The sound of Marun’s tongue moving over her skin was unbearably intimate. Izzy wanted more. Shuddering, she spread her fingers, inviting more of her wife’s touch. Flickers of sensation lit up her body, tightened her nipples, sped her pulse.
“You should stop,” she breathed, but god, she didn’t mean it.
“I can’t stop this any more than you can,” Marun whispered into the cup of her palm, the warmth of her breath another type of salve on Izzy’s flesh. “From the very beginning, your blood called to me. No matter where you bleed from, or how, when your blood spills it’s like a flare across my sky. I can’t ignore it now just like I couldn’t ignore it when we first met. I want to heal you. I want part of you inside me.” Her tongue rasped against Izzy’s skin.
Marun’s touch felt so good, so perfect, after what happened in the bakery. After the loneliness of the last three years. Maybe she should have taken a lover since her wife left her, she thought in a daze, maybe then she wouldn’t have been so desperate for someone to touch her.
But this isn’t just someone, a voice at the back of her mind said. This is Marun.
The woman she’d shared her virginity with. The extraordinary being she’d pined for and never forgot. Nothing felt like her wife’s touch.
Deep down, she’d known nothing ever would, and left the taking of new lovers to other people.
A soft tongue slid between her fingers, teasing the sensitive skin there, dampening her panties and pulling the cotton fabric tight against her swelling clitoris.
Soon, it was over. She opened her eyes and met Marun’s, licked her lips.
The familiar light in the dark eyes tightened hot lust in her belly.
“As much as I’d like to take advantage of what you’re feeling right now, I won’t.” Amusement flickered in the glittering gaze. “Come on. Let’s clean you up and get out of here.”
Marun stood and, without giving Izzy a chance to disagree, pulled her to her feet.
“Oh!” She stumbled.
“The dizziness will pass. Come. The water here is nice and hot. Clean hand towels are in that basket over there.”
Letting go of Marun’s steadying hand and finally looking around, Izzy noticed it wasn’t just any bathroom Marun had taken her to. It was obviously a public one, but each of the six stalls had real doors with gold handles. The doors went all the way to the floor, giving privacy to anyone using the toilets.
Speaking of which. “Um… I have to—” she gestured to one of the bathroom stalls.
“Sure. I’ll wait right here for you.”
By the time Izzy had used the bathroom and stepped out of the stall to wash her hands, she felt marginally better and gained a bit of perspective. She wasn’t dead on the floor of the bakery. Marun was here. She didn’t have to see Javier for the rest of the night.
The automatic soap dispenser spat a blob of foam in her palm. Her uninjured palm that had only the faintest smears of red from Marun’s tongue.
Marun had licked her blood. And actually healed her. Her ex stood by the bathroom door, hands in the back pockets of her tight jeans. A pale-yellow blouse clung to her torso and showed off the ripe handful of breasts and large nipples that weren’t being shy at all. Her hair, usually worn free and thick around her face, was braided back, the ends curling like delicate fronds of dark fern over her shoulders. Marun held a jacket, dark-brown leather that matched her boots, folded over one arm.
She looked so normal. So much like the woman Izzy had fallen for on that cold night a million years ago. But normalcy as Izzy knew it was a thing of the past, and even back then it had been an illusion. An ache blossomed in her chest. Not quickly enough, she looked away and carried on with the business of washing her hands.
As she searched for hand towels to dry her hands, she caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and nearly died. Oh god. No wonder Marun hadn’t wanted to have inappropriate sex with her on the bathroom floor. She looked an absolute mess. Smears of flour whitened random parts of her face and neck while the hairnet she’d had to wear for work tilted drunkenly on top of her head.
Embarrassment heating her cheeks, she snatched off the hairnet and shoved it into her jeans pocket and then quickly wiped off as much of the flour as she could.
Since sinking through the floor from sheer humiliation wasn’t an option, she turned away from the mirror when she was done. “Okay, I’m ready.”
With a soft laugh, Marun pushed open the bathroom door with a booted foot and allowed her to go out first. “You look fine,” she said, which only made Izzy more embarrassed. Fine wasn’t the same thing as good.
Izzy had only taken a couple of steps before she stopped.
“What’s this place?” And how did they get here?
“A coffee shop,” Marun said, like that was any kind of answer. “Come on. I see a table over there by the window.”
Izzy trailed after her.
True, the place was like most other coffee shops she’d been to before. Comfortable. Perfumed with coffee. And had more than a few people hunched intently over their laptops.
Even this late at night, it was nearly half full. Low-voiced conversations hummed in the open concept space decorated like somebody’s country cabin. A high beamed ceiling of dark wood crouched over a scattering of comfy sofas and wooden bistro table and chair sets.
Outside the café’s wall of windows lay a garden courtyard. Old-fashioned looking hanging lanterns swayed in the light spring breeze and illuminated the few tables and benches out there. A lone woman sat at a far-off table reading something on the glowing screen of her phone.
Inside, the scent of coffee was strong and very welcome to Izzy’s bruised senses.
Marun guided her to a table tucked away in a corner and draped her jacket over one of the chairs. “I’ll be right back,” she said once Izzy was seated.
A few minutes later, she returned with a big mug of hot chocolate overflowing with whipped cream and a cup of coffee as dark as her eyes.
“Oh, bless you!” Izzy reached for the coffee like it would save her life, and just held the warm mug between her chilled hands, savoring the temperature and the scented steam rising up to caress her face.
This wasn’t enough to make everything okay, but it was close enough to normal to soothe the panic threatening to bubble up out of her throat in a scream.
Izzy took a careful sip of her coffee.
The sounds of the café eddied around them, soothing and low. Tuning out the threatening panic fizzing at the back of her mind, Izzy focused on her coffee, the strong flavor, its rich taste, the touch of normalcy it gave her in the midst of the madness she was currently living. Across from her, Marun sipped from her extra-large mug of hot chocolate like they had all the time in the world, occasionally licking away any stray bit of cream that dared to cling to her lips.
“Tonight wasn’t supposed to happen,” Marun said sometime later, breaking the easy silence between them. “I’m sorry.”
Izzy swallowed the rich mouthful of coffee and put the mug on the table, fiddling with the white handle before putting her suddenly trembling hands in her lap. Her teeth nibbled at the corner of her mouth. As stupid as it sounded, she could’ve honestly gone her whole life without talking about any of this. Or, for that matter, without living it, but that horse had obviously already kicked the barn door down and run the fuck off.
“Is your brother going to try and kill me again?”
Marun sat with hands resting on the table and curved around her cup. The corner of her eye twitched. “Right now, he has no incentive to stop.”
Izzy nearly choked on her next breath of air. She should have known better than to ask. “That’s just fucking…great.”
“My family is complicated, but I’ll fix this.”
Understatement of the century. Izzy’s family was complicated. Marun’s family was homicidal maniacs and women who claimed to have accidentally abandoned their wives because they didn’t know what year it was.
“I’m one of the Orisha.” She paused and looked meaningfully at Izzy as if waiting for her to chime in with a comment, question, or denial. When Izzy didn’t say anything, Marun continued in a low teaching voice like this was a conversation she’d had many times before. “We’re spirits, some call us gods. Among humans, tales of us have come from the African continent, but we are and always have been everywhere.
“We are multitudes. Spirits of the waters, fertility, wisdom, storms.” Marun vaguely waved a hand which Izzy took to mean “etc.”
Her wife was a for real god. Or spirit.
Head spinning, Izzy reached across the table and grasped Marun’s wrist, needing something to ground her. “Tell me about you. In particular.”
“Ah…” Marun briefly tongued the corner of her mouth in one of those odd displays of nervousness Izzy found hard to get used to. “My domain is the heart of the blue flame,” she said finally. “And blood.”
Izzy’s thigh muscles twitched, and she silently gasped as her body reacted, spasming deep inside, spilling more blood into the tampon she’d changed barely an hour before all the madness started at the restaurant.
“Which means what?” she asked, scared that she might already know.
“I can sense the blood connections between people. Know if they are related and how.” The corners of Marun’s lips curved up in an oddly self-mocking way. “I know, boring, right?” The faint smile died away. “I can also control blood. Drain it from a live or dead body, boil a person from the inside and kill them. If I want.” Her shoulder hitched up in a shrug, and she curved long fingers around her cup of hot chocolate. All very ordinary. Right. “And although I don’t have to drink blood to survive, I love how it tastes.” Her tongue appeared again and, in the light of the coffee shop, Marun’s lips looked plump and red, like she’d just had a feast.
Yes, she loved blood.
That part, Izzy knew very well. Heat rushed up her throat and into her cheeks as the memory of those times chose that exact moment to ambush her. Days when she’d been weakened in bed with period cramps, and Marun burrowed between her thighs to lick her dry and ravenously eat her to orgasm, moaning her pleasure and whispering her adoration of Izzy like she could never get enough. After months of Marun tending to her like this, her cramps had become less intense, less frequent, before they disappeared altogether.
Izzy cleared her suddenly dry throat. “Anything else?”
“Not…” Marun stopped whatever she was going to say. “Once I taste someone’s blood, it can give me power over them.”
And that was what Izzy was afraid of. Was her infatuation with Marun a sort of madness inflicted on her by some minor god who didn’t like to be turned down? “Did you ever try to control me?”
“No, never.” Marun’s jaw went tight.
Izzy released a long, slow breath of relief. She clutched her coffee cup, took an unhurried sip, savoring the strong brew.
“Since the first time I took your blood, I’ve been more tuned in to where you are physically. When you’re on your monthly cycle, I have a rough sense of your emotions, maybe not exactly what you’re thinking, but the dimensions of those thoughts. That’s all.”
That’s all. No big.
Izzy licked the hint of coffee from her lips, grounding herself in the familiar flavor, and tried not to look like the foundations of everything she’d believed about reality weren’t crumbling. “So, you have all this going on and somehow didn’t think to mention any of this to me before we got married?”
Marun seemed to suddenly find something really interesting to look at outside the window. When she turned back around to Izzy, her face was an expressionless mask. “Would you have still asked me to marry you if you knew about them?”
Would she have? Being with Marun was the happiest she’d ever felt in her life. She’d always been a happy child, despite her parents trying to make her into someone she didn’t want to be. She’d simply left them behind to live the life she’d wanted. She’d found that and more in New York. Meeting Marun, falling in love with her, was the icing on the cake.
With Marun, she was the best version of herself. One that was well-fucked, well-fed, knew exactly what she wanted out of life, and how to get it.
She’d also been in danger of being murdered by her psycho brothers and sisters.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Marun flinched at that but Izzy forged ahead. “You could’ve at least given me the choice.”
It was incredible, the changes in Marun she’d seen over the last couple of days. Unreal. Being a fire-eyed demi-goddess aside, Marun had shown more emotion, more warmth and vulnerability, than Izzy had ever seen when they’d been together.
Now, her ex toyed with a used napkin, long fingers clenching and releasing around the badly wrinkled paper. She stared down at the smooth wood of the table like it held the answers to every question she’d ever had.
“That’s fair, I suppose,” Marun said with a twist of her mouth. “Nobody wants to go into a marriage expecting to be threatened with death by their wife’s family. I… I just wanted you so much, and I didn’t know if I’d lose you if you knew the whole truth.” A frown made the barest wrinkle in Marun’s brow, but she didn’t look up from the table. “By the time you asked me to marry you, I was so gone for you that I couldn’t think straight. We were so happy, I was so happy, that it was easy to forget about everything else. But then, one of my sisters told me I had to give you up one way or another. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. Finally, after living for so long, I realized for the first time what love was like.” Shock rippled through Izzy’s body and she couldn’t hold back her gasp. Marun finally looked up, her eyes uncertain. She shrugged. “That’s when I knew I had to find our mother and get her help to make things right.”
Her mother. Okay…
But Izzy was still focused on what Marun said before.
There had never been any discussion of feelings. Things had simply been between them. Every time they touched, Izzy reached a level of intimacy with Marun she never thought possible. All Marun had to do was look at her and she was transported to a place where nothing mattered but the two of them. There had been no need to discuss what they meant to each other because it had always been obvious. They were happy. They loved each other. Nothing else mattered.
Now, with the word out in the open, so raw in Marun’s low and compelling voice, Izzy realized how much she’d actually wanted to hear it.
Love.
How simple. How normal. But they’d never said the word to each other. They’d just been so sure it had been there between each of their breaths. At least Izzy was.
She and Marun had connected from the first moment they met. They’d known each other intimately, shared secrets in their quiet bedrooms. But they never actually talked.
Izzy sat back in her chair, stunned.
Didn’t the experts all say communication was the key to any successful relationship? If that was true, it was a miracle she and Marun had survived together as long as they had.
“We really don’t know anything about each other, do we?”
“That’s not true. We know everything that’s necessary,” Marun said, hotly. She grasped for Izzy’s hands across the table but after only a brief touch, Izzy pulled back. Her fingers were cold. The corners of Marun’s eyes turned down. “You know I can’t stand the beach, that my favorite color is yellow. I know you’d rather starve than ask your family for help and subject yourself to your mother’s homophobia and your father’s passive acceptance of his wife’s bad behavior. We know everything that’s important,” she said again.
But they both knew that wasn’t true. Izzy picked up her coffee but only held the heavy mug in her hands, needing something to ground herself.
“If that’s true, why don’t I know who or what you really are?”
A charged silence throbbed between them. “You know now.”
“Only because your family tried to kill me. Why did I have to lose you for three years to find out such an important thing about you?” Izzy shook her head. “I know the answer to that. But that’s my point. We bleed our feelings all over each other, but we don’t communicate like real people. What we had wasn’t sustainable.”
The sound of Marun swallowing was strangely loud in the half-full café. “You know, I thought I had all the time in the world to tell you everything and to make you understand about my life. But then, I left to try and fix everything and just ended up losing three years of us along with your trust. I’m sorry. That’s not what being a real partner is about. You deserve better.” Marun licked her lips and reached out, her palms up on the table. Instead of taking, she was waiting for Izzy to reach for her.
Because all she’d been waiting for during these years was to have Marun back in her life, Izzy reached out. A crackle of energy flared between their fingers and Izzy flinched, expecting it to hurt. Instead, a warmth flowed from her wife’s hand to hers. She gripped Marun tight.
“You can’t do this to me again,” she said. “I wouldn’t survive it.”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t survive it either.” The dark eyes shimmered with what looked suspiciously like tears. “I’ll do anything to make this right between us. I’ll talk.” Those eyes flared wider for a moment, like suddenly something occurred to her. “I’ll even sign the papers so you can do whatever you want to the bakery. I’ll do whatever you want. All I’m asking is that you give me a chance to make these three years up to you. To love you the way you deserve.”
Triumph surged through Izzy. Finally. A promise to sign the papers. But the victory tasted like ashes on her tongue. The prize she really wanted was much more valuable than that.
Marun’s ring dug into her own finger and Izzy looked at it properly for the first time in three years. The diamonds were still as brilliant as the day she gave the band to Marun at their wedding. She thought about the matching band she still kept in the cigar box and, despite all she’d been going through with money, could never bring herself to sell.
Love, Blood, and Sanctuary Page 26