Lavinia said, “Alright, listen up, all of you.”

Eight vampire faces snapped out of their trance and looked hungrily around the camper.

Sally remembered Lavinia hurled to the door until Sally renewed her welcome. That didn’t happen to these vampires and, childishly, Sally thought, no fair. Maybe it only happened in full sunlight?

The vampires surged toward the women. Lavinia snapped, “No feeding, goddammit. Remember?” They subsided with disappointed murmurings.

“Alright now,” Lavinia continued, “last night we told you there was something better than blood.” The vampires looked confused and hostile.

Sally took up the thread. “Well, you’re not going to believe it, but it’s sunlight.”

They hissed like writhing snakes!

“I’m not kidding!” Sally called over the noise. “The sun’ll be rising soon and we’ll let it stream right in here because—”

But she got no further. The panic-stricken vampires, howling threats, mobbed the doors, pushing Sally and Lavinia aside. Sally started to yell, then shut her mouth again. Let the idiots run. What she really wanted was to be alone with Lavinia.

Body upon body, they poured out the front and rear doors, flitting through the rising light like streaks of mist. Sally supposed there was an abandoned house or a cave nearby where this particular band holed up for the day. The last one vanished and the camper’s rocking subsided.

Sally turned to Lavinia. “Fuck ‘em,” Lavinia said, amused. Sally nodded, pleased.

Looking over her shoulder, Sally evaluated the light. It was a crystal clear morning out there. With no trace of fog, the sea was a velvet gray just waiting to blossom into translucent blue. Sally had always been a morning person, even when she stayed up half the night. With the local vampires rushing for their hiding places, she could, for the first time in years, actually stand outside, breathe the crisp salty air and revel in the delicious pre-dawn chill.

But she felt another desire just as strongly. What she had said to the vampires last night was perfectly true: she wanted badly to have sex with her wife. Their lovemaking last night had been interrupted by horror and the crazed energy they’d shared in the drunken sun had been ... disturbing. They hadn’t really made love since two nights before that insane rally.

She turned back to Lavinia, who was sunk in thought. She thought of all the times she had touched Lavinia and waited for Lavinia to take control, and felt throbbing desire. But somehow, that wasn’t right anymore. She reached out both arms, took hold of Lavinia’s shoulders and when Lavinia looked up, said “Make love with me, baby.”

Lavinia’s beloved face lit up like holiday candles. “God, yes,” she said. “Oh baby, oh baby…”

As they kissed, Lavinia’s body felt cooler than last night, like a shell around a dying core. Concerned, Sally looked into her lover’s eyes and spoke the forbidden title, more as a gift than from need. “Master of all masters.”

The throb inside was more slithery but less sweet than when she called Lavinia “wife.” She saw the fire kindle in her lover’s eyes, saw the powerful dom step out. In a flash she heard the command Lavinia would give: “Naked. Now. Ass in the air.” She felt how the cool air would play between her butt cheeks as she obeyed, felt how they would tingle as Lavinia caressed them with a steady hand until she was longing for what would come, felt the whip-crack spark of the first smack, heard her own breathing loud in her ears.

But she wanted that other fire, that sweeter fire she’d felt just a moment before. Still looking in Lavinia’s eyes, she said, as if in counterpoint to her last words, “My wife.” That sweeter fire rushed wetly down from the spoken word and opened her body like a parting curtain.

Lavinia looked tentative but intrigued. Sally stroked Lavinia’s face and with the encouragement in her lover’s eyes, let her hands roam everywhere.

She had never touched Lavinia so freely before, not without orders. Quickly, her right hand found its way to the V of Lavinia’s jeans to cup her sex, then snaked inside and down her silky, slightly paunchy belly. Lavinia’s skin was still a pleasure to touch. Her fingertips nestled in the bristly pubic hair. Her palm treasured the little roll of belly fat, making up for all the times she’d thought of Lavinia’s body as less than perfect.

They kissed eye to eye, making sounds deep in their throats. Lavinia’s fingers cascaded down her vertebrae, giving her shivers.

The other-worldly smell was a turn-on now. She wondered what would happen if the sun touched them while they were making love. The jeans were just loose enough that she could work her hand down around the pubic bone, pull apart dry outer lips with two fingers and find soft, oddly cool wetness to stroke.

Lavinia was no warmer inside than outside but she reacted like Sally hoped, opening her legs and rolling her hips forward and throbbing on Sally’s hand. Their tongues danced and slipped. Lavinia gripped Sally’s back and ass and with a glad, incoherent cry, came hard against Sally’s hand.

The light was bright around them now. Sally saw the relaxed peace on her lover’s face and was satisfied.

Her beloved was a ring of warm sun on the palm of her hand.

♦

Charity Claire woke feeling completely safe and loved in a bed not her own. Marveling, she played again the moment when she had stepped outside of her life.

Jesse had stopped at her table to say he’d seen her at the rally last night, to introduce himself, to ask how she was doing. And did she need anything?

Her mother had flashed into her mind, willowy Sasha Bernstein, in whose shadow Charity had grown up. Her mother would have pulled those two men into her bed (or tried to) and “cured” them of being gay, laughing her lilting, spine-aching laugh. Had that memory helped Charity to answer yes?

She’d looked up into Jesse’s eyes and said, “Let me sleep with you two. Please. Just like you did for that woman last night. Please?”

The older man had shaken his head in amusement, but love and welcome were on his face. “I love you, Buttercup,” she heard him whisper in Jesse’s ear even as Jesse told her, “If it’s okay with Walter.”

She had floated on a cloud of nervous delight as the couple boxed up what seemed to be a full meal’s worth of leftovers and paid their bill. She’d hardly eaten anything herself.

And now all her dreams were coming true because she heard them making love very quietly behind her. She wondered if it would be okay to turn over and look at them, but she didn’t want to risk making them stop. So she lay with her eyes closed, hearing the sound of a man in ecstasy and knowing that nothing would be asked of her.

She understood everything now, and knew what she would do in her own apartment when the sun set again.

She drifted back to sleep, completely happy, whispering the words she would say.

“Welcome, come in.”

♦

KerriAnne lay alone, cold, unmoving. But even in death, her thoughts could not stop.

Her icy hand twitched…