The Assistant Apprentice

by Gimme-a-Hand-Scaevola

Grief stricken from Muriel's abandonment, the wayward Pellinore Warthrop spent a single night in the arms of a woman he did not know. Thirteen years later the consequences of his grief arrive scowling on his doorstep, already too aware of the world's negligence. What she needed to find was a father, all she got was Warthrop whose neglect delivers her to exactly the wrong man.

10. Lingering

Chapter 10: Lingering

"Anna! Anna!" I came awake to Will who hovered over me, an earnest smile across his face, "Wake up, Anna, we have to go."

"Will?" I asked.

He flicked my forehead, "Who else? Get up, we have to leave."

"Where? What are you talking about?"

"Just get up." He smelled so good, like home.

I struggled up, it was so hard to move. "Will, it hurts. My arm. My chest."

He turned back, "I know, not for long, come with me. Everything will be alright."

I stumbled and called out.

He lifted me in his strong arms and held me against his chest. "Don't worry, I will carry you. It will not hurt so much." He held me, carrying me out of my room and down the hallway toward his loft, "It's alright, Anna, we will be there soon."

The trap door was open and it spilled a golden light. It was warm and inviting. As its tendrils fell upon me the pain began to ebb, "It feels better, Will. My Will."

He pressed a kiss on my forehead, "You are done, Anna, you do not have to fight. I have you."

I wanted to go. I wanted to be carried into the golden light. I did not want to fight. I closed my eyes, "My Will."

Fingers touched my shoulder, danced over my face. Pain arched through my skin, radiating from my shoulder and coursing through my blood. I screamed. My voice was hoarse. I lurched. I felt as though I was falling. I swooped forward. Every inch of my flesh hurt, through and through.

My eyes opened and hurt with the light. I tried to throw up my arm against it and cried out.

"Lee!" Someone was over me, he had his hands on my face. I couldn't see him, the white light from the window was too bright.

It was not Will. Where was Will? Where had the golden light gone? It was so cold, it hurt. I had to fight not to cry. My other hand, I could move that. I brought it up to shield my eyes. My throat made a strangled whining sob. I was dizzy.

A curtain was drawn over the window and I lowered my arm.

"Lee?"

My eyelids were heavy, why did my chest hurt so badly? Who stood over me? It wasn't Will. Where was Will? He said that it wasn't going to hurt. He said he would take me.

"Why did you," I tried to make my tongue, thick in my mouth, say the words, 'Whadya," was more close to what I said. I tried again, "Why did you...put me down?"

Fingers brushed hair from my forehead, it clung with sweat, "I carried you from-"

"Not far enough. Not far enough. Still hurts. It hurts." I felt tears slip down from my eyes, hot, dripping over my ears.

"Yes. Yes I hurts. I know it hurts." But he sounded relieved, happy even.

It took me until then to realize he was not Will, "You aren't. You aren't. Where?" I did not understand that I was not making sense. I opened my eyes and made them blink. He was standing, leaning over me. His hair was greasy, it hung around his face. I could not fathom where Will had gone.

I sank back and closed my eyes.

"Anna, you're going the wrong way." Will had returned, he stood behind me. I was downstairs, in the kitchen. He put his hand on my shoulder. The shoulder where the pain started. It hurt to stand, to breathe.

"Don't go outside, Anna," He said, "Come back, let's go. Do you want me to carry you?"

"Yes," I said and I let him pick me up. Where his fingers touched I felt no pain. He cradled me again, as he had before and took me through the kitchen, he started up the stairs. As we ascended my pain ebbed, I began to feel warm again. At the landing I could see the loft and its golden light. I wanted to go up. I wanted him to take me up.

He had his first foot on the ladder rung and I could feel the warmth of the light on my skin.

"Will that hurts!" I hissed. He had taken my wrist. His hand was cold and brought with it the pain. No, not Will's hand. Will's hands were around me. It touched my face.

I lurched into wakefulness, only slightly more cognizant of myself than I had been before. The hands were still on my face, tender touches. But I hurt.

"Lee? Are you awake?"

I peeled open my eyes. He hovered over me again. Not Will.

"Ah, see, it isn't so bad, a nick at most," The teasing wasn't quite there, the cavalier tone entirely put on, too much of an edge.

But it was this sorry attempt at teasing that made me remember, "Jack?" My vision was starting to clear up a little, I could see him standing up from a chair at the side of the bed that I was laying on.

"Lee? You're awake."

"I'm cold." I got a look at him. He looked terrible. I hadn't seen him look this bad since the boat. His hair had been tied back, not in his regular, fashionable coif, grease slicked back from his face, out of the way. Purple circles were under his eyes, stubble grew on his cheeks. We were not in a hospital. We were in the Bed and Breakfast. But I was stitched up. Dressing on my shoulder, the jagged cuts from the bites all neatly closed.

He rose to find me a blanket but I called him back, "No, come here, please."

I lifted my good hand, which took every ounce of my energy. I touched the tips of his fingers and tugged them. Like in the cave, this was all it took, the smallest of urging. He laid down beside me, moved me carefully so I leaned against his chest, pulled his fingers through my hair. Warmth bled from his body into mine.

"I...I remember the shoulder and the bite, why does my chest hurt so badly?"

"You have some broken ribs, a cracked sternum."

"How did that happen?"

"Well I had thought you were drown, I was trying to keep you alive. Would you like me to apologize? I can let you die next time, if you like."

I nuzzled my head back against his chest. I was drifting away again. Bleary, I murmured, "You kissed me." But when the tugging came to pull me away I let myself slip under. I wanted to see Will again.

But Will did not come back, nor the warm light.

It took me weeks to get back on my feet, every time I closed my eyes I expected Will to come back, to take to up to the golden light. I had figured out what that would mean by now. How close I had been. I wouldn't tell Jack, but there were times that I wanted to go, that I resented him pulling me back.

But he had pulled me back, and I was alive in a Greek bed and breakfast.

Jack swung through the door with a rakish grin, "Feeling alright, Lee? Well enough to head for home?"

I sat up and pulled myself to my feet, "Yes, let's go home."

He reached out to steady me, a hand on my shoulder and hip. I could still remember that he had kissed me, when he thought that I was going to die. I didn't mean to, I flinched back. When had he become a man who leapt into a cave lake after me and kissed me as I died? I didn't know what it meant. His hands darted back.

"Jack," I said with some hesitation.

He looked somewhat taken aback, he held himself very carefully, his gray eyes flickered between my shoulder, that was bound in fresh bandages, and my lips.

"Jack," I said again with more surety, but I ran a hand through my hair, "You said you couldn't do it, you asked me not to leave."

He took a moment to gather himself together. He shrugged, "I enjoy your company, Lee."

I didn't answer that. I just waited for him to go on.

That mask he always wore slipped off, but he was not entirely ice underneath anymore. Not quite human, but not quite nothing. "There are not many like us."

I tried to cross my arms, flinched, and let them hang. I thought of the corpses he brought home and the whores who kissed me for not telling them I would be away, "We are not entirely the same, Jack."

His laugh was hollow, "We are not entirely different, either."

I looked him in the eyes, "You kissed me."

A different person might have equivocated or told me he was caught up in the moment. But he was Jack. He smirked and quirked up an eyebrow, "I would like to do it again."

I took a step forward and he came to meet me, one hand on my hip, one cupped around my face. Mine gripping the collar of his shirt. His lips pressed to mine. Fire arched through my blood at the contact. He trembled under my fingers.

One might assume that the man who described himself as an anthropophagus, as a titan, the self proclaimed monster in the skin of a man, would be fierce. Would set upon me like prey in snapping teeth and ravenous hands. He did not. His mouth was soft, his lips barely traced over mine, and down my throat, and on the shell of my ear. His nose pressing into my hair. He shook.

I shook too. This one man who knew the lengths and widths and depths of my depravities didn't slice open my veins in reparation but slid his lips along my skin and whispered my name into my ear.

I wish that this were the entirety of this story. I want to write that it started with a the press of lips on the Greek coast and concluded in our London home. Is there not some version where that is enough? Where I am allowed to watch gray leak into his hair and the quickness leave his step? Behind us were forged so many foul memories that bound us in blood. Could we not have been given the time to forge ones that did not smell so wretched? What had I done that I did not deserve that?

What a foolish question. I know what I have done. I know the things I put in motion. I brought the doom upon our heads.

But allow me to linger here between the dying and the fall.

We came back to London.

Neither he nor I knew entirely how to act. The ship had been rather decided for us, I was still mostly bedridden and there were enough people around that we were never alone. But by the time we were home I was back on my feet, and in our home we found, of course, solitude.

He shut the door behind us and set down both of our bags, my shoulder still stung if I carried too much. After the nearly ubiquitous noise of the ship and the London streets, the house's silence bore down.

"Are you hungry?" Jack asked a little awkwardly.

"Sure, I could eat."

He turned away from me. My arm flickered out nearly without my say so and I held him by the wrist. He turned back and I pressed my lips to his. After a moment of surprise he near to melted against me, stumbling forward, then coming into his own he pressed me back, hands on my hips.

I collided with the closed door he held me against him, lips moving over mine. I slid my hands into his hair, removing the ribbon and wrapping the fine blonde strands about my fingers. He made a soft noise.

Suddenly he pulled away from me by less than a millimeter. When he spoke I could feel the movements of his lips. His voice was stripped away of the teasing purr it usually had. It was clotted with desperation, "I am Jack the Ripper."

Against mine, his body was stiff, tensed against the most brutal assault.

Once more, tender, I pressed my lips to his. "I know."

His muscles drained their tension and he was nearly collapsed against me.

I kissed the skin of his face, everything in reach of him, to the tips of his ears and the column of his throat.

He spoke again, his heated breath in my ear, "When I go too long I feel the burn of it in my very bones, Lee. I have to feel the thrill of it. And what is it that marks the human from the monster?"

"The difference," I said as I took one of his hands in my own. I kissed each of those fingers I had watched pull the trigger against unknowing victims, balance a scalpel over the dead and living alike, draw marrow from a bone to slide between my teeth. "Is that humans hunger for more than flesh." I held his hand with both of my own, "You were hungry. What does an anthropophagus do when it is hungry?" I kissed his bared palm.

Jack. My Jack who fed me blood and let me sharpen my teeth. Is there an inch of you that I could forget? You seem, to me, carved into the memory of my skin. How the color rose in your cheeks while you hunted and how your shoulders turned when you had your shot. Your heart against my ear. When your fingers lifted to my skin did they feel the chill of the ice beneath or was I warm to you? You were always warm to me. Goddamn you, Will Henry. Goddamn you.

For a moment after my lips touched his palm he stared down at me with dark charcoal eyes, then their usual twinkle of mischief returned and he smirked and snapped his teeth at me.

Playfully, I twisted out of the cage he had made around my with his arms and I ducked passed him, darting toward the parlour. He laughed and moved with much more quickness than I did. Not halfway through the carpeted parlour he turned my back with a twist of his hand on my shoulder. I cried out, his fingers having pressed against my still smarting injury. Unapologetic, he struck out with a sweeping kick and knocked my feet from under me. I was caught before I struck the ground, one his hands beneath me, the other across my back and under my head. He held me at an angle, like a helpless dancer.

"What sort of scavenger are you?" I asked, "Preying on the injured."

He laughed, "I would prefer 'opportunist.'" And once more, he kissed my hungry mouth.

Jack, as I had learned, did not ply his skill without fee. Although the hunt for Typhoeus and Echidna had seemed, from my end, short and independent, it had been nothing of the sort. But he had meant it as a grand surprise, which kept me poorly informed. Finding the cave alone had taken him months.

We had not been able to produce the corpses, of course, but sometimes during my bedrest he had shown an empty cave to his backer and received his handsome, and predetermined, price. It had not been insignificant. When I had come back to myself, I had received half.

"This is a step up from twenty five percent," I had said teasingly.

"You are a step up from an apprentice."

If one were not gluttonous it was enough for a lifetime. If one were moderate it was well enough for three, which was my intention.

On just my second day back, I quit the house for Cas' and Lights' tenement. They would be angry, I hadn't told them I was going and I had been away for a long time.

I knocked on the door. I had made sure to come in the hours of morning after nocturnal customers had left and before the odd denizen of the afternoon might come calling.

It was Cas, this time, who opened the door. She hadn't yet fixed up her smeared makeup from the night before, nor combed down the wild wrath of her hair. I could hardly help but smile, she looked like a goddess of the wilderness.

I expected more treatment such as before, but I didn't get it. She lunged at me without a word and threw her arms about me. "Lights, come come, she is back and not so dead as we thought!"

I was wrenched into the fetid hovel and called out in pain. Her arms retracted as though burned, "You are hurt!" It was then that she struck me, once across the face, "You run off, you do not tell us, you do not come back, foul witch!"

Lights, wearing only her underthings pulled herself out of her foul bedding, "Well shit in the street, we pegged you for a corpse long time ago!"

"I nearly was," I said, and I showed them the wounds.

"You want breakfast or sommat?" Lights asked, recoiling from my hurts, "We got some eggs might not be so bad yet."

"I came with a...a gift for you."

Lights grinned, "Oh, Jesus the Son, did you bring somethin' from far off? You lil' tease!"

Cas gave a dignified laugh, "Of course, you bring me gift! How could you not? Am I not the most beautiful?" She batted her eyelashes at me with a sultry pout.

I tossed them each the stack of pounds. One third of my take each. Enough for a lifetime. They stared at them, all wind taken from their sails. Lights swore.

Cas let out a single sob then leapt at me, batting at me with the notes, her face contorted in fury, she howled, "Has it all been pity then?" she shrieked, "Is that why you give us your presence? You think we need this?" Tears were coursing down her cheeks but she did not look pitiable. "You think we need you? You think we are things to save? I do not need you!"

I caught her wrists, "Casimir," I said, "No, no. You think I have ever pitied you? You think I don't admire you every time you speak? You think the thrill I feel when I see you or Lights at my door is pity?" My next sentence seemed weak, but I couldn't keep it from my lips, "You came to me for Christmas."

Tears still fell down her cheeks. I released her wrists so I could wipe them away, "My mother sold her own daughter because she was hungry. I am not a whore because I was lucky, Cas! I found my father who happened to have some money to him. How is this different? Is this the life that you want, Cas? Living here with mice and dirt and decay? I thought you were a goddess!"

Her voice shook but some fierceness remained, "I am."

I smiled at her, "Then take it as an offering, Dzydzilelya. Do as you wish with your life."

"I want to paint." It was a desperate whisper falling from her lips, "I want to make beautiful things."

"Is there another kind of thing that you could ever make?" I said, pressing a hand to her face.

"I am a whore!" It was the only time I had heard loathing in her voice, revulsion.

"I am a cannibal."

Her sensuous lips parted, then she whispered, "Jezda."

"Dzydzilelya"

"You and your blonde hunter, yes?" She said, something I could not name in her voice.

"...Yes."

"Then this is offering, for your altar," she breathed in that low alto. She kissed me. She did not stop. Her tongue against mine, rough and sure and demanding. Her slim fingers beneath my man's shirt on on the skin beneath.

Then she stepped back, eyes no longer close to tears but with their previous radiance, "You know now, doktar, that you could have had a goddess."

Lights, whose presence I had forgotten, whistled, "Don't have to tell me none of that, doc, I'll take the money and run!" She laughed her harsh and brutal laugh, "We can clean ourselves up nice and get a place ain't got no rats!"

I cannot remember another afternoon like that. The sun seemed too golden. They scoured the whore's paint from their faces and washed themselves in their basin, twisting their hair into curls. We linked arms and shopped for dresses and slippers and parasols until the three of us looked like a set of ladies from a novel. Cas made no further overtures but nor either did she remain distant.

They delighted in clean cafes and restaurants with wine. We found them, for the were to continue living with one another, a flat that they could keep quite nicely. It was painted white with picture windows. We had it furnished. Lights was enamored of soft fabric in blues and greens.

When night came, Lights took me by the hand and said, "Doc, we don't owe you nothin' that clear'd up yeah? I don't go 'round owin' people."

I laughed and kissed her cheek, "You don't owe me a damn thing, Lights, I had money, now you do too."

"So, we're good as blood now, you know? We ever gonna meet that slick genta'man what keeps you warm at night?"

"I'll see if I can bring him around."

"See you back here soon, Lizzy," she said.

We were blood, she had said, good as, "My name isn't Elizabeth Baron. It's Annalee Warthrop."

"You goddamn foul mouth liar!" She cackled, "Well, get out of here now, fore Cas starts in on you again!"

It was a further month of stiffness and jolts of pain before I felt whole again. I had been waiting for it, for the morning that I woke without pain in my skin. Light came through the drawn drapes and stole through Jack's golden hair. I took a moment to look at how it struck his face. How blonde stubble grew up on his boyish cheeks. Can I ever scour it from my memory, how when I shifted his arm grew tighter around me? I wanted a hundred thousand of mornings such as this.

His eyes opened in slow blinks. "Don't get up," he murmured, pressing his face against my shoulder and pulling me back, "You are too warm to allow to leave." There were moments before he was entirely awake, or while he slipped to sleep, when tenderness leaked from his lips. I allowed him to hold me against him.

We had done nothing more intimate than allow the entireties of our bodies to lay against one another in sleep, although I had given up my bedroom for his. When I wake without him what I miss is his feet, which were never entirely warm, mixed up with mine. There was always something that stirred my heart about Jack in bare feet. It was Jack who was not poised to strike, Jack who lingered on silk sheets and murmured into my ear while he faded in and out of slumber.

We finally rose but we didn't dress, just wrapped ourselves in dressing gowns and went downstairs to procure breakfast. He wasn't working as a surgeon then, he didn't have daily employment. Of course, nor did I. We were quite free to be leisurely with our mornings.

On this particular morning he percolated coffee and poured some for each of us, loading a plate with two pastries, "Come here," he said, and withdrew to the sitting room to recline on the divan. I reclined against him. His arm encircled me. Languidly we drank our coffee and ate our pastries. He took my cup when I was finished and reached out to put it on the side table with his, the plate followed.

I peaked up at him and saw color raise on his cheeks. He said, "I bought something for you."

"Something that is making you blush, Jack? You have my curiosity."

He had quite obviously planned our venture here, because he produced a box from behind the divan. I sat up a little to open it. He watched me removed the scarlet ribbon and lift the satin covered lid with hesitant eyes.

Sitting on a silk cushion within was a slender silver revolver with a pearl handle. Upon both the metal and the pearl were intricate carvings of roses in full and half bloom. Beside it was a knife in the same pattern.

"Jack," I said with mock admonishment, "You bought me flowers."

"Is that not the proper thing to give to a lady I am courting?"

"Was the murdering part of the courtship?"

He nipped at the tip of my ear, and growled softly, "What a foolish question."

I turned and smirked at him, "I have something for you too."

I drew them out of the pocket of my dressing gown and handed them to him.

"Boarding passes? Where are we going?" This was one of the qualities of Jack that kept me so firmly. It was the rare man who did question a prerogative set by a woman. As long as it promised thrill, he would allow himself to be led, by me at least.

"There is an island the Caribbean that doesn't have a native population, but I'm told there is a rather nice shack on the beach."

"Mmm," he said, nuzzling his nose into my hair, "Anything exciting live there, poppy?"

"Not at the moment, although soon enough two deadly monsters will be coming ashore."

His fingers trailed at my sides and he kissed my neck, his lips parting to tenderly bite and tease the flesh there. I gave a quiet gasp, leaning into him. When he spoke, his voice was rough, "That sounds like it will be a thrilling hunt."

I pressed back against him and his fingers wrapped about my hip. A low groan shuddered from his lips. I drew my hand beneath his dressing gown, up his bare thigh, goosebumps rose in my wake and I felt him tense behind me. "Do you think you can take the beast alive?"

His hand slid from my hip through the gap in my dressing gown and down, pressed against me, the sharp thrill of it made me call out. Husky and dark he growled, "Oh I shall most certainly take her." His fingers moved and I arched, small cries coming from my lips.

"And if," I asked as I trailed my clawed fingers lightly up his leg, between where our bodies pressed together to wear I could feel him growing stiff at my back. He had a better angle, my hand was somewhat awkwardly behind my back, but the effect was undeniable. I drew my fingers delicately up the softest of his flesh. A throaty moan filled my ears and I finished my question, "She should take you instead?"

His retaliation was immediate and I convulsed. He bit my ear again and whispered, "The hunt shall be grand regardless."

Goddamn you, Will Henry. Goddamn you.

The island was as it had been promised, gloriously sunny and white beached, enlivened by bird song. Just as I had been told, there were no permanent settlements on the little patch of land, but a sailor had once built a single room shack that looked out onto the coast. This was where we made our base camp, although we did not intend to stay there, at least not at first.

"How much of a head start shall I give you?" Jack asked. He was in his full glory, hair combed back, out of his face, bedecked in his hunting gear. The only thing missing was his rifle. He had brought it, but this particular hunt did not call for it.

"An hour ought to suffice, I think."

He winked, "Then I will give you two. I wouldn't want the game to be over too fast."

"Shall we start right away?"

"I do not believe myself capable of waiting."

"Well then," I said, sidling up to him, hovering a fraction of an inch from his lips. He leaned forward to kiss me but I leaned back, only enough to keep just out of reach, "Happy hunting."

His lips curled into a hungry smirk and I was out the door, sprinting toward the foliage cover.

As soon as I reached it I slowed, picking the first fifty feet or so carefully, watching not to break twigs. Then, I scampered up a tree. They were dense enough that I could move among the limbs. It was not something Jack would be able to imitate, being quite a bit heavier.

Thus I spent my first two hours, carefully moving from tree to tree trying to make as much distance between me and my starting position as possible. When two hours had elapsed I felt a shiver go up my spine. The hunt was on.

I had my new knife with me. Not for Jack, of course, but in case I ran into wildlife that required handling. It sat comfortably in my boot.

At high noon, four hours into the hunt, I heard a single snap of a twig. I went still and perfectly silent, poised above the tropical forest floor. I knew he was cursing to himself for his lapse in absolute silence. And then I saw him. My heart sped under my ribs. Jack in his element was a glorious thing to observe.

He stalked beneath me, leonine in his steps. It quickened my breath to linger here, invisibly above him. Just passed me he stopped, holding stock still and cocking his head to one side. I held my breath. He turned back. Those dark eyes flickering about him. A single loose strand of hair falling over his forehead. I exhaled.

His head shot up and he saw me, hungry grin twitching over his face. He leapt, kicked off a tree and again up at me. Simultaneously I leapt downward, swinging off a branch and hitting the ground. His premature attack had cost him precious seconds.

As I have said before, he might have been faster than me but I was the quicker. I darted between trees, hearing him in close pursuit behind me. My blood sang with it, elated at remaining just out of reach. I saw, as I fled a fallen tree that had foliage and underbrush growing up around it. I leapt it and fell beneath, huddling inside the brush and out of sight.

I might have laughed aloud. He cleared the tree in a single bound, tearing after me. I heard his footsteps fade. It would not fool him for long. But, for the first time, I had evaded him.

I left my hiding spot immediately and set off the way I had come, following his own tracks to disguise mine. I veered from this path after a hundred or so feet, going due east through the early afternoon. I wanted to keep the game going until nightfall, where Jack would be at his best.

At a small freshwater spring I stopped and rested, eating some of the rations I had brought. I lingered there in silence for a long while. The island was too small to really use distance in my favor, and I did want Jack to find me eventually, so I gave it time. When the sun began to dip I took off again, heading south.

It was not until true night, when I crept nearly blindly through the forest that I began to feel it. The prickling upon the back of the next, the raising of the hairs on my arms. That unmistakable feeling of being hunted. Somewhere in the night, Jack was close.

I stopped, standing entirely still and listening to the noises of the forest around me. Insects chirped. Trees groaned. A soft breath.

I flew into motion, exploding forward away from the noise. A ripple of laughter came next, where the breath had been, and the chase resumed.

He swung himself forward and seized my wrist. I turned, twisting toward his thumb and fingers and breaking the hold then sidestepping and turning away from him. I ducked his next lunge and kicked out, knocking him off his feet. I leapt him and fled on. He was up and after me at once. Stealth now was abandoned for the heat of the chase.

For a single moment I turned back to see how quickly he approached and it was that moment that lost me the game. The moon, so much brighter on the beach than under trees blazed down like a silver beacon. He had chased me from my cover and was too close for me to turn back. I pelted down the sand, releasing an exhilarated shriek. I could feel him closing in, the brute strength of his speed out matching me. His laughter cut through the night air and he made the final leap. I had time only to turn to face him before he was upon me.

His superior weight bore me down and we tumbled into the sand, not thirty feet from the shack. He was swift in concluding his victory, pinning my hands down on either side of my head. Our breath came fast. There was a mad gleam in his eyes, which looked darker than black above me. I could not keep the grin from my lips. He reverberated with energy. The muscled power in his thighs that penned me in and the arms that held me down thrilled my blood.

"Tomorrow, you hunt me," he said, getting back his breath. Then lithe and sinuous he came down and kissed me, tongue, hungry and insistent against mine. I met him with equal desire, lifting my hips to press against him.

His drew back, and looked at me bathed in moonlight, "Lee. I -" He paused, searching for words. That mask fell back and I looked up on him, caught as I was between human and not. "I am no longer interested in being alone."

"Then don't be alone."

He fixed me with stare, I, enraptured, stared back. "You see me as I am."

I kissed him softly, "I prefer you as you are."

His head fell forward a fraction of an inch and his eyes closed for a moment as though these words were heady to hear, "You pulled me from the shipwreck." His voice was so soft it was almost difficult to hear.

"You fed me living flesh."

"I have-" his breath was shallow and fast, "I have told you all my secrets."

"I have told you all of mine."

His voice hitched and he closed his eyes, whisper harsh and desperate, "Do not leave me."

I paused for only a moment to think on my answer, to know it would be true, "I will not."

"Swear it."

"You as well."

A smile briefly lit his face and he stood, pulling me up with him. His hair was mussed from the chase, it fell around his face. He slowly dropped to a single knee, hands sliding down my legs. His hand wrapped around the handle of my knife and he pulled it from my boot, coming slowly back up to his feet. He stood so close to me I felt his breath upon my skin.

He lifted the rose carved knife and slid the blade across his palm. Then he handed it to me. I did not look away, I slit open my palm, allowing my blood to join his on the blade, its christening. I slid home the blade and straightened. I lifted my bloody hand with his and we pressed them together, our fingers intertwining at their tips.

"Jack," I whispered.

"Lee."

He raised his other hand and caught my chin and tilted it up and he kissed me. It remained chaste and soft for a single moment and then the hunger set upon us. Our hands released and he pulled me to him, mouth moving ravenously against mine. He lifted me and I wrapped my legs about his waist, his arms holding me aloft. He carried me back to the shack and laid me upon the bed.

Article by article we stripped each other of our vestments until we were laid bare. We did not regard the blood our hands left upon each other but touched every inch and could not get enough. He lay over me and I felt every part of him. I traced my hands down his chest, the slim compacted muscles and whispery trail of blonde hair. He slid down my body those long fingered hands pressing apart my thighs. He looked at me and gave me a charmed smirk before he lowered those lips to me. I cried out his name and buckled beneath him. The little death indeed.

He tasted of me when he returned to my lips. He waited upon me to nod and urge him on. His breathless gasp joined mine as we came into one. Our movements were slow, rhythmatic, he did not look away. Sleep did not find us until the sun was rising in the sky. Never had euphoria reigned to unmitigated in my soul as when I lay my weary head over his chest and he wrapped his spent arms around me.

Goddamn you, Will Henry. Goddamn you.