Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Simon
Daniel’s vow hung in the air, heavy and vibrating with that subterranean honesty that made him dangerous. Never.
Tessa slumped against him, her eyes fluttering shut, surrendering to the weight of the mountain. She looked wrecked. Beautifully, tragically wrecked. Her hair was a dark nimbus on the rug, her lips swollen from Daniel’s mouth, her skin flushed the color of a bruised peach.
But she wasn't done.
I could see it. I was the one who noticed the details, the twitch of her fingers against Daniel’s flannel shirt, the way her breath still hitched in a jagged, unsatisfied rhythm, the shallow flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.
Daniel had grounded her. Anders had stabilized her structure.
But the fire was still eating her alive from the inside out.
She was hiding in the dark behind her eyelids. She was trying to retreat back into the void because the light was too much.
"No," I whispered. My voice sounded rough, scraping like charcoal on paper. "She’s retreating," I said, looking down at them. "She’s closing her eyes. She’s trying to disappear again."
Daniel looked at me, his hazel eyes dark with a drug-like haze of pheromones, but he nodded. He felt it too. The withdrawal into the shell.
"Get her up," I commanded.
It was the first time I had ever given an order to the pack. Usually, I was the one following Anders’ logistics or drafting behind Daniel’s social shielding. But this was visual. This was perception. This was my domain.
"Simon?" Tessa murmured, peeling one eye open. It was glassy, unfocused.
"Up," I said, reaching out for her.
I didn't offer a hand to hold. I grabbed her upper arms, my grip firm, my thumbs pressing into the soft muscle. I hauled her out of the warm, safe nest Daniel and Anders had built.
"Simon, wait," Anders warned from the floor, sitting up. "Her blood pressure—"
"Is fine," I snapped. "Daniel grounded the wire. Now I need to turn on the light."
I pulled Tessa to her feet. She stumbled, her legs jelly, slick with the fluids of her own heat and our worship. She fell against me, and the impact knocked the wind out of me. Blackberries and brine crashed into burnt sugar and graphite.
"Open your eyes," I hissed into her ear, wrapping my arm around her waist to keep her vertical. "We aren't staying in the dark."
I started walking her toward the hallway.
"Where are we going?" she gasped, stumbling along with me, her hip bumping my thigh. "Simon, I can't. My legs..."
"Your legs are fine," I lied. "Walk."
I marched her past the living room, past the safe shadows of the firelight, and into the long, architectural corridor that connected the living space to the bedrooms.
In her bedroom there was a full length mirror and I walked her right up to it until her toes almost touched the base.
"Look," I ordered.
I stood behind her. I was lean and wiry where Daniel was massive, dark and messy where Anders was polished. I looked like a shadow clinging to her back. My hands, stained black with ink and charcoal, forever marked by my obsession with her, splayed across her pale stomach.
Tessa squeezed her eyes shut, turning her head away. "No. I don't want to see."
"That's too bad," I whispered, leaning down to bite the sensitive cord of her neck. "Because years ago, you didn't have a choice. Hundreds of people watched you in person and thousands more online, and you couldn't look away. Tonight, you are the one watching."
I moved my hands lower.
The reflection showed everything from the disarray of her hair to her flushed chest and the dark peaks of her nipples. I was captivated by the way her stomach still quivered with the aftershocks of the cramps.
It also showed my hands. My dark, stained hands contrasted violently against her pale skin, sliding down over her hips.
"Look at yourself, Tessa," I demanded, watching her reflection. "Open your damn eyes."
She flinched, a sob catching in her throat, but she obeyed. Her grey eyes flew open in the glass, meeting mine.
"What do you see?" I asked, sliding my hands between her thighs.
"A mess," she choked out, tears spilling over. "I see a mess. I see... leakage. I see Graduation Girl."
"Wrong," I growled.
I kicked her feet apart, forcing her stance wider. I pressed my hips firmly against her buttocks, letting her feel the hard, undeniable ridge of my erection through my jeans. I wanted there to be no ambiguity about what was happening.
"I see a composition," I murmured, my eyes locking onto hers in the glass. "I see contrast. Value. Texture."
I slipped my hand into her heat.
In the mirror, the sight was shocking. My ink-stained fingers disappearing into the slick, wet reality of her desire. The way her hips jerked forward, disrupting the image, blurring the lines.
"Ah! Simon!" She tried to bury her face in her hands, to hide from the image.
I grabbed her wrists with my free hand and pulled them down, pinning her arms to her sides.
"No hiding," I said, my voice rising, tight with ten years of repressed longing. "We are rewriting the scene, remember? You don't get to look away."
I released her wrist to fumble with my belt. My hands were shaking. I was clumsy, desperate. The sound of the zipper rasping down was the loudest thing in the quiet hallway. I shoved my jeans and boxers down just enough to free myself.
I needed to be inside her. Not with fingers. Not with a stylus. With everything.
“Do you want me to fill you? Do you want my cock inside you, Tessa?” I murmured against her ear.
Her face heated and she nodded.
“Tell me,” I ordered.
“I want you to fuck me,” she replied a little breathlessly as her chest heaved in the mirror.
"Arch your back," I instructed.
"I can't," she whimpered, watching my reflection behind her. "It’s too much. The mirror... it makes it so real."
"That's the point."
I grabbed her hips, my fingers digging in, bruising the soft flesh. I didn't wait. I couldn't wait. I lined myself up with her slick heat, watching the connection point in the mirror.
Bending my knees so I could get the right angle, I thrust forward.
I sank into her in one long, devastating slide.
"Oh, God!" Tessa screamed, her head snapping back, hitting my shoulder.
The feeling was indescribable. She was velvet fire, a tight, wet grip that felt like coming home and drowning at the same time. It was the tactile version of every sketch I had ever made.
I held still for a second, buried to the hilt, just breathing against the back of her neck.
"Look," I gasped, pointing at the mirror. "Look at that."
In the reflection, we were a single entity. My dark form wrapped around her pale one. The strain in my neck. The way her body was impaled on mine. It wasn't polite. It wasn't clean. It was raw, animalistic, and incredibly beautiful.
"You're a masterpiece, not a mess," I whispered into the shell of her ear. "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever drawn, and I have drawn everything."
She looked.
She really looked.
She saw the flush on her chest not as a rash of shame, but as the color of arousal, the sweat on her skin not as grime, but as a glaze.
And she saw my face, my tormented, ecstatic face, buried in her neck, and as she watched me for a moment I could tell that she finally realized that I wasn't laughing.
I began to move.
I wasn't gentle. I couldn't be. The burnt sugar scent of my own arousal was choking me. I snapped my hips, driving into her with a rhythm that made her head rock back and forth.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
The sound of flesh meeting flesh echoed in the room.
"Say it," I groaned, reaching around to cup her breast, kneading the soft flesh, watching my dark fingers manipulate her nipple in the mirror. "Tell me what you are."
"I... I don't know," she panted, her eyes rolling back, her hands scrabbling for purchase on her own thighs.
I drove deeper, hitting that sweet spot, that bundle of nerves Daniel had prepped, Anders had protected, and I was now claiming.
"You are not a victim," I hissed, biting her shoulder, marking her though not the way my Alpha wanted me to. "Say it."
"I am not a victim," she gasped, the words shaken out of her by the force of my thrusts.
"Who are you?" I demanded. I reached down between her legs, finding her clit with my fingers, adding friction to the penetration. "Who is the girl in the mirror, Tessa?"
She watched herself being taken, the way her mouth fell open in pleasure, and her hips instinctively pushed back against me, meeting my greed with her own.
"I don't know!" she wailed.
"You're the protagonist," I told her, watching her eyes. "You're the main character in your story."
"I am... I am the main character," she whispered.
"Louder," I growled, speeding up. "Believe it. Make me believe it."
"I am the main character!" she shouted, the realization hitting her at the same time as the pleasure began to coil tight in her belly, tightening her muscles around me.
"Yes," I praised, watching the transformation. "Look at your stomach, Tessa. Look at the way it quivers. You hate that part, don't you? You hate that it cramped. You hate that it’s soft."
I splayed my hand over her belly, pressing down, emphasizing the curve.
"I love it," I swore. "I want to draw this exact curve for the rest of my life. It’s where life is. It’s where the heat is."
"Simon," she keened, her knees buckling. I held her up. I took her weight entirely, pinning her against my body so she couldn't fall, only fly. "I’m going to... I’m going to burn."
"Burn, then," I urged. "Burn the whole fucking house down. I’ll draw you from the ashes."
I hammered into her. Fast. Hard. Brutal. I abandoned the artist and became an animal. I watched the mirror as she shattered.
Her release hit her like one of the waves cresting below the house. She screamed, a high, shattering sound that wiped out the last of the silence in the fortress. Her internal muscles clamped around me, milking me, pulling me deeper into the void she had demanded we fill.
"God, Tessa!" I roared, throwing my head back, unable to watch anymore, overwhelmed by the sensation.
I spilled myself into her.
It was a torrent. Years of ink, of watching from the sidelines, all of it poured out of me and into her. I pulsed and pulsed, emptying myself completely.
We stayed like that for a long time. Standing in the room, swaying together, locked in the reflection.
Slowly, the world came back into focus.
Tessa slumped forward, her forehead resting against the cool glass of the mirror. Her breath fogged the surface, obscuring her face in a mist of her own making.
I stayed buried inside her, my arms wrapped around her waist, my face buried in her neck. I breathed in the scent of her, sea salt and sweat, sharper now, realer.
"Did you see?" I whispered, my voice wrecked, rasping against her skin.
She lifted her head slowly. She looked at the reflection. The fog on the glass was fading, revealing her face again. Her glasses were gone. Her hair was a disaster. She looked thoroughly, completely ravished.
And she was smiling.
A small, terrified, victorious smile.
"I saw," she whispered.
"Good," I said, pressing a kiss to the smudge of charcoal I had left on her shoulder. "Because that’s the only picture I’m ever going to draw of you again."
"Simon," she murmured, her hand coming up to cover mine where it rested on her stomach. "You're shaking."
"I'm overwhelmed," I admitted. “I never thought you’d let me, and I wanted you so badly that I couldn’t see straight, which is kind of a problem for an artist.”
She let out a soft, breathy laugh that turned into a groan as I finally, reluctantly, withdrew. The separation was a physical loss, a cold ache rushing in to fill the space where I had been.
I adjusted my clothes, zipping up with fumbling fingers. I turned her around.
She leaned back against the mirror, legs trembling, looking at me. Her grey eyes were clear. Sharp.
"You really think I'm a masterpiece?" She asked, a trace of insecurity still hiding in the corners of her voice.
I reached out and took her face in my stained hands. I didn't care about the mess.
"Tessa," I said, looking right into her soul. "I would hang you in the Louvre and burn the rest of the collection just to make sure people focused."
She grabbed my wrists.
"Draw me," she commanded. "Later. When the heat breaks. Draw this."
"I will," I promised.
"And Simon?"
"Yeah?"
She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against mine.
"Next time," she whispered, "don't make me look in the mirror."
My heart stopped. Next time.
"Why?" I choked out.
"Because," she said, her voice dropping to a smoky purr that ignited a secondary fire in my blood. "I want to look at you."
In the doorway, a shadow moved. Anders. He had been watching.
"Bradlee," Anders’ voice cut through the haze, sharp and smelling of control returning. "Bring her back. She needs hydration. And you look like you're about to pass out."
I looked at Tessa. She smirked.
"The authority is calling," she whispered.
"Let him call," I muttered, stealing one last kiss. "He's just jealous he didn't get the view."
But I took her hand. I laced my ink-stained fingers through her pale ones. And together, we walked back toward the fire, leaving the reflection, and the ghosts, behind in the glass.