Page 52 of The Reveal
And see only me.
Writhing on the edge of another gut punch of that same, impossible ecstasy.
But this doesn’t shame me. It makes me come even harder than before, my legs wrapped around his face.
And when I come back to earth, I tell myself that he’s doing that vampire thing again. That I have no choice. That I never have.
Though there’s something in me that knows I’m a liar.
Still, I assure myself that’s the only reason I follow the urging of what feels like another song inside of me as I kneel down before him and finally run my hands up his powerful thighs. I look up at him and find his severe and beautiful face another kind of chorus, lighting me up while his silver eyes gleam.
I reach in and pull out that enormous cock that I only writhed on once and dedicate the next few hours to learning how to take him in my mouth.
Not an easy task when he is so big. And so ...resolute.
I learn other things too. That he tastes like snow and flame, that he is thick and long and hard like marble. And something about the heathe causes in me leaves me trembling on the edge of another orgasm as I play with him, learning what he likes, learning how to move, learning how to tilt my headjust so.
So I can take even more of him.
Until he finally holds my head between his hands and fucks his way deep into the back of my throat, then pours himself into me with a roar that I’m surprised doesn’t shake the building apart.
I learn something then, too. That his come is also cold, and something like addictive. I gulp down every last drop of him while my pussy reacts like I’m the one getting all that attention, clenching up tight into a lush, hot, rolling orgasm that makes me sob around his cock in my mouth.
I’m still shaking and sobbing a little when he picks me up from where I’m kneeling before him. He carries me over behind the counter, where there is a sofa set back against the wall. And he holds me there for a long time, in what I try to tell myself is nothing but a parody of aftercare.
It’s like I can’t control my own body. It makes me think back to that night with Samuel, that rush in the dark and the fumbling with each other’s clothes, tipping back onto the sofa, and then the great hurry toward what I thought was a perfectly satisfying finish.
But that memory is laughable compared to Ariel.
That’s something else to grieve. Ariel is stripping everything from me. My clothes are the least of it. My self-respect. Even my fondest memories.
All of them gone in that rush of ice and fire.
“Where’s my brother?” I ask him when I can speak again.
He studies me, his silver gaze moving over me with a certain intensity that I can’t quite read. “Come back tomorrow” is all he says. “At sunset.”
He says this like he thinks we’re playing a game.Heprobably is.
As I leave the school later that night, I beat myself up for succumbing to him and thatsongthat lives inside me now and for failing, yet again, to find out the things I need to know.
The things that are the reasons I’m putting up with this,I tell myself in the truck as I head home. Self-righteously, even.
As if I imagine I can thwart the fucking vampire king.
Besides,an asshole voice inside me pipes up,you would have to stop lusting after him to do that. So.
I clench Augie’s medallion in my fist, careen down the dark roads, and loathe myself.
This becomes a nightly pattern.
Every night for a week.
After turning me inside out, Ariel sends me back home without a word about anything but my expected obedience.Tomorrow, Winter. Sunset.
He controls this, not me. I’m very clear on that. Ariel is very deliberately keeping me off balance. Yet knowing that doesn’t change the experience of trying to pick my way through each evening’s minefield.
I try to tell myself that the sex stuff is simply the price I pay for the bits of conversation we have, that I can ponder this way and that once I’m out of his presence. I try to tell myself that this will lead me to Augie, who he claimed wasn’t dead, so that’s already more information than I had going into this.
