Page 31 of These Eternal Bones

Negligent Lies it seems to operate on its own timeline.

Day and night blend while we hide away under silk sheets.

Even now, as he frets, lost to his thoughts, his tendrils smooth assuredly up and down my legs, peaking and snaking ever higher to my core.

My spoon clangs loudly against my bowl as one of them prods my ever-aching clit, a gasp nearly choking me on my soup.

My attention snaps back to the man, only to find he’s no longer pacing, his attention held on me.

It’s the odd animalistic tilt to his head and the predatory way his eyes track every puff of breath.

“Elric–” My words cut off abruptly as the tendril finds my slickened core, slipping inside as a flush burns my cheeks.

My knees knock together with a thud, attempting to keep it out.

Despite that being mostly for show, I want him there, badly.

The need for this man is never-ending, like a fever you can’t sweat out.

My embarrassment only adds to the throbbing at my center as two more tendrils join the fray, prying my legs apart under my heavy skirts.

His lips pull up into one of those damming smirks, showing just a hint of his sharpened canines.

My body reacts in kind, the thrum of my pulse thudding lower and lower as I feel his tendril expand inside me.

The pressure that builds there is immediate and overwhelming, pleasure and pain building into one entity as my core stretches to accommodate it.

An entirely unladylike squeak leaves my throat as Tien blips into the room, my hands slap down to my skirts, attempting to wrench it from me, but it doesn’t budge.

My lower half is well hidden, but that does nothing for my heavy-lidded eyes and growing flush.

I am stuffed so full that my stomach is tight with it.

“Another townsperson brought you correspondence. It was the older shop owner, and she requested an audience–”

“No.”

Tien nods while my heart pounds in my chest, my mind only half able to focus on their conversation. “Yes, I thought as much and sent her back down the hill with Cartiel, much to his displeasure.”

“Set it on my desk, please.”

Please.

It seems Elric has found his manners inside my –

The damnable man twists his tendril inside me, making me slap my palm down on the table loudly, disrupting some of the fine crystal on the top.

The different decanters of spice and sauce spill over, but I cannot seem to release the tablecloth to right them, my eyes instead on the man now lounging casually on a deep forest green settee.

“Miss Molly, are you quite alright?” Tien asks, taking a step forward, only to be stopped by a flat wall of tendril.

“The mistress of the house is fine. I must warn you against approaching her if you wish to keep your head atop your shoulders.”

I’m not sure what’s worse, that Elric has again suddenly lost his manners, or the sudden look of understanding in the old Chimeras’ eyes before he blips from the room.

“Elric…” I grit out. I don’t bother finishing whatever it was I planned to say because he’s twisting it again, swirling it inside me…achingly slow.

“Yes, my love?”

I open my mouth, but no words come, only a very lewd sound which earns me another tendril snaking around my mouth like a binding.

“It would be unfortunate for the soul who happened to overhear you make a sound like that.”

A muffled whimper leaves me, my hands fisting the lace tablecloth as I finally lean back, giving up my resistance on the tendrils keeping my thighs parted.

“I know you cannot help it, my sweet little human. My mate,” he speaks the words like a caress as I close my eyes, canting my head back sharply. There’s no surprise when it meets his stomach, his chilled hands smoothing their way across my heated flesh.

His palm takes the place of his tendril over my mouth as he muffles my answering moans, keeping me so full I can feel him deeper than I thought possible.

He twists the tendril inside me with another stroking my clit as my body spams and tightens.

“Hush now, Molly, we cannot have you making a mess in the solarium.”

It’s his lips I feel next, peppering soft, sweet kisses on the bite marks that line my neck.

My body hums in response, singing a song only he can hear until I’m slammed into a crescendo erupting with such force that it's only he who keeps me seated. The sounds of my muted pleasure fill the bright room, my eyes squeezing shut as he keeps teasing, forcing me to ride out each wave of pleasure as it drags on for an eternity. Before I can fully open my eyes, his lips replace his hands, giving me a kiss every bit as consuming as the pleasure. I’m lost to it, the world around forgotten, questions, worries, and concerns nonexistent while he shares in my breath.

It’s then he gathers me in his arms, cradling me instead of keeping me perched on his arm as normal, sensing my body is no better than butter at the moment.

My eyes are sleepy as he blurs from the room, heading toward the upper floors.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what was troubling you earlier,” I murmur against his chest, soaking in the smell of him.

“Troubled, syringa? How could I ever be that with you in my arms?”

As always, when Elric is preoccupied with not being troubled by anything, I find my way to the library.

Not hard, considering it's connected via a door to his office and about as far as I’m allowed away from him at any given moment.

I do my best to listen in on the hushed voices coming from his office, to the way Tein seems to be…

reassuring hi m, easy to imagine the mild-mannered man as the voice of reason.

It’s when a savage sounding growl fills the room that I quietly close my book, not one I can read fluently, but I’m getting the hang of it.

There’s an unrest in the house, where the halls were once littered with creatures of all colors, shapes, and sizes.

They are now desolate and hushed. Those who remain apart from Cartiel, Péal, and Tien keep to the shadows and the basement cellars.

Where the house was full of wonder and warmth, it's colder…like the air itself is balanced on a knife’s edge.

I can’t help but feel it has everything to do with me.

The arguing from the next room only increases, my eyes connect with turbulent pools of obsidian as Elric appears in front of the door, offering me a watery smile at best. “One moment, my love.”

Then he shuts it.

He shuts the door.

I have no right to be upset about that. It’s his privacy, after all.

Me warming his bed, I assume, changes nothing of our agreement.

I am a placeholder, albeit one I believe he loves as much as he loved all the rest. The women who came before me, the ones whose pictures I find him mumbling to more often than not.

He avoids the loving gazes of the paintings as we pass in the hall, yet pleads for their forgiveness after he’s long lulled me to sleep.

For the life of me, I cannot help the tinge of jealousy that comes with it.

He loves them still, an immortal man haunted, and I am destined to join the ghosts.

Suddenly, the library offers none of the comfort it did moments before.

The books in all their dusty pages slink in on me, and I’m up and out of the door before I think better of it.

A shadowy being blips across the hall, its wings fluttering with anxiety as I pass.

“I’m not so terrible, you know.” I snap at the small being, only making it scurry faster, nearly plummeting as it drives over the railing and down the middle of the stairs .

My slippered feet drag on the stairs as they change, and the narrow, winding halls I once thought I would be lost within pass with familiarity I have no explanation for as I run my fingers over the ornate, dark wallpaper lining the aged walls.

If the bones of a home could speak, one could spend a lifetime listening to the stories this one would weave.

When I reach our- Elric’s floor, I bypass the lavish bedroom we now share.

I refuse to avoid the stares of the women in the hall, glaring at them while pitying them all the same.

My sour mood gives way to curiosity when I near a tapestry toward the back of the hall, tucked in a corner as if it’s meant to be out of sight.

My fingers drift over the tasseled ends, making it sway; the design itself is a series of swirls and flares.

White inlaid with gold seems so at odds with the dark and–

My lips part as I push it aside, revealing a thick wooden door hidden behind it.

My heart ratchets up in my chest as I shift on my feet.

The hall’s chill is no more than a whisper against my pebbled flesh as I glance behind me.

Not taking but a hairsbreadth to decide to go in, my pulse a heavy, rapid thrum as my hands meet the golden handle. It twists.

Surely, if I am meant to stay out, it would be locked, yes?

At least that’s what I tell myself. My way of easing the needle of guilt that worms into my gut at the thought of invading his privacy. Elric has been nothing but adoring and attentive. He’s given me more than I’ve ever had before. I have no right.

My hand stills on the door seconds before a ragged gasp leaves my throat.

Bands of dark crimson pull me gently away from the nob.

The tapestry swinging back into place as I’m met with a cold, broad chest. “I told you not to leave my side.” His lips graze my neck, the growl vibrating the flesh there, making it heat despite his cold.

“What’s in there?” I ask, my eyes still on the space as his tendrils lift me, handing me off to him as I’m sat in my proper place on his arm .

“Storage and dust, perhaps a rat or two.” He offers flippantly, my mind blanks as he walks us back down the hall because his fingers are dusting down my inner arm, tickling it in a way that makes my eyes want to roll back in their sockets.

That devilish smirk tilts his lips as he lets his sharpened canines graze my inner wrist, and my body hums to life.

I don’t object as he enters his bedroom, his gaze trained on me.

“I have neglected you today. Forgive me.”

My only answer is a smile as he lays me back on his bed, the soft sheets pooling around me like a cloud as he crawls up my body, placing kisses along the bodice of my dress.

Savoring each touch as if he’s attempting to memorize a priceless artifact.

I don’t utter a word because he does not require them of me.

Pleasure bursts through my limbs as his bite finds its way back to my neck.

My thighs are shaking and soaked by the time he takes the last drag of my blood.

When he pulls back, his pale lips are smeared with it, my hand shakes as I lift it to his mouth, wiping it from him with the same love and adoration he shows me.

His tendrils lift me so that his deft fingers can work at the laces of my corset, his eyes glued to me, watching and noting everything.

Seeing so much, but my sweet, maddened immortal man misunderstands as I cant my head back, giving myself up to his ministrations.

There is much in this life I do not know, much that I have been sheltered from.

That being said, there are other things I know too well.

The way I know the back of my hand, or how to drag air into my lungs.

One thing I will never forget is the way a lie feels when it sours the space around you, when it’s spoken with such confidence you almost feel silly for having doubted in the first place. I know lies.

And Elric just lied to me. Perhaps for the very first time.