Eternity

by Teresa Federici

  “Please don’t tell me to stop now Anna, I don’t think I can. I don’t care that you haven’t showered in two days. You’ve been asleep for heaven’s sake!”

  I laughed up into his face, the need in his voice overriding any feeling I had of squeamishness over my unwashed state. He grinned down at me and it was devilish, that grin. His fingers resumed their work, and it was true he was much smoother than I at this. Before I knew it, the shirt was unbuttoned and lay open, and he was devouring the sight of me with eyes turned hungry, but not for my blood.

  “You are the most perfect being that I have ever seen.” He breathed, and my toes twisted in pleasure at his words. He raised trembling fingers and ran them across my chest just below my collarbones, drawing them to the vee of my cleavage, where they rested a moment, his hands cupping the tops of my breasts gently as he caught my gaze. I had been staring at his big hands, how gentle they were despite that fact that they could crush me, but as his gaze caught mine, I realized he was waiting for something from me.

  “Why did you stop?” I asked, my voice as unsteady as his.

  “I’m scared I’m going to hurt you. I could not forgive myself if I brought you pain.”

  “Gareth, you hurt me earlier with your words more than you could ever do physically.” I hated to be so blunt, but he wasn’t turning from me now.

  He nodded, as if he understood, then bent his dark head to my right breast. I almost came off the bed at the pleasure that he sent through me as his tongue bathed my nipple and his teeth teased the aching tip. The extremes of my heated skin and his cold mouth only heightened the pleasure, and before he turned his attention to my left breast I was sobbing his name rapturously.

  I wrapped my arms around his head, wanting to keep him at my breast forever, but he had other plans. Leaving each one with a tender kiss on the hypersensitive tips, he blazed a trail down my stomach, stopping to lave my navel, my hands burrowing in his hair. My head thrashed back and forth on the pillow, my eyes squeezed closed. If this was what foreplay was like, the actual mating was going to kill me. At least I would die happy.

  His hands went to the hook closure of my slacks, then the zipper, and my legs started to quiver before he even had my slacks off.

  He ripped his shirt from his jeans, and knelt between my legs, looking at me. All I had left was my shirt, draped around me, but otherwise I was naked to his probing gaze. I didn’t feel self-conscious, as I usually would have, but powerful. Holding his gaze, I pulled my legs under me, and then moved toward him, covering the short expanse of bed in a cat-like crawl, looking up at him from a lowered brow.

  I reared up to kneel again in front of him, but this time he grabbed me by my hair roughly and tilted my head back, baring my throat. His mouth covered mine, hard and insistent, and I basked in its roughness. I didn’t want him to treat me with kid gloves; it would take something out of the passion we were both feeling.

  My fingers scrabbled at the closure of his jeans, needing to feel him, all of him against me. As he scraped teeth along my jaw and the front of my neck, I did the best I could to divest him of his jeans, but he kept my head back, so I was going mostly on feel.

  I was getting caught up in the frenzy as much as much as he was, and I ripped my hair out of his grasp, the brief tug of pain not even registering.

  I pushed the offending pair of pants off his hips, kissing a path along his side, tracing the rock-hard muscles with my lips, but before I could zero in on my goal, he was pushing me back down on the bed and covering me again with his length.

  I angled my head to bite his chin and he laughed down at me again, running his hands down my arms and capturing my hands. He brought them up over my head and held them grasped in one hand while the other trailed down my torso, the backs of his fingers turning my skin into an inferno.

  “I guess I have a wee cheetie to contend with.” He said, the Scots brogue thick in his desire.

  “What does that mean?” I breathed, my words gasping out of my body.

  “A cat.” He groaned as I bit at his neck, my teeth leaving marks. The irony was completely lost on me. His mouth covered mine again, and I wriggled under the onslaught. I wanted to touch him, I wanted to consume him as he was consuming me, but he wouldn’t let go of my hands, even as he repeated his earlier performance and turned his attention back to my breasts, my stomach. He held my hands as his head dipped lower, as he sought the very center of me. At his suddenly gentle intrusion, I wept. The beauty of it brought tears to my eyes, and as my hips rose, his big hands cupped them to hold me to him, I cried aloud, sobs of happiness wracking through me as the most amazing orgasm I had ever had ripped through me. My hands suddenly free, I wrapped my fingers in his hair, alternately smoothing the hair back, and tugging insistently. I wanted, no needed, him inside me.

  “Gareth, I need you. Now. I can’t wait any longer.” I moaned, my body writhing under his sweet torture.

  He came above me, his face gloriously beautiful in the muted sunlight that graced the room, and captured my gaze as he slowly entered me. This was beyond pleasure, beyond anything I could try to equate it with. It was the sun, the moon and stars, it was everything. The joy you feel on Christmas morning, the thrill at your first amusement ride. He filled me until he touched my soul, and I shuddered to my very core.

  He was still, letting me adjust to the feel of him, but I could see it was with effort. His arms trembled, his whole frame quivered and yet he remained as motionless as the beautiful sculpture he resembled. His eyes were darker, but not the storm colored blue of anger, but the cobalt blue of desire.

  “Please.”

  I don’t know who whispered it, we were so connected it didn’t matter, all I cared about was that he started to move, long, slow strokes that quickly started my climb into oblivion. He lowered himself gently on top of me and wrapped his arms around me as he moved faster, the heat from my body enough to counter any coldness from him.

  I crossed my arms across his back, feeling the muscles moving gracefully, raking my nails across the pale skin. As he moved me closer to climax, my nails dug furrows into his skin. As I started to crest, as wave after wave of pleasure started to dim my vision, in a move so fast he had us rearranged to where he sat lotus-style, with my legs wrapped around his waist, and I was riding him. Then I spiraled into oblivion with a scream of release, and knew no more.

  I woke up slowly, immensely delighted to feel his hair under my hand, his head resting on my stomach. I had no idea how long I had been out, didn’t much care. I could feel him smile against my skin, and knew he was awake too.

  “Aye, I’m awake, although by rights I shouldn’t be. If it’s possible to die of pleasure, then I would be dead all over again.” His breath fanned across my sensitive flesh, raising goose bumps on my skin and bringing a flush to it.

  “The flush of blood under your skin becomes you.”

  “I blush very easy.” I mumbled, embarrassed. Why, I had no clue when not moments before I had acted with him as I had never acted with another person. I blushed again at my earlier boldness.

  He raised his head and looked at me, his gaze traveling over the length of my torso, touching briefly on my still heaving chest, to come to rest on my eyes. His smile was slow as he read my thoughts, but I shut my mind before he could get too far in there. I was embarrassed by my thoughts too.

  “I don’t think you need a shower, but who am I to begrudge you?” Damn, he had caught my thoughts. Before I knew what he was up to, he was off the bed and pulling me with him, throwing me over his hard shoulder in a fireman’s carry, my shirt finally giving up the ghost and fluttering to the floor.

  The next hours were magical, and even an eternity spent with him couldn’t top that day. We spent hours exploring each other, me marveling in the juxtaposition of supple skin and stone-like muscles, him fascinated by the feel of human skin for the first time in two centuries.

  “What do you mean, you haven’t touched a human in two hundred years?” I managed
to get out at one point; he was paying entirely too much attention to the back of my neck.

  “If you knew the struggle it was for me to be gentle with you and not damage you unintentionally with my strength, you would understand.”

  I looked at bruises that were forming along my thighs and could only laugh. I didn’t heal like him, yet. He saw were I was staring and moved down to kiss every one of the bruises he left behind.

  I was truly hoping a person couldn’t die from ecstasy.

  Night found us wrapped in the protective cocoon of the bed, me resting my head on the marble smoothness of his chest. Something was bothering me, even after the hours of pure pleasure he had brought me. At some points during the day, he had looked at me with sad eyes, and I couldn’t figure it out. Why?

  I turned my attention to his face, even more unbearably precious to me now, and I touched his jaw gently, my fingertips dancing in a feather light caress, and he closed his eyes, a slight smile playing across his mouth. I moved up slightly and placed a soft kiss on that mouth, such a hard mouth that had given me such pleasure.

  “Gareth, can I ask you something that might be really personal?” I ducked my head as I spoke, tucking my chin in the curve of his arm, suddenly shy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to my question, but I would meet it head on if he chose to answer it.

  He tucked a finger under my chin and brought my face up so that I could meet his steady gaze. It was still surprising to me that eyes such a cold color could hold warmth in them, considering the man that lay next to me was like an ice chest. Good thing for my built in furnace and the heat that he created in me.

  “I will answer anything that you ask.” He murmured, dropping a kiss on my nose. I wriggled it Genie style, and he laughed.

  “Tell me why you look at me sometimes with such sadness in your eyes?” I whispered and I heard him sigh. He moved up on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and pulled me up with him so that I was tucked into the curve of his shoulder. I nestled in close, like a child waiting for a story. I shivered from pure deliciousness, my body relaxed, but he interpreted it wrong.

  “I’ll have to remember to eat before I touch you in the future, so that I don’t freeze you out.”

  “I’m not cold right now. Go on, tell me.” I urged, idly playing with the hair on his chest. He reached out a hand to stop me, grasping mine loosely in his. It was the arm with the burn, and I was amazed to see that it was almost completely healed. That had to come in handy.

  “If you keep that up, I won’t be able to tell you anything.” He sounded resigned, as if he didn’t want to talk about his past, but he had said he would tell me anything. He sighed again, his chest rising and falling. That was strange to me, that a being that didn’t need air breathed. I was positive I would get used to it.

  “I promise to stop if you tell me.” I countered, smiling to myself. I loved that I got under his skin.

  He took a moment to start speaking, and when he did his voice was soft, almost reverent.

  “I need you to understand something before I tell you this. I need you to know that what I feel for you is for you and you alone.”

  “Ok I understand.” I said it simply and honestly, with everything that I felt for him, and if he was in my thoughts, he knew it was certain.

  “I’m going to show you. Close your eyes and open your mind to me.”

  As if I needed to be told.

  I closed my eyes obediently, and sensed that gentle pressure in my head. My mind cleared of everything, and then I found myself in a room, built from rock. I panicked for a moment until I realized that I was in Gareth’s memories. He had brought me into his mind. I looked around the room, which was surrounded in windows, with a large contraption in the middle. I had been in one lighthouse before, and it was modernized. This was not. There was a lot of brass and copper, and the smell of oil lingered in the room. The memory was very tactile, and if I hadn’t spotted Gareth standing at one of the storm whipped windows, his arms braced against the frames, I would have been completely enchanted.

  The light was revolving, flashing bright patterns on his tense back. I kept my back turned to it, figuring if I could smell oil, and feel the rough stone under my hands, I could be blinded by the light. I watched Gareth, and suddenly he shouted, more of a yell really, and he turned, throwing up an arm to shield his face from the light and ran out a door on the other side of the room. I ran after him, my feet unusually sure on the uneven stairs as we hurtled down a spiral staircase.

  This was a different Gareth than the one that I knew and loved. The brief look I had at his face showed a Gareth touched by age, crow’s feet at the corner of dark blue eyes and skin weathered by what I knew was many years at sea. He was still incredibly handsome.

  As he pounded down the stairs, he was repeating one word over and over. “No.” In his Scottish brogue, and considering that we were in the nineteenth century, it sounded like “Nay”. It would be very easy to think I was in a gothic romance novel.

  He hit a door at the bottom of the staircase, barely pausing to unbolt the lock, and stumbled out onto sand. I couldn’t picture my Gareth stumbling at all.

  He caught himself before he fell completely and was running hard, pounding across the sand and rock. As I came out the door behind him, catching it before it crashed into my face, I stopped to look back, and my gaze traveled up roughly eighty feet to the spinning light. The lighthouse was a startling white in the darkness and I was stunned by its immensity. It really was a beacon in the middle of the stormy night.

  As the lightning crashed and rain came down sideways, I turned back to look for Gareth. I didn’t immediately see him, but I didn’t panic. I was in a memory and on an island. I didn’t think it would be hard to find him. I ran lightly down the sand and onto the rocky shore, not even touched by the rain, the wind stirring not a hair on my head. The sea crashed wildly on the rocks, but memory or no, I stayed away from the edge.

  Over the sound of the raging storm I heard the unmistakable sound of wood crashing and splintering and sprinted up the shore to where, in the gloom, I could see a ship breaking apart on the jagged shore. My hand flew to my mouth to stifle a gasp, and I sprinted harder, finally seeing Gareth kneeling down on the rocks, looking down at a bundle of rags.

  As I got closer, I heard him bellow, and the sound of it froze the blood in my veins. I stumbled now, hitting the craggy rocks, but there was no pain. I approached him cautiously, the irrational part of my brain treating him like a crazed animal even though I knew he was oblivious to my presence.

  He reached down and tenderly picked up the bundle, and that’s when I realized it was a person. He cradled the form to his chest, his head bent, rocking slowly back and forth. I got close enough to see long, black hair draped over Gareth’s arm from shoulder to wrist, the pale face exposed to the torrential rain, and I understood that she was dead. Her lashes made dark fans against skin turned blue with cold, her lips were lavender.

  I couldn’t tell if it was tears or rain that dripped from Gareth’s down-turned face, but tears were running freely down my cheeks, and knew it must be the same with him. His grief was palpable, filling the air around us.

  He was whispering her name, but I couldn’t make it out until he raised his face to the sky and screamed it in fury and pain. “Evangeline!”

  I jumped out of my skin at that, and I came to stand over him, as though I could protect him from his pain. I looked down at her again, and this time my gasp was loud and shocked. Despite the blue-tinged skin and lavender lips, a familiar pair of eyes, and short, straight nose greeted me, along with the mouth that I always hated, because I thought it was too big for my face. She was me; we were twins almost. In my shock, I barely heard him screaming into the sky, rain pelting his upturned face, the howl echoing over the crashing waves and screaming wind.

  Despite the shock to my own system, his grief tore my heart in two, and I sobbed for him. My heart hurt and my lungs struggled to hitch in breath. H
e knew my pain after all, that terrible grief that comes with losing a loved one, the need to scream and rail at God. I watched helplessly as he bent his head and placed a kiss on her forehead with trembling lips blue with cold.

  I was so lost in the tableau that at first I didn’t notice movement behind Gareth. I squinted, trying to make out the shifting forms in the darkness beyond him, but before I could figure out what it was, he had pulled me back to the present, his cold lips on mine, his kiss intoxicating. I kissed him back fervently, my hand cupping the back of his head to deepen the kiss, but I had questions bothering me.

  He must have still been tuned into me, because he broke off the kiss and leaned his head back, his eyes going to the ceiling as though it was the most important thing in the room. I waited patiently, knowing he would talk. I rested my chin on his chest, took in the set of his jaw, the graceful column of strong neck, the indention where his collarbones came together under the pale olive skin, the light dusting of black hair on his chest. I gave him time to gather his thoughts.

  His arms came around me, and hugged me tight, then set me away from him. He sat up, and I followed suit, draping the top comforter over my shoulders. He chuckled at my modesty.

  “After your, err, performance today, I wouldn’t have expected you to cover up.” He reached out and twitched the comforter over my right shoulder, baring it to the cool air in the room. I left it there, but didn’t shrug off the rest of the comforter and he grinned ruefully.

  “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

  “No, I can’t.” I said, my voice even although my nerves were jangling. He shook his head and ran both hands through his hair, leaving it in dark spikes and whorls.

  “Her name was Evangeline, although you gathered that, and she was my wife.”

  I couldn’t deny that the words brought a piercing pain to my heart, but I reminded myself that she was dead, almost two hundred years ago. I was here now, in his bed and heart.