Chapter 37 #2
I breathe, basking in the fire and the night, which is the taste of his skin. “Then cut me open, take my heart in your hands, rewrite me to be your fantasy, and love me as deep and wide as you are able.”
In a whirl, he has me pressed to the sofa, laid out against the cushions on my stomach. Sweeping my hair off my neck, he kisses the nape. “You’re sure?” he murmurs, voice dark and tantalizing.
“Even if I believed you would, yes, I’d still be sure.”
His finger parts the magic of my clothing, cutting a clean line down the fabric, drawing an icy touch against my bare skin. “If you believed me?” He kisses my revealed spine. “What’s not to believe?”
“Had I wings, you’d bury yourself in my feathers, terrified that you might harm a single one. There isn’t a chance you’d take them from me.”
“No? Not even when I am painfully aware that I reside with my belly to the earth and you could use such feathers to take to the heavens where I cannot hope to hold you?”
“You are my ground, and I am your sky. I will ever return to rest in your arms.”
“And if I don’t wish to persevere through the moments you deign to leave them?”
“I’ll take you with me.”
He chuckles. “How?”
I smile, much too merry for this morbid conversation. “I’ll clasp your snake body in my talons and take you on a wonderful little trip through the clouds.”
“What a danger you intend to carry with you,” he murmurs.
“You’re not dangerous.”
“I assure you, I am.”
“Only when you want to be.”
He goes silent, and emotions rock through him, too many to decode, too convoluted to name. At last, he says, “What…a statement.” He runs his nose along my bare skin, kissing every bump of my spine. “My darling…”
I relax, nearly drowsy. “Yes?”
“It is the last of this month.”
Monday. The thirty-first. “I suppose it is.”
“Do you still want to marry me in the next one?”
My flesh hums at the mere possibility. “Yes, I do. Have…you found hope of a cure?”
“I…don’t know. I may have.”
I try to push myself up; he keeps me down. “Castor!” I blurt, twisting as far as I can manage. “Really? You have?”
“Perhaps.”
Perhaps. Perhaps he’s found a cure. Perhaps we’ll be married soon. “How did you have time, on top of everything else?”
He draws snakes up my revealed flesh, coiling the shapes across my wingbones. “I am nothing if not determined to have my way in most eventualities.”
I wriggle.
“Stop squirming,” he purrs, body lowering against mine.
“I don’t want to let you up yet. You’re so pretty like this…
trusting me.” A low sound vibrates in his chest, and I shiver.
“Not a single scrap of me bothers you. It’s like you don’t even remember that I cut you minutes ago with a knife, purely so I could taste the ambrosia of your essence and tease myself with the power you allow me to have over you. ”
“I cut you, too, if you’ll recall.”
“Do you know how very messed up that is? I have only recently in my meditation of late come to the harrowing conclusion that I have not been researching healthy relationships. Dark romance, who’d have guessed, revolves largely around toxic depictions.
To that end, I believe healthy lovers should actually not be stabbing each other. ”
“Why do we need to be healthy?”
He sighs, and I revel in the heat of his breath.
Quietly, he murmurs, “I’d like you to be healthy.
I want the very best for you. Which means I should probably get past this habit of proving your care for me.
You have faced enough suffering at the hands of those meant to love you.
I should stop expecting that I need to coax you one step further into my madness, lest I go too far one day when you have not had a chance to work up to it.
I need to trust you. I need to…do better. ”
“I think you need to trust you. Trust that even your worst is better for me than anyone else’s best.”
With yet another sigh, he settles his forehead between my wingbones. “I shall try, for your sake, to make certain of that. I love you dearly, Mine.”
“I am coming to love you, too,” I murmur, dwelling on the press of him, his weight, the slim heat offered beyond the coolness of his skin, everything. “About the cure. What is it?”
He licks me, weaves my clothing back together, and slips off the couch. Plucking his knife off the ground, he settles it into a sheath that materializes within his garments as he adjusts them back in place over his shoulders, covering all the pretty pale skin.
I sit up. “Castor?”
“There are many things I must do alone to reach the cure. Once your part in it comes about, I will let you know.”
“I do have a part in it?” I ask.
He turns toward me, laces his fingers around my neck, and bends to kiss me. “Yes, love. You do. Perhaps the most important part of all.” He pauses, lips pulling away before I get a chance to taste them. “Ah.” He unlatches his fingers from my throat. “Healthy women probably don’t like choking.”
I pout, jutting my lip. “A lie.”
“Is…it?”
“Yes.” I bobblehead. “Trust me. I’ll get you some nice sweet romcoms to research. You’ll see choking everywhere in them.” Because I’ll make a post in a Leopard group asking for it specifically, then rig the data pool.
“Where, pray tell, is the line?” he murmurs.
I mellow. “I think…probably…the healthy part of a relationship is deciding the line for ourselves with clear and open communication.”
His thumb settles against my pulse. “I suppose that makes enough sense.”
While I’m on the topic. “Stabbing is also healthy, just so you know. Women love it.” I might have more trouble getting that in the research data, though. Not many sweet romcoms out there with stabbing, I bet. Shame.
A smile flirts with his lips. “Is it now?”
“Oh, absolutely.” My cheeks heat. “I can think of plenty of other things that are also healthy, but I’ll save that list for our wedding day.”
The warmth in my cheeks mirrors his, and he kisses my forehead. “I’ll be looking forward to that quite intently.”
“Same.” I catch the hem of his robes before he can pull away again. “And, just so you know, I am here for you, Castor. However I can be.”
Peace settles the rampant twists and turns of his emotions, steadying the music of our soul bond into a single clear note.
“I know that, love.” His palm cups my cheek, lifting my face.
“I apologize for the distance I’ve imposed on you emotionally these past few days.
I’d thank you for your efforts this afternoon, but we both know you can’t handle it. ”
First off, rude. Second off…true.
“Can you handle it?” I ask.
A brief laugh leaves him, and he taps my nose. “Oh, absolutely not, darling. Don’t even play with the idea of that until we’re wed.”
I hum. “The list grows longer already.”
“Enchanting.” He helps me to my feet. “I yearn to explore it with you.”
I hug him, and his heart lunges in response.
“What’s this for?” he whispers, slowly returning my embrace, then melting—helplessly—into it.
“Most of what’s happened just now is because I’m attracted to you, right?”
He swallows. “Y-yes. I sensed that.”
“This is because I like you. I genuinely, deeply, and thoroughly like you.”
His arms tighten around me, and pricks of emotion leave him raw. Finally, rough, he murmurs, “Forgive me, but you have all but forced my hand.” Breath fills him. And then he adds, “Thank you.”
I’m almost sure I hold on longer than I did last time he thanked me, but, inevitably, my part-human body is not strong enough to hold up against the brushing caress of Castor’s soul, and my consciousness slips away.