I Love a Woman That Rains

She's sitting with her hands in her lap between her knees, and her head's bent at the delicate angle of a lily's petal. Her hair is a gold whiter and brighter than has ever graced her body naturally, and it's twisted up off the neck to continue the curve of her tiny rounded shoulders and swan's neck into a sea of golden, twisting petal folds. Her neck, her shoulders, her back, that's all bare, nothing hiding the smooth expanse of honey tan. Her sheets are twisted and lapsing up on and around her like Venus's sea froth.

"You should come in out of the cold."

He's standing in her window, skin smooth and hard and the color of the moonlight. His eyes are the color of the night behind him and are on every inch of her. He doesn't move for a long time.

"You inviting me into your room or into your life?"

"I'm inviting you into my bed." She doesn't turn around and he doesn't flinch. "You've already been invited to the other two."

He's quiet, but he comes down from the window and enters her bedroom. There aren't any lights on but between the moon and the daemon's vision, he can see everything in Technicolor. He smells the scent of her and can't be still any longer. He moves softly to her bed with little cat feet, padding without sound, without breath, without changing the warmth of the air. Carefully, places one knee on her bed directly behind her, and then slowly brings the other leg up, folded, and rests kneeling behind her.

"I only have to invite you once, right? And then you can come any time?"

"Sometimes," he says softly, "you have to separate the man from the beast."

She doesn't miss a beat. "And sometimes, there is no separation."

He leans in and places his lips against her bent, unprotected throat. She tastes warm and lazy, like heated honey.

"Tell me what you want."

He considers it as a question for a long time before deciding what to tell her. "I want your heartbeat."

He puts his cold, broad man's hands flat against her back so that his calloused palms rest right against her satin skin. He can feel her pulse through his dead flesh and after a little while, it echoes through his body until it reverberates through him.

"How is it?"

He closes his eyes. "It hurts."

She relaxes her petal curve and hangs her head. "It's my turn."

"Your turn?"

"What I want."

He swallows thickly and then takes a deep breath for no reason. Anticipatory and ceremonial. "Tell me."

She leans forward enough that his hands slip from her back. Her pulse, his pulse dies within seconds of the severed connection. She turns slowly toward him, the sheets falling from around her as she pivots in a music box ballerina's slow, trancing twirl. She brings her hands up to his face, resting on his throat where his pressure points lay silent and cradling his face in her hands. Her touch is so gentle and innocent and endearing and sensual that he wants to cry.

"I want you in me hard enough that I want death instead."

He cries, now, tears hot enough that it should melt away his ice skin. His dark eyes lower to between her legs. She shakes her head.

"No. Not there."

He brings them back up to her face. She's looking at him in a way that turns his soul to crumbling ash. She's looking at him like he's what she'll want instead.

She takes a hand from his face and brings it to her own throat. She runs her middle long middle finger back and forth along the bone curve of her collarbone like she's polishing an oyster's shell.

"Here."

He looks at her a long time. He's about to say anything when she breaks him off by speaking first.

"You'll have to learn when there's no separation, Angel."

He doesn't move for a long time, but when he does, it's a nod.

She's silent when his fangs break her skin, crush her throat, spilling lifeblood onto the sheets and her skin and his skin and into his mouth with a whitewater river's frenzied pumping flow. She wraps one arm around his neck and the other around his slim hips and makes sex noises while he feeds.

He lets go in time, and leaves her half dead and breathing husky breathes, shivering like a post-orgasmic chill victim on top of her ruined bed. The ocean's running red then pink with her blood, and he's crying when he leaves.

If he closes his eyes for a minute, he remembers what it feels like to have her pulse racing through him.

And damns himself for it.

He needs to learn when there's no separation.

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