Chapter 6

TOGETHER

I was just finished pumping up the air mattress when Magnus stuck his head in the tent.

"Should I…?" He floated the half spoken question and my heart skipped a beat.

"You can come in here," I said, shifting to the side as he kicked off his shoes in the small awning of the tent and crawled in. I turned away from him to pull the bulky sleeping bag from its drawstring bag and spread it out on the mattress. My heart pounded in my chest with so much force I wondered if he could hear it, too.

What was he going to do?

Was he going to just pounce on me?

I licked my lips and turned back to him to see him holding my notebook out to me.

"I was looking for soap to wash the pan in your bag because I forgot to bring some, and I found this," he said. "I also found the soap."

I took it from him and clutched it to my chest.

"Did you look in it?" I asked.

He hesitated, then nodded.

"You didn't have the right to do that." I flushed as I held the notebook tighter against my chest.

"You're a really good artist," he said. "I mean, I knew that when you sent me the picture of Nolan, but now I know how you managed to make him look so much like me."

"What?" I asked, his words tumbling together until they snapped into place in a new understanding. "What did you say?"

"That you're a good artist?" he replied, his eyebrows pulling together.

"You're Nolan?" I put together the pieces that maybe I should have fit together earlier, realizing that the small pull of my online crush and my in real life crush were one and the same.

"Well, yeah," he said.

"You knew that I was Alexandria?" I demanded. "And you didn't say anything?"

"When you told me about that game, Lensmoor, while we were playing Risk, I told you I would make a character," he said.

"You didn't say anything, though," I repeated.

"I started messaging you in the game right away," he said. "I thought you knew it was me."

He had. When Nolan had first come online, he messaged me right after spawning and asked me how to play the game. But I figured he was just some random newbie private messaging me.

Magnus had been Nolan this whole time.

"You asked me to marry you," I blurted out. "You acted like you were going to kiss me."

"Well, yeah," he replied.

"You just said you didn't see me as a woman." I poked him in the chest with my finger. "Why were you trying to marry and kiss your "one of the bros" friends on an online game if you didn't see me that way?"

"I mean, you asked me to go camping with you and offered to share a sleeping bag." His skin kept that strange red hue. "I kind of started thinking of you like a woman then."

"You are absolutely an idiot." I crossed my arms over my notebook and glared at him. "You said you didn't feel the same way about me."

"Lumi, you have pages and pages of drawings of me," Magnus said, his tone gentle as the tension in his face faded, relaxing against the unusual flush of his skin. "You've been creating art using me as a focus for a while. I don't do that. I don't sit there doodling into a notebook thinking about you. I don't feel the same way about you that you feel about me, but that doesn't mean I don't feel anything at all."

"What are you saying?" I asked. "I thought you just wanted sex."

"I definitely do want sex, like, a lot," he said, laughing as the red in his skin deepened. "But I also really like you. I like how nice you are to me. I like talking to you. I like how excited you get in board games club when you're winning and how sneaky you are, like that time you made a secret deal with Gia before the start of the club to take out everyone in Risk, and the two of you ended the game in a handshake, agreeing to share the world. You're funny. You're weird. You're a kind and loving person, and you deserve to be loved and cared for."

His words were hooks into my heart, digging deeper with every breath I took.

How could he say all that to me?

How could he say such nice things about me? How could he notice me and see the pieces of a person I wanted to be all the time, a person I wanted to be when I hid under the back deck of my house waiting for it all to stop.

"But you don't feel the same way?" I breathed the painful question out.

I wanted him to feel the same way. I wanted him to want me, to consume me, to wrap me in his arms and tell me that I was his priority, that there was no one who he could ever love more, that his need for me would fill that gaping void in my heart.

"I will never spend hours drawing pictures of you," he said, nodding. "But you're the kind of person I think I could fall in love with."

He'd known me for years, and he only "thought" he could love me.

Such a simple qualifier, one that was another piece of broken glass on the floor. He'd already said it. It shouldn't have been another small cut to join the myriad others that made up the edges of my jagged need.

He wasn't in love with me.

But it didn't matter.

It wasn't what the books had promised me, but it was enough for a moment, for a man I was going to leave behind anyway when I went to school in a different, magical realm.

It was a taste of love, not the promise of it.

It was the promise of heartbreak.

I needed there to be nothing to come back to. I needed to let him reach into my chest and take my love from me so I could focus on my future, not my past.

Those were all rationalizations. I knew that.

I wanted what I wanted, and his body had to be enough.

It would be enough.

I shifted forward on my knees.

He met me halfway, his arms wrapping around me. We both tilted our heads in the same direction as we moved forward too quickly, and our foreheads smacked together.

"Ow." I put my hand up to my forehead as I sank back, laughing. He put one of his arms around me, shifting forward off his own knees to rest on the side of his thigh as he leaned his body gently against me, the side of his leg touching the side of mine. His hand was around my back, his fingers curving around the side of my hip, and his fingertips brushed against the bottom edge of my shirt.

As my focus went to them, I felt them curl, pulling the shirt up slightly as the tips of his fingers traced the sensitive skin there. I could feel his heart pounding from where my shoulder touched his chest, like a runaway horse trampling everything in its path. He was breathing faster than normal, as well.

I lowered my hand and turned my face towards his.

"Can I touch you?" he asked.

"You can do whatever you want to me," I replied.

He sucked in a harsh breath, his eyes dropping to my lips.

"Anything?" he asked. "Are you sure?"

"Use me however you want," I replied.

A frown line appeared in his forehead and his gaze snapped back up to my eyes.

"I'm not going to use you," he growled.

Then he pushed on my shoulder and I fell back down on the soft mattress. He was kneeling between my legs, looking down at me. His hands were on my pants, his fingers on the zipper, pulling it down. I lifted my hips as he hooked his fingers over the edge of the fabric, his strong hands brushing against the spot on the inside of my hip bones, sending shivers of desire washing over me.

This was happening. This was really happening.

He licked his lips and swallowed, but he didn't pull them down.

"Promise me you'll tell me if you don't like something," he demanded.

His skin was so red, like he was sunburned.

"I'm sure I'll like everything," I mumbled. Oh, I needed him to pull them down. I needed him on top of me, touching me. I needed all of this, right now.

"Promise," he ordered, his words coming from deep in his chest, a commanding baritone.

"I promise I'll tell you if I don't like something," I repeated.

"Promise you'll tell me to stop if you want me to stop," he ordered.

"I promise I'll tell you to stop if I want you to stop," I repeated back.

I didn't know he had this side to him.

It was exciting.

He pulled my trousers and underwear down over my hips and butt, lifting my legs up into the air to pull everything off in one swipe. He tossed the fabric to the side, his fingers going to my inner thighs as he spread my legs out wide, exposing me.

I gasped and dropped my hands to cover myself, embarrassed.

"Move your hands. I want to see. I want to taste," he growled, the last words coming out in a dark rumble.

I slowly drew my hands up, moving them to the sides of my body to grip the sleeping bag underneath me. I watched him, the way his eyes shimmered with something I'd never seen in his face before.

"It's like you're a different person," I murmured.

"I've never felt more like myself," he replied, his gaze never leaving the space between my legs. He trailed his thumb over the soft thicket of hair. He traced the edges of my lower lips. He slid his other hand down the inside of my thigh, the touch of his palm leaving explosions of electricity racing through my body. His other hand joined the first and he parted me open, spreading me so he could see into my hidden places.

I arched my hips up into his touch.

"Magnus," I breathed, and clenched the sleeping bag beneath me in a white knuckle grip. I was too exposed. I could feel the cool air of the approaching night brushing against my inner folds and the heat of his gaze as he stared at me, seeing what no one else had seen.

The sensation of his thumb stroking down the center.

I rocked my hips against his touch, tilting my head back as I closed my eyes. Then his hands weren't holding me open anymore. They were sliding around, under my butt. All of the sudden my hips were up in the air, my shoulders back down on the ground, my shirt sliding up against the bottom of my old ratty bra.

I opened my eyes just in time to look up my body to where he was hooking my knees over his shoulders.

Just in time to see him bury his face in between my legs.

His lips pressed against my lower ones, and he licked me, nuzzling deeper as he used his face to do what his hands had done moments before, spreading me open for his tongue by rubbing his face side to side against my mound.

The sensation utterly overwhelmed me.

His slippery wet tongue stroking and caressing, probing and circling. It was so much, too much. It went on forever and it felt so good that I thought I would break in two, and I couldn't…I couldn't take it. I couldn't take the pleasure.

"It's too much," I gasped out.

He stopped, lifting his glistening face away from me.

"You want me to stop?" he asked, lowering my hips back down so my butt was now resting on his still clothed knees.

"I want you to take off your clothes." I finally made a demand of my own. I put my hands down and hauled my hips backwards off of him, giving him space to strip.

I pulled my own shirt off over my head, quickly removing my bra as well.

I looked back at him to see him staring at my chest, not moving, his skin still that same strange hue of red, but somehow darker. Why was it all over his body? Was he suffering from a heat stroke?

"Magnus," I said.

He blinked and his gaze wrenched back up to my face.

"I'm not…" He looked away from me. "My body isn't…Lumi, you're really hot."

"Take off your clothes, Magnus." I crossed my arms and stared him down. He was just face first between my legs, and now he was being shy?

He pulled off his shirt.

He didn't have the ripped abs I read about in all the books. What he had was a body that was strong, and also had the extra layers that would be quite helpful at absorbing a punch or surviving through a long, harsh winter. I understood why he didn't want to show himself to me. All the images of men I'd seen as the romantic leads of movies and books were all carved adonises with muscles marbleized by a strict diet of bulk and fasting right before the nude shoot.

Then his pants were off.

Magnus looked like a guy who was strong, thick, and capable of rocking my world, judging by the throbbing log that jutted out of the unkempt bush between his legs.

"You're so beautiful," I said.

His face softened as his eyes finally met my gaze again, ice blue against the deepening red of his skin. His smile curled up into his eyes.

"You're beautiful, Lumi," he replied. "You should definitely be naked more often."

I laughed. He laughed.

Then he wrapped a hand around my ankle.

My laughter stopped as the breath rushed into my lungs, the tidal wave of anticipation cresting high over the flat shore of my expectation.

He dragged me towards him, my body falling flat back against the sleeping bag as it slid with me, bunching up towards Magnus. Then he was over me, on top of me, his forearms on either side of me, his face over me, his legs in between mine, his body hovering over me, not pressing me down, but caging me in.

I could feel him, hot and heavy against my inner thigh.

The tip of him poked me, a little to the right and down from where I wanted it, hitting the crease of my leg where it met my buttcheek.

He shifted his weight to one forearm, reaching down with the other one to grab himself. His knuckles brushed against my mound as he placed the tip of his desire against the wet opening of mine.

I held my breath.

There was a nagging feeling that I had forgotten something, but I ignored that tickle of a sensation, focusing entirely on his body brushing against mine.

"Are you sure?" He looked at me with wild eyes.

"Yes," I replied. "I want this. I want you."

There was a press, an invasion, a parting of flesh as he pushed into me. I let out a cry, my knees lifting, my hips angling, as I tried to make sense of this thing I wanted so desperately, but didn't know how to make happen until it was happening right now, with him on top of me, in between my legs, his body covering mine, his skin warm against mine, his rich scent filling my senses.

Then a pinch.

"Ow!" I gasped out.

He stopped.

"Are you okay?" he asked, looking at my face.

"It just…it feels good, but then it didn't," I said.

"We should stop," he said, shifting his weight.

I grabbed onto him with all four limbs, my hands clawing at his back as my legs wrapped around his hips, my feet hooking around him.

"No!" I gasped out. "Don't stop. Just do it fast."

He lowered his face and kissed me.

I kissed him back as he thrust hard.

I let out a garbled cry as my fingers dug into his back. It felt so good, and a little not. It felt like nothing I'd ever experienced before, like there was a rightness to the world, like the endless darkness in my heart could be soothed if I let the light of another penetrate me.

I felt whole and torn apart, loved and used.

"This is so fucking good," he moaned, closing his eyes as he rested his forehead against mine. I could feel his heat inside of me, and I clenched my lower muscles, sending a wave of pleasure rolling through me as he groaned in response.

He pulled back, the raw silk of his skin dragging inside of me.

Then he was driving into me again.

There was nothing else I could think about, nothing else I could experience but heavy breathing, the wet slap of his skin against mine, the way his belly dragged against my clit, causing me to roll upwards on increasing waves of terrible, delicious, unbearable pleasure.

Then one thought intruded: the thing we forgot.

I opened my mouth to say it, but then I couldn't. I didn't want to.

I was so fucked.

His teeth were on my neck, grazing my skin as he growled in my ear.

I clawed his back, trying to pull him closer to me, my heels digging into him, trying to press him deeper.

He was hitting something inside of me, something that echoed pleasure back and forth from inside where he rubbed against me on the outside. Every thrust, every grunt, even the sensation of his balls slapping wildly against my ass as he mounted me was a thrill. He was completely out of control, and this was better than anything I had ever imagined.

Then the waves reached the peak, and I crested over the edge of it, my inner muscles fluttering and convulsing as they massaged him, demanding that he give himself to me with every part of my primal biological desire.

I was lost in the stars.

Utter euphoria.

"I can't…" he gasped out, his movements increasing as he gripped my shoulders, slamming into me with uneven, powerful thrusts, like he could bury himself inside of me.

I rolled with his movements, lost in the sensation of him.

He slowed down, then stopped, still pressed inside me as he shifted his weight to the side and laid his weight down partially on top of me, his face buried in my neck as he breathed hard, his breath warm against my skin.

I ran my fingers up and down his back in gentle strokes.

This was better.

A curling swirl of emotion brushed through me, a wind that swayed the reaching branches of thought in my mind, curling them up and spiraling them all in one direction.

This was better than I had imagined. This was more than what I wanted.

But he didn't love me the way that I loved him.

Listening to his breath as he slowly regained it, feeling his heartbeat through the bare skin that pressed against me, feeling the unexpected twitches of him inside of me, all of those experiences were small, precious moments in time, moments I would cling to as a new world pulled me away from him, off on my own journey that may never again line up with his.

The ache of him not feeling for me what I felt for him was its own form of beauty.

I ran my fingers over his back, trailing them over the man I wanted to keep, but couldn't. I touched the skin of the one I had wanted for so long, but never thought I could have.

For this brief moment, he was mine.

Magnus jerked upwards, his eyes wide with horror.

"I'll go to the pharmacy tomorrow," I said, already knowing where his mind had gone, the realization of the failure of our lust-addled brains to take basic precautions.

Relief filled his features.

"I should have put one on," he said. "I didn't think. I was really excited."

"Have you done this before?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"Me neither," I replied. "Thankfully, there are solutions for when people are stupid."

He grinned at me.

"Want to be stupid again?" he asked.