The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

D.C. may be a malarial swamp, but it gets fucking cold in the winter.

The morning I first saw her I was standing at a pre-dawn bus stop on Georgia Avenue, the beginning of my long daily commute. I was doing my post-doc at the NIH in Bethesda, but Bethesda is almost as expensive as my old upper West Side neighborhood in Gotham, so I wound up renting a room in a house in Wheaton. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but it wasn’t Bethesda. Unfortunately, I had neither car nor driver’s license—you don’t need them in NYC—and the distance meant I had to ride a bus forty minutes there and back every day. It wasn’t so bad in the summer, or when I was on a later shift, but that January I was on the clock at four a.m. every day but Monday.

They don’t tell you, when you go into medicine—no, I’m not an M.D., I’m a researcher—that you’re going to spend years and years getting your degree and then spend additional years slaving at crap pay for some hospital or research center before you’re considered experienced enough to make any real money, and maybe pay back those damn student loans.

Or maybe they do tell you and I just wasn’t listening.

Anyway. It was three fifteen in the frozen, fucking morning. No snow, but the Plexiglas walls of the bus stop shelter were covered in rime. A few cars were passing, but other than them I was alone.

That’s when I saw her. She was jogging, bundled up in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, arms swinging in measured cadence to whatever music the bright yellow Discman at her waist was playing.

It was early to be jogging, but some people take their fitness seriously, and if she had to be at work at five, say—or four but worked close to home—then this was when she had to get her run in. She was across the street from me, headed south. Georgia Ave. is a wide street, so I couldn’t see her face very well, just her swinging arms and pumping legs.

There was something about her that struck me as odd.

It wasn’t the way she was running—she ran like a jogger is supposed to run. Too often you see people jogging who have funny walks, arms too tight or upraised asses as though an invisible follower was giving them a wedgie. No, she was running smoothly, all clean lines and even pace.

But there was something...

I exhaled, and it hit me.

I couldn’t see her breath.

It was several degrees below freezing. My own breath came in great foggy clouds, hanging on the bus stop walls, dissipating only reluctantly.

The air around her head was totally clear.

I stared. Heated as she had to be from her exercise, she should be leaving a wake of cooling mist. Why wasn’t she-

She looked at me.

Her eyes—ice blue, I could tell from here—were magnetic, powerful. I was frozen in place, pinned, as those lights focused on me-

The bus arrived.

When I looked out the window, with a touch of nervous hesitation, she was gone.

I saw her again two weeks later.

The house I rented was about five blocks from the bus stop. I rented it from, of all people, the Swedish Embassy. They used it to put up, I don’t know, Swedes who came to the Embassy and had nowhere to stay. Or at least that was their plan-although I was only renting one room, for the eight months I had lived in DC there had only ever been one other person staying in the house, and he was only there for two days.

A friend of mine from undergrad had hooked me up with the place—he worked for the fencing industry lobby (yes, if you can imagine it, there are lobbyists for it) and through the grapevine had heard that the Swedish Embassy wanted to rent a room to someone so that their house wasn’t always empty. I was a well-educated young woman with a steady job; they offered me the room the day I interviewed.

The house wasn’t big, just five bedrooms in a neat little middle-class suburb. Kids played on the street outside, although not in January and not at three a.m. At least it was warmer this morning—no frost on the lawns. I could still see my breath.

I was walking down the cross-street that connected to Georgia Avenue when I saw her running towards me.

I knew it was her instantly. It must have been the way she ran. Her sweats were a different color, but the bright yellow Discman was the same. We were on the same side of the street, the same sidewalk, and she was coming right towards me.

I wanted to stare at her but I was a little afraid and a little polite, so instead I looked aside as she passed. My peripheral vision told me that she was pretty, very pretty, and the hair under her hood was short and blonde.

She ran by me, and I relaxed a little. She had no idea who I was.

She stopped.

I didn’t turn. I remembered those eyes, eyes I could see from across the street-

“Hey,” she said.

Slowly, I pivoted around.

She was looking at me, and her eyes were deep blue, but normal, just pretty, unusual eyes. Nothing eerie about them. Her hood was flung back, and her headphones hung around her neck.

“Didn’t I see you before? A few weeks back?” she asked.

I licked my lips. “I, uh, yes, I think I saw you jogging...”

She nodded. I had been wrong—she wasn’t just pretty, she was beautiful. Movie star beautiful. For some reason, I thought of silent films, bombshell blondes with black lips...

“Yes, I remember,” she said. “You were staring at me. Why?”

Because you’re gorgeous sprang to mind. But I had been in the assumed-het professional world for far too long to just blurt out something like that. I hadn’t been in the closet since freshman year, but letting people assume I was straight was just so much easier that by now it was ingrained. Her beauty blew all other answers from my mind, though, leaving me unable to do aught but stall.

“I don’t, um, I don’t...”

And then her eyes lit up. Lit up, like there was a cold fire behind them, glowing through them as though though a sheet of ice, and she demanded of me ”Why were you staring at me?“

I heard myself blurt out the truth. “Because you were jogging and it was freezing but you weren’t making any clouds, you know, with your breath. You should have been breathing hard and making lots of mist but you weren’t.” My mouth stopped and hung open.

She looked away, and then I was free enough to be afraid, suddenly afraid of those glowing blue eyes.

Her gaze turned back to me and I twitched, but they were just eyes now, just eyes, beautiful and dark blue.

I blinked at her. She was breathing, I could hear it, could see her chest rising and falling. And although it was cold, it was just warm enough that not actually seeing her breath wasn’t something I would have noticed...

She seemed to consider me, then snorted and looked away again.

“Shit,” she said to the lawn beside us.

I stared at her. Those eyes...

What was she going to do to me?

“I thought I was so clever, going out for a jog. No one really considers joggers, and I just wanted to get out some.” She frowned, and kicked at the sidewalk. “Damn it all.”

I just stood there. I didn’t know what to say.

She was looking at me again. “Look, ah...”

“Kyla,” I volunteered, then wondered why.

She smiled a small smile. “Look, Kyla... would you be willing to just forget about it? I mean, to not tell anyone and just sort of forget that you saw me running around like that? You know, not breathing and all? Please?”

I blinked at her. She was asking me? I had looked into those eyes, I knew that she could be—should be—threatening, or demanding, or... or worse. But she wasn’t. She was asking me. Asking me please.

“Sure,” I said. I licked my lips. “Consider it forgotten. I won’t—haven’t—won’t say a thing.”

She looked at me for a moment, thinking, then smiled at me a third time. “Thanks, Kyla,” she said, and flipped her hood up. She slid the headphones back on underneath, and started her limbs in motion.

“See you later,” she said, turned, and began to jog away.

I found myself fervently hoping so.

The third time I saw her...

It was March. After last time, I had looked for her, then hoped she might appear, and then finally accepted that I was never going to see her again. Whatever witchcraft was hidden behind that stunning face had peeked briefly into my world and withdrawn, and my life was back to normal.

I hadn’t told anyone about her. There wasn’t anything to tell, really, even if I hadn’t promised not to. What had I seen? A jogging woman whose breath didn’t billow out as fog. An optical illusion, surely.

Anyway, I had promised.

A plump Swedish woman whose passport had been stolen and who didn’t want to cut her vacation short had stayed in the house with me for the last week of February. I ate well that week. Other than that, I got up, went to work, came home, and went to bed. Rinse and repeat.

Then one morning I was walking to work in the pre-dawn chill and there she was, jogging down the street as if she had never left. I almost stumbled as my feet forgot what they were doing.

She wasn’t on my side of the street, she was across it, approaching the four-way intersection that I was approaching from the other direction, but I knew her instantly. My heartbeat accelerated as we drew closer.

She was still in baggy sweats, still with the yellow Discman and the yellow headphone cord flapping against her chest. Only this time... this time I could see her breath.

I wondered how she had fixed that.

I reached the corner, and waited for the light. She ran up to the corner diagonally across from me.

She waved at me.

I gave an entirely unexpected little sob. It startled me—had I been so desperate to see her?

I gave a little wave back.

The light changed. Which way was she going? Nowhere. She stayed at her corner, bouncing from foot to foot as joggers do, watching as I stepped into the street. She turned, and waited for the light to change, so that she could cross to the corner I was walking towards.

She was coming to see me.

I feared it a little, and wanted it a whole lot.

Then it happened, all much faster than I could take another step.

The driver must not have seen the red light until he was too close—still groggy, reaching for the cup holder and his morning coffee. He was twenty feet away when he hit the brakes.

The road was icy.

His Jeep Cherokee slid into the intersection going at least thirty miles an hour. The poor bastard in the Audi going straight hadn’t a chance, and slammed into the Cherokee’s driver’s side front. The Cherokee flipped.

The car, and my foot, hung in the air for an interminable second.

Then it rolled right over her.

I was screaming, and running. The horns might have been for me, stupidly cutting directly through the intersection, or they might have been for the wrecked cars, or they might have been from the wrecked cars. I didn’t think about it. I was running to her, because she had waited for me and because she had asked me “please” and because she was so beautiful...

The Cherokee was in the parking lot of an apartment complex on its side. Broken glass crunched under my feet as I reached the street corner where she had stood, bouncing from foot to foot, coming to see me. Headlights illuminated the dark places the streetlights did not, but she had been tossed forty feet and I only saw her because she was trying to stand up.

Trying, and failing.

I ran to her. I forget what I was saying, but it died in my throat as I reached her and I saw.

She was covered in blood, everywhere. There was white bone sticking from the front of her sweatshirt, and one of her legs was turned ninety degrees at the waist.

There was so much blood.

She tried to stand again, and there was a sickening sound from within a leg and she fell. Then I was on my knees, reaching for her, taking hold of the sweats that were so thoroughly soaked with blood...

Her eyes turned to me, and they were lit again, glowing blue, but this time no power reached out to me, just a sense of pain and great fear.

“Take me away from here,” she gasped. “Please, please, get me away.”

“The ambulance will be here soon,” I stammered. In my heart, seeing her, I feared that it would make no difference. “Please, just wait for the ambulance.”

“No!” She made to stand up again, and I clung to her. She relented, and her head whipped around, staring at the headlights, at the people behind them. She snarled, then her head dropped.

“Kyla,” she said quietly, her lips to my ear, “Kyla, I can’t let them get me. If the paramedics get here, I have to die. He told me to. I can’t let them,” she drew in a shuddering breath, “can’t let them get me. I have to get out of here.”

She tried to stand again, and again there was that horrible grinding in her leg and she toppled. She looked at her leg, and then rolled over onto her back, arms out as though to make a snow angel in the grass.

I looked at her helplessly. Get her out of here? But she needed medical attention...

We heard the sirens in the distance.

Her exhalation was half-laugh, half-sob. “Goodbye then, Kyla. Thanks for keeping my secret for me.”

She closed her eyes.

Somehow, the blue fire from her eyes was in me, then, and suddenly I was angry. “No,” I said, reaching for her, “no! You’re not going to- I’m not going to let you—” and I was on my feet and lifting her, and her eyes came open in surprise, and I slung her over my shoulder and her arm crunched as it closed around me, and then I was walking with her, carrying her to my home with her twisted leg dragging on the ground between us.

It was too early for a crowd, but the noise of the accident had drawn people from their beds. “Hey!” someone shouted. “Leave her there! The paramedics are coming! You could hurt her! Hey, stop!”

But I did not stop. I dragged her across the street, through the broken glass and past bits of Audi, and down the slight hill. I had to get away from these people, had to get far enough away that they couldn’t see where I had taken her.

Please, I prayed silently, please don’t let them follow me.

Two blocks later I turned onto my street, gasping for breath. She—and I gasped out a laugh, here I was carrying a woman from a car wreck and I didn’t know her name—she was remarkably heavy, and although she was still helping with the one leg her head hung down and her eyes were closed.

Somehow, I got her home.

I flung open the door and dragged her inside—I almost aimed for the sofa, but realized that the blood would never come out and I was a renter, so I stumbled into the kitchen with her on my shoulders and slumped to my knees, letting her roll off onto the floor.

In the light she looked so much worse.

Panting, I went to the front door. No trail of blood, no scarlet footprints. No way to tell which house I had taken her to. At least, I hoped—it was still full dark outside. I closed the door and went back to the kitchen.

Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. As I walked in, they rolled down to focus on me.

“Basement,” she wheezed.

I started to object.

“Basement!” she said more firmly. “I have to- have to be kept out of the sun.”

Her face was pale, white, bled-out.

I hadn’t believed it until then.

I carried her down to the basement. It had been finished and partitioned into rooms, and a few of them were without windows. She wound up on the laundry room floor.

As I put her down again, her eyes once more caught mine.

“Kyla,” she said faintly. “I’m sorry...” They closed for a moment, then opened again. “Thank you...”

Then she was still.

The sun rose a few hours later.

I had called in sick, of course. I had changed out of my blood-soaked clothes, but to do laundry was to go into the room where she was, so they remained in the sink. Hopefully letting them soak meant I could get the blood out.

Was she really...?

But I had only to remember her eyes, and I knew.

I was pacing when my moment of clarity overtook me, and I sagged onto the sofa.

I had a dead woman in my house. Dead, or damn near. What was I doing? I didn’t even know her name. What I should do, what I really ought to do, was to call the paramedics and-

But no, she had begged me to help her get away from them. What had she said? If they arrived, she had to die.

“Had to die”? What was that about?

I puttered, doing nothing of consequence and thinking of nothing but her. It was eleven in the morning before I worked up the nerve to go back down and see her.

She was dead.

Of course she was. If she was a... and it was daytime. The sun wasn’t providing a lot of warmth, today, but it was still shining.

God, was she fucked up.

Her leg was still twisted grotesquely, although I didn’t see bone in the ruins of her sweatshirt, for which I was thankful. The light ash color of her sweatpants was almost entirely black with blood, as was the green sweatshirt she was wearing.

I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I’d carried her six blocks, but now I couldn’t touch her. But she damn sure wasn’t breathing, and her outflung wrist hadn’t the slightest twitch of pulse.

I slumped against the laundry room door after I closed it. I knew what was going to happen. The sun would set, I’d creep back down here, and she’d still be dead. Dead, and starting to smell.

And I’d have to check myself in to a psychiatric hospital.

There was a smear of blood on the floor.

Oh shit, I hadn’t even looked outside! God, in the daylight, there was probably a trail leading to my house like the crimson brick road. I darted upstairs.

As I reached for the front door there was a knock.

I damn near jumped out of my skin. I leaned against the wall as I regained control of my breathing. Then I looked through the peephole.

It was a cop.

Well, fuck.

I opened the door. My step-sister is a libertarian, thinks police are the Enemy, but until that morning I hadn’t had any reason to fear them. Uniforms always used to reassure me.

“Hello?”

The handcuffs didn’t come out. He was young, sandy blonde and apologetic. “Good morning, ma’am. Sorry to disturb you. Were you awake between the hours of three and four this morning?”

Um. “Uh, yes I was,” I replied. “I usually go to work at quarter after three. But I’m sick, so I got up just for a few minutes and went back to bed.”

“I see,” he said, raising a clipboard and making a mark on it. “Did you happen to look outside? Maybe go outside?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

He frowned. “There was an accident a few blocks away, and a pedestrian who was hit by a car was carried away from the scene. Witnesses say that she needed medical attention, so we’re trying to locate her.”

“That’s horrible,” I said. I may not be much of an actor, but my poker face is perfect.

“Does anyone else live with you?”

“Not at the moment,” I said. “The house is owned by the Swedish Embassy; they sometimes have other people staying here.”

He nodded, and his pencil darted around again. “So, you woke up, but didn’t look outside, and didn’t see anything?”

Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it? I thought. “That’s pretty much it, yep.”

“Okay. Thank you for your time—here’s my card,” he said, reaching into a breast pocket and handing me the small rectangle. “If you notice anything, give me a call.”

“Will do,” I replied. “Um... what should I be looking for?”

He shrugged. “Well, the eyewitnesses say that the woman was carried off by a man about five five or five six. But mostly we’re interested in finding the woman—if you see anything indicating she was around, give us a call.”

“Will do,” I replied absently. A man? It must have been darker than I thought. And I was only five four.

The cop strolled back down the walkway. I watched him moving off down the street, then scanned the sidewalk we had staggered down. Nothing—no blood, no anything.

Then I mentally slapped my forehead. Of course there wasn’t any blood.

The world was bathed in sunlight.

The sun was due to set a few minutes after six.

I was on a stool, in the laundry room. I kept checking my watch, then looking at her body, then checking my watch.

As six oh seven approached, time seemed to slow down.

Was she going to wake up hungry? Should I be alarmed? She was still twisted and broken, like a stringless marionette. Was that normal?

Was she going to wake up at all?

She was dead. I mean, I am a professional, and she was dead. No respiration, no pulse... I had finally managed to bring myself to touch her. The cuts on her face were open, bloodless, and showing no signs of swelling or any other behavior associated with the healing process.

On the other hand, she didn’t appear to be decaying, either.

I kept checking my watch. The last two minutes I held it before my face and watched her over it, both at the same time.

Sunset.

Nothing happened.

Shit. I had a dead girl in my basement and I had put her there. I was a nutcase and this poor girl had been denied medical attention and died in my basement.

So much for a career in medicine.

With a loud rasp, she inhaled and sat up.

I stared at her. My other set of fears came rushing back.

Her eyes were glowing. There was no doubt about it, they glowed like light through a glacier, pale blue and radiant. She looked around the room, looked at me. Expressionless, she looked down at her ravaged body.

“Well,” she said. “Shit.”

Then she laughed a little, and looked at me again. “I’m quite messed up, aren’t I? Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”

“You’re a vampire, aren’t you?” I whispered.

Her expression became thoughtful. “Yeah, pretty much.” She shrugged. “You don’t happen to have any human blood lying around, do you? I’m fucking starving.” The glow in her eyes faded.

“I, uh...”

She smiled at me, which was less reassuring given the pair of white fangs that glinted there. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to bite you. I don’t—” she looked serious- “I don’t do that. Not if I can help it.”

I just nodded vaguely.

She sighed. “But of course you don’t have any blood. Why would you?”

“Why aren’t you- um. Why aren’t you better?”

She looked down at her legs. “Because this isn’t the earth I was buried in,” she said. “It’s a nice enough...” she swung her head around, looking behind her, “...a nice enough laundry room. And any hidey-hole will do to get out of the sun. But to heal myself I have to sleep in the earth of my coffin.”

“Your coffin?”

“Well, from the area where I was buried. Boo,” she added, and laughed.

“Where, uh, where is that?” I asked.

“Colma,” she said, “but anything from the San Francisco side of the Bay will do.”

“Oh. But where’s your, um, coffin, around here?”

She frowned. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Um. Then how are you going to get home? You can’t walk, can you?”

Putting her palms on the floor, she attempted to roll to her knees. Her pelvis crunched and I winced. She rolled back to a sitting position.

“That, Kyla,” she smiled at me again, “is a damn good question.” She sighed. “Do you have a car?”

I shook my head.

“Hm. Crap. Well, then, do you have a phone?”

I nodded.

“Then I’ll just call a friend,” she said, “and get picked up. Does the phone travel, or am I going to have to go upstairs?”

“It travels,” I said, “but you’re going to have to come upstairs to leave the house anyway.”

She nodded. “Right-o. Well, then, are you willing to help me, or should I see if I can crawl up there? Like I said, it doesn’t really hurt—”

“I’ll help,” I said. “Don’t be silly.”

She smiled at me, and held out her arms.

Her functioning leg functioned well enough, so getting back upstairs wasn’t much trouble.

At the base of the stairs I became aware that, her arm slung around my shoulder as it was, her head was within easy striking distance of my neck. Suddenly I was minutely conscious of it; I could feel the air from her breath on my skin, feel my own pulse beating so near to the surface.

And she was cold, as cold as stone, and her flesh was bloodless white...

“Um,” I said, to distract myself, “how come you’re breathing?”

“We breathe,” she said. “Dunno why, but we do.” We hopped up a stair. “When you first saw me, I was breathing—but as you’ve probably noticed, I’m room temperature. That’s why you didn’t see my breath. It wasn’t that I wasn’t breathing, it’s that I was cold.”

“Oh,” I replied. “Do you, um, do you really drink blood?” Oh, way to keep your mind off it I chided myself.

“Yep,” she said. “Drink blood, yes. Crosses, not a problem. Sunlight, bad. Turn into mist, no. Summon bats, no. Garlic, good on pasta. Anything else?”

“How many of you,” up another step, “are there?”

“Dunno,” she said. “We travel in mutually suspicious covens. And my Master has forbidden us to speak of our own. That’s why I can’t tell you where I live.”

“Your,” step, “Master?”

She nodded. “The one who Made me. We’re not,” step, “the way most people think. Only a Master can make new vampires. And once He—or She—makes us, then we belong to Him. We live as extensions of His will.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound very familiar.”

She laughed. We reached the top of the steps, and shuffled into the kitchen. “And you’re an expert, eh?”

“Well, no, obviously not...”

“Then take it from me. I’m not alive, or undead, because of some virus or because God hates me or any such thing. I’m alive because my Master wants me to be.”

I helped her onto a barstool. “You don’t sound, um, very worshipful.”

She sighed. “Well, it’s been a while. He’s got new favorites. Mostly I’m left to my own devices.”

“Such as jogging.”

“Such as jogging.” She shrugged. “I like to get out.”

“Do you want some clean clothes?”

She smiled again. “That’s sweet, Kyla, but I’ll be fine until I can get home. Besides, I don’t think your clothes would fit me.”

That was true enough. She was easily five inches taller than I.

“Then let me get you the phone.”

“Yes, please.”

I retrieved the cordless phone, and handed it to her. She smiled again, then punched in some digits. I went to the fridge and took out a Diet Pepsi while she waited for someone to pick up.

“Hello? Yes, it’s me. I got hit by a car. Yes, hit by a car. Yes, obviously I’m still alive. I need someone to pick me up. Um, hold on—I’ll find out and call you right back.”

I looked at her, a bit surprised, as she hung up. She looked aside before looking at me.

“Er, Kyla, I don’t think it would be in your best interest to have my, uh, friends, know exactly where you live. Which was the intersection where I got hit?”

“It was...” Something occurred to me. “Uh, you know, a policeman came by here today. They’re looking for you. And that’s a pretty busy intersection...”

“Oh. Well, pick a closer one that’s less busy, then.”

I named a street corner two blocks away. She called her “friends” back, and told them where to pick her up.

“Okay,” she said, “They’ll be there in ten minutes. We’d better head out.”

I took my position under her arm again, and we walked to the front door.

“Um, if you don’t want them to find me.. can’t they just trace your phone call?” I asked.

She snorted. “They have a rotary phone. Technology is not my Master’s strong suit, and He hasn’t seen fit to Take anyone who’s any better at it.”

“Do you really think they might come here and, um, hurt me?”

A sigh. “Kyla, you know how I told you that I don’t bite people? That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I do want to. A lot. And some of my friends don’t have my willpower, and almost none of them have my scruples.”

“Oh.” I could feel my neck again.

I closed the door behind us, and we shuffled down the walkway. The darkness seemed like a friend, now, cloaking us from prying eyes.

“Do, um. Do your friends kill people?” I asked.

She didn’t reply.

“Kyla,” she said, “You’d better go.”

We’d reached the street corner. It was quiet aside from the occasional passing car. Down one of the streets someone was walking their dog. Windows glowed and parents served dinner. A typical workday evening.

“I...” I didn’t know what to say.

She was leaning on the pole of the street sign. “Thank you,” she said, and stroked my cheek with her hand. “What you did for me... it was courageous, and, well, and really quite remarkable. I don’t... I’m not sure how to thank you. I don’t think... I don’t think you should get mixed up with me. What I am... it’s not glamorous. It’s not even much fun. But it is all I’ve got, and I owe it to you. Thank you, Kyla.”

Then she kissed me.

My toes tingled.

“Now go on, get out of here. I don’t want them to see you. I’ll tell them I hid in a storm drain or something. They’ll laugh about it, but unless He asks me for the truth no one will care.”

“If He asks...?”

“I’ll tell Him, of course. He’s my Master. But He won’t. He’ll ask if I endangered the coven and I’ll say no, because I haven’t. Now go, dammit.”

“I don’t want—”

“Go home“ she said, her eyes blazing, and I turned and found myself walking away.

I couldn’t stop. Somehow I knew that, when I got home, I would be free to come back, but I had to go home first. And she’d be gone.

I craned my neck, not watching where my rebellious legs were taking me at all. I had to see her, had to watch where-

A car pulled up. Black, German. Someone stepped out, and she—and I never knew her name—took their hand and was let down into the car.

It sped away, and my legs carried me the other direction, and I realized I was never going to see her again.

“But what’s your name?!” I cried out, mangling the last word with a sob.

I didn’t bother going back to the intersection after I got home, I just sat down on the sofa and cried.

Life got back to normal again.

As if in some weird form of karmic compensation, Dr. Wynne, my sponsor down at NIH, told me the next day that I wouldn’t have to come in on the early shift any more; he was reassigning me to the nine to four. Moreover, he only wanted me to work three days a week. I’d put in enough lab time, he said, and he wanted me to get more work done on my paper.

Oh yeah, my paper. I was researching the effects of a series of drugs on blood platelets—at least, I was supposed to be. I hadn’t seen my research for the last four months.

So I was suddenly getting up after sunrise, working leisurely hours, and spending lots of time in the library and in the lab on my own work. I started to remember why I got into the field.

I suppose she might have done that for me, with her magic eyes, but I’d never told her where I worked. I’d never really told her anything. There hadn’t been any time.

It was early April, and the trees were starting to think about budding. In a few weeks they would burst into flower, the cherry trees and the pears and all the other ornamentals, exploding into puffy white clouds before decorating the streets with fragrant snowdrifts.

However, although Spring might have been loaded it was still quite cold outside, and I’d been late at the lab. I was off shift on Thursdays, so Wednesday nights often saw me researching until late and then spending the following morning in bed.

The bus back from work had been late, leaving me at an unheated Bethesda bus stop for forty minutes; the bus itself was warm enough, but then it was back into the biting wind again. I was extremely glad to reach the warmth of my home.

I unwrapped and made myself a pot of tea. I like my tea the British way, the tea in a pot and then poured into a mug over milk. Whatever caffeine there was never seemed to keep me up. I turned on the television. Jon Stewart was interviewing the Rock.

There was a knock at the door.

Cup in hand, I went to it. I looked through the peephole, and flipped on the porch light.

It was her.

I froze for a moment, and then my hand went to the doorknob. I yanked open the door and the frigid air embraced me.

She stared at me, not smiling, intense.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

Salem’s Lot flashed through my mind, the consequences of invitations.

“Yes,” I replied. “Please.”

She stepped across the threshold, and then her mouth was on mine, cold, cold and soft, and my hands came up to wrap around her back, and hers closed around me, and we were pressing into each other, sucking, and her tongue flicked into my mouth and I welcomed it with mine. It was cold, like frozen fruit or ice cream.

We staggered back from the door, which swung closed. I don’t remember setting my teacup down, but I must have, because I found it later on an end table, not shattered on the floor.

I was staring into her eyes, and they were blue, blue like deep water, and not glowing at all. But they were magic nonetheless, very powerful magic, and I fell endlessly into them...

“Shower,” she gasped around my mouth.

“What?”

“Turn on the shower. I’m so cold... we should make love in the shower.”

Saying it out loud redoubled the speed of my heart, and I led her to the master bathroom. I didn’t rent the master bedroom, but the house was mine at the moment, and the shower in there was large enough for any seven friendly Swedes, and I used it when I felt like luxuriating.

I turned the knobs, and then she was pulling me, turning me around and lifting off my sweater, lifting off my shirt, and then my belly was naked and I reached back to unclasp my bra as she pulled her various tops over her head in one go.

Her sports bra went, too, and her breasts bounced back down, enthralling me.

The feeling was mutual—as I tossed my own bra aside, her eyes went to my chest, and then she was leaning in, sucking on my nipples, and tight pleasure shot up from them to my brain and reverberated back down to my groin. Her lips had been warmed by my own, but her fingertips on my back were cool, so cool.

She was yanking down her sweats as she suckled on me, and then was brushing past me, into the shower, standing in the spray. She posed in the hot water, crossing her arms under her breasts and slowly turning. Her last remaining item of clothing, a pair of lacy burgundy panties, were instantly soaked.

I dropped my own jeans to the floor, and stepped in—she had kept on her panties, so I did as well, but mine were white and as she drew me into the spray they became translucent, the dark stripe on my mound suddenly visible. I wanted her to see it.

We were kissing again, my mouth as hungry as hers, and her hands found their way into my panties, her long fingers stretching them out and then sliding them down, and she followed, and somehow my heart went even faster as she slid down my body, her mouth a contact point, electricity shooting to my brain wherever it slid, and then she was there, her lower lip pushing down through my trimmed (I don’t know why wishful thinking I guess, I hadn’t had a girlfriend in years) landing strip and then she was kissing my slit, her lips sliding along my labia and then joined by her tongue, and I clutched at her head and my moan was audible above the noise of the shower.

I slumped against the cool tiles of the shower stall, and she stayed with me, hands clutching my upper thighs, mouth chasing and catching and licking and tasting, and I shivered and kneaded her short wet hair until I came, her hands suddenly holding me up and her fingernails pressing half-circles into my flesh. She slithered back up my body as I twitched uncontrollably until her mouth came near and I pounced on it, kissing and sucking and tasting myself and her and the water from the shower.

Then it was my turn, and I turned aggressive, gripping her arms and turning us, pushing her against the wall, kissing her with all my hunger and sliding down, and her hands slid through my hair as I knelt and pulled off the wet burgundy cloth, pulling it down until she lifted a leg out and spread herself, and I breathed on her close-cropped blonde snatch and inhaled her, so close, and then I licked, tasting for the very first time.

She rumbled her pleasure, and I buried my face in her, mouth open wide, tongue darting. She was cool, still cool, but smooth and fleshy and perfect, and I brought up a hand to help and she moaned and then she was coming, hips jerking at me, her snatch sucking at my fingers.

We showered for an hour, taking turns, spending longer and longer periods just kissing, just touching, me staring into her blue eyes and her staring into my gold. I was in love, helpless love, and I let her know it on my knees, on my side, lying beneath her in a sixty-nine.

And she loved me too.

Well before sunrise we were in bed together.

We had made love there too, once, thrice, but then we had just lain together, touching, staring into each other and breathing each other’s breath.

And then the moment was over, as all moments must eventually be. She gave me a wry smile.

“Oh,” she said, “by the way.

“My name’s Tilly.”