Tonight, when I left Tom’s house, I abandoned my pearls in favor of a string of ebony beads I borrowed from Jordan. The beads bounce lightly against my chest as the stranger fucks me against the oak tree.
I don’t care about the grating of the bark against the back of my dress. Don’t care that my stockings will be ruined. This is what I need. This is everything.
I wind both arms around his neck. “More,” I plead breathlessly. “More. Faster.”
He redoubles his pace, driving sharp, little moans from my throat with every thrust. It’s the perfect rhythm, the perfect amount of friction, and I come with a breathless squeal under the boughs of the oak, under the canopy of the stars, under the sweet strains of the dance tune echoing from Gatsby’s party.
He pulses inside me, flooding my body with his release. He’s been holding my waist, keeping me steady, but when he comes, he shifts one hand and plants it against the trunk of the tree. His hips thrust forward once more, shoving into me harder, deeper. I suck in a breath of pleasure at the new angle, the solid feel of him. He comes a little more, with a ragged gasp.
When he pulls out, I’m sloppy and dripping. Without a word he sinks to his knees. Holding up my dress and pinning my panties out of the way, he begins licking me clean.
I tilt my head back against the tree, fingers splayed against the trunk, while he buries his face deeper into my sex, bathing every bit of me with his tongue. He growls softly, a predatory vibration that drives me blissfully mad, and I squirm, moaning for more.
A sharp prick of pain startles me, and I look down with a gasp. “Did you…bite me?”
He doesn’t answer, but I can feel it now—two sharp teeth piercing the lips of my pussy, gentle suction on my clit, growing stronger by the section. I should be screaming. I should be terrified, but the tiny pinpoints of pain are enhancing the pleasure. Everything between my legs is deliciously warm and wet, except for those intense points of painful clarity. I’m molten, mindless, prey to the exquisite sucking sensation over my clit and the slow, lascivious sweep of his tongue into my folds. I let my eyes close, succumbing to the swell of bliss, not caring how it’s happening, just yielding myself to it as it expands, wider, wider, a beautiful rolling wave that crashes, explodes into ecstasy. I half scream, biting the back of my wrist to stifle the sound.
When he gets to his feet, I’m coated in a light sweat, fragrant with sex, panting and sagging against the tree, trembling from head to toe, and completely satisfied.
He kisses me with damp, warm lips, and I taste coppery blood and salty cum on his tongue. It’s obscene and terrifying—and I love it.
When I swirl my tongue through his mouth, I feel the keen tips of his teeth, and in a moment of silent, blinding realization, I understand what he is.
Jordan and I read Dracula at the same time, one winter two years ago. A story, a myth, yet it seems more believable to me than the other truth about him—that he could be Jay Gatsby, the soldier I loved. The soldier who left me.
I don’t know how he became this—a vampire. But if being this helped him survive the war and brought him back to me, I accept it. Monster or not, he is mine.
He ends the kiss and zips up his pants, then fixes my underwear and pulls my dress down to cover my thighs.
My eyes have adjusted to the dark, and I can see his face a little better now—strong lines, high cheekbones. Handsome and hauntingly familiar, though the leafy shadows playing across his features make it hard to be sure.
He reaches up to fondle the ends of my carefully combed blond bob. Well…it was carefully combed. Now I’m fairly sure it’s been mussed six ways to Sunday.
“I just had it cut this morning,” I blurt out. “It’s the fashion, and I needed a change.”
He smiles. “It’s fucking adorable.”
“My fiancé won’t like it.”
I wait for his reaction to that terrible word—fiancé.
After a few seconds of silence, he says, “What’s not to like?”
“Tom prefers my hair long. He hates it when I do things without asking his permission.”
“And you do them anyway.” He nods his approval. “Good girl. You should always make your own choices.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t, if they’re wrong choices that lead me astray.”
“Astray?” He laughs. “Doll, there’s only one path worth following, and that’s the one that takes you straight to what you want.”
“And if I’m not sure what I want?”
“Then you must try new things until you find your passion in life.”
“Try new things,” I say dully, finger-combing my hair into better shape. “Since my engagement to Tom, he’s taken me to so many places and we’ve done so many things—always with my family or his along as chaperones, of course. Yet I couldn’t seem to stir up much enthusiasm about anything. I think I’ve become quite cynical.”
“Maybe the problem wasn’t you or the places you went, but the people you were with,” he says. “With the right person, even a ruined shack in a mossy clearing can be exciting.”
And there it is.
A paralyzing joy floods my brain, blurring everything else.
Years ago, I gave myself to a young soldier as we lay in a broken-down shack deep in the heart of Georgia, in a clearing thick with Spanish moss.
No one else knew about that tryst. No one except—
“Gatsby?” The word cracks from my lips.
“Daisy,” he says softly.
So it’s him after all. I knew it, and yet the admission makes me angry.
I shove a fist against his chest. “You didn’t come back. I thought you died.”
“I sent letters.”
“I never got them.”
