“I know, but even so. You must see how weird that should look to some.”
“The only thing I see is you trying to change the subject again.”
She went to protest. Or deny it. The words touched her teeth.
Yet somehow, under that knowing gaze, something else just came out instead.
“Because you want to talk about sex. And I have no desire to do anything like that with my mortal enemy. I don’t even want to do it with myself, quite honestly. I tried this morning and there was just almost nothing there, and even the things that were felt as uncomfortable to think about as thinking about you. All that gothic stuff about being haunted and hunted and devoured,” she said, all in a rush of embarrassment.
So of course he just made it worse.
He laughed. He actually laughed.
“And now you’re mocking me.”
“Yes. But not because of that sort of fantasy.”
“Then what exactly do you find so funny?”
“You thinking those are the things you like about those stories.”
“Because I do. I clearly do. It happens the second you show your teeth.”
Why keep confessing things to him?she moaned at herself. Though really, she knew why she did. She had stepped off the edge of the cliff again. And now everything was descending into madness, at some speed.
“No, it doesn’t,” he said, as he took a step forward. Just one step, but it was slow and deliberate enough that she knew what was coming. More words, more soft words—god, he knew how to say so many words she had no defenses against. “It happens when you expect me to, and instead I do something else. I end the story sweetly. I end it different to how it usually does in reality. In reality, you get torn apart; everything is a tragedy. But in the dream, someone strokes a hand over your face so tenderly, it leaves you breathless. They whisper sweet nothings in your ear, until you’re boneless. And the moment you think you might give in to something bloody and brutal, they do all the sensuous things you most like, and magic blooms through your body, and saves the day. You like kindness, Mina. And especially when you most believe that none is coming.”
Jesus Christ, she thought.
Only it wasn’t just because of what she’d braced for. He didn’t just make it sound good. He wasright. And so much so she didn’t even really know how to deny it. “That is not. That is just. You. You can’t know that,” she stuttered out, half knowing that this would just make things worse.
And it did.
Now she wasn’t just plummeting off the cliff.
She’d hit the sea, at the bottom. And it was like syrup, soft and warm.
She could feel herself sinking into it, right up to her neck.
“Of course I can. I can hear your heart, remember. I know what it races for.”
“Maybe it just happens too close to something else for you to really tell.”
“There is always a difference between a pulse that quickens in terror and one that quickens over something someone finds arousing. And sometimes those two things do overlap, I will grant you. But not so much with you.”
“Oh, come on. How on earth could anyone pinpoint that?” she said and tried to laugh as she did. But the laugh died when she realized what she’d just opened the door to. Now he was going to answer.
After taking another step closer.
And dropping his voice one octave lower.
“Because one only makes your heart beat loud in your chest. But the other makes it beat between your legs,” he said. Then he held her gaze, just for good measure. He waited, until the flush already all over her cheeks deepened. Before he continued, slow, slow, slow. “Do you want me to be more precise than that? I could tell you exactly where, if you want. I could talk about the sound of the blood rushing to swell your cunt. The way it beats like a second heart, in that sweet little clit. Sometimes, I think I can even make out the exact ache that goes through you there, when you most feel it.”
Andgod, once he had.
She couldn’t help marveling over every explicit word he’d chosen. No more covertly seductive poetry. Now there was things likecuntin there, things likeclit. Raw and real, and in a way she’d never really heard from anyone before. She’d barely seen things like that in books.
It was really no wonder she struggled to answer.
