Page 231 of Carousel

I take his hand and hold onto it tighter than I ever have before.

CHAPTER 43

The Magic of the Unmagical

Cosmer and I do sleep together when we’re back in our cabin. But it’s how I wanted it this time. Slower. Meaningful.

Being intimate felt rushed, or even somehow shameful, before.

But I’ve seen so many versions of him, and he’s seen so many versions of me. Shame doesn’t even factor into my thinking anymore.

And right now, we have nowhere we need to be.

And no one to be but ourselves.

So, we take our time. Undress each other tenderly, like it’s part of the intimacy. Explore each other. He eases me onto the bed, grasping my legs, my hips. I reach up for him, following the muscles of his arms with my fingers – then touch his chest, his stomach. He’s hard all over. I don’t even mind the way his hipbones and collarbone rise out of his skin like things buried. They remind me what he went through for me.

I pull him closer, surrounding myself in his warmth and scent while he kisses me in places he’s never kissed me. He moves down my body, every brush of his lips making me tingle. He stops at the place between my legs and starts working at my bud with his tongue.

I’m gasping. I didn’t know it was possible to pleasure someone with your mouth.

It’s like I don’t know what to do with myself. My legs go from being upright to flexing right out, tangled in the bedsheet. My hips are bucking up to him. At first, my hands are in his hair, and I’m almost protecting myself. But then he’s going faster, deeper, yet still deliberate – so deliberate, with everything he’s doing – and I let go of him and reach behind me to grasp the bedframe. My feet point themselves. I feel like an arrow. Go so tight all I can do is lie there and force myself to breathe when I’m not moaning for him. I want to get over the edge – I’m desperate to – but I want him to get there too.

I shift under him. My hands go back to his hair. I can see him, through the dark, looking up.

And I want to try something.

Gently, I move him so he’s up and over me again. Then I guide him by the shoulders down and around me, onto the bed.

He’s understood what I want to do. He helps me get on top of him, and I straddle him, keeping my thighs strong. He guides himself into me. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that, the way he fills me up. The instant pleasure of it. I move my hips, and he moves his, holding me steady with one hand and rubbing my sensitive area in time with our movements. I grip his chest, aroused just by how he feels under me. The way I get to enjoy all of him from this angle. Know exactly the moment he goes from breaths, to pants. Relaxed, to clenched – a pressure only I’m allowed to release for him.

And it’s a stupid thing to be thinking about right now, but I’m thinking it. I love you.

I’m shifting again. Kneeling now, I bend right over him. I use my whole body to rub against his, so he doesn’t even need to touch my spot anymore. I kiss him. Taste myself.

Then I’m over the edge. I hardly move. Just let the sensation course through me, my lips on his. I feel utterly spent by the time it’s done with me.

Another thrust and he joins me with a noise from his mouth I already can’t wait to make him make again. Then he’s rolling me onto my side and embracing me.

It’s funny. It occurs to me, as I’m falling asleep in his arms, that – unlike the sex we had on the beach – this time, I felt absolutely no light surrounding me, or power pouring out of me, at all.

Yet it was magical all the same.

CHAPTER 44

The Unsolicited Proposal

In my sleep that night, I take control of the world of my dreams. I’ve seen it dark and smoking. I’ve seen it torn by wind. I haven’t seen it, yet, truly reflect who I am.

And now is the time. Because for some reason – maybe because I’m so content – it’s nothing but a white, welcoming light. The same light that finds me when I use my magic.

I’ve never seen this light properly, only felt its presence, or caught glimpses of it in my periphery. But now I know what it looks like, any remaining fear I had of my power fades in its glow. Because it’s bright, not blaring. Whole, not fragmented. Open and wide and full of possibility, like a canvas. I can do so much with it.

I start by imagining the beach by Vikemy Village. I try to remember the way the rough plains of sand strewn with shells, seaweed and stones slope outwards and down toward the sea. The outcrops of washed-out, craggy rocks. The dark cliffs behind me. The light sea in front of me. Gradually, what begins as an idea, a memory, becomes reality. The shoreline is there, exactly as I remember it. The sand is not nearly as golden and fine as that on the desert island, nor is the sea as blue. But the scene is still beautiful, in its own rugged way.

I focus on what I want to inhabit my world next. With a movement of my fingers, I bring back the crane flies. But I also will into existence the other insects I’d loved from the Palace. Bumblebees, butterflies, moths. I look up at the sky, wishing I could see swans swooping overhead, the way they did in the dome, and then there they are. One flies right by my waist. The beating of its wings sending my old dress fluttering around me. Then I fill the water with the fish I used to catch, sea bass and black mullet and saltfins. Then I cover the sand in the little crabs from the desert island.

I admire my work. It’s all of the many different parts of me.