Free Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice

there came another voice echoing through the long halls of time that needed no vernacular to declare with a stentorian authority: Man, are you mad? Go to it!
    He had in his hand the gorgeous satin weight of her breast, the very contour that had driven him to distraction in his dreams, and pressing his lips there, he stopped breathless and afraid. Even the friction of the sheets against him might be too much. He could not hold back. But with a shift beneath him and the swift subtle movementof her hand, she guided him to the moist hair between her legs and into the place where he belonged. He clenched his teeth, moaning as he went in. Never had he even seen this place! And he did not see it now, only felt himself slide into the perfect pulsing opening, the embrace toward which he had been moving all of his life, and in a mounting rapture, all the fantasies of his childhood burnt dim, and forever went out.
    Then he heard her cry.
    She was blood-red and suffering, her breasts and face flushed, a low hoarse sound coming out of her as if she struggled for breath. She was dying in his arms! Yet when he struggled to free her, her hands held him fast, and the sudden sharp movements of her hips sent him straight to heaven.
    It seemed to go on forever.
    And then to be more over than anything he had ever known.
    On his back in the gloom, the breeze moving over him like water, he kissed her hair as her forehead pressed against his cheek. She was pleased; she lay still. And together they drifted off.
    It was a deep sleep at first that left no dreams to mark the length; and then he was conscious of loving her, of her arms around him, and that she held his back against her breast, her legs tucked beneath his, so that they slept tight together spoon-fashion and again he drifted off. He had never slept with another person that he could remember, not even when he was very small, and was ill, and this seemed luscious to him and natural and very sweet. But thin dreams came to him that were hardly dreams at all, in which he roamed the house, found gaping holes in the stairs, had the disconcerting vision of rats. And some time before the room grew dark, he knew the cistern was near, gaping by the leaf-shrouded windows. He opened his eyes once and saw her profile against the distant vines, and in sleep found her even more beautiful than she had been before. A dusky cologne emanated from her skin. He found himself savoring the scent it left on his finger-tips.
    Hours must have passed, he didn’t know. Only that at some point, when he was dreaming of the letters in the chest, and of trivial intruding things, he had turned over, very hot, and seen the flowers in a vase on the round table. Only they were enormous; the magnificent blooms one gets from florists, and vaguely he had thought my eyes are not actually open, I am dreaming this, these perfect roses and their mist of delicate fern. But all the room was there in the shadows, as sometimes happens between sleep and dream. And there were the flowers, white, all but luminous, and beside the table, there stood a man.
    A man.
    A man! Marcel sat bolt upright in the dark, the sheet sliding downto his lap, and stared straight ahead, his fists clenched in an instinctual protective fury.
    It was a man most definitely, medium of height, and apparently dressed in a smartly cut frock coat with a starched white shirt collar and something loose over his shoulders like a wool cravat. But his face was so dark that nothing could be seen save the barest glint of light in his eyes. And beside him, on the floor, stood a bulky valise.
    Juliet stirred, turning over and touching Marcel’s naked back. And rigid with alarm, he realized, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who this man was. All the air went out of him suddenly as Juliet cried out.
    He did not need for her to say the name as she snatched the sheet from his naked legs, threw it around her, and ran to the center of the room. “Chris!” she burst out, and