She smelt like life: warm blood steadily pulsing through her body,sweat, the faint odor of the things that humans surrounded themselveswith lingering against her skin. She smelt like sex: excitement andrelease and him, fresh blood smeared around the neat puncture wounds,angry and red, against the paleness of her flesh. She smelt of fear, afaint perfume that underlay the multitude of smells that clung to theflesh of the living.
She would have protested, watching him from beneath lowered lashes withbig, green eyes that shone with trust. She would have lay her warm handagainst his still chest; moved her lips against his; titled her necksideways, a submissive pose, trusting him with her blood, her life. Andthe scent of fear would have stayed with her. As much as she trustedhim with her heart and mind, the instinct to run, to flee the predator,the alien otherness, still lived within the depths of her being. Safelytucked away, caged beneath her love, her bravery, and the unfoundedbelief that some part of the man she took to her bed was still wrappedup in the flimsy wisps of humanity.
What bits of the mortal he had been which had survived thetransformation from man to demon had faded over the passage of time.Memories of what the sun felt like pounding relentlessly against hisbared head faded; the days when his eyes caressed a woman's body and sawonly the potential for a bit of fun seemed little more than a halfforgotten dream that he didn't care enough about to cling onto.Stronger, faster, senses sharper, each change had shifted him furtheraway from the knowledge of what it meant to be human.
Her body was hot against the length of his cool one, shifting with thesmall movements that all humans made -- muscles bunching and releasingas her body restlessly sought comfort; the rise of fall of her chest,the occasional hitch as she brought in air; blood surging from herbeating heart and climbing it's way back. His own form suffered none ofthe unconscious twitches and movements that moved through her's. Hisbody lay unnaturally still, stripped of all involuntary movement. Ittold the truth that she sought to deny -- as human as he looked, shebrought a corpse into her bed and body. Foreign. Unnatural. Slippingfurther away from what he had been, what she was, with every year thatslipped past.
He would let her hold onto her illusions, let her search for humanitywithin his eyes. And he would let her search until she woke in his arms- still and silent, her ear pressed against a chest that had notexpanded with indrawn air in over a century - and knew the truth.
~End~