Page 50 of These Eternal Bones
His palm takes the place of his tendril over my mouth as he muffles my answering moans, keeping me so full I can feel him deeperthan I thought possible. He twists the tendril inside me with another stroking my clit as my body spams and tightens. “Hush now, Molly, we cannot have you making a mess in the solarium.”
It’s his lips I feel next, peppering soft, sweet kisses on the bite marks that line my neck. My body hums in response, singing a song only he can hear until I’m slammed into a crescendo erupting with such force that it's only he who keeps me seated. The sounds of my muted pleasure fill the bright room, my eyes squeezing shut as he keeps teasing, forcing me to ride out each wave of pleasure as it drags on for an eternity. Before I can fully open my eyes, his lips replace his hands, giving me a kiss every bit as consuming as the pleasure. I’m lost to it, the world around forgotten, questions, worries, and concerns nonexistent while he shares in my breath.
It’s then he gathers me in his arms, cradling me instead of keeping me perched on his arm as normal, sensing my body is no better than butter at the moment. My eyes are sleepy as he blurs from the room, heading toward the upper floors. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what was troubling you earlier,” I murmur against his chest, soaking in the smell of him.
“Troubled, syringa? How could I ever be that with you in my arms?”
As always, when Elric is preoccupied withnot being troubled by anything,I find my way to the library. Not hard, considering it's connected via a door to his office and about as far as I’m allowed away from him at any given moment. I do my best to listen in on the hushed voices coming from his office, to the way Tein seems to be…reassuring him, easy to imagine the mild-mannered man as the voice of reason. It’s when a savage sounding growl fills the room that I quietly close my book, not one I can read fluently, but I’m getting the hang of it. There’s an unrest in the house, where the halls were once littered with creatures of all colors, shapes, and sizes. They are now desolate and hushed. Those who remain apart from Cartiel, Péal, and Tien keep to the shadows and the basement cellars. Where the house was full of wonder and warmth, it's colder…like the air itself is balanced on a knife’s edge. I can’t help but feel it has everything to do with me. The arguing from the next room only increases, my eyes connect with turbulent pools of obsidian as Elric appears in front of the door, offering me a watery smile at best. “One moment, my love.”
Then he shuts it.
He shuts the door.
I have no right to be upset about that. It’s his privacy, after all. Me warming his bed, I assume, changes nothing of our agreement. I am a placeholder, albeit one I believe he loves as much as he loved all the rest. The women who came before me, the ones whose pictures I find him mumbling to more often than not. He avoids the loving gazes of the paintings as we pass in the hall, yet pleads for their forgiveness after he’s long lulled me to sleep. For the life of me, I cannot help the tinge of jealousy that comes with it. He loves them still, an immortal man haunted, and I am destined to join the ghosts.
Suddenly, the library offers none of the comfort it did moments before. The books in all their dusty pages slink in on me, and I’m up and out of the door before I think better of it. A shadowy being blips across the hall, its wings fluttering with anxiety as I pass. “I’m not so terrible, you know.” I snap at the small being, only making it scurry faster, nearly plummeting as it drives over the railing and down the middle of the stairs.
My slippered feet drag on the stairs as they change, and the narrow, winding halls I once thought I would be lost within pass with familiarity I have no explanation for as I run my fingers over the ornate, dark wallpaper lining the aged walls. If the bones of a home could speak, one could spend a lifetime listening to the stories this one would weave. When I reach our-Elric’sfloor, I bypass the lavish bedroom we now share. I refuse to avoid the stares of the women in the hall, glaring at them while pitying them all the same. My sour mood gives way to curiosity when I near a tapestry toward the back of the hall, tucked in a corner as if it’s meant to be out of sight. My fingers drift over the tasseled ends, making it sway; the design itself is a series of swirls and flares. White inlaid with gold seems so at odds with the dark and–
My lips part as I push it aside, revealing a thick wooden door hidden behind it. My heart ratchets up in my chest as I shift on my feet. The hall’s chill is no more than a whisper against my pebbled flesh as I glance behind me. Not taking but a hairsbreadth to decide to go in, my pulse a heavy, rapid thrum as my hands meet the golden handle. It twists.
Surely, if I am meant to stay out, it would be locked, yes?
At least that’s what I tell myself. My way of easing the needle of guilt that worms into my gut at the thought of invading his privacy. Elric has been nothing but adoring and attentive. He’s given me more than I’ve ever had before. I have no right.
My hand stills on the door seconds before a ragged gasp leaves my throat. Bands of dark crimson pull me gently away from the nob. The tapestry swinging back into place as I’m met with a cold, broad chest. “I told you not to leave my side.” His lips graze my neck, the growl vibrating the flesh there, making it heat despite his cold.
“What’s in there?” I ask, my eyes still on the space as his tendrils lift me, handing me off to him as I’m sat in my proper place on his arm.
“Storage and dust, perhaps a rat or two.” He offers flippantly, my mind blanks as he walks us back down the hall because his fingers are dusting down my inner arm, tickling it in a way that makes my eyes want to roll back in their sockets. That devilish smirk tilts his lips as he lets his sharpened canines graze my inner wrist, and my body hums to life. I don’t object as he enters his bedroom, his gaze trained on me. “I have neglected you today. Forgive me.”
My only answer is a smile as he lays me back on his bed, the soft sheets pooling around me like a cloud as he crawls up my body, placing kisses along the bodice of my dress. Savoring each touch as if he’s attempting to memorize a priceless artifact. I don’t utter a word because he does not require them of me. Pleasure bursts through my limbs as his bite finds its way back to my neck. My thighs are shaking and soaked by the time he takes the last drag of my blood. When he pulls back, his pale lips are smeared with it, my hand shakes as I lift it to his mouth, wiping it from him with the same love and adoration he shows me. His tendrils lift me so that his deft fingers can work at the laces of my corset, his eyes glued to me, watching and noting everything. Seeing so much, but my sweet, maddened immortal man misunderstands as I cant my head back, giving myself up to his ministrations.
There is much in this life I do not know, much that I have been sheltered from. That being said, there are other things I knowtoowell. The way I know the back of my hand, or how to drag air into my lungs. One thing I will never forget is the way a lie feels when it sours the space around you, when it’s spoken with such confidence you almost feel silly for having doubted in the first place. I know lies.
And Elric just lied to me. Perhaps for the very first time.
25
An Eternity of Old Pain
Lovely - Billie Eilish & Khalid
Molly
It takes ten full days for him to sleep. Ten days of me fighting my exhaustion, forcing my eyes open only for them to fall closed moments later. Ten days of waking and falling asleep to obsidian eyes. I’d asked him if he ever tired of staring at me while I drooled and tossed. He’d laughed like that was the most ridiculous question in the world. Things have changed so much since that day in the woods, the one where my body stopped answering my call and started responding to his alone. I don’t think it's been mine since; I don’t think I mind if it’s ever mine again. Certainly, he gets better use of it than me. With no great education, years slaved away behind books and taught by the most brilliant of scholars, I doubt I could come up with any worthy description for the man lying beside me. The dark lashes that framehis dark monolid eyes, the sharpness to his features, or the torment his mind has known send tears budding in my eyes. Sitting here in the dark, firelight illuminating his deathly still frame, I can almost pretend, I can almost convince myself that a love like the one I feel for him is infinite, that it cannot possibly be constrained over eighty, ninety years if he’ll have me that long. It seems like an elephantine task to slip myself from the bed, holding my breath as each step leads me closer to the heavy doors. My heart slams to my throat, pinning me in place when he frets in his sleep, his dark brow furrowing before smoothing once again. Where I once had to sneak sniffs of him, spice and cedar cling to me now, swishing with every step as I enter the hall, shutting the doors as gently as I can behind me.
My hands shake as I grasp a candlestick from atop a candelabra, cupping my palm around the flame as I rush down the hall. The only movement aside from mine is a rush of bronze, a dim but notable light pausing to glimpse me before continuing down the stairs. My thoughts are blessedly empty. Guilt brushed away by my anxiety and with little input from my brain at all, I’m standing in front of the white and golden tapestry again.
This time, there is no hesitation, no weighing my options as I reach for the nob. The mechanism’s click is soft but might as well be a bomb echoing off the ancient walls. Something is happening to Elric; his mind frayed more now than ever. He loses minutes, sometimes hours lost to his thoughts when he’s not spending his time obsessively clinging and tethering me, it’s as if he’s waiting for something to rip me from his grasp. Plagued by some great fear I cannot understand because he refuses to share his troubles with me. Every question is met with distracting touches and sweet words that make my belly fill with butterflies. The door throws open, revealing another set of stairs, a gust of cold nearly taking my breath away, my toes already reddeningas I hadn’t wanted to risk grabbing my slippers. The stairs are a far cry from the grand ones that litter the rest of the castle. Where others are polished stone, these are made from wood, spiraling upward into the dark. I realize a little later than I should, this door leads to one of the towers on the star side, overlooking the lighthouse. As if beckoned by my thoughts, its beam wraps around, lighting the hall, and I choke on the scream that builds in my throat as Tien appears in front of me. His form is…overwhelmingly large, trapped underneath the tapestry with him. His short, cropped fur mixed with scales still baring the lines from what I assume was his shearing.
“Miss Molly, it is quite late in the night for exploring. Yes?”
The fear and the embarrassment of getting caught quickly give way to irritation. “No other part of the grounds is off limits to me.” It’s not a question, but one hangs there in the air between us anyway. I had never thought his face to be very expressive, as reptilian as it is, but the sigh he releases is unmistakable, his tail swishing with agitation.
What is Elric hiding?
What could possibly be in that room that would be so terrible?
