Sips of Blood (23 page)

"Your father is beyond any pleasure. He needs
to pass on and return to dust."

"You want him dead?"

"I want you. That is all I can think
about."

"And what about me and my happiness?"

"I will make you more than happy. I will
share a secret power that I have."

"Is this going to be in a potion made up of
mashed frog legs, bats wings, and whatever other witchy brew you
can come up with?"

Marie bit down hard on her wrist. Blood
bubbled to the surface. She squeezed the break in her flesh to
allow the blood to flow freely.

"Shit! What the hell are you doing?"

"Share my brew now." She brought her wrist up
to his lips and he turned his head.

"Only a fool would turn from my gift."

"Hey, I let you nuzzle up and suck some of my
blood, but I've never had the desire to lap up anyone else's."

"Never?" She pursed her lips. "Never in a fit
of passion have you drawn your tongue across a wound you have
inflicted? Never in a blur of desire have you bitten down to taste
the metallic juice of a lover? Never have you lapped at the
remnants of a woman's bloody life-giving tissue?" She stared at his
profile, seeing the turmoil twitch his flesh while he remained
silent. "You have. Sometimes we can't control the sweetest
temptations." Slowly she moved her wrist around to his lips. He did
not turn away this time, but he did not suck on her flesh. Instead
he allowed the blood to flow across his full lips, rivulets
moistening the parchness of his flesh.

Gingerly Marie used her other hand to guide
the drops of blood between his lips.

"Swallow, my love. Let me seep into your
body."

His tongue met her bloodied fingers, licking,
savoring the salty sweet taste.

Chapter 43

Liliana found herself laughing more as her
dates with David became more frequent. He startled her darker side
into believing that life had not been wasted on her. He touched her
gently, and she savored each embrace they shared. Again as she
remembered him in a former life, he cautiously approached intimacy,
and Liliana slowly recalled the thrill of a passionate embrace, the
rhythm of united bodies, even though it had never been with
him.

David had tanned since first she had met him.
His skin had turned from a pale white to a warm earth shade.

"How come you named him Françoise?" asked
David as he scratched the rabbit behind its ear.

"I named him after my uncle."

"I can't imagine your uncle being pleased
about that."

"Causing pain pleases him."

"I don't understand." David placed the rabbit
back into its cage.

"My grandmother and uncle aren't speaking.
Hell, they can't even tolerate the sight of each other." Liliana
latched the cage door shut. "Grandmother refuses to say what
happened between them, and Uncle implies that Grandmother is
overreacting. To what? He won't tell me. Caught in the middle, what
the hell am I supposed to do?"

"Not allow yourself to be pulled into their
feud."

"I try, but I don't like the bitterness
between them. They've never been on good terms with each other;
however, they used to at least talk."

"Time will help."

"No, David. My gut tells me this is too
serious."

"I've never met your grandmother. Is she as
much of a terror as your uncle thinks she is?"

"He's spoken of her to you?"

"Yes. Her name was mingled in with some
French words that I didn't understand, and I thought it best not to
ask for a translation."

Liliana shook her head. Why must she give up
a beautiful Saturday afternoon to her kin's feud? She took David's
soft, firm hand in hers.

"Let's forget about the skeletons in the
closet."

"Are there many, and do they bite?"

"Only a few... but they do bite."

David laughed. "Your family is probably no
worse than the average."

Liliana stroked his hand with her thumb.

"Come over here and sit down with me,
Liliana."

They crossed the yard to a white gazebo. The
paint job had been shabby. Globs of bubbles marred the various
planks of wood. A vine attempted to cut off their passage onto the
elevated natural wood stage. Dressed in hot-pink bell-shaped
flowers, the vine extended itself from one side of the doorway to
the other. David reached out a hand and batted the vine out of
their way. As they moved across the wood floor, Liliana could
measure the weakness of each board. The bell-shaped flowers
surrounding them had a subtle sweet odor. A hint of honey and
chlorophyll impinged upon their bodies.

"Why don't we sit on the bench for a while
and talk." David swept a hand across the dust that had collected on
the oddly-curved bench. "I think the builders were attempting to
make a love seat. Obviously they failed."

David sat and drew Liliana down upon his
lap.

"Too much the gentleman to have me sit on a
dirty bench?"

"Naw, it's just an excuse to get closer to
you."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and
rubbed her fingers through his hair. His hair seemed fine, baby
fine, but there was no thinning. She touched his pale eyebrows and
licked each eyelid shut. His nose twitched, causing her to
giggle.

"You look just like Françoise when you do
that."

"I hope you mean the rabbit, not the
uncle."

She giggled and kissed the bridge of his
nose.

"A little lower," he said.

She kissed the tip of his nose and then his
lips.

Immediately he parted his lips, and Liliana's
tongue ventured into his mouth. Gently he sucked and circled her
tongue with his.

She felt his right hand slip under the
sleeveless denim blouse that she wore--a move Stuart never would
have attempted. But then, David's age easily approached thirty;
perhaps with maturity Stuart would have become more aggressive. He
undid her bra and brought his hand around to cup one of her
breasts. He weighted her breast and fondled the nipple with one
finger.

Foreplay, she thought. Dare she allow both
their passions to be freed? Could she make love and not draw blood?
Liliana knew that passion peaked the hunger. Whether it be the
passion of love or hate, they both awakened the hunger that animal
blood, dead blood, could not satisfy completely. She pulled away
and heard him moan and whisper her name.

"Lil," she corrected.

David opened his eyes and smiled.

His lips formed the name Lil, but the name
remained unheard.

Using his free hand, David cupped the back of
her head and pulled her down into another kiss. This time the kiss
staggered Liliana's senses. She wanted him. She deserved another
chance at love. She wouldn't allow her uncle to continue to cheat
her of her flowering youth that he had stolen many years before.
With one hand she opened the buttons on her blouse. As the material
slid down her back, David pulled away to see her blossomed breasts.
She let the bra slip onto his lap. Immediately he suckled at her
breasts, passionately moving between the two.

Liliana opened the snap on her jeans and
permitted his fingers to pull down the zipper.

The combined smells of his baby-fine hair and
his masculine sweat drove her beyond a point at which she could
deny him.

"I love you," she muttered into his soft
hair, bringing several strands closer in order to smell and taste
him.

He stopped and rested his lips on her bare
midriff.

"I can't promise you love, Lil."

"And I can't ask it of you. Allow me to at
least share what I am feeling. What I have felt for so many
years."

He chortled and kissed her skin.

"We've only known each other for a
month."

"You've been in my heart for centuries," she
whispered.

David looked up at her. "Funny, you don't
look like such an old crone."

"I never will." Liliana scooped up his chin
and rushed into a breathless kiss. "Make love to me," she cried out
as he lowered her to the floor. "Make love to me like you always
should have." The chaste love's name, "Stuart," almost passed her
lips, but she caught herself and settled for a protracted hiss that
fed the steam in David's hurried movements.

Clothes cast aside, the two lovers explored
each other. The dampness of his flesh stirred the hunger within
Liliana, and she lapped at the dewy salty flesh. When she reached a
pulse point, she immediately withdrew her tongue in favor of biting
down on her inner cheek. She thrust her hips up toward his
tumescence, her hands gripping his buttocks to bring him closer. As
he slid into her, a burst of blood dribbled onto her tongue. She
had broken her own flesh in order to drink without stealing his
life. The blood did not quench her thirst, but it controlled the
hunger.

Wrapped in the scents of bell-shaped flowers,
sex, and blood, she heard the panting and felt the slapping of
flesh on flesh as she reached her orgasm.

Chapter 44

"God, you've become so lazy. I can't get you
to do a thing for me, and if you do something for me, I can't get
you to do it right."

Matilda emptied the grocery bag, noting that
half the items she had requested were not there.

"What did you do with the list I gave
you?"

Cecelia shrugged.

"You go out with your friends and forget the
rest of the world exists. What did you and Linda do, spend the
afternoon mooning over boys at the mall?"

"I don't moon over boys, Mom."

"Listen, young lady, remember you're not as
old as you'd like people to think. And what's this?"

"A new shirt."

"Did you need a new shirt?" Matilda asked,
holding up a long-sleeved denim shirt.

"Mom, you've never liked my halter tops.
Think you'd be happy that I'm covering up."

"You have started to look more like a
respectable young lady, I have to give you that much credit. Where
are all those flimsy tops and shorts anyway?"

"Here and there."

"Does that mean they're all in the hamper and
you're too lazy to wash them?"

"No. They're in closets and drawers. I was
thinking about taking them down to the church."

"The church? What are they going to do with
your clothes?"

"Give them to people who need them."

"My God, do you think the church is going to
pass out your old snatches of material? They'd be more apt to burn
them, I'm sure."

Thirsty.
Cecelia couldn't drink enough
to quench her thirst, and it seemed to be getting worse each time
she visited with Sade. She wondered whether he could have passed
some disease to her. She didn't know of any venereal disease that
caused constant thirst, but then, she hadn't really read up on the
diseases. She had been too busy memorizing the how-to books.

"I have to be honest with you, Cecelia, I'm
of two minds about you not being willing to help me out at the Sade
residence. I used to think that you spent too much time bothering
Mr. Sade, but you were also a big help to me."

"I told you, Mom. I don't feel comfortable
there anymore."

Besides, Sade had recommended she stop the
visits to his house in favor of the trysts they frequently had
either in the middle of the afternoon or evening.

"Did Mr. Sade ever do anything or say
anything to make you feel uncomfortable?"

"Mom! I told you it was nothing he did. I
just don't like being around his niece and that strange menagerie
of animals she keeps. And what a sicko job she has. I'm surprised
you continue to work for them. I know you could fill that space of
time with another client. Why don't you?"

"Because no one pays as well as Mr. Sade, and
I actually find Liliana to be quite nice."

"Ms. Plissay to you."

"You're right, one of these times I'm going
to slip while I'm talking to her, although she has invited me to
call her by her first name."

"Big deal. The princess has deigned to
acknowledge you." A bottle of room-temperature soda water sat on
the kitchen table. Quickly Cecelia grabbed the bottle, twisted off
the cap, and drank a third of the bottle in one swallow.

"You couldn't put that soda water in a glass?
Are we supposed to drink out of that bottle after you've had you
mouth on it?" Matilda put her hands on her aproned hips and waited
for an answer.

Cecelia's only reply was to drink another
third of the bottle.

"Drink like that, and you'll be complaining
of tummy pains. All that carbonation."

A nap would be nice now,
thought
Cecelia. She checked her watch and noted it was half past noon.
Seemed like everyday at this time she was ready for a nap. Made her
feel like a kindergartner again. Her eyelids felt weighty, as if
each slender lash had the heft of a ten-pound dumbbell.

"Has your brain stopped working completely?"
Her mother's voice came from a distance, from another planet, for
all Cecelia could tell.

"Are you listening to me?"

No.
Why should Cecelia listen? Her
mother had nothing good to say. Always complaining. Always
criticizing. Always pulling Cecelia back to a dull little house on
an innocuous street, surrounded by drones that followed orders to
the letter.

"What is wrong with you, Cecelia?"

"Nothing. I'm going to take a nap."

"In the middle of the day? Let me feel your
forehead."

Matilda reached out, and Cecelia swatted her
hand away.

"I only want to see whether you are running a
fever." Again she stretched out her arm and finally touched her
daughter's forehead. "My, you're exceptionally cool."

"Cool. That's me, Mom."

"On a hot day like today, I would have
expected at least a little sweat." Matilda removed her hand from
Cecelia's forehead.