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The creature's blood had stained her gown and soaked the white fabric in crimson. His forearm had taken the bullet that otherwise would have embedded itself in her stomach.

Elizabeth was certain Victor hadn't meant to shoot her. She’d thrown herself before the creature. Despite the undying nature of his creation, Victor had intended to ward it away from her. When the gun had fired, and Elizabeth felt the impact of its shot in the arm thrown around her waist, she saw the fear in Victor's eyes. For the first time since she'd met him, he did not look at her with desire. Only when he thought he'd ended her life did he see her as more than the object of his lust.

How different it was to look up into the eyes of her savior as one caught red in the light. The creature had been filled with a terror Elizabeth could scarcely recognize, the racing of his heart against her back called her own to beat faster alongside it. He spun her around and set her back against Victor’s bed instead; Elizabeth longed for both the sound of his breath and the feeling of it as it brushed her nape. It was here that she heard Victor’s voice.

“It attacked her!” Her brother-to-be shouted with such vitriol for her savior, for his creation. The father set the masses upon his child, hiding among them as they charged. The creature threw them off, flinging his arms wide to banish his attackers. Elizabeth splayed her hand over her mouth when she recognized the crumpled body of William against the mantle. His eyes—the color of the sky—had bloomed with red where white should be, like a great eclipse was taking place within his cornea. She hoped the wretched whine that bled from her chest was discerned as one of terror and not sympathy for poor, sweet, foolish William. 

When the creature embraced her and drew her into his arms, Elizabeth knew nothing remained for her in the ancient house. She met the eyes of the monster, Victor, as the creature carried her from the room. The salt of her tears burned with hate for the man who’d birthed all of her misery within his quest for dominion over death.

All he’d become was the harbinger of it.

Elizabeth’s arms wove around the neck of her savior and she hid her face within the soft curls of his hair. She felt him shift, and his lips pressed to the crown of her head. Despite his injury, he held her as if she weighed nothing as the flower petals William had scattered drifted down around them. They crossed the threshold, in the opposite direction of bride and groom, and Elizabeth severed herself from all the souls within the house, fading into the snow beyond. Every rise and fall of the creature’s chest calmed her. She feared not the man to which she clung, she only worried for the pursuit Victor would never abandon.

Would he follow them here, into the darkness?

“Elizabeth,” the creature whispered when they were alone in the snow. He walked onward into the blizzard without hesitation beyond that which ensured her comfort. “You are unharmed?”

The voice she’d first heard in the darkness below the laboratory spoken with such trepidation was now low and confident. Her name growled from his chest, scarcely more than a whisper he pressed into her hair with the question that followed. The tenderness of the gesture warmed her despite the cold.

“Yes,” Elizabeth turned her head so that the creature might see her eyes and knew she withheld no truth from him. “What of your injury?”

“My creator cursed me with my nature.” He met her gaze and his eyes softened with the same tenderness with which he’d marveled at her all that time ago in the culvert. “I did not think I would see you again.”

“Nor I you.” Elizabeth loosened one arm to seek his cheek with her hand and found her body did not sag in his grip; he held her with the strength of every man from which he'd become one. The creature leaned into her touch. His eyes closed, fanning dark lashes over his cheeks as a sigh rattled from his chest. The steady beat of his heart might have stuttered if Victor hadn’t imbued in him a neverending current.

He’d carried her away to a sequestered cave and set her upright with the care her peers reserved for fine china. Her wedding gown was stained at the stomach with blood that bloomed between the layers like curling vines. Elizabeth touched the crimson and traced the patterns it had seared into the ivory. The creature approached and touched the stain with the hand from which the damage originated. She seized it in her own palms, turning it to examine the injury as it had begun to heal.

“I’m sorry.” Elizabeth found the sentiment was not enough. How could any living thing put to word the despair she felt? A wound he only took on to spare her from the embrace of death. She pressed her lips to the bloodied skin and felt the broken layer of flesh where it gave way to muscle. The taste of copper burst on her tongue as a ragged breath broke from the chest of the creature. When she withdrew, she could feel the warmth of his blood drying on her lips and fingertips. His eyes lingered there; this time she knew the fever within them.

“I understand now,” he said as he watched her. “You can no longer take from me that which I do not know. I know it now.”

“What is it you understand?” Elizabeth asked, although she knew. How could she have forgotten the words she’d whispered to him that night? How could she forget the way his body drew to her touch as if two magnets had been placed within them? He pulled her to him, as she pulled him to her. This strange creature that fascinated her with his macabre perfection. “What do you know now?”

“I know lust. I know desire. I saw it in the eyes of my maker when he looked at you before and did not understand. Now, I do.” The creature towered over her but Elizabeth did not feel small before him. She felt like the center of the universe. “I know what I felt when I felt the warmth of your skin against my fingertips. I know the longing that tears at my chest with a pain beyond what any bullet or blade could hope to inflict.”

The creature touched at her arms, her waist, her shoulders, unable to stop his explorations once he realized she would not ask him to. Elizabeth welcomed the caresses that lingered and brushed no harsher than a winter breeze. He did not paw or grasp at her like the beasts who called themselves men. When his hands finally ceased their movement, it was Elizabeth that closed the space between their bodies to touch. It was her hands that slid beneath the ragged remains of his shirt to trace his ribs and flatten her palms against his stomach. The creature shuddered at the touch. The low rumble in his chest was that of want, betrayed by the way he curled over her and tightened his hands in the skirts of her gown.

“Do you want this?” Elizabeth’s voice was tender, muffled by the fabric of his coats where she pressed her cheek to the creature’s chest. She could feel the muscles that shifted beneath her fingertips. She could feel the proof of his life where it pressed against her stomach and longed to draw her fingers lower and seek it out.

“I bid you, show me. I know not what to do.” The creature hesitated, tilting its head so that it might see her where she clung to him. “Cease the unending ache within me.”

Elizabeth is familiar with the ache of which he speaks. She felt it now as it ran through her veins. She suspected she’d known of it since seeing the creature in chains. His body had been bare save for bandages and even then she recalled the strange desire that had taken root within her. It had lain dormant in her breast until she saw him again in Victor’s bedchamber. That longing had roared to life at the sight of the man clad in rags.

She bid the creature to aid her, and turned to present the laces of her gown. The dexterity with which he removed her outer layers was a marvel. She still remembered his hesitation to graze her nightclothes all that time ago. She remembered the tenderness of his lightest touch.

Eventually she was able to shed the burial shroud that might have been her wedding gown and was reborn into the nakedness known to all of God's creations. The creature watched her with breaths that betrayed the staccato rhythm of his heart, whimpering when she'd removed the final layers of white fabric from her body.

The cave was cold, and Elizabeth felt her nipples pebble in the chill air that surrounded her. The creature did not lunge for her breasts, in fact, the creature did not move at all. It stood two paces back with eyes that glowed like rubies in the meager moonlight. She was aware that he watched her; he couldn’t move his eyes away.

This time it would be he who wore too much, and she who wore nothing.

“Can I touch you?” The words might as well have been a single breath with the manner in which they rushed from the creature's chest. The tone bled with a craving mirrored in Elizabeth. She knew the crushing feeling in her chest was the lust she had kept caged within her until it festered.

Elizabeth felt her laugh, easy as a smile, as if to even ask the question was foolish. A part of her had belonged to the creature since she'd first seen him in the shadows. She was his to desire, to touch, for he demanded nothing and in return she would give him everything. Her hands caught his, and she drew them to her chest like the first time they'd touched.

This time, his palms were open, his wrists were unchained. Cold caressed her collarbones and kissed her ribs as he touched the pale expanse of her skin. She was handled like the delicate wings of a butterfly, and never once did his need for her outweigh his care.

“Touch here,” she whispered as she guided his fingers to her nipple. The creature circled it with his thumb and rolled it between his fingers. When it pulled a sigh from Elizabeth, a pleased sound rumbled in his chest. “And here,” with her other hand she led the fingers of the creature to the apex of her thighs. The feeling of his icy fingers in the place that burned hottest for him made Elizabeth sigh again in delight.

“Elizabeth,” the creature said with the kind of reverence men reserved for prayer. He curled over her and cupped the space between her legs, still and gasping for air with such ferocity that Elizabeth suspected she'd stolen the breath from his lungs. He didn't dare move, face pressed to her hair as he touched her. 

“Press with your finger; find where I grow wet for you.” She had never been afraid to tell men what she wanted and, for the first time, the man before her desired her instruction. The creature obeyed, sucking in a breath that hissed through his clenched teeth.

Elizabeth knew her body already sang for the creature's touch. When the cold tips of his fingers found her slit, they glided through the slickness there. One slid within her and he froze again in wonderment; she instructed him to add another and the creature whined into her hair.

Some instinct was retained within him, be it memory of the men he is or otherwise, and he withdrew his fingers just enough to press them back within her. Elizabeth could feel the heat that sparked through her body, ignited by the touch of the creature. It felt like being on fire. With every stroke of the creature's fingers within her, the fire blazed hotter. Her hands grasped at his chest, grounding herself as the pleasure drew her toward the sky. As her hips rocked alike the softest of ocean waves, the creature's arm encircled her waist to hold her to him.

“Does this feel good?” The creature was breathless, panting against her ear. Elizabeth could feel the way his hips stuttered at her thigh in his desperation to control this desire, and moved her hand to seek it out. A choked sound came from him when she encircled him in her hand—large as were all the parts of him—and his body lurched at the sensation.

They were pressed close, pinned to one another as though fate had pinned their bodies in a frame as Elizabeth had once done with beetles. Each of her intakes of breath were swallowed by the creature when she released them; each of his exhales, she took into her lungs. Every movement was made as one, as she rocked her hips onto his hand and he bucked against her touch.

“Too much,” the creature's words were choked in his throat. “My blood is hot like fire. I cannot-”

Elizabeth let her gaze turn up to find his face. His eyes were pinched closed and his mouth was agape. She could feel how his legs shook and, when his orgasm came, it shot through him like a bullet. The creature made a noise of half human surprise and half bestial howl. His body sagged into her, and his fingers inside her stilled. She could hear him breathing against her and knew his heart thundered like a drum by the way his pulse jumped at his throat.

When he could stand straight enough to disentangle himself from her, he watched her withdraw her hand from him. Her palm was sticky, and the opaque fluid was strung between her fingers like spiderwebs. She considered that she should be disgusted, but she was not. Neither, it seemed, was the creature. He examined the evidence of her desire on his fingers as a starving man would a hot meal. It came as no surprise when he ran his tongue along the digits and then turned his hungry eyes back to her.

“Do men taste it?” The question was raw on his tongue, growled from his chest with desperation.

“Some do, but most find it unclean.” Elizabeth would not lie to the creature, not when he watched her with such divine reverence. She had no doubt he would heed any bidding she asked of him.

“I want to.” He pressed close again. “Please.”

Elizabeth's mouth curled into a smile as she took his hands to guide the creature to where a great rock jutted from the ground. It was flat enough to service her, and she laid down upon it like any bride might on her wedding night. She drew up her legs to display her body to the creature, resting one foot on a small outcropping of rock. With a hand, she ran her fingers over her center. With the other, she beckoned the creature over.

He fell to his knees before her, smoothing his hands over any skin he could touch. His face pressed to her inner thigh, taking an open-mouthed breath as he looked up at Elizabeth with glassy eyes. She withdrew her fingers from her slit and pressed them to his lips; in response, his mouth fell open so that he could accept her fingertips into his mouth and curl his tongue around them.

The creature moaned around her fingers and she hooked them on his bottom teeth to guide him back to where she desired him. When his mouth sealed over her slit, Elizabeth's head fell back against the stone hard enough to send pain ringing through her skull. It was overtaken in her next breath by the pleasure that bloomed between her legs. He had no knowledge of what to do, but he was determined to please her. Or, perhaps, it simply pleased him to taste her.

His movements were sloppy, hungry in the way he pressed his tongue to her entrance to lap at the arousal there. He had no plan, no path to follow. There was only the want to consume her, to satisfy the pull that had ripped at him inside since their first meeting. Elizabeth knew it well, and her hands grabbed at his long hair to keep him where she desired him. His wide hands gripped at her thighs, and one slid around to spread his fingers over her stomach. Their tips just brushed the bottom of Elizabeth’s ribs; when her gasps or cries shook her chest, the fingers there quivered.

For his lack of knowledge, he was quick to find what made her cry out the loudest. The first time a moan shattered past her lips, he had asked if she was alright and she’d had to tug his mouth back to her slit. He caught on after that, mouthing at her clit after the first brush made her keen in delight. In one moment it would be too much, and the next it wasn’t enough. Her body rode the waves of stimulation and weathered the storm that raged in her chest as she hooked one leg over the wide shoulders of the creature. The burning crescendo of her orgasm tore through her in the next moment, punching the air from her lungs. Her fingers alone had never made her feel like she was burning alive. Not like this.

The creature rose to take a breath with his chin glistening in the moonlight. His inky eyes flashed red when the same light cast them in shadow, and Elizabeth felt another surge of affection rise within her.

“Come to me,” she pleaded with open arms that guided him over her. He crawled above her body like a hunter, but his eyes—wide and gentle—betrayed that could never harm her. His body contained the strength of a predator, but his arms cradled beneath her with the tenderness one might cradle a babe. She drew his lips to hers with fingertips on his jaw and tasted herself in his mouth. The sounds he elicited were rich with lust, and she could not deny him when he pressed his tongue past her lips. She nipped at his tongue with her teeth.

A laugh warmer than sunlight escaped the creature, and he broke from her lips to press his nose under her jaw with the intent to kiss the delicate skin of her neck. “Is there more I can give you?” The question was ardent, heavy with his desire to please her.

“Yes.” Elizabeth hummed her satisfaction as he kissed down her neck to the hollow of her throat. “But not tonight. I wish to find somewhere safe and fall asleep at your side.”

A shadow passed over the face of the creature, and he turned away from her. “And of Victor?”

“Let him think me dead, and we will be two spirits in the wind.” Elizabeth smoothed her hands through the white hair at his temples. “I will be your companion in this world and we might forget the name Frankenstein.”

“Were it to be so easy,” the creature whispered into the dark beyond.