Christine has felt the breath of death before. It happens each time Talen drinks from her – that acceleration of the heartbeat followed by a curious awareness of things she never noticed: the rustle of insects in the grass, the distant sound of a bird’s wings flapping in flight, occasionally even human voices murmuring in languages she can’t recognize. His feeding on her has become more and more indistinguishable from her sexual pleasure, and she always believes she won’t survive it – that it will finally be the last time.
The sound of Christine’s wetness is amplified to her ears, and she pushes her pelvis into Talen’s face, silently begging him to continue. She loves the sound of him licking her and wants it to go on forever. He seems to share her desire and never once falters; it’s as if his tongue is memorizing her intimate terrain or perhaps even reacquainting itself with it after a too-long absence. When Christine’s orgasm is at last brought to fruition by his tongue, she’s pulled from this world and transported into another.
Afterward Talen rises up from between Christine’s thighs, his lips shining with her moisture. As he looks down at her, he licks it away, his eyes burning in the night like emeralds that have been set on fire.
I have to smile whenever I look in the mirror and see the bruise on my neck with the two matching puncture marks located in the center. I touch the area carefully, though it isn’t sore. Touching it gives me pleasure, as though the wound retains a memory of the orgasms I experience when the blood’s being drawn from it. Not for the first time, I wonder why no one seems to have noticed anything unusual. There have been less and less instances of make-up having to come in and apply fake blood to my neck and any other parts of me it’s spilled onto. Didn’t they ever wonder where it was coming from? Or was the reality so unbelievable that their minds shut down until they neither saw nor realized what was in front of them? Do I even believe it myself ?
Though it’s been less than a month since I joined the cast, I know that I’m in love with Kyle. Or rather Talen. I get the two mixed up sometimes. Playing a character, particularly that of a woman who believes that spending an eternity as one of the undead is a better option than knowing she’ll eventually lose her beloved by the fault of her own mortality is not exactly an idea I can’t relate to. Having said that, I’ve never had such thoughts about other men. Envisioning myself with someone several months down the line, or even years, was as far as I’d ever managed. But eternity? No. I can safely say I’ve never entertained such a concept or loved anyone enough to desire it. Until now. I wonder if I’m mad, or if Talen is mad. Though if we are, then I’m happy to exist in madness with him, even if it means it might eventually kill me. If his artistic perfectionism has actually led him to become the person he’s playing, so be it. Or perhaps it was him all along . . .
He knows I want him inside me. Want it so badly that yes, I’m willing to die for it, to let him take away what remains of my life, just like Meridian. But he’s in control. There’s nothing I can say or do; if or when it happens, it will be his decision.
So I wait. Patiently.
And at last I get my wish.
It’s 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning when Talen takes me to the Bonaventure Cemetery. Although not the first choice on most couples’ lists for romantic destinations, it feels right that we should go there – that it should be in this place where we consummate our relationship, at least in the biblical sense. I feel no fear being here among the dead. They don’t wish me harm.
Like a fine Southern gentleman, Talen takes my arm and guides me through the darkness toward the oldest part of the cemetery. We eventually arrive at a moss-draped oak that overhangs a large grey tombstone. Despite its age, it looks surprisingly well tended, and I notice that a bouquet of flowers has recently been placed at the grave. He indicates with a nod for me to lower myself onto the grass. The blades feel cool and welcoming, soft beneath the thin fabric of my dress, and I lie back as if I’m in my own bed, stretching my arms above and behind me to create a pillow for my head. I smile up at him with a trust I’ve never given anyone.
Talen kneels down beside me, pulling my dress up over my thighs, my belly, my breasts, and then over my head. I’m naked beneath it. I only wear dresses when I’m with him, never jeans or anything constricting, and generally no underclothes, not even if he and I are shooting a scene. Ever since the first time we were together, that dream-night on the beach, I’ve stopped wearing anything beneath my dresses. I want to be available for him at all times, should he desire a touch, a taste, a scent. Sometimes he’ll just pull me into his face and breathe me in, not touching me. Even this makes me come.
He leans down and kisses my lips, his tongue licking the top one, then the bottom, before sliding into my mouth to meet mine. His saliva is like a fine wine and I sip it from his tongue, savoring its herbal sweetness. I could spend hours like this, but when Talen breaks our kiss to straddle my chest, I suspect he has other plans. His fingers unzip the fly of his jeans and I open my mouth, pleased to be given still more of him to savor. The moment my tongue makes contact with the flesh being offered, my body begins tingling with that electrical current I always experience from his contact. I can actually hear it buzzing in my ears, as if a million bees are swarming around my head. I taste his tangy-sweetness and moisture fills my eyes. How can it be possible to love someone this much? Talen allows me a few minutes to indulge myself, and I lick and suck at him hungrily as bits of moss from the overhanging branch of the old oak drop greenish-grey tears onto my nakedness. Then he decides I’ve had enough. On this occasion my mouth will not be receiving the completion of his pleasure.
There’s no preamble, no courteousness, as he jerks open my thighs and enters me with one thrust. His lips swoop down and fasten onto my neck, his teeth breaking through the fragile skin they have broken through so many times before. I arch my pelvis upward, swallowing him so deeply that it feels as if he’s entered my womb. For a moment I allow myself to wonder what kind of child we’d have – would it be human, or would it be like . . . him?
The soft suckling sounds at my neck as he drinks from me cause my heart to swell with tenderness, and I cradle his head against me, stroking his dark hair and placing little kisses anywhere my lips can reach. It’s as though I’m breastfeeding my child, giving it nourishment to allow it to live. Then I realize that yes, this is exactly what I’m doing, only Talen is not my child: he’s my lover. He moves inside me with short hard thrusts that continue to increase in speed and violence, alerting me to his impending climax. As his pelvis grinds against mine, the steel of his zipper occasionally catches in my pubic hair or bites into the surrounding flesh. I welcome the pain; it’s just one more element of the pleasure he gives me. I look up at the moss-draped oak and see an owl observing us with its large saucer eyes, as if it understands exactly what we’re doing.
My hands leave Talen’s head and slip beneath the seat of his jeans, fastening onto a buttock each. They are smooth and warm, and I allow my fingertips to skirt the crease, which is hot and humid and unexpectedly inviting. I can tell he’s nearly there; the sucking at my neck has become more frantic, as have his strokes. Suddenly my breath catches as I feel molten lava shooting into me, filling me until I’m overflowing, pooling beneath me on the grass in a boiling puddle. As I imagine it soaking into the dark rich earth, deeper and deeper, until it reaches whoever lies beneath us, I cry out, consumed by an ecstasy that surpasses any I’ve yet experienced. With a loud flap of wings the owl takes off. The ground beneath me vanishes and I’m lifted up into the black Savannah sky. I too, have become a creature of flight, swooping on the currents and playing tag with the stars, my cries of pleasure like the keening of a bird of prey. Talen is with me, our feathered fingers entwined, offering a reassuring touch of safety in this strange environment. I know that he won’t let anything happen to me; I’m safe with him. I will always be safe with him.
My eyes open and I’m lying on the grass by the oak tree. Talen’s beside me, still exposed, the beautiful le
ngth of him glistening from our combined wetness. We’re holding hands, our breathing perfectly matched, as if we share the same set of lungs. I prop myself up on one arm so that I can look into his eyes. They’re completely iridescent now, and I feel myself being bathed in a green fire. “I love you,” I say.
Talen studies me with a serious expression, and several moments pass before he finally responds. “But do you love me enough?”
The sky is starting to lighten, indicating that it will soon be daylight. Neither of us has slept, and we have another long night of work ahead. The filming of The Blood Moon Kiss will soon be reaching an end, at least for this season, and I’ve no idea whether I’ll be invited back for the next – or if there will even be a next. Talen helps me up from the ground and brushes the errant bits of grass from my dress. I laugh a girlish laugh, finding his gesture sweetly familial. This is when I notice what’s been carved into the headstone at the place of our lovemaking.
Talen Dashkovar
Born 3 May 1824
Died 1 December 1853
Before this fully registers in my consciousness, I note another inscription directly below it.
Beloved Wife
Adelina Dashkovar
Born March 17 1817
Died 28 November 1853
He reaches up behind his neck to unclasp the gold chain he always wears. That’s when I notice for the first time the locket that hangs from it. I can’t recall ever seeing a man wearing a locket before, but then, Talen isn’t like other men. He clicks it open and places it on my palm with great care. “Adelina,” he says softly. “My wife.”
A tiny black-and-white photograph of a young woman looks up at me. Her features are dramatic, the hair and eyes intensely dark against a face nearly the white of snow. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t at the moment place it. “She died carrying our child.” Talen’s eyes glitter like minute shards of green glass. A few slide down his cheeks and he turns away, his face crumpling.
I take his hand and press it to my cheek, his heartbreak so palpable that I feel my own heart breaking as well.
Later that day while brushing my teeth before the mirror at the bathroom sink, I suddenly realize why Adelina seemed so familiar. The face inside Talen’s locket is the same face that looks out at me from the mirror.
“The minute I saw you on that television commercial, even with the ridiculous beehive hairdo I recognized you.” Talen smiles, the tiny lines at his eyes crinkling with affection. “I’d know my Adelina anywhere.”
Talen’s convinced I’m the re-embodiment of his dead wife. He’s even admitted that he used some kind of mind control ability he has to influence the show’s producer to get me hired for the role of Meridian. So much for my Emmy Award-winning performance as a roller-skating waitress at a drive-in burger joint.
I’ve never really given much thought to reincarnation. As a concept it has its appeal; I mean, the idea of never being truly dead, of having a second chance at life, or a third, or a fourth . . . who wouldn’t want that? The fact that I know absolutely nothing about where I come from, or from whom, lends Talen’s theory even more credence. I was a Jane Doe, a baby abandoned at birth, then later placed with foster parents. My past is a blank sheet of paper. Now Talen is filling it in, only with facts from a very distant past – facts that resound deep within me like an iron bell being hit by a hammer, making my acceptance of the impossible possible. For the first time in my life, things are making sense.
He grabs my hands and presses them to his heart, which beats hard and strong beneath his shirt. “I’ve looked for you everywhere. I never stopped looking, not for a single moment in the century and a half since you left me.”
It’s beyond my comprehension to be loved by a man to such a degree that he would look for me for more than 150 years. To be honest, I can’t imagine any of the men I’ve been involved with even going to the trouble of walking around the block to look for me.
Adelina had died before Talen had been given a chance to transition her. They’d agreed that she would not relinquish her “normal” life until they’d started a family, believing it fairer on the children to decide for themselves whether they wished to change over. Of course, neither Talen nor Adelina knew if having one normal parent and one vampire parent would result in a vampire child, but they still felt the decision should remain with their future children, if such a decision would, in fact, be theirs to make. However, the couple hadn’t reckoned on Adelina dying – and taking with her their unborn child, who’d been growing outside the womb. Talen had railed against the world, cursing everyone in it for killing the only thing that ever mattered to him, the only thing he loved. Adelina.
“I guess there were a lot of things I didn’t know back then,” says Talen, “such as the fact that vampires can’t kill themselves by flinging themselves in front of a speeding carriage drawn by a team of horses.” He laughs at this, but his mirth sounds hollow. “Clearly, I looked dead, or at least dead enough to be buried.”
The conversation is surreal. But then, everything that’s happened since I came to Savannah has been surreal. Even more surreal is the fact that Adelina died from an ectopic pregnancy. It had turned out that I’d been correct when I thought I was pregnant in college. My boyfriend took off, and a few weeks later abdominal pain and bleeding landed me in the emergency ward, where I was diagnosed with a tubal pregnancy. By then the fetus was dead. As I tell all this to Talen, he breaks down into sobs. “I can’t bear to think I might’ve lost you before I’d even found you again!”
The following evening just before they are to be driven into the Georgia countryside for their final shoot, Talen takes Christine aside to once again show her the locket. This time when he clicks it open, she sees not Adelina as she was in the 1850s, but Adelina as she would be in the twenty-first century. Suddenly Christine realizes that the photo inside the locket is of her and she smiles.
And Talen knows that it’s time to ask the question he’s been waiting to ask.
Meridian lies on the ground looking up at Kyle, his lips shiny red with her blood in the artificially enhanced moonlight. It’s a pivotal scene and the last one in the season, and the powers-that-be have left its filming till the very end rather than shooting out of sequence. They don’t realize that the decision has not been entirely theirs, and that other powers have influenced the decision as well. It’s the scene in which Meridian acquiesces to being turned into a vampire by Kyle so that she can be with him for eternity. He hasn’t forced her or exerted any form of mind control on her; she offers herself of her own free will and with the full realization that there’s no returning to what she was, no going back. Ever.
Epilogue
Actress Collapses on Set of Hit TV Series
– USA Today
SAVANNAH, GA – Cast and crew of the hit vampire TV series The Blood Moon Kiss were stunned yesterday on the final day of filming by the sudden collapse of actress Christine Emberson.
Emberson, 36, who plays Meridian in the popular primetime vampire soap, had just finished shooting a night scene with actor Talen Dashkovar (who plays Kyle) when she collapsed. Paramedics were called to the scene, but by then the actress had recovered. She was later escorted off the set by Dashkovar.
“Ms Emberson has been suffering from exhaustion,” said Mark Gaitzberger, the series’ director. “It’s not uncommon in a show like ours. We often work all night for several nights running. It was obvious to everyone that the schedule’s been taking its toll on her. What she needs is a good long rest.”
Dashkovar, 29, who’s in a relationship with the actress, apparently agrees. He has taken Emberson to his secluded retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains until she’s fully recovered. “I ask everyone to please respect our privacy,” said heartthrob Dashkovar. “I must look after Christine. She’s my priority now.”
Neither Dashkovar nor Emberson has indicated whether they plan to return for the series’ third season.
Contract between Czarina
and her submissive Anaïs
Gala Fur and Véronique Bergen
Translation by Noel Burch
In accordance with the terms of the contract drawn up at the request of her revered Mistress, Anaïs will live up to Czarina’s expectations in every detail. She hereby undertakes to respect the lifestyle described below until expiration of the present contract, upon the death of one or the other of the signatories.
As defined in Clause 1, Anaïs’s daily life will follow unreservedly the instructions dictated by her Mistress, which means she will have no other willpower than that of her sovereign.
Moreover, Anaïs will submit to any games, humiliations, ill treatment and punishments which will threaten her on fixed dates of each year, according to the rules of exception defined by Czarina on this, the twenty-second day of August 2012.
Mistress, would it be presumptuous to say that the clauses of the agreement between us resemble a quintuple wedding ring which commits this slave of yours from the moment when my life is bereft of all attachments, save to your sole person.
As I write down the words that will seal my entrance into servitude, I am overcome with delightful erotic tremors, for the juridical nature of this existential scroll constitutes a formalization of erotic power. The Law embodied by you and served by me is but the other name for the pleasures it produces.
The knowledge that the prescriptions of this contract of serfdom, of allegiance to your person, shall be tattooed on my body in designs representing these five rules fills me with voluptuous shivers which echo your own euphoria to come.
Many perceive in a contract of submission only the rigid codification of the vagaries of life, failing to see that this appearance of immobility constitutes only the outermost surface of the pact. A trompe-l’oeil image for the uninitiated, a severe Apollonian veil, beneath whose steely, crystalline structure boils the Dionysian vortex, the body’s screams in the night. Beyond the simplicity of the game, erotic spice or other adjuvant, the alliance sealed between Mistress and slave is a means of liberating demonic vapours in both. More than a mere dialectic of the reversibility of defilement and abjection, more than any paradoxical happiness in slavery, voluntary or involuntary, this is an exploration of territories where the very notion of limit becomes uncertain, where the body is rent asunder by the experience of the extreme.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 14