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Each lashing projection of his waist blunts her vision, his crown chasing that tight spot that throws her mind into chaos. Her cunt douses Malice to the balls, his cock racing, charging until she’s convulsing, coming hard while armed to the teeth for battle.

***

It’s official. They shall never be sated. She and Malice don’t make love, but they do everything short of it, the pleasure astonishing Wonder. On a regular basis, they wear each other out, only to start again.

Her friends would be appalled. But her heart is another matter, rioting inside her chest because she loves what they’re doing, and she dreads what they’re doing.

We’re making a deal.

Yet with Malice, words are never about what they seem. And with Wonder, thoughts are never stable or stagnant.

So it’s not a deal. It’s a chemical reaction. It’s elemental, as penetrating as rain, as intense as firelight, and as deep as water. This connection has burgeoned without warning, yet it’s been brewing for ages, taking centuries to manifest.

It’s give and give, take and take. That’s how she and Malice have always worked, leaping from one extreme to the next.

Malice gets comfortable reflecting on his former life. Wonder gets comfortable recounting incidents from her upbringing.

When he shares a secret, she shares one back. When she confides a favorite book or flower, he reciprocates. When Malice accepts a confession from Wonder, she accepts a confession from him.

Notwithstanding his mercurial side, this reborn outcast lives in the moment, acts boldly without being foolish, and never assumes he’s wiser than anyone else.

He licks his lips after chewing on berries, doesn’t make excuses for his behavior, and never engages in self-pity.

He’s a mosaic, a portrait made of chipped pieces, distorted up close but striking as a whole, once the viewer steps back and gives him space.

And from the way he absorbs every word she says, Malice sees Wonder just as intensely, deeply, thoroughly. Beyond what she could have expected, this god understands her, knows her, hears her in a way no one ever has.

***

While showering in a glass dome overlooking the eventide constellations, he makes her come against the spray of water. While sleeping, he grips her tightly, warding off the nightmares while keeping her safe. While dining, they talk about a multitude of subjects, from small to existential.

Intimacy becomes second nature, with them sharing the same bed, the same bathing pool, the same meals. Feasting in the dormitory tower’s common room, Malice leans over a coffee table fronting the six-foot-tall fireplace and feeds Wonder cherries.

“Nom, nom, nom,” he murmurs, licking the juice from her lips while she giggles.

And when that’s not sufficient, he feeds on her cunt, splaying Wonder across the low table.

His hair tickles her gaping thighs, and his avid tongue flexes into her drenched crease, and Wonder is gone.

Her legs loops over his shoulders and slump across his back.

The instant he growls and sucks on her clit, tugging with force, her head flings back, her mouth uncontrollable.

She plots revenge the next day. Sneaking beneath a row of research tables, Wonder haunches on all fours.

Lamps paint Malice in murky light as he reclines in an upholstered seat and scans a journal, the visual somewhere between a disheveled deity and a satanic intellectual.

Yet the page-turning ceases once she grabs ahold of his waistband and unbuckles the flaps.

A thud echoes overhead. He drops the book, the hardback hitting wood with a boom, followed by a speechless hiss as his cock and sac spring from the vent.

The ruddy cap, the slender veins, and the delineation across the crown whets her tongue.

The long straight bridge lifts hard and high, a pearl of translucent liquid rises from his slit, and his balls hang heavily.

Damn him. Wonder’s mouth dries. Bowing her head, the edge of her tongue flicks out, mopping the bead of cum.

Malice’s sharp intake grates into something feral the instant she finds purchase. Her tongue flattens against the cleft in his cock, licking with pressure, sweeping from one end to the other.

“Fuck,” Malice groans, his body tensing.

Wonder’s pussy throbs at the captivated sound. Whimpering against his crown, she spears his knees apart, displaying this cock, owning it. Riding her palms up his thighs, she grips his ass and pins him down.

Then her tongue goes to work, circling the roof, teasing his frenulum before draping down to the sac. Another savage noise rips from his lungs. His cock inflates, broadening in girth, which gives her more to taste.

Swabbing him up and down, Wonder listens as every lick chips him to pieces. He crushes her hair, clings to her scalp, his cap darkening in hue. And when she opens her mouth, seals around him, and sucks deeply, Malice unleashes a drastic growl.

“Christ, Wildflower,” he rasps. “Oh, fuck.”

Eager to make him surrender, make him bellow, Wonder bobs her head.

Her lips strap hard, towing up and down from the head to the base, wetting him.

Palming his ass, she pumps his waist, and he matches the motions.

His ass siphons toward her mouth, every snatch of his hips punching his cock deeper across her tongue.

Stars, he tastes evil. Amazed, she encourages him with each lap, each mouthful of pressure around his taut erection. Malice juts his waist, his muscles laboring, his groans ragged.

Wonder moans around his skin, flapping her tongue over his tip, one of her hands shifting to cup his sac and squeeze.

Malice snaps off the chair, grunts shearing from his mouth.

Quicker. Deeper. As she devours his full length, he seizes up and roars, his cock pulsing, hot streams drenching her tongue.

Wonder keens, drinking him, drugging herself. She sucks to the last drop, knowing she’ll pay dearly and deeply for this.

***

“Nowhere to run.” His inflection tolls through the library. “Nowhere to hide.”

Malice sings like a god on the prowl, as he’s done twice before. The first time, it had cut Wonder’s soul to the quick. The second time, the chase had kindled a flame. Tonight, the effect imbues her pores with nervous excitement rather than agony.

They hunt one another through the forbidden section, lanterns dripping with starlight, the muted luminescence adding to the thrill.

Wonder tucks herself behind shelves, creeps through aisles, and evades the sounds of pursuit.

He quests in search of his prey, and she outsmarts the demon, knowing the optimal places to hide or mislead him.

Eerie silence pumps blood through her veins. The carpet muffles Wonder’s footfalls, her senses torn between fright and elation.

At one point, the lanterns throw a lambent strand across the books, much like a trail.

Wonder pauses and contemplates the effect, recalling the settee where they’d slept and mated after that first time against the shelves.

Malice had casually mentioned a basic slant of light while she tried to decipher the pages of a book.

The notion had stuck with her for some reason.

Twice in Wonder’s life, she has witnessed a glowing path drift through a repository.

Once, in The Celestial City. The other, in their shared past.

She takes several steps backward, only to bump into a solid surface with a beating heart. Her exhalations stall. Shit.

The predator doesn’t speak, barely breathes. Instead, he digs his talons into her hips, capturing her. Because he often has plenty to say, the uncharacteristic quiet lances her with a stroke of delicious terror, palpitations knocking in her chest.

He’s got her now.