Forevermore Ch. 01

"Waiting for what?" she asked and then bit her lip hard.

"To be with you, my love," the voice was a sigh of longing. It was a verbal ache and it seemed that it required effort on the part of the speaker because the lamp died out altogether. The voice had sucked out every last bit of power to transcribe the message from beyond the grave.

Belinda's teeth chattered as she spoke. Her breath was a moonlit fog, "You don't even know who I am." There were so many things that were wrong with this but that seemed to be the most important.

"Oh but I do, my little Bell," the voice crept down her spine and followed the tangle of her hair around her shoulders. It was an embrace.

Little Bell, Jesus, no one called her that but her. The voice chimed in simultaneously as she thought, "father."

How would he know? How would anyone know?

"Should we at least assume that forces beyond either you or I can reckon are at work, my love?"

Belinda reached for her cigarettes and jammed one between her jittery lips and lit up. When she exhaled smoke into the air, it melted into the eerie, cold fog that swirled. It was a denser air around her, as if the presence were hiding in a cloak that she wore.

Quick, figure it out before you get any drunker and try to explain this away, she thought. Why had she chosen this house? It was charming, yes, but it was old and it didn't even have a dishwasher. For that matter, why had she chosen Baltimore? The best rehabs in the world were in Beverly Hills. Fuck, Hollywood had practically invented rehab. But when she'd called Mountain Manor Treatment Center, in her heart, she wanted to go home.

"Okay, let's say you do really know me," Belinda puffed and contemplated. "Maybe you do. But you're," she didn't want to hurt his feelings. Besides, he was the goddamn literary genius. She just wrote grocery store books for lonely housewives. It should be fairly evident. She didn't want to say dead.

"The veil is thinner than you know, Belinda," his voice was right there. His lips were pressed against her pulse in her throat and for the first time in longer than she could remember, her body ached to be touched. God, she could almost feel his breath. She was crazy to feel it. That voice was enough to make her thighs drift apart. Was it just her body giving itself over or was it something else?

"I need to touch you also," the voice shook with want, with all the strings that it plucked inside her tightly wound body. Her desire was burning him up. She could feel the surge of energy rush through the atmosphere.

"How can you?" Belinda closed her eyes and felt her lips part and her head slack. Her hair seemed to blow in a breeze behind her, the thicket of thorns opening to invite him in. Closer. Closer.

"Will you do as I ask?"

It was just that question but it seemed to hang in the air, ready to fall and shatter around her. If she said no, Belinda felt that the voice would melt into tonight's dream and tomorrow's drunken stupor. If she said yes though, what would happen? Before she could imagine the consequences, her nipples rose into two burning points. Completely hard, she could feel them tingle in the fabric of her bra. If the apparition could do that with voice and breath, what else was possible?

"Yes."

"Get a cup and a knife."

Belinda rose from the sofa. Her feet were quick to obey, her body knew what it wanted. Her brain wanted to question all of it but it was a muffled voice, almost like someone holding their hand over her mouth while she called for help.

In the kitchen, her hands moved with a surety that came from outside of her. Belinda held the coffee cup and the chef knife by their perspective handles.

"Go to your bedroom, my darling."

Once again, her feet knew the way without hesitation. His breath, the breath, maybe it was just her breath, took her into its warmth, like a blanket to keep out the chill.

Once she was in the bedroom, Belinda set down the requested items on her nightstand.

"Undress for me, Belinda." His voice was a seduction. It was fingers that lingered down her back. It was kisses on her inner thighs. It was the slick spot at the center of her cotton panties.

She did. She obeyed the voice quickly and without hesitation. Tee shirt and pants, off and kicked aside. Belinda looked down at her breasts and felt how warm her skin was there. Her nipples seemed to be reaching for him. They were tipped and hot and heavy with want. She shivered as she unhooked the bra and dropped it on the floor.

The voice was delighted at the sight of her. "So beautiful, oh my love," he sighed and it seemed to come from a bottomless well of want.

All that was left were her panties. Belinda hesitated for a moment. It had been so long, too long, since she'd been naked with anyone. She pushed her underwear down, she rolled them over her hips and thighs. Suddenly she was bare and dewy and vibrating all the way down to her toes.

Undone. This is what the word meant, Belinda realized as her body tingled and melted. She'd written this before but never had it until now. Every inch of her begged for something that she didn't even have a name for.

"Woman," the spirit groaned and Belinda felt the flame too, the churning heat that was under the frigid air. When hot and cold collided, it created a storm and Belinda thought that's why she felt the roll and crackle of electricity under her feet. Together, they were thunder and lightning, a force of nature.

"Now, I need you to cut your finger. Hold your hand over the cup. Just a little bit of blood, my beautiful, little Bell."

"Cut myself?" She felt the grip of it, the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I promise, just a little bit of blood is all I need."

Belinda squeezed her eyes shut, it welled up inside, the resounding no.

"Would I ever harm my own soul's mate?" he whispered. He sounded broken, just the mere suggestion, just the thought that he would do her harm.

My own soul's mate. The words repeated around and around inside Belinda as she picked up the chef knife. She set her mouth, determined to go through with it and pressed the center of her hand into the tip of the shiny blade.

It bit into her flesh and sliced her like a yielding bit of meat. She was a sacrificial lamb, thinly sliced.

Belinda yelped and dropped the knife with a clatter to the nightstand. The blood rose from the tear into a shining, crimson pool and then began to trickle into the cup.

It poured for a bit, a steady flow. It sounded like a steady leak; the same sound that came from the kitchen faucet except this was her lifeblood. She wondered briefly if she'd have a stigmata shaped scar.

Belinda felt woozy and she lay back on her bed. Her body was limp and damp from sweat and exertion and suddenly she felt far too tired to keep her eyes open.

She felt the breath wrap her in an embrace and she immediately melted into a dream.

***

It was a place where the ground was speckled with sunlight and shadows, a pattern of light and dark that hid and simultaneously illuminated them. She was in his arms and it felt like falling. He guided her with his hands to the nest that he'd made with a blanket underneath the branches of a gnarled oak tree.

His face was familiar but she couldn't remember how she knew him. Was it from something that she'd read long ago? Perhaps she saw him every day and perhaps she always had. His black, curly hair called for her hands. His gray eyes shone and danced and she couldn't look away. They were wet eyes, deep, hypnotic eyes that drew her down into their depths.

He smiled and she knew already that it was rare. He was melancholic, sad more often than not. There were lines on his face even though she guessed that he was only her age. The creases around his eyes and the prominent worry lines between his brows were signs of his careworn, uneasy, ceaseless stirring. At the moment though, he smiled and she had never felt so embraced by a gesture.

"My beauty," he whispered, in awe. His fingers trembled as he caressed her cheeks. They softly brushed her skin, as if he were terrified that it was just a dream and touching her would make it all melt.

With his eyes locked on hers, his fingers wandered down her throat. He left a trail of ache everywhere their skin collided. Her senses were all heightened under his caress and she felt her skin melt and cool. Tingle and freeze. She smelled him on her skin and it was a familiar aroma from long ago. It was his clean, masculine warm leather scent, it bathed her in his heat. She wanted traces of that fragrance left behind on her body. She wanted to be marked with invisible fingerprints, touched by her beloved.

That's what he was, Belinda knew. His eyes told her even though they didn't say a thing about it. Had they been like this all along or a hundred years ago?

She didn't have time to contemplate the answer. His fingers moved down to her blouse. She was covered in buttons. Too many tiny, pearl buttons kept her lover out of her clothes and Belinda's hips wanted to push up. She wanted to beg, wanted him to hurry and free her body for his hands but Belinda also never wanted this to end. He deftly opened the buttons one by one. His fingers were hot and insistent and his eyes hungrily taking in every new inch of pale skin that he bared.

He groaned as he cupped her breasts. The fabric was opened. Her milky white skin and her rose colored nipples were bared for him. The pang of need pounded in both hot, little points. His fingertips studied every wrinkle, every line, every bit of her. His touch sent a shudder down her back, and inched its way steadily to her inner thighs.

If she could just touch him as well, she quivered and clenched her hands together into fists. She sighed and her breasts rose up to meet him and her body writhed under him. Those eyes should see what he was doing to her pussy.

She had made a puddle for him. She was shamefully wet and the hot longing there for him was almost unbearable. His noises, the sounds that came from him were from the very depths of a man's desire. She listened to him breathe her in and every breath was a sigh, almost a prayer.

His fingers moved down, down, down. He unbuttoned her, down her belly, down her hips and finally, her material was open. Her nakedness was there, exposed and open and he beheld her with his trembling hands and his starving eyes.

"My Belinda," when he said her name, she thought there was an echo. Was he really here or did he call to her from another place, another time? "My little Bell," he whispered from between her legs. He had taken her childhood nickname and made it something that made her thighs shudder as his fingers caressed and parted them. She was completely open to him now.

It was the first time, somehow, for some reason that didn't make sense. She had never been touched there and she didn't even have words for what her body needed. His breath on the back of her legs as he discovered her crevices was its own word. His sigh caressed her skin.

His fingers strummed her lower lips and she heard herself cry out. Her knees buckled and a rivulet of warm wetness escaped. She dripped on the blanket that was already wet and scented with her unnamed desire.

His finger found her delicate, hidden lips and she moaned and danced under him. He traced her hidden flesh with a softness, with a wonder, as if he'd never felt anything so supple or silken.

"Oh my own sweet, sweet girl," it was a whisper on the wind and on her body all at once. The pad of his finger wound a circle around her clitoris and her legs quivered. Again, his finger plucked and made her cry out. There were so many words, so many things that she felt there at the precipice but they were all replaced by a bubbling brook of cries that were everything. Begging, begging him, begging him to never stop.

Never.

There were two strong fingers that reached down to her entry. As the other finger made her clitoris sing and pulse and vibrate, the other fingers felt hard and almost rough. They thrust deep inside before she could even know their intention.

The pain was divine and then so was the pleasure. It felt like she was being opened, opened for the first time. A virgin plucked, devoured and torn apart with pleasure. Taken. Belinda cried out and for just a moment it was pain and then she shattered open. The sounds of ecstasy cascaded from her, like the steady stream of wetness that poured from inside.

It was too much. It was the pull from her center, the feel of him inside and all through her all at once. Her clitoris pulsed and his finger teased and the two fingers inside had kept the steady rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Her heartbeat.

Their heartbeat.

Belinda gripped him inside and her thighs trapped him there. The tremors shook her as the pleasure came in waves. Her orgasm rose and crashed and wracked her hips with its rhythm. It was too much, the pulse and the lights. The drumbeat that kept her time and his. His eyes overwhelmed her as surely as the pleasure. She whispered "yes, please," again and again until the hands melted into her skin. Her thighs fell together and her hands reached out for him. There was nothing but a glimmer of his gray, wet eyes in the dappled sunlight that was about to turn to shadow.

***

Belinda was just on the edge of waking up when she thought that her calf was held between two legs. They were men's legs, hairy calves, thick calves that could keep her pinned there to the bed. There were feet and legs and arms that were tangled with hers and the brush of breath that trickled down her back.

Nope. Belinda's eyes fluttered open and her hands shot out underneath the sheet. She tried to dart out and reach the last touch of him. The last touch, the last trace, the last bit of shadow from a dream that she felt as though she'd been having all her life. And yet, never before.

Coo coo for Cocoa Puffs, Belinda said to herself with a giggle. What an excellent night's sleep she'd had. She stretched her arms and legs and tossed back the sheet.

Naked seemed off. Belinda usually didn't sleep naked even when there was a man around. It felt good though given how warm and tingly she was between her legs. It almost felt like there had been a reason to be naked.

Well, at least if she was going to hallucinate, then hot sex hallucinations were preferable over some of the crazier shit that her roommates from rehab had talked about. Belinda thought as she got up to walk to the bathroom that by golly, she'd rather hallucinate being molested than rats everywhere or talking monkeys. Sign her up for the orgasmic crazy.

After she peed, she stood in front of the mirror and let her eyes wander along the expanse of her nude body. What the fuck had happened to her last night? Belinda made a face as she followed the map of scratches down her body. She appeared to have been ravaged. It was a bloody trail on her skin, slightly raised from claw marks that began on her throat. The marks followed the blue path of veins, down along her ghostly white throat to her arms and belly.

Belinda was always pale but this was ridiculous. She must have scratched herself in the night. She checked her nipples, both stung a little and between her legs actually burned a bit. Her pussy lips were splayed and fat and felt damp and hot. Belinda winced as she touched them lightly. It had been so long since she'd felt that heaviness, the telltale ache from being fucked hard and without mercy. She felt used.

Yeah but who fucked you, Belinda asked as she walked back to the bedroom. Jesus, even the sheets were wet and scented of sweat and cum. She bowed her head and inhaled the salty, almost briny scent of masculine pleasure. It was heavily scented, a man's musk and his seed, mixed with her fluids; right there on the bed.

Proof.

Belinda looked at the knife and the empty, blood stained cup there on the nightstand and it all came back in a rush. It felt quite different in the warm glow of the morning's reality.

She'd cut herself. Jesus Christ, what was she thinking? But there had been something; the voice. The voice that came with the same ebb and flow of the Raven. The voice came with waves, with water that covered old things. Things like the Ouija board that had been buried. Or drowned.

You know that this means you need that fucking lithium, Belinda told herself as she reached for the new blue, furry bathrobe. It was time to turn over a new leaf, she decided. She tied the robe firmly around her waist and walked with resolution to the kitchen; enough was enough.

Belinda pushed the button on the coffee pot and grabbed her favorite cup. It was the heavy bottomed, white cup that said, "You're awesome. Keep that shit up." She tapped her fingers impatiently on the countertop and waited for the last drop of the almost black liquid to surge through the machinery.

Once her coffee was poured, Belinda popped open the prescription bottle and tapped out two pills. If one was good, two was better, right? She swallowed the two small, dry white tablets with a mouthful of coffee. It left a bitter taste in her mouth and part of her would like to wash that down with a little hair of the dog.

No, she told herself firmly. When you wake up with raked, raised red marks all over your body because you dreamed of a man that you met from the Ouija board, that's when you start taking it seriously. Because you might have a problem.

No booze until five o'clock, she thought and noted that the time was almost nine. One day at a time, what bullshit! Who could count off the hours of a day when they were in the grip of a cold sweat that only chemicals could soothe? She'd have to distract herself.

Belinda got her cigarettes and the ashtray and brought them as well as her coffee to the second bedroom. She didn't allow herself time to think, she padded to the chair and took a seat. Belinda pushed the button on her Surface Pro and watched the screen hum to life.

It seemed like her fingers were charged with energy. They seemed to be poised, on the ready. Her hands had an alertness to them, even with the cigarette clamped between her first and second finger of her right hand. Her body seemed to know that it was time to write even if her mind was still blank.

Once the empty page of a new document was opened on the screen, Belinda's fingers got to work. They clicked and the clicks became letters on the screen. The letters became a steady stream, a rhythm that rolled underneath her thoughts.

Maybe lithium really was the answer, Belinda thought with her mouth pursed around a cigarette when she took a quick break. She exhaled deeply and looked out the window just long enough to realize that time had passed. The sunlight had shifted and was far brighter than it had been.

Was it the lithium, Belinda wondered, that made the outlines so clean? Nothing seemed to run together and slur like Belinda herself after the drink that clearly delineated between a good time and a bad idea. Today, her brain ran like a train, like a very prompt and efficient machine. One idea clicked to the next in a neat, orderly succession. Basically not like it had ever since before rehab. The fire, right before the fire, that was the last time things had clicked, Belinda thought as she raised her eyebrows.

Better not to question it. Perhaps the gods of fictional characters were finally looking down upon her with a smile. Belinda could feel the writing just pour out of her now. Not one to waste a good spurt, Belinda put the cigarette out and got back to it before she even came up with a juvenile crack about the word spurt.

Her fingers raced over the keys. She played the computer like she was a world class pianist. There was the stanza and she flew through it at an allegro, the words spilled out on the page.