Page 100 of Strange Familiars
I reach out, gently tugging her arms away from her body, until we’re standing face-to-face, her hands clasped in mine. “Percy,” I say, drawing her closer to me, “doesn’t know how lucky he is to have found such an exceptional human.”
The deep mahogany of her eyes fixes on me. I can almost see myself reflected; I can see the mirror images of the mage-powered streetlights dancing across her irises. For a moment, I’m transfixed,almost as though I’m outside my body. An observer, watching us from the outside in, as we teeter on the cusp of our pasts and our future.
It feels like a moment that could go in a number of different directions, lead to an almost infinite number of possibilities. So heavy and so significant…that I freeze.
It’s Gwendolynne, not me, who breaks through. She rises up on tiptoe, her hand lifting to my face. Her voice drops, until it is but a whisper. “I think, Briggs, that you might still have something…right here.”
And then she’s drawing my face down to hers, and I’m not fighting it, because my god this is what I want, it’s what I’ve wanted for years, it’s what I now realize I’ve wanted since that time in fifth year when Isla insisted I put a glamour on her as part of a role-playing game and I’d accidentally turned her into Gwendolynne Chan…
Gwendolynne’s tongue touching the corner of my lip sends all my blood rushing to my lower body and it only takes a minor shift of my head position to be finally, finally kissing her again.
At first, it’s slow, sensual, exploratory—but then she lets out a little sigh against my lips and I groan, curling around her, clasping her harder against my body so her chest is crushed against mine. Our kiss turns desperate, passionate, my hands roaming anywhere and everywhere and all over her body. I can barely think because all I want to do is touch her, see her, be inside her. Worship her.
I’ve booked a hotel room for the foreseeable future because exams are over, and I don’t wish to go back to Heywood Hall—or my father’s mansion—unless absolutely necessary. Both of them hold too many painful memories.
And more than anything, I want Gwendolynne to join me. At thehotel. Tonight. But it’s her choice. It must always be, absolutely, enthusiastically, one hundred percent her choice.
So I break the kiss, crushing my lips against her temple.
“Gwendolynne,” I murmur, my words vibrating against her skin. “There’s no pressure either way. But…will you stay with me tonight?”
42
Gwendolynne
It occurs to me as we’re riding up in the lift that maybe this has been Harrisford’s plan all along.
Perhaps this whole thing has been a challenge for him. A conquest. A ploy to get me, his greatest rival, into bed. Perhaps he feels the need to bring me down a peg, to win this final game.
And you know what? In this moment…I don’t care. In a way, even if it’s just another one-night thing, at least I’ll have won, too.
It’s because I need this. I need the distraction. I’ve been so stressed out by exams. So defeated by my inability to figure out the black box or how to enter the Void. If one night of sex with Harrisford is what it takes to numb those feelings temporarily, I’ll take it.
We’re standing shoulder to shoulder, not talking, as we ascend to the twenty-second floor.
“Don’t you need to go back and get Pudding?” I say, to break the oppressive silence. “Isn’t she like, your emotional support lizard?”
“She’s not my emotional support—” Harrisford starts to snap, but then he catches sight of my grin reflected in the mirrored walls.
“You cheeky witch,” he laughs, bumping his shoulder against mine.
Then his smile sharpens. He half turns, his arm snaking aroundmy waist, and leans in close to speak into my ear. “Trust me, though…” His voice has deepened to molten liquid. “With what I plan to do to you, I’d prefer not to have an audience.”
At that precise moment, the lift doors slide open and he strides out, leaving me to scramble after him, my face flushed beetroot red. How is it that I started out teasinghim, yetI’mthe one who’s wound up flustered?
When we enter, he shuts the soft-close door behind us. I only have a second to take in the room. Or, not a room rather, but asuite, bigger than anything I’ve ever seen before, bigger even than my entire flat. I don’t get a chance to register any details because Harrisford is already on me.
He’s kissing me furiously, and I’m kissing him back, our movements clumsy, harried, unbridled. He walks me backward farther into the room, his lips chasing me through space as my body arches, his hand splayed against my lower back.
It takes mere seconds before we’ve tugged off my T-shirt, and only another second before he’s pulled his own off, too. He runs his lips along the angle of my jaw, to my neck, kissing me down it, then biting me, hard, at the angle of my shoulder.
I cry out, half in lust, half in pain, and his mouth captures mine again, swallowing my scream. Another strangled moan follows, also into Harrisford’s mouth, as he slips his hand beneath the cup of my bra and kneads my breast, skimming his calloused fingers across my nipple. My whole body jerks, my legs almost giving out beneath me, but one of his muscular legs is shoved between both of mine, and then I’m grinding against him, finding both too much and too little friction between the fabric of our jeans. He groans out my name and grabs hold of my butt, kneading it, clasping me tighter to him.
When he slips the straps of my bra off my shoulders and starts kissing across my décolletage, I quip, “No judgy Carlisle this time.”
He raises his head just a fraction, just enough to say, with a sinful gleam in his eyes, “I don’t think I need him to rein me in tonight.”
My desire surges from a current into raging river rapids, and I adjust my stance to let Harrisford take off my bra. He leans back for a moment, his gaze sweeping down my body, and then drops to his knees, undoing my jeans, easing them down my legs, and good god I’m glad that I wore some decent knickers. It’s my own personal end-of-exam celebratory ritual.
