Awakening
Ceri allowed herself to float up towards wakefulness, gradually tuning in her senses as she did.
It was an acquired skill, this, taking years of practice, but she had persisted. There was nothing worse than that instant awareness, every heightened sense immediately flooding her with information. She much preferred this slow languorous waking. Not that she couldn't snap instantly awake if she needed to - her senses were still razor sharp, even when she slept.
Tonight, she did not need those senses to tell her than Calvin was already awake and out of bed. She was aware of him on a completely subliminal level, always. The bond they shared went beyond profound, born of centuries being together and more.
He was not in their bed, and she opened her eyes, smiling at the moonlight which flooded the room. That too told her that Calvin had already arisen, and had opened the shutters on the massive skylight in their bedroom. For a moment she was reminded of the time when he had first become her lover, his whispered words to her as he came back to her bed after tying the drapes in her room together, "Just in case I forget in the morning and open them."
Moonlight was their time - it had always been so. She stretched luxuriantly. Very faintly, she could hear the music rising from the club below. Bête Noire - the black beast, something to be detested and avoided, their small joke between themselves. Manhattan needed another nightclub like a hen needed a flag, and yet they seemed to be enjoying some small success.
Not that it mattered, really. Money was not an issue. Even if most of it was carefully hidden in Swiss accounts and dummy corporations. Their ventures were more to stave off boredom than anything else.
It amused Calvin in particular to sit at the bar and attract the attention of women by nothing more than a lazy smile or a twinkle in his eye. She could always tell when he was trying to goad her into reacting, but it never made any difference to the possessiveness that surged up in her whenever she saw another woman looking at him. Or to the passion it inevitably provoked in them both.
With a lazy chuckle, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Perhaps she should get dressed and go down to the club and see just what he was up to.
It was an acquired skill, this, taking years of practice, but she had persisted. There was nothing worse than that instant awareness, every heightened sense immediately flooding her with information. She much preferred this slow languorous waking. Not that she couldn't snap instantly awake if she needed to - her senses were still razor sharp, even when she slept.
Tonight, she did not need those senses to tell her than Calvin was already awake and out of bed. She was aware of him on a completely subliminal level, always. The bond they shared went beyond profound, born of centuries being together and more.
He was not in their bed, and she opened her eyes, smiling at the moonlight which flooded the room. That too told her that Calvin had already arisen, and had opened the shutters on the massive skylight in their bedroom. For a moment she was reminded of the time when he had first become her lover, his whispered words to her as he came back to her bed after tying the drapes in her room together, "Just in case I forget in the morning and open them."
Moonlight was their time - it had always been so. She stretched luxuriantly. Very faintly, she could hear the music rising from the club below. Bête Noire - the black beast, something to be detested and avoided, their small joke between themselves. Manhattan needed another nightclub like a hen needed a flag, and yet they seemed to be enjoying some small success.
Not that it mattered, really. Money was not an issue. Even if most of it was carefully hidden in Swiss accounts and dummy corporations. Their ventures were more to stave off boredom than anything else.
It amused Calvin in particular to sit at the bar and attract the attention of women by nothing more than a lazy smile or a twinkle in his eye. She could always tell when he was trying to goad her into reacting, but it never made any difference to the possessiveness that surged up in her whenever she saw another woman looking at him. Or to the passion it inevitably provoked in them both.
With a lazy chuckle, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Perhaps she should get dressed and go down to the club and see just what he was up to.