“Then come here,” he said, making space on his lap for me to straddle him.
I climbed on top of him, closing my eyes because I couldn’t possibly look at him after all he’d just said, then nodded against his forehead for him to start casting.
EPILOGUE
EMBER
Eyes closed, I watched the Vision like a silent film I absorbed through every nerve and pore, more palpable than any daydream I’d ever had. I vaguely remembered I existed outside of the Vision. Somewhere, in the way back of my mind, was the reality that, if someone were to walk into Leland’s room, they would see our foreheads touching, our eyes closed together, and Leland’s exhales becoming my inhales.
Leland, a king.
Wearing an eight-pointed crown, he sat on a tall, gilded throne, inside palatial, gold-paneled walls, under an ornate ceiling. Beside him, a second throne was empty. I sat loosely in his lap with my legs draped over his knees.
I wielded a tornado of darkness, hiding all but Leland’s face from anyone around to see. Rippling layers of my shadows rotated up from the red-carpeted dais, covering Leland to his neck, and me entirely. His Adam’s apple bobbed in time with his words as he spoke. But Visions had no sound, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
We were safe from eyes inside the dark swirl I’d cast, and a few of my shadowy tendrils strayed from the cyclone to stroke his chest. Stroking, then slowly unbuttoning his pristine, white button-down, all the way down to his belt. He skillfully kept a straight face, his features handsome and stately as hecontinued speaking to someone else. My shadows retracted to the sides, and my hands took over, sliding inside his unbuttoned shirt, tugging it apart a little so I could see more of his skin.
I traced the line between his pecs and all the way down to the strip of soft hairs that disappeared below his belt.
Leland stopped speaking mid-sentence. He looked at me, his mouth forming a word, and while I hadn’t been able to decipher any other word he’d said in the Vision, I knew this one.
“Behave.” Spoken like a liar.
A current of my shadows flicked to open his belt, and by the time I finished slowly unrolling his zipper, his hands tightly gripped the gilded armrests. My lips twitched in a smile as I did nothing but rest my hand over him, savoring his hardness, his strained look, watching him lose all patience.
He thrust into my hand, and our eyes met, an understanding passing between us:Please keep going, Em. Please keep going.
Cruelly, I pulled my hand away and sent shadows in to lightly stroke him instead.
I was only mildly interested in the conversation he was having with the person on the other side of the shadows, until, abruptly, my shadows stopped teasing him. I sat up straight and pressed two fingers to his chest.Two, I pressed into him, my eyes demanding.Two. Give me two of them.
As suddenly as I’d asked it of him, Leland resumed his more official conversation. I closely watched his lips mouth my request.Two,but there was something else he said after it, another word at the end of the sentence I couldn’t detect. Two worlds? Two witches?
Whatever it was, it started with a W, caught me by surprise, and made me laugh into his throat. He gave a soft chuckle and took my hand, lifting it to his lips, kissing my fingers, and mumbling something that made my eyes close.
With no desire to watch the porno of our ensuing “nudity,”“foreplay,” and “intercourse,” I tapped Leland’s arm — the signal he’d told me to use when I wanted to end the Vision — and he instantly ended it.
Foreplay. Nudity. Intercourse. Words you hear in health class, designed tonotbe arousing, and most likely why Leland had carefully chosen them.
Now I was blinking back to reality, trying to suppress all signs that — even though I’d asked for the Vision to end — I was thinking about him moving inside me, wondering if he kept the crown on his head.
“You still in there?” Leland asked. Our hips were locked, along with our foreheads. His hands on my lower back were still.
I lifted my head and looked around, disoriented at first, but then I slowly came back to my senses. I was in Leland’s room, a room that smelled like a winter forest, with low music playing in the background.
“Barely,” I squeaked, my knees sinking into a cushiony couch I never wanted to get up from. And I was warm. Dangerously.
“Should I not have shown you that?”
“Uh . . .” Should he not have shown me what I’d always wanted? Our eyes alight with the same fire, our laughs bubbling out at the same time over the same things.
In the Vision, I’d asked Leland for two — of what, I had no idea — but I’d asked for two, and Leland said two, then the two of us laughed, together. Counterparts.
He waited for me to take a few seconds to swallow as I stared at the small triangle of white shirt peeking out between the drawstrings of his gray hoodie.
I pulled my face another inch away from his.
“Ember?” His hand tightened on my back.Don’t go. Talk to me.
