The Embrace

"What's your name?" He blurted out suddenly, surprising even himself.

She frowned, thought for a moment, and answered in her sultry voice. "It has been a long time since anyone would call me by name. I was once called... Alanna."

"Once?"

"These days I am called things which are far less pretty. It would... please me... if you would call me Alanna."

"Alanna it is then." He said solemnly, and her radiant grin made his breath catch in his throat.

"And yours?" She asked.

"People... once... called me Jonathan Kelton." He told her, winking.

She laughed, and it was like a bird's song. "Once?"

He nodded. "Yesterday was another life for me."

Her grin wilted. She bowed her head, and then mumbled something under her breath, so low he had to lean forward to hear it. "I'm sorry." Her voice cracked with emotion, and he realized she was close to tears.

He reached out his hand, grasped her chin, and lifted it, so he could look her in the eyes, let her see his sincerity. "I didn't say I regretted it." She held his gaze for a moment, and he bowed his own head. "I believe you have a question for me, Alanna.

"I am sorry, Jonathan. Were there any other way..." Her face filled with despair. "But it must be. I must ask you, though you may hate me for it, though it may drive you from me."

He took her hand. "Nothing could do that."

She shook her head, roughly, and pulled her hand from his. "I am cold, Jonathan. I have been cold for a very long time, longer than you could imagine. Every now and then, I must go forth, and find warmth, though it pains me." Now tears fell from her eyes, and he brushed them away.

"If you accept me, if you help me, it will only be temporary, and then you too will be cold. You too will be forced to find the warmth, and it will not be in my arms."

She cleared her throat. "I am offering you an eternity of pain, of sadness. You will be with me, but we will not create our own warmth. Such is the way of those who wear the mark of Cain, the curse."

"I don't know how or why, but I love you, and I think that you love me. And that hurts more than any other pain I have suffered before, that I must ask you this..."

"Will you wrap your arms around me?" She asked, tears pouring down both their faces in rivulets. He could only nod.

"Then I am sorry for what I must do, and for what you will be forced to do." She wrapped herself in his arms, and he held her tight, and they stood that way, still, for a long while. Then, she shifted in his arms, brought her lips to his neck, and bit.

The pierce hurt incredibly for a second, then was suffused and buried in a pleasure so immense there were no words to describe it. He moaned, and she sobbed, and then the light faded from his eyes, and his arms fell slack, and she fell to the floor with him, sobbing.

Then, as he came back into the world of the living, she heard him mutter her own words. "Will you wrap your arms around me?" She obliged, and held him close