Diary of an Alligator Queen

by Winter Reid

“Okay.”

  She was quiet for a minute.

  I sighed. “Go ahead.”

  “I’m sorry, honey, I never understood what you saw in him. He had no fire, no spark at all.”

  “Ma, you met him once. For five minutes.”

  “And that’s the point, isn’t it? A mother can tell these things.”

  “He was stable. Dependable.”

  Her classy accent gave way to Staten Island, and I knew she was pissed.

  “Bullshit. He took you for granted. Like any man wouldn’t be lucky to be with you.”

  I rested my head against the wall. “Okay, that’s enough. Thanks.”

  I could nearly hear her struggling to restrain herself.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” she poked.

  “No!” I spat the word around my spoon. I could still hear Dad’s show, soft and distant in the background. I imagined her leaning against the kitchen island in her pearls, reaching underneath the countertop for her hidden cigarettes, those thin, long ones in the white package with pastel flowers. “You smoking, Momma?”

  “I don’t smoke, baby,” she said as I heard the match strike.

  “He asked me to marry him,” I explained.

  She exhaled. “The nerve.”

  I almost smiled. She changed the subject, going off about Dad’s latest fiasco—a car wreck involving a moose and some Masshole driving too fast in an Escalade.

  The bathroom door opened.

  My vampire’s hair was wet, dripping water down his neck and onto his shoulders. He wasn’t wearing the sweats, just the pink towel; holding the edges together at his hip like he didn’t know how to knot it. Or didn’t want to. The shower was still running.

  “Ma, I have to go.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  “Don’t forget to crack the window.” My father was brilliant and loving, but he had the sensory acuity of a houseplant. She could set the living room on fire and he wouldn’t notice until his recliner went up.

  “You hush! I love you, baby.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I pressed the talk button, tossing the phone onto the couch.

  “You forgot your pants,” I said.

  He smiled.

  The wound on his stomach had mostly scabbed over, a few pink droplets dotted the skin just above his towel, where his muscles made a sharp V-shape.

  “Did you wash it really good?” I asked, gesturing toward his center, trying not to step backward as he walked closer.

  He nodded.

  “I have some butterfly band aids. I could, um…” I cleared my throat. “I could close it up the rest of the way for you.”

  He shook his head, taking my hand and pulling me back into the bathroom.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  I’m not sure how to describe what it’s like to intentionally make love to a roughly three-thousand-year-old man. I think it’s more something you would have to experience to appreciate. The performance anxiety is somewhat overwhelming at first. I mean there are a limited number of ways that two people can come together (yes I did). It would be easy to lose yourself in the idea of being little more than a notch on a bedpost—forgotten entirely but for a scar in the wood. Or worse, remembered as being low on the list of his most favorites because, let’s face it, being second or third out of five is a lot more comfortable emotionally than being eight hundred and fifty-eighth out of a thousand.

  However, if you can get past the self-consciousness and doubt, you might find yourself having the time of your life. Because with all that practice comes, not perfection, but someone who revels in the limited number of ways we can fuck. Someone so very much in the moment that only sensation drives them. Someone uninhibited by concerns over their technique or whether their ass looks fat from a certain angle. Someone who enjoys their partner’s pleasure as much as they enjoy their own and will strive for it over and over. And over.

  I did things I once thought were the special province of porn stars and very dirty girls. I did them in the shower, on the bathroom floor, and finally, in my bedroom.

  I did them and I loved them.

  All of it.

  Every single second.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The “Please” Dream

  It’s night again and a day must have passed because I feel stronger than I did before. He’s still here there, the same as he has been, holding me fast even though by this point we’re both filthy and disgusting. The hole smells like piss and blood and sweat, and I would gag but I’m afraid to move. He must feel me wake anyway because he begins touching me again, putting his fingers on my cheeks and mouth, a different touch than before.

  He eases my head to the side again, and I feel his hand pass over the gash he left on my neck. It throbs with the movement but doesn’t burn or sting like it did, and I think it must be healing. He bends his head down, pausing just above the skin.

  “Please don’t,” I whisper.

  He pulls back an inch and then presses the side of his face to mine, beard scratchy on my cheek. He touches me gently with his other hand, moving it up and down over my arm, slipping it around my waist and stroking my belly.

  “Please,” I say again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was still night when I woke and stretched, feeling the muscles pull in my abdomen, tight and sore. I felt good. So, so good. My itch was scratched—hard enough I deserved impetigo.

  I rolled onto my back, looking up at glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. My vampire was lying on his stomach. A good sign he was healing the way he should be. Or rather, the way we should be. His color had come back, pale but not deathly. He woke up, rubbing his face against the pillow before he turned to me.

  “Hi,” I said, blushing.

  “Hello.”

  “Where did you use a bathroom before?”

  “The general concept has been around for a while.”

  “Oh.” I played with the sheet. “Where do you stay when you’re not with me?”

  “Different places. Mostly I go back to the caves. Sometimes I find an abandoned house or a basement. I like the big metal tubes they use to channel rainwater.”

  “Culverts?”

  He shrugged.

  “So you don’t have some huge antebellum mansion somewhere?”

  “Antebellum to which war?” He brought his hand up to my breast, circling my nipple with his thumb.

  “That’s right. I keep forgetting.”

  “I don’t have any houses. I don’t have anything.”

  “Meidias,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “What?”

  “Meh-dee-as,” I pronounced slowly. “It’s your name.”

  “Meidias,” he said, testing it. “And who was he?”

  “Well there were two. One was an asshole. The other was an ancient Greek vase painter.” I leaned over, kissing him, biting his lower lip before I pulled away. “A maker.”

  He smirked and pushed me onto my back again, climbing on top of me and bracing himself up on his arms. Bending his head low, Meidias kissed my mouth and neck, working his way down into the hollow between my breasts. He trailed his lips along my rib cage and tasted the soft skin around my belly button.

  The want in my center surfaced again and my hips shifted against the mattress, eager and welcoming. His breath painted the base of my tummy with hot, humid air just before he parted my folds with his tongue. Holding the tops of my thighs, he pressed down, keeping my legs spread wide. As if he knew my first instinct would be to bring my knees together, to try to control the sensation. I was still tender from everything we had done in the hours before and he was careful because of it, keeping his lips soft and flattening his tongue. I twisted my fingers in his hair, fighting the urge to hold him in place and grind up against him. Instead, I let him bring me softly, with sweet, mellow strokes and gentle sucking that seemed to go on forever and made my legs shake and ears ring. No fingers or biting. No roughness, only reverence. Finally, I sang
my orgasm in breathy groans and whimpers, looking down my body and watching him until it was over. Until I collapsed back into the pillows. Meidias laughed, resting his head on my thigh.

  My fingers ached from clenching them so hard and I took my time stretching them out, my knuckles stiff. His hair was soft on my palms, damp with sweat at the temples. I took a deep, deep breath, letting it slowly out between pursed lips, tipping my chin down to my chest so I could see him again.

  He released his grip on my thigh, stroking his finger over my skin back to my seam, sliding it into me lazily and pulling back out. Shifting so he could see, he pushed in again, adding his middle finger. He watched them move in and out of me, a long, slow exhale leaving his mouth before he kissed me again, not gently. My over-sensitized skin screamed in agony and delight and I moved my hands from his hair to his chin, pulling it up to bring his mouth off of me.

  “I can’t.” My voice cracked. “I can’t go again.”

  Collecting my hands, he folded them over each other, resting them on my tummy and holding them in a vice grip. He dipped his head back down between my legs, delivering a long, slow lick that ended with my clit between his teeth. He flicked it with his tongue and I made a keening sound that was half pain and half ecstasy.

  He smiled against me. “You can and you will.”

  “I can’t,” I repeated, tears gathering in the corners of my eyes as I clenched my legs around him. “It’s too much.”

  Letting go of my wrists, he studied my face. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  I studied him back, torn between using my freed hands to push him away and using them to pull him closer. Giving Meidias what he wanted meant allowing him ownership of my physical being. Trusting him to take care of me. Protect and honor me. At least for the next twenty minutes. He’d already fucked me halfway into an out-of-body experience. Another orgasm would probably send me to the Moon. I’d always been a one-and-done kind of woman, always maintained a certain level of control during my sexual experiences. Especially with Jackson, who’d made me nervous about being too vocal, as if it wasn’t ladylike. I had a feeling there wasn’t much I could do that would faze Meidias. I just needed to be brave—to let go.

  Stretching my arms over my head, I pressed my palms flat against the wall behind me and let my legs fall open.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was almost two weeks before we went out hunting together again, and honestly, neither of us was really into it. I was skittish about losing him and he was way more interested in my reverse cowgirl than in killing vampires. Plus he said I was too reckless. A fair point, but if I’d learned anything in the swamp, it was that regular people didn’t stand a chance against these guys. I might be half vampire but I was still half human, too. In the end, he’d only go if I promised him we wouldn’t split up again.

  We took out a younger vampire stalking a couple of big rig drivers back at our truck stop. It didn’t feel good to kill him but it felt damn good to see the drivers stick their heads out of their cab windows, trying to figure out what all the ruckus was, their blood still inside their bodies; to know they were safe even if they didn’t know it themselves.

  It felt even better to watch Meidias move. To see him run through the city streets beside me in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Wearing sneakers, for chrissakes.

  I took his hand when we got to St. Catherine, slowing him down so we could walk around like any other couple out in the night. I could almost pretend that we were. We stopped in front of a street band and he slow-danced with me to their cover of Etta’s “In the Dark”.

  This, it seemed, was my new version of happy. So it felt normal that neither of us reached for the light when I opened the door to my apartment. I kicked off my shoes and dropped my gun on the foyer table. He grinned at me, tossing his jacket on the floor.

  Kissing him felt so good it almost hurt my heart. I could taste everything in his mouth—his own flavor and whatever he’d drunk before he came to me that night. The woods. The city. Me.

  The telephone rang and I let the machine get it, perfectly content to stand in my hallway and let him kiss me forever.

  I heard the beep and then the caller’s voice, matter-of-fact and annoyed by my absence.

  “This is Officer William Bell of the United States Fish an—”

  I jumped and broke free of Meidias, reaching behind me for the handset. He ignored me, moving his mouth down to my neck.

  “Hello?” I croaked when his fangs scraped the soft place just under my ear.

  “Nadine? Are you alright?”

  Meidias dropped to his knees, yanking my shirt out of my waistband and unbuttoning my jeans. He dipped his tongue into my belly button and bit the skin beneath. Lover bite, not vampire bite.

  “Fine,” I breathed. “Can I, uh, can I help you?”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I asked what you’re wearing.”

  I touched my t-shirt.

  “Pajamas,” I answered, shaking my head at Meidias, who frowned up at me and licked his bottom lip, peeling my pants down over my hips to my feet. His breath was hot through my lace bikinis, and he nibbled at the inside of my thigh, just hard enough to turn my bones to liquid. Running his finger along the inside edge of my panties, he pulled them to the side. “You smell so good,” he murmured, leaning in.

  “I need you to come down here and talk to me,” Bell said.

  “Taste so good,” Meidias continued.

  “Now?” I asked Bell, and my voice cracked. I dug the fingers of my free hand into Meidias’s shoulder.

  “Now. 869 East State Drive. Wear a dress.”

  Meidias scowled at me the whole time I got ready. I put on a loose-necked purple slip dress and leather roman sandals, modest by modern standards but apparently not by ancient vampire ones. Convincing him to stay behind had been tricky. Before I left, I’d passed him my long-overdue copy of What Stoker Got Wrong and got him settled on the couch with Olive, who’d only just decided his presence was acceptable.

  East State was in the Market District and many of the couples I’d seen earlier were still out. I checked my cell. Ten-fifteen. Twenty-five minutes from the time Bell had called.

  The address he’d given me was a fancy French-Cajun fusion joint named Le Bonne Nuit, and I stopped short in front of it, thinking maybe I’d gotten the address wrong. There was a tap on the enormous front window, and I saw Officer Bell sitting inside at a table, dressed in a suit instead of a uniform. He waved me in and every warning system I had in my head went batshit crazy.

  “This is nice,” I said, dropping into the chair across from him as a waiter rushed up to take my drink order. “A little high class for an interview, though.”

  Bell looked at me. “They have a good house Syrah.”

  “Okay.”

  The waiter scurried off, and I looked around. All the decorations were typical bistro, dark and woody. The walls, though, were the color of paprika. Zydeco music played softly in the background.

  “I ordered you the alligator tail,” he said, smirking.

  “Okay.”

  “And the etouffee.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, wondering how in the name of all things crustaceous I’d keep any of it down.

  “You’ve lost weight. Are you okay?”

  I played up my victimhood. “Yeah, I’ve just been having trouble eating since everything happened, you know?”

  “That’s natural. But if you lose much more, you should see someone.”

  “I will.” I took a drink.

  Sitting straight up in his chair, he watched me, hands folded on his lap. “How’s the wine? Do you like it?”

  “It’s great.”

  “Good.” He continued to study me.

  Holy awkward.

  The waiter brought my fried gator tail and Bell motioned for me to try some. I dipped a square into some kind of spicy mayo and took a nibble.
/>   He frowned. “You don’t like it?”

  “No, I do. It’s just… memories.” I shrugged.

  “Oh, sure,” he nodded.

  I tapped my fingers on the table and leaned forward. “Officer Bell,” I whispered, “are we… on a date?”

  He laughed out loud. “No. No, Nadine. We’re not on a date.”

  “Then do you think you might explain why I’m here?”

  “Actually,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a smartphone, “I thought you might be able to explain why you were here.”

  He turned the screen so I could see it, a grainy video still of me crossing the gate into the park the night Meidias almost died.

  “Or here?” He slid his finger across the screen, bringing up the next picture: me helping Meidias out of the animal reserve nearly twenty-four hours later.

  “Or this?” He slid his finger again and I saw a dead woman. A runner, lying among some cypress roots.

  I gagged and covered my mouth with my hand. There was duckweed stuck to her thigh, and her leg had been torn off above the knee, her neck mangled.

  Tears collected on my cheeks and I rubbed them away with my fingers. A dead body left to soak for a few days in the bayou isn’t pretty, and she had been. More than pretty. Beautiful.

  I reached for my glass and gulped what remained of my wine. It was too dry and I choked, coughing. The waiter thought it was the food and rushed over. I pointed to my glass and made the universal symbol for more. He hurried over to the bar and I turned my attention back to Officer Bell, who was watching me intently.

  Bell didn’t speak until after the waiter returned and I’d sucked down another half a glass.

  “You knew her,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  I nodded, clearing my throat.

  “Yeah.” I wiped my cheeks again. “I knew her. I mean, no… I didn’t know her but I’ve seen her. We used to run around the same time of day.” I sat back and took a breath. “I didn’t even know her name.”

  Officer Bell kept his gaze on me, the picture on the table between us. He must have disabled the screen saver because her image wasn’t going anywhere. Finally, I picked it up and held it out to him.