Divine Madness

by Melanie Jackson

  We fell back onto the bed, Ninon beneath me. I caught my weight on my forearms and hovered there, taking in the view. Inches away, and she was still flawless.

  Her hair lay over the edge of the bed in a dark fall of curls. Beautiful. I touched the strands, marveling at the silken texture that remained in spite of the dye. It was soft, like her mouth, and again I felt flooded with a surge of desire that was close to religious ecstasy—the kind that transforms saints and mystics and makes sane men do mad things.

  This was what I had been wanting. It was the balm of Gilead. It was forgetting, a divine madness that made the pain of senses into a tool we could direct rather than a scourge that hurt us at will.

  I am not one who worships from a distance. One didn’t need to touch Ninon to be grateful for the beauty she graced me with, and to be aware of the exquisiteness of the occasion, but my appreciation has always been more earthy, more hands-on, and it certainly added to the pleasure of the moment.

  I undressed her first, enjoying the resistance of the buttons of jeans that only reluctantly revealed the velvety skin of her belly by tantalizing inches, until they could be pulled down her hips and stripped away altogether. Her shirt went next. She wore a bra—a confection of shell pink and darker rose lace that was more alluring than functional, though it extended down her torso and had a series of small ties that had to be undone. I didn’t mind at all as I kissed around the edges and then pulled the laces free one by one, pushing the silk away from the perfection of her breasts and body.

  Her flesh smelled slightly of wet cornflakes, and I was puzzled until I realized that she was burning off the chemicals that gave her a fake tan. As I watched, she went from gold to cream.

  Her breasts were gorgeous, her belly an expanse of perfect skin overlaid with a golden mesh of scars. I didn’t stop there. There was too much to explore, to reacquaint myself with. Our first time had been too fast and too long ago.

  She was stronger than her fragile appearance suggested. I loved the delicate articulation of the muscles beneath the velvety skin. Ah, the beauty of the female body! There is nothing like it. Nothing at all. And Ninon…No knots of bulging muscle to betray her strength, or coarse hair to mar her skin, just the smooth, almost liquid flow of movement when she moved to wrap herself around me.

  Done with the first round of tactile appreciation, I took her left breast in my mouth and nibbled with the edge of my teeth. Her skin was both sweet and salty.

  Ninon obligingly tightened like a bowstring beneath me, arching that graceful back and moaning as if the breath were being pulled out of her against her will. She turned her head and bit my shoulder. Her teeth were sharp and the bite almost painful. Such animal response was both thrilling and also a warning. I paused for a moment. We both had beasts inside us that could be moved to bloodlust. Because we had not shown any of the usual symptoms of vampiric bloodlust, it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. The hunger rising between us was not of the usual sort that happened between man and woman. The aroused appetite was enormous, an implacable lust that needed to feast.

  At my hesitation, Ninon made a noise that was part moan and part growl. It had no words, but I knew exactly what it meant: Here dwell monsters. Continue at your peril.

  I understood the danger, but didn’t care. My own monster was unafraid and it wanted her very badly.

  “Go on then,” she whispered.

  She undressed me without haste. As the clothes were stripped away, her eyes filled with ever-growing heat. She looked raptly at the soft net of golden blemishes that now covered my chest and back. They matched the gold netting of lightning strikes that covered her body. They weren’t scars exactly, but some kind of erectile tissue called to life either by the storm or by our arousal. She looked too at the marks of the stigmata clear on my skin now and didn’t turn away. I was bothered, though, and I moved toward the bedside lamp. She reached out quickly and caught my hand.

  “No. We’ll have no darkness here. No shame, no hiding.” Her voice was rough. “I’m not afraid to see you or for you to see me. We are what we are. You should know that the only way I ever do things is with my eyes wide open.”

  I thought of who she was and what she was and nodded. My jubilant beast tried again to break free. It wanted a chance to again take her blood.

  “So be it,” I managed to say.

  She reached for me then, but it was my turn to stay her hands. I kissed them as I tried to calm myself.

  “Slowly.” My voice was rough, filled with the energy of the storm outside and my rising passions. As had happened before, I was beginning to feel a bit high.

  “And yet the matter seems urgent.” She had that smile again, the small one full of secret amusement.

  I followed her line of sight and looked down at my penis poised between us. I laughed once. No, it didn’t want to go slowly. It all but wore a neon sign that said URGENT. That creature of greed! Self-interested, careless, greedy, always wanting to have its way—and right now. It never suffered from ambivalence or caution. Still, better this beast than the other.

  “Miguel?”

  I realized I was still grinning as I imprisoned her hands, and Ninon was now looking more than a little amused. Laughter was an inappropriate response to the moment, but I was feeling more than a little buzzed and very wild. I think she was too.

  Fate—or S.M.—tried a last time to interrupt us, but it was a miscalculation. Fists of wind struck the shutters and made them rattle like old bones. The storm was strengthening outside but that only made me higher and my desire stronger. I knew that we should leave this until the squall passed. It’s what sensible people would do. But I knew we wouldn’t play it safe.

  “I don’t want to be cautious or sensible,” she murmured. Her hair began to stir as static electricity crept through it. I could smell ozone. She laid a hand on my cheek.

  I realized that I was humming like a plucked guitar string. My muscles had taken in an electrical charge, drawing from the atmosphere inside the room and the rising storm beyond. My body was begging for a chance to expend the energy in Ninon. My beast was shaking, too, demanding to be fed.

  “I wish I could think of something romantic to say. Because you deserve it.” My voice was low and uneven as I looked into her black eyes and tried to explain. “But I am almost all animal now—and perhaps a bit crazy.”

  “Words are sweet, but desire is enough.” She again managed to sound reasonable in spite of the pulse hammering in her throat. I loved that about her—her calm and focus. She did not fear her beast because she believed utterly in her control over it. “And sometimes a little madness is a good thing. It lets us know we’re alive.”

  Desire. That was all she would speak of. I understood. No mention of other emotion would be allowed to intrude too far into the proceedings.

  Ninon tugged her hands free and this time I didn’t stop her when she reached for me. Maybe it wrong to let the beasts have any rope, to relax our vigilance, but we were going to take the chance.

  I crouched above her, ignoring the creaks of the rope bed as I lowered my mouth to hers. It was like kissing lightning. Power poured from my mouth to hers, mixed with her own storm and then rebounded, stabbing through my nerves where the charge redoubled. I pulled back with a small gasp, breaking the circuit. I stared at the pulse of veins in her throat. It hammered hard, like a prisoner demanding escape from her cell. My own heart answered. Or perhaps it was the beast, the bloodlust, demanding to be let free.

  The air was cool on my skin, but not enough to stop the heat that was burning through it. Her hands slipped around my butt and traced the cleft. One hand slid over the other and then slipped over my cheeks and then between, the other roamed around to the front of my body. Her touch was not entirely gentle, and I felt every stroke in every nerve. In that moment I was all sensitized flesh and hunger for things I was afraid to put a name to.

  “Your aura is so bright,” she whispered.

  So was hers. I could feel the light and
heat beginning to dance over my skin. The reaction was too intense. I knew that we should stop.

  “So beautiful,” she whispered, and then turned back to my lips. She cradled me in the relative coolness of her body, accepting my heat—even demanding it. She still did not fear the beasts inside or the storm around us.

  Amazed, I moved down to her breasts, crisscrossed in a relief of gold now, and suckled, being very careful to keep the stinger curled under my tongue. She twisted fingers into my hair and pulled my head back toward her lips. Though I should have been a gentleman, I didn’t cooperate. Instead I slid lower, biting the underside of her breast with enough force to mark but not break the skin. The beast was excited by this, and I could feel my tongue trying to uncurl itself. I turned my head and distracted myself with the sensation of her smooth, heated skin under my cheek.

  Though she resisted slightly with her handholds, I slid lower. Her scent aroused me, a patchouli that was generally feminine and yet specific to her. I knew that I would always be able to recognize her, even without sight or touch.

  My hands flexed into the muscles of her thighs, urging them to open. She resisted briefly and then gave in, crying out when my thumb flicked over her clitoris and then slipped inside. Her legs moved restlessly, shifting over the nylon of the sleeping bag and making it sigh.

  I set my mouth to her, enjoying how this flesh also changed. I wanted to devour her, to draw blood, to stab into this softest flesh with my tongue. I also thought that I would ignite—perhaps electrocute us both. The electricity dancing over our skin was visible now and surrounded us in a halo of gold.

  We had to end it at once; it was too dangerous to wait. Sex games could come later when the storm passed. We had dared Fate and our beasts enough for one night.

  I slid back up her body and her legs whipped around me, as though securing her against another escape. She was strong, stronger than any woman I had ever been with. She was also ready. I slid into her and the tempest was on us immediately. There was a flash of radiance, a sheet of white that ran down our bodies in both directions from where we were joined. I covered her mouth as she screamed. The shock threw her into erotic convulsions, and I followed immediately, burying my face in the nylon to muffle my own beastly roars.

  And just like that, the storm—inside and out—was gone.

  “That was reckless,” she said softly. “But I think we’re okay.”

  “Your hair,” I said, reaching for it. The color had changed to dark gold.

  “Dye doesn’t last. I have to recolor it every few days. Plastic surgery doesn’t work for long either. I’ve tried. Tissues simply rearrange themselves back into their intended order.” Ninon snuggled against me, fitting into my arms as if she had always been there. She looked relaxed, without pain, and I realized that I felt better too. The sex had burned out my nerve endings and I could no longer feel.

  I knew I should think about this new information, but instead I slept.

  I dreamed of Cormac that night. It felt real, but I knew I was dreaming when I saw the croft as it had been in my childhood, and therefore wasn’t terribly surprised when he showed up. He came in through the only door, covered in raindrops and smelling of wind.

  “Hullo, Da.”

  It hurt to see him. It might be different for you, but for me, most memory is about pain; good moments are about loss, and the bad…well, they are terrible. Instead of relaxing in his presence, I felt my body brace itself.

  “Hullo, son. Have ye some room by the fire?”

  Son? He hadn’t called me that in years. We both preferred Miguel.

  Uneasy, I shifted over reluctantly so that he could pull up a chair. The peat was burning low but gave out a welcome heat. Steam rose gently from the kettle and I knew in a while he would ask me to make some tea. All was normal, except that it was somehow subtly wrong.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you again,” I told him. “You always said that dead was dead and you had no plans on becoming a ghost.”

  “True, true. But it’s only right that I meet your lass. She’s a bonnie wee thing, I hear.” I couldn’t quite make out his eyes in the dark, but something about them was different. Also, his accent wasn’t quite right. He sounded more like me when I lapse into Scots.

  “Aye, that she is,” I agreed, trying not to stare.

  “Shouldn’t you introduce us?” he asked, smiling gently and waving a hand at a cot on the side of the room. I turned my head and wasn’t surprised to see Ninon there.

  I resisted this idea though, had I been awake and Cormac real, I would have done precisely that.

  “How? This is just a dream,” I hedged.

  “Aye, but it would take only a small effort for you to contact her.” His accent had disappeared. “Just reach out for her with your mind and tell her that you want her to meet your father. She’ll let us in.”

  Father. Cormac hardly ever referred to himself as my father. He was Da or Dad to me, and Cormac to his friends.

  At that moment a strange and unpleasant odor reached up and clawed at my nose, insisting on my attention. I sniffed discretely. The smell was coming from Cormac, a smell I was coming to know and dread.

  No, I thought. No! Don’t let this be.

  “I…I don’t know how.” But a part of me did.

  “Sure you do, son.”

  There was something very, very wrong with his eyes now. And he kept calling me son. This wasn’t my Da. It was some evil phantom wearing his memory. The disappointment was crushing.

  Just then I heard a cat howl and felt a sharp pain in my leg. The thing that looked like Cormac gave a growl of his own and leaned toward me.

  I jerked awake and found Ninon hovering over me. Her fair fell over her now pale skin, a thick veil that parted at her breasts, letting her nipples show through. For once, this sight didn’t move me to lust. Perhaps it was the low, menacing growling that filled the air.

  I looked in the growler’s direction. Corazon was at the end of the bed, his fur sticking out until he looked like puff adder. I felt blood on my leg from where he clawed me. Sweat was pouring off of my body. The room was stifling, but that wasn’t why I was perspiring.

  “It was Saint Germain, wasn’t it?” Ninon said. “He was trying to get into your head.”

  Saint Germain? That sounded right.

  “He was in my head.” My voice was raspy. I watched the cat, waiting for his fur to flatten. “He was trying to get into yours.”

  She reached for my face, forcing my head her way. Her eyes had widened.

  “Through you? He knew you?” she asked. “He was trying to work through you? To get at me?”

  “Yes. I pretended not to know how.” I swallowed. My eyes flicked downward. Corazon was beginning to calm, but I feared our already tenuous relationship had suffered a setback. A pity, because I was truly grateful that he had brought me back to the here and now. “I didn’t know it was him. Not at first. I thought it was my father.”

  Ninon laid a comforting hand on my chest as though to soothe my troubled heart. And in a way, she did.

  “I’m so sorry, Miguel. I shouldn’t have seduced you. That’s his favorite trick—the sneaky, conniving bastard. And I’m afraid that it’s bad news that he’s found us this way. We just have to be glad he didn’t send a demon.”

  “It won’t happen again.” I’m not sure why I said that. There was no way I could know it was true, except that I was really determined to not let that foul thing back in my brain. The lesson was learned. I didn’t want to see any more impersonations of people I knew and cared for.

  It’s odd how emotional pain works. Those nails hammered into the heart can kill you if they go too deep, but they can also pound important lessons home. For me, all my heart lessons centered around loss—loss of family, loss of options, loss of trust. I understood; bad things did indeed happen to good people. Justice was a concept rarely seen in real life. And hope was foolish, because it left you vulnerable. Translated, that meant: Cormac was dead, no
one would punish S.M. or Saint Germain unless we did, and I couldn’t trust anyone except Ninon. Maybe not even her.

  “No, it won’t happen again. I’ll watch for him now as well.” She was definite. “And he’s played his high card, using your father that way. An Achilles’ heel is only vulnerable if you don’t know about it. He’s done his worst. You’ll be wary now.”

  I was really glad to hear her say this, because dread lingered in me. But I realized she was right. He had played his high card. There wasn’t much left. Moira, my childhood sweetheart, was long dead and mostly forgotten. She would lack power as a weapon even if I fell for the same trick twice. Cormac was the only person from my old life that I had ever loved completely, the only one I had trusted enough to let into my heart and dreams—and I’d damn sure bar the door against him if he ever appeared again.

  Which left only Ninon. I had a bad feeling that she was my second point of vulnerability. Saint Germain would never get to my dreams through her, but there were so many other ways that she could be taken hostage.

  I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I rolled from the bed and began gathering my clothes. It was almost dawn and time we were moving on. We had a wizard to kill and I was coming to understand, more each day, that this wouldn’t be easy.

  My indisposition continues, my friend, and I never go out in the day.

  —From a letter by Ninon de Lenclos to St. Evremond.

  Vulnerant omnia, ultima necat. (All hours wound you, the last one kills.)

  —Latin proverb

  A woman is much better persuaded that she is loved by what she guesses than by what she is told.

  —Letter from Ninon de Lenclos to the Marquis de Sévigné

  A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

  —François de la Rochefoucauld