“It’s different,” he said, stepping closer to me. He did not sit or lower himself, but his shadow slid over my thighs, and he pulled out the riding crop. It landed on my knees with a painless flick. “The things I find pleasure in are not the same as mortals. They are darker. Even abhorrent.”
It struck me as humorous that he’d think I hadn’t already known of “abhorrent” desires. “You remember you are speaking to a prostitute.”
“I am speaking,” he said slowly, using the crop to push aside the silkof my dress, baring my legs to the sunshine and the stroke of the flat leather tip, “to a sorceress.”
My heart thumped in my chest. From the drag of the warm leather crop against my skin or from his words, I wasn’t sure. “What kinds of abhorrent and dark things?” I managed to say, annoyed that it came out rather breathless.
He laughed and the crop twitched away. My heart lurched into my stomach.
“You might be one,” he said, stroking the crop with his gloved hand. “Though sometimes you are a frustration.”
His words had gone to my head like a strong, spiced wine, and I had to breathe a moment before I could reply. “A frustration is just a pleasure withheld.”
At my words, Death paused, the crop lifted over my thighs.
I lowered my legs flat against the cloth, pale flesh laid out like the pastries, and pulled the silk of my dress up across my hips.
He swung the crop lightly.
I flinched, but it was in anticipation. The crop never fell. He caught it with his other hand and just the smallest edge of his mouth quirked up. He’d seen how he undid me.
“I have a question, my lord,” I said.
“Yes, ma petite chou,” he said, still playing with the crop.
The clouds roiled and grew hazy pink edges, and I thought of the shadows in that abyss of darkness where he trod. I pretended not to notice the crop and the flat leather end. Pretended that I didn’t lie there trembling, eager and frightened for him to flick it. “Are you Death in this world alone? Or are you Death in all the other ones too?”
He was silent for a moment, and then he lowered the crop to almost touching. Almost. “Show me a world without Death,” he said.
“Wouldn’t that be heaven?”
“Would it?”
“Is there a heaven?” It occurred to me suddenly that he would know.
“Roll over,” he said instead.
All thoughts of heaven abandoned, I quickly rolled onto my stomach, and he roughly pushed up the hem of my dress, leaving my legs and bottom bared to him.
The sun warmed my naked skin, the only sound my breathing and the soft swishing of the grass. After pushing up my dress, he had shifted back and not touched me. What was he waiting for? I craned my neck to see.
But as I turned, he violently shoved my face into the blanket, gloved hand pushing into the top of my head. “Stop trying to see everything,” he ordered. “Stop expecting. Stop questioning. Only live in this moment.”
I was so caught off guard, I froze, going limp underneath his palm, his words. But I trusted him. The camaraderie, the respect we’d built over so many evenings together demanded I trust him. I trusted the being who moved across the abyss and came home to teach me things I could never dream of knowing about the world. I knew he would never truly hurt me, that everything he’d ever done was only to push me forward. And deeper in my heart, in a place I could not bear to fashion into words, I knew Imusttrust him, for he was my path back to Rochelle and forward into freedom. So, I gripped the blanket and closed my eyes.
For what felt like hours, I lay like that. Clutching the blanket. My legs and bottom bare in the wind. I felt Death’s remote silence. Heard the high whine of bugs that rose in the late afternoon. Bees landed in the sweet pastries. I dared not move. My flesh felt reddened and raw from the sun and wind. But still, he did not touch me.
“Your afternoon is going to waste,” he finally said. “It’s a shame. Don’t you want to move? Don’t you want another pastry?”
A part of me wanted to laugh at that, for it was such a naked attempt at temptation. He could not truly think I did not know how to play this game; I was not a virgin or novice to either sex or magic. Insome ways it felt like we were building a spell together, the focus, the attention, the tension that rose with the hum of the bees. I pressed my lips tight and dared not answer. Easing my breath out my nose, I disciplined myself again to stay motionless. He would see.
He only waited, another moment. “Are you ready? You may answer me.”
“Yes, my lord,” I answered, making sure not to flinch, not to tense, not to do anything but breathe.
The crop snapped across the flesh of my arse, sharp and shocking. I managed to keep the hiss of pleasure from its bite behind my teeth. He dragged the tip of the crop down the curve to the inside of my thigh.
Then I made a mistake. I couldn’t help myself—not with his stern expression in my mind’s eye, making me weep to be touched—I arched. Just a little. The crop snapped against my skin, smarting.
