Chapter Nineteen #3
“Exactly so. He loves you so, so much. And everything he says is because he does. He tells you that you make him weak with desire, desperate to kiss you. That when you kissed him for the first time, he felt himself come apart.”
“But it felt good, though.”
“Oh god, yes.”
“He loved it.”
“He did. He moaned into your mouth, to feel it.”
How do you know that? she wanted to ask him.
Despite how silly that was. This was just a deadly little game. A way to fantasize about something that couldn’t possibly
be real. If it seemed so clear she could almost touch it, that was just because he was convincing. And she wanted to be convinced.
“I can almost make it out. The way it burned through him and into me.”
“And can you make out other things, too? Can you feel other things?”
“His hand in my hair. The way he blushed after licking just a little.”
God, she could actually see it. A million specific details she shouldn’t know—like the fact that moonlight had made that flush
look very deep against the paleness of his skin. How he had pulled back, how his lips had parted. The scent of cut grass in
the air, and that same sweet scent on him.
Is this a flash of her memories, she found herself thinking.
Even though it couldn’t be. He followed it too well.
“He thought he had gone too far,” he said.
And she had to nod.
“He did. But he hadn’t.”
“You liked it. You liked it all.”
“I did, oh god, help me, I did.”
“Now tell me how you let him know that.”
Don’t, she thought. But resisting was far beyond her now.
She could feel her head had gone back. Her whole body was trembling.
And not just over this rolling wave of almost memories.
She could feel him standing so close to her. Right by her side, in a way that should have made her open her eyes. But she
didn’t, she didn’t. Instead, she let herself sigh at the sense of his warm breath against the curve of her throat. She let
herself think of him biting. Then of him always holding back.
And she answered as plain as that other girl would have, with her lovely Bram. “I told him he could do it between my legs,
and I wouldn’t care,” she said, half ashamed of herself. Half sure she had never felt a thrill like those words created in
all her life. And worse:
She wasn’t sure he had, either.
His voice seemed actually breathless, when he spoke. Eager.
“And then what? Then what happened, after you did?”
“He said he wanted to.”
“Yes.”
“So I lifted my skirt. I worked it up over my thighs, slowly. To make sure he could say stop if he liked. But he didn’t. He
let me get it all the way up, right the way around my hips, in a way that let him see everything.”
“And why could he see everything, exactly?”
The question hung in the air—deadlier even than the last ones.
But this time she didn’t hesitate. She couldn’t.
He had been right about the way she wanted the story to end.
Like this, like this, all sweet and tangled up in something like filth.
“Because I wasn’t wearing any underwear,” she said, and could have sworn she heard him make a sound. He’s too good at this game, her mind moaned. Even as she leaned into his next words.
“Yes. Yes,” he said. “Now tell me the reason for that.”
“The tension between us that had simmered all day. Every brush of our hands, every look, every whispered word. It all just
built and built until I could hardly stand to wear them. They rubbed against everywhere I was sensitive, everywhere I was
slick, and so I slipped them off just before we sat out in the garden.”
Outrageous, her real self said.
Delicious, this other her insisted.
And the other her was right. She could feel that exact thing between her own legs, the moment she visualized something so
lewd. It made her moan, and he didn’t make her regret it. “For that reason, but also so he could drink in all of that beautiful
cunt,” he said, and for the first time she let herself think:
The way he curls his tongue around that word is electrifying.
It urged her on, even as she blushed anew at what came next.
“I spread my legs to make sure he could.”
“Then his reaction—”
“He fell on me like a starving man.”
“But you liked it. You like that.”
“God, I loved it. I loved him. All I want is to feel him again,” she said, all of her knowing that she had been brought to
that point by everything they had just shared. By his words, by her words, by the images in her head, like photos from a book
she had never read.
Yet still, the way it made her feel to say the word love.
To be so full of desire for someone who didn’t exist.
Where did this come from? she wanted to cry out.
But before she could, she felt him step away. Cold air hit where his inexplicable warmth had been, hard enough that she knew he had almost touched her. She knew that he had come so close.
And now he was back to where he had been.
She opened her eyes to see him with his hand near his wand, instead of on her.
“Good. Now defend yourself,” he said, as he went for it. But in truth, he didn’t even get close. Her hands seem to come up
of their own accord, already so full of blazing bright magic she couldn’t see through it to him. All she knew is where he
was, and she aimed true.
There was an almighty crash, and when the dust settled, the only thing she could see was a hole in the stage. Dust billowing
up, the splintering of wood. Followed by a hand on the edge of that damage she’d done, as he levered himself back out of it.
“There, you see,” he said, as he shook debris out of his hair. “Once you make the connection, everything else is easy.”