The Shape of Want #2
"That is interpretation."
One corner of his mouth moved.
"You have become unbearable."
"Accurate description."
He opened his eyes.
"Pressure increased when you pulled the tail. Interest increased when I reacted. It is closer now than when we started."
"Does it feel like yours?"
He took his time.
"The pleasure does. The interest in the pleasure is harder to divide."
Marin accepted that without improving it. She moved her hand upward, over his sternum, along the side of his throat. Oliver tipped his chin back by a fraction. Hunger thickened again.
"Do you want me to continue?"
"Yes."
"Then ask."
His eyes flashed.
"Please continue."
Marin kissed his throat. The sound he made was quiet and involuntary. Bhodi reacted at once, darkness lifting along his back in a shape that suggested reaching because Marin's mind had no better vocabulary for it. She felt no touch. Only presence becoming more exact.
Oliver's tied hands moved toward her waist. Marin caught the rope between them.
"Not yet."
He stopped. The shadow followed a heartbeat later, enough delay for Marin to look past him at the wall.
Oliver followed her attention without turning.
"It followed after me."
"Yes."
His jaw tightened.
"Do you want it farther back?"
Marin considered the question in her body before answering it with theory.
Her pulse had accelerated from more than fear.
The visible wrongness of Hunger gathering around Oliver had become erotic in ways she did not entirely trust, which was precisely why she had refused to test this while anyone was bleeding or a building was collapsing.
"Not yet."
Oliver breathed out. Marin loosened her grip on the rope tail and stepped back.
"Sit."
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The harness shifted correctly. She checked the line beneath one arm, then the wrist tie. Warm skin. Normal color. Oliver watched every small inspection with a concentration that would have been infuriating in any other context.
"You enjoy being evaluated," Marin said.
"Only by terrifying women."
"Poor survival strategy."
"My survival record remains statistically impressive."
Marin leaned close enough that her mouth brushed his ear.
"Your confidence interval is terrible."
Oliver laughed. Bhodi surged at the laughter.
Marin felt it this time as pressure along the room rather than along her skin.
Hunger wanted the laugh because Oliver had laughed.
Wanted the next one. Wanted whatever reaction Marin could pull from him and whatever reaction Oliver could pull from her in return.
It was not difficult to understand why Hollowfang had become obsessed with measuring preference.
The difficult part was remembering that understanding did not make the appetite safe. Marin straightened.
"Voice."
Oliver's amusement vanished.
"How much?"
"Enough to carry. No command." Marin left one hand on the rope at his sternum.
Oliver studied her face. "And if it changes?"
"I tell you."
He watched her for another beat. Then drew breath.
"Marin."
Her name crossed the room strangely. The sound was still Oliver.
His cadence, his breath, the faint roughness sleep left behind.
Beneath it moved the inherited resonance that allowed a voice to reach farther than it should without changing the words themselves.
Marin felt the sound in her sternum before the echo left the walls.
The water in the bedside glass trembled. Rain tracked down the windows in long silver lines. Marin stepped between his knees.
"Again."
"Marin."
Pleasure moved through her, immediate enough that she refused to romanticize the cause. She had chosen the sound. She wanted him. She wanted what his voice did to distance. Those facts could coexist without proving anything cleaner.
Bhodi rose behind him. Darkness pulled away from the wall and gathered along Oliver's shoulders. Long suggestions of fingers appeared where no hand existed, not touching him so much as making the absence around him shaped. Oliver felt it. His breath caught.
Marin placed two fingers against his pulse.
"Still yourself?"
His eyes met hers.
"Painfully."
"Do you want it closer?"
The question made him still. Marin did not rescue him from the answer. Oliver looked toward the shadow beside his shoulder, then back to her.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I want to know whether it can stop after it gets something it wants."
Marin waited. His mouth tightened.
"And because I want it closer."
There was the less respectable half. Marin rested two fingers beneath his chin and kept his face turned toward hers.
"That one was the important answer."
"You have alarming priorities."
"So do you."
She kissed him once and then looked at the shadow.
Bhodi did not need to understand Marin's language the way Oliver did, and she had no interest in staging a treaty with Hunger.
Oliver was the route and the person with whom she had negotiated.
If Bhodi wanted access through him, the condition belonged first to Oliver.
Marin looked back at Oliver.
"Closer, if you still want it."
He inhaled. The answer came without resonance.
"Closer."
Bhodi moved.
The darkness folded around Oliver's shoulders and chest, following the rope without crossing it.
Marin saw the silk disappear briefly into blackness and emerge untouched a heartbeat later.
The suggestion of fingers settled along the outside of the harness, tracing lines Oliver could feel only because Hunger made his awareness of them sharper. His eyes closed.
The reaction that moved through his body was immediate. Marin caught his jaw.
"Eyes."
He opened them. His pupils were wide. Sapphire remained around them.
"Describe."
Oliver swallowed.
"Pressure at my shoulders. Heat along the spine. Every place the rope touches feels more distinct."
"Pain?"
"No."
"Who wants me closer?"
His bound hands flexed.
"I do."
"Bhodi?"
The shadow tightened. Oliver's mouth curved despite himself.
"I believe it has formed an opinion."
"That was not the question."
He breathed once.
"Yes."
Marin stepped closer. Oliver's knees parted for her without instruction.
The movement was his. She placed one hand on his shoulder and the other against the rope at his sternum, feeling silk, skin, heartbeat, and the impossible cold of shadow gathered on the other side.
Bhodi had not touched her. Marin kissed Oliver before Hunger could make that absence feel like a promise.
She allowed the kiss to deepen until his bound hands rose and stopped just short of her waist. The effort of not taking the next inch showed in the tension of his forearms without becoming strain. She moved closer until his knuckles brushed her shirt.
Oliver made a low sound. Hunger reacted harder. The darkness at his shoulders flowed down his arms, following the rope toward his wrists. Another strand reached around his side and stopped at the place Marin's thigh touched his knee. The pressure wanted through.
Marin felt it as certainty rather than touch. An available closeness. A route already open because she had allowed the first part. She drew back. Oliver followed by instinct.
The rope caught him before his hands reached her. Bhodi did not stop. Darkness slid past the harness line toward the space Marin had occupied. It moved only an inch beyond the harness line. Marin stepped completely out of reach.
"Back."
Oliver stopped moving at once. Bhodi did not. The shadow stretched another inch from his shoulder. Marin's pulse kicked hard. Oliver's face changed.
"Bhodi."
Hunger tightened around him. The room felt suddenly smaller. Nothing had closed. The door remained unlocked, the knife remained on the desk, and either of them could end the exchange with a word. The raw possessiveness gathering behind Oliver made those exits feel more important, not less.
Bhodi had been given access, and the inch it had been offered had already begun behaving like a route Hunger expected to remain open. Oliver's eyes sharpened.
"Back."
He used no siren resonance, no possibility exclusion, and no threat. The shadow held.
Marin watched Oliver feel the resistance. Wanting moved across his face, and not all of it belonged to Hunger. He wanted the pressure. Wanted to learn what happened if he let it remain. Wanted Marin closer again. Wanted to prove the boundary would hold without ending the exchange.
None of the wants displaced the others.
"Oliver," she said.
His gaze found hers.
"What do you want?"
The question hurt him more now.
"You."
"And?"
He looked toward the shadow.
"This."
Marin waited. His bound hands closed slowly.
"On my terms."
He looked down at the darkness along his arms.
"Back."
Bhodi resisted, then withdrew with unmistakable reluctance. The darkness dragged itself from the space between Oliver and Marin and settled behind the rope line. The suggestion of fingers remained at his shoulders, tense and displeased, but the room opened again.
Oliver exhaled as though he had been holding breath underwater. Marin stayed where she was. He looked at her.
"Still?"
Marin heard more than one question inside the word. Was she still willing? Did she still want Bhodi in the room after Hunger had shown its teeth? Did she still trust Oliver to tell her if his own answer changed?
Marin listened to her own body. Fear had not vanished. Neither had desire.
"Yes."
Oliver's shoulders lowered. Marin returned to him and reached for the knot joining his wrists instead of resuming the touch Bhodi had tried to follow.
Oliver looked down.
"Change?"
"Yes."
Marin loosened the connection and freed his right hand completely. The left remained tied into the harness, mobile but limited. She rubbed her thumb across the newly freed wrist until warmth returned evenly. Bhodi stayed back. Oliver watched her.
"Why this one?"
Marin placed his right hand flat against his own thigh.
"Because I am changing what is available."
His eyes darkened.
"To whom?"
"Everyone."
She stepped between his knees again.
"Your right hand is free. It does not touch me until I put it somewhere."