Want Is Just Another Name for Empty
He leads her away from the Chantry in the approaching dusk, the words of her idiotic exchange with Elthina ringing in her ears. He wanted a small distraction. It meant nothing. She could scream but for his arm around her shoulder, the warmth of his body next to hers. No, no, Marian. No screams. No regrets.
Mute with anger, she shoves him into a darkened alley and against an ivy-covered wall. Their eyes meet: her desperate glower, his sullen stare, a flash of dangerous blue in its depths.
No screams, and no arguments either. She kisses him instead, a savage assault on his lying lips and treacherous tongue. Of course he responds. With so many lies at home in their hearts, their bodies have become their only refuge. They don't wait to reach the estate, but rut in the shadows of one of Hightown's mansions like a pair of mabari in heat. Her entire world is nothing but Anders in and out of her slick, fevered core.
"Harder." Her whisper is ragged and she's fisted her hands in the feathers of his ridiculous coat. She has a momentary flash of ripping it off only to reveal the truth of darker, blacker feathers underneath, but she shuts her eyes against the thought. No. The only deliverance is here, in their furious grinding. Her legs a vise around his waist, she bites his neck until she tastes blood, growls in his ear: "Fuck me harder! Split me in two!"
His only answers are low, guttural grunts, as he slams into her without mercy. The electric scent of magic assaults her nostrils, and she thinks she hears blue crackling through his skin. There is no turning back, no way out.
Pinned between her lover's shared body and a gray stone wall, she imagines he knows her thoughts. She imagines he tries to divest her of her apprehensions with each successive thrust. She imagines it working, so that when the act is ended they can walk away, hand in hand, free of the black weight of secrets at last.