Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 11: What Pity to Me Does God Impart?

Will Graham sleeps soundly tonight, or seems to. As much as I would like to see into his thoughts and know his dreams, I dare not attempt it. He strikes me as someone well-attuned to his mind and I feel instinctively that he will know what I've done. I have to be clever if I am to achieve my goals.

I told him I would keep watch, and I am, though not discreetly from the hall or one of the salons adjacent to his room. I am at the foot of his bed, my shadow stretched over him, undulating as the firelight moves. It was warmer today, and he has partially thrown off the heavy quilts in his sleep, freeing his arms and part of his chest. It is for the best that he is wearing the modest white nightshirt; I'm not entirely sure I could stand it otherwise.

His face is smooth and untroubled by the cares that etch into it when he is awake. I let myself study it now, unhindered by convention, staring all I like, letting my eyes devour what they will. So like Iliya. And yet, the different expressions, the pain stitched into every fiber of his being are antithetical to what my husband was. I wonder if this is truly what Iliya would have looked like if he'd lived another decade. He would have been pleased to know that his facial hair filled in just so. The shadow of Will Graham's beard is utterly tantalizing; I want to feel it with my fingertips, trace my tongue under his jawline.

Even if he is not, by some cruel trick, really Iliya returned to me, that would not diminish hedonistic desires I have for him. Objectively, he is beautiful. But if he is some part of my husband, and I can make love to him, knowing that I am loved in an equally all-encompassing way – that is what I demand from Heaven again, not a simple seduction, which would be easy enough to accomplish.

I can feel the ache in him. He is touch -starved. He wants to be loved.

I can hear his heart beating, the soft cadence of his breaths. I can smell him, his living body and a kind of fevered sweetness I've never experienced before. There is no real comparison – the closest I can come is to say the scent calls to mind cinnamon and pine, and how it complements the underlying musk is stunning. It calls to me, to the monstrous part of me, tugging there just as hard as it engages my better nature. I want to consume him, I want my lips against his neck. I can imagine the tiny pained noise he would make when my teeth breach the skin, and how it would be swept up in a moan of satisfaction. If I were to eat Will Graham, I would make it pleasurable until it wasn't.

I haven't felt sexual arousal in years. Not until this man wearing Iliya's face came through my door. Now it has returned with a vengeance, and it has no outlet. I think fleetingly of calling upon Bedelia or even Antony to help alleviate it, but the concept is off-putting. Beautiful as they are, they're dead, and any connection they once felt with me is similarly withered. I want a human touch, a warm body, a kind word, a real smile.

Reduced to touching myself, then? It's been not just years, but decades since I've pleasured myself. I do not suffer under the yoke of morality, and normally the concept would appeal to me. But here, now, with him, I don't want that kind of hedonistic gratification.

Just when I think I have my impulses under control, I'm on my knees at the foot of his bed, reaching into my clothing and bringing my hand against my sudden and immediate hardness. Anything to alleviate this ache. I watch him sleep, devour the little stretch of space where his slumbering lips part in my imagination, picturing awakening him with my insistence and the way he might smile and indulge me. The way Iliya would have smiled, that knowing curve that always made me weak with desire for him.

How differently would Will Graham treat me as his lover? Would he want the power, intent on dominating me, or would he want me to use my prodigious strength to subdue him and claim him entirely? Or would he be like Iliya, a delectable combination of the two, leaning just toward submissive?