I started at 1:30 this afternoon and added ten thousand words by 6:30 this evening. I took a break for dinner. Started writing again at 9:00 and now I am writing this post to say I got through Jezaline’s story at 5:03 this morning. That is twelve hours of writing; I’m numb from the chin up. I edited and cut over twenty thousand words and added over ten thousand. I wish I were a faster writer, I am a very fast typist but my thinker only moved so quickly. I want to exclaim, “C’mon I’m making this up as I go along!” This is a good day but at the end of all of my writing marathons I am plagued by two things, Elation and Doubt.
A great large part of me thinks, “I did good” The rest of me thinks, “We’ve been here before. It’ll be shit like everything else and you know it.” I went through three sex scenes tonight, added one, cut down two to being what I hope even my mother would consider tasteful. We’ll see about that one I guess.
The more reading that I do the more I realize that the very best fiction writers actually are telling two stories at once. The actual physical story (she goes here than there and then gets shot) and then the emotional story (she cries when she gets there, she goes here to salvage her pride and then she is glad when she gets shot). The key is to never forget the emotional story. This is my biggest flaw as a commercial fiction writer. I am a terrible emotional story teller. And on a night like tonight, numb from the chin up, I know I missed the emotional impact of Jezaline’s last ten thousand words (at least). But I hope, “crosses fingers” that maybe I have something to ADD to the next run through it. I don’t know, now that I’ve finally got through it, if I’m going to go back through, start to finish, one more time while it’s still fresh or if I will move on to the next main character’s story in my novel. This is a hard choice but I feel myself leaning to staying here, while it’s fresh, and going back through the writing I did tonight. Maybe I’ll be surprised, maybe some of it I’ll even like.
I am leaving you with my favorite scene that I have added to Jezaline’s story. Take note this has NOT been edited. This is first draft directly off the press. There is sex and it is graphic so be warned:
EXCERPT FROM EMBRACED BY DARKNESS: JEZALINE’S STORY
Copyright Tarah L. Wolff All Rights Reserved.
By the time he reaches the bed his hands are quivering. He has not eaten a human in over a decade and then that had been a very ugly, very old man; nothing worthy of raping. Not that he turned his nose up to men it had just been so long since he had tasted a woman.
He moved up and on to the bed like water running up stones. She whimpers and Waltruk grabs himself, gasps and barely keeps himself from climaxing. He laughs into the empty darkness of his chamber as she lays beneath him, a white swath of fabric, silk, against black hides.
Jezaline grips the blanket in her fists, he turns her over and she stares into his face. His eyes are black beacons beneath, long fine brows. The room fills with the desert sun and the king before her changes into the man made of fire from her past.
And Waltruk is struck still, his own past suddenly called upon. A past centuries older than Jezaline’s but as fresh in his heart as she is beneath his fingers.
She rises up to him, feeling the blessed desert heat again, lost in the warmth. The fire in her past that was once her entire life, the sand, the sun. Jezaline reaches out, tries to touch the red man’s face and the illusion evaporates. She tries to say Red man, but nothing comes out of her swollen throat. Before her is the Vamepire king but so confused, for an instant, she is unable to feel the terror that he paralyzed her moments before.
Her hand on his cheek. The memory of the molten end of her child hood fades and his cheek is very cold. The ache in her has grown into a culvert across her chest. The forgotten, ignored emptiness that red man had left. And no matter the men she had had in her life, inside of her, filling her up, they never touched the ache.
He whispers, “Red lady.” His eyes clear, he blinks and stares.
He said, “Who are you?”
“Jezaline. Who are you?”
“I am Waltruk, king of the Vamepire. You are the red…?”
She shook her head, finds herself unable to move away. He is tall, strong chested, clothed in leathers and furs. There is too little light. He is nothing else but a figment in the darkness. Her terror returns slowly, as though she is still trying to wake from a nightmare.
He reached for her and she pulls back to try and stop it. But the Vamepire king clasps his fingers around her wrist.
“How do you know of the red lady?”
She said, “No lady, a red man in my past.”
His cold fingers lay a line down her cheek and she winces but is unable to pull away again. The ache in her is wide, deep and shockingly empty.
He grabs her head, pulls her face to him, “What do you know!”
“I don’t know who they are!”
“This thing, this woman, has controlled me for three centuries. Now fucking tell me what you know.”
Jezaline got it out, in sputters and gasps, her story, without editing. Too terrified to not tell this creature every last detail. With his fingers digging in to the back of her head she recounted the red man. How fear had turned to need.
“I was desperate for him. What was my getting raped… I demanded him to enter… me.”
Her voice fell to a whisper and she finally struggled out of his grip, fell to her knees and held her face.
“What did he do to you?”
“I am a Ward.”
Waltruck’s eyes widened, “A Ward of high power. What are you doing here.”
She said nothing, having dissolved into a soft crying. His hand swept down her back and she winced away.
“Do you feel it?”
“What?”
“The empty hole inside of you?”
She pressed her hands to the place between her breasts and her belly.
She whispered, “Yes.”
“You were never able to fill it?”
She shook her head, “Never.”
Waltruk sunk down to his knees on the bed before her, put his head in his hands. His hair was jet black, it lay in tatters down his cheeks.
“If I had known,” he said, than shook his head, “I couldn’t have stopped myself.”
“What?” She looked up His skin was smooth as glass but it did not shine in the light. His fingers were long and ended in sharp, black hooks that grew in severity down his hand until the claws curved long and blackest at his thumbs. She rubbed the back of her head.
He said, “I am king because of her, but, if I had known what this would feel like. I would have tried to stop.”
She shook her head, “I couldn’t have stopped… What is all of this?”
“Something changed our paths.”
“Are there others?”
“Not that I’ve known.”
He looked into her face and she stared into his.
“I think it’s Grim.”
She frowned, “No, he doesn’t exist.”
“Grim is on the move right now… why are you in the Krept, Jezaline?”
She felt herself standing on the blade of a knife. She had no idea what this thing wanted of her. What this king wanted her to do or say or what she could do for him. But there was something guiding her. Something dark, something empty. As the moments passed between them, where she could smell his body and his breath, where her own body reacted to the presence of his, she felt herself longing to touch him. She was revolted by herself, appalled but without control. She looked his jaw and face, down his lean neck and strong shoulders. His clawed hands looked powerful and she could almost feel on her again, feel him against her. Jezaline swallowed hard, forced herself to look away.
“Talk to me now.”
“Or you will kill me?” she talked to the candle across the bed, the little flame that did not flicker. The stillness of the room made it feel like a tomb.
“What are you doing in the Krept?”
“The prophet Tarick asked for me, said that if I did not come that I would die. I was looking for the Draegoone. Not the Vamepire.”
The sound of Tarick’s name sent a jolt through Waltruk. He climbed off the bed and began to pace. His body faded in and out of darkness, the wings on his back jutted out of his clothes and looked impossible, like they were something he must have put on that morning.
Jezaline sat cross legged with her face in her hands, she fought the urge to curl into herself. She hated herself viciously no matter how she closed her eyes or the tears threatened her throat, she wished a little bit that the king of the Vamepire would come back to bed.
She screamed, “Are you going to kill me?” It erupted out of her ravaged throat like an animal tearing free.
He stopped before her and stood in the darkness, alone but not alone, as though the darkness was a part of who he was.
He said, “I think killing you would be very stupid.”
She was beyond tears now, Jezaline’s heart was pounding, she shook her head, asking the question without speaking.
“Your destiny was changed by a prophet, now another prophet is trying to interfere. That much I can deduct… if I killed you now. Fuck all, I don’t think it would be handled happily by fate. You are important somehow.”
“What do you know for certain.”
“You and I Jezaline, never should have met. This is another prophet that got you here. I know of Tarick, he is the second youngest brother of Draegoone royalty.”
He hissed it out in a long fluid jolt of pure despise. She watched him pace without speaking, sensing he would continue. He pressed his fists into his temples and his face contorted with anger.
“We are at war with those cold-blooded things. I will kill them all, that was not changed by the red lady, that I will do before I die.”
She said, “What will you do with me?”
“I want to drink you and then fuck your corpse for three days!”
Jezaline knew that that was not going to happen now. Away from him, thinking about the ache and the red man, she made no effort to make sense of any of it. If Waltruk was right, which she seriously believed he probably was, it all still left her here, in the highest room of the tallest Vamepire tower. Surrounded by creatures she knew to be dark, wicked and unmerciful. But there was clear intelligence in his eyes, it was there in Blondie’s eyes too. These were not stupid brutes as she had been made to believe and that scared her more deeply than anything she had ever known. These were conniving, brilliant creatures.
He came at her in three long strides, evolving out of the dark. His fingers moved up her face, pushed her to the bed. His weight bowed it beside her and he stretched out his body beside her, touching her throat, her collar bone and lips. His hot breath begged for her. She heard the grinding of his teeth in her ear.
Jezaline squeezed her eyes shut. Her entire body was rigid and trembling.
She was overcome by two polar opposites. The desperate, primal need to throw him off of her, run until she was overcome and die by hysteria; her heart finally bursting in terror. And the other to pull him against her. Embrace the darkness that was this king. Hold him between her legs, pull her skirt up so he could enter that hot place that was the ache the red man had left in her. Give this king the opportunity to fill it as no man had ever been able to.
He pressed his face beneath her breasts and his hot breath steamed her skin through her dress.
He whispered, “Right here.”
“Yes, right there.”
“it has not yet engulfed you in the void. But it will someday.”
“Like you.”
He sighed and she felt his head relax on her body. The weight of his hands rested, one on her chest, one on her thigh. She stared up at the ceiling, though the darkness made it impossible for her to see anything.
“Prove something!” She cried out and her voice carried up and up until it was gone. “Anything, end this or something. Don’t let me just be here in the dark. How has it engulfed you? How much does it hurt?”
His fingers slipped up beneath her and she felt them untying the back of her dress. She could not see his face.
His hands slipped the dress off of her shoulders and she murmured in need and in absolute abhorrent. His claws curled over the neck of her dress and with his face beside hers he pulled it down off of her breasts. Than down, revealing her ribs, her belly, her hips and then the place that made her a woman. The dress hit the floor. She was naked before him, her breasts leaning back in their weight, her nipples dark perfections in the light. Waltruk could see in the dark and she lay the shadow of him. He ran his fingers so lightly across her nipples. They grew hard.
Waltruk had never had another creature touch him in want. When her hands raised he waited for her to struggle, to hit him, to scream. Her fingers landed against the side of his throat, slipped under the collar of his shirt, pressed against his hard shoulder.
She gasped, shocked that his body was putting off heat. Her heart beat doubled and she bit her lip to keep from moaning. She rose before him, found laces with her fingers and began to tear his clothes from his body.
Having never known this Waltruk froze. Jezaline was unstoppable the ache filled her entire mind as it began to scream. The blood pumped through her in dangerous currents. Revulsion, fear, primal sense, it was all forgotten. Jezaline was who the red man had made her.
Her fingers splayed over his chest, worked down to the soft black hair that pointed her in the direction she wanted to go.
He almost wanted to stop her but he was taken with watching her body work, her strong back pucker and move, her breasts hang and bounce. She ripped off his belt and when Waltruk was naked she curved her fingers around his hard shaft and she gasped.
The moan was nothing he had heard before, the same sound of pain filled with a want. A desire so infinite he knew she would get exactly what she wanted, whatever it took.
Her legs parted and she lay him back, eased herself over him. His face was by the candle now and she could see his eyes. Jezaline stared, perfect lips opening. He saw her tongue and his teeth grit. The muscles down his cheeks worked. They both shook and trembled until finally, she pushed him inside of her.
She came down to him and pressed her mouth against his. She forced him to learn how to kiss her, how to press his tongue against hers. He had never kissed anything before without the intention of eating it but tasting her blood now was the farthest thing from his mind. He had never seen such beauty.
She had him, ground herself against him and he watched her be transformed by the act that he had never known existed. Watched a human woman find something in a Vamepire. This was what she wanted and she writhed. All the while, the ache in them both reached a piercing volume. They were hearing their own emptiness and the others. It grew and grew with her until they were deaf to all but it.
Jezaline threw back her head and cried out as her climax finally unleashed and it was beyond anything she had ever felt before. She succumbed entirely, fell before his chest, clawed at his body as it took her. He felt the waves around his shaft, felt the hard pleasure that took her and could not stop himself.
Waltruk roared and it was more animal the human, they grabbed each other. Jezaline embraced the darkness. Felt his wings around her arms and momentarily lost all awareness. Her eyes filled with the site of the red man.
As fast and hard as it came, it evaporated, and silence left them listening to their frantic breathing. The ache in them each was not gone, but silenced. She was holding on to him like he was a raft and she was adrift in a storm, at night, at sea. He rolled her unto her back but did not break their hold. He held himself inside of her incredible heat. Her legs clutched him to her.
Waltruk leaned back, pushed the hair off of her face and looked into her eyes.
“It is so quiet,” she whispered.
