He was panting openly then, eyes closed, his face contorted in pain.
“Isis’s tits… do youwantme to hurt you?”
I felt myself flush, even as it hit me what he was reacting to, at least in part. When I’d shifted my body, I hadn’t fully comprehended I had a leg wrapped around him, or that I’d just slid my entire thigh all along his very conspicuous erection when I changed positions.
I’d conveniently forgotten aboutthatpart of his magical overloads, too.
“Do it,” I said, half through gritted teeth. “You have my permission. Do it.”
His reaction was immediate, and abrupt.
He rolled over with me, moving so fast, I didn’t understand what he was doing until he’d already completed the motion. I found myself lying on my back, gasping, looking up at his inhumanly pale face, his glowing, unfocused eyes.
The canopy above us had lightened in the morning sun, and now looked nearly white.
He adjusted his hand on my waist. His other hand wrapped around my shoulder and neck, and then his whole weight bore down on me, even as he slid down my body just enough to get his lower half off mine. He let out another half-broken groan as he did it, and I flushed hotter, realizing he’d just dragged his cock down me a second time.
Then he was hanging over me, eyes closed, holding me to his bed.
“I’m going to start.” His voice was harsh, clipped, and he wouldn’t look at me. He grimaced, and gripped me tighter in his hands. “I’m sorry, Shadow. It’s going to be bad.”
I only nodded.
He was already breathing like he’d been running, sweating. His hands trembled where they held me, when suddenly, his breathing stopped.
I felt the wave distantly at first, like the faint roar of a coming train.
I’d forgotten.
Gods, I’d reallyforgottenwhat it was like.
His magic slammed into mine, cutting off my breath, making me cry out in something like pain, mixed with something that definitelywasn’tpain. Hot, liquid magic flooded through myevery limb, infused my blood, covered my skin, filled my mouth and lungs and every other part of me. It stripped us both of everything that stood between us––my defenses, his distance, every millimeter of psychological or physical barrier that had stood there since he’d left me by that fountain. It felt like being plunged into nakedness and nearness with him without any preamble or any remaining impediment whatsoever.
His presence, wrapped into and a part of that magic, wiped out my physical vision, even as it caused me to cling to his arm and shoulder.
I think that was what unbalanced me the most.
No, I know it was.
It was the sheer amount ofhimI felt in that hot, crashing, electrical wave.
The blank, indifferent, contempt-filled stares of the past year mixed with the heat of his storm-like magic, confusing the hell out of me. I fought to sort it out, to make sense of it, then to protect myself from both versions of him, but I couldn’t do any of those things, not like this. I couldn’t avoid the understanding that he couldn’t do it, either, that he’d been holding back all of this for longer than he could deal with, and he’d lost the ability to even care now that he’d finally let it go.
I struggled and fought to maintain my separation, any shred of dignity, of privacy, of protection from him, but it was futile.
It felt like I was drowning in it, in him, but most of all in that strange vulnerability I’d always felt underneath his mask, a kind of needing, out-of-control, longing, wanting, confused,lostfeeling that didn’t match any part of his external personality. That part of him felt strangely younger than anything he deigned to show me on purpose.
It also felt shockingly, heartbreakingly real, and visceral in a way I couldn’t avoid. None of that had gotten easier in the time I’d spent away from him.
If anything, all those feelings were exponentially worse.
All of it felt deeper, more disconcertingly intimate, more, well… morehim… than I remembered feeling it, even in those past memories of times we’d done this.
I felt things I hadn’teverfelt on him before, too.
Heavier emotions weighed on him now, things that devastated me once they reached me well enough for me to understand what I was feeling. I could barely find words to describe them in my mind before tears blurred my vision, and my throat tightened so much it hurt.
Defeat, guilt, failure… gods, so much grief and sadness.
