No, she wanted to tell him.
Yet somehow, the words struck her too hard to do it. They reverberated through her, good and right in a way she didn’t fully grasp. All she knew was that it happened, and after it did she made the swipe of aY,the circle of anO,the curve of aU. One after the other in curlicue script. And then the rest, so fast she didn’t have time to think about it. She only knew what she’d put once it was there, backward and in a line that pointed downward, alone the length of his spine:
Hell is no longer your master.
Your form is your own to command.
Terrifying, of course. Weird and not what she thought would work. But there was no noise that said she’d done it wrong. No—there was only the sense of something powerful flowing from her. And then, oh god, then, the walls shook. Everything shook. The lights went bright, bright, bright and then so suddenly dim she had their afterimage painted on her eyes.
“Jack,” she said, high and tight.
But he had her, he had her. He got hold of her hand.
“It’s okay. Nothing can trespass here, you’re safe. You’re safe, do as you will,” he said, over the noise. And this time when she touched the brush to him, nothing rattled. The lights stayed a low glow.
But best of all:
He didn’t tense.
He sighed, like someone finally relaxing after long hardship.
And after that there was no stopping her. She completely lostherself in it. One word after the other, until his back looked like a beautiful maze of them. Like tattoos all over him, it seemed. And in fact they sort of were. She ran her thumb over one—be as you wish to—and the black didn’t budge. It didn’t smear. It stayed there, almost sunk into the skin.
Amazing, she thought, as she touched another, just with the tip of her finger.
And this was the one that made him groan. All in one big low burr, like he’d been holding it in for the longest time. He’d forced it down, until he just couldn’t take it any longer. Then once he had, more seemed to break with it. He turned in one great roll, onto his side, one hand held up a little. And the hand was shaking. It was really shaking. She honestly would have thought she’d done something wrong, if she hadn’t been able to tell what he was going to say before he said it.
“Okay, that’s enough, that’s enough, you’re gonna make me—” he started to say, but cut himself off before he got tothatword. The one he clearly thought was too rude to admit to in front of her when it applied to him.
It hadn’t mattered when it had been her.
When he’d told her to come for him, and she had.
So she did her best to make it seem like nothing at all.
Even though it thrilled her to her very core. She’d almost made him come, just by brushing magic into his back. He was so starved for something like this, so hot for this—and maybe at least somewhat for her—that so little had nearly sent him over the edge. And that was so electrifying she could hear it in her voice as she spoke. “And you don’t want to do that?”
“Not here. Not in front of you.”
“You didn’t mind when I did.”
“That’s not the same, I’ll make a mess.”
“Not if I let you do it in my mouth.”
Silence, then. A long silence that made her think for just a second that she’d gone too far. But then he broke it. He broke it. “There’s no way you really want to do that to me. That you actually like doing that,” he said, as if he wouldn’t agree to let her do it if he thought she didn’t. As if it mattered.
It made answering very easy.
“You’re right, I don’t. Usually it’s a chore, a thing to get through; sometimes I even go somewhere else in my head,” she said, and he nodded as if to say,of course. And then she continued. “But the thing is, this isn’tusually. This is the first time in my life anyone has ever really held off so long that I get to feel anticipation at the thought of it. The first time anyone has ever let me go before them, so I get to imagine what it’s like. I get to long to, I get to feel excitement at the idea of it. In fact all I can think about is what you’ll taste like, what you’ll feel like, if you’ll touch me when I take you in my mouth. How soft that touch will be, and exactly what it’ll mean if it breaks into something more desperate: that you don’twantto urge me into doing more, but for just a moment are helpless not to.”
Too much, she thought, when she was done.
She even waited for him to say so.
And instead, he simply laid back on the bed.
Though, truthfully, she still expected him to stop her when she reached for the buttons on his jeans. Then she expected him to stop her as she unbuttoned them, one by one, and slow enough that he could if he wanted to. But he didn’t. And when she looked up, just as she got to the part where she’d have to reach inside, all she saw were his heavy-lidded eyes. The way he was holding his breath.
