Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

Snow's hands continued to caress my breasts; harshly would have been deliverance, but his gestures were as delicate as a surgeon's. I felt like Lilith on the autopsy table, mock-dead, or dead, what did it matter in the face of a fatal violation of the flesh?

His face bent towards mine. I kept my eyes open, staring straight ahead, dead ahead. I should have known I wouldn't get by with the sudden, deep, passing Brimstone Kiss of the mosh pit.

"Just one kiss," the pale lips moved.

My freedom! My heart's willing slavery.

I shrugged, but his hands never lost their custodial grip. I lifted my chin and, by default my face, my lips.

He pulled me toward him, bent his head to touch his ivory-cold lips to mine. Kiss Death, while you're at it, Delilah. Embrace a statue, snuggle up to stainless steel, become a body on an autopsy table, motionless, unfeeling, a sex object for the lifeless at heart.

His lips met mine, then his tongue.

It was unexpectedly, shockingly warm. Hot. Feverish. His fingertips on my naked shoulders almost sizzled.

As I'd feared, his kiss was not the hit-and-run lip lock he doled out from the stage, which he'd end like a revivalist minister with a palm to the forehead that pushed the recipient down and away to be borne away on a litter of mosh pit bodies.

It was more like a 132-car pileup on a misty mountain road, a series of domino-falling shocks that just kept on coming. It was a dozen, then a hundred, yet his lips never left mine, just nibbled, teased, probed, stroked, sucked. When his tongue took control it moved like a silver snake, fast, sleek and deep into me, into my very heart and soul, which I felt as a molten drop of forgotten memory, silver mercury, at my center, behind my navel, spiraling out to my every extremity.

I hardly felt it when he pressed my bare chest against his and moved his hands to my throat and the nape of my neck, on shoulders and cheeks, all to position me for endless variations on a kiss.

His breath smelled of frost and he tasted of Albino Vampire. Or maybe that was me.

I could feel the overpowering and inevitable response like a slowly building volcanic eruption from deep within the landscape of my soul.

The tremors made my hands shake so much that I curled them into the edges of the white leather that lay open against his pale chest, hairless, scarred by silver lightning bolts.

My knees were shaking, but his hands were holding me up by the face alone. And still he continued the slow, sensual exploration of my mouth, and now my throat felt the irresistible pull…my throat aching as if it was between my legs, tightening, tautening, so much so that a hoarse moan sought escape.

In a moment all my muscles inward and outward would erupt in spasms of orgasmic abandon.

I would be lost and the deal sealed.

Except… I remained clenched on the brink and did not plunge over.

Did not climax, not in triplicate. Not once.

I screamed anyway and swooned like a damn Snowaholic, then fell into black velvet darkness illuminated by heat lighting strikes and the thunder beat of my overstressed heart. It felt like red-hot death.

I became conscious again still pressed to him hip to hip, mouth to mouth, my bare back draped over the upholding bar of his forearm.

Snow suddenly broke the kiss, a curse under his exhausted breath.

I couldn't stand on my own power and my lips remained parted from the Brimstone Kiss.

He cursed again, so softly I couldn't hear the word or what god or devil he invoked.

That arm moved, lifting me tighter against his chest, part bare lukewarm skin, part cool bleached leather. His hands molded me to him, circling on my back, in the tendrils of my hair at my neck. I knew the lassitude that possessed me. I'd met it with Ric. Postcoital stupor. But this had been only a kiss. Hadn't it?

He took advantage. He shifted again until my lax lips became a bezel for his erect nipple. I gritted my teeth. Not reciprocal. Never reciprocal.

But I was so sleepy. So very sated…

And by now, my body was mindlessly stimulated.

I finally stirred, my arms struggling to push him away. His chest rumbled against me, under me. His heartbeat was steady, strong, and rhythmic. Heartbeat. Proof he was not a vampire, although some post-Millennium Revelation vamps could be a different breed abiding by different characteristics and rules.

I shut my eyes. He pressed my head against him, his hand tangled in my hair.

The distant part of my mind I'd deadened for this dreaded moment noted that I was still sleepwalking like a zombie succubus, or some recently killed creature whose nerves and muscles still twitched with counterfeit life.

He seemed somehow uncontrolled as well. He loosened his grip.

I shook my head until I seemed to hear something rattle inside and reared away, pulling my gown shut, pulling my mind and will together.

I'd suffered the Brimstone Kiss. For ages longer than the most frantic mosh-pit groupie.

And I had not climaxed, not even once, and especially not many times.

Good! For once it wasn't Irma talking in my head, only me. Loud and clear. Go suck yourself, Snow! I'm done! It's over. I fulfilled my part of the bargain and I bet you didn't even get off yourself. Too bad.

Ordinarily, my invisible inner friend Irma would be this spitting mad on my behalf, but I'd exiled her far inside. Not even she could witness my voluntary degradation. No one would know of this but Snow and myself, and that was two too many.

I had only hollow threats to offer, but the words came from my soft center, spit out hard. A mirrored threat. From me to him. I was good with mirrors.

"Someday you'll beg to kiss me. Someday everything you value will be at risk."

"And what will you do, then, Delilah?" he asked.

"Something you won't like. And I'll use you as coldly as you used me."

I was drawing myself up in indignation, trying to banish a sickening wave of inner disgust at what my outer self had done, when I noticed that Snow was standing dazed himself.

The sunglasses were in his hand and he was putting them over eyes that were all glittering magenta facets again.

"I'm sorry, Delilah," he said.

Could I believe this? What nerve!

"I'd hoped you'd be the one woman in the world who's impervious to the Brimstone Kiss. I'd really hoped it was you."

My righteous anger revived me, and my temper.

"It was me, right here and now. And I'm here to testify that this rotten deal did not result in giving me one orgasm, stud. Not one. Zero, Mr. Multiple Answer to a Woman's Prayer. I did not come from your infamous Brimstone Kiss. You are a dud."

He actually smiled. "Your spirit is remarkably resilient. A good thing. We have a man to free from a nexus of vampires. Would you rather do it naked? Without the services of your familiar?"

The word "naked" scorched me; the word "familiar" also, but I now knew the artifact for shield and weapon.

While I stood there, gathering strength, trying to escape the strange, timeless bubble in which he could wrap himself at will, he held out his arms for me to see.

The forearm-long silver cuffs called to me.

We are yours, they said.

And I realized that I was…free… of the silver familiar. Free of Snow's unsuspected attachment. Of his lock-of-hair turned trap.

I'm not sure I believed Snow in saying that it answered only to me, but it had even shielded me against its source tonight. It had saved my flesh if not my soul a few times earlier. I was used to its incursions, its presence, and its useful applications as a weapon of defense and aggression.

Yet it was of Snow. I wanted nothing of his to ever touch me again.

But I could use it. Especially now. To save Ric.