His eyes never left hers as they danced.
Eleanor smiled as his hand moved lower on her waist, stopping just above her behind.
Standing on her toes, Eleanor placed a gentle kiss on his exposed collar bone, causing his flames to burn brighter.
“You can touch me, if you want to.”
Without any warning, his hands were on her bottom as his shadows twisted up her leg, curving around her thigh as they danced.
Not rushed, or carnal, simply to touch, to hold, to keep her close.
In that moment, time had stopped and nothing else mattered but them. Still, it wasn’t quite right.
Eleanor’s eyes fell to his neck. “Can you take it off?” she asked under her breath.
Osiris’ movements stilled as he looked down at her, his shoulders bunched together and his eyes compressed slightly.
“I… I do not wish to frighten you,” he answered, his grip tightening on her as the music came to a stop.
Lifting her hand to caress under his head, along the side of his neck, she shook her head. “Osiris, you are not a monster. I yearn to know everything about you. The real you. I promise, I will not be scared.”
Osiris held her gaze as his grip loosened until it disappeared completely. She watched carefully as he lifted his hands to grab the base of his head, slowly pulling it off to reveal more shadows dancing where his head was only moments before.
Each tendril of shadow moved, fading away into the air around them.
His shoulders turned slightly as his neck appeared as if it were rotating, like he was—no, he was looking away from her.
“You are perfect,” Eleanor whispered, lifting her hands to touch the shadows on his neck.
His hands found her waist once more, some of his shadows brushing her hair behind her ear.
“You are beautiful,” came his deep baritone voice, just the same as always.
Eleanor’s shoulders shook with a laugh. “You cannot even see me, how could you know such things? Or, can you see?”
“I do not need eyes to see your beauty. I can sense it in my being, as if it were a truth woven into the very stars we dance under.”
Eleanor’s face burned hot to the touch as she looked up at him, fireflies dancing around them as the crickets chirped and the wind blew. They did not need music to dance, they just needed each other.
“And this, Symphony,” he said, lifting a hand to brush her cheek, “I wish to never know a day where this color does not paint your face.”
Eleanor swallowed as her face burned hotter. Her chest tightened as a new heat made its way lower, lower, down to her core.
“I think,” she whispered, “we should revisit the deal about you pleasuring me.”
24
OSIRIS
For one still, motionless moment, all Osiris could do was gaze down at his Symphony. She stared up at him with plump, parted lips, her eyes lost in a haze as if she was becoming adrift in the very chaos that was, at that moment, his mind.
“You wish,” he started in a hushed voice, his shadows beginning to lengthen and twitch around him, athirst for her touch, “for me to pleasure you? To use you to sate the very desires that have left me ravenous? For me to take you for my own, right now?”
All it took was one slow nod of her head, and a whispered word. All of which he would have gladly gone to his knees for to earn.
“Yes.”
“Then, my dearest Eleanor,” he whispered, his shadows morphing into dangerous tendrils as he took a careful step back, pulling away from her. The confusion on her face was short-lived, morphing into a terrified excitement as he whispered once more.
