Page 103 of Alchemised
Stop thinking.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the need she felt corroded her willpower.
The bed shifted. A shiver ran down her spine. Her skirts were shifted, pushed up, and the brush of fabric against her thighs made her inhale raggedly. The only reaction she could muster.
“Breathe,” Ferron said, as he had the night before.
She was keenly aware of him, more so than the day before, except now her wants were inverted. She could barely feel his weight. She wanted to arch up, press into him even as an endless scream throbbed inside her skull. Her eyes snapped open, and she stared up at him.
She felt as though she’d never truly looked at him before.
There’d always been a sharp and wary distance between them. When she observed him, it was in search of tells, for weakness. She’d never looked at him as something human or hot-blooded.
Now he felt very human to her. She wanted him to touch her. She remembered what his hands felt like, the press of his fingertips along her jaw. She craved it so much, her skin ached. The weight she’d been desperate to escape from the night before—she wanted it.
Tears burned a hot trail down her temples.
For the briefest moment, Ferron’s eyes flicked to her face before averting again. He went still and looked at her again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stared at him, willing for him to understand.
He drew away, wrenching a glove off. He was still wearing them, even now.
He barely touched her, but that was all it took. The paralysis melted away.
Helena’s body shuddered back into motion, and she instantly curled onto her side with a sob, pressing her legs tight together as her body throbbed, gasping raggedly. Even her breath burned in her lungs.
“What did she do to you?”
She couldn’t look at him.
“She said it was to make it b-better.” Her voice shook uncontrollably. “Because I—complained. H-How long do those tablets you gave me last?”
“Eight hours.”
“She gave me half.” She drew a ragged breath. “Can you—change it to something else?”
“Not once it’s taken effect,” he said. “It has to wear off on its own.”
She nodded. She’d assumed as much but hoped to be wrong.
She tried to draw another breath.
“Can we—can we wait till—after?” Her voice was strangled.
There was a silence.
“I have to leave after this. I won’t be back until late tomorrow.”
She lay there, trying to think clearly, not sure that she was rational anymore.
This, or maybe not pregnant. For all the accidental pregnancies she’d treated, she knew that children didn’t always come easy. For her parents, it had taken years; she’d arrived after they’d given up. A miracle, they’d said.
Two months, and then she’d go to Central, to Stroud, and—
She was going insane. She couldn’t do this. A choice like this—it wasn’t fair to make her choose between things like this. No good choices, just worse and worse, which way to hate herself forever.
