Lupi 08 - Death Magic

“Lily.”
    Something in that soft exhale . . . she sifted a hand through his shaggy, too-long hair. “I’m here.”
    He pushed up on one elbow, raising his upper body, looking in her eyes. His were dark with need. “And here.” He touched his chest.
    She knew then, knew what his need was—not sex, or not just sex. He was only a man. He could take her scent inside him, but he couldn’t take her body in, couldn’t open to her as she did him. He had no portal, no cradle made to receive. Only skin, surfaces. And breath.
    So she breathed on him. “And here,” she whispered, letting her breath warm his shoulder before she licked it. “Here,” she said, and blew on his throat, licked and nibbled, then blew again on the damp skin. He shivered. “And here.” She drew her leg up along his, a slow slide of flesh, and ran her hand along his arm. He had long arms, tightly knit, smooth and firm with muscle. She kissed him in the hinge of his arm, the bent place, the tender skin in the crook of his elbow. There is no place on you I can’t love, and love grants me entry . . .
    She was following a familiar trail along his belly, heading for the part of him that bobbed, waving in its ever-friendly way, when he shuddered, seized her arms, and pulled her up. He kissed her thoroughly, tongues joining in a slippery duel, teeth nipping. He was breathing hard when he paused the kiss to say, “I mean to go slow tonight.”
    She smiled.
    “Slow for now,” he amended, and began showing her what he meant.
    He wreaked shivers on her skin with his mouth, and he wouldn’t let her rush him, rush them, so together they built the blaze one burn at a time . . . a touch here, on the smooth roundness of his butt, or here, where the skin of her inner thigh jumped at the flick of his tongue. She didn’t notice when she lost the world of words and ideas, constructs too diverse for the need piled up in her.
    So she didn’t tell him “enough” or “now,” but reached for his friendliest part, gripped firmly, and drew her hand up, knowing exactly how much to squeeze. His breath was a growl this time, long and guttural as he threw his head back, the clean line of his throat open, open to her.
    She opened to him, and they made a new hinge, a place where the two of them bent, where we joined and bent and swung joyously up and up on the flat, level ground of their bed, flesh slapping flesh. Until she cracked at that hinge, cracked and broke open, calling his name as white fire rushed in.
    After they caught their breaths, after they stroked and touched and smiled, he left to shut off the light. She almost dozed off. Darkness fell, then covers did—he’d tossed them over her before slipping back in bed. She told him, “Mmm,” and snuggled close and put a hand on his chest, where his heart beat slow and strong.
    Mine , she told the world outside their room, the top half of her mind muzzy with sleep, still mostly sundered from words. It made perfect sense, floating there in the dark, sated and sleepy and clean as a garden after it rains. Mine.

SEVEN
     

     
    RUBEN’S eyes jerked open on darkness. His heart pounded out a sick, runaway rhythm. A heart attack. Another heart attack. He reached for his chest . . .
    And realized that he didn’t hurt. His mouth was gummy and sour with fear, his heart raced, but there was no monster crouched on his chest, cutting off air and life and possibilities.
    There had been pain, though, huge and monstrous. Overwhelming. He remembered that, and the glimpse he’d had of his own familiar kitchen seen from the floor—the legs of the table, a shiny puddle next to a smashed coffee cup. But already the images and content of the dream were tattering under the focus of his waking mind, like dew evaporates under the regard of the rising sun.
    Or like cockroaches scuttle into their cracks and crevices when you turn on the light.
    Ruben drew in a shaky breath and listened to Deborah breathing beside him. She lay on her side faced away from him, but her rump crowded his hip. Her deliciously bare rump, he noted with a stir of interest. Her nightgown had ridden up the way it so often did.
    The way he often helped it do . . . or used to. Not so much now, not with the doctor’s warnings lying between them, stiff and rigid like an invisible bundling board. One could get around that unwelcome board with effort, but the sheer furtiveness of joining themselves according to the new rules left him sad afterward, and