6. Chapter 6 #4
“Ah!” Levi jumped, scrambling to grab Ashmedai’s arm. The last wave had carried a family of moth crabs onto the shore.
They looked like giant spider-legged crabs, but where they got the first part of their name was often overlooked, until they spread their wings and took off toward the rocks.
“You have nothing to fear,” Ashmedai said, hushed and close beside Levi. “Moth crabs are harmless. Just about a hundred times larger than a housefly.”
“Housefly?” Levi looked at him, and because of his clinging, their mouths were but a hair’s breadth apart.
“Never mind. You were saying?”
Levi took a steadying breath but didn’t move away. “When you smooth my stitches with your magic, it feels… pleasant. Too pleasant. Intimate.”
Ashmedai had assumed as much given the way Levi gasped and flushed during the process. “Do you not like that feeling?”
“I like it very much.”
“Then why don’t you ask for more?” Ashmedai grinned, because in that moment, he could have given Levi anything .
Levi shifted against Ashmedai and took one of his hands. He brought it upward to rest upon the stitches of his right cheekbone.
The pulse of violet shadow magic Ashmedai brought forth was almost the same color as the dark depths of the lake, with hints of the brighter violet in Levi’s eyes.
“Lilacs….” Levi said with a shiver.
“Hm?”
“You smell… no.” Levi’s nose crinkled. “It’s not you, but….” After he trailed off, before Ashmedai could lower his hand, Levi drew it over to the opposite cheekbone. Ashmedai did as was silently requested, calling on his magic once more to smooth the stitches to flawless skin.
As before, Levi shivered, though his eyes seemed to clear with realization. “It happened before, yesterday, when you healed my heart.”
“What happened before?”
“I thought I smelled lilacs, but it wasn’t you. You smell lovely, but more like… sandalwood. The lilacs were a daydream… I just didn’t realize it.”
Ashmedai felt his expression slacken, much as he hated to lose this good feeling.
“It felt like I was somewhere else,” Levi continued, “with lilac bushes all around me.”
“You’re sure?” Ashmedai pressed. “But your draught….”
“It was working. I hadn’t had a daydream in days. But I think, when you make me whole, they grow stronger.”
Because smoothing Levi’s stitches made him more one person, and his mind remembered the last time it had been the sum of its parts.
“Would you like me to stop?” Ashmedai asked.
“No.” Levi clung to him, lifting Ashmedai’s hand toward the stitches through his brow. “I thought I didn’t like the daydreams, that I didn’t want them. I can’t explain why now, but… I want to see more.”
Guilt clawed into Ashmedai’s chest. He couldn’t refuse, and so he smoothed those stitches too, and Levi smiled wider.
“Yes. I first started having the daydreams after you fixed my wrist. They scared me then but… I want to know. I need to know. Please. I can almost hear a busy street, but I know it’s not the market.” He closed his eyes, those beautiful violet eyes, lost to whatever he was remembering.
Ashmedai obeyed, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to lose Levi’s unique smile with stitches at the corners of his mouth.
Instead, he brought his hand downward, but he had already gotten the stitches across Levi’s heart that might have been reached by untying the top of his tunic, and the stitches along Levi’s neck seemed so final, as those were what had first connected the real him to his other parts.
That left places that were harder to reach, that Ashmedai would have to seek with blind hands—unless he undressed Levi right there on the beach.
The prospect was far too tempting.
Holding his breath for a moment, maybe because Levi was too, Ashmedai gripped the fabric at Levi’s waist and twisted his fingers to coil the tunic upward. Soon he felt the cool skin of Levi’s stomach.
Ashmedai reached beneath the tunic, letting the fabric fall about his wrist, and felt his way to a line of stitches beneath Levi’s navel. He smoothed them with tender strokes of his magic.
Then he did the same to a line above Levi’s navel.
Then to some around the small of Levi’s back.
Then to some up the middle of Levi’s back.
Then carefully around the curve of each shoulder where Levi’s arms connected to his torso.
By the end, Levi was flush against Ashmedai, with deep, shuddery gasps leaving him. Ashmedai had started to pant too, awed by the indigo in Levi’s cheeks and the parting of his equally dark lips. Sprinkles started to fall on them from the coming storm, and Levi’s eyes were bright with excitement .
“What can you see?” Ashmedai asked.
“I-I don’t know how,” Levi said in wonder, “but I think it’s Emerald.”
All Ashmedai wanted was to keep giving Levi pleasure, because he knew the truth of the daydreams was not something to smile about.
He stroked with his hand, still beneath the tunic, down Levi’s back until he reached another edge of fabric. Ashmedai didn’t know where all Levi had stitches below the waist, but most of what remained had to be there.
Boldly, Ashmedai dipped his fingers into Levi’s trousers, following the gentle curve of his backside to a line of stitches that connected Levi’s left leg. He followed that line, first along the outer thigh up Levi’s hip, and then… inward .
Levi’s eyelids fluttered, and if he still saw Emerald behind them, that didn’t seem to matter, for all he moaned was, “ Ash .”
Before Ashmedai’s hand could fully reach between Levi’s legs, Levi convulsed with an arch upward and proceeded to sag in such a telling way that the sated look in his eyes wouldn’t have been needed to know what happened.
Ashmedai was tempted to reach between Levi’s legs anyway. He wanted to touch him, to feel what he had helped cause and spur Levi toward even more passion.
A spark of blinding lightning heralded an almost instant and deafening crack of thunder. The rain started in earnest, and Levi laughed.
“I guess the moth crabs were being prudent when they sought the rocks.” Levi held out a hand toward the falling rain. “I kind of like it.”
He was marvelous, peerless, a true vision of ignorant beauty, as if believing he was in the eye of the storm, even though his hair was plastered to his face and thunder and lightning raged all around him.
“Levi….” Ashmedai said, his words nearly lost to the wind picking up sp eed, “I lied to you.”
“What?” Levi let his cupped hand fall. “Lied about what?”
Ashmedai withdrew from Levi. “Your daydreams are more than I admitted. Braxton made you from parts of people—real living people. You are not a construct. Your dreams are memories. From this part of you.” He hesitated to reach for Levi’s cheek but allowed himself that much, feeling bolstered when Levi leaned into his touch. “Your mind persists.
“When I confronted Brax, he said that telling you the truth might cause more harm than good, and I foolishly listened. He swears all the people were lost causes, swears he will never do such a thing again, but… I should have told you as soon as I knew. I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry. I feared losing you. It was selfish. ”
Levi had yet to deny Ashmedai, but when he lifted a hand to take hold of Ashmedai’s wrist, surely he would tear the hand from his face.
Instead, he held it there.
“You asked me what I wanted, if I would choose another life.”
“I should have—”
“You were trying to protect me, and in the end, you still told me the truth.” Levi drew Ashmedai’s hand from his face, but not to brush it aside. He brought it to his lips and kissed the back of it. “Thank you.”
The swell of love Ashmedai felt was more than he would ever believe he deserved.
He crushed Levi to him. “Are you all right, knowing this?” Ashmedai asked, wet lips brushing Levi’s equally damp ear.
“I don’t know. I’m a bit of a mess though… elsewhere.” If the chill of the storm hadn’t been causing Levi to shiver, Ashmedai might have missed his renewed blush.
“ Oh .” Ashmedai pulled back, having forgotten what his shadow-touch had caused.
“I should help you clean up. And we need to get out of the storm. Would you like to see my castle, Levi?” He hadn’t invited someone to the castle, other than Dreya, who had more so invited herself, in longer than he could remember.
Levi’s eyes glittered through the rain like beacons leading home. He gave an emphatic nod, and Ashmedai whisked Levi into his arms and toward a large enough shadow for them both, diving inside with Levi clinging to him.