Part Six

Hannah had never felt more aware of her nervousness about sex. Or her guilt, come to think of it. Her mental connection with Thierry made any sort of understanding of what was going on with their bodies almost impossible; sometimes she woke up, assumed they'd had sex, and then realized all her clothes were still on. One time he woke up wearing her clothes.

She had very little actual experience with the act of sexual intercourse, and she approached the situation of getting some with much trepidation.

As did Teth, who appeared to think that if he touched her, she would melt.

"Why don't we just do it?" she asked hoarsely. "Just come over here and do it."

He didn’t move. He was sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed with his head in his hands, looking like he wished he’d never gotten into this situation.

Hannah wondered if she was going to scream. She didn’t know Teth, she didn’t like him, she didn’t trust him, and she wasn’t sure that sleeping with him was going to help her be any less angry at Thierry. That bastard.

Or, maybe it would.

She scooted down in the bed and pulled the sheet over her head. Then, wriggling like she hadn’t since kindergarten, she slid her clothes off and tossed them onto the floor.

While she was trying to work up the nerve to get out from under the blanket, she noticed that the sheets were silk. Peach silk, she thought, although without the light it was hard to tell.

The mattress tilted, and Hannah ducked her head out. Teth had sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t look at her, but at his knees.

"Go on," she said, her voice below a whisper. "Do it."

Still without meeting her eyes, his hand moved and hovered above one breast. Then it stopped, and he asked, "Is this how it is between humans?"

She closed her eyes. "I’m not the epitome of human sexuality, Teth."

"You are to me."

"Tell me, is this how it is between vampires?"

"No." He softened even more. "Vampires are like animals together. Their love is free and drunken. They moan and whimper and gasp because of what they feel. Sometimes they hurt each other, or themselves. They break things. But sometimes they’re very quiet, silent even, and all they feel is poured out through the eyes and the hands. Their lovemaking flows as smooth as a poem, it’s choreographed by instinct. It is all consuming."

His voice was as beautiful as the images he drew. "That’s how it is between humans," Hannah said. "Only...sometimes..."

She was thinking of Danny Asin, and their insanely clumsy attempts at mutual masturbation. They’d been in the car for almost an hour when she finally ventured, "Um, do you want to...," and she hadn’t finished but he’d had the sense to unzip his pants and take out his strange, malleable flesh-stick. She got up the nerve to wrap her hand around it, which seemed to please him. He closed his eyes, so he couldn’t see the crimson blush on her face or the look of disdain she couldn’t hide while pumping this foam-rubber organ.

He was sitting on the seat next to her, grunting and moaning, and she was working him up and down, and she realized that for all practical purposes she might as well be reading a book simultaneously. There was nothing remotely romantic about being parked next to the dumpster behind a K-Mart while she got her hands dirty - literally - and he looked at the pornographic pictures painted on the backs of his eyelids, none of which even featured Hannah.

She started laughing. Even when she was wiping her palm on the underside of a floor mat, she couldn’t stop giggling insanely. When Danny said, uncertainly, "Uh, do you want me to do you now?" it was so very much the complete opposite of any sexual fantasy she had ever had that she couldn’t even answer, just double over and shake her head. She could already imagine him tinkering around under her skirt the way he would have under the hood of a car.

"Sometimes?" Teth asked finally.

"Sometimes it’s awkward," she told him, opening her eyes.

Her vision had adjusted to the dark, and she could see the simple lines of his face now. He had a nice face, she realized, and his eyes weren’t intent on hurting her but worried.

She was smiling. "Sometimes we’re scared of getting too close to each other, or showing desire, of letting our guards down. We’re awkward and silly, and we try to pretend like we don’t want to have sex, like we’re too intelligent, too far above carnal pleasure."

He tilted his head. "Above carnal pleasure?"

"Humans...we don’t mean to, but we sort of regard sex as dirty. People act like it’s something you should be ashamed of."

"You’re talking about the Church," he recognized.

"Yeah, well, the Church is pretty powerful. Or it was, for a long time, and it gave people these ideas that won’t go away now."

Teth thought. "Hollywood says vampires are all about sex and blood." He glanced at her. "They aren’t entirely wrong. Feeding and...fucking..."

Hannah started laughing silently, and Teth joined her abashedly. "Are full of frenzy," he finished.

"That’s four F’s in one sentence," she said. It was a silly thing to say, and she knew it, but laughing with him was so much nicer than the silence.

He covered her hand with his. His flesh was warm. "Are we going to do this?" he asked.

Hannah rolled her hand over so that she could intertwine her fingers with his. "I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it. I mean, humans don’t exactly have sex pre-choreographed. There’s a reason we call it 'fooling around.'"

His thumb stroked the underside of her wrist. "I’ll take my chances."

So while the moment was still fresh, she put her hand to his face and kissed him. No waiting, no second thoughts. His mouth was warm like his hand, but softer. Hannah felt as if every molecule in her body shut down except for her lips, they were all she was aware of.

She opened her mouth, closed it around Teth’s lower lip. Her clumsy tongue painted his mouth from side to side before she pulled back.

His hand was cupping the back of her neck. "Now what?" he whispered.

She could feel his breath on her cheek. "Whatever we’ve got the nerve to do."

He didn’t hesitate before kissing her again, and this time it was a full kiss. For a moment she felt startled, attacked by the sensation of his possessive tongue in her mouth, but then she fought back and their mouths dueled playfully.

When they stopped her chest was rising quickly. It had been vaguely amusing at first, doing something so utterly odd, but after a time the glamour wore off, and just when Hannah was beginning to get bored the rhythm changed. She didn’t think either one of them was consciously responsible, it just happened as naturally as did her arms wrapping around his neck. Suddenly their mouths were symbiotic, it was a massage, not a kiss.

Resting her forehead against his, she opened his shirt. Her hand lay almost flat on his chest and moved from one button down to the next as if this were a reconiscence mission and she was hoping to undress him without his noticing.

"Lay down," he murmured. The sheet had fallen down, she realized, and she pulled it up under her arms.

"Why are you doing that?" He stretched out next to her on the bed.

"‘To want is to be wanton,’" she replied. "My grandmother said that to me once."

"Your grandmother is a very frigid woman."

"My grandmother is human."

"If some one walked in right now, would you pretend I was trying to rape you?"

She wondered what the two of them having sex would look like from the doorway. He’d be on top of her, his damp, naked ass bouncing up and down like a dog humping a chair, and her legs would be splayed out to either side, feet inelegantly flexed.

"I’d probably just say that I was asleep and you walked into the wrong room. What would you do?"

"I’d ask if he found you as attractive as I do."

Mystified. "Teth?"

His mouth latched onto her neck. It tickled, like being licked by a big dog. Hannah stifled another laugh.

"I know," he said, between bouts of covering her throat with kisses. "I don’t think I ever had the sense to find you attractive before."

"My being human and all that."

"And all that, yes."

She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and down his back. She liked the feel of his bare skin running under her fingers, but the shirt caught on the elbows he was resting his weight on.

"Can you, uh...shift for a second?"

Yes, flowing, choreographed romance was asking him to worm his arm around just so she could get his clothes off. He wordlessly lifted his elbow, and while she was fidgeting with the button on the cuff, he lay one finger-tip against the hollow of her throat and drew it down. It bumped against the edge of the sheet and the fabric rumpled up as he kept pushing down. Silk glided, swanlike, over the rise of Hannah’s breasts, briefly snagging on one nipple, and revealed her torso to the bellybutton.

Even with the snag, which brought dreaded attention to her naked form, the movement sent a tingle through her stomach. For the first time she felt sexy while doing more than flirting, a hell of a lot more that might have made some people frown if they knew.

She managed to get one sleeve off Teth’s body, but the second one was all twisted around, and she ending up tearing it open at the shoulder. "Oh, shit," she muttered.

Teth chuckled and shrugged the garment off. It caught on the edge of the bed and hung there until he brushed it onto the floor.

"Sorry, sorry."

"For what?"

"I ripped your shirt."

He lifted one eyebrow. Hannah fought the urge to cover herself again. "Don’t you ever rip Thierry’s clothes off?"

"I don’t think so. Sometimes we don’t even take our clothes off."

He paused to consider this a moment. "I’m exerting too much influence. Obviously this is more like vampire sex than it is human sex."

"Huh?" She pulled the sheet up to her chin again. "I thought you said vampire sex flowed like a poem."

"You don’t think this has?"

"I couldn’t even get your shirt off."

"We were tangled up in each other."

Suddenly she understood. "But I keep pulling the sheet back up," she tested.

"You’re not trying to tease me?"

"When you kissed me, I could practically taste your last meal."

"You tasted me."

She broke out into a full-hearted laugh, and this time it wasn’t nervousness or self-deprecation. "Do you see what’s going on here?" she asked.

His eyes drifted to the edge of the sheet, which he idly plucked at while replying, "I would hope so."

"Vampire sex and human sex aren’t any different at all. We do the exact same thing, we’re just concentrating of different aspects. I keep looking at all the ways it isn’t like the movies, and you keep looking at how animal it is, but we’re seeing the same thing. I feel stupid 'cause I ripped your shirt, and you feel like it was a rash act of passion."

He looked at her skeptically, but with fondness. "Are you ready to admit that you want to do this now?"

"Teth, it’s the theory of relativity."

That got him thinking, which only proved Hannah’s point further. His smile faded, and then he said, "Which means there’s no actual difference."

"It’s all in the training. You’ve been having kinky, unbridled sex for years, and all I’ve had is awkward, unsatisfying necking sessions with some light petting."

"There’s no actual difference," he repeated. He seemed sort of hung up on that fact.

"None at all. It’s what you focus on, and probably how much experience you have."

He rolled off her, onto his side. "This is quite unexpected."

"Hasn’t all of this been?"

"I thought you’d turn me down."

And if she hadn’t been so angry at Thierry, she would have.

"I thought Thierry would just break my neck when I asked his permission."

And he hadn’t. That got to her more than anything, that he hadn’t tried to defend her honor in any way.

"We don’t have the relationship I thought we did," she said, suddenly wistful.

"No?"

She stared up where the air faded into darkness. "I used to think I was the most important thing in his life. But...if he had asked, would you have let him sleep with Mira?"

"Mira and I have a very different relationship than do you and Thierry. I’m absolutely incapable of denying her anything. If she wanted Thierry, she could have him."

"And it works both ways?"

"No. She’s letting me have you because she wants me to love humans. And I’m taking you because that’s what she wants."

"And you wouldn’t be hurt, if she wanted him?"

"Are you saying that you’re hesitant to sleep with me because you’re afraid of hurting Thierry’s feelings?"

"I don’t know."

She covered her eyes with her arm and felt Teth’s flat hand slide across her stomach. "I would be devastated if she said she wanted someone else. I would hate myself."

"I think I’m starting to hate myself."

"Yet you seem to have stopped hating me. We can trade back if you like."

His touch was soothing.

"Anything I want, is that it?"

"What is it you want, Hannah?"

She put her arm down at her side and turned her face toward his. He had his head propped up with one hand.

"I want my soulmate to love me more than he does his cause."

Teth’s eyes were brown and gray, a dappled mixture. He winced at her words.

"And I want...him to love me the way he loves all the other humans. I want him to make sacrifices for me. I want to be the glory he dreams of at night."

She stopped, because she’d begun to cry, and then said, "And at this moment, I think I want you."

A sob broke in her chest, but she when tried to cover her face and pull away, Teth wrapped his arms around her again. "Hush, hush."

"I’m sorry-"

"No, there’s no need to be sorry. Come here, let me kiss you."

This time she saw the kiss from both perspectives. Yes, it was a messy kiss seasoned too salty with tears and any moment her nose would probably start running, but it was also an act of comfort. The romance was not lost on her now, that she was kissing her soulmate’s once-enemy in a fit of anger.

But it was so good, and she did find herself tasting him, and the flash of fire as he tore the sheet off her chest was not carelessly inflicted rug burn but an erotic act of passion.

"I can see it your way," she whispered, not opening her eyes. "Can you see it mine?"

"I’m trying not to."

"Why not?"

"Because it’s silly. It makes me want to laugh at us."

"Sometimes sex is silly."

"But not now."

No, not now. She welcomed his weight on top of her and ignored the way their knees had a tendency to bang together painfully.

They didn’t stop this time, not for regrets, not for idle chatter. Hannah breathed hard and fast and she didn’t hide it. That second of symbiotic intensity she had briefly experienced returned to cover her entire body. She let the desire show in her eyes, she let him see it. He rested the weight of his hips against hers, rubbing her just the right way, and she came in a moan of surprise and bewilderment that he drank with his mouth as if her cries were the blood he lived off.

To be continued...