experience . Each movement , each touch , choreographed and memorized through the ages , yet brand new and intoxicating . She awoke the next morning , once again alone , with a second bite mark low upon her shoulder . As she stood gazing into the mirror , she knew that the coming evening , if allowed to proceed as the others , would mean her death .
That third evening played out exactly as the other two before it had . She struggled to keep her focus on the task before her , while still allowing herself to be swept up in his passion , so there was no suspicion . He was what she had always known him to be . She had sensed the chill that stayed with him long after he had come in her door . A denizen of the darkness , a nightwalker , a blood drinker ; and tonight , he would be hers . She waited beneath him for the moment that she knew he would be most distracted , and as his teeth sank into her shoulder for the third and final time , she stabbed up viciously with the wooden stake she had left beneath the covers . His scream was that of a wild animal . He bucked and tore at her but with her legs tightly wrapped around him , and he helplessly embedded , she twisted the wooden stake even deeper into his cold heart . She pushed him back off and out of her and flipped him onto his back . He lay panting , gasping out his strength as she paused to light the candle . His face , still handsome but racked with pain , conveyed his disbelief . She looked down on him , the stake still sticking in his chest , the dark red blood pooling around its base . She hesitated but a moment and then leaned down toward him . Her lips first touched the blood , then her tongue , and then she began to draw it in earnestly .
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