Page 49 of Stitches
“Housefly?” Levi looked at him, and because of his clinging, their mouths were but a hair’s breadth apart.
“Never mind. You were saying?”
Levi took a steadying breath but didn’t move away. “When you smooth my stitches with your magic, it feels… pleasant. Too pleasant. Intimate.”
Ashmedai had assumed as much given the way Levi gasped and flushed during the process. “Do you not like that feeling?”
“I like it very much.”
“Then why don’t you ask for more?” Ashmedai grinned, because in that moment, he could have given Levi anything.
Levi shifted against Ashmedai and took one of his hands. He brought it upward to rest upon the stitches of his right cheekbone.
The pulse of violet shadow magic Ashmedai brought forth was almost the same color as the dark depths of the lake, with hints of the brighter violet in Levi’s eyes.
“Lilacs….” Levi said with a shiver.
“Hm?”
“You smell… no.” Levi’s nose crinkled. “It’s not you, but….” After he trailed off, before Ashmedai could lower his hand, Levi drew it over to the opposite cheekbone. Ashmedai did as was silently requested, calling on his magic once more to smooth the stitches to flawless skin.
As before, Levi shivered, though his eyes seemed to clear with realization. “It happened before, yesterday, when you healed my heart.”
“What happened before?”
“I thought I smelled lilacs, but it wasn’t you. You smell lovely, but more like… sandalwood. The lilacs were a daydream… I just didn’t realize it.”
Ashmedai felt his expression slacken, much as he hated to lose this good feeling.
“It felt like I was somewhere else,” Levi continued, “with lilac bushes all around me.”
“You’re sure?” Ashmedai pressed. “But your draught….”
“It was working. I hadn’t had a daydream in days. But I think, when you make me whole, they grow stronger.”
Because smoothing Levi’s stitches made him more one person, and his mind remembered the last time it had been the sum of its parts.
“Would you like me to stop?” Ashmedai asked.
“No.” Levi clung to him, lifting Ashmedai’s hand toward the stitches through his brow. “I thought I didn’t like the daydreams, that I didn’t want them. I can’t explain why now, but… I want to see more.”
Guilt clawed into Ashmedai’s chest. He couldn’t refuse,and so he smoothed those stitches too, and Levi smiled wider.
“Yes. I first started having the daydreams after you fixed my wrist. They scared me then but… I want to know. I need to know. Please. I can almost hear a busy street, but I know it’s not the market.” He closed his eyes, those beautiful violet eyes, lost to whatever he was remembering.
Ashmedai obeyed, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to lose Levi’s unique smile with stitches at the corners of his mouth. Instead, he brought his hand downward, but he had already gotten the stitches across Levi’s heart that might have been reached by untying the top of his tunic, and the stitches along Levi’s neck seemed so final, as those were what had first connected the real him to his other parts.
That left places that were harder to reach, that Ashmedai would have to seek with blind hands—unless he undressed Levi right there on the beach.
The prospect was far too tempting.
Holding his breath for a moment, maybe because Levi was too, Ashmedai gripped the fabric at Levi’s waist and twisted his fingers to coil the tunic upward. Soon he felt the cool skin of Levi’s stomach.
Ashmedai reached beneath the tunic, letting the fabric fall about his wrist, and felt his way to a line of stitches beneath Levi’s navel. He smoothed them with tender strokes of his magic.
Then he did the same to a line above Levi’s navel.
Then to some around the small of Levi’s back.
