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Quoth nodded, his obsidian hair falling over my shoulder as he held me tighter.
“When I started to write the book, it all came flooding back, you know? The sheerjoyof creating, of taking my ideas and making something that other people could enjoy. I think…I think this is what I’m meant to do with my life. Books have always been important to me. They were a place I could escape to when the world got tough, and I think I’m meant to write stories like that for other people. I want to create worlds for people like me, for people who were feeling a little lost, to be a place to escape for a while and come back feeling confident and empowered and like magic could be real.”
“Magic is real, especially the magic you wield, Mina.” Quoth kissed my fingers. “And I’m not just talking about the waters of Meles. I think you’ve found the thing you’re meant to do with your life. Your story is beautiful, and when people read it they will find hope in dark places, the same way you gave me hope in my darkness.”
“Aw, Quoth.” I squeezed him back. “I can’t take credit for any of that.Youare the one who savedme.”
“Remember when I hid all my artwork up in my room? Heathcliff and Morrie said it was too morbid and that no one else would ever like it. I thought that was true. I didn’t think I had a place in the world. But then you dragged my painting downstairs and put it on display, and Jo brought it. Areal personbrought it. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy as in that moment.”
Tears flooded my eyes again, but this time they were tears of joy. Quoth’s artwork was deeply personal – a way for him to escape into himself and avoid the outside world – a world where he didn’t always fit. I pushed him to share his art with the world because I knew that you don’t have to be a shapeshifting raven from a gothic poem to feel like you don’t belong.
To know that I did the right thing…
That meant everything.
“That’s how I felt when I got my acceptance letter for the Meddleworth retreat,” I sniffed. “That maybe I had found my place in the world. But it turns out that it was a lie. I’m here because I tick a box for the organizers, not because I’m good.”
“Youaregood, and I’m not just saying that because I love you. I say that because you make me feel less alone. If you can make anyone who reads your work feel like that, then that’s what matters. Not what idiots like Hugh Briston say. If you want this badly enough, Mina, you’ll find a way. You always do.”
Quoth cupped my cheeks and brought my face to his, claiming my lips. Quoth’s kiss was tender, searching, making sure that this was what I needed.
And it definitely, definitely was.
We rolled over on the bed. I pulled him on top of me. He leaned on his elbows as he kissed me, his fingers softly stroking my hair and my cheek.
When I could see well enough to distinguish emotions from people’s eyes, I always remembered how Quoth looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe I was real, like he was the luckiest man on earth every time I was near him. I couldn’t help being addicted to the thrill of being worshipped. What girl wouldn’t be?
Nowadays I couldn’t make out the details of his fire-ringed dark eyes beyond a very blurry pinprick of light when the lighting was just right. But I didn’t need to see his eyes to know what he was thinking. I felt his worship in the way he moved with me, the brush of his fingers, the way his mouth wandered over my body, dancing warmth into all the dark and hidden places inside me, the shadows between bones.
I held up my arms, and Quoth slid off my vintage slip. He moaned as his hand cupped my breast, and he bent his head. His hair fanned out across my skin, and my lungs caught when his tongue brushed the curve of my breast. His eyes lifted to mine as he took my nipple in his mouth, and those little flames inside his irises burned with all the reverence he saved up for me.
I bet the other writers aren’t enjoying their afternoons this much.
Well, maybe Christina…
I arched my back, rising up to meet him, to beg him for more. He murmured my name as he crawled down the bed, his long artist’s fingers tugging my slacks down over my knees. Our mouths collided again as his fingers slid up the inside of my thigh. I moved my legs wider as he hooked a finger into my cotton panties and slid them down my legs, too.
He sat up and wrangled my panties over my feet, tossing them into the mess of clothing in the corner. His mouth twisted into his beautiful smile as he looked down at me. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Inside and out.”
The lump in my throat grew and bubbled with heat. I wanted to say something, but Quoth tightened his grip on my hips and bent down between my legs. My breath stuttered as the heat of his tongue melted against me.
He groaned as he devoured me, like a man lost in the desert who’d stumbled into a Wetherspoons. I rolled my hips into the pressure of his tongue, and Quoth groaned. His fingers danced across my stomach and splayed out, holding me down as he did amazing things with his tongue that undid all the knots I’d tied up inside me.
My hands tangled in his hair, feeling the way the satiny strands fell through me like water, too beautiful to be real. A line from Poe ran through my head as Quoth’s tongue worked its dark magic.
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream…
Quoth was my dream within a dream – a being of such fragile magic that the simple act of touching him might make him turn to dust in my arms. His hair rippled across my stomach, and I swear that his tongue was made of fairy dust, the way it made me…
