Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like when the doves cry
~ "When Doves Cry" - Prince
Dawn's spectral rays wash the walls in golden brushstrokes.
The cabin is wreathed in silence except for the ebb and flow of the sea, and their ragged breaths. Red dust and sunbeams slip over Silco's skull. The heaviness of him fills Mel's arms. He rests on her, his spent cock still inside, his jittery come-down gasps warming her breasts. She cannot tell how long it's been. The minutes are a meltdown that no clock can measure—lovemaking blurring into sleep, then back to lovemaking, a delirium at once sweet and utterly ruinous.
Daylight, finding them, is a sneak-thief stumbling in on a scene it oughtn't have witnessed. The bed is a battleground: rumpled and stained. The sheets will have to be burned to safekeep their secrets. Their bodies, too, scoured of the aftermath. Her throat, her breasts, her thighs: everywhere he's bitten, or sucked, or gripped, is a mosaic of bruises. His own flesh is a war-torn map: red crescents from her nails across his torso, and a deep purplish blotch right over his heart. She'd nearly, in her fugue, broken the skin to get to it.
Now, Mel's fingertips trace the mark. He inhales, chest thrumming under her palm.
"Succubus," he slurs.
"Am I?" Her lashes lift, eyes finding his. "What's that make you?"
"A dead man walking."
"That would require walking."
"All the more reason to stay put."
She lets off a hoarse laugh. Even her voicebox throbs from the night's debauch. There's no part of her he's left unclaimed. Nearly a blackout of the senses; a need so devouring that it verges on self-erasure. Only the body remains: heavy with the residual wetness of him, and the subterranean pulse of exhaustion that, inverted, could stir at any moment into a fresh, hot desire.
He's made a beast of me, Mel thinks.
He's made me into something that will always want more.
A year ago, the knowledge would have terrified her. Now, she understands, with her capitulation, he is the one conquered. He is not a man accustomed to having his needs met. Not without fighting tooth and claw for every scrap. Each time they've come together in the past, he's demanded—and taken—whatever he could get. No quarter given, no mercy owed. She has learned, over time, tricks to pry open that clenched fist and coax out the tendresse from his black heart.
Not tonight.
Tonight, they've broken all the rules. In the dark, she's given him all of herself. An he, in turn, held nothing back. He's tasted every inch of her skin as if it were new to him. Bitten her, and bruised her, and buried himself inside her with the unbearable hunger of a man who's never been allowed to take his fill. And the deeper he'd sheathed his need in honesty, the hotter and more helpless Mel's own hunger fanned. She'd wanted, in the aftershocks, to drink the sea, and die with the stars. To pull him to the depths of herself and never let him resurface.
She still wants him. All that he is; all that he'll give.
And she will never, ever have enough.
"I can't go," she breathes. "You know I can't."
"But?"
The sea whispers outside. Sweat cools on their skins. Her palm, caressing him from nape to tailbone, feels the tension winding itself back up. He has a bone-deep reflex to brace for the next blow. It's why he's always the first to slip away. Why he's always outracing the afterglow to reclaim his composure, and his cunning, and the shadowy aerie of control that belongs to him alone.
It's a hard-won instinct that's kept him alive. Always ten steps ahead, in a world that'd grind him into dust.
Another night, Mel might tease him. Might take a wicked satisfaction, after a girlhood of being taken for granted, in being desired with such intensity that even a brief separation is intolerable. She might purr in his ear: You're not the only one who keeps score, Schatz.
But not now.
The game is too raw. His needs are her tides. And she is too naked, too fragile, to be mistress of anything but her own surrender.
"But," she says, muzzily, "I need a drink."
He licks the salt from her glistening throat. "So do I."
"A proper drink..."
"Eat you. Drink you. Same difference."
"Silco..."
He kisses her breasts, teeth-edged, and there's a tiny zing of pain. "Or both, at once. We'll see."
"Please..."
"Begging for mercy, Mel?"
"Only a little." Her eyes sting; a frisson of pleasurable dread suffuses her. "Please. Give me a little, Silco."
He lifts his head. His hair is wild from her pulling, dark blotches on his neck from where she's sucked the skin. Yet the features, shipwrecked, hold a softness utterly at odds with his base nature. His bad eye glows in the hollow of its orbital socket: a star-shaped flame. The good one, hooded, is all shadows in a burning green ring.
"Please," she says again, and his forehead drops to hers.
"Fine," he says. "Only because I've given you a rogering for the record books."
With a languid flex, his withdraws. Mel bites down a gasp. Even softened, he's a sizable presence, and she's exquisitely sore. Yet her flesh contracts around the emptiness he's left behind. Her body, having tasted the fullness, resists letting it go.
Silco sits up, the bedcovers pooling around his waist. At the endtable, he pours water into a tall glass and drinks. The morning sun slants over the curve of his throat, gliding with each gulp. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he refills the glass, and offers it to her. She takes a small sip, then a deeper one. The water is the most delicious thing she's ever tasted. Before she knows it, she's emptied the glass. He pours again, then again, and she finishes each of that, too.
Sighing, she slumps back on the pillows. The ocean winks through the porthole. She can feel him watching her.
"How long," she breathes, "do I have?"
"Until?"
"Until the Kraken rouses again." Her smile is a fragile waver. "It's only fair to warn me."
Subsiding across the sheets, Silco encircles her until their foreheads touch. His left palm, spanning the small of her back, is the point of a compass. With his right, he tips her chin, and his mouth seeks hers. She tastes salt, and smoke, and them.
"The Kraken," he says, "is sleeping off the exertion of that record." His lips part: a gentle pull, a slow suck. "It's only me, petal."
A tear streaks loose from her eyelid. Reflexively, she turns her head. Silco is faster. Gathering her in, he kisses her, lips a cool circuit around her wet face. Tasting her grief, as he had her bliss. She's still trembling, the gusts of emotion taking their time to ebb. It's a miracle her bones have not turned to saltwater.
He cradles her, and waits out the storm.
"You are, you know," she says, when the tremors finally pass. "A record."
"For what?"
"Everything."
"Flattery, Mel?"
"Only the truth. If it were flattery, I'd say you're the best I've ever had."
"I'd never believe that. I'm just the first man who's fucked you the way you need to be fucked."
Mel bites her lip. In his unerring talent for vulgarity, he's cut her to the quick. A Medarda to her core components: flesh, and heat, and an abiding hunger for something, anything, to fill the void. A hunger that, last night, he'd unlocked and fed with all the starved, relentless need of his own. With every touch, she tasted its truth.
Now, in the dawn, she tries to show him hers.
Their bodies nestle into the warm declivity of the mattress. Legs, sticky and damp, breading into a heavy weave. Deep waves of breath wash in and out between them. The stillness is total, but for the flicker of his bad eye, and the fractals of sunlight leaping off the ruby on his wedding ring.
Two beacons, calling her home.
She remembers lying this way with Jayce. On those rare nights when sleep eluded her, and he'd stay up, too, stroking her hair until she'd drifted off. His big body was a sturdy shelter: a spot where, for a little while, she could imagine herself safe. The illusion had never lasted. No sooner would she wake than the cold truth would crash over her.
A Medarda revels in risk, not safety.
It is an old refrain. One ingrained in her blood the day she was born. Yet here, in the cabin, Mel thinks of neither the Medarda name nor her mother's words. Silco's body is no shelter: it is a lean and scarred stretch of unknown terrain. Every inch is a risk, every touch a twist of the knife. And yet, when he holds her and kisses her and fucks her, there is a moment. A single, fragile moment, when the void is filled, and her heart, her very self, at peace with the disorder.
Jayce, Mel thinks, made her feel steady. Silco makes her feel strong.
And in that strength, she finds the nerve to speak her truth.
"When I was a girl," Mel whispers, "I had tutors for everything. Music. Fencing. Philosophy. From the moment I could speak, I was taught how to conduct myself. How to be seen, and admired, and how to turn that admiration to my own ends. By the time I was six, I knew a hundred ways to turn a compliment. By the time I was sixteen, a thousand ways to turn a man. Every word I spoke, I looked up and down twice. I was a master of myself. I was a true Medarda." She swallows. "I was empty."
"Mel..."
"I was empty… and I was starving. My family's legacy is to be hungry. For power, and prestige. For the best of everything. Our house has consumed its way through the annals. It is a constant, and a curse. And the hungrier we are, the more powerful we become." Her breath hitches. "I played my part, under my mother's tutelage. I parroted her lessons. I tried to be her replica. But the older I grew, the emptier I felt. The emptier I felt, the more I slipped up. Until one day, when I was nineteen, I found myself in the arms of a man twice my age. A man who saw through all the polish, to the cracks beneath."
"A man," Silco says, "with his own ambitions."
Mel nods, barely. "You know the sordid tale. A few weeks' dalliance, and he'd cracked open my shell. And in the process, safecracked my family's secrets. Enough to almost topple the entire edifice. Mother had him executed. But not before I was brought before her, and made to watch." The tears seep again. "She'd known, all along. About his advances. About my weakness. She'd waited for me to come to her, and confess." She stutters out a laugh. "I never did. It was like the kitten and the handmaid, all over again. And me, fancying myself clever enough to escape the consequences."
"You were a child."
"Not by then." Mel's lip quivers; she bites it. "I was a woman. One who'd failed her house, and her own flesh. Failed the most basic lesson a Medarda must master. To hide behind a thousand masks, until my true face was unrecognizable. I'd dared to show the truth. And I was punished. First by the man who'd taken me to his bed. Then, by the mother whose blood I had insulted."
The memory, blocked out since, now besieges her. Her mother's face, so close, and yet a thousand miles away. The disdainful cut of her mouth, and the flat gleam of her eyes. Her judgement, rendered in a few terse sentences, and the silence, her final, damning verdict.
"You've failed, Mel. And, in doing so, failed the name you bear."
Silco hears, in her silence, all she cannot say.
"Banishment," he murmurs.
Nodding, Mel clings tight. Their skins are gluey with old sweat. But the fit of their bodies, like two pieces of a broken vase, is nearly seamless. In her mind's eye, the shards come together: golden seams closing the gaps.
"Banishment," she agrees. "No negotiation. Just the sentence, and its terms. A decade to make restitution, or lose the Medarda name. To prove myself worthy." She buries her face in the hollow of his shoulder. "In Piltover, I found myself free. Free from the strictures. Free from the shame. Free to explore the full spectrum of my talents. But not... free. Inside, I was still the same girl. Hungry. Lonely. Hollow. I learned quickly, though, that no man could fill the void."
Silco's mouth shapes a sly curve in her hair. "Men, you mean."
"Yes." Mel's laugh, this time, is easier. "Nothing ever came of it."
"Certainly not you."
That earns him a tiny pinch of reproof. "Nothing worth keeping. And..." Her smile dies. "I believed myself immune. To closeness, or connection, or the promise of both. I preferred my solitude, and my schemes. They were strategic. They were... safe. People in our position can't afford attachments. Especially not to those who've sworn us fealty. We serve a purpose. To fulfill it, we must be unknowable. Unbreakable."
Silco nuzzles her hair, and she shuts her eyes. In the gloom, his voice holds a graveled softness.
"You can't say," he whispers, "it was the life what you wanted."
"Of course not. But I convinced myself, for years, that I was above the human condition. I learned to charm and beguile. To be coveted and courted, but never, ever to give in. All the while, in private, I starved. My body was a shell, a cage of propriety and poise. I was the daughter of Ambessa Medarda, and I was expected to be above weakness. I was expected to be... a monument. Like her."
"Only hers was stone. Yours, gold."
"Gold is an alloy. Malleable. Shaped to suit the demands of the world. Gold is a lie." The tears are cooling on her cheeks. The rest of her: scorched raw. "I became the lie. And I was proud of it. Proud, and ashamed, all at once. The two, over time, blurred together. My ambition was the only truth I recognized. So long as I fulfilled it, the rest would follow. It had to."
Then, she'd met Jayce.
And seen, for a moment, a crack of light. Jayce, who'd needed her, and trusted her, and looked up to her as if she'd hung the moon. He'd been her brightest mirror. He'd seen her for herself, without any preconceptions. And for a brief, shining season, she'd imagined a life that didn't revolve around a single, all-consuming hunger.
A life where she could be, in the fullness of herself, loved.
Until their city split in two.
In the wake of the rupture, the love had burned off like a morning mist. In its place, the hunger returned, gnawing her bones, worse than ever. And the shame, its constant smothering shadow. She'd lost, in a heartbeat, her chance at salvation.
And yet she'd found, in the ashes, a new path to walk.
A path of her own choosing.
Her eyes meet Silco's. A bitter smile tugs his mouth.
"What an antithesis of life," he says, "to be raised for greatness."
"Not as bad as a life of scraping by."
"Not as bad, no. But I was raised with no expectations. My bar was the gutter. Anything beyond was a blessing. As for my hunger? I ate it. Like my rage. Like my bitterness. Like the rest of the refuse. I swallowed the ugliest parts of myself, and made them my fuel." He cups her cheek, his thumb smoothing the tears that linger. "I was never empty, Mel. I was filled to the seams with rage, and I used it. I made it into a weapon. Then a cause. Then a city. And now, I will use it make things. New and better things. That's the beauty of Zaun. We came from nothing. And because we do, we have the space to become whatever we choose."
Mel is quiet. Her fingers, mirroring, trace the ruined ridge of his cheekbone. Her mind's eye: the memory of the first time she'd touched him there, in Zaun's glass obelisk. How his jaw had tightened, the mismatched eyes flashing a warning. How, even in his own domain, his instinct had been to recoil from closeness.
"So you chose your hunger," she breathes. "As I chose you."
"Mel..."
Her thumb touches the seam of his lips. "Do you want to know a secret?"
Silco stares. His eyes, in the sunlight, two luminous rings.
"I chose you," she says, "because I had nothing left to lose. And because I had nothing, I stood to gain everything." A shaky smile, as her palm skims down, resting over his heart. "Everything, Silco."
"Even me?"
"Especially you." Their stares tangle; the smile deepens. "When we met, my city was crumbling. The Council was in shambles. Progress was a mirage. And Jayce—gods. Jayce was drowning in guilt. He'd gone to pieces, and I had no choice. I had to find a way to secure peace, no matter the cost. So I went to Zaun. I held a parley with you. Except I had nothing to bargain with but myself."
He tricks out a lopsided grin. "You'd have had better luck offering me Piltover on a platter."
"And yet you met me."
"Of course. You'd offered a summit, not an ultimatum. We are not, Zaunites, in the habit of turning down profitable deals. Particularly—" His teeth ghost her earlobe, and she shivers, "—As I recall, the deal was packaged in a rather fetching Vyx gown."
Mel bites her lip. She's not prone to blushes. But the recollection of her first descent to the depths, the way he'd appraised her with such brazen intent: it still sets her skin aflame.
"I was playing the game" she says. "But the second I stepped into the harbor, I knew I'd miscalculated. I'd pictured you a petty tyrant. An upstart with a chip on his shoulder, and nothing to offer beyond brute force. You, I thought, would a man easily duped." She laughs, and it's a watery sound. "Instead, I met a man who spoke in nuance, but saw in stark absolutes. A man who was a pragmatist to the core, but who snatched a tag of poetry right out of my mouth. A man, who should have seen nothing beyond my station, but who saw... all the rest."
"The rest?"
"All of me." Her lashes dip. "The lies. The shame. The hunger."
"Mel..."
"You saw it all, Silco. And, in seeing, you stripped me of the pretension. You didn't care what I wore, or what I said, or how I smiled. You saw what was beneath. And you wanted it. I could feel it. You wanted to take me in your hands and rip me wide open." She shivers. "I think... you wanted to break me."
Quietly, Silco says, "Break, yes. Not destroy."
"What's the difference?"
"Breaking is a kind of making." His left hand slides, languidly, between her thighs. Thumb tracing the tender cleft of her sex. "As I proved last night."
"Making," Mel's breath hitches, "or unmaking?"
"Not yet." His thumb, stroking her swollen nub, elicits a small cry. "There's some left to go."
"Silco..."
"Sssh." His mouth, hot and wet, seals her words. The kiss is gentle. Almost a plea. "I warned you. I'm not done with you yet."
This, Mel thinks, is what he's like in the afterglow. On the island, she'd caught only glimpses. Now, here is the fresh, bright flood. And she, the willing cup.
"A little," she whispers.
"A little?"
She bites her lip; her face a bloom of heat. "I'm sore."
"Hush. I won't go any deeper. Unless—"
"Unless?"
"Unless you beg."
His mouth traces, lightly, the imprints of his teeth on her torso. Each is sweet pulse of pain. Mel flinches, and he soothes each welt with a kiss. The air, warm as their sunlit bodies, is beginning to hum with a different heat. Between her thighs, the pressure of his palm is the same. Her hips, despite the fatigue, stir.
"That's it," he breathes. "Open for me." His eyes, on her face, are a watchful glitter. "There. See how well you fit my hand?"
"Silco..."
"You've such a beautiful cunt, petal. So soft, and hot." His thumb, circling her clit, is a whisper of gathering slickness. "And so very needy."
Mel's eyelids flutter. Her body has already begun to sing. A different song: not the high-pitched symphony of last night. This is a slow, sweet, rising refrain. It ebbs and flows, a patient pull at her extremities, through her surfeited, wrung-out muscles. She's come so many times already. She's certain, even as his hands coax the first tremors from her, that more will be impossible. There is nothing left inside her, no more space for the tide to fill.
Always, he proves her wrong.
"There," he breathes, as she builds with a mewling shudder. "How's that feel?"
"Good," Mel pants. "Gods, Silco..."
"More?"
"Yes." Reflexively, she arches, seeking his hand. "Yes, please."
His chuckle grates deliciously. "How much more, treasure? How far will you let me go?"
"All the way..."
"All the way, hm? But I promised, didn't I? Only a little."
He withdraws his hand. Mel lets off an incensed sound. He swallows it with a kiss. As her nails gouge his shoulders, he smiles. She can feel the maddening curve against her mouth. Feel, too, the heavier curve of his cock. He is ready for her. And her body, at a crossroads, aches to take him inside again, though she dreads it will be too much. She's at her limit of resilience. If he splits her again, she'll hurt for days: all the tenderest parts of her.
"Silco," she gasps, "I—"
"Shhh. Only a little, Mel. Only this."
He settles himself between her thighs. His palms, beneath her knees, tip her legs up and back. His cock juts against her spread labia: a heavy, velvet heat. He doesn't go inside. Only rocks against her with a slow, rolling glide. The friction is like liquid fire.
Mel convulses on a cry. Silco's hands, unyieldingly gentle, keep her pinned.
"Hush," he soothes. "Just a little, petal. Just enough."
Her body, at his mercy, is spread wide: legs bent, sex exposed, hips angled for his pleasure. He could so easily slip inside. She's drenched. She can hear it: the sweet, sinful melody. She can feel every inch of him, spreading the wetness. The crown, sawing deliciously across her clit with each pass. The absence, as much as the presence, is a torment.
It is everything.
"Yes," she breathes. "Yes."
In the gold sunlight, his body is a corded arch over hers. Too spare for classical art, and yet a masterpiece in motion. Each breath pulls the lattice of his ribs taut, and limns the play of sinews along his torso. Every scar is a revelation. His hair, a disheveled tangle, falls over his face. His bad eye is a red flicker between the strands.
He's a canvas of stark extremes. And yet, she cannot see a single flaw. Not anymore. His ruin is only a shell. She is touching, and tasting, the truth beneath.
I must, Mel thinks, paint him again.
And again, and again.
"Look at me," he breathes, as the hypnotic rhythm builds. "I want to see you. See that pretty quim of yours, spread wide. And this—the prettiest thing. How you're taking it. How wet you are. Does it feel good, Mel? Do you want me inside?"
"I—"
"Tell me." He rocks, once, twice. The entire length of his cock glistens with her wetness. The sensation is so exquisite, she can barely breathe. "Only a little, hm? But, fucking hell, petal. You've already got the whole thing. All except—" He presses the very tip against her opening. "This."
Mel gasps, even as her hips lift, inviting him in. "Silco—"
"Mmmm." He eases the pressure, and she bucks. "Hush. I want it, too. But not like this. Not unless you beg for it."
One hand slides under, cupping the small of her back. The other fists her hair, anchoring her skull. His cock pushes in fractionally; pulls back out. In the bright sunlight, she can see every inch: the heavy veins, the glistening heft, the splitting fullness. She can see her own swollen flesh: parting, yielding. The pearly glisten of their shared spendings is obscene.
Mel, transfixed, cannot look away.
"Gods," she gasps, past pride or shame. "Silco..."
"Do you need more, Mel?"
"Please, I—"
"Say the words, petal. Say 'em, and I'll give you what you need." He rears up, hips rolling. Mel quakes on a high-pitched wail. "You've had your first taste on the island. Remember? You know how it felt to give yourself over. Now I want the rest. All of you. All the way down." He grinds deeper, and Mel claws at him in a blind frenzy. "Gods, you're so wet for me. So open. All I have to do is fill you up. But I need to hear it first, Mel. I need you to say the words."
"Yes. Yes."
"Give me the words." His teeth close, gently, on the shell of her ear. "Beg me to fuck you. Or tell me to stop."
"No, gods, please—"
"Then beg, Mel. Beg for the rest."
She sobs again. Her body, a throbbing wound, is already begging without words. Her nails score red lattices into his flesh; his back is a raw ruin. And yet he takes the pain with a strange reverence. Opening himself to it, as he opens her to his pleasure. Giving, with the same ruthlessness as he takes.
And Mel, at the crossroads of herself, can no longer tell the difference.
"Fuck me," she breathes, and tears are scalding. "Schatz. Fuck me."
He lets off a strangled growl. But his right hand, cradling her skull, is gentle. So is his left, tracing her pouting seam. Then his palms go to her knees, tipping them up and back so she's laid all the way open to him in the sunlit air. And the fullness, as he goes into her, is a burning-bright shock that consumes every nerve.
Mel keens. She cannot stop it. It's like the first ever time she'd had her body filled. The ache of it. The brute enormity of sensation. Except her only souvenirs of that night were streaks of blood on the sheets, and a girl's bitten-down tears. Dazur, her first, was neither gentle nor considerate. He'd taken her selfishly, and left her hurting. Afterward, the hurt had been met by scorn.
This is how it's done, Medarda. This is how you become a woman.
And you want to be my woman, don't you?
She'd lied, and said Yes. And the lie had been the first of a hundred. That lie had set her on a course to five dozen empty dalliances, and a dozen men's beds. And she, remade into the woman who entered each one with the intention to leave, long before any man could lay claim to the same.
She'd been sovereign of her own body. And tyrant of her heart.
Dazur's betrayal was nothing, Mel understands now, to the betrayal of her own self.
This is different. An entirely new depth of possession. Slowly, inexorably, he fills her, and fills her, until there is no room left to breathe. The geography of her body reshapes itself around him. Her flesh, weeping, gives way completely. It doesn't stop until the pulse of him is kissing a secret pocket below the mouth of her womb.
He's going to kill me, Mel thinks wildly.
Inside, it flares: the old, old terror. A picture flashing in her mind's eye—herself, laid open like a chest of jewels. A monster's ransacking hand going inside—and taking, taking, taking. A fate of pure wretchedness, and she'd invited it. Begged for it.
Bared her own beating heart.
"Don't be afraid," Silco soothes, as she jitters out a cry. "Let go, treasure. Let go, and take me. Take all of me."
"Oh gods—"
"Sssh. Nothing will hurt you. Not while I'm here."
His palm becomes a tender fist in her hair. He tugs, lightly, and her neck arches. He kisses the exposed vein at her throat. Mel, trembling, lets her eyes drift shut. The fear recedes; the heat takes its place. Heat, and a dark, drugging bliss that takes root at the base of her spine, and unfurls outward to every extremity.
"There," he breathes, as she begins to unspool. "Feel that? I'm all the way inside. Does it hurt, treasure? Should we stop?"
"N-No. Only—"
"Only?"
"Full," she gasps. "So full."
"You are. Feel." His palm goes between their bodies, molding the space where they're fused. His forehead, resting on hers, is fused too in a fresh layer of sweat. "See how easy it is when you let yourself want it? When you trust me?"
"I—I do. Gods, Silco, I—"
"Sssh. That's all I need. Now let me take care of you, hmm? Let me give you what you need." His hips roll, once, twice, and Mel's only answer is a shuddering sob. "Hush. I'll go slow. Nice and slow, just like this. All you have to do is feel me. All you have to do... is come."
His lips play with hers; she tastes the salt of her own tears. His pace is agonizingly slow. Nearly frictionless; each small, syrupy shift on the sly. Except there's nothing sly about it. She can hear the slick, sinful melody of their bodies. She can feel, too, the tremors of his restraint. His rhythm is a gentle, steady glide. But the ticking pulse in his temple, his throat, his cock, tell a different story.
His patience is an hourglass: rapidly running out. And yet, he's holding the last few grains in stasis.
Keeping his word, and keeping her safe.
Mel's spine curves; her nails gouge. In the dark behind her lashes, her mind blanks out. There is only the scene playing: the monstrous fist, reaching into the jewel chest, and withdrawing a beating, ruby-red gem. The fist, closing tight. Claiming, until the heart is its own.
And Mel, opened up to the depths of herself, understands:
I am the one taking.
He's lodged so deep, it's like he's right against her heart. There is nowhere she can hide. No place he can't touch. And yet, in this moment, he belongs to her, irrevocably. The pleasure of it bubbles in slow-motion to the surface. If it's a climax, it's unlike any she's had. None of the sharp peaks she'd scaled last night. Only a bright, molten fullness, and tiny tremors that overlap like ripples in water. She shivers as trickles of fluid escape from her body to dampen the sheets. Silco's fingers, cupping the juncture of her thighs, are slicked to the knuckles.
"There," he grits, shaping the arch of her pelvis to his. "You're feeling it now, aren't you? Feeling yourself let go."
"Sil—Silco—"
"Let it happen, Mel. Gods, you're so wet. Practically gushing. I'd lap it all up, if you'd let me. But this greedy little cunt needs more, doesn't it?" He suckles at her throat, a long, merciless pull, and her body spasms. "That's it. Squeeze me, petal. Take what's yours."
"I—I can't—"
"You can. I'm right here. I'll hold you all the way through." Breathless, he nuzzles her hair; lost to the rhapsody, and to her rapture as she jolts around him, all soft gasps and low ragged keens. "Kindred's teeth. That's it. Give me the rest. Give me everything. This is what you're made for, isn't it? For me to fuck you, and fill you, until there's nothing left."
The tremors, ebbing and flowing, are endless. Mel's world is a tear-streaked blur. And the truth, tripping off her tongue, is inescapable.
"For you," she sobs. "Only you."
"That's right, petal. You're all my own. Say it."
"I'm yours."
"Who does this sweet cunt belong to?"
"You," she manages, and his teeth catch her lower lip.
"Say the words."
"It's yours. My mouth. My body. My cunt. All of me."
"Fuck." The word is a hungry hiss. His hips buck; Mel's vision splits. "Say it again."
"All of me. Everything. Gods, please, Schatz, das ist ja zu gut, ich kann nicht—"
The tremors are deepening into an excruciating tidal pull. Her body rises and falls in aftershocks that end none of her torment. He is everywhere, and yet she needs him closer. Needs him fused. Nothing less than total possession will be enough. Nothing less than consuming him completely will end her need.
Nothing more or less, because after a lifetime of both, she has everything right here.
Right inside herself.
Mel's nails sink, with unexpected ferocity, into his spine. He arches on a groan.
"Mel—fuck."
"More," she says, and the tremor of hysteria is rising in her voice. "Gods, please, Silco, ich brauche alles— ich flehe dich an—"
He is slipping. She can feel it: the fluid grace of his body dissolving into a primal rut. It's torture; she is so tender. But her hips are working, too, ready to lap up the friction, ready to be lapped away by the tide. She cannot stop. Not until he's empty of everything but her. Not until she's full of nothing but him.
"Mel." Silco's breath falters. His words splinter into agony. "Fuck, I can't—"
"Come," she begs, her thighs enfolding him. "Bitte. Komm in mich, ich brauche dich, Ich liebe, oh gods, Silco, I—"
The syllables are a tangle her mind cannot untie. But the truth, bone-deep, has already taken root.
Love.
The echo of Silco's groan will haunt her for weeks to come. His fingers, twining with hers, trap her arms over her head. And then he's slamming into her, the languor devolving into madness. The mattress shrieks a symphony in counterpoint to the obscene soundtrack of their cries. She gives quarter; he spares no mercy.
There is only the heat, and their bodies, and the sunlight inverting shadows into gold.
When the end comes, it's a beautiful shipwreck. His climax is a series of shudders that ripple from the base of his tailbone, up the corded column of his spine. The layers of hard-won cruelty—accrued over years—fall away. And Mel takes what's left. Takes everything he gives. Her own spasms, unrolling from her heels to her scalp, are a thousand pure, piercing, perfect deaths. A sound—like a wail, but harsher, more guttural—falls from her open mouth. Her body is a cup, overflowing. Their two bodies, a single pulse.
"Mel," he slurs, and his mouth finds hers. The kiss is the softest wreckage. "Gods, Mel..."
He goes deadweight on her; she loves the burden. Nuzzling under his jaw, Mel tastes the seaside spray dousing his skin. Deep waves of breath wash in and out between them. Her legs, sticky and damp, stretch languorously to twine with his. Between their conjoined bodies, the tremor pulses on. The final, shuddering throes fading into the sweet motes of day.
And, as the tide recedes, they cling fast to the shore.
In the aftermath, fatigue—the great equalizer—fells them both.
It's late noon when they stir again. The sun is higher now, the shadows longer. Their spent bodies, caught in the liquid pull of gravity, are still fused. She cradles him in the circle of her arms and legs; he is nearly boneless, as if she's drained him dry. The soft rhythmic tickle of his breath, warm on her throat, is the only sign of life. Even his heartbeat, usually a ruthlessly steady cadence, has slowed to a lullaby under her palm.
Mel pictures the child in her womb: a tiny, perfect gift, tucked in a bed of bliss.
She smiles.
"Silco," she whispers, and drops a kiss to his damp forehead. "Wake up."
A drowsy rumble. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because if I do, you'll go."
"We're in the middle of the sea, my love." The unaccustomed endearment slips off her tongue. "Where would I possibly go?"
"Back to the shore."
The simplicity of the statement steals her breath. She has to swallow twice before the words come. "And leave you, is that it?" His silence is a sullen confirmation. She seals another kiss to his temple, right above his bad eye. "Never, Schatz. Not unless you ask me to."
"Good." He burrows closer. "I've no intention of asking."
Mel hides her smile in the dark crown of his head. Her fingers, tracing the ridges of his spine, encounter a terrain of welts. Some have scabbed up. Others are rawly oozing. The memory of her own frenzy is a guilty sting.
And yet all she can think is: How lovely.
His body, like a canvas, holds the imprint of all her spent passions. A signature he'll carry under his clothes for days. She's claimed him, and she's proud.
And she needs a bath.
With effort, Mel extricates herself from the languid tangle of arms and legs. Silco, with a groggy growl, tries to drag her back. But Mel's will is a match for his—and the pressure in her bladder is verging on painful. She manages, with coaxing tugs, to persuade him that a shared soak is a more worthwhile pursuit than lazing in a bed full of stale fluids.
Not bothering with dressing-gowns, they pad, naked and wobbly, across the tiles. In the brightness, Mel can see the full extent of the damage they've done. A constellation of contusions—red, purple, green, yellow, blue—stains their bodies in visceral record.
"You're beautiful like this," Silco says, idling by the tub as it fills.
"I look like a bruised plum."
"You do." He comes up behind her, arms snaking about her waist. "A juicy, well-fucked plum."
"What an appalling metaphor."
"No less true."
She half-turns in his embrace. Her fingertips trace the mottled discoloration below his collarbone.
"And what does that make you?" she muses. "The apple of my eye?"
"Too poisonous."
"And yet the sweetest I've tasted."
He scoffs. But his arms tighten around her. It's a discrepancy she's slowly becoming aware of. From irreproachably aloof for days, he is now disclosing a secret cache of neediness. His hands can't seem to stray from her body. If she's more than an arm's length away, his eyes follow as if magnetized.
At the toilet, she hopes he'll grant her privacy. Unfazed, he props a shoulder against the doorframe and watches. It's a testament to Mel's own wrung-out stupor that there is no self-consciousness. Only a strange new species of intimacy.
After last night, there are few secrets left to guard between them.
Then Silco strolls over, and takes himself in hand. Reflexively, Mel scoots back as he aims squarely between her parted legs. There is the splash of water on water. Her first frisson of alarm mutes into a droll amusement.
The exchange is the most surreal, and surreally matter-of-fact, she's ever had with a man.
"Does this mean the honeymoon is well and truly over?" she muses, as he tugs the latch of the flush.
Leaning over, Silco drops a kiss on her hair. "It means we're well and truly married."
It is no love lyric. But a laugh bubbles out of her.
This, she decides, is a side of him well worth the wait.
In the tub, tendrils of steam drift invitingly. Together, they sink in. The citrus-scented water is a balm. There is little conversation. But there is something unbearably sweet in the silence. Mel sits, her back against Silco's chest. His heartbeat, along her spine, is a languid ebb.
Every few moments, she parts her lips, thinking she should speak. To begin the talk they must have, about the Iron Pearl, and the Shimmer, and her mother. About his plans for Zaun, and the vision he's built in his mind, and how he expects her to fit into the reality.
But every time, the words fail her. There is nothing more solid than this. His arms, enfolding her, and the lassitude that clings to every inch of her skin.
Even on the island, they'd not shared a peace so profound.
Without being asked, Silco soaps her hair: thumbs massaging with delicious force across her scalp. Soon, her locs are a dark, sodden mass, slithering down his front. Carefully, he lifts each, wringing out the suds.
"The ends are breaking," he says quietly.
"I've been pulling them."
"Stress," he guesses.
Mel makes a small sound.
"I'll trim them later."
"You know how to trim hair?"
"Barbers cost coin." He rinses a section, working out the runnels of foam. "As a young man, I did a lot of things myself. Then, once Jinx came into my life, it went from necessity to art. She was finicky about her hair. I was the only one permitted to touch it." His thumbs circle her temples, soothing. "I still remember her, huddled behind it like a little blue wraith. I'd have to coax her out with treats. Candy. Toys. Tools. One day, I took her to the salon. I hoped, if I got her accustomed to proper grooming, she'd let her guard down."
"Did it work?"
"A disaster. She nearly slit the hairdresser's throat. Quite the untapped talent, in hindsight." His slow chuckle melts into the steam. "Jinx, I learned, took comfort in the mess. The chaos. It made her feel safe. If you could've seen her cubbyhole up in my rafters, you'd have understood. Every inch of the space, scrawled with her drawings." His hands cup the nape of her neck. "We struck a deal. There'd be no more tiffs about her hair. And, if she could tolerate a regular wash, I'd braid it myself. I'll never forget the first time I did. Her little face in the mirror..." His voice dips, a little. "I'd never seen her so still. So serene. I'd no practice, of course, so the braids were lopsided. But Jinx loved them. She demanded I style her hair that way every week. It became our little ritual. Whenever she was upset or restless, we'd comb, and plait, and talk. And she'd calm right down."
Mel absorbs this. Her own girlhood grooming had been a succession of primped, polished Noxian maids, and a glossy coterie of Ionian tortoiseshell combs and glittering pots of Shuriman hair oils. The memories are all sharp teeth, and unforgiving tugs, and winces stifled, for fear of earning the rod—or Ambessa's reprimand.
She cannot picture what it would've been like to sit in a man's presence, and simply—let her guard down. Let him tend to her with such patient care. Her father, a doting enigma, had dropped trinkets into her lap, then disappeared on voyages for months at a time. Kino, indulgent but self-absorbed, was never privy to her girlhood rituals. Jayce had combed her hair, on occasion. But his touch, though tender, was a boy's: unsure of himself, and the unwritten rules of the ritual.
To have Silco's hands on her, now, is to be twined in the sharpest threads of intimacy. In her mind's eye, she sees a little Jinx, perched on a high-backed chair, while Silco's scarred, elegant hands unfurl her wild blue tangles. The tenderness with which he'd coax her out, and the pride, as he'd tuck in the ends, and present a mirror for her to twinkle into.
"Jinx was lucky," she whispers.
"If you saw those piss-poor pigtails, you'd reconsider."
"It doesn't matter. It's the fact that you cared enough to try. You saw her, and never gave up." Mel's eyes burn. "No matter the mess—tangled hair, or a tangled mind. You kept trying."
"She was mine."
"How many others would've given up? It takes a village, isn't that what they say?"
"There are no villages in Zaun. Only dead-ends—or dead families." His palm kneads the knots from her neck. "The least I could do was arm Jinx against the worst. Make sure she had what I didn't."
"What was that?"
"Someone who'd never forsake her."
The burn in Mel's eyes seeps into her throat. She swallows.
"Someday," she whispers. "I'd like to hear about it."
"About what?"
"Your family. Your boyhood. What you were like, before... everything."
His pause is a tangible thing. For a moment, Mel wonders if she's mis-stepped. If, after everything, such a question is still tantamount to trespass.
She's about to backtrack, when Silco says, "In time."
"In time?"
"When the moment's right." He tucks her curls, damp and dripping, over her shoulder. "When you're less inclined to envision my younger self as vermin scuttling from a pile of refuse."
"That's not—"
"No? How, then, would you picture me?" A wryness creeps into his voice. "Be honest."
"Well," Mel hedges, "I know you were a smuggler. You ran the Black Lanes, with Vander. The two of you were a bit of a legend belowground. I've seen photographs in archived newsprints. Mugshots, too." A tiny grin flickers. "You looked quite the chancer. All hooded eyes and sharp cheekbones. But also a bit... boyish. It was the hair." Idly, she tugs a damp, wavy strand. "Quite long."
"Like a drowned rat."
"Like a merman. Or a pirate." She bites her lip. "I've always been fond of pirates."
"Have you, now?"
"Oh, you should've seen me as a girl. I had an entire shelf devoted to piratical romances. The swoonier, the better." A soft laugh, and a shake of her head. "My favorite was called 'The Devil and the Sea Witch'. It was a series of swashbuckling adventures. I'd smuggle each volume out from under the Grand Matron's nose. Read it under my bed, with a lantern, until my toes went numb."
"What was it about?"
"A roguish sea captain. A smuggler, like you. Lean as a knife, and as deadly. He had a wicked right hook, a price on his head, and a penchant for seducing noblewomen. But the twist was, he was no scoundrel. Not really. He was a castaway, and the victim of a great, unspeakable tragedy. The only thing he had left was his ship, and the seas."
"And the women?"
"An escape, from the solitude." Mel's grin turns rueful. "Then, of course, he meets his match."
"Melusine, the sea queen?"
"Not a queen. Just a girl who'd lost her family to a terrible storm. She'd washed up on the shore, the sole survivor of the shipwreck. The magistrate, a lustful beast, falsely accused her of witchcraft. He sentenced her to hang unless she yielded to his advances. She fled the gallows, and stowed aboard the Devil's ship." The grin deepens. "Naturally, they hate each other. But the more they fight, the more the attraction flares. The Captain tries his hardest to resist. He is an inveterate rogue. Master of the high seas. He has no business with a soft little chit from the gentry. But, alas, he succumbs to her charms."
"Her perky arse?" Silco guesses.
"Her spirit. Her fire. She challenges him at every turn. Never gives him a moment's rest." Mel's sigh is a playful flutter. "They are so much alike, the pair of them. Two kindred spirits, bound by circumstance. And the sea."
"So, of course, he falls in love."
"He does."
"With her perky arse."
"With everything." Her lips, curving, find his shoulder. "The story ends with a grand battle. The crew of the Devil's ship, outgunned and outmanned, is besieged by an armada from the merchant navy. But our heroine saves the day, with a potion in a bottle. Proof, that there is a bit of a witch to her, after all. The Devil declares his undying love, and they sail off to a new horizon. The rest, well... I won't spoil the ending."
"I don't need it spoiled. It's all written on your face."
"Is it?"
"Happily Ever After."
"I wouldn't know." Her lightness fades. "When Mother found my books, she ordered them burnt. It was her way. No frivolity; only cold pragmatism. I watched as, one by one, the stories went up in smoke. I stood, and I said nothing. I was twelve years old. But I'd no tears left." Mel's throat works. "The rest of my years were spent in service to her ideals. Treatises on war. Texts on governance. Blood, and coin, and conquest on every page. I read, and I learned, and I grew up."
"Grew up. Or gave in?"
"I couldn't give in. If I did, she'd win. And if she won, it meant the life she'd forged for me was all there was. So I learned to keep the rest—the things that brought me joy—locked up tight." She twists to meet his eyes. "Until, one day, I met a real Devil. And he opened a door. Then, another. And another. Each one, leading somewhere strange. Somewhere... I'd been before. Or maybe only dreamed about."
His good eye, on hers, is a steady blue horizon. "So the story, in the end, was rewritten."
"Only if I write it for myself." She lifts a quivering hand up to thread through his wet hair. "Only if I get to choose."
Gently, she tugs his mouth to hers. The kiss is a brief: the tip of her tongue, and a barest cut of his teeth. They both taste, beneath the minty chill toothpaste, like seasalt. It's a memory: the way their bodies, all night, had melted into each other.
A taste Mel never wants to lose.
He finishes lathering her locs. Then, carefully, he wrings them out. When it's his turn, he sits, with remarkable patience, while she kneels behind him, lathering his scalp. It's like making love to him: the chance to trace, without reserve, the shape of his bones and sinews. To keep, with utmost care, the runnels of soap away from his bad eye. To watch, in slow-motion, the menace uncoil; his features shifting into a softness that verges on repose.
She imagines herself: the sea witch. Massaging a pinch of magic into the knots, until the scales wash away.
Until he is just a man again, and all hers.
They emerge, dripping, from the tub. She towels his hair into a crisp nest of fluffy waves. He, in return, trims the ends of her locs: an efficient flicker of steel, and a series of precise snips. The ends, spiraling, fall like a soft black snowdrift to the tiles.
Twisting her hair up, Silco pins it with a spare comb. Then he hands her a small mirror.
Startled, Mel meets her reflection. She's not looked at herself in hours. Now here she is, in the bright glow of morning. Here, too, is last night: her lips a lush, bitten plum, her eyes a half-lidded luminosity, a pretty necklace of bitemarks on the base of her throat.
And there, at the crown of her head, sits her new coif.
A few loose curlicues frame her face. The rest, scooped up, is a coronet of thick black coils. The overall effect is somehow—decadent. Primal. Not quite her own. The elegant stateswoman, the impeccable Medarda—they are gone. In her place is a woman: barefaced and utterly brazen.
Silco lays a kiss on her nape, right where the fuzz grades into skin.
"There she is," he murmurs. "The sea witch."
Shivering, Mel tucks a dangling curl of hair behind one ear. "Is that how you see me?"
"It's how you appear." He flips the curl back onto her cheek. "How I'd frame you."
"Frame me?"
"For a private collection." A slow grin, as his fingertips trail down her throat. "To be savored in the dark."
Mel's shiver deepens. "Paintings don't belong in the dark."
"Neither do you." His grin fades. "That's why you paint, don't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"A painter's brush is like a witch's wand. It conjures realities from the ether." He encircles her nape, thumb caressing the jut of vertebra. "And you? You conjure futures. A world where beauty, and justice, and choice can live. Where a necklace fallen in blood is a dead girl's spirit resurrected. Where a fleet of ships is a fleet of possibility. And the portrait of a sea-monster, with a gold heart, an ode to a drowned man." His caress stills. "You paint dreams. And then you make them so. It's why the darkness can't touch you."
Something pierces her chest in a red-hot mote.
How has he, in the space of a single night, divined her so thoroughly? Then again: how could she have expected otherwise? She thinks of the first time they'd met at Zaun's burnt-down harbor, and she'd known that the game had changed. Thinks of the first time they'd kissed in the glass obelisk, dying sunlight refracting off the panels, and she'd known there'd be no going back. Thinks of the first time she'd taken him inside her, in the enfolding blackness of the tunnel belowground, their gasping cries a frantic loop, and known she wanted him, no matter the cost.
No matter the consequences.
Four years, Mel thinks.
Four years since the first day they'd met. Four years, and forty-four minutes, and nothing was the same again. Everything changed, and changed again: the consequences cascading like ripples from a dropped pebble: out, and out, and out, until she is left standing here, on a path she's never been.
A path wholly her own.
"The darkness," Mel says, "isn't what I fear."
"No?"
"I'm a Medarda. We're used to darkness." She sets the mirror down, and turns. "It's the emptiness I'm frightened of. The hollow space where the void might seep in." She lays her palm over his heart. "So much hunger, fed by nothing but its own shadow. How do I endure it?"
"By filling it with the things you need."
"What about the things you need?" Her thumb traces his sternum. "How do I fill that?"
Silco's fingers, threading through her curls, tug her closer.
"You can start," he whispers, "by putting your ring back on."
At the basin, her wedding band sits: a lonely green glitter. In daylight, the sight is a rebuke. Not of the man by her side, but of the woman she'd been last night. The one who'd denied the value of the bond that held her fast. Who'd refused, with the most delicate disdain, the presumption of belonging. Who'd been, in short, the very thing she'd condemned all her life.
A Medarda: the monument to the worst excesses of hubris.
Silco takes her ring; she lets him slip it back on her finger. Afterward, he holds her hand, in both his own, like a treasure narrowly salvaged.
"I'm sorry," she says.
"For what?"
"For taking it off. For looking for the end, when this was meant to be a beginning." She twists the ring on her finger, watching the stone's facets dance. "My parents were wedded for twenty years. Twenty years of conflict and intrigues and infidelities. But never once, in private, did I see Mother take her ring off. Not until my father's death." A headshake. "What does it say about me, that I derided her for knowing nothing of marriage? But barely a month in, I was ready to cast mine away." She lifts her eyes to his. "Cast us away."
"Perhaps," Silco says, "in your mind, there wasn't an us. Not until then."
Mel swallows. "Is that how it was, for you?"
He lifts his hand. Her grandfather's ruby catches bright fractals of fire.
"The day I took this from you," he says, "is the day I chose to believe."
"In compromise."
"In you, Mel." A crooked little smile slinks onto his lips. "The rest is window dressing."
The red-hot mote, lodged in her breast, melts into a sweet simmer. She lets him tug her close until the concave of her body, and the convex of his, are fitted in every notch. Until all of her skin, supple and singing, is pressed against all of his. Until the rings, between their clasped palms, are twinned witnesses to the openmouthed kiss sealed in the sunlit air.
And when the kiss ends, there she is, reflected in his eyes.
The sea witch: bare and bold, her coils a halo of power.
"Would you really frame me?" she breathes. "As a portrait, I mean."
"Only if you're nude."
"You're a pig."
"I'm a pragmatist. Anyway, I've no talent with the brush. I'd rather frame you in words. Wouldn't be perfect, mind. No flattering light. But I'd tell the truth."
"And what is the truth?"
He lets a few beats pass, his heartbeat the only metronome. Then:
"Tides turn/And the moon goes mad/She rises, gold/The sea at her feet/The sky, she's eclipsed/Her light, the horizon/And you, the sea-beast/Bask in her sun."
Startled, Mel pulls back to stare. His expression is as grave as the lines he's just spoken. "Who wrote that?"
"I did."
"It's lovely. When did you...?"
"Just now. It's a rough draft. One can't capture all your charms in a poem." His lip curls, and for a moment, she sees a peek of that old boyishness—half-merman, half-pirate. " My poetry, like my portraiture, is amateur."
"I think it's wonderful."
"So long as you don't expect a line of doggerel every time I bed you."
"Oh, I don't know." Her fingers skitter, playful, down his chest. "I've never had someone pen an ode to me."
"To your arse, more like."
His hand, fanning, dips lower to give her bottom a firm squeeze. A jolt zips from her tailbone straight down to the cradle of her hips. Mel stifles a gasp. There is dull throb between her thighs: the sting of broken capillaries. It's a pain that, under normal circumstances, she would never tolerate. She prefers to start her day as a fresh canvas. With no reminders, beyond the sweet memory, of what transpired the night before.
Here, a different sweetness overrides. They won't be able to make love for a few days. But she's content, in the aftermath, to let her hunger build.
To feed it with the rest of him.
"Sore, petal?" he murmurs, gentling his grip.
Lip bit, she nods.
"Shall I lend you some ointment? Or..." His fingertips, gently, dabble lower. The heat in her belly pools into a low-down thrum. "...Kiss it better?"
Her voice comes huskier than she's heard it. "And in trade?"
"What trade?"
"You never offer something for nothing. Not—not unless there's a catch."
"No catch." He eases her back onto the vanity. "Just a taste."
"Silco, I really can't..."
"Sssh. Just a taste, petal." His hands, parting her thighs, are as gentle as his voice. "You trust me, don't you?"
Her breath jitters. "...Yes."
She can see the effect of her words: the dark energy uncoiling in his body, making his good eyelid heavy, his prick stir. And Mel, her own body priming itself to a fever pitch, wonders if she's playing with fire—or ready to catch her death.
Then he's kissing her. Hungrily, yes. But with enough hot restraint to dizzy her. As if, after weeks of having her, a single night has unhinged him.
Or perhaps it's not the having, but the keeping.
Keeping, and not letting go.
She lets him waltz her back against the wide sink. His body, crowding her, is a wall of sinew. A wall, and a door: somewhere she can slip in, and let the rest of the world, for a little while, slip away. He lifts her up against the basin, the marble a hard chill against her bare bottom. His palms, cupping her knees, coax her thighs apart. The kiss deepens: a slick suction, his teeth teasing her, her tongue curling against his.
Then he breaks the seal. She gasps—a little half-sob—as his mouth works its way down her body, tasting her flesh with unsparing relish. Her bruises are a constellation of stars. He maps them, one by one, with lips and tongue, down between her thighs, where the throb is the headiest.
"Let's have a look," he breathes. "Open wide. There's my treasure."
His thumbs, spreading her carefully, reveal the swollen folds. Her breath escapes on a broken mewl. She's sore: a flush, like a bad sunburn, from the inside out. The wetness, though, is an endless pulse.
His touch is breathtakingly soft.
"My poor petal. Such a sweet little quim, and such a hard night." The flat of his tongue, lapping the seam, draws a cry. "There. Is that better?"
"Silco…"
"Yes?" Another lick, slow and full and thorough. Mel's head falls back on a whimper. "Does it hurt?"
"No—I—oh—"
"Mmmm." His growl, reverberating through her flesh, is a liquid vibration. "Let me make it up to you, hm? I'd no business being so greedy last night. Taking this lovely cunt without mercy." His tongue tip, tracing circles, is a slick whisper. "No more of that. Only this. Only for you."
"Silco..."
"All day. All night. For however long it takes." Another lick, and Mel's hips, reflexively, roll to meet him. "That's it. Show me where you need it. Where's the ache?"
"Inside." Her voice wavers. "Deep."
"Deep, hm?" He suckles, openmouthed, and her thighs quiver, ankles crossing at his back. "Shall I kiss you there, too?"
"Yes, gods—"
"Sssh. Keep those legs open." His teeth close, with a tiny bite, on her inner thigh. "Let me make it better."
And, dark-eyed, he descends.
Mel's cry of rapture dissolves in the sunlight.
Last night, he'd been a man possessed with the need to lay claim. Today, in the golden glow, he is a man, laying his need at the altar.
He worships her: tongue curling deep; lips suckling wetly. The dark crown of his head, nestled between her thighs, imprints an indelible rhythm against her flesh. The pleasure is too saturated for Mel to bear. There is no climb; no climax. Only a continuous tide that rises, and swells, rises and swells.
She is his, and his alone, and her desire is the only language he speaks. The only thing, save for her unspooling cries, that is real.
"That's it," he breathes, eyes lifting to hers. "Let it out, petal."
She does. Threading her fingers into his hair, she lets it all go. The last vestiges of the empty space. The shame, the loss, the sorrow. The past: a distant island, receding from the horizon. Herself, laid bare, and breaking to the surface. Cresting, past her body, to the sea.
To the sun.
Gentleness, she learns, can cut the deepest of all. But also set the worst wound to rights.
Especially when it's from a man who knows all the places where the ache resides.