14. Leah #2
I can’t lie to him, not when he can feel the way my body is calling for it, those tendrils curling southward now, wrapping around my thighs and core to create a very different kind of ache.
Memories of our previous times together come easily to my mind. Maybe it’s just the exposed, raw state of my nerves right now, but all I can think of is the exquisite feeling of being with Syrus. The desire to experience that again burns like a thirst at the back of my throat.
Still, I’m not sure I can trust the proposition. Can I take what he offers without losing myself in him?
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I stutter out, even as my eyes flutter closed under a particularly effective touch. He knows what he’s doing, but I’m too drunk on this feeling to be irritated.
“Why not? Let me do this for you, Leah. I thought you agreed that I would help you.”
Something that starts as a laugh tumbles from my lips, turning halfway through into a breathy gasp. Syrus’s attention is still focused on my back for now, but each touch wakes up sensations elsewhere.
“This is not the kind of help I had in mind.”
“Then maybe you need to be more imaginative,” he purrs.
“What should I be imagining?” I ask, because I’m not even teetering on the edge of giving in to this. If I’m honest, I’m already falling.
“Let me take over. Let me touch you like I would if I was there with you.” He caresses the inside of my mind to emphasize his point. “All you have to do is give me permission, Leah, and I’ll do the rest.”
“Yes,” I say, too quickly, making him chuckle.
But that laugh cuts off abruptly when I lie back on the bed and run my hand along the edge of my underwear.
My back still twinges a little, but his touch has done wonders to ease the soreness.
“You want my permission?” I ask. “You can have it. You can take over, but just this once, and only for this.” I try to put some force into my warning on the last part, but I know I sound too eager, gripped with anticipation.
And then any concern about that melts away as he sinks deeper into me, the force of his magic stretching down to my fingertips and toes.
My hand lifts up toward my face, guided by him.
Goddess, this is so weird, but it’s still so good. I lean into the touch as my palm cradles my face. It feels less like my hand than I’d expect—maybe because I no longer have control over it. As Syrus brushes my thumb across my lower lip, my pulse flutters faster at the hollow of my throat.
He makes a noise of approval, then has me shucking my underwear off so I’m completely naked. My skin is so sensitive now that having so much of it bare against the sheets is sending me up the wall, and I writhe against the bed before the steadying hand of Syrus’s magic stills me.
“Relax, Leah,” he murmurs as he slides my hand across my stomach, down between my legs.
I close my eyes and give into the fantasy that it’s not my fingers—my hand—moving lower.
It’s his. He’s there with me. Syrus strokes gentle circles across my clit; the pressure is light but still manages to send twinges of pleasure through me.
It has me pushing my hips down and spreading my legs wider, bucking into the touch, hungry for more.
But his magic presses down on my hips, holding me still. That only makes his firm caresses more exquisite, as I’m pinned in place and left to ride the waves of sensation without escape.
My powerlessness should frighten me, or at least make me uneasy. Instead, I love it, because I still trust him with this. Not with other things. Certainly not my heart. But when it comes to my body, I know I’m safe with Syrus.
“More,” I demand as his firm strokes work me into a frenzy. Another time I might worry about sounding too needy, but right now I’m unable to think about much of anything through the haze except what my body is crying out for.
Syrus dips my fingers lower, and I feel his keen-edged delight as he discovers how slick I already am. He murmurs something so quietly I don’t entirely catch it, but I think it involves the phrase “missed this.”
Then he slides my fingers into me—first one, then a second. I pull my knees back, not caring how it puts added pressure on my sore back, too obsessed with the feeling of fullness between my thighs.
He adds a third finger, bringing a new layer of delicious pressure, stretching me as he pushes deeper, curling my fingertips until they graze the perfect spot inside. I shudder as I feel my climax building.
“Sweet goddess. Yes. Fuck.” I mutter a stream of nonsense as he slowly curls them again, stroking them in a smooth, sensuous movement.
Syrus’s voice caresses the inside of my ear, and I can almost hear his breath against my throat.
“Darkness, this’ll ruin me,” he growls. “Feeling you make yourself come, soaking your own fingers as you call out my name.”
Somehow, even when he’s reducing me to a quivering wreck, I manage to huff out a defiant sigh. “Who said anything about calling your name? I’m not—”
He silences me by stroking my fingers against my inner muscles, pulling a filthy moan from the back of my throat.
“Oh we’ll see about that,” he murmurs as my other hand skims across my stomach, reaching up to my breast. My fingers encircle my hardened nipple, lightly pinching it.
My head falls back, and I find myself thrusting downward onto my hand, overwhelmed by the strange, heady sensation of not being in control as my fingers move inside me, pushing deeper, fucking me.
As wonderful as it feels, the thought still crosses my mind that I wish they weren’t my fingers—that I wish Syrus was truly here, his weight pressing over me, his cock claiming me with powerful thrusts.
I want to see the way the runes twist and stretch on his skin as his muscles tighten, to look into his eyes as he spills inside me. I want to hear that unfiltered, animal groan he makes, like a man who’s finally letting himself loose after centuries of being leashed.
“Oh, fuck, Syrus I’m going to come,” I stammer, as if he can’t feel the pressure building inside me. He only takes me harder, speeding up the thrust of my fingers, the heel of my palm pressing down against my clit until the friction has me spiraling out of control.
I need to reach out and grab hold of something for support, but he doesn’t even allow me that, keeping my free hand roaming across my body, lightly wrapping around my throat, then moving down to tease my breast some more.
It’s too much all at once. I’m going to split apart with the force of it, and instinctively I call out to warn him, or beg him, or I don’t know what.
“Syrus!” I shout into my mind as the wave of tension breaks, my orgasm ricocheting through me. My vision darkens a little at the edges, and I slump back, breathing hard. There’s silence except for my panting, then after a moment I feel Syrus loosen his grip on my body, handing control back to me.
“I told you…” he says smugly, and I’m so undone that it takes me a moment to realize what he means.
“I said it in my head, not out loud,” I throw back. “It doesn’t count.”
Which makes him laugh, a low, long chuckle that soothes me almost as much as his touches.
There was a time when Syrus would hide his smiles from me behind a tight-lipped expression.
Every time I made him laugh, it felt like a triumph, like I’d won something.
That feeling is still there now as I start to drift off.
Maybe I should be wary of it—of anything that softens me toward Syrus—but for once, I’m too sated and sleepy to care.
That self-scolding comes in the morning, when I’m folded over breakfast, shoveling in eggs and chugging down coffee to try and distract myself from what happened last night.
“Well, you look like you’ve been through hell.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
Filippa settles in at the table beside me.
“You disappeared into your room yesterday, and they’re bigger today,” she nods at my back, where the ephilium-style shirts have become very useful, with their two panels that leave openings for wings—or in my case, a set of increasingly protruding ridges.
“I’m assuming it was a rough night. The growth can come in spurts like that. Not fun.”
I close my eyes briefly, absorbing her interesting choice of words and wondering what Filippa would say if I explained that it was more accurate to say that hell had been through me last night.
“Yeah, it’s been…challenging,” I say. “I’m just glad that when I woke up, they didn’t hurt so much I wanted to rip them off anymore.”
I’m still in plenty of discomfort, thinking about what Syrus and I did last night—what I gave in to.
Weakness. That’s how the ephilium would describe it, and to them, weakness is nearly the ultimate sin, second only to cowardice.
In a way it was both. I ignored all my hurt and misgivings about Syrus just because I wanted comfort.
I could’ve weathered it alone if I’d really tried.
It only feels so hard to be on my own because I’m not used to it anymore.
In the past, everything was my own battle to fight—no one knew all of it.
Not Evie or Hodges and certainly not my father or stepmother.
But that changed with Syrus, who was closer to me than anyone had ever been before.
Is it my fault that now it feels unnatural not to have that?
Even after everything, going to him is instinct.
Or at least a very bad habit that I keep indulging in.
Shit. Filippa is talking, and I should be paying better attention.
“…a good sign. It means they’ll come in soon,” she says, and I nod to show I’m listening.
“How do you sleep with them, anyway?” I ask, looking at her own wings.
The thought has only occurred to me recently with the arrival of the ridges.
As far as I can remember, Syrus vanished his wings the few times I slept next to him, so I have no point of reference.
It’s a neat trick, but the ephilium can’t do it. “Can you just never lie on your back?”