The voice was different. Not the Cruxius who’d given orders in hallways and dropped offers like change on a table.
This was sothing older and younger at the sa ti—sothing that had been filed away for a long ti and was being said now not because it was strategic but because, for so reason, in this specific car on this specific morning, it was simply true.
"M-Master..." Darithi’s voice was barely there. Her hands, steady always, were not quite steady.
She had carried her own hollowness for years—the inability to feel what people around her seed to feel, the quiet guilt of existing beside soone who wanted sothing from her she simply didn’t have. She had always assud the fault was entirely hers.
She had not known he carried sothing too.
Thalia looked at him.
The fury hadn’t gone. It was still there—the ache of what she’d lost, the anger at what he’d taken, the very reasonable desire to scream in his face until sothing broke. All of that was still exactly where she’d left it.
But underneath it, sothing else had moved.
Just slightly.
Just enough to notice.
She looked away. Out the window. The hospital approaching in the distance, glass and pale stone, its facade serene in the morning light like a place where things got fixed.
She pressed her knees together.
Felt the warmth between them, still.
’I hate you,’ she thought at him. ’I hate you and I hate this and I hate how none of it is as simple as it should be.’
She said nothing.
The car drove on and she kept her eyes on the window and kept her knees pressed together and kept her jaw set against everything that wanted to move in her face, and she was doing fine—she was doing perfectly fine—
"Sit."
She turned.
Cruxius was looking at her.
Just that. Just the single word, dropped quiet into the space between them, and his hand reaching across the seat to close around her wrist.
"What are—"
He pulled.
She was on his lap before she’d processed the motion—one fluid tug and suddenly she was sideways across him, his arm around her waist anchoring her there, her back against his chest, the solid warmth of him underneath her imdiate and impossible to ignore.
"—’What are you doing’—" She grabbed his forearm with both hands. "’We’re in a moving car—’"
"You awakened painful mories," he said.
The words were even. Almost casual. His chin ca down against the top of her head, his arm settling around her middle like sothing that had found where it belonged.
Thalia froze.
"’...What?’"
"Talking about it." His thumb moved against her side. Just slightly. "It’s been a while since I thought about any of that."
She didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know how to hold it alongside everything else. She stayed rigid in his arms, hands still wrapped around his forearm, and tried to think of sothing to say that wasn’t—
His other hand moved.
She felt it before she understood it—fingers finding the hem of her skirt from the side, sliding beneath the fabric with the sa unhurried confidence he applied to everything.
"’—Hey—’"
The cool of his fingers against the inside of her thigh made her breath snag. She reached down and grabbed his wrist.
"’What are you doing,’" she said. Not a question. An accusation.
"Relieving stress."
His fingers found the edge of her underwear. Not pulling it aside yet—just touching, pressing lightly against the thin cotton, feeling the warmth beneath it. And she was ’warm.’ She’d been warm since the car park, since the hospital corridor and the cold air and the dress that sat against her like evidence.
She felt his fingers register it.
"’Don’t—’" Her voice ca out wrong. Too high. Too thin.
His other hand moved from her waist—up, slow, fingers trailing along her ribs through the fabric of the dress—and found the neckline. She wore a bra beneath. He found that too, fingers curving along the underwire through the fabric before slipping inside—underneath the bra cup, palm flat against the soft weight of her breast.
"’Cruxius—’"
He squeezed.
Not rough. Not the hallway. Just—full, warm, the weight of her breast filling his palm as his fingers closed around it, thumb dragging slow across the nipple.
Her back arched. Involuntary. Completely.
"’Sto—’"
The word dissolved.
His thumb moved again—back and forth, slow and deliberate—and her nipple hardened under it with a speed that betrayed everything she was trying to maintain. The friction was light, lazy even, like a man doing sothing with one hand while his attention was elsewhere, and sohow that specific ’casualness’ of it made it worse.
His other hand pressed flat against the front of her panties.
"’Ngh—’" The sound ca from sowhere she didn’t authorize.
"There it is," he murmured into her hair.
"’Stop—what are you—we’re in a CAR—’"
"Mm." His mouth dropped to the side of her neck. Not asking. Just finding the place he’d already marked this morning and pressing his lips there—warm, unhurried, teeth barely grazing the skin.
"’—Hh—’"
He sucked.
Slow and deliberate, drawing the skin between his teeth just enough, his tongue moving against the mark he’d already put there and making it darker while she squird in his lap and her hands gripped his forearm and did absolutely nothing productive.
"’Of course,’" he said against her neck—she could feel his lips moving, could feel the vibration of his voice against the skin. "’Relieving my stress.’"
"’This is not—’ ngh ’—stress relief, this is—’"
His fingers pushed the cotton aside.
The first contact—bare fingers against her—made her head roll back against his shoulder with a sound she choked halfway through. She was ’wet.’ She’d been wet for twenty minutes and knowing it was one thing, having him find it was sothing she couldn’t reason her way around.
"’Don’t—’" She reached down again, hand closing over his wrist under her skirt. "’Don’t you dare say anything—’"
"I wasn’t going to," he said.
Two fingers. Slow. Pressing in at an angle he’d mapped this morning—the sa angle, the sa depth, curling slightly on entry in a way that made her whole lower body clench around him imdiately.
"’Ahh—’" The sound escaped before she could catch it. Her heels pressed into the leather seat. Her back arched further off his chest. "—’too deep—you’re—’"
"Hold still," he said.
Which was an absurd thing to say to soone he was currently taking apart in the backseat of a moving car.
She didn’t hold still.
His fingers moved—not fast, nothing like the hallway, just a slow drag inward and a slower pull back, thumb circling her clit in loose, maddening loops that never landed where she needed them to.
His other hand rolled her nipple between his fingers through the cup of her bra—she could feel the heat of it even through the fabric, the pinch, the bloom of sensation that shot directly from her chest to her core and made her clench around his fingers.
"’Hnn—’"
PAH—
The sound of his palm against the inside of her thigh, adjusting his angle. Her leg fell open.
"’I—’" Her voice was barely language. "’I didn’t—ngh—’"
User Comments
0 comments from readers