Chapter Twenty-One #2
He didn’t even stop there, either. He laid face down on the bed, head on the pillow. “Just go slow, okay,” he said as she stood there, heart a bird in her chest, all the soft things she wanted to say to him on her lips.
Substituted, at the last second, for this: “I promise I will.”
“A little at first.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Stick to my back, no going lower.”
“The only way I would is if you asked me to.”
An intake of breath, then. She knew why now, though.
Having the choice had obviously never really been a thing to him. And even if it had, he’d clearly never imagined a choice like this. That he could say the word, and she’d unbutton his jeans, get underneath them, touch whatever she found there.
And now that was in his head as she gingerly knelt beside him, on the bed.
The question he could ask.
The things she was willing to do.
“Don’t sit so close, okay? If I snap into demon form it’ll knock you off the bed,” he said, ashamed sounding, half into the pillow. So she did as he suggested, she shuffled back. But she put a reassuring hand on him as she did so. She gave his shoulder a squeeze, as if to say, I’m not scared .
And that seemed to settle him.
Or, at least, it settled him enough that she was able to dip the brush, and get it to within a millimeter of his skin. She let it hover just over the place below the nape of his neck, where she’d stroked last. Poised to write, the words ready in her head, but unable to go any further.
He’d gone so tense.
She could actually see the muscles in his back, rigid as anything.
His biceps, bunched at his sides. And the hands he’d laid under his forehead weren’t just hands anymore.
He had made fists and shoved them against his eyes.
Like he could screw these feelings out of him that way.
“I was wrong about slow,” he gasped out.
“I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. Just do it like you’re ripping off a Band-Aid. ”
And she wanted to.
Her hand felt almost heavy with magic and desire, it trembled with it; she almost had to get ahold of her wrist with her free hand to hold it where it was.
It just seemed like the most natural thing in the world now—and especially when he clearly needed it.
He trembled to feel that tense air between the tip of her brush and his skin.
He rocked on the bed, so ready it was agonizing.
But still she did nothing.
He had to reach back and grab her hand. “I don’t want to tell you go ,” he said, as he forced that makeshift ink onto his body.
“Because if I have to tell you go I won’t.
I cannot tell you what I want, I can’t. So you have to do it, you have to do this until I say stop.
Until I holler uncle . Until I beg for mercy. Do you understand?”
No , she wanted to tell him.
Yet somehow, the words struck her too hard to do it.
They reverberated through her, good and right in a way she didn’t fully grasp.
All she knew was that it happened, and after it did she made the swipe of a Y, the circle of an O, the curve of a U .
One after the other in curlicue script. And then the rest, so fast she didn’t have time to think about it.
She only knew what she’d put once it was there, backward and in a line that pointed downward, alone the length of his spine:
Hell is no longer your master.
Your form is your own to command .
Terrifying, of course. Weird and not what she thought would work.
But there was no noise that said she’d done it wrong.
No—there was only the sense of something powerful flowing from her.
And then, oh god, then, the walls shook.
Everything shook. The lights went bright, bright, bright and then so suddenly dim she had their afterimage painted on her eyes.
“Jack,” she said, high and tight.
But he had her, he had her. He got hold of her hand.
“It’s okay. Nothing can trespass here, you’re safe. You’re safe, do as you will,” he said, over the noise. And this time when she touched the brush to him, nothing rattled. The lights stayed a low glow.
But best of all:
He didn’t tense.
He sighed, like someone finally relaxing after long hardship.
And after that there was no stopping her.
She completely lost herself in it. One word after the other, until his back looked like a beautiful maze of them.
Like tattoos all over him, it seemed. And in fact they sort of were.
She ran her thumb over one— be as you wish to —and the black didn’t budge.
It didn’t smear. It stayed there, almost sunk into the skin.
Amazing , she thought, as she touched another, just with the tip of her finger.
And this was the one that made him groan.
All in one big low burr, like he’d been holding it in for the longest time.
He’d forced it down, until he just couldn’t take it any longer.
Then once he had, more seemed to break with it.
He turned in one great roll, onto his side, one hand held up a little.
And the hand was shaking. It was really shaking.
She honestly would have thought she’d done something wrong, if she hadn’t been able to tell what he was going to say before he said it.
“Okay, that’s enough, that’s enough, you’re gonna make me—” he started to say, but cut himself off before he got to that word. The one he clearly thought was too rude to admit to in front of her when it applied to him.
It hadn’t mattered when it had been her.
When he’d told her to come for him, and she had.
So she did her best to make it seem like nothing at all.
Even though it thrilled her to her very core.
She’d almost made him come, just by brushing magic into his back.
He was so starved for something like this, so hot for this—and maybe at least somewhat for her—that so little had nearly sent him over the edge.
And that was so electrifying she could hear it in her voice as she spoke. “And you don’t want to do that?”
“Not here. Not in front of you.”
“You didn’t mind when I did.”
“That’s not the same, I’ll make a mess.”
“Not if I let you do it in my mouth.”
Silence, then. A long silence that made her think for just a second that she’d gone too far.
But then he broke it. He broke it. “There’s no way you really want to do that to me.
That you actually like doing that,” he said, as if he wouldn’t agree to let her do it if he thought she didn’t. As if it mattered.
It made answering very easy.
“You’re right, I don’t. Usually it’s a chore, a thing to get through; sometimes I even go somewhere else in my head,” she said, and he nodded as if to say, of course .
And then she continued. “But the thing is, this isn’t usually .
This is the first time in my life anyone has ever really held off so long that I get to feel anticipation at the thought of it.
The first time anyone has ever let me go before them, so I get to imagine what it’s like.
I get to long to, I get to feel excitement at the idea of it.
In fact all I can think about is what you’ll taste like, what you’ll feel like, if you’ll touch me when I take you in my mouth.
How soft that touch will be, and exactly what it’ll mean if it breaks into something more desperate: that you don’t want to urge me into doing more, but for just a moment are helpless not to. ”
Too much , she thought, when she was done.
She even waited for him to say so.
And instead, he simply laid back on the bed.
Though, truthfully, she still expected him to stop her when she reached for the buttons on his jeans.
Then she expected him to stop her as she unbuttoned them, one by one, and slow enough that he could if he wanted to.
But he didn’t. And when she looked up, just as she got to the part where she’d have to reach inside, all she saw were his heavy-lidded eyes. The way he was holding his breath.
He only let it out when she slipped her hand in.
And it came out rough, guttural, almost a moan.
His head went back with it, eyes closing. Though they opened again once she had him in her hands. Like he couldn’t resist the sight of her soft little fingers around his heavy cock. He had to watch her exploring the length of it, the thickness, all curious and just a little shocked.
Because it was shocking.
Not in the demon way, not like the thing she’d glimpsed between those legs.
But enough that it should have made her nervous. He was going to fill her mouth. He was going to be impossible to take too much of. If he forced her down on it, or tried to fuck her like that—it would choke her. Though of course the thing about that was: she knew he never would.
In fact, he put a hand in her hair to stop her, over nothing more than a lick.
Just one lick over the slick and swollen head of his cock, and he did it, like a reflex.
Then, just as she was wondering if it was himself he was worried about, he spoke into the stifling, incredibly still air.
“Go easy, easy, it’s a lot to take,” he said, and honestly she didn’t know what she liked more.
The fact that he did this.
Or that it was clearly so hard for him to even try. His voice cracked in the middle; she could feel that hand shaking. And as she hung there, parted lips an inch from him, that swollen cock spilled over her hand. Just one clear stream, so sweet and hot and unexpected that she couldn’t help it.
She ran her tongue over it, all the way from the base to the tip. Then once she was there, she did it. She took him in, in one long, slow kiss. Slow enough that he could stop her if he wanted to. But not so much that he couldn’t feel how eager and greedy she was. Or react to that.