Helping Vampires to Save the World
Let's face it. Vampires are sexy. Something about the undead
stirs up our juices. Perhaps it's their irresistible power. Even when we know
the danger, we're so very tempted to surrender to their all-consuming lust.
Maybe we want to comfort them, to save them a lonely, bloody eternity. Maybe we
secretly crave immortality ourselves.
Vampires are frequently portrayed as evil or at least
amoral, viewing humanity from the jaded perspective of centuries. Now, though,
vampires are doing their part to save the world.
Coming Together: In Vein is a brand new
collection of vampire-themed erotica and erotic romance edited by Lisabet
Sarai. All sales of this novel-length volume support Doctors Without Borders
(Médecins Sans Frontières). MSF works in nearly 70 countries providing medical
aid to those most in need regardless of their race, religion, or political
affiliation. Right now, despite being barred from the country, MSF doctors and
nurses are in Syria, working with patients from both sides of the civil war.
They're performing surgery in caves and sneaking into refugee camps to
distribute desperately needed medications.
You can help MSF in its life-saving mission, simply by indulging
your passion for vampires. Buy a copy of Coming Together: In Vein
in ebook,
Kindle
format, or print. Enjoy!
Then help spread the word! Every copy we sell has the potential to save
someone's life.
The list
of contributors includes many names you'll recognize. Every one of these
authors has provided his or her work free of charge, to support the charitable
aims of the project. Furthermore, the editor is giving away a free copy of her
short story collection Body Electric to everyone who buys a copy of Coming
Together: In Vein. (For details of this offer, click
here.)
You'll find an excerpt below – just to whet your appetite.
Sink your teeth into Coming Together: In Vein.
Help our vampires save the world.
She was almost late coming into work. Unheard of, though no
one would have noticed. She’d stood and stared at the bare bed, looking for
some kind of evidence, some kind of physicality to match her filling memory.
They’d stood on the balcony, looking at the stars and the brilliant lights of
the city. A natural position, Ellie’s hands on the cold metal of the balcony,
the other woman’s hands around her waist, her breath on the nape of her neck. A
cascade, Ellie remembered, of goose bumps, but not from the cooling night.
Hard daylight. Blinking, wrapped in a towel, she stepped
out, looking for footprints, hand prints. Moisture, a sparkling flicker of dew,
anything to prove it had really happened.
They’d kissed—yes, and she tasted her again in memory: the pressure of lips, the heat of her, the
rhythm of their breathing. They’d come inside, kissed by the foot of the bed.
The whisper of her black satin dress, the sudden too-tightness of Ellie’s
jeans. The surprising laughter when the kiss broke, when the high of their
excitement crested. The way, then, the giggles had faded as she had put her
hands on Ellie’s face, traced the contours of her cheeks, her jaw, the way
she’d tapped Ellie’s nose, whispering “button” in a rich, throaty voice.
In the warming room, Ellie stood at the foot of the bed,
turning so she was facing the way she remembered standing. Yes. Eyes brown with
flickers of amber. Lips too full, too red, too silken to be anything but a
fantasy running around in the real world. Lithe, boyish. She remembered how she
liked to watch her move, liked to watch her walk barefoot across the apartment.
Graceful, as if every muscle were elegantly conducted to some lovely score.
Her shoes? Yes… She’d
kicked them off, near the foot of the bed. Without really thinking of the woman
walking the hard pavement on thin, bare feet, Ellie dropped down to look,
hoping for the reality of a simple black pump. Nothing, of course. Memories,
but nothing else.
A glance at the clock brought up more—her face, glowing as
if from low embers, smiling up at her. There, in her eyes was the lust Ellie'd wanted, needed, but also
something else, something finer, softer, kinder. There was something else
there, in the dull red glow, something that had made Ellie’s heart melt as fast
as her body. Liquid—yes, molten....
A glance at the clock also brought a slap of reality. 8:05.
Half an hour on the bridge, fifteen minutes from the garage to the office. She
was going to be late.
Still, hurrying, there was no escaping the growing number of
ghosts from the past, that expired night: brushing her hair brought up a voice,
rich and rumbling, and the feel of strong fingers stroking the top of her head;
doing her teeth was those same fingers brushing her lips, feeling them before
another kiss…
Finally, she had to stop, had to put both hands on the edge
of the sink and breathe deep. In and out. Strong, steady breaths. She was late,
she needed to get dressed and get going. She had work to do, lots of work to
do. If it had happened... if it had happened then it was nice, and that was
all. It didn’t change anything. If it hadn’t, then the world was as it was.
Ellie, her little place, her little life, her job—the days falling down, one by
one.
Tears, hot on her cheeks. How she wanted it to be real.
Eyes open, puffy and red. Her face in the mirror, looking
broken and small. But then she saw it, as real as a shoe, as foot and hand prints
in night dew. Evidence, reality. Purple and harsh, sore, yes, but evidence none
the less. A scarf would hide it, but not for now. Lateness, the bridge traffic,
the walk from the garage, the firm, everything was gone from her mind. For now,
as she stood in the window, the bruise on the slope of her neck was too
priceless to hide, too real not to be stared at.
Hi, Erzabet!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your support!