Chapter 20 #2
“Italians are a persuasive people. Sicilian witches even more so. She told me to get two in case I ever —” Fell in love, Aster stopped herself from saying.
Before Sylvia could ask her to finish her sentence, as she so obviously wanted to — Aster continued on, “Doesn’t matter.
We were apart, that summer you spent in Salem, and the quote made me think of you.
I know you’ve always had a… different interpretation of the Old Testament. ”
Sylvia’s skeptical expression finally faltered, and she took the ring from Aster, observing it with a soft sort of determination, turning it around in her palm.
She mouthed the quote as she read it under her breath, then laughed coldly.
“So, which one of us is which?”
Aster’s brow creased, confused.
“Who’s Eve,” Sylvia clarified, licking her lips. “And who’s the serpent?”
Oh.
Aster laughed, understanding the implication.
“Who corrupted who, you mean?”
“Mm.”
Sylvia had that troubled expression on her face again. The one she’d had earlier. Aster could practically feel the thoughts pressing claustrophobically against Sylvia’s skull — which one of us is bad, tell me it’s me, tell me it’s me, I know it’s me.
“Isn’t marriage a sort of mutual corruption?”
That seemed to pull Sylvia slightly out of her pit. She smirked, “I don’t think the Catholics would phrase it quite like that, no.”
“Good thing we’re not Catholic.”
“Weren’t you baptized?” Sylvia countered.
“So are all the other thieves and murderers born in Galicia.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “So which religion is overseeing this, then?”
Aster shrugged. “Take your pick.”
“The pagans might not mind.”
“Hm.” Aster smiled as she took the ring from Sylvia’s fingers, and began to position her hand. Not quite pulling the trigger, but simply offering it. “Satanism might do, too.”
Sylvia looked nervously down at the ring, then back at Aster. “Even Satan might have rules against marrying someone for the night just to get them off.”
Aster’s stomach clenched.
Is that all this is?
But before she could open her mouth, Sylvia took Aster’s hand, and did the honor herself—slipping the ring up her wedding finger, releasing a sharp breath, then grabbing the other ring from the bed where it sat, and doing the same to Aster.
“There,” Sylvia said, as if she’d just cleaned up a mess.
“There,” Aster echoed, looking down in disbelief at her hand, and at Sylvia’s matching finger. For a brief moment, the two snakes seemed to move. Genuinely slither.
Just as the seller had promised back in the eighteenth century—love will make them dance.
Aster had figured her for a sentimental scam artist, but maybe she’d read her wrong.
With Lillia’s voice in her head, love will make them dance, love will make them dance, Aster couldn’t stop studying them, far longer than would have been appropriate for something that was proposed as a glorified sex toy.
She remained mesmerized, emotion caught in her chest like a bird in a pipe, until she felt Sylvia’s finger brush under chin, propping her up so their eyes would meet.
“Aster?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to stop?” Sylvia asked, ghosting her hands across Aster’s thighs. Which made the question feel a little disingenuous. “Or do you want to fuck me, and we can figure out how to be normal again in the morning?”
How to be normal again.
She laughed. A testament to just how thoroughly ruined she was that she found that idea so funny. Aster wasn’t sure she’d ever be normal again. She wasn’t sure she’d ever take off this ring again. But look at that, for the first time, Sylvia had become the optimist. Something to celebrate.
“Lay down,” Aster said, in place of an answer.
Sylvia blinked, squinting at her suspiciously for a moment, before obeying.
They didn’t say anything after that. Not until Aster had cleared her mind by ravishing Sylvia’s breasts again, kissing and biting along her sternum. They didn’t speak until both of them were a firm distance from reality, the only sounds coming out of Sylvia’s throat small whimpers.
Until finally, Sylvia begged again.
“Aster.” Aster’s nose was pressed up against her throat, her fangs denting the skin. “Fingers. Yours. Enough — enough teasing me.”
So Aster complied.
Her hand traveled down, silently, and slipped into Sylvia with an ease that made both of them gasp. And suddenly all the anguish from a moment before was wiped clean, replaced only by the feeling of Sylvia so full around her, closing around Aster, opening again.
Like a revelation each time.
“Does that feel good, baby?”
Because it’s completely ruining me.
Sylvia didn’t use her words in reply, instead wrapping her arms around Aster’s neck and pulling her down, whimpering into a sloppy kiss. Sloppy but soft, her fingers pressing gently into the dimples of Aster’s cheeks. Like Aster was a paper doll that Sylvia was scared of crumpling.
“I don’t usually let people fuck me,” Sylvia said quietly, and the confession made Aster’s fingers still—which Sylvia immediately punished by pushing into her hand, whining. “That wasn’t me giving you permission to stop, baby.”
The pet name made Aster’s skin flush. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to hearing it. She hoped she never stopped hearing it. “I just don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
Sylvia groaned. “If you had let me finish my sentence...” So Aster did, expectantly, keeping her fingers unmoving while she waited—which was obviously the wrong thing to do, by the way Sylvia bit the side of her face, like a wild animal. “What did I say about stopping?”
“You want me to fuck you while you tell me how you don’t like to get fucked?”
With an impatient moan, Sylvia’s free hand snapped down to meet Aster’s own, and pushed her back inside of herself, guiding her fingers back into a rhythm. Aster’s mouth came open in shock, and Sylvia grinned, eternally pleased with herself.
“God, yes.” Sylvia arched into it, eyes closing. “Much better.”
“Sylvia.” Aster whimpered. “Tell me.”
She felt the ring crest against Sylvia’s opening, and the both of them gasped again.
“Oh my god. Yes. Yes.” Sylvia moaned as cool metal pulled back, then pushed up against her again. She moaned. “God. I love feeling like your— your—”
She whimpered, cutting herself off.
“My what?”
“Like your — your fucking property.”
Sylvia blushed, and Aster’s entire body melted.
“Jesus Christ,” Aster breathed out, both disgusted and absurdly turned on all at once.
Before Aster could say anything about it, though, Sylvia careened back to her original thought, “You’re the only one whose fucked me in centuries.”
Their eyes met when she said it — and Aster could tell from the color of her eyes, darker than usual, that it was earnest.
…Centuries?
With all the thousands of people Sylvia had slept with from then to now, she’d only touched them? They’d never touched her?
It was a confession that had nowhere to sit in Aster’s mind. It was indigestible.
“Why?” was all Aster could think to ask.
Why me? Why now?
Sylvia chuckled dryly a moment before moaning again at Aster’s relentless fingers, Sylvia’s knuckles grasping the bedsheets, twisting them roughly.
“Because I don’t trust anyone,” she moaned. “I don’t trust them to touch me right. I don’t trust them to stop when I tell them to stop. I don’t trust them to understand what I want.” She laughed bitterly. “I don’t trust them not to try and kill me while I’m enjoying myself.”
As Aster digested her words, a boulder began to form in her throat.
“I would always stop,” Aster said.
“I know.”
“I would never hurt you.”
“I know.”
“You’re sure you want me to keep going?”
Sylvia’s eyes widened just a smidge. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“So you trust me?” Aster asked. She needed to know. She needed to hear it.
Sylvia’s eyes captured hers.
“As much as I can trust anyone,” she said, her fingers snaking around Aster’s neck. Aster could understand what she meant implicitly — I can’t trust anyone fully, I never learned how — “Fuck, Aster. That feels so good. You feel so good.”
And even if it wasn’t perfect trust, even if it was trust with a heavy disclaimer, it was enough to make Aster feel high. Because Sylvia was letting her in—again, and again—inside.
She made a circle around Sylvia’s clit, and the other woman’s hips seized into her.
Sylvia’s words—Sylvia’s sounds—Sylvia’s movements—it was all enough to make an insane woman out of her; that was the only explanation for the way she opened her mouth.
“The good news is,” Aster said, thrusting her hand deep enough that the ring gilded against again, and she kept it there for a moment, unmoving, “You’re mine now. No one else’s. So you don’t have to worry about anyone else fucking you right. Just me. Only me.”
Sylvia’s eyes opened wide, and for a moment Aster thought she’d said something wrong—that she’d damaged them beyond repair—but instead, Sylvia’s lips were nearly deforming hers in seconds, and her hips were practically begging Aster to keep going.
“Please,” Sylvia whined. “Tell me again.”
Obedient as a greyhound, Aster worked her thumb against Sylvia as she kissed her incessantly, “You’re mine. You’re mine. All mine. All mine.” Remembering what Sylvia said earlier, she moaned – “You belong to me. My wife. No one else’s. Okay?”
She pumped in, out, in. The rhythm felt dizzying.
“God, call me that again.” Sylvia’s breath came in short wisps.
“My wife?”
“Yes.”
“You like it that much?” Aster said quietly.
Sylvia whined, arcing her hips up. “I like it that much.”
“Why?”
Sylvia was too close to the edge to think — and that’s why Aster asked it then.