Gothicana

She didn’t want anyone to turn around and see her. Neither did he. But the threat that they could, that she was doing something so forbidden right where anyone could just turn their heads and see, sent liquid heat through her veins.

She was turned on, more turned on than she’d ever been in her life, and he knew it, the devil. He knew the depth of her desires, how to play them, how to deliver them and leave her satiated.

She bit her lip as he pressed his palm into her clit, inserting another finger inside her, stretching her wide open.

“Look at you, so wanton, standing in the middle of a hall, drenching my hand under your dress,” he licked her neck. “It gets so wet for me, just for me. You missed me so much, didn’t you?”

“So much,” she groaned at the pressure, her legs quivering. She locked her knees, gripping the side of the pillar for support with one hand, the other holding her glass tight, as he wreaked havoc with his hand.

Erica looked at her in the middle of dancing with some guy and waved, and Corvina clenched hard around his fingers. She somehow managed to smile and lift her glass to Erica, relieved when the girl turned back around.

“Mine,” he growled against her neck, scoring his teeth over her fading hickey under the dress.

“Please,” she begged shamelessly as a fine sheen of sweat broke out over her skin, knowing she couldn’t take the buildup much longer with the silence. “Make me come. Please, Vad.”

Thankfully, he took mercy on her, increasing the pressure of his palm on her clit, rotating it while squelching his fingers in and out in a rhythm her body loved, her i

It climbed and climbed and climbed, and all of a sudden, her mind blacked out.

In a hot flash that started to shake her body, she came, biting her tongue hard to keep from screaming out, somehow muffling the sound down to a groan, her heart beating so hard in her chest she could feel it pounding in her ears, her limbs jittery. The glass broke in her hand silently, cutting it open as her blood dripped to the floor, shards falling amidst them.

“Fuck!” he turned her around, taking a look at her hand. A jagged edge of a small piece of glass was lodged in the middle of her palm, dark red blood covering her fingers and dripping.

Corvina winced as he took the piece out, freeing a small gush of new blood.

He tore the edge of his cape, and wrapped it around her hand tightly, stemming the flow.

“The glass could have slit your wrist,” he said gruffly, his jaw clenching.

Corvina gave him a little smile through the pain. “Then I would have died in your arms while coming, and what a beautiful death it would’ve been.”

He gave her a glare as he finished wrapping her hand. “The night will get wilder here. You want to stay and see the show? Or get out of here for a bit?”

Corvina glanced back at hall, her friends all busy either dancing or making out with someone, more and more people around the hall finding dark corners to engage in.

“Take me somewhere else.”

“Meet me outside.”

Corvina entered the throng to find Jade standing alone in a corner, watching her approach. She told her she was going for a walk with someone, and a fleeting look crossed her face before Jade smiled.

“Come back soon.”

Corvina left the hall and went downstairs, slowly making her way through the crowd towards the front entrance, dodging a few hands that tried to grab her, finally emerging out into the night to her silver-eyed man in the crow mask.

He swung her up in his arms with a yelp from her. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you to my lair,” he gave her a roguish grin, a mysterious man in a dark cape, carrying her into the woods on the night of the Black Ball. 

She recognized the path he took her down immediately.

“Did you repair the piano?” she asked him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he sturdily took her down the incline towards the ruins.

“It’s a work in progress,” he commented wryly. “I was more focused on getting the thesis done in time.”

“Have you ever wanted to go out, teach somewhere else?” Corvina mused.

He gave her a questioning look in the moonlight. “Why would I? Verenmore is mine. I want to slowly fix it and make it a safe haven for people like us, the ones with troubled pasts.”

“What if someone disappears tonight?” she worried her lip.

“Let’s cross that bridge when we get there, Corvina,” he sighed, settling her higher in his arms.

Soon, a familiar crumbling wall came into view under the gorgeous moonlight, the eerie gargoyle-like sculptures, and the one-eyed tree their audience as he headed to their spot.

“This is what you call your lair?” Corvina chuckled, looking around the ruins and the empty gravestones under the moon.

Vad deposited her on the now mostly-repaired piano, and she leaned back on her hands, watching him as he took his mask off, revealing that sculpted face and the streak of hair she loved. He took off her mask and put it on the side, going to his knees in front of her, his hands trapping her on the piano. Pulling her leg over his shoulder, he kissed her i

“Show me your mother’s bracelet,” he told her, pressing light kisses to the soft skin.

Puzzled, Corvina showed him her left hand where the multi-crystal bracelet gleamed in the moonlight, warm against her skin.

He took her hand and placed something in her palm.

A ring.

Corvina’s heart stopped. She’d read too many romances not to recognize the similarities, and they scared the hell out of her.

“Are you… are you proposing?” she whispered, her anxiety climbing.

Vad chuckled. “No, little crow. Not yet.”

The relief inside her was immediate. She wasn’t ready yet, neither was he. They were just discovering each other, discovering themselves, and while she hoped they would get there one day, it wasn’t the day yet.

“But I saw this ring when I was getting your dress,” he ran a thumb over it. “And while we’re not ready yet, one day we will be. And that day, I’ll give you another ring. This one is simply from me to you, so you have something of me on you always, like with your mother’s bracelet. I want you to look at it in moments of stress and know that I’m here.”

“And it had nothing to do with shooing off other men?”

A side of his lips twitched. “You should’ve known my motives could never be completely selfless. I am selfish, and I want everyone who looks at you knowing you belong to a very selfish man.”

Corvina blinked back her tears, looking down at the ring.

It was an exquisite high-quality teardrop amethyst – she knew because of the way it refracted the moonlight – the same shade as her eyes, set in silver metal, the same shade as his eyes. The ring was both of them together in substance.

“Thank you,” she whispered, looking into his eyes.

He pressed a kiss to her knee. “There’s an inscription.”

She turned the ring.

‘I will not let you go into the unknown alone.’

“Dracula,” she breathed, recognizing the quote from the book they’d studied.

She turned her hand for him silently, and he slid the ring on her finger, tying another knot into the threads of their bond, making it stronger, more enduring for the tests of time.

He stood upright and she held his face, looking at him with all the love she felt in her heart, thanking the universe with the whole fiber of her being for this man.