“The law says nothing about looking.”
“Nor your Illusions.”
Her eyes flash. “Do you want to feel all of your senses all at once?”
“I want to feel all of you, everywhere.”
The Illusion in my hair gives a gentle tug, baring the column of my throat to her. I swallow, staring at the ceiling. She could slit my neck with a fingernail.
“Are you sure?” she whispers.
“Do your best.”
My nose fills with the scent of her skin, as if she were under me now, her gasp tickling my ear, my tongue dragging on her neck, licking the salt of sweat. On the ceiling is the prettiest picture, a mirror to this moment: her magic coaxing my legs open, and her real hand between her very real thighs, stroking as she watches my pupils dilate, my mouth part, my chest blushing. Unseen hands tease down my body, circling my nipples, sliding lower, my abs flexing. She circles around where I need her most, again and again and again, and I should have known she would be perfect at this game, too.
A breath hisses between my teeth, pressure building higher, higher. I am cupped by her Illusions, overloaded and overwhelmed and overtaken in every sensation.
No wonder she failed as the Heart of Illusion, for she should be its queen.
A moan builds in a throat, but in whose I cannot say, we are one and the same, every part of her indulging every part of me.
“Is this,” she pants, “what you want, my love?”
“Yes,” I cry in the rising crescendo. Illusions stream through my mind like water. Her on her knees before me, my thumb pressing into her neck, my body pinning hers to the mattress, her nails scraping my back, and it is her fantasies over the years setting my very essence on fire. Steam rises from the bath, hotter and hotter.
“But is it—” She swallows, leaning against the pool as her body tremors, and I see it all on the ceiling above me and in my mind’s eye, and hear her very real gasps around me. “Is it what you need?”
I groan in response. The tide is taking me away, everything hot and shivering, and if I do not burst now, I will die.
“Can you…can you say no to me?”
“Never.”
Everything stops.
Everything. Stops.
The images die out, the sensations yanked away like a tablecloth under a feast, and everything scatters, ruined.
“No,” I sob, slumping forward.
Water swallows my torso, smacking my mouth; I sputter. Delicate hands, much weaker than their magic, grip my shoulders, hauling me up. Kassandra, her flushed face pinched with worry, mouth set in a tight line.
“What is wrong with you?” I snarl, shoving her away, humiliation burning every inch of me where heat just was.
She flinches, eyes wet, almost afraid. Then she’s reaching for the ledge, hauling herself out of the pool.
“Wait,” I say, reaching. “I didn’t mean that.”
Her feet slap against the tile. “Yes, you did.”
“I didn’t—”
“This was a mistake. I made a mistake.”
This time, I flinch.
No.Not this, not now—not when I was so close to a release, to feeling something that is not rejection and failure and fear.
