Rawlins #4
“My sympathetic nervous system isn’t affected,” she said. Ellsbeth’s eyes sought his, but he wouldn’t quite meet her gaze, fighting to maintain some semblance of control, fearing what he would do otherwise.
“The other muscle groups? Still functioning correctly?” Rawlins asked.
In answer, Ellsbeth raised her arms, still bound at the wrist, and put them behind his head, her forearms resting on his shoulders, her fingertips grazing the back of his neck, as if they were slow dancing.
Rawlins struggled to breathe normally, but it suddenly felt like an effort to drag air raggedly through his throat. And he was so close he could feel the warmth from her lungs, grazing his chin, intermingling with his own breath in the charged space between them.
“You blushed,” Rawlins said, and his finger brushed her cheek, where the skin was turning red, blood blossoming just below the surface. “Just like you are now.” He felt the warmth of her flesh, and his finger trailed down, to her jawline, to her throat.
“Pesky sympathetic nervous system,” she said.
He had no more academic points to prove.
No more reasons to be standing so close to her, with her bound wrists around his neck pulling him even closer.
He was suspended in this limbo, on an impossible precipice.
Physically unable to retreat to safety, but not willing to leap forward.
He wanted to grab her and pull her into him, press her body into his.
But he fought the urge, because he didn’t know where it would stop.
His hands found her waist, and Ellsbeth shivered under his touch as his thumbs tightened into the contours of her rib cage through the soft fabric of her blouse. Simultaneously holding her and holding her back, in sync with the warring impulses inside him.
Ellsbeth leaned forward, bridging the distance between them, her lips moving toward his.
He was so acutely inclined toward her, it was almost like he could already feel the sensation.
But his chest tightened as the guilt that he had been trying to keep down roared to the surface. She may not be helpless, he thought, she may want this as badly as he did, but she was his student. She was his responsibility, and the prospect of violating that trust was repulsive to him.
So his hand came up between them, and he put his thumb to her lower lip, stopping her. She froze, embarrassed and exposed in the middle of the act. He searched for the right words—to explain, to apologize, to soften this—but couldn’t find them.
Instead, he pressed the pad of his thumb into the tenderness of her mouth, barely grazing her bottom teeth. He could feel her soft breath on his thumb.
His resistance began to collapse into itself, and he could feel his body begin to relax, ready to let go of the self-control he had been fighting to maintain.
But at that moment, the energy in the room shifted. The glow of the metals dimmed, and the hum of the ritual went silent. A tremble convulsed her body; her shoulders shook and her arms relaxed, her wrists separating as the effect of the ritual ended.
The spell was broken. Two minutes was up.
Even though it was darker than ever, it was as if the lights had been thrown on at the end of a high school dance, the music cut, and without thinking they both took a step back, separating, suddenly self-conscious.
Ellsbeth spoke first. “I’m sorry,” she said, although she didn’t look quite sure what she was sorry for.
Rawlins shook his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We were just…testing the effect. It worked. Congratulations.”
She exhaled—right, of course—and hugged her sides.
He could see that she was wounded by his denial, and felt torn by his empathy for her, uncertain how best to proceed.
Tell her the truth? That he had seen her physically restrained and wanted to strip her naked and drag her to the floor and take her again and again, touching her and teasing her and pleasuring her until she forgot her own name?
What he’d felt for her was dangerously excessive, and he didn’t know how to let out only a little.
Ellsbeth glanced around at the elementals scattered across the ritual platform and said to the floor, “I should probably start getting this all put away before someone comes in and arrests us.” She began to pick up ingots from the floor, but he stopped her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
He desperately longed to explain himself. To tell her…
Yes, it works, like I knew it would.
And Yes, I wanted to kiss you last Friday.
And Fucking hell, yes, I wanted to do more than that tonight.
But his tongue was heavy and numb. Anything he said would change their relationship forever. Would only cause problems down the line. Would only weaken his resolve. “Yes,” he said finally. “We should clean up.”
He forced himself to lift his hand from her shoulder, and turned to take down the hanging incense. He felt impossibly idiotic, knowing he looked like an absolute fool—but at the same time, a strange realization: He was hoping she could see through him. That she could read his mind.
When he glanced back and watched her kneeling to pick up gold ingots, her face was partly turned away, but he was glad that by the glow of the streetlight reflecting through the high window of the Practicum, he could see her smiling.