Nightwise by R. S. Belcher Page B

in my arousal, my desire. Our mouths, hungry, insistent, clumsy in need, opened, fell onto each other, upon each other. She moaned under the crush of my lips, my tongue.
    She pushed me against the wall next to my door. Her nails were raking down my back, her legs wrapping around my waist. Her tongue, teasing, flicking my own. It was my turn to moan.
    â€œYou going to get in trouble for this?” she said, gasping as our mouths separated for a moment.
    â€œTrouble is my business,” I said, with apoligies to Raymond Chandler, and pulled her by her hair back to my mouth.
    We crashed into her room, the only light spilling in from the hallway. There was a vanity with a cracked oval mirror, a dumpster treasure, a dresser from the same back alley store, and a proper bed with tarnished brass head- and footboards. There were dark candles everywhere, on every milk cart pedestal and bookcase, on top of the dresser and the vanity, and there was a brass stand that held a large white candle near the window.
    As one clumsy, thrashing organism, we stumbled to the bed and fell onto it laughing and moaning. Clothes were flying everywhere. I sat up and put my hand to her pale, perfect throat. She gasped, then relaxed against my hand. I kissed her bare shoulder and then kissed my way up to the tender junction where shoulder met neck. I moved her head backward slightly with pressure to her throat.
    â€œYou want this?” I said. “You need this?”
    â€œYes,” Magdalena hissed. “I need to be outside my head. I need to feel out of control, to be under control. I want it.”
    I tightened my grip on her throat and sank my teeth into her alabaster shoulder. She gasped and her head flew back. Her body shuddered as pain and pleasure burned through her nerves.
    My hand slid from throat to her breast, clawing at the corset. My mouth was at her ear again. I chewed on her lobe for a moment. She gasped again; her hands were clawing at my chest, pulling at my sweater, tearing it. Her hands were running through my hair, tugging on it.
    â€œMine,” I growled into her ear. “Mine, tonight.”
    Her lips found my cheek and then chin as she covered me in sweet wet kisses.
    â€œYours,” she said, her voice muffled against my neck. “Yours, tonight.”
    Magdalena fell back on the bed, her hands sliding under my sweater and T-shirt, teasing, raking my nipples with her nails. Sensation surged through me. Still crouched on the bed over her, I turned my gaze to the harsh light of the open door.
    â€œPropinquus quod obfirmo!” I said, and stabbed at the door with my finger. The door slammed shut, and the lock turned with a click. I made a sweeping gesture with the same hand all about the suddenly dark room, and said, “Candela exuro perspicuus!”
    All the candles in the room flared to life as one. Magdalena’s eyes were huge, full of honeyed darkness in the flickering candlelight.
    â€œPower,” I said as I pulled my shirts over my head and tossed them into the darkness. “Control, will, submission. All of these are the first principles of magic, the currency of the universe. You’ll learn that sometimes you control the power and sometimes it controls you.”
    Magdalena traced the scars and the tattoos across my skin with her nails. “Which is better, control or submission?”
    â€œYes,” I said, and we both laughed. We kissed again. She raked my chest with her nails and I caressed her face, tracing my finger along the pulse in her throat.
    I pointed at the beat-up old boom box she had sitting next to the vanity, surrounded by towers of loose CDs.
    â€œLascivio Al Viridis,” I said.
    â€œLove and Happiness” by Al Green began to play.
    â€œTurn over,” I said.
    â€œYes, sir,” Magdalena murmured. She rolled onto her stomach, like a great sleek cat stretching. I began to unlace the corset, revealing more and more of her porcelain skin and more