Gently, his fingers found her, found her more than ready.
With a deep, quiet chuckle, they eased into her.
Coaxing, stroking.
He knew just how to touch – there was no force, just a caress of absolute control. The pleasure was so intense, she could feel the blood rising in her face, feel her body quivering as he paused, then began again.
“You’ll make this happen, Amethea.”
Her hips ached towards him, muscles tightened around his touch, silently begging him deeper. But the resentment in her heart glittered, cold and hard and still. Somewhere, she remembered she wouldn’t be controlled like this – not any more. Jamming her cheek sideways against his, she said, “I
He hissed exasperation; his fingers were gone. She gasped objection before she could stop herself. The wash of loss, the hollow ache of hunger...
But his weight was between her thighs, he was tugging her ridiculous skirts roughly out of the way. She was feet and shoulders and tailbone against the warm stone, eagerly welcoming his weight on hers, her legs rising to wrap round him even as her mind repeated, insanely,
The first thrust was slow, full length – tension rippled through him at the contact, he was holding his own need sternly back. She cried out, struggling to free her arms so she could... what? Hold him? Fight to free herself? He braced his hands against her wrists, held his weight on his elbows and, still buried in her to the hilt, leaned up to look at her flushed face, her splashed hair.
Somewhere in his soul, he smouldered. Embers burned in his vision.
She could feel his heat, over and in her; hear her own breathing; feel her pulse hammering in her skin.
And beneath her, the rock was
It seemed to thrum, as if summoned by his fire, by the drumbeat of her blood.
He withdrew – almost. Circling his hips gently, a tease, a tempt, he said, “You can. And you will.”
She wanted him back. Her legs tightened but he was too strong. The thrum beneath her was becoming a reverberation, an echo and broadcast of her own hammering heart. Somewhere between the heat of the stone and the burning between her thighs, she found herself saying again, between gritted teeth, between breaths of craving, “All... the tricks... in the world... won’t make it... any more possible.”
His face set, then, his eyes gave a single blaze of fury. He pushed into her slowly, watching her expression, and she stared back, unwavering; yet her voice was catching in her throat – a feminine cry she couldn’t stifle.
He withdrew, eased into her again, a long, smooth stroke. She gasped, wanted, needed still – couldn’t help it. She unwrapped her legs to brace her feet against the stone.
The hot pulse of the stone.
The thought was incoherent – she hadn’t grasped it, not yet. Once before, she’d felt the vastness of the rock about her, that sense of potence and patience and loss and age...
The reverberations of her own pulse echoed back through her skin. In the stone, something
Oh, my Gods.
It was rhythmic and deep, its might massive, yet not hostile. It was far, far bigger than Maugrim’s petty lust, his need for control. It was bigger than her resentment, than her body or senses, the chamber, the passageways. She couldn’t encompass it or comprehend it. As waves of sensation and pleasure broke through her, she surrendered herself – not to Maugrim, but to the stone.
And he felt it too.
As she let go, it pulsed through her skin, her movements and responses and sounds. He gave a breath of amazement as the heat found him through her and he started to move more swiftly, making her cry wordless appreciation. She moved with him, matched him. He, too, lost himself in it, in her. She grounded him and he was her focus.
And the stone grew hotter. The thrum became a pound and it was tangible in the sweating air.
Now, she wasn’t fighting him any more. She found his mouth, craving as much contact as possible. He let her hands go and they were in his hair, over his shoulders, clumsily pulling his strange garments from him so she could feel his bare chest, the muscles move beneath his skin.
Leaning back, he tore the lacings down her top with one hand, bared her skin to his.
And the stone grew hotter.
She could feel it in her feet, bracing downwards against it as she pushed upwards into the impact of Maugrim’s body. The wet slide of him inside her was almost too much, she gripped him as hard as she could and he, too, cried out, guttural and abandoned.
She began to shake. Waves of sensation robbed her of every conscious thought. Her lips parted in inarticulate sounds – her hands clung to him, refusing to let him go.
He growled at her pleasure, drank it in through his skin. Beneath her, around her, the rock was alive, burning with the heat in the chamber. She was caught between flesh and stone...
As she crested the wave – hips high, back arched, colours flashing through her vision – she was vaguely, oddly, aware of intense sensation in her feet. Maugrim came moments after she did, head back, eyes closed, teeth bared. Then his relieved weight fell forwards on top of her, strangely comforting, secure. For a moment, she rested under him, feeling the stone beneath her slowly cooling.
The thrum faded from her bones.
After a minute, he propped himself upright, looked down at her with an odd smile. He looked – young, almost confused.
She had no idea what to say, what to do – no idea what had just happened. The stone was only warm; it was hard under her shoulder blades.
And her feet...
...her feet felt strange, like she’d been sat on them too long and they’d gone to sleep. She tried to move them – half expecting the pin-ripple of returning feeling...
...and couldn’t.
Sudden alarm pushed the languor from her body. She pushed him back, tried to sit up. There was tearing across her shoulders, a rush of ripping skin and fabric, a sudden flash of pain.
Warm ooze down her spine.
Maugrim tried to roll sideways, but her knee was in his way. She could move her leg, but her blood flow felt cut off mid-calf, her feet were weird, distant – somehow not her own. Her shoulders hurt like she’d shredded her skin; torn bits of her top were stuck to her.
In increasing desperation, she craned to see past Maugrim’s body. She tried, really tried...
They still wouldn’t move.
“Maugrim...?” she said. “My feet...”
“Thea.” The word was almost gentle. Frowning, he sat back on his heels and stared.
Then he started to laugh.
* * *
“Vice!” Massively jubilant, Maugrim raced through the entranceway to the chamber he’d humorously named his “lock-up”. “
The Kartian had gone – his latest failure was a broken heap, glittering under the rocklights. Once again, the melding of flesh and metal had yielded only death. Maugrim dismissed it and cast his eyes over the bike, the stuff he’d stashed here, waiting.
Now useless.
Aftershocks of pleasure danced sparks in his blood.
His old life had gone – the van a blackened carcass of steel. He’d been in the back – heard only the angry
