Chapter 7 #3
I didn’t.
He held my face in both hands, thumbs on my jaw, his body braced above mine, the firelight running the length of his back and into the hollow at the base of his spine.
His cock was hard and hot between my thighs, but he did not move.
He only looked at me, waiting, the shimmer at his cheekbone gone almost white.
He said, “This is the part that seals the bond.”
He moved his hand from my cheek to the underside of my jaw, tilting my face so I could see him, and then—with a precision that bordered on the cruel—he drew the head of his cock up the length of my slit, catching on the clit for a half-second, then stopping at my entrance.
He did not push in.
He said, “Tell me you want it.”
I said, “I want it.”
He did not move.
He said, “Again.”
I said, “I want it.”
He pressed, the head just inside, a pressure that ran up the inside of my thighs and into the pit of my stomach.
He said, “Once more, baby. The bond only believes a want if it’s said three times.”
I closed my eyes. He let me, for a second, and then his hand came to my throat, not tight, but definite.
He said, “Open them.”
I did.
I looked at the ceiling.
I saw the two of us in the mirror, my body splayed wide beneath his, his body above mine like an animal poised to break into a run.
I said, “I want it. I want you. I want you to fuck me.”
He entered me, slow, the length of him pushing in until my body took all of him.
There was no friction, only the give of the muscle, the way the body makes room for a thing it has always, secretly, been waiting for.
The bond at my wrist went molten. The base of my spine lit with a sharp, clean click, like a switch being thrown.
The room filled with gold.
He started to fuck me.
Not fast, not at first. He pulled out almost all the way, then in again, slow, each stroke going deeper.
His hand held my wrists above my head, and when I tried to turn away from the mirror he said, “No, baby. You look. You see what you look like when you’re being fucked by someone who wants you more than anything in the world. ”
I watched.
I watched the way my breasts moved, the way my mouth opened, the way the color flared in my skin.
I watched the way his body covered mine, the muscles at his back moving like a river under ice.
I watched the way his cock moved inside me, the shadow of it at my mound, the slick shining at the base of it every time he drew back.
I had never looked at myself like this.
Not even in the worst moments of my own shame, not even in the bright-lit public restrooms of downtown Brooklyn, had I ever looked at my own body with the level gaze of a person who deserved to be looked at.
He went harder.
He did not lose the rhythm. He held my wrists in one hand, then reached down and put two fingers to my clit, circling, slow, exact.
He said, “You tell me when you want to come.”
I said, “I want to.”
He said, “You can do better, baby.”
I said, “I want you to make me come. I want you to fuck me until I scream.”
He said, “Good girl.”
He circled the clit, pressed, then started to fuck in harder, each thrust deep and sure. The sound in the room changed—the slap of skin, the rhythm, the animal groan of the bed under us—but he did not lose the focus, the way he looked at me in the mirror, the way he made me look at myself.
I felt the orgasm building, the way it had the night before, but bigger, wider, more structural. My whole body was alive with it.
He said, “Look at me.”
I did.
He fucked in, slow, then held, all the way at the end, the head of his cock pressed right up against the deepest part of me, and then he curled his hips, a motion so small and so calculated that it shot the pleasure up through my whole body like a spark up a fuse.
I came.
I came with my eyes wide open, watching myself in the mirror, watching the body of a woman I had never recognized as beautiful break apart under the hands of a man who had spent a thousand years waiting to want something as only himself.
The color in my skin went prismatic.
It was not just gold anymore. It was red, and blue, and violet, and a white so pure it was almost transparent.
The bond ran up the insides of my arms, across my shoulders, down my chest, and into the root of my cunt, where it detonated.
I felt it in my eyes, the way the color changed there, the way the rings of my iris went from hazel to silver to a color I had no name for.
I felt it in my hair, which in the mirror looked dark, almost black, but now—in the gold and fire and light—shone with a luster I had never seen on any body, in any world.
He kept fucking me.
He kept going through the orgasm, the thrusts getting smaller, tighter, as though he was calibrating the pressure to the exact load-bearing point.
He said, “You can do another, baby. Give it to me.”
He moved the fingers on my clit, pressed, circled, and I came again, this time harder, my whole body seizing on the wave.
The reflection in the mirror showed the moment my jaw unclenched, the moment the chronic ache at the base of my skull let go, the moment every part of me that had been built to survive was, finally, allowed to live.
He came.
He fucked in, deep, holding at the end, the cock pulsing inside me, and I felt the heat of it, the silver of it, filling me up until the bond at my wrist snapped tight and then released.
He shuddered, once, then twice.
He lowered himself over me, his mouth at my ear.
He said, “You’re mine, baby. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself.”
He held me there, soft, for a long time. The fire burned down. The color in the mirror faded, but the color in my body did not.
He pulled out, slow, and the loss of him was almost as acute as the having of him. He rolled to his side, pulling me into the crook of his body, holding my head to his chest.
We lay there, not speaking, not moving, for what felt like hours.
He said, “I will give you a thing I have not given any being in any of my long memories.”
I waited.
He whispered, “Vael. My name.”
I repeated it, into the hollow of his throat. “Vael.”
He shuddered. The color at his cheekbone settled, steady and native, the mercury-pale of a thing finally at home in its own form.
He said, “You will write under your own name. You will have your book. Your picture. Your voice.”
I closed my eyes.
I opened them, and saw—in the mirror—a woman with her head on the chest of a demon, eyes ringed with silver, hair a riot of wild, and the color in her skin alive as a wound.
She looked happy.
She looked whole.
She looked like me.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his voice like honey, “is the bonding ceremony. The entirety of Infernum will see my love for you.”