from "Silver and Blood"

An excerpt from a potential novel I've been working on for a few years.

There was a a stillness about him, a calmness she had never seen in a man before. She traced circles over his chest, spiraling across his chest, the hard skin smooth under her nail. Valmedrin did not move in his sleep, did not make a noise, didn't even breathe. She wasn’t even sure if he could awaken before nightfall. Here in this cave, how would he know when the suns set? The darkness of nightfall is the same as the darkness of the cave, isn’t it? She put the tip of her finger, softly, lightly on his eyelid, tracing the line of his eye. She felt the eye moving underneath the lid in deep dreaming, and she wondered what it was he dreamed. Would he dream of her? Did immortals dream of anything that a mortal could possibly understand? Would it be dreams of bloodlust, of love, lust, of war or pleasure? Would he have nightmares?

She leaned over and placed her head on his chest. His skin was so cold to the touch, but she could feel her warmth spread into it as she moved to lay down beside him. He did not move, nor did she hear any movement of heart or blood under his skin. She frowned a moment, wondering if it was natural to want to hear these things from a lover, but then remembered the touches and the kisses earlier, of how those things felt far more intense than those things she had felt with Jayrd. Surely, the knowledge of this intensity made up for the fact that, if she thought about it hard enough, Valmedrin was undead.

How long she lay there she couldn’t tell. The candles had all burned down hours ago. The pale light of the lichens was enough for her to see by. Even if it had not been there, she would still be able to see the glowing under his eyelids fluctuating as he slept. So she rested, her head on his chest, her ear cupped to his skin, the warmth of her body spreading through his. She smiled at this understanding, that her body was giving something back to him, something he could not have on his own. She was his warmth, his beacon of life, a life that did not run, that did not hate, that did not despise who or what he was. 

She became braver, moving her fingers on his body, over his skin, letting her nails scrape across his form. He did not move, though she noticed the light of his eyes change faster, changing through a broader range of colors, blues and purples and reds, and she scraped across all of his body, feeling the hardness of his skin under her fingertips. Despite the cold of his body, her own body felt warm, hot, burning, and she liked the reactions her touches caused as she brushed lightly at his waist and over the tops of his thighs and across the wrinkled flesh of his partial erection. She paused, daring herself to take it in her hand. Minutes, maybe even hours passed, and her hand hovered, moved back to his stomach, and back down and her indecision heightened and waned with each movement. She was poised, ready to grasp loosely, when Valmedrin moved in his sleep. It caused her to pause, wondering if she had made him move. She withdrew her hand, moving away from him, letting his body return slowly to its original position, his back on the floor of the cave, the rest of him facing the sky. He had told her he always slept like this so that Myshella might have a better chance of watching over him. As she looked at him, she understood why Myshella might indeed enjoy watching over this man, this beautiful man, and she felt a twinge of jealousy, and instantly forgot it, closing her eyes to say a small prayer to her goddess for allowing her to find this man, for allowing him to find her and fall in love. She thought she heard a small voice in her head, some small whispers of comfort, an acknowledgment that all would be well. Aloris found herself smiling at the thought that, perhaps, she and Myshella loved the same man.

In slow motion, she returned to stroking his skin, moving across his face, playing with his long, silver hair, twirling the wispy strands floating free from the leather thong that held the most of it back behind his head. It was fine hair, thin, but strong, like wire, and she could feel it cutting into her skin as she tugged on it. She did not flinch, but reveled in the sensations. Her entire body seemed poised, on edge, as if something had caused all of her nerve endings to shoot harder and faster as air and stone hit it. She had to smile more, knowing that it was Valmedrin who had caused this intensifying of her senses.

For minutes or hours, she didn’t know which, she barely breathed, sustained by the close presence of Valmedrin. She kept her eyes closed and spent the time learning his body with her fingers, the curves of his face and shoulders, the stone hardness of his skin, the way the hair of his chest twisted around her fingers, and the weight of him as she slid an arm under his head. He awoke with her staring into his eyes.

“Make love to me again.”

Her words were an order, despite the calm and excited tone. It was not one he wanted to resist or deny.

“Good evening, Aloris. Have you had a good day?”

“I have spent it next to you, you lovely man. And I am now needing you to make love to me. I feel I will die if you do not.”

She climbed on top of him, giving him no choice even if he had chosen to resist. He wrapped his arms around her as her body slid around him, pushing against him slowly, feeling him fill her, careful not to hurt herself too much too early in the love play. She rocked against him as he pushed upward and she smiled. She felt his mouth with her finger and he opened his lips, licking the underside of her finger with his tongue. She let him pull her finger into his mouth and took the opportunity to run her finger across his teeth. She felt them, his perfect teeth, nothing unhuman about them. There was certainly nothing unhuman about the love she felt from him.

Valmedrin did not question as Aloris’ finger slid across his teeth. He had the discipline to keep his vampyric incisors withdrawn, away from her skin. He sucked on her finger, tasting the water that had formed on her skin in the damp cave. He held a thought in his head to take her to a spring’s pool sometime tonight, to let her swim, to bathe, to cleanse, to frolic.

Aloris held him close, enjoyed having his arms around her, but wanted more, wanted to feel him on top of her. She pressed close to him, slowing her movements until she was still on top of him. Carefully, keeping her body on him, keeping him inside her, she rolled to her left, pulling him to his side, then on top of her. He moved smoothly, his hands pressed against the cave floor as her arms circled him, locking behind his shoulders, threaded between his body and his arms. She pressed her fingernails into his skin, hoping he could feel her. He smiled in response.

His movements at first were slow and careful, following her breathing, letting her blood set the rhythm. As her heart beat faster, so did he, pushing further, deeper, feeling her fingernails in his flesh. He moved faster over time, letting her body keep up. Aloris breathed in fits and starts and in ragged time with his movements. Her breathing was short and fast as she whispered to him.

“Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”

And Valmedrin didn’t. He continued to push against her, feeling her fingertips pressing into the muscles of his shoulders, her body pushing up against his own with every thrust. He increased the rhythm as she squeezed harder, slowed as her fingers relaxed. It was a game of follow the leader played in a close space, the lead impossible to follow, neither knowing if it was the other, or if they led each other. Aloris opened her eyes as she pressed her hips upward, watching several wayward silver hairs floating over her as Valmedrin pushed deeply and withdrew. She could not help herself as she watched his face, his eyes closed, though she could see a thin line of blue light glow leaking from the edge of eyelids. She moved one hand to the back of his head and pulled his lips to her own, controlling the kiss even as he controlled the lusts and love moving through the rest of her body. This kiss was hers, as selfish an act as can be shared between two people. She pulled on his lip, sucked hard on his tongue, promising so much even as her legs moved to wrap around his waist, allowing him even to push deeper. At the depths of one thrust, he stopped, holding deep within her, his back arched to press as closely as he could. She gasped as he filled her, her eyes and mouth open in the purest ecstasy, and wanting more, wanting this feeling to last forever.

The glow from Valmedrin’s eyes grew, still blue, cycling through the deepest of blues to the palest greys. It illuminated Aloris’ face and torso, giving the top of her breasts the strangest colorless hue, darkening the top of her areolae, the rest hidden, pressed against his chest. He could feel the tips of her nipples hardening even more under him.

And then he was moving again, and she was breathing again, and the pleasure filled them both even more, reaching the point of overflowing, but never flowing over, contained within their bodies, seemingly more than they could hold, but, together, capable of holding the flood and more. Aloris stretched, reaching backward, pressing her palms against the wall of the cave, feeling the stone push into the flesh of her hands, her whole body now so sensitive to every touch, even the touch of the rock sending flashes of pleasure to punctuate the rhythms of Valmedrin in and out of her. She pressed harder and felt Valmedrin increase his pace, pushing her even further into the throes of her desire. She felt herself pushing closer and closer to an edge she had never felt before, a building, a crescendo into something far more than sex, more than the love she felt. Suddenly, wave after wave fell through her and she felt the pressure, that which had been building, felt it all rush out of her to envelope that one point of contact between her and Valmedrin. She screamed in her rapture, her mouth open, gaping, gasping for air even as she pleaded in her guttural screaming for more, for more of whatever it was that Valmedrin was giving her. She smiled as he obliged, and he felt the same rushing, something he did not expect, but his mind was too filled with wanting to please her for him to notice more than her. He pushed and pressed and felt her lifting under him.

Together, in an outpouring of love and lust and desire, of pleasure and searing release, they climaxed together, Aloris for the first time knowing her full self with this man, Valmedrin knowing without doubt that Aloris was his, and he was hers, and that undead or not, his love for this young woman had been blessed by Sharmayn looking down from her starry repose.