He stayed.

It's a small victory over my sister and her lover. I may not have everything my sister has with Decamerone, but I have this; something I did not have to plead Kezmet for. It's a shallow triumph, but one I need to cling to: I don't want to think that I have made a mistake.

The water in my bath has chilled over the hour, now no longer warmer than my own cool flesh. It is the color of rosewater; a pale pinkish-red. Yet it isn't rosewater: there have been no roses to color it, only my own blood. I shiver, causing a thin rivulet of blood that had trickled down my arm to shake off a droplet. It's amazing how one can get used to pain, even forget about the injuries until you notice them again. I am trying to forget what caused them; each scratch and the already inflamed bite on my shoulder. I have to.

I can hear Kezmet growling in his sleep; he had stopped speaking in any human language halfway through the night. It had been so strange to hear such animal sounds coming from his throat, each growl and hiss and purr of the demon language. The noises had fueled my nightmares: dreams of being pressed to death and pierced with knives, dreams of daggers and archaic tortures, dreams of being torn apart by wolves. When I awoke, my heartbeat frenzied in my chest, I saw that he had turned away from me during the night; his hair flowing down his back like the glossy wings of a fallen angel. It hurt me to see that he had done this, as if awakening to see his back, impassive and white as marble, was a form of betrayal. It was his face I had fallen in love with first, and it was his face that I first wanted to see. It was simple... selfish.

The growls are more angry now and I realize that he is waking up, furious to find me gone. I sink down further in my rust-smelling bath, the water lapping at my chin. The door swings inward with a creak, Kezmet standing at the entrance. His eyes regard me coolly, passionless as the stones they resemble. I am suddenly aware of how disgusting I must seem to him: bleeding into bloody bathwater. Faint and weak from loss, I am as pale as he; my skin a sickly white.

With a low rolling growl too harsh to be a purr, he walks towards me to kneel in front of the bathtub. His pose is reminiscent of prayer, his head bent down to hide his beautiful face. For a moment I feel like a dark, secret goddess of the flesh; the witch-queen, devil-wife Lilith. Silent now, he dips a hand into my bath, cupping it so that some of the water remained in his palm; lifting it back up to his mouth to drink. He smiles at me, sly as any trickster of legend, then licks his palm clean of any blood residue. I'm not sure whether I should be aroused or disgusted by this act, my stomach churning fretfully. I slide into a sitting position, the better to watch him.

Meeting my eyes, Kezmet purrs softly, the sound making my heart melt. With a panther's fluid grace, he stands and joins me in the bath, the water seeming to grow cooler as he lowers his cold body into it. The purr roughens again as he caresses me, his nails raking across the soft, fragile skin of my neck. It hurts, but I have to forget that it hurts; learn to forget or enjoy the pain. He unnerves me, making me feel less in control of myself than I have ever before, but he stayed and he loves me. I have to believe he loves me.

I wanted to be romanced, perhaps that's the problem. I wanted to be kissed foolish, carried laughing to bed like a romance heroine, touched so sweetly that I would think I held an angel in my arms. I wasn't ready for his brand of seduction, his harsh affections wounding me to tears. Even now, his teeth nip at my throat, sliding along the point where my pulse leaps in my neck. He's so cold... his lips, his hands, his chest... all of him. I never dreamed it would be this way: I wanted tenderness; I wanted Decamerone.