Oh My Dark Darling

It has been a long long exhausting week, but as I near the finish line for releasing Shivers, here's another bit of Max's story, Max has long been a favorite of mine and hope he will become one of yours. His story is long and convoluted, and this piece is one of the darkest....





Oh My Dark Darling.......

Nadine slipped from the harem like a dark ghost, feeling the cool silk of desert night against her skin. She couldn't hardly breathe as her feet in their elegant embroidered slippers ran lightly over the mosaic tiles of the courtyard. She passed the gurgling fountain without a glance, her black eyes searching the blacker, moonless night for him.

He had been entertained by the sultan this eve. Not in the harem, of course. No intact man, other than the sultan himself could enter the harem, but in the palace proper. She wouldn't have even seen him if she hadn't been entertaining the sultan with her singing when he'd arrived. 

Tall, much, much taller than the rather puny Suleiman, more on a height with the proper men of her own country, though more slender and with eyes as blue as storm-darkened seas. Eyes that had made her shiver as she was lead back to the harem. eyes that had followed her with a gaze as hot as a physical touch.

How she knew he would meet her here, Nadine couldn't say. But she knew he would. Just as she knew she could never go home and see her beloved mother again. Or her cool green lake with it's soft mud that would coat her feet as she splashed her little sisters and brother. But those memories were best left alone, they were speckled and smeared with blood, fear and pain....

Nadine caught her breath as she felt the whisper against her cheek, the hand that slid around her hip, flattening over her silk-covered belly and pulling her back. 

"You answered." The velvety voice made her smother a whimper.

"How could I not?" She let her head fall back and felt the dance of warm fingers along her neck.

"How indeed." Lips followed the fingers and Nadine sighed. Warmth such as she had never felt filled her from head to toe. She had never longed for a man, Had never been given the chance. But she longed for this one. She burned.

He turned her in his arms and pulled her down beside the fountain. She couldn't see the falling water but she could hear it as his mouth continued to move over her smooth ebony skin, lingering over the throb of her jugular for a long moment, making her heart beat quicken in something very like fear before sliding down her collarbone and lower, over her wrap now. Wetting the silk as he drew a firm nipple into his hot mouth and caressed it with his tongue. Nadine gave a soft cry, her back bowing off the cool tiles.

He took his time with her, as no one had ever had, not the vicious warriors that had took her virginity, the slave traders who had gotten more from her body than mere gold or even the rather kind harem merchant and the indulgent, if boring sultan. He made her sweat, made her beg and sipped her juices from her body before he even entered her. She never had the presence of mind to wonder why he showed absolutely no concern at the death he was courting by taking a member of the Sultan's harem within shouting distance of more than five hundred trained warriors.

And in the witching hour before the dawn began to light the sky, when he told her what he was and what she could be, Nadine did not hesitate. She already loved him.

Fifty years later in Venice, Max knew he had made a mistake. Nadine had already been half-insane from the horrors she had endured before him. He wasn't sure if the streak of cruelty she had was innate, or acquired from all she survived, but it increasingly sickened him. She relished Cesar and Desdemona's blood parties even as he was finding himself turning away from the hedonism of his vampiric acquaintances.

And now, tonight, he had refused to attend the latest 'bash' and she stood before him, wild and beautiful and furious.

"Maximillian, you vex me! Why do you not want to be with me any longer? Do you hate me so? Do you despise me now?" Her black eyes snapped, but Max held back a sigh with difficulty. This argument had gotten old about half a dozen years ago.

"Vex you, love? Why should it vex you if I would rather spend time with you here, alone?" He spread his arms wide, indicating the lush chamber they currently occupied. Max loved Venice but he was more than ready to move on. But Nadine refused to leave her friends. That argument, too, was very old.

Nadine growled. "You must be getting tired of me, if you do not wish to be seen with me in front of our friends."

Max sighed. "Your friends, Nadine, Not mine. I don't have friends."

That lovely face twisted into that grimace he was beginning to hate. "You have that bitch, Anna."

Before he quite knew what he was doing Max's hand was wrapped around that taut column of Nadine's throat. And squeezing. It was only her gasp that got him to shake his head and drop his hand, staring at it for a second as if he didn't recognize his own limb.

"I knew it!" Nadine shrieked as he backed away from her."You love her, you don't love me....you never have!!"

Max stared at her, wondering why it had to be one or the other, but already knowing in his heart he no longer felt love for Nadine, even though he once had. Maybe not as he did Anna, but love was love, wasn't it? He said nothing and Nadine grabbed her hair and tore at it.

"Get out!! Get OUT!" When the door closed behind him, Nadine shut her streaming eyes for half a second before she took all the trinkets off the desk and hurtled them at the door, then the paintings on the wall, the water basin and pitcher, the jewelry from her wrists and ears, tearing her skin as she pulled off gold in a senseless fury, blood trickling from her ears and neck, her hair wild and boiling around a livid and darkly purple face.

She reached up to pull the huge gilt mirror off the wall, but stopped abruptly at the sight of her reflection. Nadine gasped once, face to face with her insanity before lifting the mirror and hurtling it to the floor. It shattered with an almighty crash, knocking the lamp from the trestle table and plunging the room into total blackness, but Nadine's heart shattered very, very quietly and her worst screams were in her mind.