“Do what?”
“I don’t know how you make me feel like a starving supplicant. How you’ve made everything that is notyoutaste like ash. I’m certain nothing truly good existed before you.” His warm fingers met the middle of me with a soft, devastatingly slow caress.
I gasped. Let my head fall back. “Magic, I suppose.”
His warm laugh made my heart flutter, but a breath later the gentle moment turned torrid. He gripped my knee and pressed it wide as he pushed two fingers inside me. He rose up onto his knees and tugged me toward him across the tiles.
“Gods.” I tried to move against him, but I only slipped over the tile.
He gave me nothing else, even as I sought it. He used only his strong fingers, dragging them in and out, curling them inside me.Not enough.Despite my frustration, a long breathy moan escaped me. “Gods damn you.”
“What’s wrong, Immy?” He didn’t relent, filling me fuller, going deeper.
“You… know…”
He hummed his approval as a ripple of pleasure made my body tighten. “I do.” He pressed his other hand against my belly, and I let out a cry. “You have to do something for me first, darling.”
I was close to snapping, close to screaming. “What?”
He moved faster. “Since the bond you share with Eusia won’t let you perform a spell against her, you’re going to teach it to me.”
I gave an angry gasp, even as my body began to arch with the shattering pleasure he pulled from me. “I—” I had to grip the edge of the pool as the overwhelming sensation crested. I moaned, whimpered, until finally, the blistering tide began to ebb, and I was reduced to a heap of loose muscles and speeding breaths. “I’m… I’mnotteaching you a spell.”
Theodore smiled smugly above me, his thumbs stroking the inside of my knees. “Oh, I think you will.”
I pushed myself up to my elbows, still gasping. “I would never let you do something so dangerous. And you despise magic. You’d be compromising your morals—”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, I’m the picture of morality, aren’t I?” He settled himself between my legs, glowering down at me. “You think I’m far better than I am, Imogen. Stop it.”
I shook my head. “Spells are painful, Theodore. I won’t watch you suffer like that. I can’t.”
With a jerk, he towed me closer to him, until his hard length was pressed to the center of me. His voice was dangerous, his gaze grievous. “And yet you’ll let me watch you suffer and expect me to bear it.” He nudged me with a thrust of his hips. “Cruel.”
I couldn’t breathe between the feel of him against my pulsing body and my arrant outrage at what he was suggesting. When I managed to find my voice, it was embarrassingly weak. “We haven’t found Eusia. We may never.”
“We’ll find her,” he said firmly.
“And we don’t even know if youcanperform a spell. Not everyone—”
“And we never will unless you teach me.”
I let out an aggravated snarl, my legs squeezing around his hips. “Theo, Iwon’t.”
He gripped the hair at the back of my head. “You will.” This was the indomitable king. The commanding voice, the steely gaze. But his touch was so gentle, so desperate. “You will because you and I are both reaching the end of our tethers. It’s killing me—to have you in my palm but unable to grab ahold. And I don’t know how much longer you’ll beyou.I can’t…” He swallowed hard. “Watching magic slowly steal you from me is a pain I cannot and will not shoulder.” He leaned closer, lips close. “So instead of walking into hell alone, you will take me with you.”
Sickness swirled through my stomach at the thought, but with my hands resting on his hard chest, I focused on the thud of his heart. I focused on the undeserved fortune I’d found in being cared for this way.
His nose brushed mine. “Say yes,” he said, “and I’ll kiss you.”
I pushed against him. Furious. Terrified. Guilt started to creep in as my pulse began to slow. The thought of missing Agatha, and now the prospect of watching magic eat away at Theodore, would be more than I could take.
I opened my mouth to answer, when a terrifying wail echoed through the hall beyond the locked grotto door. It bounced around the tile in a horrific reverberation that made both of us jolt. Water splashed as we made for our discarded clothes, struggling to pull them over our still-wet skin, when the cry started anew. The terror I saw in Theodore’s gaze only redoubled my own. It was an inhuman sound, somehow unearthly and entirely too real.
Clothing half fastened, we raced from the grotto and stumbled into the pitch-black hallway. We raced toward the hidden door, where the wailing was louder, but still, I couldn’t place it. It sounded muffled and yet it rang through the center hall, up to the ceiling and back down.
I looked to Theodore.
“This way.” I ran toward the eastern stairway across from us. There was no visible outline of a door on the curved wall beneath, but I pushed regardless, right where the hidden entrance to the grotto had been on the opposite stairs. It gave just as easily as the other one had. The cry stopped as we ducked inside. I smelled mildew and decay. The stench of rotting, wet plants. It reminded me of the thick brown mist that had poured from Rohana’s ritual bowl. Theodore recoiled.
