I crawl farther onto the bed, and Dorian hauls me right against him, his arm banding my waist.
“That was incredible,” he mutters. “I feel so refreshed. Like I could…fall asleep…right here.”
“Go ahead,” I whisper.
“I just might. And then…I’m going to bury my face in that pretty little pussy of yours again.”
Delight throbs in my heart…and in other places. “We’ve got nowhere to be and nothing to do. It’s you, and it’s me. No one else. Just for today.”
“Just for today,” he echoes drowsily.
I fold up my worries, my fears, and my guilt about caring for this beautiful, wretched man, and I set myself adrift with him, and I pretend it’s forever.
26
Dorian
In the course of my long life, I’ve licked all sorts of genitals, and I’ve found most of them appealing. But there’s something uniquely satisfying about Baz’s pussy. At first I think it’s the shape of it, the delicate symmetry, the way it glistens…or maybe its flavor—the faint sweetness of her, with a hint of sour.
But as I slide my tongue through her folds again, I realize it’s more about her in totality, not one single part. She’s fiercely independent, suspicious and withdrawn, not by nature but by necessity. Her personality bristles with protective thorns; she has edges as sharp as her tongue.
But when she lets me do this—when she allows me to put my mouth between her legs and make her come—she softens in the most beautiful way. She doesn’t know how to keep her barriers up during sex. Or maybe she has kept them up with others, but she can’t keep them up with me. And that absence of walls and safeguards opens her wide, lets me give her the most exquisite bursts of pleasure.
Every time I make her come, I understand her better.
We have to take breaks, of course. I’m not some immortal sexfiend who can come five times in an hour, and neither is she. When we’re not actively fucking, we’re twined up together naked on her couch or her bed, blankets draped over us, watching TV or simply tracing each other’s skin, talking quietly about anything but my portrait.
Oddly enough, my past is one of the safest things we can discuss. I describe to her my first encounter with a computer, the huge kind that used to take up an entire room and could perform a very limited range of tasks. I tell her that I used to do some radio theater back in the 1940s, how my voice was extremely popular. I even mimic the transatlantic accent for her, the stylized way of speech from that era.
“God, that’s amazing.” She sips her beer. “Do some more voices from the old days.”
So I indulge her with 1920s slang, the elocution of the 1890s, and the high-born British accent that came naturally to me as a young man. Then I illustrate my command of French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Russian, and Mandarin.
“Show-off,” she says after the Mandarin, but I can tell she’s impressed and probably pleased that I haven’t spent all my time drinking, smoking, fucking, and getting high.
When she leaves to use the bathroom, I pick up my phone and text Lloyd-Henry. I rewrite the text several times before limiting it to three words:I fucked her.
Normally I wouldn’t text him when I take someone to bed. It’s not newsworthy. But this isBaz, and I feel a compulsion to tell someone—not Sibyl, who would look at me sternly and caution me not to break Baz’s heart, and not Vane, who would be sulky and jealous. Not Noel, Cherith, Eve, or Darwin, who are merely satellites to my inner circle. No, this news is something I can only tell my oldest friend.
Biting my lip, I wait for his response.
When his reply flashes up, I consume it in one hungry glance.
How was she?
Divine, I text back. And then, before I can think better of it, I add,I feel whole with her.
A pause, and then he replies,You were already a god, whole and immortal. Don’t lose sight of that, or of your true self.
I’m not. When are you coming back?
Soon. The vampires are a cautious group. Gatsby’s girlfriend took a dislike to me when I arrived, so my investigation is taking longer than I expected.
We need you here. We were attacked again, I tell him.Skriken. Big ones.
Interesting.
That’s all you have to say?I text back.
