Page 43 of Light Locked #1

She felt trapped between two intentions, no longer able to explain herself.

“I’m trying to save you,” she replied with a stifled breath.

The blade of his other hand traced over her collarbone and then her neck.

She sucked in a breath and flattened her back against the column behind her.

He’d only mimicked a version of her gesture, but she reacted as if it were his touch that caused pain.

A curious, tense feeling followed the path of his hand as one thumb lined the column of her throat almost as if he would choke her before his fingers moved to her face.

“But who’s going to save you?” he asked, his eyes full of a pushing and pulling tide, yanking her forward and shoving her back as he whispered threats but kept his tone gentle.

She closed her eyes, his proximity unbearable. Another sharp flash of the medallion’s presence touched her senses.

Focused, she locked her eyes on his as she reached her left hand across his body and fished the medallion from between two belts across his side. He refused to release her eyes as she gathered the chain in her hand and clutched it against her stomach.

He offered no objection or resistance. She thought for the briefest moment he might take it back, but in exchange, he took something else. The fingers that were cinched through her corset, released her, and wound around her waist. He guided her into his body by her lower back and kissed her.

His lips pressed against hers and she forgot to breathe, her thoughts scattered by the rush of feelings that coiled and fought one another in the pit of her stomach.

Fears she understood and attractions she did not bloomed in competition, entangled in a web of awe at how a kiss could cause it all to feel so urgent and irrelevant at once.

He turned her hand up against the marble column, flattening their palms together and coiling his fingers into hers.

Clea knew the power of hands to heal and to break, but now it was as if everywhere their skin connected was some binding and unavoidable truth of things they shared beneath all their stark differences.

He breathed her in, his entire body drawing her close like an expression of his lungs as his hand pushed firmly against hers.

As if to exhale, he eased away for a moment.

His hand slid down her wrist and arm, his eyes searching her scattered soul as she witnessed the stirrings of hunger in the depths of his gaze.

She watched his eyes wander to her neck, his hand lifting to trace the black lines now exposed from paint rubbed clean from her skin.

She expected disgust or revulsion, holding her breath as he followed the lines questioningly with his fingertips.

She waited for his eyes to find hers again, to exchange silent messages, confirm his distaste.

Instead, he tightened his hold on her and embraced the skin with a hungry kiss.

She clutched his shirt as she felt his teeth against her neck, gasping as his fingers curled forcefully into her hair and freed it in his hands.

Every gesture broke her open, protest dwindling to an involuntary, pleading whimper.

Embarrassed by her own weakness, she wanted to disappear, but he found her mouth as if to drink the sound, and kissed her like he savored it.

The rest of the golden pins clattered against the stone as her hair cascaded over her shoulders in waves.

In his arms she felt pain without suffering, a strange and foreign sensation that sent her mind reeling before he drew away again.

His hand left her hair in a lingering way before tracing her cheek.

His thumb rested gently against her bottom lip, privy to every breath she tried to recover.

Awash in dizzying feelings, she felt like one more kiss would make her disappear.

He tilted his head as if tempted to kiss her again gently, but paused as he searched her eyes.

His own gaze burned with an unfamiliar life she’d never seen in him before.

Her hand slid down his chest, some part of her warning that she should push him away, create some space between them, but instead it returned back to his face with a question she didn’t know how to ask.

He followed her hand in his own again, smiling into it as if he could see the answer and keep it all to himself as he playfully bit the inside of her wrist and swept her up. The first motion preceded the second so suddenly that she was completely off guard in his arms.

Hitting him seemed like such a strange and abrupt change, that she found herself unable to discern her next move as he sat her back on the altar.

He braced his hands on either side of it, Clea tempted to hop off as he commanded, “lay down. ”

She stared at him, perplexed and bewildered, swallowing as she watched him with wide, curious eyes.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“No,” she said breathily, and he laughed.

“Good,” he responded, his smile surprisingly warm, “but right now you should. In fact, there is never a time, and may never be another time where you should trust me more than right now.”

She searched his eyes, and he let her, patiently.

He’d already given her the medallion, and willingly. If he really wanted to hurt her, what was to stop him now? And that kiss. After that dizzying kiss, she was hardly sure what to feel or think.

She swallowed nervously and laid back with one hand hovering over the dagger nestled in her corset. She wondered if she had the strength to draw that dagger.

Ryson had claimed that there was no cost too great for him to maintain his freedom. He refused to be controlled.

What did it mean that she was lying on a literal altar, with a knife in her hand, and not the resolve to wield it?

She reminded herself of everything she’d suffered to get the medallion this far. Her hand tensed over the blade, but wielding it against him felt like wielding it against herself and she couldn’t shake free of that feeling.

She watched him as his hand moved to her collarbone, a chill running through her as his fingertips touched the dark lines that crawled around the base of her neck.

His expression changed, all savagery and playfulness gone and replaced with the engrossed fascination of a skilled artist, examining another’s work.

She tried to piece together his intentions as the burning silver of his gaze cut over her skin in precise examination.

She quickly lost the mind for speculation as his fingers followed all the darkness engraved into her chest, tracing it like lines in a book.

She flushed and forced herself to look away from him, eyes focusing in on the opposite wall.

No one had ever touched the marks before.

Even her mother had refused. Everyone had been afraid, so deeply afraid.

Veilin often took great pride in the resilience of their skin.

Its glow was considered sacred, and hers had become little more than a symbol of living decay, hidden even from the revered sight of the sun.

His touch roused an overwhelming tide of emotion, and she tried to stifle it with a comment, fighting back a glaze of tears as they surfaced. The only thing more humiliating right now would be to cry.

“You have me on an altar,” she pointed out, trying to sound offended and hoping it might further suss out his intentions. Was he trying to determine the origin of her illness? Understand it? And why?

“I said the only purpose of purity was sacrifice,” he replied back with an amused lilt in his voice.

No answers. Just a jest, a jest in which she found her own ill-humored joke .

“You say that as you trace all of the evidence of impurity,” she said without inflection, remarking the disease he so closely examined and abruptly holding her breath as his finger trailed along the line of the corset and stopped.

“Art,” he breathed, almost to himself. She looked over at him in surprise as he scanned her over thoughtfully.

“I need to see the worst of it,” he said, eyes flickering to hers and she sat up on her elbows and swallowed.

Shaking her head slowly, she said, “I can’t.”

“Do you want to know what this is?” he asked.

There was a curious intensity in his eyes, but she didn’t sense any intentions beyond the one he so frankly offered.

He clearly wanted to know what it was. Ryson had always been very knowledgeable.

She’d never connected the pieces that his vast knowledge had been the result of a passionately curious intellect.

She paused and they continued to watch each other.

“I can’t,” she said again, but this time she referenced the clothes themselves, her hand tugging at the edge of the corset she’d tried to cut loose.

His eyebrow rose as he noticed the cut she tried to make in the clothing.

She watched him reach over, pull his fingers through the tear she’d made and then rip the corset open with a jolt.

She gasped as she caught herself against his shoulder with the force, sucking in a full breath as the corset freed her lungs and cast a wave of beads clattering over the stone floor .

Even as she laid back again, she couldn’t let go of his arm, terrified as the bare skin of her stomach already felt exposed under the silk shirt. Her free hand still covered her stomach, Clea looking away from him as she swallowed again.

He didn’t touch her. When she looked up at him, he was still watching her patiently.

She looked away again and removed her hand, jolting as she felt his fingers along her abdomen. Alliances no longer mattered, she clutched onto his arm as if her life depended on it, shutting her eyes tightly. She felt him grab her free hand, turning his own beneath it.

“Take it,” he said, and she settled her hand over his as he explored the dark lines that stretched along her stomach.

Keeping her hand trained over his soothed her, as if she were the one guiding his fingers along the paths of her skin.

Her grip loosened on his other arm, her breath steadying until she was no longer sure that she wasn’t the one in complete control, urging his fingers along dark patterns that had once felt untouchable.

Lines of warmth soon traced his touch until she knew the shape of her illness not by the heat of her embarrassment, but by an incomplete sensation that sought his fingers again.

By the time he flattened his palm over her abdomen, she was convinced that she’d willed it, welcoming the fullness of his touch under her own.

She didn’t realize she was holding it there until he leaned back, the movement causing him to adjust his placement under her hand.

As if sensing how she now held him close, he smiled.

“Radiant skin, marbled by darkness,” he said, now the admiration and awe was clear. Under his breath and with pure appreciation, he whispered the word, “beautiful” to her.

The word washed over her, and it didn’t matter if he was light or dark, if he admired her in the same way he might admire a battlefield, or suffering.

An emptiness inside her stirred. The wave of emotion was too strong now, and even with her eyes closed, they bloomed with grief and she turned her face away and kept them closed, hiding the embarrassment of her tears.

Clea tried to restrain her breath, hoping he wouldn’t acknowledge her pain and leave her be.

Instead, the arm she’d clutched so tightly lifted as his hand moved along her chin. He turned her face toward him as he leaned over her and said, “Your illness has made you a rarity, the kind that doesn’t survive, but a rarity nonetheless. That is the good news.”

She swallowed, searching his face, completely still now as she watched the fire in his eyes, felt the warmth in his touch grow.

A prickling sensation swam through her body, electrifying a once deep and pervasive numbness with an energy that was not her own.

The energy seemed to capture every inch of her illness, following it through her muscles, organs, and bones.

“The bad news,” he added, and leaned forward as he braced his hand under her head, whispering into her ear, “is that this is going to hurt tremendously.”

He yanked his hand back from her abdomen.

She gasped in a silent scream as an icy, painful lightning broke through her body and her muscles seized and then collapsed inside her. He caught her back against the altar so that she didn’t hit her head, and she struggled to breath, the world dizzying around her.

Her head spun and she waited to die, knowing in that moment, he’d killed her.