26. Husband
Husband
Ijust stood there, silent, as he shouldered off the black, ash-covered coat. He managed to do it without letting go of my cat, instead switching which arm he held her with so he could shrug out of the nearly floor-length garment.
It landed on the floor not far from the mask.
“Well?” he asked, his voice just as cold. “Don’t I warrant a hello… wife?”
He said the last word like it was a knife he’d stabbed into my chest.
“I thought you wanted me here,” he said, still staring at me.
“Didn’t you keep saying I needed to come with you?
That you were going to whisk me away, back to our shared rooms?
” His expression didn’t move. “Do you imagine I’ll restart my classes then, once the weekend’s up? Maybe re-join the Skyhunt team?”
I watched him warily, following his steps towards me as he brought the cat over to the couch, and placed her back down on it.
Wraith gave an indignant series of growls and huffs, sitting down on her favorite pillow of his and staring up at both of us with almond-shaped green eyes.
She looked at both of us like she was trying to decide which one of us was at fault for him putting her down.
I barely glanced at her, though.
My eyes remained on Bones, more specifically, on his magic.
I recognized what I was looking at by now.
I’d never seen it this bad before, but I found myself able to categorize it with broad brush-strokes, well enough to know where to look.
The black crystal flaming over his head looked three times the size I remembered.
It shone nearly purple with the firelight behind it, and I saw his magical aura sparking around him like a dense cloud filled with lightning.
“Still nothing to say to me, wife?” he asked, colder. “Not so sure you want me here, then? I suppose it’s not so much fun when it’s for real.”
I bit my tongue, but still didn’t speak.
Anyway, I doubted he would hear me, even if I tried.
He took a step nearer to me, and his eyes closed briefly, longer than a blink, the instant the edges of his magical aura reached mine. I saw him flinch as the contact jolted him, right before his long jaw clenched, his throat muscles tightening.
Despite his near-gritted teeth, and the things he’d said, nothing in his magic matched any of it. His jaw loosened gradually as he looked at me, and I couldn’t help but see the pain that rose to his eyes as his gaze slowly made its way from my face down to my bare feet.
I’d flinched when I felt him there, too.
My fists clenched by my sides, my breath caught, but somehow, I found words. I’m not sure how much I thought them through in the end. I had my own mind and magic to deal with as they changed voltage and frequency when they reacted to the proximity of his.
“Give me some of it.” I held out a hand, and my voice sounded impatient to my ears, even annoyed. “Give me some of it, before you have a heart attack.”
He blinked, staring at me almost like I’d slapped him.
His jaw hardened again, right before his eyes changed. Now he looked at me like I was the most frustrating person in the world. He also looked half-tempted to leave.
“More like drag you out of here with me,” he growled.
He stepped nearer to me again.
I took a shocked breath…
…and then he was fully in my magic.
I saw his facial muscles loosen faster that time, more dramatically.
“Gods-damn it,” he muttered coldly.
He closed the gap entirely, and reached for me, pulling me up against him. I had my arms around his neck before I’d thought about any kind of decision. He was still wearing all black, with gold buttons, and I realized there was blood on his shirt. I stared at it, wondering if it was his.
“What does it matter?” he growled.
“So it is, then.” My eyes traveled up to his. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer but I saw that denser frustration return to his eyes.
“Give me some of it.” I bit my lip, still watching his gold eyes as they traveled down me more slowly. I could see the heat there, but tried to ignore it. “Your magic, Bones. You’re not all right. You need to give me some. Now.”
He stared at my lip where I bit it, and his arms tightened around me still more.
“Are you going to let me fuck you?” he asked thickly.
I flinched. I couldn’t help it. I felt my face heat, but I didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” I said. Even so, a bitterness reached my voice as I studied his face. “Is that why you’re here? Did your father order this, too?”
I don’t know if he even heard anything I said beyond the yes.
He lowered his mouth to mine, wrenching me tighter up against him.
He shocked me more by kissing me almost tenderly, falling into it in a way he hadn’t when I’d seen him in the Black Tower.
He leaned into me with his whole body and his magic, until I couldn’t feel one thing without the other.
He poured his magic into me through his mouth, his lips, his tongue.
I felt the longing mixed with need there, and I let myself fall into it, too.
Really, I was drowning in it.
It worried me at first, but I couldn’t make myself care for long.
He paused the kiss long enough to release me, tugging on the buttons of the black cross-over shirt. I couldn’t help noticing he moved the arm strangely on the bloodied side of his clothing.
“You’re injured,” I blurted.
“We already established that.” At something in my face, he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Leave it, Leda.”
“But it hurts. I can tell it does––”
“Not as much as this fucking hurts,” he growled.
He was yanking open the front of his shirt, working the buttons to get it off.
I saw the gold collar he wore, but it looked inert again, not how it looked when I saw it hurting him in my dreams. When I reached for him, he took another step back when it seemed like I might get in the way of him undressing.
Some part of me rationalized he was moving fine, that it was his choice, not mine, and then I stepped back, too.
I yanked the long-sleeved blouse I’d been wearing over my head.
I hadn’t really thought about what I had on underneath, but Bones let out a heavy groan as I finished pulling it off. I remembered I hadn’t worn a bra, that I’d just thrown on the softest thing I could find when I got out of the shower earlier.
I held his gaze as I writhed out of the leggings next, and Bones caught ahold of me, his shirt open now, his belt undone. He brought me roughly to the bed.
He was lying on me then, pressing down his weight.
He kissed me again, and groaned when he maneuvered his hips between my legs.
I didn’t stop the kiss as I worked on unfastening the front of his pants.
He smelled like smoke and blood. He tasted like smoke and blood, his tongue hot in my mouth as he rested his arms on either side of my face. He was throwing his magic at me compulsively now, groaning when I only pulled on him in response.
He stopped briefly to yank the shirt the rest of the way over his head, giving up on the buttons and the tailored fit. He stayed there, half-sitting up, his chest heaving as I finished unfastening the front of his pants.
“Fuck,” he groaned.
Pain filled his voice that time.
His fingers hooked the sides of my knickers, and he half-tore them off me.
His magic slammed into me again, and I let out a groan of my own.
I watched him kick off his pants, then he was kissing me again, hard enough that I could scarcely breathe.
The longing there made me want to cry. I couldn’t get enough breath to cry, though, and I dug my fingers into his hair instead, which was longer than I remembered, and a rougher cut.
I clenched my hands in it, not thinking about the fact I might be hurting him.
My fingers toyed with the collar he wore, half-expecting it to shock me, but it was cold and smooth.
It didn’t have any openings any way to take it off.
If any of what I did bothered him, he didn’t say anything.
We were still kissing when his hands eased my legs apart, surprisingly gentle.
He stopped us again, but he was breathing so hard now he wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t bear the thought he might be changing his mind.
“Please.” I swallowed. I went from yanking on his hair and toying with the collar to caressing his face. “Please, Bones… Caelum…” I swallowed again, angling my hips towards his. “Gods, please. Don’t leave.”
Pain changed his face.
I not only saw it, I felt it that time, so intensely I moaned.
He gripped my hips in his hands, fighting to control his breathing as he stared down at me. He lowered and adjusted his body until he’d notched the end of his cock in me, so that he was just barely inside, and then he was staring down at my face, his eyes glassed.
That pain in his expression worsened.
“I love you,” he said.
His voice was rough, the words barely coherent, but my whole body felt their meaning like an electrical charge. I clung to him, wrapping my legs around his waist, and I could only nod at first, kissing his mouth.
“Yes,” I managed. “Yes. Bones, I––”
He arched all the way into me, almost like he was trying to silence me.
If that had been his intent, it worked.
I couldn’t think for those first few seconds he was inside me, couldn’t breathe.
He barely paused, but rolled his whole body into me again, harder, and I cried out, arching my back so that he could go deeper.
Gods.
I’d forgotten what it was like.
I’d somehow completely forgotten what it was like with him.
Maybe it was one of those things you couldn’t really remember, not accurately, not until it was happening.
His magic flooded into me, a dense, liquid heat that turned my limbs to jelly, blanking out my mind, causing me to cling to his back and shoulders like I was drowning.
He fucked that magic into me deliberately, with a precision that seemed to wipe out everything else.
I felt so much of him in it, I couldn’t control my reactions.
I think I was talking to him at one point.