Page 55 of Below the Shadow of the City

“What, that the beast is obsessed with the princess? I’ve heard that one before.”

He kneels on the ground before the washing machine. My legs swing against the metal door, back and forth like a pendulum. On his knees he’s eye level with my hips, and I see that familiar wild look in his eyes.

Slowly, like he’s drinking in the sight of me, his thumb drags up my bare calf.

“So soft,” he coos, inspecting my legs like I’ve accidentally stumbled into his cave in the woods. “So fucking beautiful.”

The cheap shitty polyester that makes up my dress crinkles as he pushes it up my thighs, layers of crinoline poof around my hips as we both try to get them out of the way. His hands glide along my thighs, and he slides my underwear down my legs. I murmur a thanks that he opted to not shred them off of me in this moment.

“Perfect, perfect,” he repeats, like he doesn’t have anything else to say. “And wet for me already.” His head disappears below the yellow skirt, and he wraps my legs around his shoulders. He whispers things against my thigh, things I can’t hear but I know are pleading compliments.

When I’m with him there’s this insatiable need, it’s entirely inexplicable. He insists over and over again that magic has nothing to do with it, I disagree. How else can this feeling be put into words?

His tongue finds my slit, and grazes across the surface. I am twitching at this point, not even caring about the fact that I’m in a basement, on top of a washing machine that works only half the time. He blows a breath against me, the air curls up and around my folds and settles into my core. It coolly trickles in, and sends a shiver up my spine.

“M-more M-Maddox,” I eke out in a desperate whine, “p-p-please.”

He takes that as an invitation to completely overwhelm my cunt with his mouth. His tongue works itself around my clit and he suckles at it with an admirable enthusiasm. I bite at my lip to keep my moans from escaping, he’s bringing me right up to the edge.

His finger tracks in, and he moves his mouth. He lets his claw graze between my folds, towing a line between danger and delight. He then hooks it, pushing his knuckle into me, allowing it to stretch me out.

Maddox seems to relish in giving me pleasure, like it’s the sole purpose he’s been designed to serve.

His pupils grow so large his eyes are nearly black, hardly visible over the layers of fabric.

I push myself deeper into his muzzle, absorbing his heat, seeking his tongue. He readjusts himself, a firm hand on each of my thighs while his tongue works in concentrated circles around my clit.

I’m reaching, aching, pulling towards him⁠—

“God, I love you, Sigrid,” he moans against my hip. I quickly pull back, my mouth drops open. The words escaping his mouth seem to have stunned him as much as they’ve stunned me. I don’t think he meant to say it, not now. But clearly they were bubbling and bursting to come out.

And how did I react? I jerked away from him.

The worst part? Those words have been punching at me to escape, too. Because despite my best efforts to fight what’s happening, I am genuinely falling in love with him.

I’m too scared to admit it, even if he told me literally seconds before that he feels the same. If I utter those words and make it real that means there’s something tangible that can be ripped away from me. He stares at me, and I know the shock hasn’t faded from my face.

“Do you not feel the same…?” He quietly asks, there’s a familiar sadness tugging at his voice, he sounds like he did the first night I met him in person. He looks like he knows I’m terrified of him.

“I don’t know—” I start. He scoffs indignantly, effectively cutting my excuses short. He stands up and backs away from me, wounded by my words. Or lack of them.

“What do you know then, Sigrid?”

“Do we have to keep having these conversations?” My gaze tracks to the floor, I study the cracks and speckles in the linoleum tile. His eyes burn into the top of my head, I can’t return the eye contact.

“Yes, we do. Because if you don’t feel the same I can stop myself from falling in love with you more than I already have.”

I steel myself, nearly rattled by his confession shared so off-handedly. Like he’s as sure of falling in love with me as he is about something simple like a coffee order. I hate that it pulls at me like an invisible string.

“You can’t throw around love so casually like that,” because I think I’m jealous that this is so easy for him.

I sense his frustration. I’ve continually given him reasons to leave in a huff and he just…doesn’t. “Why not? Why am I not allowed to be so sure about this? Why do you keep calling our relationship ‘this thing’ instead of what it is? You say I’m the one who’s going to up and leave you one day but you’re the one who won’t even let me get close enough to have someone to leave. The back and forth is destroying me. And I don’t want you to be coy, or casual, or make jokes, or bake me cookies. I want you, Sigrid Larson, to actually believe that we’re something, despite your fears, despite this so-called curse you think you’re under.”

His hackles are raised, literally, I see the fur raise beneath the pressed cotton of his shirt. We’re in defensive opposing positions. I’m figuratively reaching for the gun in my holster.

Being in love with the idea of someone is vastly different than being in love with them. And in a strange way, I think I’m in love with Maddox himself, it’s the idea of being in love with anyone that is the problem.

I’d always been the first to say “I love you” in past relationships. Younger me had a naive certainty that the feelings bubbling in my gut were true and needed to be shared as soon as possible. He’s blown past any stop sign, he’s been gleefully and openly smitten with me.