Chapter Nineteen #2
“Yes, because that’s all you’re ever concerned about. How cool you look. So how am I supposed to believe that you can whip
that amount of magic out at a moment’s notice, based on soppy feelings you barely understand?”
He sighed. “Because it doesn’t matter if a feeling is out of reach. You find a way to get to it anyway. You claw your way
to it, if you have to. You open wounds to make it happen. You use every trick in the book and force it from yourself.”
“It’s not that easy, with this.”
“Seemed easy the other morning, with me.”
He shrugged one shoulder. As if it to say, Hey, no big deal.
But the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth gave the game away.
“The cause was not you, you arrogant fuck. It was just the things that happened. All that excitement and then the bed and
the manacles and the blood and the sensations. Anyone would lose themselves in something like that. But unfortunately for
me, losing myself in those things is not something I can just do, every time I need to make a spell.”
Or do for any reason ever, she mentally added. Just in case I start liking it any more than I already seem to. Then just had to hope it didn’t show on her face. Or in her body language. Even though both were pretty rigid already. Her
features felt like a mask of irritation; her arms had wrapped themselves around her chest without her even knowing it. She
was safe.
She just didn’t feel safe.
“So imagine it, then,” he said, too soft for her liking.
She swallowed thickly to hear it. Shook her head to cover it.
“I don’t want to do that, either.”
“Because it was very disturbing?”
“Because it involves having to think about you.”
“Then you’re going to have to consider other things that turn you on.”
A jolt went through her, over those last three words. And not just because of the sudden lewdness of them. No—there was also
the thing that swam into her head, the second he said it. That little curled finger almost brushing her cheek. Inexplicably,
impossibly, and right in the middle of him saying more things.
“There must be something. Someone. A boy you liked,” he said.
She had to fumble into answering him, with a head full of nonsense.
“The boys I knew were not very pleasant.”
“Then a story. One of those ones that dance on that glass you all love.”
“Oh my god, you mean a television,” she shoved out. “You’re talking about a television. How on earth do you pass for just a person when you barely know what
a fucking television is? That just seems impossible.”
“There are plenty of people here who live in closed magical communities.”
“I know, but even so. You must see how weird that should look to some.”
“The only thing I see is you trying to change the subject again.”
She went to protest. Or deny it. The words touched her teeth.
Yet somehow, under that knowing gaze, something else just came out instead.
“Because you want to talk about sex. And I have no desire to do anything like that with my mortal enemy. I don’t even want
to do it with myself, quite honestly. I tried this morning and there was just almost nothing there, and even the things that
were felt as uncomfortable to think about as thinking about you. All that gothic stuff about being haunted and hunted and
devoured,” she said, all in a rush of embarrassment.
So of course he just made it worse.
He laughed. He actually laughed.
“And now you’re mocking me.”
“Yes. But not because of that sort of fantasy.”
“Then what exactly do you find so funny?”
“You thinking those are the things you like about those stories.”
“Because I do. I clearly do. It happens the second you show your teeth.”
Why keep confessing things to him? she moaned at herself. Though really, she knew why she did. She had stepped off the edge of the cliff again. And now everything
was descending into madness, at some speed.
“No, it doesn’t,” he said, as he took a step forward. Just one step, but it was slow and deliberate enough that she knew what
was coming. More words, more soft words—god, he knew how to say so many words she had no defenses against. “It happens when
you expect me to, and instead I do something else. I end the story sweetly. I end it different to how it usually does in reality.
In reality, you get torn apart; everything is a tragedy. But in the dream, someone strokes a hand over your face so tenderly,
it leaves you breathless. They whisper sweet nothings in your ear, until you’re boneless. And the moment you think you might
give in to something bloody and brutal, they do all the sensuous things you most like, and magic blooms through your body,
and saves the day. You like kindness, Mina. And especially when you most believe that none is coming.”
Jesus Christ, she thought.
Only it wasn’t just because of what she’d braced for. He didn’t just make it sound good. He was right. And so much so she didn’t even really know how to deny it. “That is not. That is just. You. You can’t know that,” she stuttered
out, half knowing that this would just make things worse.
And it did.
Now she wasn’t just plummeting off the cliff.
She’d hit the sea, at the bottom. And it was like syrup, soft and warm.
She could feel herself sinking into it, right up to her neck.
“Of course I can. I can hear your heart, remember. I know what it races for.”
“Maybe it just happens too close to something else for you to really tell.”
“There is always a difference between a pulse that quickens in terror and one that quickens over something someone finds arousing.
And sometimes those two things do overlap, I will grant you. But not so much with you.”
“Oh, come on. How on earth could anyone pinpoint that?” she said and tried to laugh as she did. But the laugh died when she
realized what she’d just opened the door to. Now he was going to answer.
After taking another step closer.
And dropping his voice one octave lower.
“Because one only makes your heart beat loud in your chest. But the other makes it beat between your legs,” he said. Then
he held her gaze, just for good measure. He waited, until the flush already all over her cheeks deepened. Before he continued,
slow, slow, slow. “Do you want me to be more precise than that? I could tell you exactly where, if you want. I could talk
about the sound of the blood rushing to swell your cunt. The way it beats like a second heart, in that sweet little clit.
Sometimes, I think I can even make out the exact ache that goes through you there, when you most feel it.”
And god, once he had.
She couldn’t help marveling over every explicit word he’d chosen. No more covertly seductive poetry. Now there was things
like cunt in there, things like clit. Raw and real, and in a way she’d never really heard from anyone before. She’d barely seen things like that in books.
It was really no wonder she struggled to answer.
“No, you can’t,” she tried to insist, so faint it seemed almost breathless.
While he only got stronger, more sure.
“Even if I couldn’t, those aren’t the only clues.”
“What other ones could there possibly be?”
“The way you flush—not just in your cheeks, but down your throat, over your chest. How your pupils dilate, how your lips part,
how your breathing changes. And most importantly, there is your scent. Oh, that scent, when the sensation inside you lasts
for longer than a moment. It makes me want to draw things out, just to get a little more of it. To tease you, until there
is nothing but that filling my senses.”
“And by that, you mean—” she started to say, now so sunk into his every word that it seemed like a miracle she stopped herself, before she
finished that terrible thought. But that was okay. That was fine.
He was happy to finish it for her.
“The sweet slickness between your legs, of course,” he said.
Because apparently there was another level of explicit in him.
And this one made her squirm.
“But I never get that way.”
“You are that way now.”
She shook her head. Like someone caught committing a crime.
Even though the crime was his and all the ways he was speaking.
Not just soft now but earnest almost. Passionate.
“Mina, you are so wet I could catch the scent of it from outside the school. I can actually hear it, every time you squirm or squeeze your legs together. It sounds so slick, like you already have someone licking you there. Kissing you. Making you come so hard you soak those little cotton panties I just know you are wearing. I know you are. And not simply because you’re that sort of girl, sensible and sweet about things like that.
No. No. It’s because that sort of material makes a certain sound, when it strains over a swollen, slippery little cunt. When
it turns transparent, because you’re so excited you make a mess,” he said, so fast he had to stop there and take a breath.
She watched his chest heave, with a headful of the filthiest things she could imagine anyone saying.
And somehow, it made her take a step toward him.
She had to remind herself who he was, just to stop from going farther. “You’re just trying to humiliate me now,” she said,
voice breaking in the middle. But he gave no quarter. He came for her, relentlessly.
“If I was, you wouldn’t be enjoying this.”
“I’m not enjoying it.”
“Yes, you are. And you are because you know I’m not saying any of this to be cruel. I’m saying it because I want you to feel it. I want you to know what you actually like and explore it. I want you to hear the words that excite you and sound them
out in your own head, until all you can feel is that sweet ache between your legs. And all you can do is make magic.”
“But it will be your voice I hear saying them.”
“So imagine someone else, then. Someone better than me.”
Like who? she thought. But as soon as she did, it came to her. That face turned toward Lilibet. The being from the Underneath saying
that Bram was the best of us. “Someone kinder. Someone sweeter. Someone more loving,” she said, and as she did, she found
her eyes closing. Just for this. Just so she could see someone like that a little better.