Sunny - Mona Lisa Darkening

With a soft cry, he pulled me against him, holding me so tight I could feel his heart beating against mine as his light faded back into him. His lips brushed my temple in a tender kiss as tears, both his and mine, mingled together in happiness and sadness. In things both lost and found.

we had dinner at a charming restaurant off Bourbon Street. I didn't ask if it was mine. The fact that we didn't need to pay told me that it likely was. On the drive home, we held hands and spoke little. I drowsed, waking as we pulled in front of Belle Vista. A relaxed lethargy seemed to hold me in its grip. Inside the house, I smiled and nodded as the others complimented me on my new glamorous look. As soon as we politely could, Dontaine and I retired upstairs.

He stopped in front of my room. "You seem tired. Should I leave you alone to rest?"

"Oh, no, you don't." I opened my door and pulled him inside. "You're responsible for putting all this stuff on my face. It's up to you now to get it all off." I yawned and plopped into the chair in front of the dressing table as he brought all the things up into my room. "Do you remember what to use for what?"

Thankfully he did. My face seemed oddly naked and bare after it was cleaned. Maybe because of my hair.

Hopefully, once I washed away the salon-perfect style, it would look more like the simple me I was used to seeing in the mirror.

The bed beckoned to me and I crawled onto it.

"Do you want to go to sleep?" Dontaine asked, stretching out beside me.

"It's too early, hours yet before the sun rises." I snuggled against him on top of the bedspread. "I just want to rest here for a little bit, like this, with you holding me."

My last thought was how surprisingly comfortable it was in his arms.

I woke up beneath the sheets, naked, my head resting on top of Dontaine's chest. He was wide awake, a warm smile on his lips, a tender light in those green eyes.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Six."

"I only slept one hour? It feels longer."

"It is much longer. It's six the next morning."

My eyes popped wide in disbelief. "I slept for over twenty-four hours again?" And yet I still felt so tired.

"You needed it."

"Oh no," I groaned. "I missed dinner! Rosemary's going to kill me."

"You wake up in bed with me and your first thought is of Rosemary's wrath?" He rolled, bracing his lithe, muscular body over me, his weight balanced on his hands, feet between mine.

"I must not be doing things right," he murmured and lowered his body down to brush the lightest kiss above and below — his lips soft and tender over mine, the hard silky rub of him lower down between my legs. It pulled a hungry sound from my throat, and my lips and legs opened wider in invitation.

"Much better," he murmured, rolling away to open the bedside drawer. Grabbing a condom, he ripped it open, slid it on, then slid back on top of me. "Rosemary saved us some dinner, and she's not mad."

"Good;" Lifting my head, I nipped those luscious lips hovering so close to mine. "What did you want my first thought to be?"

"Of me." His eyes heated to deep green as he lowered his mouth and kissed me thoroughly, tongue pressing in slowly, delicately. "Of this." His body followed, his full weight sinking me down into the mattress, his arousal seeking its own wet kiss down below. "Of what we are together." The hot slide of his erection in — deep, deeper, deepest. My soft moan, his deep groan.

My lips sealed around his tongue and sucked deep. Down below, inside, I clenched tight with hidden muscles around his throbbing hardness filling me so sweetly, so fully. Felt him flex inside me at the twin embrace in sweet reward.

We moved in languorous rhythm, building the heat slowly. His shimmer of light started as a gentle glow, building with each unhurried stroke, each lazy kiss, some deep, some delicate. Savoring me with contentment in his eyes and happiness. Gone was that yearning intensity, that unfulfilled need. Whatever he had searched for, he had found. Never had things been so easy, so right with us.

His light brightened above me, around me, deep inside me. I felt my body try again to match his light. Sharp rending pain from the torn part of me pulled a soft cry from me.

"Did I hurt you?" His hands cupped my neck, his thumb brushing the side of my face. The pain stopped as soon as my body stopped trying to glow — to express the pleasure he was giving me.

"No, you didn't hurt me."

It was true, he hadn't hurt me, and it came suddenly to me what was so different, what was missing between us — that electric buzzing sensation I had always felt from him whenever we touched. It was missing, gone.

"Dontaine, I don't feel you," I said in surprised realization.

He mistook my meaning and resumed the deep strokes he had stopped in his concern. Green eyes shimmered above me with sparks of energy, energy that I didn't feel from him, only the stroking, the deep push and pull of him rocking above me, inside me. He quickened the tempo, almost brilliant now with light. His hand slid down my chest, brushed over my nipple. He touched me perfectly, expertly. His hips began to plunge in and out of me with rapid weight and speed, thrusting me down into the bed, dipping the mattress with each stroke. I felt him there, only there, at those two crucial points — my beaded nipples that brushed his chest with each stroke, and my tight quivering sheath. And could only lie and take what he gave me, my limbs suffused with an odd languor as my body began to buzz with sensation, not the electrifying spark that usually flared when he touched me, but the simple buildup of heated passion, of cresting pleasure. Cresting then exploding like a bomb inside me, gripping me, arching me back in hard convulsions that spasmed my entire body.

He thrust through my clenching contractions, once, twice, a third time, then with a tight ecstatic grimace, his mouth opening in a silent cry, he gave himself up to release, his hard body shaking, shuddering above mine. His heavy weight came down to blanket me, his arms wrapped around me, holding me in close embrace. I felt his heart beating strong and fast against mine, faster than my own, which was unusual. My base heart rate, already slow by human standards, was usually double his.

As if conscious of my attention on it, my heart slowed even further, grew even weaker. My sight hazed, my consciousness dimmed.

As if from a distance I felt Dontaine pull away from me. I heard his muffled voice spiraling down to me as if through a long corridor. "Mona Lisa, what's wrong?"

All sound faded until all I heard was the hesitant beating of my heart. Ba-boom. . pause… ba-boom. A much longer pause. Then nothing, no more beats. Just echoing, empty silence, the silence of my body. The realization — I'm dying. . I'm dead. And nothing with that thought, no emotion, no fear. Just nothing as death claimed me once more.

I'd always thought of death as an active thing. But it was simply a cessation… a ceasing.

Into this floating mass of nothingness, crackling energy — excruciating pain — struck me like a lightning bolt through the heart. Sound and sight returned, life resumed, messy and chaotic. My eyes shot open as I gasped in a breath, as my heart leaped within my chest and resumed its slow and labored beating… ba-boom … ba-boom. Sound was both loud and muffled — Dontaine's words, fierce and strong, "No! I won't let you go."

His green eyes had changed to silver, I noted distantly. Sparks of light, of energy, so much energy, crackly like tiny lightning bolts in those glittering eyes, lifting his blond hair around his face like an invisible wind. His hands, pressed down over my heart, passed another burst of electrical current through me. It felt like needle-thin knives were stabbing me.