A/N: I am eyeing my word count with disapproval. I may have also started something like a storyline here so I'm definitely glaring at my brain for that one too.
Falling backwards, Griffin didn't land on the mattress... entirely.
Looking up confirmed her suspicions that her head now rested in someone's lap.
Her own face, turned upside down, staring at her drove all the air out of her lungs. None was left to carry her startled scream.
The timid smile barely tugging at her mouth was different both from the critical gaze the mirror regarded her with and from the twisted grimaces her self wore in most of her nightmares.
A trace of magic lingered in the air around the other her like a haze of perfume. The scent was unmistakably Valtor's.
A moan erupted from her already opening mouth when Valtor thrust inside her. Her eyes fell closed to shut out everything else and let her savor the fullness of his hard cock sheathed inside her. It would be too much otherwise, her mind pulled between the delicious stretch of her body welcoming him and her own wide eyes watching her from the face above her.
As if on cue, fingers–her clone's fingers–sifted through her hair. Less so in a soothing caress but instead grasping at the strands, pulling them all but painfully as if trying to hold on and failing.
Her heart hammered in her throat. Opening her eyes was nigh impossible. Opening her mouth left her stifling whines for more when Valtor's hips rocked into her.
He cupped her cheek and leaned in as if to keep his words a secret between the two of them.
It only made her more aware of the grip on her hair, the lap she was lying on. That had always been his intention, his voice loud enough to carry through the whole room.
"Having you moan like that in someone's face and then do nothing to follow through should constitute attempted murder, dearest." He pressed a mockingly chaste, tame kiss on her lips – as if afraid a longer contact would make him burst into flames. "You should make it up to yourself, wouldn't you agree?"
The hands tangled in her tresses couldn't save her, keep her in her place.
Disorientation flooded her body along with his magic.
Up was down faster than she could take a breath.
Her face was shoved in the sheets, her hard nipples, her stuttering chest pushing into the mattress. Yet, Valtor's cock was still buried deep inside her as if she'd never moved, had imagined it all.
She lifted her head to find herself between her clone's legs. Her own confoundment was mirrored back as her clone blinked at her and shuffled to close her thighs, her knees poking at Griffin's upper arms.
"I've never taken you for the shy type, dearest," Valtor's smug remark sparked indignity in her and her clone alike.
Valtor killed her protests with a well-timed thrust that left her boneless with the quick succession of emptiness and flooding relief from the returning girth of his cock. His arm reaching under her to stroke her clit only prolonged the wave of liquid heat spreading through the whole of her.
Her clone seemed mesmerized by it as well, her gaze darting between Valtor's body pushing into Griffin and the blissed out expression taking over Griffin's face. Her own slickness was unmistakable – all over her folds and dripping onto the sheets already.
She opened her thighs instinctively upon Griffin's caress, a shared look between them enough for her to welcome Griffin's ministrations and the chance to shut Valtor up.
Griffin had to resist throwing him a challenging look over her shoulder.
He pushed into her again right as she closed her lips around her clone's clit, making her moan reverberate through the body beneath her and draw one in turn from the other her.
Hearing her own voice from afar as she lay between her own legs was as close as she'd get to being in Valtor's head, seeing herself through his eyes and feeling herself the way he would. Watching herself writhe, tasting her own desire and feeling her clit throb in her mouth was a mindfuck but one she could get addicted to. It would be easy to get used to her own thighs squeezing her closer, her clone grinding hungrily against her face and grabbing at her hair, would be easy to start craving it. She could get high on experiencing herself the way he did, becoming one with him in this new way he'd unlocked for her.
She could if not for the glaring discrepancy between the smooth, even rhythm of Valtor's thrusts inside her that had her panting for breath, her hips meeting his and her muscles tensing with coiling pleasure and the way her clone's pussy clenched under her mouth, empty and frustrated. Her hands were clutched in a death grip, one shoved into the mess of her own hair and her clone's and the other stroking the breast pushed into it. Her fingers were nothing more than a disappointing substitute for Valtor's longer, thicker cock, for his skill and mostly for his need.
Every time it got the best of him, his hips surged into Griffin and his own groans would accompany the whimpers and choked cries shedding from her mouth. It was only those that were building up her clone's orgasm when they resonated through her flesh, driving her that much closer to madness rather than relief.
She didn't even seem to want the orgasm – not from Griffin's lips. Only all the pent up desire that had her body trembling and her spine arching off the mattress kept her bucking into Griffin's mouth.
It was like reaching through the mirror to be hurled back into time. Back to those cold nights where her nerves had been wound up from spending all day five inches away from Marion and her Dragon Fire – so familiar and alien at the same time. Those nights nothing could soothe the ache in her chest or the throbbing in her cunt. It had been a waking nightmare that still came to her in her dreams sometimes.
The tickle to her spine startled her.
The ends of Valtor's hair announced his descent before his chest pressed into her back and his breath scorched the shell of her ear. "Have you finally come face to face with what you've done?"
His lips teased her cheek. It was hardly a kiss yet the force of it was brutal. It wrecked her more thoroughly than his cruelest spells, burned through her whole body with wretched, insatiable yearning for more.
"Are you ready to apologize yet?" His voice compelled her easier than magic.
She caught the eye of her clone, who was watching them intently, both intrigued and insulted. "I'm sorry."
The face in front of her–her own face–contorted so painfully when it couldn't fit so much confusion all at once.
"For... what?"
It came out mistrustful, spooked – the same way she'd accepted sympathy from her friends. She'd been too afraid of what their kind words would do to her, of how much dignity she'd lose to the sweeping revelations they would bring, of the truth.
"I'm sorry for starving you. For teasing you with a taste of something you can never have."
She cried out when Valtor fucked into her again, hitting spots that made her vision black out for a moment. Her pussy squeezed him jealously, hungering for the next stroke of his cock, for more irrefutable proof of his matching desire for her.
She held her clone's gaze – she owed her that much when she wasn't the one swallowing tears but pleasure instead. "I'm sorry for leaving you only with the memories of satisfaction that you cannot have."
They only shared a mind – so all the cold, dark corners in her head that were overflowing with the warmth of Valtor's skin on hers right now were still cold and dark in her clone's head. All she had to keep her from freezing were Griffin's memories of her nights with Valtor – fleeting things that weren't branded into her flesh like they were for Griffin, that wouldn't save her even if they'd been. That truth was branded deeper still into Griffin, into her very bones.
Something shuddered in the air between them.
It might have just been the heart in her chest, the flooding release crashing into her with Valtor's next thrust.
It swept over her again and again like waves splashing the shore. Each new one strangled her moans in her throat and every breath between them carried her voice just enough for a tortured "I'm sorry" interspersed with Valtor's name from time to time.
Valtor's arm was wrapped around her middle. She only noticed she was facing him again, chest flush against his own and his fingers sifting through her hair, when he pressed a kiss to her forehead. The aftertaste of magic was gone already or there was simply no room in her mouth for it through all the regret clogging it.
"Shh." Valtor kissed the crown of her head. "Who are you apologizing to?"
Griffin looked at him through tears. The heady rush of orgasm and the agony of his absence still fresh in her own flesh–not just her clone's–had frayed her nerves so badly that just looking at him hurt. The touch of their skin – even more so.
Her hoarse voice scratched in her throat like nails on a chalkboard, "Myself."
"She's gone." Valtor tucked her head under his chin, let her listen to the calm beating of his heart for a long while before adding, "I'll make sure of it."
She had to fight him. Had to claw at his chest until he let her go, push him back and keep her distance until talk of erasing parts of her didn't come to him so easily.
The ugly truth was that she wanted to forget.
Wanted him to heal the festering wound where she'd torn him out of her flesh so that seeing herself in the mirror or her nightmares, or even another living, breathing her, wouldn't have her pouring salty tears all over both of them.
