Nocturne

by Syrie James

  “Sorry about that,” Michael said. “She spooked when that icicle broke off.”

  “Icicle?” Nicole glanced at the huge icicles ringing the roofline of the arena, and understood. “I thought it was a gunshot.”

  “When the sun’s out, the icicles heat up and crack before they fall. Even the best-trained horse will freak at that sound.” Michael slid off the horse and took Nicole in his arms. “I should have warned you about it. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, I’m fine. Thank you for rescuing me. It was rather . . . spectacular.” Nicole kissed him. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind being rescued like that again sometime.”

  Michael kissed her again. “Let’s hope the occasion never arises.”

  BEFORE LEAVING THE BARN, Michael groomed, fed, and watered the horses, and then cleaned out their stalls. Nicole offered to help, but he insisted he could do it more quickly himself. Indeed, as she stood back in fascination, it was like watching a movie on fast forward. In a matter of minutes, Michael completed tasks that might have taken a normal person a good hour at least. The horses didn’t even bat an eyelash at the whirlwind of activity.

  “They’re used to it,” he explained. “They were both born into my hands. They think my ranch hand moves at a glacial pace.”

  The sun was low in the sky by the time they returned to the house. Nicole was so hungry that for dinner she ate a can of soup standing at the kitchen counter.

  “I’ll lose weight fast if I stick to this diet,” she said, as Michael leaned against the counter, watching her.

  “I don’t want you to lose weight. You’re perfect the way you are.”

  They went out on the deck of the house and knocked off huge icicles from the roofline in areas where they’d be walking, an activity that devolved into a hysterical, swordfight-like battle wielded by mop and broom handle.

  Afterward, Nicole was shivering with cold and dying to warm up in a hot bath. Michael filled the marble tub in the master bathroom, they stripped off their clothes, and sank down together in the soothing hot water.

  Nicole closed her eyes and sighed with pleasure as Michael shampooed her hair, massaging her head with his nimble fingers. Cradling her shoulders with one arm, Michael then eased her head back into the warm water, rinsing away the soap suds with gentle hands, her long hair floating around them like tendrils of reddish-gold seaweed.

  As Michael scanned Nicole’s naked body, he said, “Let me soap you up,” the low timbre of his voice and the glow in his eyes seeming to promise a great deal more than sudsing.

  Nicole’s pulse beat to a new rhythm as she watched Michael soap up a bath scrunchie. He took one of her hands in his, grazed the slippery smooth surface of her slender arm from the top of her shoulder to the tip of her fingers with the soapy sponge, then ran it back up the underside of her arm. As he soaped his way along the inside curve of her underarm, then moved on to linger over her breasts, Nicole let out a little moan of pleasure.

  Michael mirrored the exercise with her other arm, then ran the sponge tantalizingly over her legs one at a time, pausing to pay extra attention to each foot, and to the soft, sensitive region of each inner thigh. Nicole’s nerves were on fire, yet at the same time she felt as if every muscle in her body had turned to jelly.

  “Roll over,” he said softly.

  Limply, Nicole turned herself over in the water. Michael ran the sponge with tormenting slowness over every curve of her back and her submerged buttocks. Tiny embers ignited beneath her flesh at every touch of the soapy sponge driven by his strong hand. When he’d finished, Michael scooped her up to face him, pulling her close. He was ready to make love and so was she, but Nicole put off the pleasure, seizing the bath sponge and instructing him to lie back against the tub wall.

  Now Nicole returned the favor, giving Michael the same treatment he’d given her, soaping him up over the length and breadth of his lean body until they were both breathing hard and quivering from the tension of restrained desire.

  Taking Nicole’s face lovingly between his hands, Michael brought his mouth to hers, kissing her with fierce need, his hard, wet, naked body pressed against hers. Nicole’s heart raced. She was wet, so wet, without and within.

  “Please,” she whispered hoarsely against his lips. “I want you.”

  “You have me,” he responded, and with one swift movement he was inside her.

  They moved in each other’s arms like a pair of slippery seals in the steamy water, mouths meeting, parting, meeting again. With his every thrust Nicole felt as if hot, erotic fibers

  Through a gauzy love haze, Nicole became vaguely aware of another kind of heat, emanating not from her own body but from Michael’s. She heard a subtle click. Michael’s mouth left hers and he took a ragged breath. Nicole glanced up and couldn’t prevent a sudden gasp. Michael’s blue eyes were burning red, his canine teeth were fangs, and he was looking at her with an expression that could only be called hungry.

  Nicole held her breath uncertainly. Their bodies were still joined. He wanted her blood; the one thing that, for so many reasons, she was terrified to give him.

  If he bites me, if he drinks too much and can’t stop himself, I could die, she thought.

  Heart pounding, Nicole stared back into his burning eyes. She loved him. She wanted him. She wanted to experience all the ways that he wanted her, to give him the pleasure he sought. And she trusted him not to hurt her.

  Wrapping a slippery hand behind Michael’s neck, she urged him closer.

  “Bite me,” she said softly.

  CHAPTER 17

  HE NEEDED NO FURTHER INVITATION. With fevered need, Michael lunged for her wet throat. Nicole need, Michael lunged for her wet throat. Nicole cried out at the first sharp prick of his teeth piercing her flesh, but just as quickly the pain dissipated, replaced by the warm, arousing, suckling sensation of his lips against her skin.

  What she felt next filled her with surprise. It was as if she could feel her own blood slowly emanating from her body and mingling at the point of contact with some delectable essence of his. A molten shiver ran through her as the exquisitely erotic exchange continued. As he drank, he moved inside her. Nicole gasped with pleasure as the twin forces simultaneously spread shock waves of intense, rising sensation within her body. She had never imagined a bliss so delirious as this.

  His mouth at her throat and his every thrust within brought her ever closer to the point of rapture. As she hovered on the brink of her sexual peak, Michael’s mouth moved up to cover hers once more. His lips and tongue tasted warm, tangy, and coppery. Moving together, they breached the pinnacle of ecstasy, gasping with pleasure as their two souls became one.

  “I SHOULDN’T HAVE BITTEN YOU,” Michael said, regret in his voice.

  They were sitting on the carpet in the great room before the hearth. Nicole wore Michael’s soft, luxurious bathrobe with the cuffs rolled up several times, and he had thrown on a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. As Nicole ran his brush through her damp hair to dry it by the roaring fire, Michael’s eyes fell on the bite marks imprinted on her exposed throat, and she saw him wince.

  “I’m glad you did it,” she told him. She wondered now why the thought of him drinking her blood had seemed so frightening before. “I liked it. Very much, in fact.”

  “You’re supposed to like it,” Michael said grimly. “Here, let me mend the wound.”

  Gently, he pulled her backward in his arms until she was sitting in the V of his legs. Tilting her head to one side, he slowly, tenderly ran his moist tongue over the tiny wounds on her neck. Even under his light touch, Nicole’s pierced flesh smarted slightly, as if that spot were under the siege of a hundred needle points, just as it had when he’d cured the cut on her forehead the night before. Knowing what was coming, she relaxed in his embrace, holding the hairbrush in her lap.

  “It’s part of the higher plan, I think,” Michael went on, his tongue lapping against her sensitive flesh. Soon the barbed, stinging sensation waned and altered int
o something sweet and ticklish, as if he were stroking her with the tip of a feather. A giggle bubbled up from her chest, followed by a calm, lethargic warmth and a sense of well-being as the tickling finally eased.

  Nicole felt her neck; the marks were gone. She gazed up at him with a smile. “Thank you. What higher plan?”

  “The blood exchange, I believe, is designed so that people will enjoy it. It’s just like sex. Why do you think lovemaking is so pleasurable? It’s to ensure the continuation of the species.”

  “The continuation of the species?” Nicole’s pulse skittered as she sat up and turned to face him on the carpet. “What are you saying? I know you were worried that you’d take too much blood. You didn’t. You stopped. But if you had kept drinking—?”

  He reached out to gently stroke her cheek. “Don’t worry, my darling. I shouldn’t have taken your blood; I vowed that I wouldn’t, and I promise I won’t do it again. But if I drink from you—that, on its own, wouldn’t make you a vampire.”

  “That’s right,” she nodded. “To become like you, I’d have to be near death and then drink your blood, wouldn’t I? The way you drank from . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much blood would I have to drink to . . . ?”

  He pulled his hand away, frowning. “Don’t ask. Don’t even think about it.”

  Michael took the hairbrush from Nicole’s hand and asked her to turn around again. She settled on the floor cross-legged

  Michael said, “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve told you my history. But when it comes to talking about yourself, you’ve been very reticent.”

  “Have I?” she asked, knowing full well that it was true.

  “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I got the distinct impression that you don’t find your current line of work very fulfilling. Not to mention that it seems a bit beneath your abilities and talents.”

  Nicole’s cheeks grew warm but she didn’t reply.

  “When I asked what you did before that job, you didn’t answer, and you seem to have been avoiding the topic ever since.”

  “A lady doesn’t like to talk about herself,” Nicole said lightly, hoping he would change the subject. But he didn’t.

  “The first night we spoke, you told me how much you loved children and that you dreamed of working with them one day. Yesterday, you said you once thought about becoming a doctor. What happened to that dream?”

  Nicole didn’t respond immediately. The fire crackled. The clock ticked. The brush tugged and glided through her hair. Michael remained silent, waiting. Unable to think of a way to gracefully avoid his question, Nicole sighed and said, “Actually I did pursue it for a while. I went to college fully expecting that I’d become a pediatrician.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded. “I graduated from high school at seventeen, got a scholarship to a great university, and began my undergrad studies with a premed focus. I took all the difficult prerequisite classes that are supposed to weed out people. I did very well academically, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “I really didn’t enjoy the people I was with. There was this hypercompetitive component. People actually celebrated when someone else flunked a test or dropped out—and I’m not that way.”

  “You wanted everyone to do well.”

  “Yes. In that cutthroat environment, I was miserable. In my second year of college I went to the health center with strep throat and was seen by a nurse practitioner. She was fantastic and had about a hundred letters embroidered on her lab coat after her name. I asked what the letters meant, and she was really kind, told me all about it—that RN was registered nurse, BSN meant she had a bachelor’s degree in science and nursing, MSN was her master’s, and ARNP was for advanced registered nurse practitioner. At the end of my visit, she said, ‘You’re premed, aren’t you?’ And I said yes. ‘You hate it, huh?’ she asked. I admitted I did. She said: ‘You know, there are about a zillion other ways to go into health care without being a physician.’ A huge lightbulb came on for me. I realized that I could have a fulfilling career in the medical profession and still work with kids by becoming a pediatric nurse.”

  Michael’s brush strokes continued to pull pleasingly through her hair. “A pediatric nurse? That sounds like the ideal profession for you.”

  “I thought so too, at the time. Due to the shift work that’s common in the nursing profession, it seemed like it would work with my other hope, to become a mother and raise a family of my own. Within a month I’d looked into nursing programs all over the country and applied for a transfer. At the end of my second year I moved up to Seattle to go to nursing school. Even though I’d taken all those premed courses, I had to make up a whole bunch of nursing prerequisites. I took an extra heavy course load every semester and attended summer school so that I could still get my undergrad degree in four years.”

  “So you did graduate? You became a nurse?” he asked, surprised.

  “Yes.” She ran her fingers through her hair, which was now almost completely dry, and turned around to face him where they sat. “I took a job at Puget Sound Children’s Hospital in the pediatric oncology unit—”

  “Oncology?” His eyebrows lifted and she thought she detected admiration in his gaze.

  “I worked on a hematology, oncology, and bone marrow transplant floor, responsible for between three and six patients per shift.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “I loved it. The kids would check in and stay for weeks or months at a time. We really got to know people, so when we experienced a loss, it was a huge loss, and it was stressful. But the kids were such fighters. It meant so much to me to be a part of returning children to health, young people who still had their whole lives ahead of them—or in the terminal cases, helping them through a difficult illness with affection and respect.

  “What about the parents?”

  “They were the ones you had to peel off the ceiling. And that’s one of the things I loved about pediatric nursing: that the kid is the centerpiece but you’re really taking care of the whole family. You have to tailor your caring and the way you’re delivering your nursing to many different family members with many different needs. It was a wonderful balance for me, where I could act like a kid and do goofy knock-knock jokes all day, and then go become an adult when I talked with their mom and dad.”

  “When I was a physician,” Michael said, “cancer was an even bigger mystery than it is today. There was no real way to treat it. The survival rate was negligible. There’s still so much about that terrible disease that we don’t understand, but at least there have been some breakthroughs. It must be thrilling to know that you have the power now to cure certain cases.”

  “Yes! So many times, at a party someone would ask, ‘what do you do?’ When I said ‘I’m a pediatric oncology nurse,’ they’d just want to walk away. I spent a lot of time telling people, ‘it’s actually a lot more hopeful than you think.’ Granted, bone

  Michael hesitated, as if weighing his next words carefully. “I would imagine that, even loving nursing as much as you did, a specialty like oncology must have been . . . very difficult at times.”

  “It was. I worked at a very renowned center. Kids who couldn’t be cured with traditional chemo came from all over the country and the world to have last-chance treatments, and they were expecting miracles from us. That didn’t happen very often. That was really hard. And it’s never easy when you—” She broke off suddenly, her stomach seizing as the memory came crashing back, and with it all the horror and stress of everything that followed.

  She felt him studying her as she picked at the carpet, struggling desperately to reassemble her thoughts. At length, he said, “I’ve heard a saying: ‘Nurses eat their young.’ That older nurses make it difficult for younger ones, who really have to earn their stripes. Is that true?”

  “There is that perception,” she agreed. “I don’t know why. I never once encountered
that issue, nor have any of the people I know. There was no hazing when I first started. I was never bullied. I was surrounded by extremely supportive and professional people. I had a network of four nurses I had graduated with, and we became very close friends. We all worked weird swing shifts, so we’d get together at bizarre hours, meet for drinks at midnight or for dinner at 9:30 PM before someone started the night shift at 11:00. We helped each other cope. And we loved to ski.”

  “To ski?”

  “We used to make our schedules fit with each other’s and get season passes to a mountain resort close to us in Seattle. We spent a lot of our days off skiing.”

  “That sounds like a great outlet.”

  “It was—a place I could go to get away from the stress and tension and just let loose, so that I was clear-headed and raring to go when I got back to work.”

  He smiled. “I’ll bet you were a wonderful nurse.”

  “Well, I don’t know how wonderful I was, but I always tried to do whatever I could to make the children’s experience in the hospital a little more pleasant, to help them understand and be okay with their diagnosis, tolerant of their treatment, and actually come up smiling. I used to ask what their favorite color was and buy them a bright knit cap or new do-rag in that color to cover their bald heads—that often cheered them up. But some of the children were very introverted and had a lot of trouble opening up and responding.”

  “Such as?”

  “I remember one patient—a darling five-year-old girl with leukemia. She was a Native American from Alaska who spoke very little English. She was shy, in pain, and traumatized, and for weeks she would hardly look at me. I tried to explain to her about the Make-A-Wish Foundation—they grant wishes for kids who’ve been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, whether their prognosis is hopeful or terminal—but she didn’t understand. I brought in a translator, I bought her toys and a hat and a doll, but she still wouldn’t come out of her shell and she wasn’t responding to treatment; she was going downhill. I couldn’t think of what else to do.