Willing (20 page)

She whispered into his ear. “Alisdair! Not yet!”

“I’m trying.”

He closed his eyes and stilled his movement. Constance moved swiftly, pushing him over to his side before he could steady against her. Then she quickly shifted on the altar, moving to straddle over him. He obliged her, anxiously, grabbing hold of her hips and pulling her to him with relish. “God yes.”

Constance centered herself over him, reaching down to take his cock in her hand and guide him inside again. She breathed deep, sighing as she lowered herself down, pressing her whole weight over him as she pressed her palms against his broad chest. He kneaded her thighs and hips, pulling at her to coax her movement. Alisdair’s head fell back as he groaned, his eyes shut.

“Look at me, Alisdair.”

He swallowed, breathing heavy through parted lips. He did as she asked. “I see you. God, I see you.”

“Don’t look away. Be here with me.”

“I am.”

She slid over him, feeling him move inside her, his hips driving up into her as he tried to urge her on. Yet, she kept her rhythm slower, trying desperately to draw it out. She glanced to her right, to the figures standing by the ballroom doors – Gregory and Thomas still standing at attention. No one had moved toward the altar. She glanced toward the figures standing in the circle, some watching them behind masks, others fixated on the flames of their candles, chanting away in reverie. Constance winced at her thoughts, the knowledge of what was soon to come tearing her from this moment with him.

She was no warrior, she couldn’t protect this creature from so many, but if she could give herself to him, open herself there in his arms, perhaps she could help him to protect himself. Constance looked down at his beautiful face and her heart hurt. She wasn’t open to him, not wholly. If those tomes filled with nonsense meant anything at all, she could hold nothing back from this man now.

Constance took Alisdair’s hands and pressed them above his head, letting her breasts hang just over his face. He strained to meet them with his mouth, drawing an involuntary sigh.  She lowered herself to him, letting her hair fall at the sides of her face, blocking out the room. Let Alisdair be all I see, she thought. Get lost in him.

He groaned, pulling her so close she could smell the sweetness of his breath, and his eyes softened. “Constance.”

She pressed her chest to his, clutching him like moss on a tree. She could feel his heart pounding beneath her, a rumbling echo of her own heartbeat, their rhythms matched. She felt their heartbeats resonating with one another, and her chest tightened. Constance whimpered suddenly, wishing she could absorb him, but no amount of strength could pull him close enough. He pressed his lips to her ear. “Oh God, Constance. I love you.”

She cracked open, her heart pouring out as tears streamed down her face. She pressed herself to his chest, helpless to this sudden wave of love and grief, of need and desperation. Alisdair seemed to feel her weaken, wrapping his arms tight around her as he began to buck beneath her. He held her so tight, her arms were pinned between them and she was helpless to his movements. He pushed upward, pressing his lips to her ear, repeating those words over and over again.

The first wave hit her with such force, she could barely breath. Then the second came, and she shuddered over him, exhaling one ragged, helpless wail before holding her breath. Alisdair whimpered, his breaths coming in sharp grunts as he moved, then he jerked beneath her, shuddering with her in his arms. She melted over him and he melted beneath her, the two of them shuddering. Her orgasm crested and fell back, but she continued to shake over him, her whole body succumbing to soul rendering sobs.

Figures were moving, chanting ever still. She startled upright, looking down at Alisdair and grieving with such force that she let out a cry.

“No! You can’t do this!”

Alisdair’s expression changed, reaching for her anew as though to protect her from this sudden, unknown harm.

Another figure moved in her peripheral, and a hand took hold of her hair, yanking her off of Alisdair and down onto the ballroom floor. Figures moved all around her, their robes flitting about them as she was held on her knees. She watched Alisdair try to rise from the altar, his flushed skin bared to them, and saw as five men took hold of him, pinning him back down onto the altar.

“Stop it! Please, leave him alone!”

“Ah, I see the whore has grown fond of you, Ali.”

Alisdair struggled against the many hands that restrained him, but for each moment of struggle, another set of hands appeared, pressing him back down.

Alisdair roared at his captors, pulling a hand free just long enough to blast a fist into the jaw of one of the masked men. The man crumpled out of view, clutching his face. “Roman, get your fucking hands off me! Thomas!”

Constance turned toward the ballroom doors to find Thomas on his knees, pinned there by Gregory. Gregory’s face was alight with that gleeful madness. He was watching with rapt attention, enjoying it.

Why hadn’t it worked? If only they’d gotten it right, he could make them stop, make them suffer. Constance tugged at the hand that held her by the hair, reaching up to find the fingers long and lithe - a woman’s hand. The figure that took position at the head of the altar leaned down to Alisdair’s face, kissing him on the forehead. He felt familiar, but this was not Roman or any of the men that once touched her, his moustache waxed to perfect points.

“Now you’ll see what real magic looks like.”

With that, he turned from the altar, moving past Constance as he went to the nearby table. A moment later, the familiar glint of the athame passed just inches in front of her face as the man walked back to the altar. She cried out at the sight of it, bellowing with all her might, as though the force of her screams might be enough to stop this deed.

The circle began their chant anew, Alisdair cussing a storm from the altar, the veins in his neck protruding with the effort of his battle.

“Please, stop!” She cried again, but their voices were rising in volume, drowning even Alisdair from hearing. The chant grew louder, familiar rhythms of words she’d come to know well. They surged in the throats of each member of the circle, and she knew when this line of chant was done, Alisdair would be, too. The man stood at the head of the altar, his arms outstretched, dagger pointed toward each of the walls in turn. Then he turned its direction, pointing the blade downward as he brought his hands up for the final blow. She cried out, tears burning her eyes, and jerked her head away. She couldn’t watch this.

The force of her movements pulled her hair from the woman’s grip just so, and she yanked Constance’s hair upward, her robes shifted around her with the force of the violence. Constance clutched the woman’s hand, but forgot the pain instantly as the table came into view behind the woman. Constance took hold of the woman, and without thought, sank her teeth into the woman’s thigh. Her captor screamed, slapping at Constance’s face, stinging her cheeks. The chants stuttered just so, the circle confused by the sudden violence. Despite the sting of a raging slap to Constance’s face, the woman had loosed her hold on Constance’s hair just enough for her to pull away, reach for the table, and wrap her fingers around the base of the chalice. She snatched it before the room could respond, put it to her lips, and took two deep swallows before the searing agony stopped her.

The world went white, shrieking and grinding in her ears like madness. Her insides were afire, burning so hot that she knew her skin would bubble. This was not the subtle buzzing of bees just behind her eyes, this was chaos – blinding, agonizing chaos, churning through her veins like poison. The familiar rhythm of chant had ceased, replaced by a long, constant wail, like thunder and violence – it was her. She and it seemed a thousand other voices were screaming.

There was movement, every where – inside her eyes, and in the shadows of what had been the ballroom. She couldn’t see anymore, nor hear, but she had a sense of the figures around her. Suddenly, the pain began to subside, leaving a strange pulsing rhythm that ran from her chest every inch of her, burning under her skin.

The blinding noise in her brain subsided, slowly, leaving a constantly hushed sound, like waves of voices coming into a calm shore. Constance opened her eyes. She was curled into a ball on the marble floor, too hot to feel the cool of the stones, and the figures that stood around the altar were fighting with Alisdair, the naked man clearly putting up more of a fight than any of them had expected. Alisdair kicked one of the figures at the foot of the altar in the face, then scrambled over the side, back fisting another of the masked men as his feet hit the floor. He didn’t run, but instead dropped to his knees before her, touching her.

“Constance? Ah!”

He jerked his hand away from her skin as though she’d stung him. Before she could speak, a figure wrapped their arm around Alisdair’s throat, yanking him away from her, dragging him across the tiles, his naked feet scrambling for purchase. Constance recognized the crazed face at Alisdair’s shoulder, and she rose to her knees with a strange calm. When her words came, her voice was as unfamiliar as the surface of the moon.

“Enough.”

The room shook with a deafening crack. Every window in the room shattered, sending tiny shards of glass scattering across the floor as the room filled with cool air. The robed figures startled as they had before, but no one ran. No one would run. She wouldn’t let them.

Constance rose to her feet, watching Gregory’s face as he met her gaze with an unwavering sneer. The cold air from outside had quickly filled the room. She could see Alisdair’s skin prickle, but she could not feel it herself. She burned from the inside out.

The masked figure still brandished the athame, watching her from the altar. “What have you done, bitch?”

“What does it fucking matter? Let’s finish this!”

The voice growled from nearby and they all turned to find Gregory with a knife pressed squarely into Alisdair’s throat, just as he’d held it to Octavia’s. Alisdair was clutching Gregory’s arm, trying to hold it at bay, but the man was much shorter than Alisdair, and his balance was thrown by the small man’s embrace. Gregory met her gaze, daring her to move. Constance took a deep breath, willing her voice steady and letting her chest puff out. “Release your Master.”

Gregory snorted, taking the knife from Alisdair’s throat and pointing it at her. “He ain’t my fookin Master. Ain’t nobody my fookin Master!”

Before he could return the knife to Alisdair’s raw throat, Constance took a deep breath.

“You do now.”

With that, she swung her hand out, her wrist moving in his direction, her fingers splaying as she did. She was not close enough to hit him, or to take the knife from his hands, but Gregory moved nonetheless. It felt as the bedroom door had – as the dozens of little things she’d tested this strange energy on the month before, but Gregory was not an open bedroom door, Gregory was a man of flesh and bone. And yet, Gregory flew across the breadth of the room as though he’d been made of paper, his shoulders and head slamming into a nearby column with a sickening thud.

The masked figures cried out around her, moving away en masse as they huddled together. Alisdair stared at her agape, a strange amalgam of shock and perhaps wonder on his face.

What had she done? She watched Alisdair put his hand to his throat, touching the small slice that Gregory’s blade left there. It was surface. It would heal with ease. Alisdair looked at his bloody fingertips, and swallowed. Then he stared at her, his eyes wide, his brows high, as though appraising her and finding her priceless.

A soft chittering sound began between the masked figures, a female voice whispering in agitation to her partner. Constance turned toward the circle, anger rising in her chest as though she prepared for battle. Who spoke? Which among them was to blame; at the helm of this chaos? How many had known what they intended to do to her beloved Alisdair; to her? She glanced from face to face, as they all stood, silent, and the rhythmic hum that remained constant in her ears began to take form – the sound of whispering voices.

Then she met their eyes and the whispers became hollering, panicked cries. Pleading voices praying that she let them live; that she grant them clemency for their crimes. And the voices changed as she moved from face to face, each figure’s mind betraying their thoughts to her with just a look. They were terrified, they were repentant, and they were all guilty.

The sound was near intolerable. She closed her eyes.

When she spoke, it was barely a whisper. “Stop.”

The room and her mind fell as silent as an empty church, save for the gentle hum of a breeze through the windows overhead. She took three slow breaths, filtering through the sudden wealth of knowledge she held. She knew their secrets, each and every one of them; knew the details of their lives that could tear their worlds, their fortunes apart. She closed her eyes, feeling Alisdair draw closer.

“Roman Fairmont. Archibald Fairmont. Robert Fitzsimmons.”

A woman in the crowd yelped, reaching for the masked man beside her. Constance glanced at the woman; the blonde with a dark splotch on her robe where Constance’s teeth left her thigh bloody. Constance met the woman’s gaze, her eyes crystal clear to her now, despite the mask.

“Jane Fitzsimmons.”

The woman gasped, as did the man beside her. Constance turned her eyes to him, tilting her head. He’d already betrayed himself. She knew everything of this man, and couldn’t begin to understand how.