Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

himself ready enough for pleasure the night before. He had a better heart than she did, and probably a stronger mind. God knew his soul was purer and yet, when she was with him, when she looked into his incomparable gentian eyes, she felt not diminished but complete.
     
    He had never judged her. In truth, she could tell that he admired her.
     
    Which was all the more reason she must not cause his fall.
     
    Let him go, she thought, tightening her jaw against the blooming pain. Stop tempting him and you'll have earned your freedom from the blood. She could make it a bargain with the angels. Surely one good deed was not too much to ask.
     
    And if the good deed gained her nothing, what then?
     
    Luisa forced her muscles to relax. She stared at the mountains, their ceaseless winds blowing the hem of her mink-lined cloak against her thighs. As if in sympathy, her robe twisted around her ankles. Fur and wool, luxury and necessity—and her mind unable to say at the moment which was which. Blithely she had spoken of wishing to live more ethically, a half-truth at best, designed to impress the people whose help she begged. Much more important had been her desire to depend entirely on herself. To need a human for its blood, even a human she could suborn, was to be vulnerable. But now she needed much more than blood.
     
    With a skin-chilling shock, she saw her quest had come to mean less to her than one man's good opinion.
     
    Then she laughed, sharp and bitter, her breath clouding thickly in the air. Even now she hedged the truth. She wanted more than Martin's good opinion. She wanted his well-being.
     
    ***
    FROM his interview with the abbot Martin had gone straight to his private chamber, where he turned at once to light his altar's lamps. Now a cone of his finest Indian incense smoldered sweetly in a dish. He had bathed and stretched and said his customary prayers. He had prostrated himself and fixed his inner vision on a point. Or he had tried to.
     
    His body wanted nothing to do with prayer. His body wanted only to wallow in the memory of Luisa's touch. His phallus throbbed with readiness, hard and heavy and full, demanding union, demanding her.
     
    His guide had claimed his heart was not his weakest organ. What, Martin wondered, would he have said of his cock?
     
    His desires were at war with each other. He wanted to be the man of his own ambitions: a steadfast servant of his faith. Being recognized for his spiritual achievements was admittedly attractive, but more than that he wished to be true at heart.
     
    Of course, he also wished to be the person who saved Luisa.
     
    How else could he ensure that she remembered him? Not in bed. Too many men more skilled than he had gone before him. But this only he could do. A hundred years from now his image would brand her heart.
     
    Sighing, he unfolded his body from the floor.
     
    He had no business with her heart. Their likely paths in life could not have been more divergent. Except—
     
    He brought both fists to his mouth and pressed them hard against his teeth.
     
    Except his heart had business with her.
     
    In spite of everything, he and Luisa were kindred spirits. Both were strong of mind, both concerned with a longer stretch of time than most lives could hold. Certainly both were trying to balance the promptings of the body against those of the soul.
     
    Nor were those the only parallels. Luisa had twice been betrayed by the men who sired her: the first marrying her to a brute, the second simply leaving. To Martin's mind, neither abandonment was deserved. Whatever her flaws, his life was immeasurably richer for having met her. Auriclus had missed out. And so had Martin's father. Luisa had taught him that by proving how easy to love one imperfect soul could be.
     
    His eyes went hot with the sting of truth. He did not simply admire Luisa's beauty or her spirit or her decadent Western mind. He loved her as any man loved a woman. He loved her as he loved the peace of meditation and the mountains in the spring. He loved her as the boyhood friends he'd never had. He loved her as he loved his cherished guide.
     
    He also loved her as herself, in a manner unlike any other. He, who had never thought to love at all, loved her with all his being.
     
    The discovery floored him. It was a miracle, a raw, exciting terror. He tottered under it like a two-year-old, neither knowing nor caring if the abbot had been right about there being a karmic bond between them.