Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

My Winter Boy

(A/N: I know I said the next story would be a Ludovic one, but I had a lot of fun writing last week's reunion, and I thought we needed a little Edmond/Ysanne smut. So here's a short extra story. I will also post the first part of Ludovic's next story, so yay for double updates :) )

Carcassonne, 1683

More than two hundred and fifty years had passed since Ysanne Moreau had left the place of her birth, but the walled city hadn't changed much. The air was still rich with the smell of pine and herbs, and when she closed her eyes she could almost imagine that she was still human, standing by the walls or the canal and breathing in that familiar smell.

"It's beautiful here," Edmond said, and Ysanne opened her eyes.

He leaned on the wall beside her, his hair spilling like ink around his shoulders, his face almost luminous in the moonlight. Ysanne stared at him for a beat too long.

When she'd left him, an eighteen-year-old human boy in the spring of 1667, she'd never imagined she would see him again. But fate had brought him back to her, as a vampire this time, rather than the boy she had known.

For the past three years they had travelled France together – Ysanne had seen it already, but to Edmond, who'd spent his vampire life living in Paris, it had been new and exciting. Many years had passed since she'd crept out of her house in Gascony and left him sleeping, and the man who'd run into her on the streets of Paris was not the boy she'd left, but the bond that they'd forged during their winter together had quickly fallen back into place. Edmond hadn't blamed her for leaving him – they'd never even talked about it – and now he was her dearest friend.

But just like the friendship they'd started years ago, something else had fallen back into place.

Though Ysanne had never admitted it to Edmond, she'd left him that morning so long ago because her feelings for him had moved beyond friendship. The death of her second husband had still been too raw a wound, and she'd fled from Edmond rather than confront her feelings. Now, time had healed that wound, and though she still carried Julien in her heart, his loss didn't hurt like it used to.

She'd taken lovers since then, both male and female, and the more time that passed, the more her old feelings for Edmond started to rear their head.

The man he'd become was so beautiful.

"Why did you never come back here?" Edmond asked, and Ysanne looked over the city walls, out at the darkened huddle of the valley.

"When I became a vampire, my life started again. My parents wanted me to remarry after Richart's death, and coming back would only have meant having the same argument over and over again. I didn't want that." She paused. "That must seem selfish to you."

After all, Edmond had no family. They'd all been taken by the plague years before she met him.

Edmond shook his head. "It doesn't. I'd never pretend to know what it must have felt like to carry all their expectations."

His hand covered hers where it rested on the wall-top, and Ysanne's stomach clenched. She was so familiar with those hands in so many ways, but not in the way that she now wanted. She ached for the touch of them on her body, her bare skin.

"Come on," she said, pulling her hand away. "It's been too long since either of us have eaten."

It wasn't hard to find a nearby tavern, though this particular one hadn't been here when Ysanne was human. They just followed the smell of spilled wine and beer.

"Have you ever been drunk?" Edmond asked, as a man staggered out of the tavern and loudly belched.

Ysanne smiled. "The day after my first wedding, I drank so much that I was sick over my new husband."