Our Infinite Sadness

Transubstantiation

Edythe launched straight into her next lesson, an instant transition, without segue or preamble. She didn't want to dwell on the infinite sadness of her kind. She leaned so close to him that her eyelashes gave his cheek butterfly kisses. "On that happy note, now you and I. Lovemaking."

She had his full attention.

"Two impressions," she whispered into his ear. "I'm an old fashioned girl. I was brought up in the early twentieth century, and there was a proper order in which these things were done. I died at sixteen. By then many of my childhood friends were already engaged. The rare genius went to college, but most girls didn't make it all the way through high school. I'm kind of stuck in that time, so lovemaking is out." She said to his widening eyes, "That's right; you've heard me; and I've put my foot down. Home plate is off the table, young man, so put it right out of your delightfully lusty mind. You must try of course, because your desire to make love with me is intensely thrilling, but I must warn you that I will defend my chastity with heroically tragic stoicism."

His wide eyes became narrow and shrewd. He leaned back and grumbled, "Are you for real?"

Edythe broke into soft giggles and buried her face between his neck and shoulder. "No!" she blurted through her giggles. "Don't get me wrong, my Benjamin, all that stuff is true. But I want you so badly that I'm going crazy, and I'm already going to hell. Around you, my temperance is doomed."

He wrapped his fingers in her hair and breathed hard.

She raised her head and more somberly continued, "Which brings me to my second impression. For all the aforementioned reasons pursuant to the previous lesson, I'm afraid lovemaking just wouldn't be possible for us."

He grimaced, and she caught it. She didn't need to read his mind to know that he was imagining the sensation of having his erection smashed to bloody pulp under a compression force of forty thousand pounds per square inch.

"Because... because I can't reassemble?"

She fervently shook her head. "Not that. I could never hurt you that way; of course not. Impossible. I adore you, Ben, and I want so much to give you pleasure. I am certain on a rational level that I could happily let you lead, relax myself inside, and give you the sweet release inside of me that males crave. I am a selfish creature, but not with you; for you I would give anything.

"But... damn me, I just... if we were together that way, and joined... the bliss I would feel, the sheer exhilaration of having you inside me... Ben please understand that having you inside my body is all I've wanted for us... ever since before the ice storm, really... I've been a total basketcase with desire for you; I've driven Emmie and the rest of my family crazy... and to finally achieve that with you... to finally have you... inside my body... well, I know my limits, dearest one. I'd forget myself. I just don't think I could control myself. And it's not about the whole sex and vampires thing, it's more... I might... I might... " she made a tortured groan. "I don't know. I might just hug you too tightly. Just out of... happiness. That's all it would take, to crush every bone in your body! It could be anything. One fatal instant of inattention could spell our utter ruination."

He faced a Herculean struggle of his own now, as he labored to see rationally past her enormous admission that she had wanted to make love with him for months, which he took to mean, pretty much since the day they had met.

He struggled, but he somehow managed to recall the first few times that she'd touched him, how cautiously she'd moved, how much the slightest direct contact had seemed to frighten her, how she was so slow and calculating with touching, always painstakingly premeditated, and yet she had always accepted his own touches so gratefully.