Choosing Eternity

by Bridget Essex

  There was a vampire, and she was real, and she stood before me.

  And I did not know what to do.

  “Are you…real?” I hazarded, because there was no better question to ask her in that moment. And she nodded once, twice, heavily.

  “I am,” she answered, her voice low, broken.

  “And you are…you are a vampire?” I repeated, tasting the word and disbelieving it even as I uttered it myself. I had read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I had heard the stories of Mercy Brown, the poor girl suspected of vampirism, of the folks suspected of witchcraft and drinking blood…but this was the age of science, of reason. It had been proven that people’s superstitions were only that…stories we use to frighten one another about the dark.

  A vampire could not and must not exist if science and reason were true.

  But I was faced with her, standing before me.

  She was real and I was real.

  And we existed together.

  I shook my head, uncertain. There was fear in me, yes, but it was not my strongest emotion. To be truthful, what I felt heaviest was wonder, a bewitching quality that pulsed through me as I watched her.

  For, if vampires were real, what else was real? What else was possible? In the humdrum mundanity of my life, I had dreamed of fairy queens and I had dreamed of magic.

  And now here was a type of magic, standing before me, true and lovely.

  She was real.

  I stepped forward tentatively, uncertainly, my slipper falling quietly upon the wooden boards beneath us. I lifted up my hand, and I paused before her, the sound of my breath, the sound of my pounding heart, loud in the stillness.

  “Often, my mother would tell me stories,” I whispered, licking my lips, reaching up, my fingertips close, so close, to the cool softness of her jaw. “So many stories. Of fair folk that came from other worlds and stole children away. I dreamed of a fairy queen who would come and take me to another place,” I told her, and chuckled tensely at the end of it. I’d never told anyone that.

  I reached up, brows furrowed, and my fingertips finally connected with her cold skin, drifted over her strong face.

  She stayed very still and watched me, her dark eyes wide, curious, as I touched her.

  “Are you a fairy queen?” I asked her, only half jesting.

  She stared down at me, and she shook her head slowly.

  “But…but you are magic. Are you not?” I whispered in wonder.

  Kane watched me, said nothing.

  “Do you…do you hurt people?”

  Kane, again, shook her head.

  “Do you…drink blood?”

  “Only from someone willing to give me it,” she answered, voice soft.

  “Should I fear you?”

  There was a long pause as Kane closed her eyes, pain passing over her face and carving deep grooves of anguish there. After a long moment, she opened her eyes again, reached up, pressed my palm fully against the side of her face with her cold hand.

  “Never,” she answered gruffly.

  We stared at one another, connected, and my heart rose inside of me.

  And I knew what I must do, what I felt in my heart to be the rightest thing I’d ever known.

  “Then what does it matter what you are?” I told her, voice strong. “From the first moment that I saw you, Kane Sullivan, through this window here…” I pointed, raising my other hand, showing her the wound, “I wanted you.” My voice dropped. “Not for something so frivolous as the deadly sin of lust,” I chuckled, but there was no humor in it. I continued fervently: “but that, too…and because there was something about you that drew me to you. Something…I do not even know how to describe it.” My voice possessed anguish now, clear and as throbbing as my heart. I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, schooled myself, but my words shook as I uttered them then, as possessed as they were with passion. “But there is something in you that draws me like a moth to a flame.”

  Kane watched me closely. “A moth burns if it touches a flame,” she answered quietly.

  “Does it burn, or is it transformed?” I asked her.

  We stared at one another, so profoundly close, each of us breathing the same air as the other, our bodies pulsing, drawing each other inexorably onward toward a conclusion both of us could feel in our blood and bones.

  “Could it be…” she whispered in wonder, staring down into my face, searching it for any sign of fear, any hint of repulsion, “that you are not afraid of me?”

  “What is there to be afraid of?” I asked, genuinely curious. “You have told me that there is nothing in you I should fear.”

  “And you believe me?” This, too, she spoke in wonder, eyes wide.

  “You have been nothing but kind to me. Maybe I am naive,” I told her with a little shrug, “but because you pull me onward, toward you, because in you I have found something too lovely to name…I believe you because I must. Because to not believe you would be to deny my basest nature, what my heart tells me.” I reached up, pressed my fingers over my breast. “That you and I are linked by something I do not know the name of.”

  “Do you believe in fate?” asked Kane, her eyes glittering in the dark.

  “I never have before this very moment,” I whispered to her the truth.

  And it was then that our mouths met.

  She was so cold, so very cold, and yet that cold was lovely as I covered her lips with my own. The chill of her was a sensation I had never encountered. It was like embracing winter itself, the coolness of ice and snow delicious beneath my mouth and tongue. Kane’s arms were strong as she wrapped them about me, as she held me to her, her cold fingers reaching beneath my chin to tilt me up to her administrations, one palm open and strong against the small of my back, drawing her to me, cradling me close. I stood tall on my toes, and I wrapped my own arms about her neck, holding her with a tenderness that consumed me.

  And a fire, too. A fire that grew in my belly that threatened to devour us both.

  I pulled her to me with a ferocity I had never before felt. I gripped the collar of her shirt, drew her down to me, and it was then that I felt her fingers curling in at my hips with a strength that made me shudder against her.

  She tasted of mint and moonlight, of unfathomable mystery, of a sweet, sacred darkness. I, all at once, knew I would crave this sensation, her kiss, until the very end of my days, would count the heartbeats until our mouths met again, and that knowledge frightened me. I had always been my own woman, had never needed anything or anyone to feel a sense of rightness in myself.

  But I knew I needed her now, had—perhaps—always needed her and simply didn’t know of the emptiness in my heart that she filled by her mere existence, didn’t dare dream that something so lovely was within reach, someone so lovely that this loveliness lit a flame inside of me, a flame that grew and grew…

  I didn’t know. But, in my not knowing, I was not alarmed. I felt nothing but fire, but desire, but need, and I thought of nothing but these things, too, as I drew Kane toward the little bed in the softly lit room, scarcely believing that I was about to experience this.

  I was about to experience her.

  But this was like nothing else that had ever happened to me, that I had ever done. No woman I had ever kissed or tasted had ever felt so real and true beneath my mouth, beneath my fingertips. Yes, I cherished my time with them—they were precious to me, those memories, those women.

  But this was different. This, with Kane.

  And I did not yet know how different.

  When I shoved aside the studies of Kane’s form off of the coverlet, the papers fluttering to the floor like so much trash, I drew the woman down on top of me upon the bed. She was graceful as she followed me down, between my legs that were maddeningly still covered in a wealth of skirts. She was graceful as she undid the stays of my corset, as she took away my undergarments, drawing strings and lace through her fingers like fine gold. She was so gentle with me.

  But I did not want gentleness. For my
own part, I drew the shirt over her shoulders impatiently, and then and only then did she chuckle in the dark, did she grasp my wrists with her oh-so-gentle—but powerful—fingers.

  “Don’t you want to savor this?” she whispered to me, voice low, eyes searching my face.

  “I will and I shall,” I answered her, breathless.

  And so I did.

  I reached up, my fingertips drifting through her soft, white-blonde hair until they were at the back of her sweet neck. I drew her face down to me, and I kissed her fiercely, my teeth dragging over her lower lip, my tongue in her mouth, asking, tasting, touching, demanding. When Kane realized the tempo I was setting, she no longer questioned the idea of savoring. Instead, she devoured, too, tasting my mouth, my neck, the lobe of my ear as I shuddered beneath her cold lips, arching my back beneath her like a taut bow that must release or snap in two.

  Now divested of my garments, there was only Kane, Kane, everywhere against my skin, her smooth, cool mouth, her tongue tracing over me, her teeth giving little nips and love bites as I shuddered and moaned beneath her, trying to keep as quiet as I might. I dug my fingers into her hair, begged with my body, kissed her face, her mouth, her shoulders, feeling my own heat warm her skin just a little. She felt so good over me.

  She felt right.

  I had known from a young age that I was not like other girls. I had known what I wanted, what I loved, but this was different, somehow. I had felt myself for the first time in my life when I kissed a woman like me.

  But, that night…

  I felt come home.

  Her breasts were small and tender and I tasted of them gently, like one takes a bite of something rare and precious and sweeter than sugar. She moaned over me, arching her back, and I reveled at that moan. I had made her feel good, and I would make her feel better than that…

  I turned beneath her, pressing her yielding shoulders down until she was beneath me upon the bed, and I straddled her hips, panting, my palms flat against her firm belly.

  Her hair, her white-blonde hair, was like the crests of unfathomable waves upon the sea of blue that was the coverlet. Her mane was everywhere, satin and smooth and as soft to the touch as her sweetest skin. Her eyes were still dark—that dazzling blue had not come back to them—and within her mouth as she opened it, panting, I could see her fangs clearly, the sharpness of them wicked in the half light.

  But I had learned, in my life, that some wickedness is very, very good.

  I leaned down, and I kissed and nipped her neck, delighting in the chill of her skin against my tongue and lips. I breathed out in pleasure as my hands and fingertips and fingernails traced patterns over her belly, found the closure of her pants, undid it and tugged them down over her perfect creamy thighs, down over her lovely calves and then—blessedly—off of her entirely.

  When I was done tossing them upon the floor, Kane reached up and took my wrists in her unyielding hands. I glanced down at her in surprise.

  “No,” she murmured, and she sat up, our breasts touching, my center tight against her right thigh. I moaned in pleasure at this sweetest of frictions, and she drew me into her arms with a strength that made me sigh. “I want you,” she growled to me.

  I looked at her in surprise in the dim light.

  “You have me,” I answered her.

  For a long moment, we two stared at one another, surprise evident, I felt, on both of our faces. I hadn’t meant to muddy the moment of desire with something like this. Declarations of love, of ardor, had never gone quite well for me in my adventures with women. It was a lovely time, each time, and…that was it. It was only meant to be one time, or perhaps, a time or two…but then we’d part ways and act like nothing had ever happened between us. This was safest, I’d always hazarded, as much as it was hard to do.

  Passions could exist between women…but love? I hadn’t every dreamed that the world would allow it, that the world would make it possible. But wasn’t that what I spoke of when we stared at one another, when she told she wanted me…

  Had I just ruined everything?

  Kane continued to hold my gaze, her mouth open, her eyes wide in surprise. But then she gathered me as close to herself as her own heart, and with a tenderness that brought tears to my eyes—and I was not the crying sort.

  “I did not know if I should speak it,” she murmured, whispering the words into my skin, “but I feel a connection to you that is so deep and true that…I do not know what to do with it.”

  “Is it here?” I asked her, pressing my palm against her heart, my thumb gently, so gently, caressing her peaked nipple, my whole body aching from her touch, aching for more of her touch, but my heart rising within me.

  “Yes,” she answered, her voice a growl of satisfaction as she held my gaze now. “Is it…here?” she asked me in turn, reaching up and cupping my left breast, bringing my own nipple to her mouth, teasing it with her tongue and laving it against her teeth so that I moaned, arching against her, pushing my wet quim hard against her thigh.

  “Yes,” I told her truly.

  And then there were no more words.

  Kane turned and she pushed me gently down upon my back on the bed. I watched her as she rose over me, between my legs, her center finding my center with a sweet surety. She pressed down into me, and I bit the back of my hand, trying to silence the moan that emanated from me then, so pure and powerful was that feeling that pulsed through me then.

  I had never felt it before, but that did not mean that I did not know its name. It was love I felt as Kane bent her beautiful head to me, her lovely mouth finding my breasts, finding my skin, kissing me like she cherished me, like she worshipped me…and in those moments, I knew that she did. I felt my place in the universe itself as her fingers lovingly dipped into my center, found a bounty of wetness and she growled in delight over me, moving over me and into me with her perfect hand, her fingers long and right and too good as we found a rhythm together.

  It was love, as I cried out in the darkness, unable to contain the ecstasy that poured through me by her hand then.

  I shuddered against her, beneath her, and she spoke my name gently in the dark. “Melody…Melody,” she breathed over and over again against the soft skin of my neck, against my mouth, as her fingertips trailed silver up and over my skin in that low light, the wetness shining there as she cupped my face in her hands, as she kissed me fiercely.

  “Please,” I almost sobbed then, my arms tight about her. “Let me.”

  And she did.

  She laid back against the headboard, reaching up and grasping it with her still shining fingers as she spread her legs, as she invited me with her other hand, a satisfied and perfect smile upon her perfect face as she drew me toward her. For my part, I came like a supplicant, peppering her calves, the smooth bend of her knees, the sweetest skin of her thighs, with a thousand kisses, uncountable kisses. She growled and groaned, pressing her head back against that headboard, arching her neck so that her face was parallel with the heavens as she panted, threading her fingers through my hair and pulling me with surety toward what she needed.

  I bent my head, and my mouth found her center, my tongue her slit, the small, sweet hardness above it. I suckled and lapped as both her hands found my hair now, urging me, twisting and pulling as she growled above me, her growls becoming more urgent as she spoke my name in the dark.

  “Yes…Melody…yes…”

  When she came, it was sudden and fierce, and my hands upon her perfect thighs felt them shudder beneath my fingertips, felt her entire being pulse with delight as she lifted her head back, as she moaned into the stillness of the room her sweet release. I waited, drawing it out as long as I could, until she drew me up and on top of her, cradling me in her arms as she sighed long and low, her eyes closed, her entire being spent.

  “Yes,” she repeated in the stillness then, and she lifted my chin with two fingers, drank of me deeply, tasting herself upon me, our mouths merged just like our entire beings had.

&nb
sp; For that was not some mere poetry. It felt true, this merging,

  It was true.

  I wanted to speak to her, to tell her the unfurling in my heart. But I was afraid, oh, so afraid, that she did not feel the same, or that I had mistaken her attentions for so much more…but when Kane gazed into my eyes then, her face so beautifully content, my heart ached inside of me, and I needed to know, must know…

  But she spoke first.

  “I have been alive for many years,” she said then, voice low, her eyes searching my own. “Hundreds of years. Does that frighten you?”

  “No,” I answered her, holding her gaze.

  “Then you must know, Melody,” she whispered, “that I have been searching for you all of that time. I did not know your name, I did not know when you would appear…but I have believed, every moment of my life, that I would find you.”

  My throat felt tight, countless tears threatened to spill. I took her face in my hands, pressed my forehead to her own, closed my eyes tightly and then the tears did spill, hot salt water racing down my cheeks down to her cool, sculpted ones. I felt her coolness, her solidity, beneath my palms, and it was only because I touched her, tasted her, that I believed she was real.

  “Do you believe in fate?” she’d asked me.

  I hadn’t.

  Not until then.

  Not until her.

  It was as if all the world had been out of focus until that very moment. And then the clarity and beauty of everything surrounding me finally came to light. Life was a type of beautiful I had only seen glimpses of, before her mouth had found mine, before I’d heard her heartbeat beneath my ear.

  But now, my eyes were open and I could see the world for what it was: the magic had been here all along.

  I only needed the eyes to see it.

  We moved together all night, fingertips learning every inch we two possessed. I learned what made her whisper my name in the dark, I learned every exquisite taste and sweetness of her lines and curves. I learned what made her smile, what made her laugh against me, her laugh the sweetest part of all. And she learned these things from me.