Page 12 of Minor Works of Meda

“Meda,” he whispered again. His lips found my collar, above the hem of my shirt. And then his teeth, my neck. I gasped and gritted my jaw as a pounding need took hold of me. My back arched from the pillow.

He tried to lay me down again. I pushed back against him, then grabbed him to keep his body against mine.

“What do you want?” Kalcedon asked in frustration. “Is this a yes or no?”

And I knew I should have said to stop, but I didn’t want to stop; I was already tangled up in him, and no matter how the words no, this is a mistake, repeated in my mind I couldn’t voice it.

“The other end of the bed—or the floor—” I pushed him again. He sat back and I climbed onto him, the blanket dropping as I straddled Kalcedon’s lap.

“The floor?” He ran his lips up the thick column of my neck, pressed them to my jaw. I panted and dragged his shirt up, pressing my palms to the burn of his flesh. “Why?”

“Because, I just…” I muttered, reminding myself repeatedly of the book, and his fae blood, even as my mind teetered and my nerves hummed; as my bones cried and my blood rang.

He froze, his soft lips burning furious against my skin. One of Kalcedon’s arms wrapped around my torso, fingers splayed and tight against me. I rested on his hardness, unfamiliar and tantalizing.

“Of course,” he muttered low. Then the witch reached past me. I barely mumbled no before he gave a triumphant cry and pulled the book and journal out from beneath my pillow.

“That’s mine,” I told him in a panic. “I bought it. Stop touching it—”

“Tsk, tsk,” Kalcedon clicked his tongue, and wagged the books in front of my face. “What is this, Meda? Why’ve you got some boring old book in your bed?”

“It’s not boring! It’s the Minor Works of—”

“Tarelay Sorrowsworn,” Kalcedon said, his words doubling with mine, but his voice pitched dramatically low. He was mocking me, lips inches from my own. “I know.”

I reached for the book.

His arms were longer than mine. He dumped me off him and lay on top of me, pushing me further down now so I lay fully back on the bed.

“It’s an illegible mess,” Kalcedon said, tossing my journal onto the floor and flipping lazily through the spell book. His weight pinned me down, hard and heavy and raging with heat.

“Just because you can’t read it,” I said breathily.

“Nobody can read it,” Kalcedon said. “Not even you, book-nose.”

“Hm,” I answered, and made another grab for the book, grinding my body up to his. He clucked his tongue again.

“I’m taking this with me when I go, you wicked, thieving tiffa.” He dropped it to the floor, with only slightly more care than my journal.

“Kalcedon,” I hissed, scandalized.

“You’ll live,” he said. “And now it’s not in the way anymore.”

Even the beautiful sigils of the Sorrowsworn were no match for what happened next. My legs fell further apart as Kalcedon’s lips met mine. I had not known. I had not known.

The tower could have fallen to pieces around me, and I’d have been hard-pressed to give a damn. I grabbed his dark hair in my fists and dragged him harder against me. He flayed me open with that kiss. Raw strength pounded through me, the magic coiling around my body. Enough to melt the sky and bring the world to its knees.

I was terrifyingly at risk of being carried away. Fae can enchant you, I’d been taught. They can steal your mind, steal your body. There were fae that ate people alive, fae that wore human skin for clothing, fae that delighted in torture, fae that kept humans in cages or hunted them for sport. Fae were tricksters. They were heartless. They were cruel. And if some seemed kind, you couldn’t trust it. It didn’t last.

And I was about to forget that the man on me wasn’t a man at all, but something more powerful, more dangerous; half-immortal and immune to petty human things like love. If I gave myself to him… that was that. There’d be no coming back. I couldn’t let it happen. I needed to stop kissing him. But my body didn’t want to do anything else.

I needed a distraction. One big enough to stop us both. I fought against my lust and tumbled into the magic’s heat instead.

“Let me cast something?” I breathed into him, as his lips drifted to the corner of my mouth.

His mouth stilled, his breath coming hard.

“…Now?”

---