Choosing Eternity

by Bridget Essex

  So I did exactly this. I wrapped my arms about her neck, pulling her down to me, and when our mouths met, there was a brightness all around me and through me as she opened her mouth, as her tongue entered me, laving me, asking and taking what I gave. I whimpered beneath her as she began to move faster, her fingers curling up and into me, the heel of her hand pressing, pressing…

  I could feel the length of her fangs, pressing down into my lower lip, but they were not noticeably sharp, and they did not cut me. I moaned into her mouth, and tilted my head back then, for the intensity of it was almost too much…

  My eyes were tightly closed, and Kane did not stop with her rhythm, but she did lower her weight onto me. I wrapped my arms about her tightly, and I realized, opening my eyes, that she was lifting her other wrist to her mouth.

  When she bit her wrist, I gasped. The motion was almost clinical with precision, nothing wild or animalistic at all. Kane did not wince—she made no motion that it pained her at all, though I know now that it must have, and greatly. Instead, she gazed down at me, and her eyes, still dark with desire, also now held something else…something so evident as I gazed up at her.

  Love.

  She was looking down at me with love.

  “Are you ready?” she whispered to me.

  I stayed that way for a long moment, simply panting beneath her, simply feeling her fingers fill me, the heel of her hand hard against my clit, waves of pleasure rolling through me.

  And then I whispered:

  “Yes.”

  So Kane offered her wrist to me, the blood pooling up out of the wound, dark in the half-light of the room.

  I closed my eyes, I opened my mouth, and I drew her wrist to me.

  And I drank.

  I had done this once before, but what I remembered of that time was really…nothing. Only so much darkness. So, beneath her, upon the bed, everything was sensation as I lifted my chin and licked the blood off her wrist, sucking slowly and gently at the wound.

  The blood tasted simply like blood, metal and sharp in my mouth, and I closed my eyes, drinking deeper. I didn’t know how much I should drink or what else I should do, so I waited for Kane to tell me to stop…to tell me that this was enough, that I’d gotten what I needed.

  But she did not.

  It became sensual, my licking at her wound, my devouring her blood. Her skin was cool against my mouth, the perfume of all that she was surrounding me, her hair caressing me with a softness that made pleasure radiate out of my skin like light. I drank her blood, and I drank it deeply…

  And I kept drinking.

  Everything began to feel…honestly, I know it sounds strange, but the only way I can think to describe it is…“more.” Everything began to feel “more,” and bigger and brighter and better. The cologne that Kane always wore, that jasmine and dark vanilla and unnamable spice…it began to be all encompassing. The scent of her skin, what made Kane…Kane, filled my nostrils, but it also seemed to seep into my skin. I began to take in Kane, began to truly merge with her, and it was beautiful, as she moved her fingers in and out of me, as I lapped up her blood, as we began to tangle, the two of us.

  But that wasn’t true, then…because there was no “two.” There was only an us, Kane and I, forever entwined.

  I gasped, opening my eyes, and I stared, wide eyed, past Kane’s beautiful face above me, at the ceiling. I knew that there was a ceiling above me, obviously—we were inside a room in the Sullivan Hotel. We’d not suddenly been transported outside. But it seemed as if there was no ceiling, at that moment. There were only stars, uncountable stars, and an aurora borealis made up of intoxicating colors, sweeping together like the train of a dress, like a woman’s skirts, rising over her thighs…God, it was glorious as I watched the aurora move, as I watched the stars peek out from among the glorious colors, pulsing with a bright and dazzling light…

  But even with all this glory above me…I couldn’t look at it for too long. Because there was Kane, with her beautiful blue eyes looking down at me as if I was the whole universe itself…

  As the orgasm began to build inside of me, I felt…untethered. The only thing that kept me from floating away was Kane above me, her hips pressed into my hips, her heart over my heart. As I let her wrist fall from my grasp, as my hands fell back onto the coverlet and my back arched under me, as the orgasm mounted, higher and harder and brighter and fuller, inside of me…

  I felt as if every part of my being was exploding into a million incandescent points of light.

  And then, I closed my eyes, gasping into the stillness, and when I closed my eyes, there was red, red everywhere.

  And I don’t remember anything else.

  ---

  The first thing I saw was her.

  Kane.

  She arched over me, her brows furrowed, her beautiful, full mouth downturned into a saddened frown. Her long lashes fluttered against pale cheeks as she gathered me to her, as she whispered my name over and over again.

  “Rose,” she murmured, breathing that syllable into my skin. There was anguish in every line and curve of her, and I didn’t understand why she was so upset.

  I tried to say something, to speak her name, to tell her I was all right, not to worry, that everything was okay…

  But I could make no sound.

  I could do nothing but stare at her.

  I couldn’t move at all, not even the slightest twitch of muscle.

  And that’s when I realized that things might, in fact, not be all right.

  Panic consumed me, a bright bolt of it exploding in my heart as I tried to get my limbs to respond to my signals: all I wanted to do was reach up my right hand and cup the side of her face gently, that’s it, but I found that I couldn’t get a single finger to respond to the simple command. What? Why couldn’t I move? What in the world was wrong with me?

  The fear began to eat me up in larger and larger bites, fear and panic cresting through every vein I possessed…but maybe it was something else besides the fear. Because fear didn’t feel like electricity, surging through every single one of my veins, thrumming just below my skin…

  Right?

  I glanced up at Kane, my eyes wide and full of panic, but at the exact time that I thought I might explode from the panic and the electricity pulsing through me, all at the same time…

  I realized that Kane was holding me tightly.

  I could feel her hands on me.

  I could finally feel something.

  I gasped for breath, and I found that now I could blessedly move as I doubled over, lying on my side on the bed as Kane let me go, gently lowering me down to the coverlet and spooning me from behind, wrapping her strong arms tightly about me.

  “Rose…listen to me,” she murmured as I panted, as I writhed on that coverlet, the electricity dazzling through my veins, through every inch of my skin, winding through my bones. It hurt… But I could feel her, strong and steady and pressing hard against me, and it seemed that this was the only thing anchoring me to earth at that moment…

  “Rose,” she whispered into my ear, “sh, sh… This only lasts for a minute…just a minute,” she crooned to me, smoothing the hair off my forehead. “Just…try to relax, my darling…just…try to relax.”

  My spine snapped behind me, and I shrieked. Every bone inside of me felt like the electricity was picking it apart into tiny bone fragments, bone shrapnel hurtling through my muscle and sinew now, through my skin itself. I felt like my entire body was going to explode into the tiniest particles, disintegrating into nothingness.

  The pain became too enormous, too astronomically impossible to contain.

  The pain became unbearable.

  And just as it became unbearable…

  It stopped.

  I panted, groaning into the comforter, gripping it tightly in palms that were damp with sweat as Kane held tightly to me, her breathing slow, even. I listened to that breathing, felt her chest rise and fall against me, and I closed my eyes, tried to match it. But
I still panted for a long moment, simply lying there, my eyes closed tightly, my face pressed to the bed.

  I felt the mattress compress behind me, and Kane rose, her arms no longer grasping me. I looked up, and then Kane was bending over me, her face smoothed into a beautiful expression of relief as she gently—oh-so-gently—wrapped her arms about me again and drew me back into her lap. I was a tangle of limbs as she held me close, and I collapsed against her, feeling boneless…there was nothing in me that was strong just then, so I hung limp in her arms.

  And Kane held me there with a quiet tenderness that felt profound. Her bright blue eyes were narrowed with concern as she gazed down at me, but when I looked up, when I met that gaze, she visibly relaxed, cradling me closer.

  I closed my eyes tightly, reached up and gripped the collar of her dress shirt, beneath the suit jacket. I clung to it like a lifeline, like I was drowning and a rope had been offered to me, and I would survive if only I held tightly enough to it.

  If only I held tightly enough to her.

  “I’ve got you,” Kane whispered to me. She brought her mouth to the top of my head, inhaled deeply, kissed me there. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and one drifted down her pale cheek to fall off her jaw, dropping to my own skin.

  I reached up gingerly, weakly, and I furrowed my brow.

  I brushed my fingertips over her cheek.

  It was…warm.

  I lifted my hand, stared down at my palm, flexed my fingers and gazed at them with wonder before I cupped her cheek, pressing my palm to her skin.

  She was warm.

  “What…” I began, but Kane shook her head, gave me a soft, sad smile.

  “Save your strength. Don’t speak yet,” she told me, her tone gentle. “Just…wait.”

  I picked up her hand, turned it over, gazed at the wound that was so ugly on the lovely skin of her wrist. I frowned. I thought the wound should already be healing—but it wasn’t. It was still there, a mar upon her loveliness, the blood no longer visible, but the wound an ugly gash of a gruesome smile on her skin.

  “Why…aren’t you healing?” I tried, then gasped, feeling weakness flooding me, seeing red prick at the corners of my vision as if unconsciousness wanted to take me once again, just for speaking those simple words.

  “Sh,” said Kane, pressing a warm finger to my mouth. “Beloved, please…”

  “Are you…all right?” I managed, lifting my gaze to hers.

  She smiled down at me, warmth radiating from her features. I felt the warmth of her fingertip against my mouth, and it was delicious.

  “It takes a little longer to heal when I’ve given blood to someone,” said Kane with a small shrug. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine soon.”

  I closed my eyes again, breathed out. Kane held me so tightly, so closely…I could hardly move, could hardly speak, but I was cradled by her, and I felt that, felt that deeply.

  I was safe in these arms.

  She was my sanctuary.

  Outside of her embrace, the world seemed so cold and dark, a strange conglomeration of shadows and blackness. I could hardly see anything past Kane’s face—my eyes couldn’t really adjust beyond her, and I was fine with that. So I hung here, suspended in her embrace, weightless and weak and entirely unafraid.

  Because she was with me.

  “All right, beautiful,” said Kane gently, then. I don’t know how long it was until those words. It could have been eternity or a handful of moments. Time passed strangely now, it seemed. Slower.

  Kane helped me into a sitting position. I was still naked as I arranged my limbs, sitting cross-legged in front of her, trying to straighten my back a little. I winced. Every motion was so hard to do, but as I moved upward, straightening, it was almost as if I was a very rusty machine, and something had greased all of my axels.

  The more I moved, the easier it was to move.

  Kane smiled at me once I was fully upright. She sat back on her heels on the bed, her knees touching my own as she observed me. She reached out, took my hands in hers, and I stared down at our fingers, twined together, in astonishment.

  “How are you warm?” I whispered to her in wonder, lifting up her hands and turning them in my palms.

  I leaned down and brushed my mouth against her palm, then, and a thrill raced through me.

  Warm.

  I inhaled the perfume of her skin, so much brighter now, it seemed.

  Kane chuckled above me, and I straightened up to look in those beautiful blue eyes, surprised.

  “I am not warm,” she said, almost a little sadly. “You are cold now.”

  I looked down at my hands, and I curled them into fists, flexing my fingers. “I don’t feel cold,” I told her, looking up, and she shook her head.

  “No,” she answered with a little shrug. “But you will feel cold to a human.”

  “Because…I’m no longer human,” I murmured, gazing down at my hands again.

  That was the strangest thing I’d ever said, and I tasted the words on my tongue in wonder.

  I was no longer human.

  I was a vampire.

  I reached up, and then I pressed the pads of my thumbs to the points of my teeth, my incisors. But they weren’t sharp. In fact, they were exactly as I remembered them being, and I looked to Kane, unsure.

  “Yes…you’re like me,” she said gently. “But…we have to test you before we leave these rooms. Just in case. I want to make certain you’re safe, Rose. I want to make certain that…it took.”

  “Test me?” I asked, perplexed.

  “I have to make sure you’re a vampire,” she said, searching my face. “Are you feeling stronger?”

  I curled my hands into fists again and uncurled them, looking down to watch my fingers work…slowly, but steadily. I nodded, looking up at her again.

  “All right,” she murmured, and then she raised a brow, put her head to the side, a brilliant smile passed over her face. “The easiest way to see if you’ve truly changed is to make your fangs grow.”

  Her eyes began to darken a little as I watched her, and my mouth parted.

  It was instantaneous, the desire that shot through me, bright and incandescent as fireworks exploding in a starless sky.

  Kane reached up to me and placed the tip of her forefinger against the pulse in my neck. It danced under my skin—the blood had begun to move quickly through me again, finding a faster rhythm as Kane simply gazed at me with a powerful want that left me breathless. As her forefinger began to drift softly, softly down my neck, I felt myself shiver against her.

  Kane was resplendent in her now quite wrinkled suit. And I was naked before her. The dazzling sensuality of her skin against mine, of the soft shush of her hair over her shoulder as she leaned forward, as she bent her beautiful head, as she placed a single, warm kiss against the skin of my neck made me gasp out into the stillness.

  I gasped out, and then…

  I felt something against my lower lip.

  I stiffened against Kane, and she straightened up, gazing at me, nodding.

  “You are,” she whispered, and there was a curious expression on her face, something I couldn’t quite place.

  It was happiness and regret, all mixed together into solemn loveliness.

  I reached up, shocked, and I felt my teeth.

  I winced as the pad of my thumb brushed over one incisor…

  It was longer than before.

  And sharp, as sharp as a knife in my mouth.

  “I…” I felt for the other, and there it was. I pushed myself off the bed and wavered for a moment when I finally got to my feet. The room seemed to be spinning beneath me, but getting my bearings took only a handful of seconds.

  There was a bathroom off of Bran’s bedroom. I walked carefully, like I was stepping on eggshells, to get there, and by the time I reached the bathroom door, I found that the way I was walking was almost normal again. Still a little haphazard, but I don’t think anyone looking at me would have noticed anything strange in t
he way I moved.

  I was starting to warm up, starting to feel more like myself.

  But that ended then.

  I flicked on the light, and I stared at myself in the mirror.

  I exhaled in a gasp.

  What stared back at me was…not exactly what you think you’ll look like on your wedding night.

  There was blood on my face, on my neck, spatters of it. In the low light of Bran’s room, as Kane and I had moved together…I’d been too preoccupied to notice how the blood flowed out of Kane’s wrist…but, of course, it wouldn’t be a single, smooth trickle. Her fangs had ripped into her skin, and the wound was jagged and ugly. The blood that came from it flowed fast, and I’d taken in as much as I could…

  And the rest had gotten everywhere like some gruesome special effects in a vampire movie. But this wasn’t a movie, I mused, as I reached up, as my bloody fingers—the blood dry and flaking now—passed over my bloody face.

  My eyes were as dark as Kane’s, I could see clearly in the mirror.

  And my fangs were long and sharp.

  I watched my reflection reach up and press the pads of my thumbs to the points of the fangs again. I winced at the sharpness of it. I leaned forward in the mirror, leaning in to look closer at my eyes.

  As black as a moonless night.

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” asked Kane from the doorway. She leaned on the bathroom doorframe, her arms folded in front of her. She pushed off from the frame and moved quietly over to my side. She reached up now, and she drew a fingertip over my bloody lips. She gazed down at me with nothing but love in her too blue eyes. “Interesting,” she repeated in a murmur, “how everything is the same…but also so very different.”

  And she was right. This close to me, I was able to appreciate the fact that I could hear Kane’s blood beating loudly in her veins. I could hear it, something that would have been impossible unless my ear was pressed to her heart. I could smell everything about her, the scent of the blood drying on her wrist, the scent of her perfume, of her skin. These were things I noticed about her, because I loved her and was drawn to her…but they were clear now, and strong, even a vast distance away from her. The scent, as strong as it was, was not overpowering.