lena

She had a destiny, and it was wonderful, every girl__ dream. Like Sleeping Beauty, awoken from a deep sleep by a charming vampire, Lena would have her very own fairy tale.

I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him.

She took hold of him through his pants. "I want this inside me five minutes ago.

He silenced the thought, already itching to get inside her, his tongue, or his fingers, or his cock. After all these years of wanting, he would gladly accept whatever access to her body she gave him. He just wanted in.

The opening notes of a song began, some plucking of guitar strings. I knew the melody. It was Maroon 5__ __he Will Be Loved._ As pop songs went, it was pretty damn good, a bit of a favorite of mine.

Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache.

His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years.

I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have."He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly.""Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing."City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating.

It's the rule of the wilds. You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher. A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn't love me.He never loved me.It was all a lie."The old Lena is dead." I say, and then push past him. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone.You must hurt or be hurt.

This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else__very single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss__as meant nothing.

I keep having the urge to cross my hands over my chest, to cover up my breasts, to hide. I'm suddenly aware of how pale I look in the sunshine, and how many moles I have spotting up and down my chest, and I just know he's looking at me thinking i'm wrong or deformed. But the he breathes, 'Beautiful' and when his eyes meet mine I know that he really, truly means it.

Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?""I don't know any other way.""Let me show you."And then we're kissing. Or at least, I think we're kissing__'ve only seen it done a couple of times, quick closed-mouth pecks at weddings or on formal occasions. But this isn't like anything I've ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: this is like music or dancing but better than both.

He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.

Laws of physicslaws of loveof time and spaceand the (in)between place(in)between you and meand where we arelost and lookinglooking and lost