[ You are right about Ruthven and Carmilla, they were (and still to some extent are) popular. I was mostly referring to Stokers original book as the today most well known classical vampire story and how Dracula wasn't really sexy there, he was quite hideous.
Yes and no. Dracula was everything that was wrong about the aristocracy, true. A vestigial cancer that just refuses to die even as it leaches the life from the body politic . . .
The erotic aspect comes out in Lucy. There are very dark undertones of a woman liberated by an act of violence in her story. Lucy goes from an easily ignored mouse to a terrifying force to reckoned with. If you read erotica from the time period -- and even up to the early 70s -- the woman whose sexuality is freed by an act of violence was common theme.