Relief. That is what Catherine felt in that moment. A deep swell of relief washed over her like a warm ocean wave engulfing her body, sloshing through her arms and legs, melting tension in her limbs that she didn't realised she was holding. It was as though she was exhaling a breath that she had held for twenty years and was at last enjoying the beautiful feeling of breathing in the air and feeling alive once again. She could touch him, feel him, taste him, he was real, he was here, he was… Her skin suddenly felt feverish and her ears exploded in a loud buzzing noise. She felt so hot and light headed that the room began to spin and she realised that she was about to faint. Faint!
"A swoon." Her mind told her. "So they do exist." She thought dryly, and from some deep unknown crevice of her brain sprang forth new joy at the thought of swooning at the touch of a man. She had apparently become a character from a Victorian melodrama.
"What irony!" She thought. "I moved here to become an independent modern woman, and now I am on the verge of fainting dead away in the arms of a man. A man for goodness sake!"
A new thought cut through the joyous fogginess of her brain like a hard shaft of light.
"A man? Is that what you think he is?"
The warmness flooded out of her body as quickly as it had arrived. Where had that thought come from? Of course he was a man, he looked like a man, he felt like a man beneath her arms…albeit a very powerful man, a man with strength. He felt hard and muscly beneath her fingertips, but he was warm, she could feel his heart beat against her cheek, and yet…
"A man? Is that what you think he is? He is dangerous."
This primal instinct was warning her there was something more to Lucian. She knew with absolute clarity that is was telling her the truth. It is the warning inside of each of us from a time when we were once stalked and hunted in the darkness. It is akin to how a mouse knows instinctively to be afraid of a cat, and Catherine felt like a mouse now, trembling beneath powerful paws that held her securely and would not let her go.
"It's the fatigue." She told herself.
"I'm not in the right mind." She told herself. And yet still the primal instinct rand in her head like the constant ringing of a small bell tingling deep in the caverns of her brain. There was danger here. Real, terrifying danger.
"He is dangerous." Her primal-self warns. "Dangerous and…"
"Wild." She whispers the word into his neck.
"No." The primal voice warns, "Not wild- a monster."
A cold shiver runs down Catherine's spine. Lucian holds her closer in response and when he does that sweet, warm relief passes through her tired body once again and a question floats through the warm and foggy recesses of her mind…
"Does it matter?"
She considers this for a second.
"Does it matter?"
She holds him tighter.
"Does it matter?"
She breathes him in, she lets him fill her lungs.
"Does it matter?"
The mystery of him. The danger of him. The fear of him- does any of it matter as long as she could hold him? God, it was so hard for her to think rationally now she was here entwined in his arms. How could she possibly think straight with him present and real and stroking her hair and neck as he was at that moment. It was so unfair! Why is it now that she must make such a crucial and life changing decision with her emotions flickering between paralysing fear and deep flooding desire? Catherine knew in that moment that she would have to make the decision and whatever path she chose, whichever door she opened she knew also that it would be a one way journey. Once you place yourself into the jaws of a lion there is no turning back. It was, quite simply, all or nothing.
She briefly cast a thought over her life to this point… it was all filled with nothing. She knew the taste and shape and colour of a nothing life. For a second a memory flickered through her mind. It was of her mother, sitting in driver's seat of that beat-up old red car, picking her up from a night in a crumbled old town that had once been her home. There was no joy there, everything had been as grey and lifeless as this new life she had carved for herself in this new city thousands of miles from home. Her mother that night had admonished her for being a selfish creature. In many way she may have been right. Every decision she had made had been to escape. To create a new life alone, to find some purpose alone, and though she had accomplished all of these things not one decision she had made had brought her any measure of joy or happiness. Now she could remedy that.
She chose all.
With all her heart.
She turned the handle for the beast at the door, she let him in. She kissed him and let him devour her.