I felt like I was walking on a cloud weeks after Beltane. Somehow, I just felt suffused with a joy and zeal for life that I just didn't ever truly feel... and it was noticeable.
My daughter seemed more inclined to ask after me than she ever had before... it had not ever occurred to me how often the family saw me as emotionally closed off, trying to understand and contain the chaos in my own head, that I had actually,
instead, been shutting myself away from the people that loved me, so scared was I to hurt them. My husband saw the change in me too, even going so far as to ask what brought this evolution on.
"The Devil made me do it," I responded with a smile and proceeded to tell him the complete story about the strange little spellbook and my compact with the fallen angel.
Naturally, he was concerned. I mean, what else could you be when your wife tells you she made a deal with the Devil? Still, as I continued to explain all of the details, our dates, and finally that I was not the only person in this flesh that had fallen pretty hard.
"REALLY?" Sean's eyebrows lifted so high in surprise it was almost cartoonish. "Evangeline? And here I thought she would be the more reserved between you... she always has been."
It was always like this when we discussed my other side. He accepted well enough, could even sometimes tell it was her that wanted him and not me. But her feelings for Sean, so far as I had ever gathered, were lust mixed with tolerance for him. She loved to fuck him. Adored the few times she had been brought to heel by him, but resented he wasn't interested in anything she was and on the rare occasions that he catered to her desires, it was fleeting and never lasted as he preferred to worship the woman he chose... not the one that he got saddled with by random happenstance.
It was uncharitable to say he didn't like Evangeline. It was truer to say that he wasn't overly fond of the parts of my personality that she embodied and came to the surface for. He didn't see Evangeline as a whole other person; he saw her as a part of me that had been given a new name, as if to say when I painted, I then went by my artist name in public rather than my own.
And I will be honest, I had thus far managed to avoid any real therapy to know if his take on it was more correct than my own that Evangeline was the sister I never wanted, and we only had one body to wear. Sometimes, I got to wear it and be in charge... sometimes I got to stay home and nap while Evangeline was out dancing and making mischief. If I was lucky, she live streamed her evening so I knew what happened. We had developed an agreement over the years. I would let her watch me and Sean, even let her ride shotgun and offer suggestions of what she might desire (provided I kept it quiet it was her desire, as she seemed to really think Sean didn't see her... or want to). And when she chose a partner, she shared with me. Sometimes I wondered if I did have memory gaps with certain partners if it meant she was engaging in some sort of play I might have problems with. But I knew her purpose was to protect me, so I wasn't too worried if she hid something from me so long as it was something that stayed between her and our lover and wouldn't cause me embarrassment in the future.
Sean kissed my temple and ran a hand through my hair, his warm caramel brown eyes on mine. "Be careful, love. Few wind up unchanged when they mess with the Gods. Fewer still are changed for the better."
"He doesn't feel evil," I said honestly. "He seems... lonely."
Sean shook his head with a sigh. "Always the champion for the irredeemable monsters of the world, my beauty?" He gave an indulgent, loving smile and kissed my lips while caressing my cheek and I leaned into his chest, letting him take my weight a little as I wrapped my arms around his neck.
I knew what he meant. I had a long standing love of the story of Beauty and the Beast. Not just the Disney version but any love story where the heroine has to find a hero in the heart of a monster. Sometimes they are physically bestial, like in the Disney cartoon. Sometimes their form didn't make them monsters per se, just what if demanded that they do to live, like any romantic paranormal story. I think that is why I have always loved vampires. Ever since Anne Rice in the late 70s, vampires had become the new misunderstood monster. Sometimes what made someone a monster was a misperception by society. Sometimes they just didn't emote or were sociopathic and chance of redemption seems impossible... and sometimes it is.
I had a weakness for monsters, and my husband knew it. The irony was that I had ended up with him, and he was so far from being a monster or needing redemption. He was completely, genuinely *good*. I was the monster.
My desire to mend the broken often shattered my own heart. I had never learned when someone didn't want to be saved or redeemed. Some were unrepentant... Knowing the difference often eluded me.
"Maybe," I conceded, ever the sucker for a monster to save. And Sean knew it. He knew me. And that was why, despite the misalignment we had about a few key factors in our physical makeups, like my insatiable nature and his own which could often verge on Asexuality, he was still my best friend, my playmate, my confidant, my partner in crime... he also just happened to let me fuck him two or three times weekly. And while I got terribly excited when it got to be more than that due to the lack of child in the home (I'm looking at *you* summer camp weeks!), sex was not the primary focus or even what cemented our marriage together. It was more than that. It was a sense of lust, love, appreciation, trust, devotion, kinship, and respect that created the solid platform on which we built our marriage.
He had had many an opportunity to see me lose my heart to a monster and get it broken. And he was always the one who picked up the pieces, held me and put me back together after. That was true love. Letting me be who I was, even when he didn't understand the basic forces that drove me to needing multiple lovers. Most men, one imagines, would love the idea of his wife wanting to have sex all of the time. Some men would take my need to have multiple partners as a way to hook up with more than one person at a time.
Sean just... was happy I always wanted sex when he did. When we did have sex, I always treated it like I hadn't had him in months and I missed him... because sometimes that was accurate. I had told him if he wanted another partner the only reason I would be upset was because I wanted sex at least six times the amount he did. While I was fine if he wanted another lover, I just wanted to play too! Any chance to fuck him more!
He was the one man I had ever been with that didn't have a monstrous bone in his body. Or so *I* said, but he frequently reminded me I didn't know him in his angry teen years. When we met, he had been twenty seven and I, a twenty year old girl fresh to his little city, but hardly inexperienced or naive. We met playing a role play game, and he played someone who was his exact opposite; a cold, calculating, selfish part-time villain of a character. I had let Ev take the wheel when we played and our character was essentially herself. It was the darkness that he exuded playing his character that caught her attention. I think she felt like it was a bait and switch sometimes... she fantasized about who he pretended to be, not who he was at home. But that character, I reminded her, aware of pains in his past that helped create that persona for him, it came from *somewhere*. It was apart of him, as she was of me. And sometimes... sometimes I could see a little flash of that darkness in him and when I did... well... Frankly, it made me wet. It made *US* wet, which was so much more succulent... like finally, all of my nerves were turned on when before I'd only been able to access fifty percent. Just thinking about it now, that look and how much he aroused me when he was dark and serious, I felt my heart skip a beat and my pussy spasm, longing for his thick cock.
Something must have shown in my face, because his lovely caramel brown eyes darkened, just I had imagined a moment before, and I swear I felt myself suddenly drench my panties.