the morning?” the woman said, opening the car door. “Great! I’m starving!”

The intense cloud of perfume that wafted out of the car made Béla’s eyes water. Tanya opened the car trunk and started pulling out suitcases.

“Here’s my costumes. They’re so small,” she complained, “you wouldn’t think they’d weigh so much.”

“I’ll help,” offered Béla, grabbing a bag in each hand and heading towards the front entrance of the club, unlocked by the unseen ‘Frank’, still inside.

The two girls struggled with the three suitcases, finally shoving them in through the now unlocked front door. Béla yelped once when she dropped one on her bare, frozen toes.

“Hey! Shut the door! Yer lettin’ the cold in!” a surly voice called out from behind the bar.

“Hey, Frank,” Béla called out, raising her voice to be heard above the dragging suitcases. “Thanks for the door.”

She heard a muttered response followed by the clink of glasses being pushed against each other as another one was put away.

The girls dragged the suitcases up a flight of stairs and stopped at the room with a tattered star on it.

“This is it! Your home for the next week!” Béla said cheerfully. “Let me show you around.”

“Oh, that’s okay, you seen one room you seen ‘em all,” her new acquaintance chirped.

“Well, you haven’t seen this ‘un...” Béla grinned and opened the door.

They dragged the luggage in and looked around at the four-poster bed, a dresser with make-up lights, and, across the room, a huge shower and bath area complete with built-in Jacuzzi. A four-foot high wall separated the bath area from the rest of the room.

“Nice,” Tanya murmured, pleased with the dark woodwork accenting the pale pink walls and the open feeling of the rather large room. “Knocked out a few walls for this one, huh?”

“Yeah, I had Frank build it for me,” Béla replied, “took him nearly a year. Well, go ahead and get settled in. I’m going to grab some clothes and go down the hall for a minute. If you need anything, just yell. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay, thanks,” said Tanya, throwing a suitcase on the bed.

Béla threw off her itchy coat, exposing her bare backside and grabbed a dress off the rack in the closet behind her. When she turned around, she noticed Tanya was watching her curiously. Béla stood still for a moment, holding the warm dress against her cold body, looking back at Tanya.

“I give personalized back-scrubs, too,” Béla said, grinning nervously, thinking that maybe Tanya might be interested.

She hoped Tanya was a ‘go’ for some light morning exercise in her Jacuzzi. She’d been looking forward to climbing into it for the last hour.

Tanya looked uncertain. “I want to get cleaned up first, and maybe get something to eat?” she raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been driving all night...”

“Oh, of course! Where are my manners?” Embarrassed, Béla scampered toward the door. “I’ll go find food – you clean up! Bye!”

She closed the door quickly behind her. “Damn!” she cursed to herself. She was still freezing. And now, she was horny, too.

Frank heard Béla romp down the stairs, still barefoot. The short amount of time she was upstairs indicated that she didn’t get the opportunity to wash the weekend off her, and that meant she probably needed his services, after all.

He grinned to himself and went into the kitchen. Pulling down his trousers, he began to play with himself. He was half-hard when Béla burst into the room completely naked, carrying a flimsy throw-over type dress over her arm.

“Oo. Is that for me?” she asked playfully, noticing what Frank was doing.

Without waiting for an answer, she dropped to her knees and hugged her shivering cold body against his warm legs, kissing and licking his hairy belly. Then she began concentrating on his dick, running her lips up and down the sides of it as it hardened.

Frank leaned back against the countertop, enjoying Béla’s enthusiastic display of affection. Her cold skin and her warm mouth created an intoxicating contrast of sensations.

‘She must have had a really rough weekend, ‘ he thought to himself.

He put his hands on her head as she sucked him completely into her mouth. He could feel her throat constricting around the head of his cock as she tried not to choke on it.

Frank moved his hands lovingly through her thick black hair. He loved its silky smoothness. This time, however, her hair was damp and sticky. He raised his hand and looked at it, flexing his fingers. His hand appeared to be covered in hair dye.

Or blood!

“Oh, God!” Frank exclaimed, suddenly worried sick about what she may have done.

Béla moaned in response and sucked harder, thinking he was about to come down her throat. That was quicker than normal, but she was ready for his little offering to help warm her insides.

Frank pulled her face off his cock. There was a popping sound as they separated. Béla looked up, surprised and distraught.

“What?” she asked anxiously, trying not to be angry at being tossed on her rear.

Frank knelt down in front of her and grabbed her shoulders. His face was full of anguish.

“God, Béla, what have you done?” he implored, his voice shaking. He looked ready to cry.

“Nothing,” Béla whimpered, confused by his inappropriate behavior and her own unfulfilled arousal.

“Nothing?” Frank asked, disbelieving her. “You have blood all over you!”

“Oh,” Béla said, slumping her shoulders a little, trying to get him to relax his grip. “I showered afterwards – I thought I got it all off.”

‘Could that be why that girl, Tanya, was looking at me?’

Seeing that her answer didn’t appease Frank, Béla, trying to sound angry with him, added, “Most of it’s mine, so what do you care?”

It always came back to the same old argument. She liked her sex rough and bloody. He was unwilling to harm her that much, even after she showed him it didn’t hurt her by performing hara-kiri on herself in front of his fireplace with his own grandfather’s civil war sword. He was simply unwilling to cut her every time she needed sex.

As Frank stared down, trying once again to comprehend this supernatural creature kneeling on the floor in front of him, he noticed a thin scar running down her left breast right through her nipple.

Remembering how fast she healed, he estimated that, whoever Béla had been with this weekend, she had convinced him to carve her open clear down to her ribcage. He looked at her torso to see if he could find any other evidence of her insane desires.

Disgusted with the way Frank was staring at her, Béla shook herself out of his grip and stood up angrily. As she rose in front of him, Frank noticed that her stomach wasn’t as smooth as normal and flexed in odd places...

... as if her stomach muscles had been sliced apart and hadn’t smoothly grown back together yet.

Béla stormed out and Frank heard the door to the changing room behind the stage slam shut. He pulled his pants back up, tucked himself back in and went out to the bar area to find something to do.

He’d known her for thirty-five years. She’d looked twenty when he met her and she looked twenty, now. She hadn’t changed at all, at least, not physically.

‘She’s hasn’t changed emotionally, either, ‘ he realized.

Sexually, she was a wild child, perpetually young, with no basic sense of self-preservation.

‘Well, if you can’t be hurt, why be careful?’ he reasoned. ‘Why grow up at all?’

He listened to Béla showering in the tiny stall the strippers used. She ran the water for almost twenty minutes. He didn’t care how immature she acted or how much water she used. He had loved her since the moment he saw her, and he knew he’d be loyal to this immortal child of the night for the rest of his natural life.

Ten minutes later, she headed out toward the front entrance wearing the blue sack dress she’d brought down with her. He doubted if she had anything on underneath, knowing how she hated undergarments.

Her spike heels clopped against the floor as she walked. Then she turned and walked back to stand in front of him as he stood behind the bar.

“Food!” she said, holding out her hand and trying to glare at him.

Frank grinned at her antics and handed her several twenty’s. She headed out the door, looking stunning, as always.

‘That shower must have warmed her up pretty well, ‘ Frank mused. ‘She didn’t put on her coat.’

Frank was drying glasses when he heard Tanya coming down the stairs.

“Béla went out to get us breakfast,” he called out, not looking up. “She’ll be back by and by.”

No answer.

“I know it’s May, but it’s gonna snow this afternoon. I can feel it in my bones,” Frank said, mostly to himself.

He looked around and found Tanya sitting at the end of the bar, watching him.

“So, what’s your story?” he inquired.

“Story?” she asked.

She cupped her chin in the palm of one hand and leaned on the countertop. Her open shirt displayed the cleavage of over-filled breasts that stretched her skin so tight they held themselves up.

Chapter 3 »