Each night
she wakes him.
He doesn’t
need to be woken; his vampiric senses do that for him, letting him know when
the fatal rays of the sun can no longer hurt him. It’s a sort of slow, dreamy
reawakening; shaking off his dreams, he surfaces gently to consciousness as
those final, lingering rays slip away.
She wakes
him anyway.
She
reaches out, places her warm hand to his shoulder or face, feeling the smoothly
sculptured bones under her palm. Or she slides her hand over the white expanse
of his back, or perhaps traces a finger over the winglike collarbones and down
his sternum. If she’s feeling playful, she might dip that finger in his navel
or trail it over the soles of his feet, oddly vulnerable in the way they have
invariably escaped from the blanket to stick out at the bottom, and laugh when
he jolts away from her to escape the ticklish sensation.
Once he’s
awake, she withdraws her hand, as there’s little place in their relationship
for things like non-sexual touching. Her purpose met, she will jam her hands in
the back pockets of her jeans (the action causing her breasts to thrust out
enticingly, but she never realizes), or if it’s chilly in his room, she’ll
cross her arms over her chest in an effort to keep the heat from leaking out of
her.
She wakes
him because she loves twilight. She tells him each time, and he nods gravely as
if he hasn’t heard it a hundred, a thousand times before. She wakes him
because, just like the rest of the world, she doesn’t want to experience a
beloved thing alone.
“There’s
nothing more beautiful and romantic than twilight,” she will often say as they
stand on his balcony and simply look out. It’s not a prompt; she doesn’t say it
as most women would, to remind him of love and tender feelings and that he
should feel them for her. She simply knows he agrees, and enjoys it as she
does.
No matter
the weather, they always open the tall French doors and step outside, breathing
the still-sun-warmed air as twilight casts blue shadows over their faces. If
it’s warm, he doesn’t bother to dress, but steps onto the stone floor of the
balcony, nude. One such time, when twilight had passed and the moon was ripe
and round in the sooty sky, the sight of his pallid angles and hollows and
curves affected her so powerfully that she cried.
Any other
time, any other woman, and he would have felt like an idiot, and thought she
was insane. But he understood what it was like to be overwhelmed by beauty, and
waited until she was done. Grateful, she removed her own clothes and allowed
the moonlight to silver her, and instead of crying (he had no tears left) he’d
shown his own reverence of her beauty with his hands and mouth and cock.
She never
came when he fucked her. She enjoyed it, he knew: her sigh of relief when he
slid inside her, her moans and wiggles when he thrust in, the arch and gasp of
disappointment when he withdrew; all told him she was reveling in the
experience as much as he. But no matter how long he plied his fingers and mouth
before, and no matter how skillfully he worked himself inside her, she never
came.
He would,
of course. The pleasure started in his toes and fingertips, and raced
centerwards until it spilled from him. “I don’t love you,” he would gasp into
her hair with each lunge of his spasming body, inhaling the earthy smell of her
sweat and musk and arousal as his hips bucked frantically against her.
“I know,”
she would croon back, clasping her legs around his waist to grip him tighter,
pull him deeper. “I know,” she whispered in his ear as she smoothed her hands
over his hair, his neck, his back.
Then he’d
slip from her, his tongue laving various bits of her until he was positioned
between her thighs. Parting her moist petals, he would lower his mouth to her
and feast. Writhing under his ministrations, hands that had just caressed his
hair now threaded through and tugged on it. Her feet would alternately skid on
and pummel the mattress, trying desperately to gain purchase against his
onslaught, to press herself even harder against the magic of his mouth and
tongue and lips and fingers.
“I don’t
love you,” she shouts as she comes, her body tight as a bowstring. “I don’t, I
don’t.” Quaking, shaking, her voice trails away until she is mouthing the words
soundlessly.
“I know,”
he answers over and over until she’s finished, and then pulls himself up the
bed and reaches for his packet of cigarettes as he reclines against the
headboard. They permit themselves a small, almost token amount of physical
affection after they fuck; it’s part of the whole experience, and they enjoy it
without giving it any significance. It doesn’t mean anything more than the sex
itself. She cuddles against him, and he curls his free arm around her, pulling
her tight, while he brings the fag to his lips in the silent, ink-dark night.
The never
speak of anything important during this time. They usually don’t say anything
at all. This is a respite from their lives, this blue hour, and they don’t
pollute it with talk of monsters, or death, or love, or any of the other
painful and ugly things in the world.
Once her
heartbeat returns to normal, and his cigarette is nothing but a scattering of
ash dulling the gold on the saucer he uses for an ashtray, he will give her a
slight squeeze with his arm, a miniscule hug of thanks, and they will part.
Rising up from different sides of the bed, they dress almost soundlessly.
He turns
on a light, and the world intrudes again. No more are they just two people
enjoying each other’s bodies in the shadows of a room lit only by the moon and
stars; once more they’re co-participants in a prophecy that neither wants to be
a part of, but which both are compelled to follow, each for their own reasons.
They leave his room, which reeks of sex and smoke and the temporary stanching
of loneliness. They go downstairs, chatting amiably about real-world issues,
and it’s as if nothing in his bedroom ever happened.
He wonders
sometimes if she’d ever come to him, ever fuck him, without the twilight. If
she needs it to share herself with him, that unreal time that is not day and
not night— neither his world nor hers. It hurts him, for a moment, that she
wouldn’t be able to accept him inside her without the twilight weaving its
spell over her, and anger knots his hands into fists. He doesn’t want to be
used, doesn’t want to use her. Not for sex. Not any more.
But what
is the alternative? She feels the same, he knows, but they are powerless to end
the pretense, to demolish the wall of illusion between them. His fists loosen
as the anger flees, hopelessness taking its place. There’s too much fear and
pain, and neither are strong enough to conquer those particular emotions. Neither
is strong enough to be the first to admit the truth. Not yet.
And so
they continue as they are. She keeps waking him to share the twilight with her,
and he keeps fucking her, and they keep lying when they come, and that’s the
most they can endure.