Chapter 4
In the wild, in the darkness, time lost much of its meaning. Through breaks in the canopy, I could see stars littering the night sky like bright grains of sand, much brighter than the city let them shine.
The forest seemed unremarkable in my flashlight’s glow, but its beam could only show me so much. The thick growth of trees and bushes was filled with strange noises and stranger shapes, and the ground was softer than I expected, littered with branches that tried to catch my feet and make me fall.
Auris had come back to my side to hold my hand, and if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known he was there.
I was too busy watching my footing to keep my flashlight trained on him, and he made no sound at all, didn’t try to lure me into a conversation.
Every now and then when he drifted into the bright cone of light I cast ahead of me to help me with a particularly tricky part of the forest, I caught him staring at me for longer than was strictly necessary.
At some point we slowed then stopped, and up ahead, I spotted something that, for once, wasn’t a tree.
“Here.” Auris moved to stand behind me, guiding my hand and the flashlight.
In the slice of brightness, I saw something that I thought was a part of the forest at first, something that had grown like all the trees and brambles around us.
Only once the shapes lined up properly in my head did I realize it was made from stone and mortar.
The building was smaller than the church had been and the stones were covered in thick moss, which made them look like soft cushions.
Ivy had stretched its many green fingers up windowpanes and around the balustrade that surrounded the front porch.
The glass in the windows was just reflective enough that it looked like buried treasure when I ran my light over it.
Shadows spilled out from cracks in the mortar and lapped at the edges of lintels and eaves. It was beautiful.
I exchanged the flashlight for my camera just as I had back at the church.
I walked around the structure slowly in the darkness between the camera’s strobing brightness.
I lost all sense of where Auris was. I thought he might have left me as I snapped a picture of the wall leading all the way up to a chimney.
Maybe I’ll wake up in these woods tomorrow and remember nothing.
I photographed a corner of the building with its low eaves bending under the weight of time.
Or he’s leaving me here so he knows where to find me.
In the light of my flash, I caught him standing on the moss-covered front porch, a dark, magnificent figure that seemed to fit into the scenery perfectly.
“Ethan, I can show you around inside. Come.”
“Okay.”
I pulled my flashlight out again and made my way up the front steps. They were slippery with moss, and I took care not to fall. Once I was at the door, Auris put his hand at the small of my back. He pushed the rotten front door out of the way and led me inside.
“There is a root cellar. I’ve come back here over the years, sometimes to hide, sometimes to see how the house was doing.”
“How it was doing?” I looked up at him while my flashlight beam washed over rotten furniture, paintings faded to dark shades on the walls, and curtains that were nothing but tatters. “This is yours?”
“Yes. I was early coming here. Across the Atlantic, I mean. I built a shelter here at first, and then this house. I’ve restored and abandoned it twice now.”
“Oh, that’s…” I’m not sure any language had a word for what this was. Incomprehensible was one option. This person had been the one to build this and also the one to allow nature to retake what he had built. It made the time he had spent living feel very real and tangible all of a sudden.
I ran a hand over my camera bag. This house looked abandoned, but it wasn’t. Perhaps it was lonely, perhaps it was old, but it wasn’t what I’d set out to find.
And yet, it was gorgeous; darkly enchanting.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just… It’s complicated. I was thinking about the photography.”
“Hmm. The artist’s mind works in mysterious ways.”
I snorted. “I didn’t realize vampires subscribed to stereotypes.”
“Well, without a bit of gallows humor, Ethan, I would never have managed the first five hundred years, and stereotypes are often the hills those gallows are built on. Imagine the Middle Ages when there was superstition in abundance. Be thankful you were born when you were.”
I took his word for it, or rather, I was distracted by taking in what my flashlight showed me. A vase, abandoned on a small table, but somehow still reflecting the light. Had he placed it there? Had he last touched it decades ago?
I pulled my camera out, took a picture, another, then captured the remains of the curtains.
I lowered the camera, the flashlight dangling from my wrist, and just stared at what I could see of the house in the low light.
It was shadows upon shadows. Wooden floorboards, a carpet thick with dust, a chair in a corner.
There wasn’t a lot of furniture left—or maybe there never had been that much to begin with.
With Auris being what he was, he had no need for the same things I did: food, a table to eat at, kitchenware.
I spotted what looked like an antique wash basin, but there was nothing here to even uphold the pretense of a kitchen.
Auris pulled me from my thoughts by pressing the pad of his thumb just below my lips.
“I would kiss you, Ethan. Permit me?”
He was moon pale, wrapped in darkness, his hair an obscuring veil, much like the darkness. He could have been a dream. Even now, even with him holding me like he was, he could have been a dream.
If he was, then maybe, like in a fairy tale, a kiss would wake me.
“Yes.”
I leaned in and gave in to the sensation of his lips on mine. His arms came around me, holding, exploring, and I opened my mouth to let him taste me.
He was surprisingly tender at first, his hands barely ghosting over me without pulling me in. A small sound spilled out of me, a moan in response to him, to his closeness, his gentleness. My cock filled, just the closeness triggering the reaction, and my spine tingled. I moaned.
That sound broke his slow pace and shifted it to more urgent exploration.
His mouth moved harder against mine, taking my lips with one part need, two parts desire, and his hands pulled me to him until I could feel his strong body against mine.
Before I could think about it, I rocked my hips, making sure he could feel how hard I was.
He took the flashlight from my hand and placed it on a credenza behind me. I fumbled my camera back into its bag, and he took it off my shoulder and put it next to the light.
As if that interruption had frustrated him, he immediately wrapped his arms around me to close the small distance it had created between us. His mouth took mine all over again, and he placed a hand at the back of my neck so he could bruise my lips to his heart’s content.
Meanwhile, I’d stumbled a half step back, and my lower back was against the credenza, my arms around his shoulders, brushing that long, luscious hair.
I could feel myself surrender to his embrace.
In that moment, I wanted him badly, this person, this creature, I didn’t really know.
It was as if I was drawn to him, as if an invisible pull was reeling me in, and I didn’t resist.
I wanted to take off my jacket so I felt less restricted, sure I would faint with the heat washing through me soon, but he wrapped his hands around my wrists, stopping me.
“No. You’ll get cold. Leave that on.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I felt so hot I was ready to burst into flames.
“But I’m not.”
“Ethan. You will be. The night has a way of sapping the warmth from your skin. Leave it on.”
I nodded, and he let go of my wrists so I could rest my arms on his shoulders again.
He continued kissing me for a while, moving slowly so he could savor me thoroughly. Then he left my swollen lips alone to caress my neck with his tongue, letting his hands glide underneath my clothing and over my belly.
I was not, by nature, the type of person who worked out much, but I moved a lot for my job.
Or I had, before the pandemic. As a result, I wasn’t proudly muscular, probably soft where some would have preferred something firmer.
But his touch, offered without hesitation, was such a relief. It was affirming.
I felt his hand come to rest on my belly, his fingers splaying over the soft skin and following the movement of breath inside me.
I wasn’t sure why, but the possessiveness of that gesture brought a fogginess to my head I’d never felt before.
Maybe it was because he showed me he accepted me with just that simple gesture.
His gentle massaging, his touching and his kissing through the layers of fabric I was wearing were enough to make me squirm. I pressed against him, coiled my fingers in his hair, around the fabric of his flawless jacket, and whispered a low, breathy, “Please.”
But that wasn’t enough, so I burrowed my arms under his jacket, felt the strength of his body against mine, and pulled him closer.
I moaned when his mouth opened against my neck and he let me feel his teeth.
Just the unfulfilled promise of their sharpness sent shivers down my spine, made me groan and melt against him.
He pulled me tighter to him, body pressing against body, and almost as if this were a dance, he spun me and pushed me up against a wall. I could barely see now, the room just outlines.
His hands ghosted up my thighs, fingers teasing. He stepped closer, almost caging me in. His breath rushed against my cheek.
“I want to pull your pants down. I want to have you like this, but you have to allow it.”
My breath rattled out of me. I’d imagined so many scenarios during lockdown, when it had been just me and whatever porn I could find to get me in the mood, but there was a new intensity to this.