I love you.
A light flickered across his gaze the instant she felt the sentiment.
Brian shoved with a gusto she would not have guessed he had in him, cursing and shouting and crying her name.
A second orgasm barreled in, originating from deep inside and tearing her asunder. Pleasure, but a destructive and rampaging sort, raged.
“Brian, I’m coming again.” Her voice was a pathetic plea, or a confession, chasing the heels of such profound disbelief she couldn’t help but tell him. He needed to know what was happening to her.
He yelled his triumph, uninhibited in his frenzy. Thrusts grew sloppy, lost their steady rhythm. His gaze never wavered, though the humanity behind his eyes gave way to maniac sex ecstasy.
She shuddered, her explosions tapering to fluttery aftershocks though he was ramping up in earnest, racing to his finale. Worked out well, for now she could enjoy him, his broken noises as he came undone and fell apart.
Such a thrill and a treat, to witness a composed man like Brian reduced. An aphrodisiac and a feminine sort of power.
He froze, every muscle in his body locking up. With one more big push, he surged forward, folding her in two and pushing the bottoms of her feet into the board as he buried himself balls-deep and shot. His lips parted, and out poured a series of sharp noises.
The spectacle of her lover’s ruin might have satisfied her more than her own orgasms. Wrecking a man by way of abandon was the best kind of magic.
Sexed-up madness dribbled off, awareness of the present returning to showcase the embodiment of post-coital humanity.
He let go of her ankles, and she collapsed on crumpled sheets, nude and spread eagle, catching choppy breath.
Sweat glued bellies together. The smash of damp bodies separated with suction pops.
He, a riot of akimbo limbs and a robe hanging on for dear life, sighed and kissed her jaw. His heartbeat thumped against her breastbone, her own pulse complementing the percussion.
Brian rolled off of Helen and onto his back, splaying a hand over her tummy in a gesture that sweetened the afterglow with claiming and affection. He was letting her know that he wouldn’t retreat after the deed was done.
She didn’t need the aftercare, but she honored the good place from which his effort came.
Speedy and discreet, he peeled off the loaded condom and lobbed it into a wastebasket. “I knew it would be good with you, but damn. That was…”
Though the vocabulary word escaped him, she got the gist of the sentiment. Some silly cliché like “mind-blowing” would not suffice to describe their passion.
Helen shifted to her side. His face in profile, celebrity at rest in the backlight of the pool, was surreal. “I agree. I’m not sure what goes in that blank, but it’s awesome.”
Brian turned to face her, wearing the disheveled bathrobe and a grin. “Your dirty talk is white hot. I banked up all of the things you said for future solo use. Though I hope that I won’t have to fly solo as much anymore.” He wiggled his eyebrows, tracing the outline of her curves with one lazy finger.
But Helen’s couldn’t participate in the jest. Not when she saw the mark marring Brian’s body. Though his robe must have concealed the bruise during their lovemaking, his repositioning jostled a corner of the cloth behind his hip.
A ghastly shiner rimmed with puncture marks darkened a golf ball-sized area where his leg met his lower belly.
Despair burned dirty tributaries into her vein networks. The splotch showed up in Denver, but she’d thought little of it. She pushed white fabric aside, attaining the closer look she didn’t want.
“What happened?” Her voice shook, but she wasn’t shocked. Nothing shocked her these days, which made her so fucking tired.
“Oh, it’s what I told you about in the car, how the double put marks on me. Ugly, but I hardly notice it anymore.”
But Helen noticed, because the colors changed before her eyes. Broken blood vessels crawled outward from the impact sight, squiggly inchworms dipped in blood. The stain spread like red wine spilled on a carpet. Regret slammed. Pieces clicked.
“We shouldn’t have had sex,” she said.
He sat upright and pulled his garment together, cloaking his injury and nude body. “Did I do something wrong?”
“It’s not you, it’s the curse. I should have known. Fuck. I knew some feeling inside of me generated the hex, but I haven’t understood until now. It wasn’t my desire for money or to save my studio that emboldened it, allowed it to latch. It was my desire for you. In no way was your involvement a random occurrence.” She knocked the back of her head into the wall a couple of times like she could whack their mistake into a harmless torpor.
“We can’t be sure.”
She jumped out of bed and paced, tearing at a nail.
“No, we can. It adds up. You were the target because I wanted you to be. On some subconscious level I pinned this thing on you. I sought you out. You connect to my past, and the idea of you was all knotted up in this messed up savior fantasy I had, so when the curse needed to latch, all it had to do was reach in and root out the trace recollection of someone I desired, but desired in a way mixed up in resentment and desperation and other unhealthy shit. That’s a curse, a hex. That’s all it is. Toxic mental sludge, bad energy we attach to other people, the ways that we make others responsible for our own garbage and pin our trash on them. So the setup’s in place before I even start screwing with the supernatural, with the Left Hand path. Then I find you at the fair, and bam. It’s too easy. I delivered you right into this thing’s clutches.”
“Hold on.” Brian put a hand in the air. “All of that may have been true the day we met, but you aren’t doing either
