I cry out as the burning sensation travels down my back and I feel the skin separating. It makes something inside me huddle in on itself. I think I might throw up.
Please, God, please stop this.
I don’t know how deep it is, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is it hurts. The warm liquid flows down my back, and then his tongue is on me, licking up the blood, healing the wound with his saliva.
He does this over and over. I’m getting weaker, but Christian doesn’t seem to notice, so lost is he in his blood lust. There is no physical evidence that I’m damaged because he heals each cut as he makes it, but his saliva just heals the surface damage. The only thing that will replace my loss of blood is his blood. I know he must know this.
“Master... please... ” I try to get the words out to express my fears to him, because I don’t
think
he wants me to die.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll gag you.” His voice sounds different—possessed—his darkest nature in full control now as if I’m with his evil twin.
I become hyper-alert, like a rabbit realizing she’s just met the wolf who will take her life. I’d thought Christian’s long obsession with me would make him more careful, that it would take longer for him to lose control. He’d told me I’d have years at least before the need to worry about my own demise. But it’s only been a few weeks. Can it be over this fast?
The fucked-up part is that it’s not just about my desire to survive. I want to stay with Christian. This can’t end yet.
“Please... ” I try again. I have to make the words come so he’ll stop.
He smacks me on the face, then gags me and continues on. Can’t he feel my emotions? Can’t he feel my desperation to survive as he drains me? I’m starting to really hurt. The weakness strangles me like a prelude to death. I’m screaming through the gag.
Please hear me, Christian. Please come out of this haze. Please, please. I need you. I don’t want to go. Please.
I wish he could read my mind. My emotions don’t seem enough to get through to him. I can’t even feel the pain of the knife anymore. Slice. Lick. Slice. Lick. Slice. Lick. He’s drunk on me. He can’t help himself.
I can’t be angry with him. He’s not himself. I know he doesn’t want to kill me, but I’ve accepted he’s going to. I wonder if the women before me had this sudden terrifying moment of realization. I wonder if this is how they went, or if it was another way. I wonder if it even matters.
I scream around the gag, letting every emotion I have spiral out of me. I try to press those feelings into him, to imprint him with awareness of what he’s doing, to wake him from his red-rimmed dream.
My shouts become more muffled as the energy starts to drain out of me faster. My eyes drift shut, and I wonder if he’s going to be sorry when I’m gone. Is he going to mourn me? Will it be better or worse than if he’d had me for more than just a few weeks? I wonder if this is a brief interlude in his existence, like losing a small kitten—sad, but not enough to end you.
I want to say goodbye to him, but I barely have the energy to think that thought. I’m gone. It’s over.
Blood. Christian’s blood inside me. It seems as if the moment I thought it was over, his wrist was shoved in my face, but I know that’s not how it went. I don’t know how much time passed from the point I lost consciousness to the point Christian somehow gained his. I imagine he was frantic and scared. It seems unreal to think of my master as scared, but I can’t imagine he wasn’t because I know he didn’t want this. I’ve thought of him as having so much control and power, and now the control turns out to be smoke and mirrors.
I’m still tied down, drinking. It seems like forever, like it’s not possible to drink so much. Vitality and life and relief flood through me. I’m not angry with him. I don’t hate him. He was out of control, lost down some dark tunnel he couldn’t get out of. I feel bad for him even though it was my life on the line. It must be so lonely where he was. I wish I could have been there, could have reached him, but by that point I’d become an object the monster inside him was intent on devouring in order to kill his ability to feel anything human.
His wrist is still to my mouth when he speaks, his voice defeated. “I think I love you, pet.”
I should be happy to hear this, but I’m not. He’s gotten too wrapped up in me, so much that rationality cannot penetrate the bubble. I’m not safe here. I’ll never be safe again. I understand finally what he meant when he said, “pray I don’t love you”. I’d thought he was just being dramatic.
I try to think of what I can do to become less lovable, but anything I can think to do would only piss him off. He takes his wrist from my mouth. Physically I’m totally healed and alive. Emotionally it feels like something died that can never come back. I’m on death row now. Before, time held no meaning with him. Now it’s everything. Every second of my existence feels like it will be the last.
He unchains me from the bench, gathers me up in his arms, and carries me back upstairs to his bedroom and locks us in. It’s almost sunrise. Normally he’d take me to my room and retreat to his own alone, but I understand. He can’t be without me. I wonder if he’s making himself vulnerable so I’ll kill him and take his curse away.
But he has to know I can’t kill him. I can’t kill him and he can’t keep me alive. The world we’ve lived in together is an illusion that can’t be maintained. The edges are fraying, curling away to reveal the harsh reality beneath. The lion and the lamb do not lie down together. It just can’t be.
We’re both naked, huddled underneath the covers of his massive bed. With no windows, it’s easy to imagine it’s the only place that exists. Christian holds me close, stroking my hair. I feel a bit of moisture slide down my cheek, but it’s not my tear, it’s his. I never knew he could cry or feel. I’ve told myself every emotion he seems to show is a mask, an act, even while needing it to be real. He’s rocking me back and forth, but it seems he’s withdrawn into himself, rocking himself for comfort and I’m just along for the ride.
In the stillness of the room, the words leave my mouth unbidden. “I love you too, Master.”
“Oh God, please don’t say that, Juliette. It’ll doom us. Don’t love me back. It’ll only end you sooner. Hate me. Please hate me. It’s the only thing that will lengthen our time together. I don’t want to lose you. I need you to hate me.”
He’s sobbing now and the pain I feel from that sound is worse than any other pain that exists. It’s sharper, more dangerous. It cuts deeper, burns hotter.
I can’t hate him. All I feel is sympathy for the devil who has crawled inside my heart, stealing my soul and my will from me. I wonder if he’d die if I did because I know the opposite is true. I couldn’t go on if he wasn’t in this world. It’s surreal, and I know this shouldn’t be happening.
My mind flashes to high school English:
Romeo and Juliet.
I’d thought Shakespeare was an illogical sap. You can’t fall in love that fast. Not real love. Real love takes time, like a fine wine. Real love takes years. Not days. Not weeks. No one has such a short relationship and becomes so deeply entwined. I thought the playwright was foolish, but I’m the foolish one. He was right about this kind of love. It burns past logic and all rational time lines to consume everything.
There is some arcane power in this truth. Christian and I are the house of Montague and the house of Capulet, a tragedy waiting to unfold for yet another person to read and disbelieve, until it happens to them and the only thing they have left to hold onto is an unbelievable fiction now made real.
I wish I could hold the play in my hands right now. I want to read it. I want to know that someone else has felt what I feel, even if that person never existed outside one man’s imagination.
I hold onto Christian tighter. “I can’t hate you. We’re too connected. I can’t hate you without hating me.”
He doesn’t respond, and then I know he’s asleep. The sun has risen, more powerful right now than our feelings. He’s too exhausted to stay awake. And yet, if I were distressed right now he’d awaken to comfort me. He would immediately know and seek to make it all better, because nothing in this universe is allowed to harm me but him.
I pull myself from his arms and reposition us so I’m holding and comforting him. I know he doesn’t know I’m doing this, but I still need to do it. I run my fingers through his hair and think back to that night when I first met him, when I existed in a world of darkness behind closed eyelids and he was only a voice rumbling through me and a solid, strong hand on my shoulder.
I try to form a plan, a way we can be together. There has to be some way this won’t end in tragedy. Why can’t Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after? It’s as if the universe won’t abide such a strong connection in such a disconnected world, as if our connection defies the natural order. But Christian already defies the rules. Why can’t we have a tiny bit more magic to sustain us?
No usable ideas come to mind, and I end up falling asleep, too exhausted to hold my eyes open any longer.
***
When Christian and I wake up, things are different. He’s putting distance between us, and I can’t blame him. We don’t talk about it again. It’s as if the wee morning hours in the dungeon didn’t happen—like the dungeon doesn’t exist.
Days pass and he’s so careful with me, but I know it’s a temporary reprieve. The one big change is that he won’t let me sleep in my own bed in my own room. His room has now become mine. Beyond this heightened intimacy, everything else he does is careful, with barriers he’s erected to protect us both.
We can’t maintain this polite distance forever. He takes me to the club because it’s safe. He doesn’t lose control there. Something in the situation keeps him from losing himself, keeps the darkness at bay. He fucks me, ripping me apart inside, drinking from me, reforming me into a pure virgin with his blood.
I want to be alone with him, but I know it’s not safe. We need all these witnesses. Though not a single vampire in the club would stop Christian from killing me if he decided to, there is something in this atmosphere that keeps him in control of himself. If I have to have a roomful of witnesses and participants to have intimacy with Christian, it’s a small price to pay.
Weeks pass like this. Every night on the way out to the car, we pass the dungeon door. I stare at it, Christian glances at it, but I know he thinks about it every second. How long can he wait between hits? How long until he loses control again? The door taunts us both, terrifies us both. We keep pretending it isn’t an issue and can’t harm us.
He hasn’t said he doesn’t want to take me back to the dungeon, but I know that’s what he’s trying to avoid. If we never go down there again, maybe I’ll be safe. But we both know it isn’t true.
Tonight we stay in his room. The club, our only safety, is miles away. We both regret not going, but it’s too late to get there and back before sunrise. Christian is restless and wild. His mouth is on mine, his tongue relentless in his pursuit of a deeper way to consume me, a deeper connection than what we have that just doesn’t exist.
“Undress.” His voice always makes me throb.
I rush to comply with his demand. His pupils are dilated, so black they swallow the world. Then they flash like fire and his fangs descend.
“I want to drink you until there’s nothing left. I want you to magically rematerialize so I can do it again. I want a phoenix that will rise from the ashes just so I can keep burning her. I thought I knew madness, but I didn’t know it before you.”
“Christian, please.” I know using his name can get me in trouble, but it seems the only thing that will puncture the haze coming over him. I’m about to lose him again to the dark monster. I don’t want to go to that terrifying brink again. The thread between life and death was so frayed the last time, I know I won’t be spared again.
He doesn’t seem to hear me. He doesn’t seem to care. If I survive tonight I probably won’t even be punished for not addressing him properly.
He doesn’t have a knife. We aren’t in the dungeon. Nothing particularly stimulating is happening. The only stimulation he needs now is me naked and vulnerable and desperate to please him. His fangs are enough. We can’t lock his fangs up or hide them in a drawer. They are always there, a constant reminder that I am one bite away from oblivion or the afterlife. Whichever it is.
He prowls around me as he peels his own clothing off. Now we stand here, two naked animals, predator and prey, and I know somehow the final dance of death is about to begin. I gasp as he comes up behind me, pressing his bare, sculpted chest against my back.
He buries his fingers inside me, and I buck against him, straining for more contact. I want to say something, find some way to get him back to the more restrained Christian, but I can’t. There’s nothing I can say or do. All I can do is lose myself in his primal grace, soak it up until it dwindles into nothing.
His fangs are in my throat, while his fingers still stroke me from the inside. He’s drinking too fast, too greedy. I’m only human and he can’t seem to remember.
“Christian!” My voice comes out softer than I anticipated. I struggle, but it just pushes him on harder. “Please. I love you. I want to see you tomorrow.”
It’s a mere whisper. It shouldn’t have stopped him, but somehow it has. He flings me away with so much force, I hit the wall, and I know something is broken.
Christian shouts. It’s this primal, guttural male scream that goes beyond my ability to describe it. It’s a hopeless cry into the cosmos for some salvation from himself, some hope for us that won’t come.
I’m crying, partly for the pain consuming me—from my injuries and his bite—partly for the emotional hell he’s lost in. I see him as so strong, larger than life. Nothing can be stronger than him. But that’s the problem. He can’t overcome his own power. He’s his own victim, trapped and enslaved as much as me. I wish I could unlock a door and free him, but to free him I’d have to kill him, and I’m too selfish.
His fit finally subsides, but he still looks wild and untamed. My blood is streaming down his chin, down his chest. He rips his wrist open and blurs to my side. “Drink, pet. Take as much as you need. I’m so sorry.”