Before Dawn

He sits across the table from her, the only light coming dimly from the three candles on the other side of the room. The room is sparsely furnished, only the table and the two chairs, and the thick candles stand upright on their bases on the hardwood floor.

He doesn’t remember how he came to be here, only that she brought him. Did she drive? Did they walk? He has no memory.

She is beautiful, but not in a sudden and breathtaking way, like a leap into a cold mountain lake. Rather, she is lovely in pieces—dark eyes of a color he can’t name, a lower lip that begs to be taken between someone’s teeth, hair the color and scent of clover honey—and more beautiful for not being taken as a whole. He stares at her openly, and she returns his gaze without looking away.

“We don’t have much time,” she says. Has he heard he speak before? He must have, but he is at a loss. Everything is like a dream, especially the whisper of water on glass that is her voice.

“Yes,” he says. He doesn’t know what he is agreeing to. He doesn’t care.

She raises her hands, small and porcelain, and begins working at the buttons at the top of her dress: one, two, three. Her hands are steady, but his tremble slightly in his lap as the candlelight slips into the hollow of her throat and paints her shadows golden.

“It’s almost dawn,” she says. She tilts her head down, and the hair on either side of her face falls like a curtain to conceal her eyes. He concentrates on her lips, parted ever so slightly, pink, unpainted, and licks his own. “I’ll be gone when the sun comes up.”

“We have to be quick,” he says.

“Quicker than quick.” She pushes her chair back and stands. She undoes another button, and another, moving from behind her side of the table and gliding closer to where he still sits. He is transfixed by the line of her bare flesh becoming more and more visible as she opens her dress wider and wider with each dance of her fingertips. In moments, she stands next to him, the shadows between the folds of fabric making his breath come in heavy gasps, his heart sounding like crashing surf in his ears.

“Stand up,” she says, and he does, pushing his chair back with his foot. She slides between him and the table, resting her hands against the wood and arching her back, letting the curves of her push against the open dress, revealing more of herself to him.

“You are…” he begins, but then she leans suddenly forward, pressing her belly and breasts against him, and he loses the words he was trying to put together.

She takes his wrist in her hand and puts it against her stomach, then forces it down further, guiding his fingers lower across her hot skin, down and then inside, and she sucks in her breath and presses against his hand.

“What do you want?” she asks. Her eyes are black pearls in the dim light.

“I want you,” he says, and it is true. He wants her more than anything he has ever wanted in the world of man.

She puts her free hand on the back of his neck and pulls his face down so that she can put her lips against his ear. “No,” she says, her voice suddenly colder and glazed with frost. “What do you want?”

And now, he remembers why he is here.

“I want everything,” he says.

Name it,” she hisses. The hand on his wrist slips away, and then he can feel it tugging at his belt.

“I want money.”

There is flesh on fabric, and then her hand slips inside the waist of his pants.

“I want respect.”

She takes hold of him, her skin both fiery hot and icy cold at the same time, and she tugs him free.

“I want power.”

She puts herself against the edge of the table and holds him tightly in her hand, squeezing almost to the point of pain.

What will you do?” she demands, breathing the words into him. “What will you give?” She pulls him closer against her, and he can feel her wetness just brushing against the very edge of him.

“Anything,” he whispers. “Anything.”

She pulls her head back, and even in the dim light, he can see that the whites of her eyes have gone fully black, and the tongue flicking across her lips in desire has forked and lengthened serpent-like, and a sulphurous stink is rising off her flesh to assault his senses.

Then seal the deal,” she growls, and in her voice he hears bone grating on bone and the anguish of the lost. As he drives himself into her, the pleasure instant and white-hot, the pain just as unfathomable and encompassing, he hears his own voice rising up to match the voices of the damned that begin to rattle and spill from every crack in the floor, every knot in the walls, rising up from the pit where they burn and covering him like a hot cloud as he empties into her, body and soul. Especially soul.

He tries to stumble back from her, but she flexes her legs and pulls him back against her. She is beautiful again, her face lovely once more, her body smelling of honey. Even so, his desire for her has vanished, and he tries in revulsion to push away. She holds him even more tightly and licks her pink, human tongue along his neck.

You have everything you want,” she whispers, and she nuzzles her face beneath his jaw. “But now I have you.”


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Comments

4 responses to “Before Dawn”

  1. Bianca Noire Avatar

    Oh, you minx. You delicious, crazy thing.

    1. Kameko Avatar
      Kameko

      You know me.

      Candy on the outside.

      Crack cocaine on the inside.

      And then some more candy in the middle, to take the edge off.

      But then some heroin inside of that.

      I’m a mess, I tell you.

  2. Bran macFeabhail Avatar

    oh my, so sexy…and terrifying. it’s a slippery slope, literally and metaphorically ha

    1. Kameko Avatar
      Kameko

      Every time I write about the devil, or anything devilish, I always present him as a her.

      If there’s anything more devilish than a woman, I don’t know what it is.

      Scared of me yet?

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