Chapter 19 #2
Shadows making out her body in tones of dark gray with those burning eyes. She had felt like a kind of power you would worship. Ancient divinity. A god you paid to in blood, not anything as frivolous as flowers or wine.
Then, I hated that she let everyone look down on her when she was anything but nothing, but I stopped hated her.
Yet, all she saw was hatred itself and directed at her.
So how could she still want me?
I deserve her hatred. Not her trust in being the first male she consents to be with. Especially when she has all the trauma of her past. She explicitly told us the details of what that fucking devil did.
You can’t even say it’s taking her virginity because that was already taken when she was a child.
I strain to keep control over my blood as I can imagine her in that position. Her small child’s body under his. I’m tall at six foot six and tower over her nearly fully matured body, but Darian’s father – who is twin in physical appearance – is seven feet tall.
I don’t think I would have ever been able to survive anything she went through.
She can’t want me. Whether it’s consciously or not.
I inhale and hold until my lungs burn before slowly exhaling. Then I turn back towards the poison drop and cont –
She’s already watching me.
It makes my heart trip.
Her fox mask pointed up, but I can feel her eyes. I can feel her red eyes. There’s a subtle difference between her watching you with her auraless pink eyes and her true red ones. A weight in her stare that feels like something greater is observing. Something older than just a nineteen-year-old.
There’s no one else in the room aside from us. Music curated from the walls of this room the only company.
For a split moment I contemplate what Darian said about what she wants.
She entered this game knowing every consequence.
She accepted the risks and told Darian her safe word in the events she was caught.
She wanted the actions Varian began. That had been very obvious when I walked into that room and it was drenched in sex. Even if Varian didn’t fuck her.
Does she want to be fucked?
Clearly Darian hasn’t either, though he does prefer oral transgressions. Whatever they’ve been doing, whatever he’s been helping her with, I’m sure it’s along those lines.
Is she trying to overcome her trauma? Is that what Darian has been helping her with? A type of exposure therapy where he looks like her abuser and eats her out?
Except some sort of physical pain has to go along with it.
I pull my shadows and the scent of copper and ozone spikes as I shadow twist to her. Appearing directly behind her.
I watch her shoulders tense when she realizes I’m behind her, but she doesn’t turn around. If I touch her, all that remains is Callahan and Castiel needing to touch her and then she loses the game.
I wonder if she would let me touch her?
My soul pulls with a sharp tug and I oblige by stepping up right behind her. When I inhale my chest brushes against her back. She consumes my lungs and I bow my head so I can bury my nose into her hair.
My body moves without my consent as I inhale her deeply while wrapping my arms around her waist. I tug her back to my chest and dig my fingers into the fabric of her dress wishing it was her skin.
My shadows leave me as I have them seal off all the points of entry and exit.
Locking the rest of the world away as I pull her closer.
So close, but not enough. I want every part of her.
Selfishly, knowing that she hates me or at least will hate me, knowing that the likelihood of her ever wanting me is closer to none, but I want to be hers.
Souls fused, minds entwined, bodies tangled.
“Please,” I beg.
For what. . . ? I don’t know.
I’m praying to divinity who doesn’t know she already owns my belief.
“Mavyn,” I whisper. It sounds like reverence.
“I’m not a god.”
She says it on a breath, her own kind of plea.
Gripping her waist, I force her to turn and face me. Red eyes which I can’t see look up at me, and they follow me down as I lower myself to my knees.
“Good,” I enforce, “because the gods have never answered me and you are the only religion I wish to believe in.”
It’s fact. Truth. Varian would be able to hear it from my soul.
She is my only belief.
It’s only right. Me on my knees before her. I just wish I knew what she was thinking. I wish I could see her face, her eyes, her soul. Just like with Varian, Callahan, and Castiel I have not seen her soul. Can’t. No matter how long I hold eye contact or how much I bare myself to her.
But if she wishes to stay just like this until that bell rings twenty-four times, then I will stay just like this.
Let my shadows prevent anyone from entering and let her win the wish for this game.
As long as my hands are able to stay on her waist like this and she continues to look down at me with those red eyes.
I want to see her red eyes.
Her head jerks as she shakes it. “I – I can’t – “ Her voice wobbles as she takes half a step back, but her hands cling to my wrists. “You deserve better.”
My body moves before my mind can communicate what I want it to do. A type of instinct, my soul knowing what I need to do before I can process it.
I pull her mask off first. The crafted barrier disappearing so I can look at her face. The red of her eyes darker than my own, and hers with a thin ring of black and silver on the edge of her iris. Then I pull her down and settle us on the floor of the dance floor.
Varian had ripped part of her dress when he had used his fingers to touch her, feel her, pleasure her. Though with the overlapping panels of fabric you wouldn’t be able to tell, except it works to my advantage because I push everything behind her so she can sit in my lap without all the bulk.
Not to touch her – even though I could touch her, and it’s whispered in the back of my mind as her hot, wet center sits right over my straining dick – but to hold her. To pull her into my chest and wrap my arms around her because she thinks we deserve better? That I deserve better?
There isn’t a world or lifetime in existence where she would not be worthy. More than worthy.
Except she somehow thinks she doesn’t deserve us because her head buries into my chest and her hands cling to the lapels of my jacket and a sound comes out of her throat that makes my soul ache.
Her head starts shaking again as she chokes out, “How fucking pathetic.”
My fingers thread through her hair from her nape and tighten. I pull her head from my chest and force her to look at me.
Tears stream down her face and instead of meeting red I’m met with the palest shade of pink I’ve seen on her. Her lashes clumped together from her tears but she meets my stare.
“You are not pathetic,” I ground. I imbue as much truth and strength as I can into my words to make her believe them.
I take my other hand and cup her cheek. Running my thumb under her eye, catching the new wave of tears.
“You don’t understand,” she whispers. She gives me the same look she did when she told me this isn’t a choice. “You will never be happy with me. You will never be able to – “
Her words freeze and something within her eyes flinches. I swipe my thumb across her cheekbone, waiting for her to finish or explain. I’ll wait for anything, so long as she doesn’t shut me out any more than she already does.
“You’re touching my face,” she breathes.
My fingers flex where they’re cupping her jaw and cheek. Pieces start clicking together when I shift my hand and trace my thumb over her lips. The same lips that had kissed Varian and she flinched back as if in pain.
Callahan’s question earlier tonight, him telling Varian before to not touch her, Darian saying to make her fight with her skin exposed. . .
Everything revolving around physical – skin on skin it seems – contact.
She’d been cursed through runes to burn from the sun, but she had said that devil would make her burn for all of eternity. It always seemed like there was a deeper meaning to her words.
“Why does it matter?” I breathe back.
I have an idea. Darian has been having some format of sex with her, but it has to be more than just some type of exposure therapy for her. He said to make her fight with her arms and legs exposed to help her because he has a theory about what he’s doing now no longer working.
One of her hands lifts and traces over my hand on her cheek. “It doesn’t burn.”
I inch my face closer to hers. Line our eyes and slowly tilt her head. My lips whisper over hers as I mouth, “Why would it burn?”
“I’m supposed to burn for all of eternity.”
Her eyes deepen in shade as I rest my forehead against hers. “Then let me burn with you.”
Tears build along her waterline and for a moment I think I can see past just the color of her eyes. A flicker of a shadow that wavers.
“I am not a god.” That’s the second time she’s said that. “You shouldn’t speak like that. I am nothing.”
I tighten my fingers still threaded through her hair in warning. “You. Are. Not. Nothing. You are mine.”
Her eyes shutter before they close and those tears along her waterline spill over. “You only say that because you don’t have a choice.”
Do you know what it feels like to never have a choice? This is the closest you will ever feel to knowing what it feels like. Because this is not a choice.
She doesn’t understand.
Fated goes beyond spiritual mumblings of humans speaking about karma and the universe being in their favor and set destinations. To be fated is our souls connecting on a level we even now still do not understand. It is not something we as beings can fully comprehend.
“I promise,” I mouth, my lips still tracing over hers, “I am yours in every lifetime.”
Her eyes snap open as she pulls away and a gasp leaves her mouth as her eyes flood red. The color stark and vivid and pure.
“What did you just say?”
“I am yours,” I repeat, and I will repeat it for the rest of my life and all of the ones after, “in every. Lifetime.”
I see it again. That flicker past the color of her eyes. A shadow of a soul hidden so deep within her not even her fated can see it.
Varian said he didn’t think she had a soul because of how she felt. Castiel said she told him that she had ripped it out, even though Darian corrected him by saying she had purposefully lied to him.
But I see now.
Her soul is there. And I will wait for however long she needs me to until she wishes to show it to me.