A Birthday Outtake from Amelie Gray

This is an outtake from my story Beyond the Seventh Circle, specially written for Kari. I hope she enjoys.

* * *

I wish it wasn’t you.

You straddle me, iron and stone and chilled fingers slowly peeling the protective layers of clothing away from my chest. You could strip me down if you wanted, as I lie here weak and subdued beneath you. I am at your will, the way that you want me, but in body, not in spirit.

You want me to want you, smirking as my lips part and my eyes flutter closed when your finger traces over my collarbone. Even as the thought repulses me – that familiar squirming feeling, worms forming a knot of disgust, nausea forcing bile up my throat as I stare up into your sharp red eyes – I cannot help but see what the other girls admire in you; the perfectly sculpted vampiric beauty of you, the features meant to draw your victims in.

Your face.

Your smell.

The way your voice drops low as you whisper my name, sweet nectar and honey masking the bitter taste of arsenic.

Bella.
Take me in.
Let yourself go.

I do not answer your deliberate words. Even if I wanted to, your touch erases my presence of mind.

Your lips press against my neck, and I can feel the rasp of your tongue, slick ice tracing the goosebumps on my chilled flesh. I’m sure you feel my pulse, pounding double-time, quick drum beats to a rhythm of fear and anticipation.

We both know that I cannot win tonight.

We both know that you control me.

And for this moment, I resign.

Your teeth sink through my fragile skin, and the prick of pain is like the quick pierce of a needle, before your tongue is there to soothe it. The venom of your mouth is like a healing salve against the open wound, as your lips close around it and you moan through a mouthful of blood. My eyes are clenched shut, but I am dimly aware of the soft trickling, the slurping, and the hum of a starving man receiving sustenance.

I am the dying deer trapped beneath the body of a mountain lion.

But where the predator’s jaws are clamped around me, there is suddenly a moment of ease – a sensation of pleasure. It feels ethereal, comforting in a way that clouds my senses. For a moment, I forget where we are.

I forget who we are.

I part my lips, and my hand reaches up for you, and in that brief suspended moment you are nothing more than a man. A man whose lips are gossamer-soft. A man whose hands stroke down my skin with the touch of a lover.

In this moment, I would die happy knowing that my skin was the last you ever tasted.

You are nothing like the others: the creatures of your type with the impenetrable skin and hungry eyes. They are scourges of death who reached for me in the darkness of the apartment building stairwell, with all the intention of leaving me there. Dead. Drained. Beyond the reach of Sam’s medical equipment or Jacob’s edicts.

You came and stepped through Circe’s veil, stole the Golden Fleece from beneath the nose of the watchful beasts. You were everything I believed I could overcome. I was foolhardy and proud, a simple girl with easily destroyed guardians. A queen destined to fall off her throne.

I wish it wasn’t you.

I wish it were someone else who stirred me to feel this way.