She is a queen in repose, head leaning back, hair a curtain of dark gold down the side of the clawfoot tub. Light reflects in patches on the surface of the water, which remains utterly still as he circles its perimeter. Her skin is touched with the sheen of spiced oil, her eyelashes two dark crescents against her cheek, her nipples like jewels of pale rouge resting just beneath the surface.
He kneels at tub's edge, deferential, fingertips a mere brush at the island of her knee. He watches her lips part; follows the fret in her offered throat as she swallows, a deliberate and subtle act. Her voice is soft as vapor.
"You smell like Shiraz. And perfume."
"Do I?" The oil is slick and pungent on his fingers.
"Did you fuck her?"
The corner of his mouth lifts, and falls again. "Do you want me to say yes?"
She smiles, cobalt eyes diffused in her languor. "Maybe. Just once."
"Yes. I fucked her."
"Liar." Hushed. She closes her eyes again. Then, "Tell me about her."
And he does. He describes her hair, long and like mahogany; her eyes, chocolate flecked with evergreen. He recalls her smell - not only the elegant fragrance adorning each pulsepoint, but the scent of her pulse itself; headier than perfume, yet impossibly fragile.
And he imparts what she tasted of: apples and spearmint, earth and standing water, aged paper and dust. Holidays, and libraries, and dampness, none of it unpleasant.
A sigh escapes her, one of longing; her eyes a blue for the asking.
"Let me taste it."
She watches as he rolls up his sleeve, her gaze trailing along the length of his inner arm, peeling back the skin. Her tongue is pink and expectant at the back of her teeth as his nail cuts a neat, precise line. His flesh parts, the wound deep, and her wanting is a symphony against his skin, in his groin. She makes to meet him, to plunge into his wound, but he catches her by the throat, pinning her in place.
Her teeth bare as he stretches his arm over the water, scarlet drops bursting like stars on its surface. There is hate in her eyes - the hate that scalds, that scourges, that sets the bottom lip to trembling. He denies her mouth; he denies himself.
He waits, until the water is rose quartz, until her frustration renders her features as cruel as Bathory. Then, his arm dips, her pubic hair silken against his knuckles.
"You will never marry me."
The comment is unexpected; a confession offered carelessly in an unguarded moment. He does not release her, but he studies her for a long, silent moment. Only her mouth is soft, and he sees her youth, her vulnerability there. Immortality has yet to preserve and harden her core. This will take time for her, he knows. He will be patient.
"What is human law to us, Elena?" His words are gentle. "What we have cannot be ordained by any mortal."
"But you will not marry me." He realizes it is only now truth to her, and she speaks this truth without sorrow. The skin of her thigh is fevered, slick against his palm.
"We are already married," he says. "We are of the same matter, you and I." His nails slash, lips parting as her breath hisses between her teeth, legs shifting apart on the crest of this new sensation. Her hand closes in a vise around his wrist. He knows the pain as she knows it; the exquisite, liquid burn of the clove as it caresses her wounds, an ecstasy as sweet as honey. Their blood swirls a pale red ghost underwater and she smiles, for she tastes apples, libraries, and earth. Her arousal is silent, a prayer she keeps to herself. She touches the hollow at his throat.
"You cannot conquer me. You want to, but I won't let you."
She strains against his hand, but he holds her still, a knot weighing in his belly as she comes on the edge of a knife. Her orgasm is slow, shuddering.
"Perhaps it is you who has conquered me," he says.
The word ripples on a breath across the water.
"Liar."