He said, “You tell me when you want to come.”
I said, “I want to.”
He said, “You can do better, baby.”
I said, “I want you to make me come. I want you to fuck me until I scream.”
He said, “Good girl.”
He circled the clit, pressed, then started to fuck in harder, each thrust deep and sure. The sound in the room changed—the slap of skin, the rhythm, the animal groan of the bed under us—but he did not lose the focus, the way he looked at me in the mirror, the way he made me look at myself.
I felt the orgasm building, the way it had the night before, but bigger, wider, more structural. My whole body was alive with it.
He said, “Look at me.”
I did.
He fucked in, slow, then held, all the way at the end, the head of his cock pressed right up against the deepest part of me, and then he curled his hips, a motion so small and so calculated that it shot the pleasure up through my whole body like a spark up a fuse.
I came.
I came with my eyes wide open, watching myself in the mirror, watching the body of a woman I had never recognized as beautiful break apart under the hands of a man who had spent a thousand years waiting to want something as only himself.
The color in my skin went prismatic.
It was not just gold anymore. It was red, and blue, and violet, and a white so pure it was almost transparent. The bond ran up the insides of my arms, across my shoulders, down my chest, and into the root of my cunt, where it detonated. I felt it in my eyes, the way the color changed there, the way the rings of my iris went from hazel to silver to a color I had no name for. I felt it in my hair, which in the mirror looked dark, almost black, but now—in the gold and fire and light—shone with a luster I had never seen on any body, in any world.
He kept fucking me.
He kept going through the orgasm, the thrusts getting smaller, tighter, as though he was calibrating the pressure to the exact load-bearing point.
He said, “You can do another, baby. Give it to me.”
He moved the fingers on my clit, pressed, circled, and I came again, this time harder, my whole body seizing on the wave. The reflection in the mirror showed the moment my jaw unclenched, the moment the chronic ache at the base of my skull let go, the moment every part of me that had been built to survive was, finally, allowed to live.
He came.
He fucked in, deep, holding at the end, the cock pulsing inside me, and I felt the heat of it, the silver of it, filling me up until the bond at my wrist snapped tight and then released.
He shuddered, once, then twice.
He lowered himself over me, his mouth at my ear.
He said, “You’re mine, baby. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself.”
He held me there, soft, for a long time. The fire burned down. The color in the mirror faded, but the color in my body did not.
He pulled out, slow, and the loss of him was almost as acute as the having of him. He rolled to his side, pulling me into the crook of his body, holding my head to his chest.
We lay there, not speaking, not moving, for what felt like hours.
He said, “I will give you a thing I have not given any being in any of my long memories.”
I waited.
He whispered, “Vael. My name.”
I repeated it, into the hollow of his throat. “Vael.”
