Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

At the third tasting room they selected an expensive late-harvest Riesling. Véronique usually preferred dry whites and reds with a strong hint of the barrel atop the fruitiness, but he knew she would have liked the vintage. His companion drank selectively so as not to become so sated she lost the keenness of taste. Just like Véronique, and unlike elves, who he had heard were gluttonous in regard to alcohol. She wore gloves to avoid touching the metal of the car, but even those were Véronique’s own, bought in Paris two winters past.

The divergences mattered less and less as the hours wore on. Just before dinner, a call from his brother in Hawaii drew him from the room. It tortured him to leave her.

“I can’t tell you what this means to me,” he said as they sat down to the meal.

She didn’t reply. He would not have needed to make such a declaration to the former Véronique. He realized he was holding back, reminding himself that this was illusion.

No more. He had called her back from the dead. By now, it was the airplane crash, the funeral, the grieving that seemed unreal.

“Come to bed,” she murmured after the main course. “We can have dessert there.”

He knew that sparkle in her eyes. It had been bright in courtship and when they were newlyweds. It had not faded.

She was assertive and eager, quickly burning away his nervousness. He knew this body. He was conditioned to respond to it. Just past the brink of middle age, sex was the best he had ever known it to be, because unlike the arrogant young buck he had once been, he knew how to communicate what would gratify him most, and could sense what was wanted in exchange. Knowledge of a partner enriched the passion.

That was why no one but Véronique would do, why in their years together he had not succumbed to adultery, and he a wealthy man who could have starlets and models and golddiggers by the mattressful.

She tasted like Véronique: salt and honey. Slightly on the sweet side the way she was at times. She whimpered in that familiar, inspiring way. Regaining her breath after her first orgasm, she climbed atop him and straddled his face, putting her own mouth to work even as she offered him the chance to bring her to a second peak.

They licked simultaneously, gently and languorously teasing each other to desperation. Sometimes she strained as she engulfed him, as if she wanted to have it all. He had never minded the inability. No other cheeks nor tongue nor lips had ever understood so instinctively what he liked, and the joy she took from it was evident from the sweet liquor coating his own tongue.

When at last she rolled, sighing, onto her back and spread her legs to let him clamber between, he hesitated, wondering if she would feel the same inside as what he knew. Then he breached her, and within her heat and slickness found a homecoming.

He had dreamed vividly of this, night after night, grief fueling the intensity of the imagery. Why should he doubt that this, of all things, would be anything other than what he wanted?

“Don’t ever leave,” he whispered. Though spent, he was still unwithered inside her.

She squeezed back. With her arms as well. “I’m here, my love. I’m here.”

Here. At least until he could bear to let her go.

The clock glowed 3:12 when Jordan suddenly woke. Reaching out, he found the sheets warm beside him, rich with the lingering bouquet of lovemaking, but vacant. No sounds leaked out of the master bathroom, nor any other room in the house.

He rose and went to the French doors that led to the balcony, and pulled aside the draperies. There she was—on the lawn. Her silhouette wavered, occasionally looking like Véronique, other times taking on a foreign, even unnatural, configuration. Arms too thin, fingers too splayed, neck too long. Too androgynous, as well, though he tried not to think about that.

Transformed, she moved under the trees to the spot where the other elf—the prince?—had fashioned his crown of pine needles. The tree’s lowest branch seemed to have reshaped itself since Jordan had last noticed it. It offered the visitor a broad, hammocklike curve, within which she tucked herself and lay her head back, as if exhausted.

She would be back, he told himself. Before dawn, she would return, join him beneath the covers, and peer into his dreams.

He sensed the loop around his wrist. He could tug, and no doubt she would be compelled to join him immediately. The temptation flared, putting a shiver into his lower arm.

Carefully he lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to be content with what he had.

In the morning, he attempted to forget what he had witnessed in the night. It only distracted him from the quest at hand—to make the most of a resurrection. There were so many little things he wanted to get right, now that he had the chance.

They made love again before breakfast, contorting the sheets until they came loose and nearly slipped from the mattress. She was sleepy and affectionate, per expectations, slow to climax but radiant when it happened.