Page 82 of Angel in Absentia
“Beg me,” he whispered, and without a single thought, she filled his name with every longing feeling, the word suddenly the only word she knew, capable of containing every feeling she felt.
“Ryson. Ryson. Ryson.”
He at last rewarded the word, his hand following the final path down as she urged him onward. Her breath hitched, and she froze beneath his touch, every attention in her body focused on every trace of his fingers that sent tantalizing shocks through her. For a second, she couldn’t breathe, wincing at the intensity of the feelings, questioning one last time the disastrous control he had, and then it no longer mattered.
She was only energy now, stirring around his fingers, that spell building and shifting at every subtle gesture, building only in hopes of being cast. The feelings grew possessive and intolerable, her body moving around him, melting against his. He pressed her against the wall as she strained and bucked beneath him, no longer capable of speech. Her mind was silent, her voice lost to words, sealed by his name, which she could onlywhisper in a plea as she held it like a tether as if it might be her only way back into existence at all.
She was nothing but those feelings, urgent and unbearable until her body bucked against him and he twisted her around, slammed her back against the wall as his face hovered above hers, holding her chin now as he finished her and witnessed the evidence of every emotion. Her hands clutched his desperately, trying to look away as the feelings eclipsed her and she cried out.
She buckled into his arms under the near-violent rush of sensation that his touch twisted through her. He allowed them both to sink together against the wall. She clutched onto him, breathing heavily as her body remained melted against his, trembling from the moment and the evening’s exhaustion.
She meandered through a daze, vaguely aware that he had polarized her with his touch, somehow removing and modifying every heavy quality she had until she was nothing but what remained, soft and light energy that flurried hopelessly and pleasurably at every subtle gesture.
She lay there against him, her body weightless in his arms. She felt unable to speak, completely vacant, and never wanted to return to herself again and that cool platform of heavy feeling that waited for her to land.
The rain seemed gentle now, though the cadence hadn’t changed. The thunder was a quiet roll, the lightning little more than a flash of brilliance, and she breathed against him in the darkness.
“Clea,” he said, and there was a request in his voice. Even if there hadn’t been, she felt tuned to every tone and inflection, knowingthat had the request been even more subtle than it had been, she would have detected it anyway. She yearned for a request.
“Ryson,” she offered without a moment’s thought, not out of eagerness, but for the moment, she felt incapable of any other response. He was solid beneath her, still holding the weight she’d given him, the responsibility, the control, and she was in no way eager to take those things back.
She felt his laugh under her chest.
“Perhaps in a few minutes when you’re a little less pliant,” he whispered into her ear, the words playful but strained.
She wanted to be this thing forever, this free, airy thing, incited into a fire at his whim, no thought or judgment, but as the minutes passed, she began to regain some sense of herself, leaning away from him slightly as if she’d just woken up from a dream.
He moved fingers along her face and through her hair, watching her eyes. He grazed her lips with his fingertips as if he so badly wanted to kiss her. “Will you heal me?” he asked as if he’d never asked before, as if it hadn’t been a part of their negotiation from the start.
“Yes,” she said and meant it with everything in her. Healing him was exactly what she wanted to do, reminded that even now, his pleasure was only in seeing hers, and beneath his skin were wounds of a lifetime lived in warfare.
He combed a hand through her hair and, looking into her eyes, said, “It’s almost time. You should get some rest.”
“Will you be okay?” The question sounded strange coming off her lips. Clea almost wanted to withdraw it as this small sphere they existed in expanded to the rest of the world, a world with other implications and consequences.
“I have every intention and motivation to end this,” he murmured, scanning her face. “I don’t want you to go.” At last, he admitted what was obvious to them both.
“I’m going,” she said firmly, all resistance returned, and he nodded, as if that, too, were obvious.
Her hands remained coiled into his clothes, and looking up at him, she whispered, “The Ryson I came to know didn’t remember his past.” There was a request in that statement, and she wondered if he’d sense it.
“That didn’t seem to matter at the time,” Ryson replied, smile soft, and she noted how often he seemed to smile compared to the version of him she’d initially met in the woods.
“I want to know you,” she whispered back.
“You already do,” he replied, and she kept her gaze fixed to his, and his smile slowly faded. The quiet continued on for a moment before she curled into the shell of his arms, looking down at the stone under them before she closed her eyes.
“Everything before you is an infinite darkness,” he whispered. “All of the lights before you were a mimicry of my own imagination. You wanted life and all its toils. It wasn’t a negotiation. My tired heart was drawn to that, and I became a slave to the sanctuary that you were, a temple in which I could finally exist. I’ve taken every measure to try and foster the same for you.”
“By lifting the mantle of the city’s responsibility,” she whispered, interpreting his intentions for herself, “by inviting me into the forest.”
“And after you heal me of my sifting, I still intend to take you there, into the woods. You can exist where no form or structure binds you, only my own, with your consent, so that you can understand what it is to surrender to something as I surrender to you.”
“I feel that way now,” she whispered thoughtlessly and then opened her eyes, only then realizing how vulnerable the admission had been. In this moment, she felt like little more than a worshipper at his whims.
As if sensing the subtle nature of her tension, he lifted her face to his. Looking into her eyes, he breathed, “What you feel right now is the smallest fraction of what we could be.”
She couldn’t imagine anything beyond what she’d just experienced, swallowing slowly as he traced his hand along her neck and slowly unfastened the golden necklace she wore. She heard the heavy metal slide into his palm, and she watched it lie there like a golden viper, freed from her throat at last.
