Page 83 of Architecti
I deepen the kiss, my hands caressing her head, gliding through her dark hair.The world shrinks to me and her, and the soft mattress beneath us.And it’s the first time I think I may be in trouble.
I love the way her body feels under my fingers.The deep spicy smell of her perfume.It’s addictive and moreish and I want to bite and lick my way over her skin until I’m sated.
She lays in my arms a while, both of us coming back to earth and I remember that awful confession.
“We need to talk,” I say.
She goes rigid in my arms.But we have to discuss it.
“Your father…” I say and leave it hanging in the air.When she doesn’t offer any information, I probe again.“What do you mean he is the one who hurt you?”
“It’s complicated.”
She tries to wriggle out of my grasp, but I pull her closer against me, enveloping her with my arms and tugging a blanket around us.
“Uncomplicate it, Lucy.”
She resists, fidgeting against me until she realises I’m not letting her go.She huffs and settles against my chest.
Her hair tickles my chin, but I drink in the scent of crackling fire, autumn flowers and warm summer wind.I have to suppress the urge to inhale her deeply.To bottle her scent and keep it forever.
For the first time, I find myself wishing I could keepherforever.
“I told you, I’m trapped in a contract.He made it when I was born.I don’t know the full story, only that there was a contract which saved my life and that the contract has consequences.”
I run my fingers up and down her arms.“Explain the consequences.”
She turns her face into my chest and huffs.“Mostly that I can’t move against him.I can’t fight back.If I attack him, or even sometimes just threaten him, the results aren’t good for me.”
“Your eye and knee at the Severance Rite?”I ask.
She nods.“I get nosebleeds, my bones break.Bloodshot eyes.I’ve thrown up blood when things get really bad.I imagine that if I kept going, I’d end up dead.”
“What kind of sick, fucked-up contract is that?”
“One that means he always wins.It’s why I need your help.”
“He needs to win against his child?”
“I think it’s more that he needs to win full stop.He’s manipulative and sometimes aggressive, but there are good parts to him.He’s never actually hit me.My injuries are self-induced when I try to fight back.Besides, he saved the city, didn’t he…”
“Why does that sound like a question?”
She presses her lips shut, as if sealing in a secret.
“I’m failing to see anything good about that man,” I say.
She sighs, twining her fingers into mine.“When I was little, every full moon, he’d take me down into the basement, and we’d watch the Veil and make up stories about the shades that would drift in and out.He used to make me draw my nightmares out when I was scared, and then we’d burn them together in the cloisters.”
“And what about now?He hasn’t stopped being your father just because you’re an adult.”
She releases my hand and tiptoes her fingers over my skin.“Things are harder now.I fight back more.But…”
“But that means you get injured more?”I ask.
She nods.
“I see.”
