“Yeah, a deal’s a deal,” I said, taking my usual seat next to Wes.
“What deal?” he mumbled around his steak.
“Nothing,” Marta said at the same time I said, “She beat me in training this morning.”
“She beat you?” Wes raised his eyebrows and laughed, glancing back at the witch. “You don’t look too happy about it. I figured you’d be gloating.”
No, I realized she wasn’t thrilled when she promptly got off me, rushed out of there, and avoided me for the rest of the day. Even when I came into the library to help them research, she didn’t say more than two words before disappearing into the Christian occult section and not returning for a few hours.
It wasn’t the first time a woman had hit it and quit it, but admittedly, it was the most action I’d gotten in over a month and would likely be the only action I got until we figured out how to get out of here. Watching her walk away stung, and the ache in my chest pissed me off.
I shouldn’t care what she thought about me. I didn’t even like her. But watching her get herself off on top of me, her knife to my throat, her hand over my mouth…Goddamn, I got hard just thinking about it. I might have even gone back to my room and fucked my fist thinking about it a few hours later.
“She cheated,” I teased, pointing to the wound on my cheek that she’d yet to heal.
That got her attention. She gasped and dropped her jaw, staring at me. “No, I didn’t! The rules were nothing permanent.”
“This is gonna scar,” I said. “I probably need stitches.”
Wes chuckled harder, but Marta only growled and stood, raising her hand toward me as she muttered something I couldn’t hear. Her white light started to beam out of her fingertips, but I ducked out of the way before it could reach me.
“No, none of that,” I said. “I want you to see it every day and know the error of your ways.” I let the double meaning hang between us, raising an eyebrow at her cute indignation. “Besides, chicks dig scars.”
She ran her tongue over her teeth before glancing at Wes and finally returning her attention to her dinner. Our conversation turned to figuring out how to get out of the liminal. Then Wes and I went to the parlor to drown our sorrows. Marta didn’t join us. She never did.
“What’d you do to her?” Wes asked when she stalked up the stairs.
“Nothing she wasn’t asking for, brother,” I teased.
He raised an eyebrow and let it slide.
But when I went to sleep that night, I dreamt of the things I wanted to do to her, the way I wanted to roll her over, tear open her leggings, and stuff myself inside of her. I’d hold her down and fuck her until neither of us could talk, until we were wrung out and gasping for air. It got so intense that I didn’t realize I was dreaming. I could almost feel her heart beating next to mine, could sense the heat rolling off her, could squeeze my hand around her throat until she pulsed around my cock.
One final shove into her, and I detonated with a resounding fury that ricocheted down my spine and into my legs before surging back up again. I opened my mouth to groan with my release, but the only thing that came out was black smoke, wisps uncoiling from my mouth in thick, devastating waves. Shocked, I sat back as it poured from my nose and lips, smothering the space between us. It replaced my hand around Marta’s throat and tightened until it pulled her up. The smoke coalesced between us like a sickening tether, scalding the connection between us. She opened her mouth to suck it in, and it poured down her windpipe, revitalizing our bond with an evil depravity that I’d never known before.
It should have terrified me. It should have made me wonder if we were possessed or worse…becoming demons ourselves. Instead, I relished it. I held her down while the mist pummeled out of me and into her, shoving myself in between her legs again, filling every part of her with me.
I shot out of bed, sweaty and gasping, clutching at my mouth like I could get it out of me, like the smoke was real and would suffocate me if I didn’t eradicate it. But when my brain caught up with my body, I realized I was alone in the dark with nothing but the streams of moonlight filtering in through the curtains.
Marta wasn’t in the training room that morning. Nor was she in the kitchen when I finished my routine and made myself breakfast. I found her in the library, hunched over a pile of books with my brother sitting across from her in his usual spot. Over the last few weeks, they’d gotten close, partly because of their shared love for nerding out on history.
I didn’t think we’d find a way out of here by looking through books. The Harlot library housed thousands of texts, some in languages no one spoke anymore. We could probably spend the rest of our lives stuck here, poring over them, and still have nothing to show for it.
We needed to get outside. We needed to go back to where the ritual was, hold another one, and cut through time and space to get home. Of course, mentioning it only caused a fight.
“We don’t have our bond, Atlas,” Marta would say.
“We don’t know what we’re doing,” Wes would agree.
I had no arguments for that, so I shut the fuck up, drank my beer, and let them take their time. But anxiety clenched my chest when I thought about staying here, and the longer we went, the harder it might be to break out again.
“Alright, it’s been weeks,” I said, plopping down in the seat next to Wes. “How’s the research going? Find anything good?”
Marta raised an eyebrow and kept reading, continuing the whole ignoring-me gig. It still hurt, even if I was used to it by now.
“It might go a lot faster if you helped,” Wes said, turning a page.
Fine.
