Page 57 of Dark Ink

Maybe the words were rash. Maybe they were all too soon. I should have let our little role play go on a little longer. It was all bound to come crashing down eventually, as inevitable as our clothes hitting the floor.

Eithne looked almost frightened as she whispered, “No, what?”

I stood from my chair. It felt good to be free of that stiff leather. Those cold brass buttons. The straight back that was too unyielding, that refused to arch beneath me. The height of me made Eithne shrink back.

“I don’t want your thanks,” I told her.

I slipped my hands into my pockets. Looked down at her. Her next line was obvious. The question she was supposed to ask was right there at the tip of her tongue. All she had to do was open her mouth. Or she could leave. Nod. Smile. Accept that what she had to give was not what I wanted. Disappear once more.

I waited. Hid the fact that beneath the cool demeanour of my casual posture I was pinching at my skin, piercing my flesh.

Eithne leaned forward slightly. Blinked at me through long, sweeping eyelashes. She said the words I had wanted to hear, the words I thought I would lose myself over if I didn’t hear.

“What do you want?”

No more than a whisper. No more than the brush of a fingertip over goosebumps. But enough.

“I want something with you, Eithne,” I said before quickly shaking my head. “No, I want everything with you.”

I pulled my hands from my pockets. The release of pain was hardly a relief. My chest burned like I was struggling to remove a boulder from crushing it. I advanced on Eithne. She did not flinch away as I stood above her.

“I want everything,” I repeated. “I want all of you. All of your body. All of your mind. All of your soul.”

I leaned down and put my hands on the armrests of her chair. She remained seated so properly, so ladylike. Stiff back like that goddamn chair. Fingertips frozen like a line of those tufting brass buttons. Lips stiff and unrevealing as my face came closer and closer to hers.

“I want too much,” I whispered. “I want more than I can ask. More than I should ask. I want a reckless amount of you, Eithne, a dangerous amount of you. I want to drown in you. Choke on you. Smother myself with you.”

Eithne listened with eyes wide with fear, darkened with arousal. I scared her, I know. She scared me, too. But the fear was cut with attraction, magnetism, desire, lime for tequila, orange peel for whiskey.

“And yet it’s what I want. What I’ll ask for. What I’ll demand.”

Eithne shuddered. It drove me mad. I could no longer contain myself.

I grabbed her shoulders and yanked her out of her chair. “What I’ll take.”

She gasped and I swallowed her fear, her lust, her hesitation, her impulsive abandon. I crushed her to me as I kissed her deeply. Her lips relented to my tongue with a soft moan that only served to spur me on.

I was vaguely aware of the back of her coming into contact with the wall as I pushed her against it. It seemed as unimportant as a boat knocking against a dock; all that mattered was that Eithne and I were intertwined in the hull, sweating beneath the high noon sun. I hardly felt at all Eithne’s fingers come to the collar of my shirt, hardly noticed at all as she tugged me closer; I was a planet in her orbit and it was as natural as gravity to crash into her. There was the scuffing of shoes, the knocking of knees as I widened her stance with my leg, but none of it was as present, as pressing as the simplicity of Eithne’s lips against mine.

I breathed what she breathed: musty office air, expectations, fears, a pervading sense of wrongness, a deep conviction that this was right. I inhaled when she inhaled, exhaled when she told me with panting little groans. My fingers burned with the warmth of her neck, twisted with the tendrils of her dark hair. I tugged her head back, loomed over her, darkened her heaving chest like a solar eclipse. Claimed her even as she claimed me.

A creak of the door interrupted us. I looked with irritation at the disturbance. A glare in my eyes. A snarl of my lips. Whoever was there was an obstacle to clear, a hurdle to get around. I had nastiness forming on my tongue. I had Eithne to get back to.

But for Eithne, the shocked face of a fellow student peeking hesitantly inside was something far different. It was a splash of cold water. An alarm that screamed her awake because she was drifting out of her lane in the dark. An excuse to pull away, hide her face in the crook of her neck, and whisper, “Oh my God.”

I shooed away the student. Crossed the short distance across the oriental rug. Closed the door after saying politely more for Eithne’s sake, “I’ll be right with you.” But when I turned around, I found Eithne with her bookbag over her shoulder. Her sweatshirt tidied. The back of her hand drawing across her lips. Wiping away us. Wiping away me.

“Don’t go,” I told her.

I hadn’t meant it to sound like a command, like an order. But emotions were boiling up in me, boiling over in me. I couldn’t keep doing this. Couldn’t keep watching her leave. Letting her disappear. I couldn’t continue without her in my arms, without her in my life. Every time she pulled away, she was taking a piece of me with her. I was being shredded. Destroyed. Torn apart. I’d snap eventually. I’d lose it.

I hadn’t meant it to sound like a command, like an order. But it was. Because it had to be. Because I couldn’t help myself. Because only Eithne could help me now.

“I’m sorry,” Eithne said, slipping by me without meeting my eyes. “I don’t have everything to give.”

She opened the door roughly. Not bothering to hide the creaking this time. Not caring that the noise was nails on a chalkboard to my ears. Eithne left the door open behind her and that was almost somehow worse. There was nothing to close the door on, it seemed. We’d never been anything so there was nothing to end. We’d never truly been together so no final separation was even needed. I dug my fingernails into my palms as I heard her outside.

“You can go in now,” she said to the faceless student I’d soon have to face. “I’m finished.”

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