Page 39 of Gothikana

The wood lit up with a crackle and she turned to him, her heart stuttering as she saw his silver intensity on her. Those turbulent, mercurial eyes watched her with a ferocity unmatched, the unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth as the matchstick burned, lighting up the space between them in an orange glow. Feeling a sudden burst of shyness, Corvina broke their gazes and brought the burning stick up to the cigarette.

He took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew on the matchstick, extinguishing the little light between them, ensconcing them in the dark silence. The sound of the rain battering the car was loud in the quiet insides, the cool air from the crack in the window keeping her from feeling suffocated. Unclipping her seatbelt, Corvina put her bag down between her feet, the matchbox falling to her lap.

‘I can’t get attached.’ His words in that deep, gravel voice of his broke through the silence.

Corvina looked at her nails, neatly trimmed and unpainted, and wanted to bite them for a second. She had been a nail-biter years ago, ahabit her mama got rid of by putting some kind of bitter oil around her fingers that tasted awful.

She knew exactly what he was telling her.

She replied, worrying the nail of her index finger, ‘But why are you telling me this, Mr Deverell?’

‘Vad,’ he reminded her.

‘Vad,’ she spoke his name in the quiet of the car.

‘You know exactly why I’m telling you.’ She felt him turn fully toward her in the limited space. ‘I cannot afford to get attached. My emotions are off the table. I have other things to focus on at the moment. But this thing, it’s getting hungrier every single day.’

Corvina turned to him, her heart pounding at his words.

‘There’s no one here, Corvina,’ he told her, using her given name like that for the first time, his gaze heated but severe on hers. ‘Only us. Whatever does or does not happen here will stay here.’

‘And after we get back, nothing changes,’ she finished for him.

His hand came forward, taking the tip of her braid between his fingers even as their gazes stayed locked. He brushed one of her pebbled nipples with the tail-end of her own braid, the feathery sensation sending a long shiver over her body.

‘This is the time we can succumb to your sorcery,’ he stated softly, his pupils dilating, the braid in his fingers wreaking havoc on her sensitised nipple. ‘The one time I’ll allow myself to possess you.’

Corvina swallowed down her nerves. She wanted it. The one time to follow her urges and expunge this madness from her flesh.

‘Will you regret it after?’ she asked him, remembering the aftermath of their kiss.

Understanding dawned over his face in the dark. He leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to her nose, right above her piercing. ‘I never regretted kissing you, little crow.’

Corvina looked at his face, so close to hers, her body warm. ‘Then what did you regret?’

‘Having to end it.’

Her heart stuttered at hearing him say that. She hadn’t realised how much she had needed to hear that until that moment.

‘So just one taste, then?’ she asked, repeating his words from the library.

He flicked her nipple with the tail of her braid in response. ‘One taste. A deeper taste.’

This was the universe giving her a birthday gift, the man she had wanted for months from afar finally hers to take for a night stuck on a mountain away from civilisation. This was her one chance to understand what it felt like to be claimed.

‘Possess me then,’ she whispered against his lips and the words hung in the air between them, crackling, colliding, consuming.

She was suddenly out of her seat and over him, her skirt pooling around them, her braid fisted around his hand, tugging her head back as his mouth opened over her neck. He licked the line of her neck, the wet trail of his tongue making a gush of liquid fire pool between her legs, right where she was pressed against his bulge, just the flimsy fabric ofher panties between them. She clutched his shoulders with her hands, feeling the warm muscles under her palm, feeling the heat rolling off his skin.

‘I thought you didn’t like wearing underwear,’ he grit out against her neck, his other hand going under her skirt to trace the cotton on her panties.

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t wear them,’ she moaned as his teeth worked over her lobe. ‘I just like going without some days.’

‘Fuck—’ He pulled on her braid. ‘And here I was thinking about you going bare with all those salivating little boys around you.’

‘You’re not that much older.’ She ran her hand over his shoulder and up his neck, into his hair, touching that distinctive white streak she’d wanted to touch for a long time.

‘Old enough to make you come like a firecracker around my cock.’

---