“It’s alright. I’m here. We’re alright.” He tucked my head under his chin and folded himself around me. Tucked tight in his embrace, I tried to hold on to the feeling of improbable triumph growing in the dark. We stayed burrowed into one another for as long as possible, giving our hearts a chance to slow and time for reality to catch up.
Around us, the cavern cooled, the cinders settled into a field of ash, and the demons’ bones crumbled into dust. Except for the sound of my stuttered weeping and his thundering heart, there was silence.
When the panic receded, shock rushed in. I existed in a suspended state, abstractly aware of the world around me. Luther ripped a strip from his shirt and wrapped it around the weeping blisters on my palm. He kissed the back of my handbefore wrapping an arm around me and guiding me out of the cavernous sanctum. It might have been minutes or hours that we traversed the underground tunnels before coming up for air on the fog-shrouded Kilbride campus.
My tender, unstable psyche floated over my head, and I barely remembered how we got to my house. Only a few fragments lingered: blurred streetlights, fog coiled in the limbs of barren trees, the stench of smoke clinging to my hair and clothes. The heavy contact of Luther’s hand on my thigh the entire way. Then the shock of a bitter chill as he escorted me from a car to my house.
By the time Luther carried me through the front door, the night had finally caught up with me. When he steered me to my bathroom, I tried to stand on my own but swayed under the weight of the night’s trauma. I was barely aware of the sound of the faucet knobs squeaking as they turned and water hitting shower tiles.
I made it as far as the sink, trying and failing to peel off my smoke-heavy clothes before my knees buckled and the world swayed sideways. My breath hitched, and I collapsed as the sob that had been building deep in my chest for hours, days, months, finally imploded.
I dropped to the floor, cradling my injured hand to my chest.
All the agony, misery, betrayal, culminated into one unstable star that decimated my composure. Great whooping cries breached me, my heart faltered in the cage of my ribs, and a flood of tears blinded me to my surroundings.
Luther was beside me in an instant. I hadn’t even managed to fully undress before breaking down. I looked like a disoriented, pathetic creature smothered in ash and worn thin. But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. Instead, he sat behind me on the floor and gathered me into his lap as though I weighednothing. As though I were a precious treasure and it was his duty to cherish me—like I washis.
And I was.
Luther’s hands were moving soothingly over my body, and his mouth hovered near my ear. “Breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe. It’s alright. They’re gone. We’re safe. You did it. Amazing, wonderful girl. So perfect. You did amazing. So good.” And then the dam broke with, “I’m so proud of you.”
Bone-deep, soul-crushing sobs heaved out of me. The hard, ugly, sniveling kind you tried to keep hidden from the outside world. Yet there I was, shaking with visceral aftershocks of horror and the fact we barely made it out alive. All the while, his arms remained curled tight, caged around me. He was holding me up, warm and unmoving, but tender and secure.
“It’s over,” he whispered, his own breath shallow and ragged as he repeated an endless cycle of praise until the words drilled into my skull. “Ophelia, it’s over. I’m here. I’ve got you.I’m proud of you.”
I clung to him as my lifeline.
My everything.
No matter all the reasons I had tried to tell myself it was insane before, he would never abandon me, betray me, or set me in harm’s way. Perhaps those were just excuses, and I was fooling myself, but in the end, I decided it didn’t matter.
Despite the age gap, the trials, his oddly endearing obsession, it was true. Luther would go to the ends of the world for me. His sense of possession might be off-putting to others, but that was exactly what I needed. I needed to belong to some place,someone, and to be cared for. And with him, I didn’t need to ask. It was intuitive and natural. Even in the penultimate moment of vulnerability, we were in sync.
Steam billowed around the bathroom, cocooning us in humid warmth. Neither of us spoke when Luther eventuallyhauled me from the floor and delicately peeled off the rest of my clothing. He ushered me under the water, wordlessly beginning the slow, gentle process of washing dried ash and crusted blood from my skin.
The water ran in pink and gray swirls beneath our feet.
He was exceptionally careful with the burn on my hand and the cut on my forearm. I hissed from the stinging pain as he cleaned the wounds but gritted my teeth so he wouldn’t stop. I wanted his touch, even if it hurt.
Luther wrapped me in a towel with a tenderness that spoke of steadfast devotion. His adherence to my aches and pains, to my moods and my unspoken needs further tangled him in the vulnerable parts of me that no one else could ever dream of reaching. His touch was so reverent and careful it made me want to weep for entirely different reasons. Throat tight, and eyes drained of tears, I watched as he cleaned and bandaged my wounds, finishing the work with another kiss to the back of my wrapped hand.
Then he lifted me into the cradle of his arms, carrying me down the hall and over the threshold of my bedroom. But when he set me on my feet and turned to my dresser for clothes, I stopped him with my unhurt hand catching his wrist.
“Luther,” he turned, hearing the strangled emotion in my voice, “please, I… I need you.”
He faced me, half in shadow and half brushed in silver moonlight from the window. A contrast of light and darkness, and both sides of him belonged to me. He nodded, dipping his face to press his forehead to mine. “Anything for you, sweetheart.”
His warm breath skimmed my lips, and I rose on the tips of my toes to kiss him.
And he kissed back, though not like before. These weren’t the charged, frenzied kisses we’d shared. They were gentle,cautious, and significant. The type of kisses that whispered in rasping breaths and rising moans,I thought I lost youandyou’re mine.
Handling me as if I were made of porcelain, he lowered me onto the bed and climbed over my body. He kissed me soundly until my back was flat on the mattress. Then he settled atop me and parted my legs with his knee. Our bodies were perfectly slotted together, and I widened my thighs in welcome of him. I opened for him, blossoming like a flower in spring.
It was a primal impulse, to come together and use one another to feel alive. To bring each other back from the brink of death we had balanced on for too long. And he was the only thing that made me feel so alive, so hot, like a supernova flaring bright.
His hands were precise and skilled in how they handled me. He spent time kissing and biting from my neck to my shoulder, making me shiver. I ran my tongue over his neck and dug my nails into his back until he groaned.
Luther usually fucked me as if staking a claim on me, as if trying to prove something to me he already knew. But not tonight. He moved with certainty, knowing that I was finally wholly his.
