invisible barrier and just kept on going right through to the other side, where my hands are full of his hair and my body is completely aware of all the things he never does.
In truth, I’m not even sure if he knows what those things are any more – instead, there’s just a hole in him, where desire and lust and pleasure used to be. It’s like knowing someone who never needs to breathe. At some point, you expect them to want to. You expect them to suddenly jolt with the memory of something that once kept them living.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even remember when I reverse what he’s been doing to me. He just hangs there in my arms, blankly staring, and lets me put my mouth on his. Lets me taste my own blood in his mouth, and come away just as he always does: streaked with red, stunned by the sensation of feeding.
But, unlike him, I don’t let myself lapse into that oddly vulnerable state. I don’t tell him my real name – what would be the point? He already knows it. And I don’t let him curl against me, to chase away the confusion and hurt all over his face.
I just do it again, in all the different ways I can think of to kiss. Open-mouthed and close-mouthed and soft and wet. Then maybe all of those things together, until he does something that shocks me more than his vampirism ever did.
He kisses me back. He kisses me back, as though he does know how to breathe after all. It’s just like riding a bike, I think, deliriously, but there’s another simile just hovering on the edges of my mind. One I don’t want to think about, at first, but then – isn’t that what I’ve been doing along?
I’ve refused to think about those hands on my back, roaming and running over me in the way they do again now. I’ve refused to think about the song, like the sort of thing you’d put on if you wanted to seduce a girl. I’ve refused to think of the word one, and what it usually means in romance novels.
But I think of all of these things now, because when I put my mouth on him all of them are reframed entirely. It’s not just a hint. It’s right there in my face – that his hands make me so swollen and slippery, between my legs. That the feel of his body against mine stiffens my nipples, whether I want it to or not.
And it’s not just because he’s a man, underneath it all. It’s because his name is Merrith, I think. It’s because he stares and stares at me as though I’ve suddenly become some entirely different creature, and the longer he does the stronger that feeling gets between my legs. Usually it’s just this syrupy sort of thing, born of the pulling sensation and the laxness and some internal confusion.
But now I can actually make it out distinctly, and put a name to it without shame. I’m aroused. I’m aroused because of the things he does to me, and because of that sense of an absent need in him. He doesn’t even know what sex is any more – but that’s all right.
I do.
‘It’s like this,’ I tell him, and then I take his hand just as the music cycles back up again. I slip my fingers around his waist, and lead him into a different sort of dance.
One that ends up on the bed.
Of course, he doesn’t do any of the things you’re supposed to, once we’re there. He doesn’t tear my clothes off, or tear his clothes off, or rut against me frantically – though it doesn’t matter really. There’s at least one of us doing all of those things, as greedily as I’ve ever felt myself be.
In fact, I’m not even sure if I have ever been this greedy. My fingers feel oddly numb and fumbly, unable to do something as simple as make my body naked. And when I try to do the same thing to him, the effect is tripled. Quadrupled. I’m practically paralysed by the sight of so much of him, so pale he’s almost translucent. Every muscle and line in exactly the right place, even though I’d kind of expected to uncover something strange.
Like maybe he’d turn out to be a satyr or worse, underneath his clothes. There’d be fur in all the places I haven’t yet seen, and hooves where his feet should be – but of course there’s none of that. He’s perfectly formed, perfectly man-shaped, and more than this … he’s remembering fast, for someone who seems so dazed.
Between his legs he’s thick and stiff. And though I suppose it should be this that frightens me, it isn’t. It’s the other thing, it’s the crunch, it’s the bitter bleakness of having that hole in my gas line and seeing the night come down, down, down. Whereas this, by comparison …
This is something I’m asking for. It’s the first thing I’ve asked for. And it seems the moment I do, he’s willing to give it. He even runs one cool hand over the length of my spread body, in an echo of the thing I do to him the moment I have the chance. I just reach up and feel every inch of his skin, feel his cock all perfectly right and normal, and in response he touches me there, too.
Between my legs, I mean.
And when he does, it’s so soft, so soft it’s almost too much. It’s the reverse again of everything that’s come before – or at least I think it is, until I go back over it all. I think about his mouth again, and his teeth, and the way he held me, as he slides one finger through my slippery slit in the very same manner.
Steadily, slowly, with deliberation, I think. I’m an animal he needs to calm and make still before he can stroke it. Before he can map it out with curious fingers – because, God, that’s what it feels like.
I’m being mapped out. He needs to rediscover everything, like the exact shape of my stiff clit. He just follows all the grooves and folds surrounding it, everything getting steadily slicker until I know I should be embarrassed.
But I’m not. I’m not even embarrassed when he finds my greedy cunt and eases just one finger in, all slow and slippery, working back and forth before I’ve had the chance to really consider – and when I do, they aren’t normal thoughts. Yeah, I think, when he twists those digits inside me and finds some good good place. Fuck my tight little pussy.
Whereas his responses are the innocent ones, for once. The expression on his face is near-startled, almost curious – as though he hadn’t realised a woman could be all slick there like this. And he absolutely didn’t know that I could squirm for him and moan for him and urge him to do it harder.
‘Is this what you are asking me for?’ he says, but it isn’t in the voice I’ve come to know. There’s an accent there now, somewhere behind the false façade of his American one. A thick one, a guttural one, that runs right out of his mouth and all over my body, a second before his hand follows it.
He’s caressing me now, I think, but of course doing so makes answering him hard. All I want to focus on is how his hands feel – the one that’s stroking my breasts as though he’s actually and gradually coming to know what this all means, and the one that remains between my legs, rubbing and rubbing in that maddening way.
Until I say: ‘Yes.’
And then after he just leans down, as slow as syrup. That curious, questioning look so clear on his face, a moment before he does something that makes me cover my eyes with my hands. I can’t watch, I just can’t – though of course I realise a moment later what those words mean.
They’re what the heroine of a horror movie would say, just before she sees a loved one being eaten by the creature from beyond. It’s what I should have said, when he first stalked towards me, teeth bared.
But I didn’t. Instead, I do it now, as he licks one long stripe through my spread sex. I cover my eyes and imagine running up the stairs rather than
