J. Ward - Lover Enshrined

His lips moved up higher on her neck, then lingered on her jaw. Just as he pressed his mouth to hers, a featherlight brush ran over the robe… to one of her breasts.

As she surged up, her nipple pushed into his hand and they both groaned.

"Oh, Jesus…” The Primale eased back a little and carefully, reverently pulled the lapel of her robe away from her breast. “Cormia…” His deep, approving tone was like a caress, nearly tangible and all over her body.

“Can I kiss you here?” he groaned, his touch circling her nipple. “Please.”

“Sweet Virgin, yes …”

His head went down and his mouth covered her, warm and moist, pulling gently, suckling.

Cormia threw her head back and thrust her hands deep into his hair, her legs parting for no reason and every reason. She wanted him at her sex, in any way he would come at her-

“Sire?”

Fritz’s respectful intrusion from the far end of the theater snapped them both to attention. The Primale quickly straightened and covered her up, even though the chair prevented the butler from seeing anything.

“What the hell is it?” the Primale said.

“Forgive me, but the Chosen Amalya is here with the Chosen Selena to see you.”

An ice wave went through Cormia, freezing out all the heat and the urgency in her blood. Her sister. Here to see him. How perfect.

The Primale got to his feet, uttering a horrid word Cormia couldn’t help but echo in her own head, and he excused Fritz with a quick movement of his hand. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Yes, sire.”

After the doggen left, the Primale shook his head. “I’m sorry-”

“Go do what you need to do.” As he hesitated, she said, “ Go. I’d like to be alone.”

“We can talk later.”

No, not really, she thought. Talk wasn’t going to solve any of this.

“Just go,” she said, tuning out whatever else he spoke.

When she was alone once more, she stared at the frozen picture on the screen until all of a sudden it was replaced by a black wash, and a little grouping of English letters reading Sony flashed here and there.

She felt wretched, inside and out. Apart from the ache in her chest, her body had hunger pangs as if from a meal denied or a vein left untapped.

Except it wasn’t food that she needed.

What she needed had just walked out the door.

Into the arms of her sister.

Far upstate in the adirondacks, on the verge of dawn’s arrival over Saddleback Mountain, the male who had taken the deer down the night before the male who had taken the deer down the night before was tracking another. Slow and uncoordinated, he knew the hunter role he was playing was a joke. The strength he got from the animal blood just wasn’t enough anymore. Tonight as he’d left his cave, he was so weak he wasn’t sure whether he could dematerialize at all.

Which meant he probably wasn’t going to be able to get close enough to his prey. Which meant he wasn’t going to feed. Which meant… the time had finally come.

It was so odd. He’d wondered, as he imagined everyone did from time to time, how exactly he was going to die. What would the circumstances be? Would it hurt? How long would it take? He’d assumed, given what his line of work had been, that it would have been fighting.

Instead, it was going to be here in this quiet forest by the hand of dawn’s burning glory.

Surprise.

Up ahead, the buck lifted its heavy rack and prepared to bound away. Gathering what little energy he had, the male willed himself to cross the distance between their two bodies… and nothing happened. His corporeal form flickered in space, blinking on and off as if his light switch were being triggered, but he didn’t change positions, and the deer shot off, white tail flicking as it crashed through the underbrush.

The male let himself fall back on his ass. As he looked at the sky, his regrets were many and deep, and most involved the dead. Not all, though. Not all.

Although he was desperate for the reunion he expected to find in the Fade, though he hungered for the embrace of the ones he’d lost so recently, he knew he was leaving a part of himself behind here on earth.

It couldn’t be helped. The leaving behind, that was.

His only solace was that his son had been left in very good hands. The best. His brothers would look after his son, as was the proper way of things in families.

He should have said good-bye, though.

He should have done a lot of things.

But the shoulds were over now.

Ever mindful of the suicide legend, the male made a couple of attempts to stand, and when they failed, he even tried to drag his deadweight body in the direction of his cave. He got nowhere, and it was with a slice of joy through his dark heart that he finally allowed himself to collapse onto the pine needles and leaves.

The male lay there facedown, the cool, dewy forest bed filling his nose with smells that were clean even though they came from the dirt.

The first rays of the sun come from behind him, and then he felt the blast of the heat. The end had arrived, and he welcomed it with open arms and with eyes that were closed in relief.

His last sensation before he died was his liberation from the ground, his broken body being drawn up into the brilliant light, drawn unto the reunion it had taken eight horrible months for him to find.

As night fell some sixteen hours later, Lash stood at the foot of a rolling lawn that led up to a sprawling Tudor house… and turned the ring the Omega had given him round and round.

He had grown up here, he thought. Been raised and fed and tucked into bed here as a young. When he was older, he’d stayed up to watch movies and read books with dirty shit in them, and surfed the Net and eaten junk food here.

He’d gone through his transition and had sex for the first time up in his room on the third floor.

"Y’all want some help?”

He turned and looked at the lesser who was behind the wheel of the Ford Focus. It was the little slayer, the one he’d drunk from. The guy had pale hair like Bo from The Dukes of Hazzard , all curling up around the cowboy hat he wore. His eyes were a faded cornflower blue, suggesting that before he’d been inducted he’d been a real middle-America white boy.

The guy had survived the feeding, thanks to some true depravity on the Omega’s part, and Lash had to admit he was glad. He needed help understanding where he was at, and he wasn’t threatened by Mr. D.

“Hello?” the lesser said. "Y’all okay there?”

“You stay in the car.” It felt good to say that and know there wasn’t going to be any discussion. “I won’t be long.”

“Yes, suh.”

Lash looked back up at the Tudor palace. Lights glowed yellow in windows made of diamond-paned glass, and the house was spotlit from the ground like a beauty queen on a stage. Inside, people moved around, and he knew who they were by the shapes of their bodies and where they were.

On the left, in the sitting room, were the two who had raised him as their own. The one with the broad shoulders was his father, and the male was pacing, hand going up and down to his face as if he were drinking something. His mother was on the couch, all bobble-head proportioned with her elaborate chignon and her slender neck. She kept touching her hair, as if trying to make sure everything was in place even though it was no doubt sprayed stiff as a boxwood shrub.

To the right, in the kitchen wing, several doggen scurried around, moving from stove to cabinet to refrigerator to counter to stove.

Lash could practically smell the dinner, and his eyes watered.