HIS

Jade Melisande

Ava stood trembling in the deep shadows of the alcove, her heart hammering in her chest. She stared, an unseen observer, as Noah leaned over the woman’s body, blade in hand. As one, the woman and Ava both caught their breath as the tip of the blade slid across the flesh of the woman’s back.

“Easy,” she heard him say. She felt the air go out of her lungs softly, sweetly, like the kiss of his blade across her lips. She heard the woman’s expulsion of air at the same moment. A trickle of blood, shockingly bright against the woman’s pale skin, trailed down her rib cage and dripped onto the floor. Noah reached up and wiped the blood away gently; the woman moaned beneath his hand.

Ava felt an answering tightness in her belly. She imagined his hand on her like that. It had been so long since she had felt any man’s hands on her. Two years, to be exact. Her eyes closed; she bit back the familiar pain. Oh, to let the pain go, to have it cut away… Why couldn’t sorrow work like that? She longed to give herself over to his touch, as this woman had done. To lie there beneath his hand, allowing him—trusting him—to carve upon her body with his blade.

To lay herself open to him.

Desire, hot and sweet and fierce, swept over her, and she gasped with the intensity of it. For so long she and Noah had danced on the edge of this desire, each playing the role of hunter and hunted, as desire and fear and longing had flared and banked only to flare once more between them. She wasn’t sure she still had what he wanted her to give. Noah insisted she did, insisted that it hadn’t died in her the day that Rubin, her partner, her lover, had died. That it was merely hidden away inside of her, waiting for her to surrender herself to it again. To him.

She opened her eyes and found him watching her, the tip of his blade raised in one hand, the woman’s body an intricate swirl of lines and liquid beneath the other. His eyes were dark, almost as dark as the blood on his hands. The woman moaned again, shifting on the table, every movement a plea for more. Still Noah watched Ava; watched her watching him.

Heat curled its way up from her belly, spreading across her chest, into her face. It curled downward, too, swirling and pooling between her legs. Her skin burned, her breathing quickened. Her body throbbed in time to the music coming from the speakers.

She wanted him. Wanted to be his, wanted to feel his mark on her.

The woman sighed, a breathy exhalation of pleasure. Noah held Ava’s gaze for a moment longer, and then turned his attention back to the woman. With gentle strokes he began to wash the blood away, leaving behind the tracings of the cutting.

Ava turned abruptly, backing deeper into the shadows and then out of the alcove altogether, feeling guilty for her intrusion upon their scene. Still, she felt Noah’s eyes on her, the question in them, long after she had left them.

She lay curled into the corner of a couch in a small side room, enjoying a moment of solitude after the noise and excitement of the party. Kurt’s parties were always well attended, and a quiet spot was hard to come by. In days past, she and Rubin had been a fixture here, along with half a dozen others. Noah was part of that inner crowd as well. After Rubin had died, Ava had sequestered herself and locked all her needs and desires away. But little by little, Noah had chipped away at her reserve, drawing her farther and farther out. Ava was a submissive at heart, but that heart was not easily won, and in the end it wasn’t Noah’s dominance that had called to her. It was his quiet strength, his boundless patience with her as she struggled to come to terms with losing not only the love of her life, but the man she had considered her Owner.

Still, she held back from him. How could she give herself completely to another, when losing Rubin had been so devastating?

Ava looked up as Noah entered the room. “Ava,” he said, stopping in front of her, “it’s time.”

Ava’s heart began a slow, steady hammering. He touched her cheek.

“Say yes,” he said. “Be mine.” He held out his hand.

With a shaky breath she rose and placed her hand in his. He led her through the warren of rooms, her mind and heart racing. Finally, he stopped just inside a small, intimate space in which a table stood before a fireplace.

“After this,” he said, his lips close to her ear, “this will only be for you and me. Your body is the only one I want to mark. Your body, your mind, your heart.”

Moments later, she lay facedown on the table, naked before him. She felt his eyes, then his hands, tracing the curves of her body. Her skin glowed with heat that had nothing to do with the flames flickering in the fireplace.

“Ava,” he said, “sweet Ava. You’re all I’ve wanted for so long. Will you be mine?”

Ava turned her face to his, gazed up into his dark eyes. “Yes,” she said at last, and surrendered to his touch. To her own need. Her mind slowed. It felt as if the world held its breath as she waited for the first touch of steel against her skin.

She shivered as the flat of the blade touched her, but it wasn’t cold. It was warm, heated by the desire that flowed between them. Her body thrummed, painfully attuned to his every touch, to the roughness of the pads of his fingers, to the blade against her skin as he teased and caressed her with it. She shuddered as she felt his warm breath on her shoulder, on the nape of her neck.

Then he had turned the blade edge-side down, and she felt him beginning to trace a pattern in her skin. He drew the blade carefully down her back, and it stung, but as it penetrated her body it was as if he penetrated her, opening her, peeling away the layers of doubt and fear and loneliness. She felt the darkness being cut away, leaving only her desire for him, her desire to be his. The sting of his knife was an exquisite accompaniment to the ache between her legs, to the ache that he was releasing from the center of her. She felt herself floating free of everything that had held her down, that had kept her from him.

“Look,” he said, after. He had washed her blood away tenderly, and raised her to a sitting position. She looked over her shoulder at the mirror on the wall, saw his strong hands cradling her. Then, a single word etched in her skin: mine.