Chapter 19 #2
I feel the curve of a faint smile against my lips.
He obliges.
The silk of his mouth leaves mine and travels along my jawline to the tickle of my neck, and that slashes a grin over my face.
My insides clench against the tickle, a laugh bubbling up in me.
The shape of his grin returns against my skin, and he traces it down the curve of my neck, until he nips on my collarbone—
The gasp is sharp through me.
My lashes flutter open with the startle, but already, he has abandoned my clavicle, and he goes further and further down.
His hands descend with him, dragging over the shape of my body as the pressure of his kissing warms my skin through the flimsy material of the dress.
The silk is sticking to me, ruched by his hands that grip onto me, then loosen, then grip, then loosen, like he needs to hold me in place as he drops to his knees—
And the heat of his mouth warms another part of me… but it doesn’t touch.
In the thick darkness of the corridor, my breaths heaving my chest, I pause.
And so does he.
On his knees, his hands are fisted in the flimsy silk of the dress, bunched up to my knickers.
But he can’t see the strip of silk.
Can’t see anything, just like me, like anyone who is awake in the academy right now.
Anyone could turn the corner.
Anyone could fumble through the blackness and collide with us.
The corridor suddenly feels like the most exposed place in the world.
I wonder if that’s what pauses him—
Oh.
His kiss is unkind. He grazes his bite over my core, like he’s prompting me…
I realise with a choppy exhale.
He’s not hesitating.
He’s not pausing.
He’s asking permission to continue.
A smile slinks onto my lips.
I hike my leg to drape over his shoulder, like a silk ribbon.
That’s all the permission he needs.
His hand slides up my thigh, strong fingers gripping the soft curve of my backside—like he’s locking me in place. Trapping me between his mouth and the wall.
The movement is decisive, possessive.
It sends flurries through me.
His fingertips press into my skin, leaving promises of bruises to come later—
His mouth finds me.
A breath rushes from my lips the instant the wet warmth latches onto me.
The silk of my underwear is quick to dampen.
And not even the flimsy shield of fabric dulls the sensations.
Soft, full lips drag over my tingling flesh. The drag of his tongue follows along my slit, a painfully slow journey to the tingling bud—
Breath captured in my chest, I wait for the kiss, the lick, the touch.
But he is motionless and I am blind.
Something about it thrills me.
The darkness, the secrecy, that sheer fucking desperation in his painful grip.
No doubt about it, there will be a scattering of fingertip bruises all over my backside tomorrow.
And I don’t give a damn about that.
Not as he does it.
His tongue rolls around my bud, and a breath utters from my parted lips.
Something hurried rushes through me.
I reach down for him, not knowing where to grab, not in the dark, not in my need.
But before I can find anything to hold onto, his cheek turns to my core, and he nips me right on the inner thigh.
I stiffen.
The warning is clear.
I’m at risk of him stopping.
And I really don’t want him to stop.
I slap my hand back against the wall.
Impatience claws through me in a guttural groan.
But it’s enough.
He turns his mouth back to the barrier of my silk knickers.
The dance of his tongue is a performance, the graze of his lips is timed, it’s practiced.
He’s done this before.
Perfected it as a skill over time, but there’s nothing passionless about it. Not with the heat of his breaths against me, the desperation of his hands clutching at my ass.
It takes everything, everything, in me to not grind against him, to chase my denied pleasure on his tongue.
My head lolls back against the wall.
My nails dig into the wainscotting.
And I climb this almost pleasure he torments me with.
But he hears my prayers, he feels the need burning in me—and he gives into me.
The hand abandons the meat of my hip. It’s gone for the shortest of moments before it’s grabbing at the side of my pelvis, where my skin is too sensitive, and so I jerk against the sudden touch.
The cut of his fingernails pierces a wince through me, swallowed by the blackout.
The pressure of my silk underwear is loosened, and it takes me a moment, a second too long, to realise he’s just ripped them right off of me.
An obstruction.
Something in his way.
I didn’t ever think Eric had this side of him.
This determination, the need for me.
Before I can think on it a beat longer, the silk of the underwear slips down onto the ankle of my still-standing leg—and his fingers have found my slit.
There’s no patience in him.
Not before a finger has slipped inside of me.
And the sensation of his mouth on me is no longer blocked by silk.
I feel it.
I feel everything.
The moan that ribbons from me is drawn-out.
I melt against him, the roll and flick of his tongue, the curl of his finger inside of me, the feel of his hand pressing into the meat of my thigh.
I can’t help it, I can’t stop it.
Instinct guides me, and I’m grinding with his pace, rocking with his movements.
I’m climbing—
And like he feels it, too, like he needs me to arch with the crushing pleasure within my reach, to unravel on his tongue and hand, that control slips away from him.
He moves like he needs me—like he’s been holding this back and can’t wait anymore.
I meet him just as desperately, grinding closer, chasing the friction, the heat.
My hand drops and I grab a fistful of his hair.
It’s my first time—
Never done this before.
Never had it done to me.
It’s fucking bliss.
Every breath is a gasp, a hitch, a moan.
The harsher my breaths, the more my body moves with his tongue. The closer I inch, the tighter my hand fists in his hair.
The blackout swallows my moans, moans that hitch into a string of broken whines.
Like he senses it, feels it rising in me, the end, the fireworks, the electricity I chase on his mouth, he presses further against me—
And latches onto my clit.
His tongue flicks, then he sucks, his tongue flicks, then he sucks, and he does it so well, so quickly, that I’m spilling over.
My head throws back against the wall.
A guttural shout shudders through me.
Rigid over his shoulder, my leg trembles against the static pulsing through my whole body.
Stars erupt in my eyes.
My nails are dragging over the wainscotting, and I’m certain the blackout is swallowing a groaned curse from my lips.
His tongue slows on my bud.
I twitch against him, the tender lick at my core, slowing and slowing until it ends with a final chaste kiss that shudders me.
He brings me down from my high with a gentleness I didn’t know he had in him.
That was nothing like the first time we experienced each other.
There’s no awkwardness, not when he had his tongue travelling my core, not now that he rests his forehead on my pelvic bone, letting the heat of his breaths graze over me.
There’s no hesitation. No second-guessing.
Something just fits now.
For one reckless, buzzing moment, I wonder—
I wonder if he likes me this way.
Unmasked, a real face behind the smoke, the vicious tongue and snark and sharp edges.
Not the me I was pretending to be.
He likes aristos me.
Now that I think about it, sort of makes sense.
Eric likes Asta—and Asta is a fucking bitch.
He thought I was sweet. Someone to pity.
Now he’s seen me for who I am.
And he got on his knees.
I slump against the wall.
The shift of movement brushes up my body. He pushes up from the floor until he’s standing over me in the dark.
And his mouth finds mine.
He kisses me. Softly. Slow and lingering, tender.
I taste myself on him.
It’s faint, like he dragged his tongue over his own lips and gathered up my flavour, but it’s there.
His hands reach over my hips and smoothen out the crumpled, bunched hem of my dress.
The gesture is gentle, loving somehow, and I let my lashes shut with the rush of warmth coursing through me.
The smoothness of his cologne floods my senses.
I inhale it like a sweet bakery air.
His lips find my jawline and, for a beat, he just stands with me, letting me come all the way down from the summit.
But I feel it.
The smile.
The curve of his mouth, however small and slight and lazy, is a smile regardless.
For a long while, we stay like this, melted into one another, a tenderness in the way we exist.
I don’t know affection.
Not like this.
I know false smiles and lies and masks.
This, whatever this is, feels true.
Right now, if he asked me to walk into fire with him, I think I would. Just to stay in the cloud of adoration.
But it comes to a close when he plants that final, firm kiss on my cheekbone—and it feels so much like an ending that something inside of me twists.
I’m not ready to go yet.
I’m not ready to leave this feeling.
Desperation pushes me to remind him, to buy myself more time.
I take his hand from my face, where his fingers caress down my cheek, then stroke into my hair.
I bring my fingertip to his palm.
The only way I can think to communicate in the total blackout is this. A way me and the other Snakes would give messages to each other when we were young, and I wasn’t hated.
Now, I share a code with Eric.
My finger grazes the letter N—then swipes, as if to wipe the letter away before I etch the next, O.
First word down, and something about what I’m doing lures him in closer.
His forehead rests on my head, like he’s a lover curving over his beloved.
I bite down on a smile and finish the message.
‘NO BED’.
His smile is slow to fade.
I feel the furrow of his frown drag over my head to my temple.
For a heartbeat, his thumb just grazes my fingers lingering on his palm.
I repeat the message, then after a swipe, add in another few letters.
‘ASTA.’
It reminds him.
A mere heartbeat passes before his fingers firm around mine.
He tugs, once.
Come with me.