As his strokes deepened, she moved her legs even farther apart and echoed his rhythm in her own hips.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she didn't think twice about them as his relentless momentum carried her away, a knot of fire taking hold where he was pumping in and out of her until she thought she would be burned alive - and didn't find that a bad thing in the slightest.
They both seized up at the same time, and in the midst of her own climax she caught a vision of him from over her shoulder, his head rearing back, his jaw clenching, the great muscles in his arms standing out against his smooth skin. But then she was too lost to see anything at all as her own body corded and released, corded and released, the greedy pulls on his sex making him moan and twitch as she drew the marking out of him.
And then it was done.
In the aftermath, she thought of the summer thunder-storms that swept over the mansion from time to time. When they receded, the quiet was all the more dense for the fury they'd wrought. This was the same. With their bodies stilled and their breath easing and their hearts slowing, it was hard to recall the vivid urgency that had propelled them here to this now-resonant moment of silence.
She watched as dismay, then abject shock, took the place of his single-minded marking urge.
What had she expected? That this dance of bodies was going to make him renounce his Primale status, forsake his vow, and declare her his one and only shellan? That he would be overjoyed that right before her departure they had done on a passionate impulse what they should have completed with reverence and forethought all those months ago?
"Please get out of me," she said in a choked voice.
Phury could not comprehend what he had done, and yet the proof was there. Cormia's slender body was under his heavy one, her cheeks were wet with tears, and there were bruises on her wrists.
He had taken her virginity from behind, like she was a dog. Held her down and made her submit because he was stronger. Plowed into her without regard for the pain she definitely had felt.
"Please get out of me." Her words were shaky, and the word please killed him. She could only request it of him, as she was completely overpowered.
He pulled free of her and got off the bed, stumbling like a drunk.
Cormia turned onto her side and tucked her legs into her body. Her spine seemed so fragile, the delicate column of bones utterly breakable under her pale skin.
"I'm sorry." God, those two words were such empty buckets.
"Please just go."
Considering how he'd already forced himself on her, honoring her request now seemed significant. Even though leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do.
Phury went into the bathroom, put his clothes on, and headed for the door. "We need to talk later - "
"There is no later. I'm going to put in to be a sequestered scribe. So I will record your history, but not be a part of it."
"Cormia, no."
She looked over her shoulder at him. "It's where I belong."
Her head went back down on the pillow.
"Go," she said. "Please."
He had no conscious awareness of walking out of her door or going through his own. He just realized sometime later that he was back in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, smoking a blunt. In the silence, his hands were shaking and his heart was a broken drum machine and his foot was tapping on the floor.
The wizard was front and center in Phury's mind, standing with black robes waving in the wind, his silhouette jagged against a vast gray horizon. In his hand, balanced on his palm, was a skull.
Its eyes were yellow.
I told you that you would hurt her. I told you.
Phury looked at the tight roll of red smoke in his hand and tried to see anything other than ruination. He couldn't. He'd been a beast.
I told you what was going to happen. I was right. I've been right all along. And by the way, your birth wasn't the curse. It wasn't that you were born after your twin. You are the curse. Whether there had been five babies born with you or none, the outcome of all the lives around you would have been the same.
Reaching for the remote, Phury turned on his Bose system, but the instant one of Puccini's luscious, beautiful operas flooded through the room, tears boiled up into his eyes. So lovely, the music, and so unbearable as he contrasted the magical lilt of Luciano Pavarotti's voice with the grunting he'd uttered when he'd been on top of Cormia.
He'd held her down. Pinned her arms. Mounted her from behind -
You are the curse.
As the voice of the wizard continued to pound at him, he felt the ivy of the past overtaking him once again, all the things he had failed to do, all the differences he hadn't made, all the care he'd tried to take, but had fallen short on... and now there was a new layer. Cormia's layer.
He heard his father's last wheezing breath. And the crackle of his mother's body going up in flames. And his twin's anger at having been rescued.
He heard Cormia's voice, worst of all: Please get out of me.
Phury covered his ears with his hands even though that did nothing to help.
You are the curse.
With a moan, he pushed his palms into either side of his skull so hard his arms shook.
You don't like the truth? the wizard spat. You don't like my voice? You know how to make me go away.
The wizard dropped the skull into the tangle of bones at his feet. You know how to do it.
Phury smoked with desperation, terrified of everything that was in his head.
The blunt wasn't even touching the self-hatred or the voices.
The wizard put its black claw-toed boot on top of the yellow-eyed skull. You know what to do.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Up north in the adirondacks, deep in a cave in Black Snake State Park, the male who had collapsed at the coming of the dawn two days ago could not understand why the sun was shining on him and he wasn't up in flames. Unless he was in the Fade?
No... this couldn't be the Fade. The aches and pains in his body and the screaming in his head were too much like what he felt on Earth.
Except, what about the sun? He was bathed in its warm glow, and yet he breathed.
Man, if all that vampire-no-daylight shit was a lie, the race was an idiot as a whole.
But, wait, wasn't he in a cave? So how were the rays reaching him?
"Eat this," the sunshine said.
Okay, going with the idea, however improbable it was, that he remained alive, clearly he was hallucinating. Because what was shoved in his face looked like a McDonald 's Big Mac, and that was impossible.
Unless he actually was dead, and the Fade had the Golden Arches instead of the golden gates?
"Look," the sunshine said, "if your brain's forgotten how to eat, just open that mouth of yours. I'll cram this f**ker in and we'll see if your teeth remember what to do."
The male parted his lips, because the smell of the meat was waking his stomach up and making him drool like a dog. When the hamburger was stuffed into him, his jaw went on autopilot, clamping down hard.
As he tore a hunk off, he moaned. For a brief moment, the tingling approval of his taste buds replaced all of his suffering, even the mental shit. Swallowing brought another whimper out of him.
"Take more," the sunshine said, pressing the Big Mac back against his lips.
He ate it all. And some fries that were lukewarm, but a godsend nonetheless. Then his head was lifted and he sucked back some slightly watery Coke.
"The nearest Mickey D's is twenty miles away," the sunshine said, like it was looking to fill the silence. "That's why it's not as hot as it could be."
The male wanted more.
"Yup, I got you seconds. Open wide."
Another Big Mac. More fries. More Coke.
"I've done the best I can with you, but you need blood," the sunshine told him, like he was a child. "And you need to go home."
As the male shook his head, he realized he was lying on his back with a slab of rock for his pillow and a dirt floor as his mattress. He wasn't in the same cave as before, though. This one smelled different. It smelled like... fresh air, fresh spring air.
Although... maybe that was the sunshine's scent?
"Yeah, you need to go home."
"No..."
"Well, then we got a problem, you and me," the sunshine muttered. There was a shuffling like someone big was sitting down on their haunches. "You're the favor I need to return."
The male frowned, dragged in a breath, and croaked, "Nowhere to go. No favor."
"Not your call, buddy. Or mine." The sunshine seemed to be shaking its head, because the blurry shadows it created in the cave shifted like waves. "Unfortunately, I gotta deliver your ass back to where you belong."