Page 95 of Her Creation

When her height dipped and rose again, he realized she had gone onto her toes. Even as he bent toward her, she strained higher, breath catching. In one smooth motion, he lifted her from the floor and she melted into him, her hands locking behind his neck, her legs winding around his waist, the red silk of her dress spilling downward like a falling curtain.

Her hands moved over him without hesitation, urgent at his throat and chest as they kissed. Whatever restraint he had left shattered. He carried her to the wall beside the parlor and settled her against it, holding her there with deliberate pressure until her breath faltered. His fingers traced the back of her neck, then slid into her hair, cradling her head as their mouths met again, deeper this time, slower and consuming.

When she finally pulled back, her lips were flushed, swollen, her eyes heavy with something unguarded and bright. She looked at him as though he were the answer to a question she had been asking her entire life. Her hands rose to his face again as she studied him, reverent and wondering. Then she kissed him once more, lingering at his cheek before her mouth traveled to his neck.

A rough breath tore from Innominatus as his eyes closed. He braced one arm against the wall to steady himself while her lips traced his skin, hungry and tender all at once. Then she kissed the scar at his throat, the one that had always unsettled her, the final cut her father had made.

Her body went rigid and cold.

She tore herself from him, scrambling out of his arms as though burned. “I cannot do this,” she gasped, her eyes wide and unfocused.

“My love,” he said quietly, reaching for her.

“Do not call me that!” she screamed frantically. “This was a mistake. You were a mistake,” she cried out as her body shook. “What spell do you hold over me? No matter how hard I try to do the right things, I cannot seem to stop myself. In my efforts to resist my love for you, I will no doubt grow to hate you, I already do. I hate what you make me feel.”

Innominatus felt his expression harden. He understood fear, but the violence of her rejection after such closeness split something open inside him—the relentless rhythm of her pulling him near and casting him away ignited—then turned into something sharper. Darker.

“The way you punish yourself and me alike. You treat me as though I am a thing you may lock away and summon when it suits you. I have endured enough. I am tired of my leash being yanked about.”

“Go to the basement where you belong.” Her eyes glistened with the harsh command.

He turned away, disbelief flooding him, then swung back toward her, taller now, looming. When he spoke again, his voice carried an edge that she had never heard. “No.”

“Inno, I command you to go to the basement!” Her whole body shook with the desperate cry.

He stepped toward her. “I have done everything you asked. Everything. I stayed in that rotting cellar, listening for your footsteps, when I could have left and been free. I went hungry for days without complaint when I could have left and taken what I needed, all to prove my obedience. I was nothing until you appeared before me. Do not cast me back into the emptiness you dragged me from. I am yours, entirely, and now you deny what is natural, what is inevitable, because of someone that is not even here to stop you.”

Victoria crossed her arms, her jaw set as silent tears slid down her cheeks.

“The cruelest part,” he said softly, disbelief threading his words, “is that you do not deny the feeling. You deny its right to exist.”

Her eyelashes trembled. “You are not human. I cannot go against the world and love you as one. You are a creation and nothing more.”

He stared at her as though struck. “You made me capable of wanting. Of feeling. And now you recoil from the thing you created. Am I meant to live beneath you forever, surrounded by centipedes and stone, aching for a love that exists only one floor above me, all so you may feel absolved? What about me? What about what I want? Do those things mean nothing because of the scars on my skin? I may not look like you, but I still deserve love.”

“Inno, please.” She rushed to the laboratory door and wrenched it open.

He had done everything right and still he was being condemned.

Something inside Innominatus finally gave way. Weeks of isolation, of obedience, of living on the echo of her presence collapsed inward. His gaze darkened, and whatever had once been patient within him slipped quietly out of reach.

“Say it. Say you want me.”

Victoria’s eyes tightened shut for a moment before they refocused on Inno. She did not deny it. “I do.” Then she added, “That’s why you have to go.”

“And if I refuse?” His voice dropped, rough with something newly dangerous. “I’m not your father. You can’t stuff me in a closet to hide from what happened.” He stepped closer. “If you desired true obedience,” he continued quietly, “you should not have given me a soul.” His gaze burned into hers. “Tell me how you will control me then, when the only thing I want is the love you deny.”

“Enough!” she cried, her voice cracking with panic. “It is wrong. You are nothing but a—” The word died in her throat. She turned toward the window, staring into the dark glass as if it might save her from finishing the thought.

Pain bloomed in his chest, slow and spreading, like rot through timber. “Go on, say it,” he urged, his voice lower now, stripped of restraint.

“You are a monster.”

His eyes closed. His head bowed, as though the word itself carried weight enough to bend him. “I did not ask to be resurrected. You pulled me from death. You gave me breath, thought, and feeling.” His eyes opened, dark and shining. “And now you deny me companionship. You deny me love. The only thing in this world that separates a man from a true monster.”

Pain carved his features as he leaned in and whispered, “You believe I am a monster.” He swallowed. The sound was thick, ruined. “I will show you what a monster I can be.”

Their eyes locked for one terrible heartbeat, then he turned and descended the stairs.