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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