Chapter Seven #2
“I…” I have no idea how to answer the question. I find him infuriating. He is bound and determined to own me. To prevent me from realizing my dreams. He is also the most compelling, magnetic man that I have ever known. But there’s nothing easy about him. Nothing half so pastoral as simple liking.
“Have you slept with him?”
Eve is extremely keen on the question, and I feel heat wash through my body.
“No,” I say.
Eve makes a comedically dramatic expression. “That is a pity. Because he looks like he’s good for that.”
I have so many questions, since this is the prevailing opinion of the two women I’ve talked to who have actual sexual experience when it comes to Lucian.
I know that when I look at him, it makes me feel hot. I know that his touch sets off a chain reaction inside me I can’t control.
But I don’t know why.
I need one of these women with sexual experience to give me some actual details.
After that, I am passed around the room, introduced to more people than I can count.
And Lucian is across the room from me, but I can’t seem to get to him.
To cross this wave of people. Then, I lose track of my sister, even, and I’m just left out there to drown in the social ocean.
I swallow hard, and slip back to the edge of the room.
The crowd of people folds in, and for a moment, nobody’s looking at me.
Nothing has prepared me for this.
None of the skills that I’ve cultivated.
I take my opportunity, and sneak out. There’s a door to the garden, and I melt away, invisible. That’s something that I’m good at. The studious one. The bookish one. I’m good at not being seen.
Except, in all this gold, with the butterflies in my hair, I am much more conspicuous than I’ve ever been.
Belonging to Lucian, I’m much more conspicuous than I have ever been.
I swallow hard, walking away from the palace.
I don’t even know where I’m going. The evening is warm, and my hair is heavy on the back of my neck.
The breeze smells of gardenia, jasmine and other glorious flowers.
I can’t see, but I know they’re there. The moon is full, the sky scattered full of stars.
I close my eyes and allow the warm breeze to filter across my skin. I allow myself a moment of tranquility.
A moment to remember who I am.
Except, even that moment doesn’t really help.
Because less than a week ago, I was university-bound, and I had never experienced feelings even half as conflicting as the ones I felt tonight.
A strange kind of possessiveness for a man who’s holding me captive.
Jealousy. The feeling of being the center of attention.
All of these things are as far removed from the me that I know as any stranger could be.
There is a hedge maze, and I dip inside, wandering through the twists and turns before I find a stone bench. I sit down, and put my hand on my chest. Feel my heart beating.
I know who I am.
I tell myself that. And still, I can seem to find a way to ground myself.
“Sparrow.”
I hear his voice, and everything in my body responds to it.
Responds to him. As though I’m relieved to see my captor, as though I wish to be back in my cage.
I am momentarily immobilized by how much I despise that.
By how much I despise myself, but then he comes around the corner, and I see something genuinely like fear on his face.
The moonlight illuminates his blond hair, his eyes so pale they’re almost white.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I just needed a break.”
“I thought you ran away. Or perhaps worse, had harmed yourself.”
He’s expressed worry about that twice, and I can’t help but wonder why. I already know he’s nothing like any of the rumors suggest. He’s interesting. He has the soul of a poet, and the body of a warrior. He has the ruthlessness of a warrior too, but people can contain multitudes.
He cares about my happiness—unless what I want makes him unhappy. He definitely cares about his own more.
He’s a mystery.
“I’m not going to hurt myself,” I say.
“I didn’t know,” he says. He moves close to me, and he drops down to his knees in front of me.
He’s close, and as glorious as the garden smells, he’s better.
My heart is thundering so hard it’s the loudest sound for me right now.
My mouth is dry; my body is on high alert.
And my science brain is nowhere to be found.
He reaches up and touches my face, his thumb tracing the outline of my lower lip. “Do not run from me,” he says, his voice rough. “I thought you ran away.”
I shake my head. “I gave you my word, Lucian. I’m not a liar.”
He breathes out, a sigh that almost sounds like relief.
“Yes. That is true.” Then he shifts his hold on me, his hand going to cup my cheek, the hold possessive, firm.
My heart is beating hard still, but this isn’t fear.
It’s different. My chest aches, the sensation more of a throb right at the center of my breastbone.
And then, more disturbing, I feel an answering throb at the center of my thighs.
I can’t help but think about what my sister said.
That he looks like he would be good at sex.
I’ve never given that a thought. Certainly Eve knows what sort of man might be good at it.
I wouldn’t. I would have nothing to compare it to, and very few fantasies to even call up and try to apply his image to. And yet I’m not so foolish that I don’t understand what’s happening to my body. His closeness is…is making me want him.
Want.
What a strange thought. Me wanting this man. This man who is holding me captive. This man who seemed scared at the idea that I might’ve run from him.
He releases his hold on me, and turns his attention to my ankle. He wraps his large hand around it, lifts it up and rests my foot against his chest.
“What?”
I can’t conjure a thought or get out a sentence, because he begins to push my dress up my legs, revealing my bare skin to the night air.
He adjusts my leg, puts it up on his shoulder and begins to draw closer as he pushes my dress up higher.
My eyes go wide, and he inserts himself between my thighs, pressing my other leg out far, my dress now up all the way, so that he’s staring at the golden underwear that I put on before the dress.
The underwear is very pretty, but I’ve never had anyone look at me like this, and I feel nothing but embarrassment. I’m a liar.
I don’t only feel embarrassment. He looks up at me, his gaze hungry, and I’m sure he sees hunger mirrored in mine. But also wonder, confusion. Fear. I don’t want him to stop, though. I want him to keep going. I want him to show me.
I want him to solve this puzzle for me.
Then he puts his hand on my bare thigh, drawing his fingertip to the sensitive skin at the crease, pushing beneath the fabric of my panties.
My breath catches as he grazes my most intimate flesh. He growls, a sound of satisfaction rumbling in his chest. He’s never kissed me. Right as I think that, he leans in and kisses my inner thigh. The sensation is like a shock wave through my body.
“Let me show you why you should stay with me,” he says, kissing his way up toward that golden triangle between my legs, ripping the fabric to the side, and closing his mouth over my flesh.
He takes no quarter, and I can’t believe the intimacy that he’s claiming.
His tongue slides through my folds, moves ruthlessly over the sensitive bundle of nerves there. And I can’t help but react.
My hips fly up off the bench, and he wraps his free arm around me, drawing me tighter against his mouth as he continues to lick me.
Until he’s devouring me like the dragon that I feared him to be.
The pleasure is otherworldly. Like nothing I’ve even imagined.
I thought that because I knew how to bring myself to the peak that I understood something about sexual pleasure.
But I don’t. Because in that situation I was always in control of it.
How fast, how intense. I have no control here.
It’s all him. His wicked lips, his tongue.
I hear the sounds of pleasure that he’s making, pleasure that’s coming from tasting me. There.
I have no choice but to surrender. I’m lost. Lost to reality. Lost to the earth itself. I might as well be among the stars.
I hear the sound of my panties tearing, pulled entirely free of my body.
Then with both hands, he grips my rear and holds me against his mouth as he consumes me.
He shifts, putting his hand between my legs, using it in conjunction with his tongue before he pushes two fingers deep inside of me, the pain and pleasure mixing, along with the unfamiliar sensation of deep penetration, sending me right over the edge.
My internal muscles squeeze tight around his fingers as I cry out with pleasure.
With abandon. Without care that someone might hear.
I find a hand over my mouth then as I continue to ride the wave.
He pulls me from the bench, onto his lap, holds me against him, keeps his hand firmly pressed on my mouth as the aftershocks continue on through my body.
“Don’t announce it, sparrow,” he whispers against my head.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper.
“Are you a virgin, sweet sparrow?”
My throat tightens, and I find myself fighting tears. “Virginity isn’t even a real thing,” I say. “The idea that a man’s member has the power to change a woman is incredibly regressive.”
“It’s not so simple,” he whispers against my hair. “It is not about a man having the power to change a woman. What I want to know is if you’ve ever been this close to anyone else. If you’ve ever felt pleasure like that. If anyone has ever touched you there, tasted you there.”
“Why?” I ask. I feel small, and I feel like weeping.
“The fact that you won’t tell me gives me all the information I need.”
We’re silent for a long moment. Then he stands, and deposits me firmly on the ground. “Come. Let us return to the party. People will be wondering where we are.”
“I can’t… I can’t see anyone… They’ll know.”
He bends down and picks something up off the grass.
I realize it’s my underwear. He puts them in his pocket, his eyes never leaving mine, and I know a terrible lashing of shame.
I didn’t resist him at all. Not even for a moment.
I didn’t try to pull away. I didn’t try to do anything but receive pleasure from him.
I just didn’t think this was who I was. I didn’t think I was subject to these same needs and desires as my mom, as my sister.
I love them both but they’ve thrown themselves into love affairs at the expense of themselves.
They’ve let men determine how happy they’ll be and I think it’s because of the power sex has to cloud your mind.
I just didn’t think I was like that.
I thought I was a scientist, not a sensualist.
Nonfiction, not fiction.
Not a romantic.
And yet now I feel like I’ve been lit on fire with the possibility of this. Of him.
I feel like I want to know things I didn’t before. I feel like he’s changed me, and that feels shameful.
Yet, I can’t stop it.
“I don’t care if everyone knows,” he says.
“Why not?”
“You’re going to be my wife. Better that I desire you, isn’t that correct?”
I want to ask him questions about that. If he really wants me or if I was convenient. If he was simply manipulating me with pleasure because it was a convenient thing for him to do. I think he knows that I’m a virgin. It would be so easy for him to find the information out empirically.
I’ve never been on a date. Never even been close.
He could have easily found that out if he’d asked the right people. Therefore, he must have known how easy it would be to completely blindside me with desire like that.
But he is leading me back into the ballroom, so I can ask him that. I can say any of the things that I want to say. Tomorrow, I’m marrying this man. And I’ve just been given a taste of what need feels like with him.
My own lack of control terrifies me. More than he ever has. The one thing that surprises me above all else is that I’m no longer most afraid of Lucian.
I’m afraid of myself.