24
She was terribly in love. Yes, terribly – not 'madly', or 'very much', or 'passionately'; these words that people normally used speaking of love were not right to describe what was happening to her. They were not strong enough, or they were too pompous or too… cold. They would not do. Her love was so sudden, so deep, so intense, so frightening, so inescapably overwhelming, so life-changing, so absolute, so natural, so raw, and somehow, though her lover kept her by his side day and night, her love felt hopeless. 'Terribly' described it all.
She was so very surprised to fall in love at all (and she did fall into it, literally – one second she was her normal self, the next she was gone, totally submerged in Him). She somehow always thought she was not the falling-in-love type; she did not remember ever dreaming of a perfect boyfriend, for example, even when she was little. She could never say who her 'type' was, whenever she preferred tall guys or blonde ones or whatever – she just never thought of it. She wasn't really noticing men, most of the time, and never caught herself building an image of her future husband or something. And it was for the best, perhaps, for the man she did fall in love with wouldn't have fitted into any teenage dream. Even if she did dream of falling in love, she would have never imagined a lover like hers.
It was lucky that she didn't have a mother or any friends – it would have been so difficult to explain him to them. He was so unlike anything that might appeal to a girl her age. He was old. He was not handsome – she knew he was not. She found his thin irregular face mesmerizing, she could spend hours tracing lines around his eyes and mouth, or stroking his graying hair, she would kiss his beautiful hands, dry and papery as hands of old people sometimes are, she could stare into his dark, dark eyes and lose herself in them, but she understood no one else would ever call him handsome. He was not strong or powerfully built – girls were supposed to like that; no, he was very slight, brittle, almost, yet she was amazed at the strength and stamina contained in his light body: if ever people talked about appearances being deceptive, that was his case. He was distant and aloof, he dressed like a prig; she'd never have thought she'd go out with a man in a three-piece suit and a tie and silk socks. None of the people she knew would ever imagine her with such a prim chap. But then, they didn't know what hurricane of emotions and passions he hid under that suit – how much energy he had, how strongly he felt and how directly he loved. Atomic bomb does not look very impressive on the outside, but look at what it can do; he was the same. Sometimes she thought of his suits as of a sort of protection he put between himself and the world – not to keep the world at bay, mind: to protect the world from him.
They didn't have much in common: there weren't many things about which they could talk – she knew she was too simple for him and, though he was very patient with her, most of the time she didn't understand half of the words he was using. He was a difficult man, his temper was snappy, some of his remarks stung her and hurt her; yet he always took hold of himself, almost at once, and would make it up for her: he'd give her something, or kiss her, or take her to bed – or to any surface available, if truth be told. He was incredibly possessive, which she found very exiting, and that was strange, for she always fancied herself to be a free spirit. In theory, she would have opposed any attempt to boss her or limit her freedom, but when he was ordering her around, she happily obliged. 'Wait here, Lacey', 'Stay in the shop, Lacey', 'Go into the other room, darling…' Who would have thought she'd be happy to be dragged around by his side, as if on a leash, like a submissive girlfriend of some mafia-boss? Yet he seemed to have some secret power about him – he had a right to boss her; he was supposed to boss her. May be she resisted all previous attempts to constrain her because she felt that there was a man who had a right to do it; she refused to be owned by others, because her real master was around, somewhere. Now she has met him, and her life took on a new meaning.
Yes, that was what terrified her the most: he meant so much to her. She felt that, before she met him, she sort of wandered in the dark, without any sense of direction, not really knowing herself. But then he appeared, and everything changed. Life had meaning. She had meaning. And it was frightening. She felt so anxious about him, about herself. What if she lost him? What if he died? What if he would leave her, what if his sudden fancy would change, and he would drop her just as easily as he picked her up? What would become of her? She felt alive, she felt real only as long as he was near. It was awful to be so dependent on him. It was awful and humiliating to be so needy – she wanted to see him, all the time, she longed for his touch; she wanted to hear his voice – that deep, sad voice he had; she wanted to always watch his face, his ever-changing, mobile face, with brows lifted, eyes darkening, lips giving a quirky grin. She knew it was a bad thing to cling to him so; men tired of clingy women. Yet she couldn't stop herself. She constantly needed to be reassured that she had him and that they were together. And it drove her crazy to realize that every time she asked for more and more devotion from him, she was ruining things – she was probably bringing the moment when he tired of her closer.
She didn't know where this anxiety came from; he was actually very kind to her. Cold and ruthless to the outside world, he was infinitely gentle with her; even the roughest sex was caring. He was always protecting her from some danger that only he could see; he was shielding her from the world, holding her in his pocket or in the palm of his hand like some very precious, very fragile thing. He seemed to be afraid she could break, suddenly. He did things to please her. He let her do things she wanted – the time when he was pursing his lips at her drinking was gone; he was always ready to refill her glass if she wanted it. And she did think sometimes that perhaps she should go easier on that – after all she did remember that he disliked it. But she was so anxious she needed to calm her nerves. Ah, it was awful – to be with the man who meant the world to you, and still be so afraid to lose him as to do the very thing that actually might drive him away!
It also felt somehow unjust that he thought her so weak and brittle. She thought that was probably a mistake on his part. She was stronger than she looked, she did not need to be pampered all the time. She, too, wanted to take care of him – she felt she had it in her, and, what was more important, she felt that he needed it. There was some part of him that remained closed to her – something that he didn't show her so as not to upset her. Something painful. He was hurting, inside, even in their happiest moments together, and she wanted to help him, but he didn't give her even a chance. And it was bad, because deep inside her she had a curious feeling that if he opened to her that would help her more than his protectiveness and his tolerance. If he trusted her, something new might waken in her; she'd become stronger, for him. Sometimes she wondered about this other girl he apparently knew and lost, the girl she reminded him of, the girl that first made him notice her. It pained her to think about it, but she did, for she realized that it might explain something about his attitude to her. She wondered what was different about them; she wondered what she lacked, and the other one possessed, and the other way round. She wondered what happened to her – it must have been something awful to make him act so carefully around her, as if a tragedy from the past could cast a shadow upon their present. Sometimes she wondered, wildly, if he was right after all, and this other girl was indeed hidden there inside her, somehow. She wondered if she could ever find her in herself, and wondered if she wanted to. Perhaps she was finding her – seeing glimpses of her. Perhaps that was what made her feel there was a possibility of change in her, and the only thing she needed for it to happen was for him to really, really love her.
She felt it even now, sometimes, especially when he held her in his arms – it is impossible to be withdrawn during love-making, and he did open to her as he had her; she felt connected to him, she felt she knew him then. Perhaps he felt it, too – perhaps that was why he was so insatiable. And he was – they hardly slept at night, and even during the day, when he took her with him to his shop, he would lock the front door and take her into the backroom, and time would suspend. He'd sit her on his desk, and draw her legs apart, and take off her shoes and stockings, and pull her dress from her shoulders, and down beneath her breasts, so that she would sit there, naked above and below, breathing heavily, and he'd just stand there fully clothed, in his bloody tie, and look at her, for several minutes, taking her in, watching her nipples harden, smelling her arousal, look at her with his dark eyes becoming flat, and then, when she'd feel like burning, he'd slowly put his fingers between her legs and start pushing them in and out, in and out, and she'd throw her head back, and moan, and then, suddenly, he'd grab her legs and pull her forward, so she'd fall on her back and be spread on the desk before him, and he'd step closer, and press her opened wetness to his groin, rubbing her against the fabric of his damned suit, letting her feel how hard he is, and then she'd clutch the side of the desk with her hands, and moan again, and then he'd open his pants, finally, thank God, and push into her, and she'd come, at once, and he'd start moving in her, and she'd feel it all again, the tension, the build up, and then she'd scream, and he'd lick her nipples as he comes, and groan, and stay on top of her, trembling, his face buried between her breasts.
It was humiliating to be so much in his power. Yet she didn't mind. She loved it. She loved him, and whatever he did, was right. And if he wanted to prey on her body and pray to it as if she were a pagan goddess, that was all right. May be if he did as he pleased often enough, if he had things completely his way often enough, he'd feel less pain, and she would become more then a body to torment and please for him.
That was what she wanted more than anything else in the world – to be complete and real for him. That, and to never, never lose him. And there came a moment when these things suddenly became a possibility. She has learned the strangest, the most unbelievable thing about him; she has learned that he possessed magic. Any other girl would have run away screaming: looking at the man you sleep with and seeing him pull things out of thin air can only mean one thing – that you are mad. Magic doesn't exist; any sane person knows that. But her submersion in him was so absolute that, seeing the unbelievable things he did, she felt relieved. It explained everything: his power, his secrets, his remoteness from the world, his loneliness; for of course people shunned him, for being different, even as they used his powers. And this new knowledge changed her role in his life. She was not just a silly gullible girl obsessed by a father-figure lover. She loved a wizard. He had chosen her to be with him; he thought her worthy. She was the woman who could share his fate, stay by his side when everyone else abandoned him. He wanted her to. That separated her from the rest of the world and bound them together.
And the powers he had meant that she would never have to lose him. They could be together forever, and forever is a very long time; time enough to love and know each other, time enough to heal and bloom. Time enough for everything.
