Chapter 75
Quill
Inkbird
FALLING FOR YOUR EYES
DA TI
Just as I thought Davian had fallen asleep, he slid down beside me and began kissing my neck again. More intimately, more intensely, pressing his lips against my skin almost desperately, so that my heart clenched in panic.
His hand traced circles on my stomach, and I didn’t know what was burning more. These kisses or his tenderness.
He wasn’t hard anymore – I could feel it against my leg as he pressed himself against me – yet he was still interested in my body.
This… was completely new to me.
Over the past three years, I’d slept with a few men, and they’d all thrust into me mechanically. Many of them had only needed a minute before they had finished and pulled out of me, only to then slide off me, turn away, and fall asleep, or disappear into the bathroom to shower.
For the first time, I felt… at ease.
It was as if the blue thread that had almost completely cocooned us no longer hurt. As if it found peace in the fact that we were lying together. Two souls, trapped in two heated naked bodies that couldn’t get enough of each other.
However I’d managed to get through to Atrinus, it had made me addicted, curious to see if he was capable of everything Atrinus did with Velina in Batteries of Ink.
Whatever Atrinus was to him, it seemed to be part of what he was trying to hide deep inside himself. Something powerful he was fighting against. And something told me that this was only the tip of the iceberg.
He had come inside me. I felt it, hated how good it felt – as if I now had a part of him inside me – because this was the riskiest thing I’d ever done with my body. And the worst part? I wanted to do it again. Wanted more…
Davian hadn’t been my first time, but he was the only first time I ever wanted to remember.
His hand pressed more longingly against my stomach, his kisses leaving less and less of my skin untouched, until he was breathing heavily into my neck and I felt his hardness return.
I turned my head toward him so that he was forced to look up, eventually turned completely toward him, and in our eyes, there was the reflection of what I had successfully kept under water until now: fear.
I slid down toward him, cupped his face in my hands, ran two fingers of one hand over the soft gray hair at his temple, and let my fingertips wander back over his stubbly jaw, toward his ink-smudged lips.
He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“I don’t want this to end…” he whispered hoarsely, and my finger froze on his chin.
The tears came back far too quickly.
“Then let’s make the most of it while we can,” I whispered back.
He knew it would never be up to me, but he should also know that it was okay if it was up to him. That he didn’t owe me anything.
My life was chaotic, his complicated. A combination he was rightly afraid of.
If this were to end soon, as much as it hurt, I would have to leave…
For the rest of my life, I would wait for him, even if he never came. This wasn’t about me. It was about him knowing that he would always have a place where he was allowed to break down.
He closed both his eyes, breathing heavily, and I ran my fingers through his hair, using every second to imprint every millimeter of his face into my memory, as far as the candlelight allowed.
Every uneven feature, like the two tiny pearls under his right eye, the finely defined structure of his straight nasal bone, the various light shades of his stubble, the pale, thick eyelashes, evenly and delicately curved.
He opened his eyes, smiled, and there was something melancholic about it, yet it was enough to make the moths in my stomach flutter.
I’ll Stay Close
David Buckley, Luke Richards
He pushed up on his elbows and slid off the bed.
I was tempted to stare at his hardness – veined and glistening with my wetness – as he pulled his pants back up, fastened the button, and pulled his belt completely out with one hand before taking it over to the desk.
Only now did I notice the smudges of ink where his finely defined abs pressed against his skin.
“Wait here,” he said before disappearing from the room.
Where was I supposed to go?
I let my gaze drift over the ink stains decorating the cream-white sheets. Davian’s bed was a mess of ink, though I hadn’t even turned over.
I closed the inkwell next to me, but noticed that as I tried to sit up, something was leaking out of me, so I let my body sink back into the pillows, slipping out of my soaked panties.
Shit. I wasn’t even on the pill.
When had I had my last period?
Just then Davian came back, a white towel in his hand, and I watched, confused, as he stepped around the bed before he sat down on the edge and gestured toward my closed thighs.
Instinctively, I spread them, and we both looked down at the sticky white mess he’d left on my smooth, glistening pussy.
The fact that it turned me on didn’t make it any better.
Davian’s jaw clenched, and oh how I wished I knew what was going through his head.
I spread my legs wider, which made him look up at me with a hungry gaze.
“Don’t you dare, or I’ll make it worse.”
Overwhelmed, I took a deep breath, wanted him to make good on that threat, but instead he leaned toward me, let the towel slide between my legs, and gently wiped my center.
“I’m sorry.” I looked up, confused, as he continued to clean me, noticing remorse in his eyes. “I didn’t even think to ask if you’re on the pill.”
I bit my lower lip in embarrassment, because I, too, hadn’t given a second thought to putting a barrier between our skin.
They had all used a condom. I had insisted on it every time.
How had the heat of our lovemaking been able to cloud my mind so much?
“You…”
I slowly shook my head, and Davian stared at me for a long time.
“When was your last period?”
The memories came flooding back.
“A week ago, maybe two.”
I grimaced apologetically, feeling unease spread through me, seeing it appear on his face as well.
“Fuck…”
He looked down as if this were giving him a headache, and a sense of helplessness washed over me.
I didn’t want to get pregnant, didn’t want to end up like my mother, had decided that as soon as I had enough money, I would get sterilized. Because I would never bring children into this world. No matter how perfect my partner was.
How could I have been so careless?
“Would you get me the morning-after pill?”
Davian looked up, seemed to think for a moment, before placing his hand on my thigh with an indecisive expression.
“Are you sure? The dose of hormones in that pill is…”
“Please”
Normally, I was strictly against letting any hormones into my body, which was why I often had to explain to Lara why I didn’t take the pill. Something about how it manipulated the female body put me off. But this was a one-time thing. Necessary.
He nodded slowly.
“Okay. I’ll get it for you first thing tomorrow morning before my lectures.”
I nodded again, not wanting to think about tomorrow, about that place, about the people on that campus.
Lara wasn’t there, Monica would tear me apart over my exam results, Tony would try to talk to me again, and I’d run into Father, see Arnold…
The crushing feeling in my stomach returned, along with the nausea, but before it could crush me under its weight, Davian stood up, leaned down toward me, and slid his hands under the backs of my knees.
“Hold on to me,” he said, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting him lift me up.
Butterflies (feat. AURORA)
Tom Odell, AURORA
“Where are you taking me?”
He left the room with a hint of a playful smile, carried me down the dark hallway, and opened the bathroom door with his foot.
The sound of running water and warm candlelight greeted us, and I looked puzzled at the bathtub, which was already half-full, with candles flickering on its rim and on the bathroom cabinet, just like in the bedroom.
“Let me bathe you.”
With those words, he let me slide into the hot water and turned off the faucet.
I probably looked at him like a penguin that had been captured and, after days in the dark, released into a desert, because he smiled before he knelt down next to me beside the tub and reached for a washcloth.
“Do you want to make sure I get addicted to all of this?”
For a moment, his smile threatened to fade, but he managed to hold on to it, refusing, for once, to let reality take hold of him.
“I’ve never wanted anything other than for you to feel comfortable.”
My heart was pounding when Davian dipped the washcloth in the water, squeezed some shower gel onto it, and began carefully rubbing the writing off my shoulder.
My hand landed on his, making him pause, and he looked at me searchingly.
“No. I want it to stay. As long as possible.”
What the water wouldn’t wash away, time would fade. But days would have to pass before that happened.
He hesitated, but then moved the washcloth away from my shoulder, letting it wander into the water between my legs instead, until I felt it against my still-throbbing slit.
An aroused sigh escaped my lips, swollen from his demanding kisses, and he held my gaze as he began to rub me slowly.
Davian was so gentle, letting the washcloth wander over my body, watching me with a gleam in his eyes that made me wonder if it came from the candles.
He got up, left the bathroom, and I used the moment to wash my hair before stepping out of the tub.
I was just about to reach for a fresh towel when Davian returned, tossed what could only be the bedding into the washing machine, and quickly grabbed a towel, which he wrapped around my body.
Once again, he lifted me up, reminding me how desperately I had wanted my whole life to be someone’s backpack, to be carried around and looked after.
It had taken so long for me to realize that it was Davian I wanted to be carried through this world by. He made me forget that my feet were bleeding.
Still half-wet, he laid me back down into his freshly changed bedding, continued to dry me off before pulling the blanket over the lower part of my body, eventually reaching for a black notebook in which he began copying some of the passages he had left on my body.
I closed my eyes, listened to the sound of his fountain pen on the paper, tried to hold onto how he had turned me into his paper.
At some point – I couldn’t even hold it back – the question simply slipped from my lips.
“Why don’t you like Batteries of Ink?”
When he hesitated, I opened my eyes and turned my head toward him.
“I felt like I couldn’t satisfy my readers with Atrinus.”
He tried to focus on my skin again, continued writing, and I imagined how much his creativity must have suffered under his perfectionism. Perfectionism that had made him the man he was today.
“Authors don’t have to satisfy us with their characters. They have to teach us a lesson.”
He paused, staring at the notebook.
“What lesson did my book teach you?”
I smiled tentatively.
“That there’s nothing in this life worth giving up the one thing that saved my life.”
I meant writing. I was sure of it. I wanted him to know that writing was the one thing that had kept me going for so long.
But the moment I said it, I knew that wasn’t the only thing that had saved my life. That, in the end, it hadn’t even been strong enough to stop me at the crucial moment.
Or maybe it had?
I would have found out that night. But Davian had been quicker…
Davian stared at me for a while before breaking out of his trance and getting up to return the notebook to the desk.
Prelude: The Atlas March
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, MDR Rundfunkchor,
MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Kristjan J?rvi
My gaze lingered on the large tattoo. The lettering that stretched across his shoulder blades, marked by my scratches.
“What does it say?” He turned to me, looking confused for a moment, so I sat up straight and pointed behind him. “On your back.”
Davian came back and sat down next to me, turning around so I could read the typewriter lettering.
INKBIRD
He flinched slightly as I ran my fingers over the lettering, savoring the warm, taut skin beneath my fingertip.
“My first pen name.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, trying to put two and two together until Davian confirmed it for me.
“Back then, I used to fold more paper cranes. Dozens after every writing session.”
I smiled sadly.
Always a perfectionist. Something I would never be.
“Why did you change it to Atrianima?”
“It felt less vulnerable.”
My curiosity about Atrinus returned, and the next question was on the tip of my tongue, but just as I opened my lips to ask him, he turned back to me.
“Enough about Atrianima.”
He slipped past me, sliding behind me, and I turned my head toward him in confusion.
He smiled again.
“Let me braid your hair.”
His hands slid into my hair, just like the other day, only this time he began massaging my scalp, so that I leaned my head against his fingers with a soft sigh.
How could someone so tormented inside be so gentle?
Davian smoothed my hair before dividing it into sections and calmly began braiding it into a simple braid.
“Inkbird?”
I felt him pause, hesitate.
“Blue?”
No matter what we did next, whether I somehow managed to stay in his life or whether our paths would part, he couldn’t go on living like this. That wouldn’t have been worth all we’d put each other through up to this point.
“You wanted to give me a thousand reasons. Give me a thousand paper cranes instead.”
For you I fold a paper crane.
Filled with ink blood, our pain.
You seem to want to bleed us dry.
My fragile nocturne butterfly.
– Leaking Batteries Diary