It felt like having him all over me, which it always did, to some degree or another, but somehow, it still managed to feel worse each time we did this. I felt more of him every time he asked or needed it, it grew more disturbingly intimate, more difficult to fight, more difficult to keep any part of him out.
It had ratcheted up violently in intensity, even in only a few weeks.
For a long-feeling few minutes, I couldn’t do anything but take it.
When my eyes finally swam back into any kind of focus, I was sweating, my hand gripping his wrist, my other hand wrapped around the back of his neck. His skin was hot, his hair damp. He was leaned into me, his other arm wrapped around my waist. That hand gripped my side under the jumper I wore. He was breathing even harder than me, and I felt him fighting to pull it back, even now, to choke it off.
I wasn’t even certain his magic was done expelling itself.
It had only been a few days.
I had to believe it was because the meeting freaked him out, igniting all his paranoia and the fear he obviously had around Dark Cathedral and his father, but normally suppressed to the point where I forgot it was there. That constant, tightly-controlled suppression probably messed him up even more. Maybe that was the real reason he’d lost it.
I looked up at his face, and found him already looking at me.
His expression looked frustrated, but I saw another look there, too.
He looked at me like he had no idea what to do with me.
His irises had dimmed somewhat, and his skin looked flushed, less of that deathly pale I associated with his magic being on the verge of exploding out of him. His hand loosened, and his thumb stroked along my throat, compulsively almost, as his fingers tightened on my bare waist. I didn’t let go of him, either. I couldn’t even bring myself to want to.
I was still looking at him when he lowered his face to mine.
“Are you coming?” he asked softly, right against my ear. “Thursday. To my room.”
I fought to understand, but when I did, I nodded. “Yes.”
“I can’t promise I’ll behave,” he said. “But I want you to come, anyway.”
I swallowed, but didn’t answer. Neither of us had really moved. I just stood there, gripping his arm and the back of his neck as he stroked my throat and the bare skin just below my ribs. His fingers were shockingly gentle.
“Why can’t you leave the school, Bones?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“You do know.”
There was a silence where he only stood there, breathing. “Not really,” he said. “There were always rules, Leda. I’ve never not known his rules. It’s not like he explains them to me, or tells me what they’re for.” He shocked me, kissing me lingeringly onthe side of my face. “He hid me away for most of my childhood,” he murmured in my ear. “I couldn’t play with other kids. I wasn’t allowed to talk to other people, or leave my room. And now I can’t go anywhere on my own outside the school… where he pays people to watch me.”
My jaw slowly tightened as he spoke. I didn’t look away from his face.
“Bones.” I made my voice as soft as I could. “You’re an adult.”
His fingers traced my skin. He took a step closer to me, cupping my face in his hands.
“It’s complicated,” is all he said.
I watched him stare at the wall behind me, now fighting a tightening in my throat.
Gods. I believed him. I really believed him.
I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, but I knew, without really questioning how or why, that he was telling the truth, that it was even worse than he was saying. Maybe it was just that I could feel some part of him breaking down as he said it. It felt like it was breaking some part of him to tell me even that much.
I honestly couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.
“He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way,” he said next. His eyes flickered to mine. “He’d have killed you a long time ago if he had the faintest inkling of how much I need…” He faltered, his voice wavering before it grew hard. “Yet Istillcan’t seem to stay away from you. I still find excuses, even when I don’t need it. What does that make me?”
I stepped into him, and wrapped my arms around him.
