In the moonlight he looks so damn desirable, the silvery light caressing his bare skin, highlighting his cheekbones and lips. He's truly beautiful – it hurts just to look at him. I hate that I need him.
Finally, I stand in front of him on unsteady legs. "Your wrist?"
He shakes his head and then reaches up and runs a fingernail along the skin on his chest over his heart. A thin dark line forms, and blood drips from the wound. "Here. Where you stabbed me that day."
"You're a bastard," I say, my voice breaking. He says nothing, just sits there like some god waiting for his slave to swear obedience. "You want me to kneel?" I say as I crouch down on my hands and knees, barely able to keep my balance. "Then I'll kneel. Don't expect me to call you my god."
I creep the rest of the way, tears of anger and frustration – and need – on my cheeks. Then I crawl up into his lap, my arms around him, and press my mouth against his wound, gasping in relief when I taste the blood, but crying as well. I have to lick the dried blood to get any, and it isn't nearly enough to quell the sickness in my body and mind.
"It's stopped," I say, frantic. "I need more."
"Suck."
I stare up into his face. "I hate you."
"You already said that."
I pull away and glare at him through my tears. "I won't forgive you for this."
"Yes, you will," he says. He leans his head back and closes his eyes, a look of sadness on his face. "Because one day, you'll use this to kill Soren."
I can barely believe what I hear though the fog of pain.
"You're going to let me?"
He hesitates, as if it hurts to say.
"Yes."
I lean in and suck the wound, and soon fresh blood flows again, just a small trickle onto my tongue and into my mouth. When I swallow, the relief is immediate. The pain and sickness flees, draining out of me as Michel's blood drains into me. I soon lose myself in the taste of it, the feel of it, the blessed relief of it – of his skin against my mouth, under my hands, his body pressed against me. Bliss fills me, and all the anger, resentment, and frustration vanishes. I no longer know where I end and he begins, and finally, when I've had enough, I pull away and release him, slipping out of his lap, between his thighs, and onto the floor, lying on my side, satiated.
He picks me up and carries me to the bed, then lies down beside me, his arms wrapping around me, his body spooning against mine. We connect, and I don't care what happened before or what will happen in the future. The experience of his blood in my body, his mind meeting mine, his emotions feeding mine, of our bodies joined through shared blood and touch overwhelms everything that I felt just moments earlier. I know without words his true regret for what happened. He fears this fate even though it gives him the most solace he's felt for eight hundred years. He did everything to prevent it and would have stopped it if he could go back in time.
There is no going back in time. He undresses me and I him, and we roll around on the bed, wrapped in each other's arms, drowning in each other's senses. His mouth is on me, mine on him, the sheets caught up around us. I forgive him.
We lie together, recovering, and while his passions calm, his mind won't leave me, and I feel him probing my memories, searching for something – what it is I can't tell – but the search is determined, focused. He lingers over certain memories and feels my emotions as I re-experience them. I realize he's reliving everything that happened between Julien and me, searching for how I feel about him.
“Stop,” I say. “I love you.”
“You said you could love him as well.”
“I said Icould. I didn’t say that I loved him. And that was only because I thought I might never see you again.”
“I don’t want you even looking at him.”
“You’re so jealous,” I say, smiling, tucking his hair behind his ear. “But you don’t have to be. He was a substitute for you. I fought letting him be that, but in the end, I was so lonely for you.”
“I am as jealous as ten jealous men, Eve. You have to understand that. I feel as if I have to banish him from my life now.”
“Don’t youdare,” I say. “He loves you. You love him. You’ve had each other for eight hundred years.”
“I don’t want you in the same room with him. I don’t want you ever to be alone with him.”
“Michel!” I take his face in my hands. “I loveyou.Period.”
“You fucked him and you enjoyed it.”
I shake my head in exasperation.