It had happened late in the eighteenth century, in England, at an unexpectedly debauched bacchanale held at the behest of the Prince Regent. I was a poor younger cousin down from Scotland, almost on the shelf at nineteen, but pretty enough to catch the regent's eye, so pretty enough to be asked. After Scotland's restrictions, London was something to get drunk on. It competed with my books and studies in a way the narrow society of home never had, even in places where Calvinism found small purchase.
I hoped, frankly, to find a wealthy protector to keep me in books and conversation, who would understand about not turning me into a brood mare, something I knew well I couldn't count on a husband to do. So I was - at this particular soiree - looking for trouble. But it found me first, in a most astounding way. My career as a vampire, and for a spell as an actress, stemmed from that night. On the whole, though, and in retrospect, I really couldn't complain.
I went to that party hoping to become someone's investment. There were men, I knew, who liked an intelligent woman's company, who didn't want to be burdened with a family, and who were willing to pay for their pleasure. One of those was what I had in mind. He materialized at my elbow in the guise of visiting royalty -- a foreign count, pale and dark eyed, aquiline of feature. I really found him very beautiful. That was, perhaps, why I agreed to continue our conversation by strolling in the extensive grounds of the house to which the festivities had been transported.
I suppose I was lucky not to be left for dead. Conrad told me later that he saw me immediately as a candidate for conversion. A life of the mind, he said, was essential for immortality. Dullards went mad or got caught. They hadn't the resources to enjoy the passage of decade after decade. So I was spirited away, across the grounds to a waiting coach. Or so I was told. Being near death at the time, I wasn't cognizant of events. Conrad took me to his townhouse, located in an ostentatious but less-than-respectable part of town, and proceeded to effect the transformation. I was exceedingly annoyed with him. For weeks. I had not been in the habit of killing innocents and I was not about to start. We finally achieved a compromise on criminals and enterprising prospective rapists. Nowadays, of course, there are blood banks.
I first met you a good thirty years after my transformation, on journey intended to facilitate an investment in Scottish real estate and intended even more to create a bolthole if things should become to hot in urban areas. I posed as Lady Whimsy, an eccentric British woman with a taste for nature. I'd purchased a castle in the neighborhood and had it refurbished and renovated via my agent (vampires have splendid luck as the beneficiaries of wills and so on) and I had finally arrived to reconnoiter in person. You were a local landowner, someone I should know. I was interested in purchasing some of your pastureland -- it bordered my estate and there was every reason to try for even more privacy than I presently had. Or that was what I thought until I met you one evening in town. Your shoulders alone made me reconsider my position. What woman would want space between herself and shoulders like that? Shortly after we were introduced, I asked you to tea. A very late tea. The sun set quite early at that time of year.
I'd had the servants bake some scones (best to keep up the illusion of tea) and build up the fire before giving them the night off. The housekeeper had gone to visit her niece and the manservant had a room above the stables. The cook lived in town, and only came in for the day, or for dinner parties.
So I was the one to welcome you at the castle's big oak door, and to lead you down the stone passage, illuminated by innovative gaslight, into my study. A fire roared in the big stone fireplace to take off the chill, and a warm, thick red Persian rug lay across the cold stone flags. Two deep armchairs flanked a small table holding scones, a pot of honey, a pot of tea, and a flagon of whiskey. To take off any chill that was left. I hoped to remove that last bit of frost myself.
To that end, I'd worn a fine cambric blouse over a minimal cambric shift, both so fine as to be almost transparent. The blouse was tucked into a high-waisted full skirt that swirled as I moved and molded my waist to a nicety. As I stood before the fire, adding a little whiskey to your tea, I felt your eyes move up my waist to linger on my my breasts. I felt my nipples harden involuntarily, and heard a hiss of indrawn breath from you. The shiver ran through me like a flame held to an empty page. We spoke politely, but the heat, the feeling, made ordinariness more and more difficult.
Finally, when we'd caught ourselves gazing at one another for nearly a full minute without having said a word, I lifted my hands to my upswept hair and pulled out the pins, letting it tumble over my shoulders and down my back. Then, slowly, illuminated from behind by the firelight, I began to unfasten my blouse, lingering over each small button, listening to you breathe.
--
I can see you in the firelight. Realizing what I want. Realizing what will happen. My skirt slips with a whisper to the floor, the blouse falling silent after it. I stand in my shift, the lace so delicate that it is virtually transparent, so sheer that you can see the dark triangle of hair between my legs. I can hear your heart.
The pulse of that heart matches the pulse between my legs. You gaze at me intently. I am wanton, half-dressed, clad only in vapor-thin silk stockings, half-boots, and a shift that is slipping off my shoulders as I move toward you, revealing much more than it conceals. There. You're close enough to touch. I lean toward you, placing one booted foot between your legs and bending toward you so my lips are just a breath away from the pulse in your throat. Your heart grows louder, faster. I push your hair away from your face, untying the unnecessary tie, unbuttoning the collar on the equally unnecessary shirt, running my nails along the base of your neck and slipping a hand inside your shirt and over your heart. I can feel it beating now. Your hand slips of its own volition up my calf and then along the inside of my thigh, while your eyes remain locked on mine. I can barely breathe.
"Honey?" I ask huskily. "You forgot to put honey in your tea."
I dip my finger in the pot and smear the honey across your mouth. And you explode into action.
The honey came from hives I actually owned in the south of England and was made according to an old recipe of mine that included a lot of ginger. It was thick and pale yellow -- very sweet and very hot. That was something I noticed as you gripped me around the waist and kissed me with a concentrated intensity that made me lose what reflectivity I'd managed to retain in yielding to the feel of your tongue in my mouth.
Your shirt was on the floor in seconds, the kilt unwrapped and lying by its side in seconds more. The shift had been torn from my body early on. We were standing in one another's arms and your body was so hot against mine that I imagined it contained the entire sun, somehow, that you would burn me to a cinder with that heat and that hardness and that intensity before we were done. And I didn't care at all.
Face to face, skin on skin, burning in more than one way, I slide down your chest and envelop your cock in my mouth, startled by the size and the hardness, feeling you sway as your knees almost give way, feeling your hands tangle in my hair. I pause to look up and see you leaning back, eyes closed, and I glory in my temporary possession of so intimate a part of you. Then you gently extricate yourself, sinking to your knees and pushing me onto my back on the plush red carpet. I happily comply, posing for you, stretching my arms out over my head and arching my back, smiling at you as you kneel between my legs. I place one booted foot against your shoulder and you smile, so warmly that I feel myself dissolve impossibly further, and unlace it, kissing the calf at the side of your face, stroking the inside of my thigh in a way that almost stops my breathing. And then, my bare foot still on your shoulder, the other leg wrapped around your hip, you grasp me by the hips and plunge into me -- or perhaps it's that you lift and then impale me onto you -- in a single thrust. The sensation is exquisite -- so intense, almost painful, so overwhelming, that my vision swims. It is as if I was mortal again -- except that I'd never had a chance to do this as a mortal. It is as if the whole of nature were sweeping over me in your person. I am, in this instant, alive again.
Swept ashore on the crest of what seems a tidal wave of orgasm, I come to rest on the carpet before the fireplace, glowing like one of the embers in the grate, loving the feel of you shuddering to stillness inside me, loving the feel of you on top of me, your face buried in my neck. I've had the idea already, of course. But this brings it even more forcibly to mind. What a companion you'd make. But there are no words in this moment. Shuddering sighs from us both, and the crackle of the flames, the smell of the woodsmoke mingling with the bitter-herb smell of your sweat. I lie with you inside me, more contented than I can ever remember being, even before. And then, like magic, like a macrocosmic symbol of the thing I want more and more to do to you, I feel you coming alive inside me again -- bigger, harder, more urgent than before.
I can hear you listening to my breath, to the rhythm of my heart, waiting for me to come again, making it happen, so connected that it's as if we're joined down there. Every inch of you is like a furnace, warming me, heating me more and more. We come at once, my lips against the side of your neck, shuddering with the intensity of it, and you collapse briefly, hiding your face in my hair. After a time during which we do nothing but breathe and hold one another, you lean up on an elbow and look into my eyes.We smile, and it is as if our gaze were somehow palpable, connecting us physically even more than we already are.
"How would you like to live forever?" I ask.
No use in beating around the bush.
"How would I like what?"
You lean over me, still smiling, your long hair swooping over your shoulder like a dark wing.
"To live forever."
"Fine. And would you have a wee ring that could grant me wishes, or perhaps a magic carpet to take us to Fairyland in a year and a day?"
You're laughing at me. It pisses me off.
I eye the ceiling speculatively. My study had originally been part of a tower, and the ceiling here is so high along the outer wall that it disappears into the shadows. I sit up, dislodging you, ignoring the growl of protest.
