27. Chapter 27
If You Love Them Let Them Go
The plastic on the window wakes me. It’s been flapping since the window went in Wraith’s first attack.
A soft, irregular sound that I’ve been sleeping through because I’ve been exhausted enough to sleep through anything.
But the morning light streams through a tear, bright and grey and very clear, and something about the combination of the light and the sound pulls me up out of sleep before I’m ready for it.
I’m on the futon. In the circle. Snuggling.
Again.
I lie very still and take stock. This is becoming a habit, which is its own kind of information that I’m going to have to deal with at some point.
The futon is warm. The circle hums quietly.
Outside, Bristol is starting its day with complete indifference to what happened in this building yesterday. The plastic flaps.
I didn’t go downstairs last night. I meant to.
I told Hex five minutes, and then I was in Dis’s arms crying, and five minutes became considerably longer, and by the time I was done it was late and the coffee shop was quiet below, and I just...
didn’t. I stayed. And nobody came up, which means they made a collective decision to leave me to it, which means they probably assumed I was in my own bedroom doing something manageable like holding it together on my own, not in the summoning circle doing something unmanageable like falling apart completely in the arms of my captive shadow king.
Which is fine. That’s fine. We’ll deal with all of that later.
The morning light is very clear.
It has the quality that morning light sometimes has, particularly after something significant, of making everything obvious. Of cutting through all the complicated feelings and the wilful blindness and the elaborate self-deceptions, and leaving just the plain shape of things.
The plain shape of things is this. Bunny nearly died yesterday.
The coffee shop is destroyed. An unknown enemy is still out there somewhere, with motives and resources I don’t fully understand yet, and as long as Dis is here, bound in the circle, the circle is a target.
The wards helped, and they bought time, but they also trapped me downstairs while Dis raged above, unable to reach me, and that’s not protection, for anyone, that’s a liability.
And Dis is a shadow king. Former, technically, but still.
He is ancient and powerful, and perfectly capable of looking after himself.
He doesn’t need the circle. He doesn’t need to be here.
He has survived worse than whatever is currently after him, and running, as unglamorous as it sounds, is a genuinely effective strategy for beings who can melt through walls.
It’s time.
I’ve known it for a while, if I’m honest. The revenge stopped making sense a long time ago, and I’ve been finding other reasons to keep him here and I’ve been very creative about it, but the morning light doesn’t have much patience for creativity.
I sit up.
Dis is awake, as always. He’s watching me with those blue eyes, steady and calm and attentive, the way he watches everything. There’s something in his expression that suggests he has been thinking about more or less the same things I have.
I look at him. He looks at me. The plastic flaps. Bristol carries on outside.
“I have to let you go, don’t I,” I say. It doesn’t come out as a question.
“Yes,” Dis says.
Just that. No argument. No negotiation. He knows it too. He’s known it probably since before I did, and he’s been waiting for me to get here, and now I’m here, and he’s just saying yes. Simple as that.
I nod.
I get up off the futon. My back makes a complaint about the futon that I ignore.
I step out of the circle, back into my living room, and I sit cross-legged on the floor at the circle’s edge.
The carpet is slightly dusty from everything that happened yesterday, and there’s a crack in the wall I’m going to have to fill.
And at some point I have to go downstairs and look at the coffee shop properly and work out what happens next.
But first.
I close my eyes.
I’ve been carrying the binding for weeks now.
Long enough that I’d stopped feeling it as something separate from myself, the way you stop feeling a ring on your finger or a scar that’s healed over.
It’s just part of the background. Part of the way the flat feels.
But now that I’m looking for it, I can feel all of it.
The wards threaded through the walls and the circle laid into the floorboards beneath the carpet and the binding that connects them, all of it my magic, all of it mine.
I start with the wards. I find the edges of them and I begin to unpick them carefully, the way you unpick a seam, thread by thread, letting each one go rather than cutting.
It takes patience. I’ve always been better at the intricate work than the brute force, and this is intricate, three weeks of careful, layered magic unwinding at my hands.
The wards go first. I feel them release, one by one, the flat losing that particular texture of magical alertness, becoming just a flat again.
Then the circle.
This magic is older. Deeper. The runes I laid into the floorboards before Dis arrived, before any of this started, when I was a different version of myself with a plan that made sense and a clear idea of what revenge was supposed to look like.
The chalk is long gone, but the intention is still there, still holding, still doing what I asked it to do.
I ask it to stop.
The magic unravels slowly. I feel it go, all of it, the binding and the circle and everything that has kept this particular impossible situation in place for weeks, and there’s a moment where the flat feels very strange and very empty without it, like a room with all the furniture taken out.
Then it’s gone.
I open my eyes.
Dis is looking at me.
I stand up. My legs are slightly unsteady, the way they always are after significant magical work. I brush off my knees. I meet his gaze across the space that used to be a circle and is now just a patch of living room floor with a slightly singed carpet and a battered futon on it.
He steps out.
It’s such a simple thing. One step, from inside to outside, from the space that was his prison to the rest of the flat, the rest of the world.
He does it without hesitation, without looking down, just steps across the line that isn’t there anymore with the ease of someone who has been waiting for exactly this and knew exactly what he would do when it came.
He crosses the distance between us in two more steps.
He kisses me.
Not like a question. Not tentative or uncertain or asking for permission.
Like something that has been decided for some time and is simply, finally, happening.
His hands find my face, and the kiss is thorough and unhurried and tastes like everything I’ve been not thinking about, and I stop not thinking about it and just let it be true.
When we separate, I’m slightly breathless and my hands are fisted in his shirt, and the morning light is coming through the plastic-covered window and making everything very clear indeed.
“Well,” I say. My voice comes out slightly wrecked. “Okay then.”
Dis looks at me. Something in his expression that I have a name for now, something I’ve had a name for since he said he didn’t entirely hate me, or possibly earlier, possibly since the Scrabble board or the first time he told me I had a pleasant laugh.
He kisses me again, and suddenly we are stumbling towards my bedroom. Well, I’m stumbling and he’s gliding, but it’s the same thing.
My bedroom door crashes open. I think that was magic, but I’m not really sure of anything right now, except that Dis is kissing me and it’s wonderful and he’s free and this definitely isn’t feeding.
It’s goodbye. The best kind of goodbye there is, and also the worst, and I’m going to stop thinking now because I want this.
We fall onto the bed, tangled together. I land on my back, with Dis on top of me. Neither of us breaking the kiss for one moment.
I don’t want to stop kissing him. I don’t want to waste one single second. Kissing him is like kissing a thunderstorm, all that wild, natural power. It’s exhilarating. It makes me feel as powerful as he is, maybe even more so, because I’m the one the thunderstorm wants to kiss.
Shadows glide over me. His hands work, stripping my clothes off extremely competently. How is he so good with human clothes? It’s uncanny. But I’m not complaining.
I shiver as the last bit of cloth leaves me. Now the only thing touching my skin is Dis.
His shadows writhe, and suddenly he is naked too. My hands reach out eagerly, greedily. I explore him. Beneath the shadows he is warm, his skin is softer than silk. I can feel muscles, biceps and abs. Defined like a dancer, or a sword fighter, I guess. A toned, lean body.
He’s so frigging hot. The hottest man who has ever lived.
And he is in my bed. This is astonishing.
His hands are running all over me, as hungrily as mine are groping him.
I gasp as his palm skims over the skin of my inner thigh. My hips rise, offering. My legs are already spread in invitation.
His hand drifts higher. A lingering caress over my hole.
His lips pull away from mine. I pant breathlessly, head spinning.
“Is this okay?” he rumbles.
I nearly cry out an immediate and enthusiastic yes. But I restrain myself. Do a lightning quick calculation involving when I last ate, how long ago I showered, and what my body is telling me.
“Yes!” I exhale, with far more enthusiasm than is warranted. But I don’t care.
“There’s lube in the drawer,” I add, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the bedside cabinet.
Oh hells. Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to explain lube. I really doubt it’s been covered by daytime TV.
Dis retrieves the lube. Flips the lid. Smears it over two of his fingers.
Oh thank fuck. He understands how lube works. Praise be the horny gods. I will be eternally grateful for this blessing.
His lips descend on mine. Devouring me in another kiss. I whimper and kiss him back with everything I have.
A finger traces gently around my hole. Teasing the rim. I moan into his mouth.
He eases inside me, softly, easily. My lungs stutter. Lights spark in my brain. My cock swells, tight and heavy.
One finger becomes two. He opens me carefully, tenderly, reverently. Soft, sweet, gentle touches and movements that drive me wild.
My body is writhing. My cock is leaking. Moans are spilling breathlessly out of me, into our kiss.
I yank my lips away.
“I’m ready! So ready!”
Not my most coherent sentence, but it gets the point across.
Dis swirls. His fingers leave me. He looms over me, blue eyes blazing brightly.
The tip of his silken cock notches against my hole.
He pauses.
“Is this okay?”
There is no calculation this time. Nothing to ponder. There will be no regrets, this is a truth I can feel in my soul.
“Very!” I nod enthusiastically.
He holds my gaze. Around us, shadows coil and twist like smoke dancing around flames.
His eyes deepen from sapphire to cobalt.
Slowly, with great intention, he slides into me.
His thick, heavy cock, stretching and filling and burrowing deeper and deeper.
I hold his gaze while ecstasy soars through me. A pleasure so profound it feels holy.
He pauses, falling still. While I pant through my guts rearranging to make room for him.
Things settle. Pleasure blooms. Desire burns brighter. Carnality claws through me.
The room spins. Air rushes around me. The bed disappears from my back.
I blink down at Dis. He flipped us over. Now I’m on top, riding him and his cock has pushed even deeper inside me.
My eyes flutter as a contented groan vibrates out of me.
“How did you know this was my favourite position?” I say.
He smirks up at me. “It was an educated guess.”
A chuckle starts, deep in my belly, but the movement intensifies the feel of his cock inside me, and the chuckle turns into a loud, uninhibited cry of pure pleasure.
My body takes control, and I ride.
Dis groans, low and deep. His hands rest gently on my hips. Not controlling, simply to touch. Leaving me to run the show. Just how I like it.
Inspiration strikes.
“Dis…” I gasp as I bounce up and down. “Can you… make yourself bigger?”
Inside me, his cock grows. Reaching deeper and deeper.
“Ahhh! That’s enough!”
The invasion stops.
“Can…you…wider?” I gasp breathlessly.
His cock thickens. My insides stretch and stretch.
“There! Perfect!” I sob.
I’m riding an absolutely perfect cock. Made-to-measure. Tailor-made just for me.
Now shadows are drifting over me. Up my torso, flowing mist-like over my skin until they reach my nipples. They coil over my piercings, and then they tug and twist. The sensation sparks all the way through me.
New shadows form around my cock, swirling, squeezing, flicking the piercing at the end. Another coil of darkness gently wraps around my neck and tightens, just enough to be firm.
I pick up the pace and wail with glee and utter delight. Oh fuck. This is heaven. Pure and utter bliss. Euphoria and ecstasy are going to overload my brain and I’m going to die and it’s going to be totally worth it.
Dis’s cock throbs. Hot. Heavy. Something akin to wetness pumps into me, painting and filling my guts. His body jerks. Tenses. He makes a noise that’s pure depravity. The bed creaks. It wobbles.
It lifts up into the air with us on it. It levitates. Starts to spin slowly.
I keep riding. I’m so close I couldn’t stop if the place was on fire.
Oh. Hold that thought.
I glance quickly around. Phew, nothing is smouldering. He’s learning. But fucking me still makes him lose control, and that’s really fucking hot.
My eyes roll back. My head falls back. My scream echoes around the room. My body goes haywire. Muscles spasm and clench. Nerve endings fire, misfire and fire again. And through it all, pleasure burns so brightly it detonates my soul.
My vision fades. Sound dims. The room falls away.
Oh shit. I’m going to pass out.
Best sex ever.