My fingers slide off the keyboard and I slouch back in my office chair, the bright summer sun mocking my words. The existence of vampires…no one is ever going to believe me.

     In the world of academia, how do I expect to get tenure with this paper? I’ll be a laughingstock within minutes and on mental disability leave by the end of the day.

     Through a haze of consciousness, I had to admit I was getting a bit of a shiver up my spine. I closed my eyes and let myself drift into that nebulous area where your knees start to give way as you get into the necking, when I realized I had no idea who the leech was, nor how he came to be sucking on my neck. My eyes flew open as that fact registered, and I stared at the shadows flickering in the dull lighting on the gray cinderblock walls of my university lab.

     Now, I'm certainly no prude, but I do, at the very least, like to know the name of the man attached to my body parts. I didn’t know his, and I certainly didn’t remember the dinner and a movie which might have given him license to munch on me. 

     “Um? Hello?” I tapped his suit-coated arm and managed a little squidge to separate us. It wasn’t much, but enough to see that his suit was black with silk lapels. “Do you think you could take a breather for a sec?” 

     My tall, dark stranger lifted his head and a sharp pain pierced where he’d been nibbling. I also thought he had a spot of blood on his lip, but that was just ridiculous. Though the throbbing above my collarbone indicated otherwise. Great job, Meg. Sporting a hickey at twenty-nine. I hadn’t had one of those in years.

     “You were expecting, perhaps, Romanian?” He patted my shoulder, took a few steps back and chuckled. Must have been some sort of Monty Python-ish humor that I didn’t get.      

     “Um, no. I guess. It’s just...” Boy, this was embarrassing. You’d think I would have remembered my date’s accent, but, apparently not. It was starting to worry me. How was I supposed to ask this guy our dating history when I couldn’t for the life of me remember even having a date? Much less at some place fancy enough to require tuxes, like the opera or an art exhibit. Last I remembered, it’d been nine p.m. on Saturday night and I’d been in my lab, getting all excited to examine--