Immortal Pleasures, page 7
I dance Colin into a corner when I notice a roped-off room in purple velvet and low light. Glancing around to make sure no one is looking, I pull him inside, pushing him onto the velvet sofa before turning to close the curtains.
My hips sway to the beat of the music. I’m wearing heels and a red wraparound spaghetti strap dress that is very short, just how I like my dresses to always be. I keep my eyes on him as I slide a single strap off my shoulder. “I Want Your Love” by Chic is playing. I’m feeling nothing but complete abandon. He looks so good tonight in his loose jeans and T-shirt. His stubble is unusually thick today. I want to feel my nipples in his mouth. I want to be driven to hunger and back again since he knows how to do it so effortlessly.
I straddle his knee with one heel on the sofa, grinding my bare pussy above his leg, my dress lifted just enough for him to catch a glimpse of my wet lips. He reaches to touch me and I swat his hands away and turn around to grind against his cock, still dancing. Lost in the rhythm, I kick off my heels to dance the way I danced as a young girl, the way my ancestors danced, conjuring up the spirits and magic of my homeland. Perhaps that is the same magic that made me what I am today. I am so very close to finding out.
I whip my hair side to side then bend over to touch the floor, so he has full view of my ass and pussy. Before I make it to the floor, he grabs my thighs, and the stubble that drives me wild brushes against my ass. His tongue laps at my clit, then dances from my labia to my anus as I hold on to the table in front of the sofa. He moans as he eats me in gulps and slurps like he’s gorging on sticky candy.
But this is all just an amuse-bouche. I turn around and see his jeans can barely contain his cock. He reads the look in my eye that says, Pull those silly jeans down. His fingers unzip his jeans. I love how I don’t even have to speak for him to know what I want him to do. You don’t need to speak when you want the same thing, when you need the other person inside of you like you need air.
My knees sink into the sofa as I straddle him. My ass and hips still move to the beat, letting the tip of his cock sneak inside of me before it’s out again. I bob and plunge deeper onto his cock as the music becomes wilder, while he squeezes both of my nipples into his mouth. Either this man is telepathic, or the heavens decided to bless me with a seraph to fulfill my every wish. Or is it the devil leading me down the road of ruin, temptation that feels like a downy bed but is really a coffin? I continue to ride him harder and faster as the music commands and as his grip on my ass tells me to. He’s moaning and biting his lips while sweat causes his T-shirt to cling to his chest.
As much as my body wants to extract every ounce of pleasure from him, I want to cry out, “What have you done to me?”
I remain quiet and direct his fingers to my clit, creating a hurricane of tension that results in orgasm. Knowing he’s made me come, Colin places one hand on the back of my neck as he thrusts his cock as deep as he can manage then comes inside of me. I can’t stop trembling as we just stare at each other, our foreheads touching, the sweat from his skin saturating mine. I don’t hear music or people or know if there’s anything beyond those heavy purple velvet curtains. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can get it out, I kiss him.
We linger inside of each other, neither of us wanting to disconnect. I want to cling to him. We kiss for what seems like hours but is really minutes. I touch his face, kiss him once more until my kisses lead to his neck.
I bite, drink, take him into my beating heart so that I may live, because without his blood pulsing through my veins I would surely die. I can feel him harden again inside of me the longer I drink. His sweat rolls from the side of his face into my mouth. Blood and sweat makes a salty-sweet umami taste that tumbles around my mouth, causing my clit to become engorged again.
For the first time I understand what the term making love could mean and experience a capacity to feel something deeper than flesh level, to exchange something other than bodily fluids before getting off. I’ve never felt anything like this before—it is a vicious lie to think a slave could ever love a master. There have been so many lies surrounding who I was in history, but that I could have loved my captor is one of the most pernicious. I move my hips, grinding at a slow and deliberate pace. Small kisses find his mouth again until we both orgasm. His blood is life, his love salvation, and his body the cherry and whipped cream on top.
Before I can move from his lap, he puts his hand around my waist.
“Wait. One more question. Since a bite doesn’t make someone a vampire, what does?”
Suddenly I’m trembling again. Does he want to share an immortal life with me? To be a vampire? The back of my mind says this connection we are having is just the flash of a warming flame, but not that I’m ultimately destined to share my life with Colin. It is hard to know: As well as I know myself from spending so much time alone on the hunt, I still have those lingering human feelings of doubt. I’m a broken thing, who had been brought back to life, but still carrying with her a fucked-up past and no knowledge of what the future might hold. I fear what will happen to Colin and me when the flush of excitement and newness wears off. I know the moment may come when the touch that feels so exhilarating to me now could become no more than a sure thing to get me off before I roll over for sleep. Because life is more than sex, dancing, and sharing stories.
And love is a story, and all stories must come to an end.
Against my better judgment I tell him how a vampire is made. “I ask you if you accept my gift of your own free will. Then I drain your entire body of your blood, but just before death, I give you my blood.”
He’s looking at the corner of the room, nodding, touching his puncture wounds on his neck. Only God knows what he’s thinking.
“Thank you for telling me. Thank you for texting me and making these last few, I don’t know how many days or weeks it’s been, but whatever, it’s been something special I didn’t know existed. Like you.” He kisses me tenderly and places my dress straps over my shoulders. I want to forget he’s asked me that question because it just leads to more overthinking, more worries, more messy feelings that splash all over me like a wineglass filled to the very top.
As we walk home, the old dark streets, football matches blaring from pubs, and greasy chip shops make me forget I had planned to be in London. This is so different from the world I was born in and eventually created for myself. I’ve spent all my time in bed, cooking, reading, and feeding from him. I’d forgotten about my original plan, my desire to see the south of Ireland. The skulls. My lifelong pursuit. All my work has been completely neglected. It’s been the one thing that has given me purpose, true joy, because it was all created by my own hand. I have succeeded—and not because I was on the arm of someone who believes they own me.
When I get back to the apartment, I look at my phone finally, and my inbox is a mess. Unlike my historical persona as “the traitorous La Malinche,” my work reputation is spotless, until now. Love isn’t just blind; it blinds you right back.
Suddenly, the apartment that felt like an ever-expanding universe is just an apartment. He is just a man, a mere fantasy I once had. I can already feel the little petals of my soul curling in on themselves. The vibrant roses have dry, brown edges. Their heads sag at the weight of their time being over. And then the petals drop one by one until nothing is left.
Everyone I ever loved in my life is gone. I never gave human lovers enough of a chance to know me, and I’ve never had many friends. It is the vampire way, it seems, to be rootless. The male vampires I have met are just as aloof as I am. The petals on their souls are long gone, with no chance of ever growing back because they refuse to add fresh water for the stems to drink. Before leaving Mexico for Ireland, I was very close to that point too.
Not everyone wants the gift of near immortality, and if I had been given a real choice in the matter, perhaps I would not have chosen this vampire life. At the time, it had seemed like the only way I could realize the dream of true freedom I’d mistakenly thought I could win through Cortés.
Will I take a chance on love even though the ones closest to us hold the sharpest stakes in their hands? I’ve got countless splinters inside of me that will never be plucked from my flesh. The overwhelming emotions I’m feeling are turning into ugly, fearful obsessive thoughts. Ugly like when I wake up without removing my makeup, with my black eyeliner and mascara running, my mouth smeared with red. I think of these things as I brush my teeth and place my toothbrush next to his when I am finished.
* * *
Not a damn thing makes sense anymore until he sits down to eat the poppy seed cake I made the day before. While he eats, I’m on my phone trying to catch up on work. There are so many transactions I have neglected. A few emails slipped through the cracks. When I finally send my last email for the day, he folds a newspaper and sets it on the table.
I glance at the newspaper, and the headline makes me feel uneasy. Another woman was found murdered. I can’t read the rest of the headline because what he says throws me even more off-center.
“My sister just texted me. I’d love for you to meet my family. Is Sunday lunch okay? Do you like kids? You mentioned you were a mother once. Anyway, her kids are pretty adorable. I told you about my nephew.” And there’s the other stiletto dropping. My head hurts with hangover pain even though I wasn’t drunk the night before.
“Colin, you know that’s asking for trouble.”
“Let’s just go for dessert. Say you’re gluten and lactose intolerant. I promise she’ll be making her ‘famous’ trifle. She always does for special guests. They all keep asking when I’m going to fall in love. Now they’ll know they can stop asking.”
He’s touching my hand from across the table, looking at me with those dreamy blue eyes that now look like a watery grave. I slowly withdraw my hand to my lap. I think of the hanging horned skull in his bookstore. Then my thoughts shift to my skulls. The two skulls I desperately want and that brought me here. Horatio had sent me a flurry of emails I’ve ignored over the others. I only read one, which possessed the tone of a man I didn’t know. Where are you? The seller is having second thoughts. Please get in touch. This isn’t like you. Everything all right?
I had already paid the deposit, and so I wasn’t sure what the rush was about.
Then my eyes fix on a bottle of Cholula hot sauce on the kitchen counter among his menagerie of condiments. The image on the bottle is of a woman with a pleasant and placid smile on her face as she stands in front of a kitchen. I want to take the bottle and throw it hard against the wall until it shatters with all its red-orange contents splattering everywhere, even if it hits our eyes, causing them to burn. Cholula. It reminds me of the eventual massacre there.
At the same time the word love that has savaged my heart for years has escaped his lips. He loves me, just like I hope to love someone someday. The word love terrifies me like my existence terrifies humans. I can’t breathe.
But isn’t this what I wanted? My fantasy could become reality. I just need the balls to take it into my mouth and bite. Once again, messy thoughts of consequences, of the pain if it all goes bad, stab the front of my forehead until I feel dizzy. I go to the other room to find my things and toss his T-shirt into the dirty laundry, even though I want to keep it.
“Hey, you want to go out? Give me five minutes to…”
“I’m going. You’re staying here. I had a plan for my life, and I’m sticking to it.”
“I thought…”
“You thought what? There is an ocean between us, more than one, in fact. I’m not human! I can’t give you children or a life or all those things people want before they expire. No more children for me. I don’t do family or romance.”
He grabs my hands. “I don’t need kids…I don’t think. I’m nearly forty. If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. I’m sick of being in and out of relationships that are nothing but constant ups and downs, never knowing what drama is going to crop up next. There’s no bullshit with you. There are no expectations with you. You can have my blood for as long as you want. You already have my heart.” He wasn’t going to let me go easy.
“Maybe I’m tired of drinking the same blood. Ever thought of that? And how can you be sure if you want children or not, knowing it’s not a possibility with me?” I spit these words at him like venom.
Now I’m just being cruel. He looks wounded. I want to embrace him, kiss him, tell him I don’t mean it. Making love to him this second would make me forget the silly notion that leaving was the right thing to do.
But I shake my head. No, this is better. This is a web I walked into. I allowed myself to get spun tighter into his world. Not a world created in mutual union.
I walk out of the door and don’t look back. As I step onto the street, a gust of cold air blows against my body. It sobers my drugged senses. The chrysalis around my heart has cracked open, yet I don’t see the change. I head back to my hotel to focus on work for a few hours before checking out, namely calming Horatio down. After, I will begin my original itinerary.
Four hours later, I call Horatio from the car. To my surprise he answers after only one ring. “Malinalli! It’s so nice to hear from you. Please tell me you are on your way. I really need to conclude this business…I mean, for you. This has been a long time coming.”
He doesn’t sound like his usual cheerful self. There is a frantic urgency in his voice.
“Everything all right, Horatio? You don’t exactly have money problems, and I’ve already sent a deposit. What’s another day?”
He remains silent. He is searching for the right words through his heavy breathing. “The seller. They are eager to move forward and will go elsewhere.”
Now I know he is lying. “You said it was all arranged and there were no other interested parties, considering I was willing to pay in crypto.”
“You know the business. Things change. Please come as soon as you can. These skulls are magnificent. They are haunting. You must see them to believe their beauty.”
My mind can’t juggle Horatio and my emotions while also navigating a car on the opposite side of the road. “I’ll be in touch.” I hang up, too agitated to give Horatio’s strange behavior another thought.
I want my fucking skulls. I want to close more fucking deals for more goddamn money before spending a crazy amount across Europe. If only Catherine were still around for me to call.
When I am finally on the open road, it takes me back to that journey to Cholula. Today, they call it the Massacre at Cholula.
During the five years of translating for Cortés, giving birth to his child, and the brutality of conquest, I didn’t have the energy to appreciate anything, not even the breath in my lungs. All I could feel were the blisters on my feet as we traveled across the land in the name of God and crown. Cortés would say without mercy, “Come, Malinalli. You people were formed with the animals during Creation. Surely you don’t tire that easily.” I remained silent about my needs because I had to, and to conserve my energy.
My people’s resistance to Cortés and the colonizers was met with yet more violence. My throat remained hoarse from speaking on behalf of Cortés. And after I was done with that, he wanted me to either entertain him or explain everything we had seen and heard on our journey in detail. Hours I spent recounting the history and differences between the tribes.
I’ve bled bodies of all their blood as a vampire but only after my victims were received by death. But Cortés bled me in a different way while I was still alive: He worked me until the exhaustion left me with nothing. Then it all had to be repeated the next day.
There were moments I could do nothing but squat alone with my arms wrapped around myself. My own embrace was the only thing that felt real. It was the only true tenderness extended to me. Only my determination to survive another day helped me get to my feet when it was time to move again. I had to constantly be on the move with Cortés on his exploits, stand by tyranny and terror. At night I would stare into the night sky as if waiting for some miracle to occur. Every cell in my body screamed a prayer. No such thing happened. My calls for miracles were only met with more bloodshed of my people.
I remember one such moment when Cortés and I were side by side. Two gold cuffs adorned my wrists. All that was missing was a chain connecting them. After another battle, we watched black smoke rise in the distance. I didn’t know whether it was burning bodies, temples, or villages sending plumes of stinking clouds into the atmosphere. Probably all three, because the stench of burning flesh is one you never forget. I turned to my right to see Hernán’s reaction. There was none.
From the beginning of our travels, I could already see Montezuma’s demise was inevitable. I spoke multiple languages fluently by then and picked up Castilian with ease, as my fear of these new people was as great as my curiosity about them. If the Spaniards existed, what else was out there in the world? How many other people were arriving on other shores with boats to do the same to other unsuspecting people?
The road to Cholula and the eventual captivity of Montezuma were the destination I shared with the invaders. My people had experienced bloodshed and territorial fights before, but not by a completely different race of people, and not in this way. The god they wanted to give us, and the emperor named Charles we had to serve, were as distant and foreign as a star in the sky.
