Jeremiah Quick (26 page)

If he was crazy, Pretty was okay with it,
because she wasn't lying, not even to herself, about loving him.
The fact that he couldn't love her back drove one more big slow
tear out of her, that landed on her lip. She caught it with her
tongue and fed it to him herself.

It didn't make everything a lie, did it, the
fact that he couldn’t love her?

How many times had that been true, a dozen?
More?

Only once it wasn't, and for a long
stretched moment she wanted to be at home, with every nerve ending
and every hair follicle. Home.

She almost said it out loud, but instead
said, "I want to fix you, Jeremiah, but I
can't
."

For some reason this made him laugh, which
softened his eyes and made him look incredibly sad, incredibly
lonely.

She didn't want him to feel lonely when she
was right fucking
here
. That hurt her as much as
anything.

"I know you can't, Sunshine Girl." There was
something in his face she couldn't read, something that, for one
brief flicker, was dead and terrifying.

She had suffered at his hands. He'd spanked
her, caned her, starved her, raped her, mocked her. He filled her
heart, and then smashed it to jagged little pieces.

He'd filled her skin with lines and symbols,
controlled her body and all its systems.

He'd eaten her tears, licked at her eyes,
poked his tongue into her tear ducts.

None of it was as terrible as that one brief
flicker of nothing.

Whatever was going to happen was worse than
what had already happened. Much worse.

She promised herself grace. She would love
him even unto her death, even as his hands choked her, if that was
his intent. She vowed it.

"This is magick," he said. "My magick." He
arranged her on the bed, propped almost upright with too many
pillows at her back. He straddled her, his cock hard and obscenely
lewd against the pristine white panties, and cradled her face in
his hands.

He was so thin she could count every rib.
Bones beneath skin, and so white and lean and strong it took her
breath away.

This was a moment of such profound
importance, his hands on her face, his eyes staring into hers, but
not just her eyes – her soul, herself, into every part of her. And
he said, "You need to be
you
. Not anything else for anybody
– just
you
." And then he whispered, "I'm sorry. So
sorry."

And while she was turning that apology over
in her head, trying to figure out if he was sorry for the past or
the future, he reared upright, his hips pressing hard, holding her
down, and he reached to the nightstand and scooped up something
that he held hidden in his fist.

There was a noise, a click, and then a
singing swoosh, and Pretty blinked, trying to comprehend the bright
blade.

It glowed in the night of his room, sharp
edge and glinting steel, and understanding caught in her throat.
The apology. He would kill her now.

"Jeremiah, no," she pleaded, thinking of her
family, of all she had left to do. She had yet to learn how to be
herself – he couldn't take it away from her now, could he?
Eradicate her before she even started, was that what he wanted?

"Trust me, Pretty," he said, and thrust the
knife into his inner forearm, nearer to wrist than elbow. Clear
through.

Pretty stared at it in absolute horror, the
knife handle on one side of his arm, the tip of the blade showing
through the other. There was a spot of blood where the knife tip
had nicked his thigh. She stared at it, wondering why there wasn't
more blood. She turned her head the tiniest bit to see his face,
just in time to see him grimace. Now she couldn't even name his
expression, some sort of satisfied glee, some sort of
expectation.

And then he held his arm above her and
pulled the knife blade free. Blood splattered across her white
shirt, so hot and unexpected that she flinched. Each drip spread
like magic marker on wet paper. It was very bright, and decorative,
and reminded her of snowflakes. Except not.

It landed on her chest, her stomach, soaking
into the whites, this red spreading gore.

He traced the blade oh, so delicately along
her cheek and, although she felt a sting and the ooze of blood, it
hardly hurt at all. He lifted the blade to his mouth, licked it,
and smiled.

She had no idea how she managed not to pass
out.

She did, however, make a squeaking sound,
tiny and choked, and hoped the sound came out in a loving and
accepting way.

He dug into the wound with two fingers, then
painted her lips with his fingertips. And after that, he forced his
fingers past her lips and past her teeth, deep into her throat.

She gagged, and didn't know if it was
because of his fingers or the blood. Did it matter?

She was crying again, and he ate what she
imagined were red tears.

"I told you, start hating me now," he said,
and that made her cry harder, and her headshake in the negative
made him miss a tear or three.

"You can't love me for this part." He said,
exasperated. "You'll fuck up my magick."

She almost laughed. The darling delusional
dear.

"But I do. And you can't stop me. And that's
my
magick," she said back. It was the truth.

She couldn’t fix him, but neither could he
make her into everything he'd thought he could.

She'd always believed he was the person who
had the most notable impact on her life, but that wasn't true at
all.

She was Light and he was Dark. Neither of
them would ever manage to change each other all that much. And yet
they had an undeniable compatibility that didn't have to make
sense. It just was a thing that
was
. An existence. A
connection. She would never hate him.

Chapter 28

P
retty wanted to
explain about connection, about love, but words failed. Jeremiah's
eyes glittered and his face descended. His lips pried open her
mouth, his hand rising to rest the flat of the blade against her
jaw. His tongue found hers for a brief tangle before he pulled
away. She watched with horror as he tongued the wound, then loomed
close to kiss her again.

She whimpered and tried to recoil, but he
was having none of it, and almost seemed careless of the knife as
he wound his right hand, blade and all, into her hair to hold her
head in place.

His blood tasted like blood. Not more or
less horrifying than her own, not empirical and wonderful, not like
a drug – just copper salt red wet.

"Poor Pretty," he murmured against her lips.
"I'm getting you all dirty."

The front of her shirt sported pinkish
streaks and red blotches, warm in some places and cooling in
others, clammy against her skin.

His pale chest was streaked and smeared and
he looked as if he'd just murdered someone. Her, she supposed. He
looked like he'd murdered her. A sticky red smear colored his
chin.

He pressed his arm against her mouth. She
knew what he wanted, and tentatively, delicately, touched the tip
of her tongue to the wound. Here, at the source, he tasted like she
expected Jeremiah Quick should taste. Like himself.

It was right, even if Pretty was conditioned
to fear and loathe it. Warm red, wet to damp, not so much different
than tears.

She closed her eyes and imagined tears.

Taste of old pennies.

Blood covered Jeremiah's hands, Pretty's
mouth, coated her tongue. But it wasn't until he started petting
Pretty's hair that she cringed away, picturing strands and locks in
matted tangles.

She shuddered beneath him, opened her eyes,
and what she saw in his – or didn't see, to be honest – made her
rigid with fear.

He was gone. His eyes were empty of
everything she associated with Jeremiah Quick, blank holes seeing
nothing, or looking so deep inside himself there was nothing
outside of himself to see.

His lips were moving, but soundless, and
when she turned her head to put her ear closer to his lips, in the
hope of capturing words, she heard nothing and felt only the tiny
puffs of his breath.

Puff. Puff.

Or maybe
Pretty, Pretty
.

Pretty wriggled and pulled one arm free, and
tapped the side of his face with her open palm. "Jeremiah. What's
wrong?"

He didn't answer, but reared up, releasing
her hair, knife still in his hand, and slowly, deliberately, cut a
line across his abdomen, just beneath his naval.

It wasn't deep, like… the edges didn't flap
or flay, just… thick red welled to the surface.

The air around his head filled with sparking
lights – and Pretty wanted to think she was making this up, faery
magick – except she wasn't. She saw it. She felt it, her hand,
tracing through the magick like a child might trail fingers through
a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

Enchanted.

He dropped his upper body on top of her,
letting his weight fall, going limp, as if utterly relaxed or
utterly exhausted. He was slight and weighed almost nothing,
practically a guarantee that she was the heavier of them, which for
some inexplicable reason embarrassed her.

She tugged at his left arm, frenzied, making
it bleed more and more, and she could feel it leaking through the
fabric of her shirt, leaving trails of gore like botched surgical
trace.

He seemed to recover, and in a surge of
energy propped himself up on his hands, leaving her momentarily
bereft, missing the weight of him, and he called her "Pretty" as he
rolled her to her stomach, tugging and turning, shifting the
pillows at the same time so they were under her hips. Before she
even thought to struggle she was pinned again, and he was bleeding
on her back, and scrabbling at her sweet white ceremonial cotton
panties until he caught the waistband and yanked them down so they
hobbled her just above her knees.

The knife was still in his hand, the flat of
the blade against her cheek. She was nervous of it there, but it
was just a resting place, not a threat.

He used his thighs, his knees, to push her
legs apart, virginal panties making that popcorn cracking sound of
fabric about to tear. The flat blade metal pressed harder against
her cheekbone, unmoving, no give. Hard enough she would have a
bruise.

How could she ever translate this time with
Jeremiah Quick into a simple explanation? She would not call him a
madman, or an abuser, or even an enemy.

He was none of those.

No.

Because the real story, the truth – he was
her lover now, in every sense.

A dark and twisted lover, yes.

The blade left her cheek, drawing away from
her field of vision, and her heart sped up, and her mouth went dry,
wondering if he would tear her open.

From the corner of her eye she saw a flash
of it again, no longer glinting, just dripping red. She tensed and
flinched, and heard a hiss of sucked in breath, and warm drips
spattered the small of her back. She could imagine his blood there,
bright and red on her pale flesh. He held her down with the flat of
one hand, though she didn't fight him, and he squirmed a little bit
downward, repositioning himself.

A finger trace along her spine – all the
way, all the way down…

Swirled through the warmth, drawing patterns
of fluid ever lower, down, lower, lower, coaxing it between her
buttocks… and pressing bloody fingers into her anus, one thrust
timed with her breath, curving, thrusting, using his own blood as
lubricant.

Oh. My. God.

She arched away, still on her stomach, and
made some little noise, thrusting her hips tighter against the bed,
trying to escape. There was no escape. He shushed her, petting her
hair.

She flung her head up and looked at him over
her shoulder. His red fingers plunged in and out of her, and it was
so… carnal… so obscene, that she started to shake.

Depraved. And yet… something else too,
again, like he knew her, the whole of her, because he breathed into
her ear, "So Pretty, but such a dirty girl that loves the Dark,"
and something in her cunt she hadn't noticed was tense released its
clench.

Flood of hot wet want, her hips thrusting
back against him, her fingers finding his other hand in her hair,
entwining and clutching, holding it, howling into the pillow and
snapping her head up to fit in the hollowed curve of his neck. She
felt a hot slash across all four fingers of her right hand – she'd
forgotten he held the knife – and then she turned her head and
noticed the shade was up and the window open, and yes, a storm was
just starting or just tapering off, and the thunder and lightning
felt exactly right.

He pulled his hand away from her grip, and
curled both around her hips, lifting them, his legs urging her
knees beneath her, and, when she accomplished both these things,
the flat of one hand pressed hard against her back, urging her
shoulders down, her face buried into the pillow.

Too much. Too exposed, and she hated it, ass
lifted into the air for his eyes, his hands. She must have made
some sort of sound of protest, for he said, "Hush. You're all
right," although Pretty didn't know if he meant okay, physically,
or in the sense that he cared for her, at least a little.

He pressed his hips against the obscene
portrait of her, and she could feel him, hot and hard.

More wet warm slippery for a few seconds,
then slightly gritty and dragging, and this time his fingers going
in further, and she moaned in capitulation to this ugly and strange
pleasure.

"More," he said. "Again." And she let him
coax the sounds out of her, unsure what he wanted, and unable to
think it through, unable to give him anything more than mindless
noise as his fingers slid in deeper, then out, and in again.

When she was nothing but an endless whimper,
Jeremiah said, "All you have to do is relax and push against me,
and it will open you, and it will hurt less. You know how.
Try."