That stupid cunt. Oh, did he have plans for the fucking harpy... but it would have to wait after he spooked the rest of these fucks out of the house. Delia was asking for a big show and he refused to deliver. Not yet. Fuck that, he could get scares easy out of a bunch of drunk New Yorkers.
"You're standing in the most haunted house in Connecticut!"
Hoo-boy, this bitch was really asking for it, though. She was locked in the attic with the Ghost with the Most and she would get her wish but first, he had to get rid of the hangers-on.
The room was kept dark and cold as he used the cover of shadow for subterfuge. All of their flesh began to crawl in simultaneous as bugs scuddled up out of their clothing, phantom touches caressing them. Foul odors filled the space, and a group of the boxes in the corner catapulted across to the other side.
He got a few screams, mostly from cheap jump scares and banging shit around rather than true terror. He could just barely taste the first hints of it. It was the cheap fear, but it was fear and it sustained. The walls began to leak blood, quickly pooling on the floor and edging closer to the dinner party. There was a struggle for the door handle but no matter how hard they tried it wouldn't budge.
The room shook around them as his shadow form solidified and stepped into view before them, eyes glowing eerily.
"Get out!" He boomed, and the door sprang open.
In a flurry of blood-curdling screams and curses aimed at the Deetzes, the dinner party guests fled the scene, scarcely stopping long enough to grab their purses and jackets before hopping into their sports cars, narrowly avoiding crashing into the river on their way downhill. Only Otho and the Deetzes remained.
Still, Lydia slept.
It was not that the Deetzes weren't frightened by the show. It was that they knew it wasn't meant for them. They didn't smell the foul odors the guests commented on, didn't feel bugs crawling over their skin the way the other city-slickers did, squirming and dancing in their overpriced suits and dresses. Every other vision and illusion they were privy to, but these were small-time compared to what this ghoul had put the Deetzes through.
Nevertheless, it was enough. More than enough. Delia got exactly what she asked for and it was her own undoing. Her agent was never going to try and get her booked again, she was never going to appear in Art in America or get a piece in the Times. She was devastated.
Charles, on the other hand, was burning up for a completely different reason.
"You've got to be fucking with me, Delia."
She turned on him aghast, cherry lips parted in shock that he would speak to her that way. They were in the foyer, watching their guests flee in terror.
"You spent forty-five goddamn minutes crying to me about how Lydia was trying to ruin your party, and as soon as it's convenient for you, you want to use her to impress your shitty guests?"
Either Charles had had one too many, or Delia had crossed too far over the line, or a healthy combination of the two but he was letting her have it and wasn't letting up.
"You've been saying you think she's behind the shit that happened when we first moved in for months now! Now you want to believe her? Get us fucking killed! I‒ I need a fucking break."
"Charles‒"
Her husband had never spoken to her like this. Delia knew it was a little wrong of her to fib like that, to string their guests along, but hadn't thought Charles‒ or the "ghost"‒ would react so poorly. It wasn't like Delia to consider the consequences. Desperate to fix things, she followed after him as he stormed up toward his study.
Otho was just playing the third wheel to it all, happy to exist amid the drama.
"Wait! Wait! Talk to me! You don't understand‒"
Her steps slowed. The banister felt wrong… scaly.
Betelgeuse had followed them down the stairs grinning, a cigarette clenched in his teeth. It was chaos, maybe not as much fear as he would have liked but still gratifying… now for the main attraction.
Charles was headed back up the stairs, Delia close behind calling after him when she froze mid-step to look down at the newly minted banister. He let his heavy coils fall from where the banister had originally been mounted. There was that stale dry quality to the air that reminded one of a snake cage, the horrid dry scraping sound of scales along the carpet. From near the attic doorway, a large snake-like head bearing his face slithered towards them, huge luminous snake eyes and long venom dripping teeth crawling closer to the Deetzes. He snapped his jaws at Charles, his long forked tongue tasting the air and a nasty dry cackle crawling out of that vast cavern of a mouth.
"I'm here fer yer daughter, Chuck."
Thick coils looped around Charles, dangling him by the ankle over his own gaping maw. Another large coil knocked Delia and Otho to the ground, both crying out in fear and pain. There was so much energy that he wasn't actively trying to control, it made the lights flicker
He had Charles inches from his fangs, forked tongue reaching out to caress the man's face.
Lydia was trying very hard to keep sleeping, but there was so much going on outside her bedroom, and her hearing was so sensitive‒ even with the volume on the television turned up as loud as it was. There was screaming and crashing coming from upstairs... the attic. By the time she had shaken the sleep off long enough to stand up out of bed, her father was yelling at Delia. Rather than interrupt that once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, she hesitated behind the door and listened.
…
Delia did what?
The girl barely had any time to speculate as to what they were even talking about before they were screaming again. What was going on? It couldn't have been Betelgeuse. He was still in bed, wasn't he?
"Beej…?"
The air in her bedroom remained silent, all but their muted screams, and her gut flipped. It was him out there terrorizing everyone. And she was letting him. She had unleashed him.
"I'm here for your daughter, Chuck."
A sickly screeching cackle filled the air. Lydia burst from her bedroom in an instant, just as furious with the poltergeist as her father had been with her stepmother moments ago. She stepped confidently toward the sound, ready to give him a piece of her mind, completely ignorant as to the form he had taken, only to stumble backward right over the trunk of his tail. If someone didn't act fast, she was going to snap her neck right on the staircase.
It was more of a niggling sensation than anything else. He felt her trip and, panicking, tossed Charles over the ledge. Reaching out with a coil, he caught her delicately around the middle and cradled her in against his large scaly form. The lights were killed, plunging the whole house into darkness.
Charles was groaning from the floor below, so he wasn't dead. What a disappointment. Flicking his tail like a whip sent Delia and Otho down the to the bottom floor as well as made the stairs quake and shuffle them down painfully. His long forked tongue flicked over her skin, telling him she was uninjured.
He had let her wake up to an empty bed. Her parents had taken up too much of his time this evening. He was seeing red again‒ they needed to pay. But first Lydia needed to be seen too.
"Babesssssss," it was a long low raspy hiss, "ya' all right?"
He pulled her in close and let her small form slide to the floor.
Never having been held by a giant snake before, it took Lydia several long beats of breathless shock to gather that this was the form her beloved had chosen to terrify her parents and their guests. Scales upon scales coating gargantuan tubes of muscle, wrapped lovingly around her, squeezing in a tender way that made her feel like she was being hugged from thigh to breast.
Lydia liked snakes.
The agonized screams coming from her father, Otho, and Delia snapped her out of it. This… this poltergeist may have adored and protected her‒ loved her even, she dared to think bravely‒ but he hurt people. Planned on hurting more people. He didn't even feel bad about it. It was selfish of her to keep him around like this, to desire him the way she did‒ and Oh God, did she want him.
Obscenely so, feeling him around her like this only made her want him more.
"Betelgeuse…" She whispered, hurt and disappointment echoing through her tone.
"Betelgeuse…" This one was louder, her pain for him audible, seeping into her expression now as she sought out the luminous orbs that made up his gaze in the dark.
"Betelgeuse." His frustrated cry was cut off into nothing as he and his aura disappeared completely as if he had never been there at all.
The pain of her calling his name was worse in this form. Or was it just worse at this point because it was her that was putting him away?When she said it the second time he almost crushed her as his large form convulsed. His irritation with her parents disappeared as panic started to claw at him.
"Lydia, sweetheart, please‒!"
She said it a third time, snapping him back into his twilight existence, unseen and unheard. He couldn't even find it in himself to be mad at her. Sure, he was livid to be sealed away again but he was mad that he wasn't there when she awoke, and that it was his fault she almost fell. Mostly, he was furious he didn't get to finish dealing with her parents his way.
He didn't dare to manipulate the lights for fear of her getting disorientated this close to the stairs but he did make the paint on the walls start to peel and the house shake.
"For fuck's sake, Lyds, don't do this!" He was making enough racket to wake the dead without actually damaging anything. His touch ghosted over her, a whisper of what it could be.
"Call me back, babes, pleeeeaaase call me back. Don't leave me like this!"
It hurt Lydia in equal parts emotionally to banish him as it hurt him physically. With a broken sob, she threw herself away from her family, away from all of them, and back to the dark solitude of her bedroom‒ still reeking of his cigarettes.
"Just leave me alone, all of you!"
She catapulted into her bed, pulling the comforter up over her head and stuffing pillows over her ears, hoping in vain to just block it all out. Otho was crying. Her father was making horrible hurt sounds. Delia was hysterical over both of them. Even through the pillow, she could hear her own name uttered on the occasion and couldn't bear to listen fully to whatever they were saying about her.
She was responsible for this. She did this. Betelgeuse's energy was moving all over her, making her squirm and sob.
"You hurt them," she lashed back in an explanation she shouldn't have to give. He couldn't honestly expect her to just let him go around hurting people, could he? He couldn't.
"I could'a killed them babes, but I didnt!" He'd stopped tormenting the rest of the house.
"Chuck ain't even really hurt, a few bruises at best. The harpy is fine, upset but fine. Fatso didn't even get a scratch goin' down the stairs." He was floating mid-air not far from the edge of her bed, arms crossed, cigarette clenched in his teeth.
"It fuckin' hurts when you send me away," he rubbed at his chest absently, "they carved the spell that binds me into my fucking bones, n' every time someone calls me I can feel my ribs breaking. The dead ain't supposed to feel pain."
"How could'ya do this, sweets? How could'ya send me away like this? For them breathers that don't love ya? Not like I...do. Fuuuuck."
He scrubbed his face with his hands. It was no use. She couldn't heard him and he couldn't get her attention, she was too upset. He didn't know how to fix it. The worst part? He wanted to fix it. That horrible churning in his gut had started again. He had to get her to let him out enough to talk. Enough to let her know hadn't done any permanent damage, even to the house. Trailing his fingers in her hair, he pressed another kiss to the top of her head.
A flood of anguish pooled around her; some of it his, some of it her own, their tortured energies melding in joint despair. She could feel him all around her, the ghost of his touch reaching through the blankets to pet her hair, caress down her back, soothe her sobbing.
"I can't," she begged him to understand. How could she let him back out knowing what he was capable of? They were murderers. What if Delia was just a little too bitchy to her one day? What if her father was drunk and said something hurtful and careless? Would Betelgeuse haul off and rip them apart the way he did Mr. Howard?
"I'm so so sorry, Beej," she was hyperventilating into her pillow, barely able to catch a breath. It didn't appear to Lydia as though there were any solutions that made everyone happy. "Don't you understand? What am I supposed to do?!"
He must have known how lonely she was, how much she adored him and wanted to keep him all to herself. The ghoul with his penchant for violence had not given her much of a choice here. To say his name again would be to give him freedom to whisper in her ear, talk her into letting him lose again‒ something that could not be allowed to happen. Lydia could only handle so much blood on her hands.
Betelgeuse wasn't sure how exactly long Lydia had been keeping him locked away in the twilight of reality but knew it had to have been more than a day or two. Time really didn't work the same for the dead as the living. After the first evening, when he didn't leave her side, listening to her cry until she fell into a fitful sleep he couldn't do anything about, he considered evading her dreams but thought better of it.
He spent an entire afternoon going through Charles's office for dirt, anything to turn Lydia against them. He found several points of interest, one of which being a number escort calling cards. Those were promptly left in Delia's studio. Every evening, he made sure he was there when Lydia went to bed and stayed until she woke up. After the first few nights, though, he stopped trying to touch her. It caused them both far too much distress.
She didn't leave for school, but he'd also murdered her teacher so who knew what they were going to do about that? He was just glad she wasn't walking alone anymore. One afternoon, when he overheard Delia and Charles talking about sending Lydia away he moved quickly to Lydia's room and played their conversation over the radio for her.
She had to see that they didn't love her, were intent on throwing her away‒ but he could stop it. All she had to do was agree to marry him.
The Deetz house was tenser following than snake incident than it had ever been in Lydia's memory. They weren't speaking to her. Unlike before where it seemed more like an accident, where they had the benefit of the doubt that maybe they just didn't hear her, it was clear to Lydia that they were actively ignoring her‒ as if afraid of her. As if it was she personally that attacked them all, threw them down the stairs.
She may as well have.
School was out of the question for the foreseeable future. With Mr. Howard's "mysterious disappearance", Miss Shannon's was unable to accommodate her and forced to refund her father's tuition money. The public school was similarly unequipped to take her on, leaving Lydia's education up in the air for the time being.
One day, Lydia was reading in her bedroom, trying to pretend she didn't miss Betelgeuse so much she felt it in her bones when a conversation she wasn't meant to be privy to began to play over her radio.
"... Not again, Delia."
"But Charles!"
"I won't! She's not going anywhere like that!"
"But we can't take care of her, Charles. She'll be happier with other people like her. They know how to handle cases like hers. We don't."
"Evie knew how to take care of her."
There was a lengthy pause. Lydia held her breath, her very fate hanging on the balance of this conversation. Such a bold name-drop by her father knocked the breath out of her, same as it did Delia.
"That was low, Charles. It's your fault just as much as it is mine."
Lydia's heart beat faster. What were they talking about? What was their fault? She scrambled across the room, holding the stereo close to her ear so as to not miss a single word.
"I know…" Her father continued, sounding defeated. Delia's voice softened.
"We can't change the past, Charles. We made our bed, and now we've got to lie in it… but maybe it's time we accept the facts of the case. The Hemlock Institute is state of the art, just look at these brochures! She would be living better than us…"
The conversation faded away, marking either its end or that Betelgeuse was unwilling to let her listen further. She couldn't have heard them properly. There must have been some sort of mistake. They were going to send her away? Why did they think mother's death was their fault? Lydia was so hurt and confused, she wasn't thinking when her lips formed the syllables.
"Betelgeuse…"
"Yeah, babes," his voice soft, as he let his hand fall from where he had it pressed to the radio. Tricks like that took more energy than he wanted to admit but it was easier than trying to get Lydia in a position to overhear them. Safer for her, too, to hear it well away from them. She needed to hear it.
"Sounds like they wanna get rid of ya," he cleared his throat and leaned in until he was so close his lips touched her when he spoke, "send ya' far, far away from me. I dunno 'bout you, sweet cheeks, but I dun like that idea."
He thought Charles would have learned his lesson when he got tossed over the banister to the bottom floor. Apparently not. It wasn't just about being sent away thing though, was it? Not for Lydia. She didn't get startled and move for the radio until they mentioned…
"Sweetheart, who's Evie?" The look on Lydia's face spoke volumes. "What happened to her, sweets?"
Lydia had gone very numb. Silent and motionless, her mind was still struggling to process everything she had just heard. She still wasn't over the ghost crowding her space, the one she had promised herself she would never indulge again. It was too dangerous, too selfish to let herself keep him.
But Lydia was human, and weak, and alone. She didn't want to be sent off far away either.
"Evie is… my Mom." Her voice cracked. "She died‒"
Abruptly, a head of silver-blonde hair shook, the girl clasping both hands over her ears as if she was suddenly hearing far too much.
"She killed herself."
And, apparently, it was Delia and her Father's fault. Why did they think it was their fault? Lydia was very young when she lost her Mother. It was a traumatic experience, more so than the average individual who had their mother prematurely stolen from them.
"Sleeping pills. I was six. She was supposed to be watching me that day. I slipped into bed next to her because I didn't know what was wrong. She wouldn't wake up. No one came . Not until it was dark and then bright again."
The way she recited it, it was is if she was still there, small and cuddling her mother's corpse and waiting for someone, anyone to come home. She shook now, but didn't cry, nails digging into her palms hard enough to break skin.
"I was so little… I didn't think anything of it when Delia moved in so fast… Why do they think it's their fault, Beej?"
A nasty grin spread across his features. Well, well, well, this explained why she could sense ghosts. A whole fucking day snuggled up with a corpse, when she was that young? It was a wonder she wasn't catatonic. Chuck and the harpy obviously had something to do with her killing herself… Betelgeuse sighed, shaking his head. A fuckin' suicide. She left her daughter for those goddamn cubicles. Bet she regretted that choice, but then didn't they all…?
The first hint of blood hit his dampened senses and he reached out to stop her from doing her hands any more damage. Pulling her in against his chest, he rocked her slightly.
"Hey. Don't do that. Yer hurtin' yerself," he pressed a kiss to her temple, "Chuck was probably fuckin' that harpy on the side. Doesn't seem to be a one-woman man, ole Chuck. I think he's fuckin' around on that red-headed bitch now."
He ran his fingers through her hair to massage her scalp, pressing her head to his chest.
Lydia was always an easy target. Especially meak, especially vulnerable. She was the runt of the litter, the underdog. Betelgeuse didn't have to do any real work isolating her from friends and family to get her to come to him‒ they cast her out on their own. She was bleeding open in his palms now, prime for whatever he had planned for her.
She wanted to murder. She wanted to die. She wanted to cry. All her tears had been used up over the past several days waiting for her feelings for this monster to disappear. Love didn't work that way, apparently.
At that first touch, she was his again, but she didn't come easy. She was rigid and shaking, fists digging into her comforter instead when he directed her away from self-harm.
They killed her.
The thought echoed on repeat at the base of her skull where fury blossomed, Betelgeuse's nefarious whispering adding fuel to the ticking time bomb she was turning out to be. He was being so sweet, so soft, but Lydia wasn't surrendering to his tranquil, contented aura, the flames of her own practically burning down the room while his hummed and glowed with contentment
She wasn't sitting there in that room with him. No, she was gone elsewhere at the moment, back years ago, holding a different corpse cold to her cheek and so fucking angry. Why wasn't Daddy home yet? Why wouldn't Mommy wake up? Couldn't anyone hear her screaming and crying for help? If only she could see.
Holding the girl closer still and rocking her softly, he could feel the anger and pain flowing off of her. Slowly stroking her hair, he leaned down to see her face.
"We can make 'em pay. Yer Mama, she didn't deserve what they did. You don't deserve t'be treated like ya are by 'em."
Cupping her face, he kissed the tip of her nose.
"We don't even gotta hurt 'em. I could jus'... take ya away. We could go anywhere, do anythin' ya wanna." He was talking low and soothing.
"Could always turn back inta a snake n' eat 'em," he chuckled darkly, trying to play it off like a joke. He wasn't capable of healing her wounds, mental or physical, so he didn't try. "Whaddaya say, sweetheart?"
If he were an ordinary man, perhaps she could scream and cry about how she wanted them dead, too. How he was right, and they deserved to pay their pound of flesh.
But he wasn't an ordinary man. If Lydia gave into vocalizing those ugly desires, he would deliver.
"I could just take ya' away. We could go anywhere do anything ya wanna."
Did he really have that kind of power? For a moment, Lydia was taken out of her seemingly bottomless pit of angst, pulling back from his arms to level him with a vaguely curious expression.
"What do you mean?"
He couldn't mean anywhere-anywhere, could he? They were both trapped here in this house with those people. It's what drew them together, their greatest commonality. He could leave? Lydia had never, ever heard of a ghost… leaving their haunt. Her mind was blown past all the other shocks it had endured within the past several minutes after overhearing the murderers and their great betrayal of her beloved Mother.
"We can't leave."
"Sure we can," he ran his hands up and down her sides, "well not right now. I'm sealed away. But ya say my name n' babes, I'll take ya anywhere ya wanna go‒ AND if you ever decide ya do wanna get hitched, I'll be able to do anythin' ya' want me to."
Conjuring a cigarette, he let his hands slide down her body and he settled them a little further into the bed.
"I've gathered lots o' power in my time." Usually at the cost of selling off bits of his soul and humanity, not that he missed those parts now. "I can even look like I'm alive so we could play tourists, go on a fun vacation that we never have to come back from."
Sure, if she let him out again, he would be able to do whatever but the majority of his power would still be locked away behind the name binding. With a marriage to a willing partner, that curse would be broken. It would bind him to her… but really it couldn't be that bad, having her eternally with him.
He kissed her cheek and snuggled against her neck at the fuzzy thought. Just being able to take her and leave would be wonderful. He was irritated that the last time he got outside he didn't get to enjoy it. It was raining and he had work to do. Giving her another squeeze, he sighed.
"We can leave if ya' wanna…" he cringed internally, "... but I ain't gonna force ya ta say my name."
There was an escape, after all. Lydia was already in the midst of planning either a murder or a suicide. Blood would be spilt before she let them lock her up in one of those places. Just because she couldn't see that great didn't mean she was crazy.
"Take me…" she began without even thinking, trailing off without a concrete destination in mind or even saying his name. It was her gut response, the first thought that reached her lips unfiltered.
"Betelgeuse," she corrected herself, a flush pinking her cheeks at her choice verbiage.
That was two. His arms tightened around her, and her fingers softened over where his heart would beat. This hurt him. To balm the pain, she brushed a kiss forward, letting it land where it would‒ his Adam's apple.
"Betelgeuse."
Third time's the charm. That humming aura of his expanded beyond her scope, so large it swallowed the house and surrounding area. The intensity of all that power unleashing so near her sent her neck snapping back, lashes fluttering with a gust of wind. The last time she set him free was by accident. This was with intent. Names did have power. He was free. He could do anything. In an instant, a flash of bright red colored her memory bank along with a symphony of screams, and Lydia remembered why she hesitated to free him, but it was too late.
He was out and ready to play.
These were her first thoughts. The second was that he was here and she missed him so much. Her arms went around his somehow more solid neck, his wiry hair scratching her cheek as she embraced him bodily.
"Hey there, stranger…"
It felt so good to be selfish.
She said his name. She said it three times with intent. It still hurt but sitting there with her made it feel like less, less like a rope snapping and more of an untying. Her hot mouth was on his skin, her warm little arms around his neck. He was as close to Heaven as he would ever get. With the intent of her incantation he could feel more power coursing through and around him than with her previous summons. He was wholly her creature for the time being and oddly for once he didn't mind belonging to someone else.
"Hey there, stranger…"
"Hey, Baby girl," he pressed a heavy kiss to her lips, hands running along her back, one moving down towards her ass the other up to press her closer to him, "feels good to be back, love."
His senses were working better than before, too. Colors were brighter and she was glowingly beautiful to his new eyes. The heat from her body thawed some of the coolness from his skin. His lower hand kneaded at her curves.
"Feels so very, very good to be back," there was a lazy drunken quality to his voice, "thank you, fer lettin'me out," he nipped her lower lip softly.
For a precious few moments, they were the only two people in the world. All Lydia cared for was to stay wrapped up in his arms like this belonging to him forever and ever, and he appeared to be in a similar boat. Past and future troubles were insignificant and unworthy of their attention when this perfect togetherness existed.
Beaming, happy just to be with him again, Lydia pulled back from their languid, slow making out to put a few inches between their faces and actually communicate.
"We should just disappear and spend the whole day together. Let them think I've gone missing. They can call the police and get in trouble for filing a false report again."
His movements were calm and relaxed, not his normal jerky intensity. When she leaned back to speak, he moved from her lips to the graceful column of her throat, pressing cool kisses along her skin as she spoke and plotted.
"We should just disappear…"
Now that was an idea. He could take her away, wherever she wanted to go. They could just disappear and never come back.
"Where'd ya have in mind?" His lips were still pressed to her sweet skin, hands slowly stroking. Part of the reason that he hadn't just stolen her away after the attempted rape was the insurance of the blood sigils he put on the house to keep Juno at bay but the home was no longer a sanctuary for Lydia and therefore couldn't be one for him either.
"We can go anywhere ya like love," he kissed his lips soft again speaking against her, "but first I'ma need some blood."
Blood.
Lydia froze while he continued kissing her, undisturbed by his own suggestion. It made sense, she supposed but maybe it wasn't the brightest idea to participate in blood magic with the ancient, dark creature taking up her bed. Once more, a voice of trepidation spoke up at the back of her skull, warning of danger, and once more, naive Lydia didn't pay it half the attention she should have.
"What for?"
The kisses moving down her neck toward the collar of her nightgown almost distracted her from continuing this line of questioning. They were so soft, so sweet and savoring of her flesh.
"Do you need a lot?" He was excellent at seducing her. She was already on her back, long skirt flirting around her knees while he continued pawing at her.
"I think… I want to go to an Opera. I've never been to a real Opera house before." Moss from his cheek tickled the baby hairs on her neck and she giggled, arching away from him. "You could be the phantom of the opera. Get it?"
"What for? Do you need a lot?"
He was kissing his way south along her body. This was so much better than before, being let out with intent was vastly superior than accidentally or under duress.
"A spell, so no one can pull me away from you," and so no one can take you from me either. He paused in his kissing and looked up the line of her body, a thoughtful quality to his voice. "Not much… a small cut."
Deciding she was too clothed, he made her nightgown disappear before running his tongue over one of her pretty pink breasts, a hand moving down to cup her core.
"I'll be the phantom of whatever you want me to be, babes," he bit softly at her flesh.
She meeped when she was suddenly naked, startling beneath him, but that sharp breath was quickly manipulated into a heated whimper with a crook of his clawed index finger sliding between her labia, caressing her wet clit. Creamy thighs trembled around his invading hand, her own finding purchase on his shoulders.
"I suppose…" she breathed, simultaneously arching into and away from his sinful touch, enticed and oversensitized to it all at once. "If it's just a small cut… I don't see the harm…"
Lydia was bumping and tripping and cutting and losing little bits of blood by accident all the time. What difference was a few drops freely given?