Open Door
by
HH Self

Chapter 1
 A New Romance    

^He watched her from a distance. A thin gown covered her body as the mist at her feet did the ground, concealing the sharpest of details, delicately revealing the rest. Each step swirled the diaphanous night vapor around her ankles, rising, caressing her, and then flowing back over the pebbles of the narrow pathway. The sound of a heartbeat echoed in his ears. Was it hers, his, or a blending of both? He strained to see more, understand more, but the shadows and muted colors of night mocked his efforts as the moonlight ebbed and flowed with the passing clouds. His hand reached forward then halted, fingers curling back, a heavy breath pushing into the darkness. The gossamer figure slipped around the path’s curve and stepped slowly toward the imposing cliff and the door set into the rock.

One arm outstretched, she pressed at the large stone door that loomed before her. For a moment, the small round carving on the door shimmered in a faint green glow, the design a memory just out of reach. The groan of burdened hinges, a grating as fingernails on a chalkboard, heralded the portal’s opening. The sound moved over his flesh with the feel of a frigid wind. The breach was as black as pitch. Even the faint moonlight seemed to refuse to cross the threshold. Her long dark hair billowed back from an out rush of air and then quickly swung forward, as if the darkness inhaled. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, eyes of blue ice, lips the color of fanned embers; her paleness now amplified by the framing of the blackness before her.

Her body twisted toward him, the curve of hip and breast made clear. A conscious act of seduction on her part reflected in the slight upturned corners of her mouth. The hand that pushed open the door now stretched out toward him and one finger with a blood red fingernail curled slowly, calling him closer. He could not feel a step taken and yet the distance between them narrowed until he stared into the subtle shades of palest blue eyes, their hues flickering before him. As he inhaled, her scent filled his head, everything around him fading into the mist but her. Like a predator, her desire, her hunger, revealed to him by her musk, like prey, he did not understand why. Her outreached hand let a single finger touch his face. “Khaba…”

1