Page 33 of Cast Stones
I wish I could part my legs and bring him in so close I’d be able to love all his badness and sadness away.
“Can we go now?” he says, fidgeting.
“You said five minutes. It’s only been two!”
“Is that all?” he mutters, his tone catching my attention.
Is he scared?
Luca doesn’t fear much. His father and the other Disciples have already inflicted the worst imaginable horrors on him, but over the last couple of weeks there’s been an uneasiness in his eyes. It’s happening again right now. They’re drifting to the horizon, as if he’s bracing himself for an incoming storm.
Rolling onto my back again, I squint up at a sun that’s slowly melting into the edges of the forest.
“What are they going to do to me, Luca?” I ask quietly. I’ve begged him to tell me this, time and time again, but he always evades my question.
He follows me over with a groan, flopping his head down next to mine until our splayed-out hair is touching.
Black and gold.
Dark and light.
His silence draws invisible lines around us until finally,finally, he starts to talk.
I listen to every word, first in open-mouthed horror, and then in tearful revulsion.
He rises up on his elbow to wipe the salt water from my cheeks, and I catch sight of his expression. He doesn’t want this for me. Not anymore. He’d do anything to make it go away. There’s a cold brutality lurking inside him that would break every vow to make it true. I see scary glimpses of the violence that lies beneath.
“I won’t let those men steal it from me, Luca,” I whisper, burrowing my face in his chest. “It’s mine to give, and I choose you over them.”
“It’s God’s will,” he mutters weakly.
“Fuck God’s will! What about ours?”
I move quickly, determined to show him another way. When he feels me sliding on top of him, he bucks his hips in a panic. I grip him tightly with my knees and feel him growing hard against my pussy. They’d kill him if they saw us like this.
“Please—”
“Fuck God’s will, Luca,” I repeat viciously. “I want to hear you say it too.”
“Never!” He tries to buck me off again and fails. He’s rock hard against my wet panties now.
“Why?”
“Its blasph—”
“Come with me,” I plead, switching tactics. “We’ll run together. We’ll get lost together. We’ll save each other.”
“You temptress whore!” he explodes, shocking me. At the same time, he rocks sideways so violently that somehow I end up underneath him… Drowning in him. Feeling his body heat pressed up against every inch of my own.
“Is that really what you think of me, Luca?” I whisper, wrapping my arms and legs around him. Binding him to me. “Or are those Daddy’s words coming out of your mouth?”
Shame clouds his expression. His conflict is agony.
“If I give myself to you right now, if I act like the temptress whore you’ve been conditioned to see me as, would that change your mind?”
“You don’t need to buy my affections,” he says roughly, stilling his frantic movements.
“Then make love to me because you want to. Because I want you to… Don’t let them steal the last thing I have to offer, Luca.”
