Joyous and peaceful calm washes over me. There is nothing about this moment that feels wrong or strained. The silence is blissful. The smell of tea and musky cologne sets something in my soul at ease. There is a rightness to being at Augustine’s side that I have never felt about anyone or anything before.
Maybe it is the bond, or trauma, or extreme loneliness, but I think I might be in love. A few months of a crush and two weeks of knowing him, I feel like my life has turned upside down for the better. Every little defence I had about keeping people away so I didn’t get attached just blew up with Augustine. I want nothing more than to be attached to him.
That is the most terrifying thing about all of this.
The knowledge that what howls in the night and lurks under beds is new and scary, but it makes no real difference to me. I have Augustine. He believes he is one of the scariest things in the world, but in my world? He is a dream come true and only keeps proving it to me.
The drive is short. His townhouse is on a side street in the historic district. Marcus pulls up to the curb and idles for us. My lover opens the door and holds out a hand for me. He tells Marcus to return the car to the garage and that’s the end of it. A quick business goodbye and then it is just us standing on the pavement in front of the stairs to his front door.
“Joanna,” he hums my name like it’s a beautiful melody, a hand cupping my cheek as he looks into my eyes.
“So, are you going to invite me in for a nightcap?” I tease.
“I would much prefer breakfast.”
His smile is downright sinful. Augustine grips the back of my neck and drags me in for a kiss so luxurious it rivals the entire evening. He pulls my body flush to his. A hand settles on my hip, holding me in place for his pleasure. Sands tickle the base of my neck as it drips across my throat, smoothing over my bare, heated skin.
He breaks the kiss with a smile reminiscent of that first night, when I was trying to sneak out of the library after that dream. It spreads a bit too far across his cheeks, and the lights from street lamps make his face look sharper. My hand cups his cheek, thumb tracing over the seam that hides his sharp teeth.
“Put me to bed then,” I whisper.
Most of Augustine’s house is exactly like the library. It is stacked upon shelves upon piles of books ranging from titles I have seen made into movies to books older than this country. He pulls me up the stairs in a rush, narrowly avoiding the art decorating every wall. Another time, when I am not recovering from a life-saving ritual or near delirious with lust, I will enjoy the decor, but now all my focus is on him.
With need and arousal pulsing to life between us, the heat of the bond washes over my skin like hot sand. It’s comforting and turns me softer, if that is even possible. The need to bury myself in this feeling is almost overwhelming. To hide away from all the real parts of life and just live in this dream. The fact that Augustine would give that to me is a threat to my sanity.
As I think this, Augustine slams me into the wall. Frames and sculptures clatter around me, but my focus is on him, his body shifting, sands dripping from his hands and around his neck. His eyes are dark as night, the iris glowing a hypnotising golden shade that I once thought was just a trick of the light.
He grips both sides of my face with his blackened, clawed hands. “Mon abeille, I cannot control myself around you. Every grain of sand in my body is begging to touch you, swallow down your emotions as they happen.”
My breath catches as I feel them. His sands crawl up my legs with a slow gluttony, luxuriating in all my curves, sneaking underneath my shapewear.
“Allow me, Joanna, grant me the greatest pleasure of my existence to have you. Tell me, now.”
“Augustine,” I gasp softly. My heart threatens to explode out of my chest and tears threaten to spill down my face. “I want you,allof you.”
He lets go of me only long enough to open the door next to us. Then his mouth is on mine. His teeth scrape across my bottom lip and I moan. The sharpness of it sends a shiver down my spine that pools right between my legs.
“The sweetest ambrosia,” he mumbles against my lips, guiding us into his bedroom.
Augustine shucks off his jacket as I pull him into a deeper kiss, teasing my tongue across his lips and teeth until he lets me in. I stroke my tongue against his. A groan vibrates from his chest, and the soft, warm sands that I thought surround me turn molten.
“No games,” he says. “When I own you here, worship you, I do not want there to be any doubt. Every word is true. As soft and vicious as they may be, they are real. You will never doubt me.”
He rips his waistcoat and shirt off, exposing his smooth, golden skin to me for the first time. It’s the first time I have seen so much of Augustine. Dreams are so wildly different. They cast a haze over everything I do and see. Now he is all I see. In the glow of the city lights seeping through the bedroom window, I see the boogeyman. His chest heaves and thin black veins pulse through his skin. They decorate him like a work of art. My fingers reach out and trace one from his solid abdomen up to where his heart should be. The hardened spines at his back shine and shudder as if they are his heart, alive and pulsing with life.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he drags my hand to his face. “You do not have to do anything to have my love, mon abeille. It will be yours for eternity.”
He kisses my wrists and leads a trail of them up my arm over my sleeve until his lips hover over the bonding mark he leaves me in my dreams. Every night for the past week, I have felt his teeth sink into my flesh with his honey ichor dripping from my lips like a drug. It’s a pleasure and pain that are fighting to see who will drown the other first as I’m dragged to oblivion. I will never be the same if even a drop of those feelings hits me tonight.
I will never be the same either way, but Augustine makes me feel alive when I have felt nothing for so long. A selfish part of me wants to keep feeling that way. A little voice in my head shouting that I don’t deserve happiness or love. A deeper voice echoes in my thoughts,‘sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, darlin’. I inhale sharply, trying to blink the voice from my head.
“Are you sure?” I ask, belly quaking as fear twists up in my gut. “Augustine, you don’t have-”
“I know what you are going to say, and I hate interrupting you,mon abeille, but…” His lips brush against my ear as he pushes me back towards his bed. “I have lived thousands of years and have never been more certain. I know what you are worth, my Joanna. Let me show you.”
The spines at his back catch in the light again and I am desperate to touch them, to feel them soften to my touch or resist me. Augustine pulls the zipper of my dress down slowly, avoiding the snag where my waist flairs. It falls to the floor easily, my sleeves coming next, and then he steps back. Slips of sand remain on my shoulders, and my neck. They trickle down my sternum until they reach my nipples. They pebble at the sensation, my chest heaving as I wait for more.
