“Christ.” His fist falters as hot and viscous white surges from his tip, coating my stomach.Branding me.The hard lines of his abdomen contract, his hips driving forward, his eyes rolling back.
And that’s what does it.That’s what throws me over that edge.It’s not my own fingers doing it.It’s him.His pleasure.Seeing him come undone.
My orgasm is so intense it borders on pain.It doesn’t give me things, but demands them of me.Just like he does.My jaw drops in a soundless scream as I come, clenching, throbbing, feeling him drag his own tip through the mess he’s made of me.
When I come down, barely breathing, I realize that Curse has already moved away.Without him looming over me, the water cascades down my front.It washes away everything.
“You warm enough now?”he asks.
Words failing me, I bob my head in a jerky nod.
“Good.”
He opens the shower door, then leaves.
Chapter16
Aurora
True to his earlier words, Curse barely lets me out of his sight for the rest of the day.Though it’s an odd sensation, because though he’s not willing to let me go far, I also get the sense that he’s avoiding looking directly at me.After dressing and replacing the bandage at the side of my head, we exist around each other in strained silence.I spend most of that time thinking about what happened in the shower.If Curse thinks about it, too, it’s impossible to tell, everything locked behind the blank mask of his face.Whenever the tension becomes too much, I tell him I’m going to the bathroom.Short toilet breaks are the only time he allows a door to close between us – but only if I use one of the small inner bathrooms without a window in it.
Dinner, too, is eaten without words, the only sounds being the clink of cutlery and the relentless drive of the freezing rain outside.It hasn’t let up at all, and every hour in the storm thickens the ice encasing everything.Perhaps the ice will encase us, too.Trap us together in this house with no hope for escape.
The thought should be a horrifying one.But it’s not.
When darkness falls, it’s split by the snapping whip of lightning.Thunder muffles the sound of my footsteps as I ascend the stairs for bed.It muffles Curse’s as well.I don’t hear him close behind me on the stairs.But I can feel him.
Curse has brought our bags up here earlier.In the same bathroom as before, we brush our teeth.We do it together, side by side, at the twin sinks sunk into the countertop.His huge form dwarfs mine in the mirror.There’s an absurdity to the scene, and at the same time, a poignancy.The sight of Curse and me, side by side, doing something as mundane as brushing our teeth together, feels like a glimpse into some other secret life.Some other version of us.
Curse and Aurora in another universe.Another time.
Does he share that disconcerting sense of slippage, too?The sense that we could have been something together, or at least been somethingelse, if things had only turned out differently?Is that why he merely answered, “Another time,” when I asked him about his A tattoo?
Curse shows me into a large guest bedroom with warm lighting and a bed wrapped in sumptuous green sheets and a cream-coloured duvet.Across from the bed is a flat-screen TV hovering inside what looks to be a custom-created set of shelves and storage, constructed from dark wood.Maybe we can turn the TV on.It might puncture the seal of the silence that’s been around us all day.I’m just about to mention the idea to Curse when lightning and thunder explode in terrific unison.A half-a-heartbeat later, we are plunged into darkness.
Without another spear of lightning, without electricity, without the stars or the moon or a single streetlight outside, I’ve become entirely incapable of sight.The blackness is blinding, and so disorienting that I feel suddenly sick.I twist my head this way and that, searching for something, anything to anchor myself in this endless night.
“Aurora.”
Shuddering, I collide with a warm, bare chest, hands strong and steady around my upper arms.It’s only then that the lightning returns, searing Curse’s face into my vision as he tilts his head down to me.It’s only for a second, and then he’s gone again.
But no, not really gone.Though I can’t see him, I can feel him.Smell him.My hands are splayed on his chest.His fingers slide, down from near my shoulders to my elbows.
How did he even find me in that opaque black?And so fast, too.He was all the way across the room when the lights went out.
A silly question, perhaps.The darkness is his domain, after all.
Curse doesn’t let go of me, but starts walking, forcing me into shaky backwards steps.I don’t have a clue where the bed is now, so the sudden pressure of the edge of the mattress at the backs of my knees comes as a shock.My legs collapse, and now I’m seated on the edge of the bed.Even with the mattress firmly beneath me, I’m not ready to let go of him.Or, rather, for him to let go of me.I keep my hands on him, letting them drift down his chest to his belly.My fingertips register the sharp contraction of his abdominal muscles at the same time that he hisses in a tight breath above me.
Though he’s not got on a shirt, he does have pants.I find the waistband of them, slung low on his lean hips, then halt.
“Are we…” I lick my lips.“Tonight…”
“Are you asking me if we’re going to consummate the marriage now?”
He is still entirely invisible to me.It’s as is the darkness itself is speaking.
“Yes.”
