Chapter 19 #3
Before I can even reach down for the underwear ripped and loose on my ankle, the warmth of his body against mine is stolen.
He steps back.
I lean into him and kick up my shoe to my backside.
Reaching around my spine, I snag the torn knickers from my ankle, then stumble into the blackout corridor with him.
He guides me.
Shoulders grazing along the wainscotting, his fingers are hooked, firm, around mine, and he leads me back to the Living Quarter.
The heat of fireplaces in total darkness swallows me up—and so I know we are in the grand parlour.
But his steps curve right instead of left.
He takes me towards the staircase that leads to the boys’ dorms.
My face furrows, a crumpling frown that creases more and more the closer we get—until he’s taken a step up the stairs, and my stilettos scuffle to keep up.
Enchantments should block me.
I saw it once.
When I was younger, and a senior guy tried to go up the staircase to the girls’ dorms, whether to chase down a girlfriend in a fight or to prank one of us, I don’t know, but he was thrown back into the door of the cigar room with so much force that the hinges snapped, and he knocked his head so bad he had to go to the infirmary.
Then he had a tonne of detention.
It was all the talk in the dorms for a while.
But that doesn’t happen.
Not now as Eric leads me up the staircase, then into the narrow pressure of a corridor, and leads me down it, hall tables knocking into my hip every other moment, then up another set of stairs—
Until he slows down, and I feel the brush of a door moving against my shoulder.
He takes me into his dorm room.
And I’m still standing.
Not knocked back, not thrown down the stairs and corridors by an invisible force.
He did something.
Some kind of magic.
Maybe some of the older seniors, the guys, worked out a way around the enchantments.
Maybe all the seniors know this trick except me, since I’ve been on the outs for so long.
The air rushes around me, disturbing the hem of my definitely wrinkled dress, and I guess he’s closing the door, because a moment after, his grip re-firms on mine, and he guides me through the dark to a wall of curtains.
No, not curtains.
His bed.
The drapes shift, like he reaches over my head to hit them aside, then his hand leaves mine.
The pressure of his fingertips meets my middle—and pushes me back.
I thud onto the mattress.
Into another pocket of darkness.
With or without the curtains, light is stolen by the blackout. But the curtains do a job of it on their own. If I ever want light in my bed with the drapes shut, I need to tug in a nightlight or lamp with me.
I wait for a moment before he presses a lump of material to my chest.
Tentative, I reach up for the bundle.
Blindness slows me as I dab my fingertips against the soft fabric.
Clothes.
A t-shirt and boxers.
I take them from his grip.
His fingers loosen, then they are gone.
The rustle of air shifts around me, the curtains moving again, and a few beats pass before the mattress dips.
I hate when it dips.
It’s like all the margaritas in my blood just suddenly pulse and strike my brain.
So as he climbs onto the bed, I fall onto my back and let the whooshing in my head settle.
The pile of clothes slips from my grip.
He finds me in the dark.
His hand glides up my cheek, and holds.
The pressure of his thumb is just beneath my eye, and so he feels the flutter of my lashes.
For a heartbeat, he just holds me like that, curved over me in the darkness.
He waits it out.
The flutter of my lashes, the stirring in my head.
And still, he waits.
Patience is burrowed in him as his hand leaves my face and he soothes me. His fingers trace my arms, my shoulders, reacquainting himself with my body, as though he’s memorising every part of me he might have forgotten.
His fingertips leave my pebbled skin and loop around the small of my back.
He pushes me up the mattress until the pillow is perfectly fluffed and settled beneath my head, a contained feathery embrace that I sink into.
And I am caressed by his touch.
He drapes over me.
His weight should crush me, but I suspect he has his forearm pressed into the mattress and holding him up as he brings his kiss to my face.
I let my lashes shut on the adoration.
The softness of his full mouth brushes over mine. But the kiss doesn’t connect. It’s a graze, a caress, a tenderness that lures my eyes shut on the darkness.
My lips tingle.
The delicate graze of his fingers brushes along my shoulder, slipping the strap of the dress out of place. Then the touch of his fingertips glides over my breastbone for the other shoulder, leaving goosepimples in its wake.
He slips off the other strap.
His mouth brushes against mine—and I expect a soft kiss, but my brows shoot upwards as his teeth graze me instead.
He nips at my lips, a sharp but slight bite, before he’s tugging back.
On his knees, his hands firm on my sides and drag the dress down my body. The silk snags on the width of my hips.
I reach down for the thin zipper burrowed into the fabric—
But my hand is hit aside the moment I touch him, and he yanks the dress right off of me.
The nip. The bite. The whack.
He’s telling me to lie still.
To stay where I am—and not move.
Maybe because I’m dizzy.
The smile on my lips is hidden by the obscurity. Still, I bite down on it.
The flush on my face tells of my shame, but it’s hidden in secrecy and shadows.
His commanding presence doesn’t soften.
Pushing a knee under my thigh, his hand comes through the dark and slaps my leg—hitting it aside.
I’m completely exposed.
Before I can fall to the urge to shut my legs, to hide from him even in darkness, he’s shoved himself between my spread legs and—
A gasp hitches me.
He wastes no more moments, not another second, before he’s pushing the head of his cock along my slick core.
The wetness from his tongue in the corridor welcomes him—but so many moments have passed since then, and the nerves are biting back into me, gnawing at my insides.
My thighs tense, as if ready to press into his hips, to try and shut him out.
But the moment my muscles tense, he shoves into me.
My back arches off the mattress with a shout.
The suddenness, the fullness—I didn’t expect it. I didn’t know it was coming.
I hit out at him.
My hand collides with his bicep, stronger than I remember it, and not a moment after, his hand finds my neck—and clasps, firm.
The grip isn’t tight enough to choke me, but it pins me down as his nose grazes along my cheekbone.
My hands clutch onto his arms, nails digging into bare, smooth flesh.
It doesn’t slow him down.
His mouth turns for mine, a harsh chaste kiss that mushes my lips and aches my teeth—and I grunt as he slams further, deeper into me.
The darkness twists around me.
My head is dizzied more and more with his thrusts, and through the daze, I swear I feel him release inside of me.
The twitch of his cock against my tense walls, the spill of warmth, the twist of his mouth against mine—
I think he’s finished, but I think too soon.
The mattress feels like a waterbed beneath me.
It’s like the world warps, stretching darkness, and everything wobbles.
He shoves up from me.
Knees pressing into the mattress, dipping it, his hand flexes on my neck, like he’s battling off another rush.
I know he climaxed.
I feel it slicking us both as he draws out of me, then glides back in.
A shudder rinses through him.
His hand pushes up my neck to tighten on the curve of my jaw.
For a beat, he’s still.
He’s too buried in me, too pressed against me, and my feet dangle in the dark air, my knees bent too far back.
Something’s thudding against my skull from the inside, my brain knocking and knocking.
I squint against the distortion.
My hands reach out for him in the dark, to tap and tap, to communicate.
But I can only reach his forearm.
His fingers are still locked onto my jaw.
My hand is a flurry against his forearm.
And in answer, pressure comes from his thumb against my jaw. It digs, firm, into the edge of my chin, then slides up to my parted lips—
His thumb delves into my mouth.
A guttural sound catches in my throat, felt but not heard.
His hold on my jaw firms, his thumb hooking onto the bite of my lower teeth, like he’s locking me in place.
He thrusts.
My mouth is pried open in his grip.
His other hand comes smacking down on my hip, fingertips digging into my flesh, like if he can hold onto me, he can hold onto whatever scraps of self-control he’s scraping for.
He juts again.
I can only receive it.
Each thrust fills me too much.
Every swift, fluid fuck into me juts me back into spiralling dizziness.
I grunt against the intrusion of his thumb hooked onto my lower teeth.
Faintly, I’m aware of a dampness on my temple, trickling into my hair. I don’t know if it’s a tear or a bead of sweat.
I clasp onto him, both my hands tight on his tensing forearm. The veins and tendons flex under my grip, like his own body battles him—
And he loses.
His thrusts turn savage.
The strain of his cock slamming into me pulses against my walls, and I know he’s coming again.
He falls.
Thumb still slipped into my mouth, he softens, and his body should come smacking down on mine. But he bolsters his weight onto his forearm again, the shift wobbling the mattress—
And a groan utters out of me.
Nausea is starting to unfurl in my chest, like strands peeling away from my insides.
I blink and I see darkness.
I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling his raspy, chopped breaths disturbing my hair.
My hands slip from his forearm—
And he starts to move again, slowly pushing in and out of me.
My lashes shut—and I fade away.