Chapter Twenty #3
for pleasure. So ready to feel it,” he said, his own voice almost as breathless as hers now. As if it was actually exciting
him, to hear her soft cries of surprise and pleasure. To get that rock of her body, almost against his. To know that she was
fucking herself—desperate enough about it now that the sound filled the stairwell.
Though she would never have said for certain.
She would never have truly believed it.
If she hadn’t opened her eyes, just as her pleasure seemed to reach its peak—just as it broke over her body in a great unstoppable
wave—and seen his face. How lost in this it looked, as if nothing mattered but her pleasure and his delight in it. The way
he’d leaned into her, so close to touching she could see him trembling with the effort to not. And just as she gave in entirely,
she let her gaze drop down, between them. Over that tautly held body, that trembling live wire.
All the way to the place between his legs.
And the undeniable evidence of what this had done to him.
The heavy shape of it, so clear she just couldn’t help it.
She said his name. She called it out desperately, as she shuddered through more bliss than she could ever have imagined her
body contained. It seemed to claim her sex, before swelling through her belly, her chest, oh god, she could feel it in her
teeth. It ran right up to the roots of her hair, leaving her boneless and shaking.
Half of her wanting to be embarrassed about what she’d done and said.
But the other half knowing she could never be.
The way he had behaved made it too easy to not.
She found herself laughing, hard to believe what it had been like. One hand coming up, to touch his face. To make him open
his eyes and look at her. I think maybe things are different to the way I thought, she imagined saying. But before she could, he caught her wrist. He stopped her.
And when he met her gaze, he didn’t seem pleased.
He seemed agonized. “Make a knife,” he said. So coldly she almost couldn’t. It shut down that lovely sense of being open to
everything, right away. But then he saw her hesitation and snarled; he snapped at her, teeth so sharp that it just happened.
As if all her instincts were aligned now.
She didn’t have to relax and wait for desire.
It was just there, in the background. It let her form a blade, as bright and sharp as the one he had made, all that time ago.
And when he snapped again, like something now barely leashed, she brought it up. She held it to his throat, just to show she
could. See, she wanted to say. See, it’s okay now. I can defend myself.
But somehow that didn’t appear to matter.
It wasn’t enough to him, it seemed.
Because he got hold of that wrist, too. He held it firmly, so firmly it almost hurt.
And he didn’t use it to force her hand away. He used it to draw her hand closer. He pulled until that knife was so near to him, that the light from it backwashed over his skin. It bathed him in that shimmering
blue glow, in a way that made him seem beautiful.
Yet so terrible at the same time.
And even more terrible than that, when she realized what he was doing. She felt that knife actually make contact, and let out a sound of horror. But still he kept forcing her hand. Still he kept pressing and pressing, until her arm was almost shaking with the effort of fighting him.
She actually screamed over it.
“Stop it. What are you doing?” she heard herself say. And still he wouldn’t relent. In fact, he did the opposite of it. He doubled down, until there was
blood, actual blood. She had to beg him with her eyes, but when she did, he turned away. He closed his own, so he couldn’t see how frantic she was to not do this.
Because doing this was killing him.
He wanted her to kill him.
There was no way around it. No chance to redefine it.
He didn’t care about anything, except the oblivion that knife represented.
All this time it wasn’t me you wanted to hurt, she thought wildly, as she fought him. It was you. It was you. It was always you. “Just let it happen,” he said, but god, how could she? She had to stop this. She had to snap the connection between herself,
and her magic.
But of course the irony was: It was too in her to do it now.
It didn’t want to go. He was going to die, because he had taught her too well.
That’s the point, she thought frantically. That’s the point. And then she did the only thing left to her: not moving away from her magic, but going toward it. Fully toward it, in a way she didn’t think was possible. She pictured what she needed, bright and clear, and then just
pushed herself right into its depths.
And the second she did, she felt it.
A doorway emerging between them, right through the handle of her blade.
Then all she had to do was push him through, to his room beyond.
Just one little push, and he was on the other side.
And just as he tried to get back to her, just as he launched himself off the ground and toward the doorway she had opened between them, she closed her fist. She made it seal him in, somewhere safe.
Though she didn’t feel triumph when she did.
How could she, when she caught his look, just as the magic she had made winked out.
Nothing but despair, of a kind she knew she would never now be able to unsee.