Page 158
Because love, I have learned, does not arrive cleanly for creatures like us. It comes covered in soot, baring its teeth, demanding to know whether we will run from the ruin or make a home inside it.
His fingers find the buttons of my shirt and I catch his wrist with a demand. “Slow.”
He stops, I immediately, but the obedience is not submission. It is his choice.
“Slow,” he repeats.
Alcott’s voice flickers beneath the word. I press my forehead to his, and for a moment, neither of us moves. Then the anger loosens. A storm passing into rain. I lick the blood at the corner of his mouth where Olive struck him, as he groans deep in his throat.
“There,” I whisper. “That is the only reward you get for being a bastard.”
A laugh escapes him. This one sounds like both of them, Darkness and Alcott. A strange, broken harmony.
“Cruel man,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Undoubtedly. Call me a name again and watch what happens.”
“Cunt.”
I close my eyes. Damn all of us and the impossible thing we have become. When I open my eyes again, he is watching me with something that looks dangerously close to trust. I push him against the bookcase once more.
The rest happens in the dim firelit room with the door locked and the world kept carefully outside. There is anger in it still, but not cruelty. Need exchanged between our bodies against the bookcase but not force. Sliding his slacks to the ground and feeling his complete surrender. Teeth, hands, breath, and the constant checking of edges neither of us can afford to cross. Our gasps fill the room as our pleasure consumes us. I love when I stay still, deep inside him, my body deep within him as I feel his soul convulsing from orgasm. I clutch his hips as I drive once more into him, hearing his moans makes me feel like a god.
When it is over, he sits on the rug before the hearth, shirt open, hair disordered, mouth swollen, looking more human than Darkness has any right to look. I sit beside him, not touching at first, but then his shoulder brushes mine. I allow it. We listen to the fire for a long while. Until I break our peace, “You owe her an apology.”
He smiles faintly, “I know.”
“And Edward.”
His smile fades. “He may attempt murder.”
“Probably.” I retort.
“Will you stop him?”
I consider this. “No.”
Darkness laughs softly, his hand finds mine on the rug.
“I am sorry,” He says, voice rough.
I turn my hand over and lace our fingers together. “I know.”
Darkness stirs behind his eyes again, quieter now. I hold his stare, my anger is still there, but so is the love. Messy, impossible, inconvenient love.
“You,” I say, “are going to learn that being useful does not give you permission to be cruel.”
His mouth twitches. “That sounds difficult.”
“It will be.”
“And if I fail?”
“Then I will remind you.”
