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“It’s so pretty,” Maelle murmurs, awe heavy in her voice.
Verso is too leery to agree, having spent decades exploring this world. The more beautiful something was, the more deadly. “Be careful,” he warns, disliking how quiet everything is. The valley they have found themselves in is beautiful. Lush with rolling green hills, and a picturesque babbling brook that fed into a crystal clear lake in the distance. The flowers here are large and tower over them both, rising seven, maybe even eight, feet tall. They appear stationary, though, which mollifies some of Verso’s concern.
“They’re just flowers, Verso,” she says, high and teasing. “Are you afraid of them?”
His lips twitch despite himself. She is Maelle, not Alicia, and yet— it is what Alicia would have asked him. The thought of her is sobering. They are alike, but they are not the same, not unlike himself and the original Verso. In the weeks since he as integrated himself in her expedition, he has come to see them as separate people. It has for better or worse, made things irreparably more complicated.
“I can’t die,” he reminds her bluntly, carefully picking around the path through the flowers. “But you can. And you should be careful. There’s very few things in this world that haven’t adapted to survive.”
He’s been around so long, he can remember when the Nevrons weren’t violent. Well, were less violent. They hadn’t begun as monsters. Perhaps they still weren’t. Was a wolf a monster because it defended it’s territory, or killed the sheep that wandered into it’s den?
Maelle isn’t listening to him, though, he can tell. It was a mistake for him to come with her. It should have been Lune, or Sciel. He is still a stranger to her, for all that he is working on gaining her trust. The little time they have spent to gether has helped but she is not bonded to him the way she was bonded to the boy she lost – Gustave, his name was.
The one he had let die so he could take his place as a both her bedrock and her confidant.
His heart aches for her at the thought that Alicia cannot seem to stop losing brothers, no matter what she does.
“Isn’t it time for us to go back to camp? The sun is going down.”
“Lune asked for a field report. Riding around on Esquie might be faster, but we keep missing things,” she says, weaving in between the flower stalks. “We must’ve passed that last Gestral kid at least four times.”
She isn’t wrong, but Verso dislikes being in an unknown place in the dark. His time, for the last several decades, has been spent in varying stages of despair, depression, and drunkeness; not all of it was spent productively exploring the world as he should have.
That desire died with Julie, and the rest of Expedition 00.
“Seriously, Maelle, I think we should head back now.”
The sun is gone and the moon is rising, and as moonlight fills the valley, the flowers come alight. The petals appear almost metallic, glowing verdant greens and vibrant purples and pinks.
Verso begrudgingly acknowledges that they are pretty, in the privacy of his own mind, and doesn’t catch Maelle’s intention until her hand is already stretched out, and her fingertips brush the edge of the petal.
“Wait, Maelle, don’t touch—”
At the barest touch, the flower falls open. Verso can hear the light chirp and reacts instinctively, hauling Maelle by her arm behind him. The flower moves, it’s head wheeling back and then snapping forward too quickly for him to avoid it. It doesn’t hurt, at first. At least, certainly not compared to some other blows he’s taken. His face stings from the brunt force of it but he stays on his feet.
Then, his lungs seize. He can’t breathe. Pollen from the flower fills his nose and throat, and even as the flower retreats and resumes it’s passive state, the feeling doesn’t die.
“Verso?” Maelle calls to him, ducking beneath his arm to cup his face in her hands. “What’s happening? What do I do?” Her voice has risen in panic, and from the corner of his eye, Verso can see the flower stalks moving again in the distance. Not of their own accord this time, but from something moving between them.
He shakes his head and goes for the simple healing tint hooked to his belt, swallowing it down in seconds. The stinging sensation in his throat fades, and he can breathe, but he still doesn’t feel right. “We need to go. Now.” He peers behind them, the way they came, and sees the limbs of the flowers moving there, too. “Merde. We need to find somewhere to lie low.”
Maelle’s head is already on a swivel, and it’s she that sees the footholds along the cliff wall. “There!” She bolts, and he follows a half-step behind, realizing that the pollen has left him with a spacey feeling that he usually only associates with being very drunk. Scaling the footholds one by one, she is halfway up the wall by the time that he has got his grip on the second.
“Verso, come on! What are you doing?”
He doesn’t dare speak, or look behind to see if they’re being pursued — it’s taking everything he has to concentrate on the climb. Maelle reaches the top first and disappears, and he has the presence of mind to hope that it is safety awaiting him and not more Nevrons. He isn’t sure he can properly aim, dizzy as he is.
Soon, though, Maelle’s face appears over the edge, and her hand extends down to help him up.
It’s an Expeditioner’s camp, he realizes with some relief. An old one. There are no bodies, which brings a feeling of stark relief that they don’t need to rest among corpses. Maelle is already digging through the blankets and bedrolls, pulling out the ones that aren’t entirely moth eaten, and rearranging the tent poles to create a sturdier shelter. Rather than individual tents, this expedition seemed to favor a single large one. They were here for a while too, he realizes, holding a hand over one eye to stop seeing double. There is furniture, real furniture, that had been hand carved and left behind: a desk, a table and chairs, and even a small kitchenette.
He hasn’t moved very far beyond the edge, not trusting his legs enough to stand-up. It was unusual for an effect to last so long, especially once outside of battle; his cells always regenerated quickly.
“Verso?” Maelle catches his attention, and she is kneeling next time in the time it takes for him to blink, which doesn’t seem right. “Are you okay?”
“Right as… purple rain,” he says, offering her a weak smile. The words come out slurred together, like his tongue is twice its size. He feels it with his teeth and frowns; it feels normal enough. “The pollen from the flower… did something.”
“I can see that,” Maelle says, her voice gentle even as she withholds a laugh. “Why don’t you come lay down? I’ll get a fire going.”
Verso cranes his neck to look at where she has set up the bedrolls. It’s only a good ten to fifteen feet beyond the edge of the cliff. He shakes his head. “I’ll stay here.”
“You’re not staying here,” Maelle argues, shaking her head. “C’mon, get up. I’ll help you.”
Despite his misgivings, he lets her guide him to his feet, sliding an arm around his waist to keep him upright. His arm extends around hers too, for support, but he stumbles when he feels her bare skin beneath his thumb. Her shirt has come untucked and has ridden a little high. Hardly anything indecent, but it is enough to set his blood on fire. He falls to his knees, stopping just short of shoving her away from him, and crawls on to the bedroll she laid out for him.
What the fuck. His heart is pounding. Every nerve ending feels like it’s ablaze.
“Verso?” Maelle kneels beside him and pushes him onto his back. Concern is etched into her face, and she presses a hand against his brow; he shudders. “God, Verso, you’re burning up.”
“Just need to sleep it off, I think,” he says, gritting his teeth. “You’d better… stay away so you don’t catch it.” Her hand has moved from his forehead to his cheek, and everywhere their skin meets, his blood sings. He is shivering violently, though it contradicts the heat he feels building beneath his skin.
“I didn’t get any of the pollen on me,” she says, dismissing his concern. “You pushed me out of the way, remember?”
He can hear the guilt in her voice. It isn’t the first time he’s pushed her out of the way, either. The real Verso had done so for Alicia too, and it had cost him his life.
Verso doesn’t think he’ll get that lucky.
This, he thinks, is going to be far worse.
“Drink some water, and get some sleep, and I’ll take the first watch.” She says, her voice warbling just a little. She’s trying to be strong for him, he knows, and is as endearing as it is wrong to him.
He was supposed to be strong for her. Her bedrock. Her everything, as she had always been his.
He obligingly drinks some water from her canteen, careful not to let his lips touch her skin, and sinks back into the damp bedroll. The next time he blinks, Maelle has gotten the fire started, and warmth is steadily seeping back into his bones.
Sleep. That’s all he needs. A good night’s sleep.
Maelle watches over him while he sleeps, his breathing shaky and labored. Guilt is eating away at her. He told her to be careful, and she hadn’t listened, and now he was laying beside the fire, shivering and miserable. Dense underbrush and foliage — not of the bioluminescent, moving variety – encloses the camp and it gives her some small sense of security. There are no Nevron tracks nearby, no broken branches or paths. This is a secure spot to be, at least for the night. She’s peered over the edge once or twice, and can see things moving on the ground, the flower stalks swaying side to side as if they were being parted, but cannot make out what kind of creatures are moving below.
Then, the drumming starts. From the distance, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on. The light from the bioluminescent flowers isn’t quite bright enough to give a clear view, but the Nevrons seem to be dancing. The flowers are drumming on the ground, and when they rise, Maelle can see clouds of golden pollen dispersing in the air. The tempo of the dance between Nevrons increases, and their own musical whistling seems to increase in both frequency and volume.
It takes her a good thirty minutes of observing before she realizes the Nevrons aren’t actually dancing.
She withdraws back to her own bedroll with burning cheeks and stares at the fire. It had never occurred to her to wonder how Nevrons were made. She assumed they were all the Paintress’ creations, but it made sense, in a way, that they had to reproduce—nothing else would explain the sheer number she had killed, only for more of them to have appeared in the same place the next morning.
It is disturbing to think of them as being living things, with families and little Nevrons running amok. How many had she slaughtered and prevented from ever coming home? Did they feel things too, real emotions like love and joy and grief?
She wishes Verso were awake so she could share her discovery, and talk through all the guilt she was feeling over doing the bare minimum to defend herself.
Lune was going to lose it when she told her.
The moon isn’t quite high in the sky yet, but Maelle is already growing weary. The adrenaline from their flight had taken a toll. She should wake Verso so he can take a watch, but she is reluctant to do that, especially since he still seemed ill. She checks him one last time before retreating to her own bedroll. His fever seems to have subsided, though he’s still warm, and for her this is enough to rationalize going to sleep.
She un-tucks the rest of her shirt for comfort and takes off her shoes and socks. Her skirt is long enough, at least, that she shouldn’t need a blanket, but she keeps one within reach just in case. It smells of mildew and damp, and she’d rather avoid using it if she can help it.
Settling into her bedroll, the cool air blowing against her cheek, she slips into a deep, dreamless sleep.
***
Awareness comes to her slowly. She is being dragged from a deep sleep by a feeling that is entirely new.
Pleasure. Mind-breaking, heart-racing, toe-curling pleasure like she has never felt.
There is a mouth between her thighs, and tongue writhing inside her, sucking hard at the small, swollen bundle of nerves that she has only ever brushed with her fingers.
The bundle of nerves that she only barely understand because Gustave had thrust a medical book in her face at her when she began to ask questions as a young teen.
This, she knows from that same book, is an orgasm. Her only — her first.
“What—” she gasps as another wave of pleasure rolls through her, and she looks down to see the familiar dark head of wavy hair between her thighs, the streak of white all the brighter in the moonlight. “Verso—”
His tongue flicks at her clit, and she whimpers.
“Wait, Verso, wait, I don’t understand—”
He hums against her, and his eyes rise to meet hers for the first time. They are not blue, however. Not the color that she has so intensely studied, memorized. They are black as pitch.
She doesn’t know what to do. This… isn’t Verso, even though it is. Verso wouldn’t hurt her.
Has he hurt you, though? A quiet, niggling voice in her mind asks.
The lips on her cunt suckle a little harder and send another spike of pleasure running through her.
Hurt or not, she hadn’t consented to this. He has to stop. “Verso, stop.”
He doesn’t.
The only acknowledgement she gets is a grunt, and his tongue moving faster inside her.
She is mortified, and aroused, and confused, and in this moment she doesn’t know what to do. Verso was attractive, in all the ways she didn’t know she could find people to be attractive. If she were the kind of girl who swooned, she certainly would have, watching him fight that monstrous Nevron, the Dualliste. But she was only sixteen, and she hadn’t even had her first proper kiss yet and she certainly wasn’t prepared for — whatever this was.
“Verso, no,” she insists, and presses her feet into the ground for traction to propel herself backwards. “It’s the pollen, Verso, the Nevron. You don’t want—”
A large hand closes around her ankle and drags her back, and his face is once more between her thighs before she can even finish speaking. Somehow, her arousal spikes. It’s the feeling of his hand on her ankle, she decides. The weight of it, of him. Of how he had overpowered her. Her toes curl as another orgasm—only the second she’s ever had—rushes through her.
Maelle cries out as her hands fly to his head, burying her fingers in his hair. “Okay,” she pants, thighs trembling. He’s looking up at her now, and in the moonlight she can make out the wet glisten on his chin from her own slick and his spit. It makes her belly clench, a fluttering contraction that she cannot stop or control. “T-that’s enough, Verso.”
His lips press gently into her abdomen right above her cunt, and then over her belly button, and rising higher. “No,” he rumbles, the first word he’s spoken since she awoke.
“No?” She asks, trembling. “Verso, this isn’t right. You’re not yourself.” And I’ve never had sex. She thinks but doesn’t say aloud. “I don’t want this.”
He huffs, and his eyes narrow when he looks at her. Holding her gaze, she watches his hand disappear between her thighs, and feels when his middle finger slips into her. “Feels like you do,” he croons, licking a stripe between her breasts. Her shirt is gone, she realizes. With the heat of him hovering over her, and his mouth between her thighs, she hadn’t even noticed. Her skirt is unbuttoned and spread wide like a blanket beneath her, exposing her bare legs and thighs to the air. Her underwear are nowhere to be seen at all.
“You’re scared,” he says, sucking her pert breast into his mouth. “That’s alright. I’ll make it good for you, mon coeur.”
“Yes, I am scared. You’re scaring me. I don’t want this and I’m telling you to s-stop!” She stutters on the last word when his teeth close around her nipple, and a fresh, hot bolt of arousal sparks through her. It shouldn’t feel good. It wasn’t supposed to feel good unless you loved the person you were doing this with, unless you wanted this.
“Liar.”
“Verso, please,” she pleads, her fingers digging into his shoulders, the fabric clenched in her fists, as another finger slides inside her. “Please stop.”
It doesn’t hurt, but it is an unusual feeling. He sets a rhythm, his fingers sliding in and out a little faster with each thrust, until she can hear the wet squelch coating his fingers and dripping out of her. He crooks his fingers, pressing up and a little to the left just inside her entrance, and she has to bite down hard on her lip to keep from shouting. It’s an orgasm that leaves her thighs trembling, her heart racing, and her mind frozen in place.
“There,” he croons, pressing a gentle kiss to the column of her throat, and slides a knee between her thighs to spread them wider. “Nothing to be scared of, hm?”
She is very sure that isn’t true. Emma had this talk with her the year before, when a boy had shown up at their door with flowers. Gustave nearly had an apoplexy and chased him off, and Emma, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe, had been left to explain. It had seemed like such a messy, complicated thing. The thing Emma had emphasized, apart from the importance of consent, was to never let a boy release inside you. Not if you didn’t want a baby.
Maelle had no interest in making orphans for future gommages, or being a teen parent, and had sent the boy with the flowers away herself when he returned the next day.
Emma hadn’t said much about this part, though. How good it felt.
And Gustave was not here to chase Verso off, either.
No one was.
Her sword wasn’t entirely beyond her reach, she realizes, craning her neck to see it leaning against the tree only a handful of feet away. A swift punch to his throat, just enough to incapacitate him, and she could have her sword in hand in less than ten seconds. Of course, he was a better swordsman. If it came to a duel…
“I’m sorry, Maelle.”
The apology snaps her back to reality, and she pulls her head back to look at him. A glimmer of blue is shining through the black, just a sliver.
“Verso?”
“I-I can’t stop,” he grinds out, his teeth clenched. He is trembling, she realizes. Violently, like the effort to not move is like fighting against gravity.
“What’s happening to you?” She asks, hoping, against all odds, that she could pull him out of this.
He is breathing hard, his chest heaving from the effort of holding himself back. “You need to run, Maelle. Get out of here before I hurt you.”
“You look like you’re in pain,” she says, noticing the heavy furrow of his brow, the wince when he tries to lift himself off of her. “Tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help—”
Verso pulls his fingers out of her, and stares at them. The look on his face is… confusing. There is horror, genuine horror, but something else, too. Hunger. He sucks the fingers into his mouth up to the knuckles, an appreciative groan rumbling from his throat. When he looks at her again, no blue remains.
“The only pain I feel is when we are apart,” he breathes, and lays down on top of her, hips nestled between her thighs, his head pressed against her bare breast.
It is a ridiculous thing to say — the kind of thing Emma liked to read in those ancient pre-Fracture romance novels. But he is being quite serious when he says it, she realizes. There is visible relief on his face when his skin presses against hers.
He isn’t moving, either to touch her or take further liberties, so she is reluctant to disrupt the momentary peace, but she hasn’t given up hope of being able to save him from this, either.
After several minutes, she decides to risk it. “Verso?” She half-hopes he is asleep.
He tilts his head to look at her, his blackened gaze drowsy. “Yes, mon coeur?”
“When you say that it hurts you when we are apart… what do you mean?”
“It burns,” he says, grimacing, and presses a gentle kiss to her sternum. “Like someone has poured fire into my blood. It settles a little when we are skin-to-skin. Makes it… bearable, for a little while…” He trails off, and she hears the wince even though she can’t see it.
“But?” she prompts, shifting a little beneath him so she can breathe easier, and freezes when she feels his hard length against her thigh.
“It isn’t enough,” he says, sighing, his hand reaching over his head to tug his shirt off.
She has never seen him shirtless, she realizes. His shoulders appear broader now, no longer softened by the silk of his shirt. His torso is covered in scars, some that have left raised skin from where the wound was poorly stitched, others that have faded to think white lines. He is well-built, she realizes with a fierce blush, which is not a surprise, but knowing is different than suspecting.
His hands reach between them to tug at the laces of his trousers, and Maelle freezes. “Verso, wait, why don’t we try to—”
The trousers slide off his hips and down his legs, kicked off one leg and then the other. She can see his cock, firm and bobbing between his legs.
Her heart skips a beat.
She can still feel her arousal dripping out of her, knows that her body, at least, is prepared for what’s about to happen, even if her mind still hasn’t come to terms.
He sighs when he sees the look on her face, his black gaze soft.
“You have such a pretty cunt,” he tells her, the filthy words bringing a hot blush to her cheeks, peering between her thighs. “So sweet,” he continues, licking a stripe between her folds that makes her insides clench.
She was supposed to be running, she thinks. Fleeing. Doing anything other than sitting here and let him lick her, or fuck her with his fingers.
“That boy is lucky you slammed that door in his face,” Verso growls, nipping at her thigh. She squeaks and jerks, her thighs parting wider automatically.
“How do you know about him?” She asks, her attention snagged on his words. “I didn’t tell you about him.”
“Pretty girl like you? There’s always a boy,” he says, pressing slow, unhurried kisses up her belly.
Maelle doesn’t think — something about his answer doesn’t ring true, but she cannot think of what is wrong with what he said, not with how his mouth is moving faster now, climbing higher until he takes her whole breast in his mouth.
“Ah, Verso—” She meant to protest, but it certainly doesn’t sound like one. The pitch is all wrong – high and breathy, and his name… accentuated with a whine that sounded needy. It certainly didn’t sound like her.
His cock is sliding along her thigh as he rises higher above her, until she can feel it resting against her mound. He settles his weight against her, his cock trapped between them, and kisses her properly for the first time.
She can taste herself on his tongue. He presses into her mouth and steals the breath from her lungs, and it is only when he coaxes her to return the kiss that she feels that same hunger ignite in her belly. The kiss she returns is hesitant and uncertain; she isn’t sure what to do with her lips or tongue at first, but he is a patient teacher. Soon, she is chasing his lips and tongue, and cannot withhold a whimper of protest when he begins to move away.
He huffs a laugh against her mouth, and the sound sends another jolt to her core. It is rough, and honest, and entirely too rare.
“Greedy little thing, aren’t you?” he teases, nipping at her nose.
For a moment, it is easy to forget the circumstances that have brought them to this moment. He is so warm above her, his smile so easy. Her lips are swollen from kissing, and she finds that she is eager to have him kiss her again. She forgets to be afraid, until he reaches between them to take his cock in hand, and slides it between her folds, rubbing the head against her clit.
“Verso,” she gasps, staring between them as he lines his cock up to her entrance. “This will… help you, right?” It is a flimsy, pitiable excuse for why she has stopped resisting. If this is what the pollen has driven him to do, then surely allowing him to see it through will put an end to it.
“Oh yes,” he assures her, nuzzling his nose against hers. “It is exactly what I need. All that fire in my blood… it has to go somewhere. Has to fulfill its purpose.”
Maelle knows the truth.
She is still scared, afraid of the unknown and what this will mean for her, for them, later.
But she wants it, too. Fiercely.
She thought she would be dead by now, especially after their disastrous landing on the beach. They are preparing to face the Paintress, and there is every chance she will die in that battle and perish like all the expeditioners that have come before her.
There are worse places she could lose her virginity in, worse times to do it, and with worse people.
“Relax, Maelle,” he commands, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth. “Breathe.”
She can feel the head of his cock push inside her. For all her slickness, for all the preparation, it is still a tight fit. It is uncomfortable, at first, but hardly more so than his fingers.
“Merde,” he swears, his mouth covering hers in a desperate kiss. “So tight,” he says, panting against her lips. “So fucking tight.”
The rest of his thrust is slow, controlled despite how he is trembling, and he stops when he is halfway inside her. She breathes, as he told her to. The muscles that are tense are ones she hasn’t ever actively controlled before, and it takes some concentrated effort before she can relax even a little. It does not hurt in the way she thought it would. Emma had warned her it might, at first, if Maelle wasn’t sufficiently aroused, but that is not a problem. It is pressure, not pain, deep and insistent while her body learns to yield and accommodate something it has never held before.
He is holding himself still above her, his eyes squeezed shut — either he is concentrating, practicing a restraint that is counter to his actions, or he cannot bear to look at her.
“Verso?” She asks, hating how small her voice sounds. “Are you… alright?”
Verso’s forehead drops to hers, and when he opens his eyes, they are pitch black ringed in a fine outline of blue. A bitter, broken laugh escapes him. “No,” he says, shaking his head, his hands digging into the bedroll above her shoulders. “No, I am not.”
His hips snap and he is fully sheathed inside her, and she nearly chokes on the whimper crawling up her throat when she feels him. “Maelle,” he groans, burying his nose in the crook of her neck. “Merde.” He rocks inside her, hardly withdrawing his hips before thrusting back in. Short, gentle thrusts at first that grow steadily longer when his cock slides inside her a little easier. “Are you okay?”
She isn’t entirely sure. Her mind is at war with her body, and her emotions are tangled up in knots that will take hours to unravel later. She manages a nod, hardly more than an assertive jerk of her chin, and feels him nuzzle into her, his lips pressing a gentle kiss to her neck.
His hand slides under thigh to pull her leg over his hip, opening her wider. Feeling the angle change just a little, his cock sliding a little deeper and hitting something that makes her feel another jolt of arousal, she keeps her leg up when his hand releases her thigh to snake between them.
Deft fingers pluck at her clit, as skilled at this as they are at playing the piano, and work her until she feels the increasingly familiar pleasant burn of arousal and gasps. Hearing the affirming sound of her enjoyment, he moves, thrusting in earnest. Her arms wrap around his shoulders of their own accord — she doesn’t know what else to do with them, but it feels right to draw him closer.
A particularly hard thrust when he bottoms out, his pelvis flush with hers, while his fingers work her clit, makes her see stars and sends a rush of hot arousal right to her belly.
“There,” he murmurs, and thrusts again just as hard, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction. “Right there, hm?”
She cannot muster an answer, isn’t even aware of the sounds she is making until he kisses her and the sounds stop. His thrusts slow to a near grind, rolling his hips in a way that drags his cock against something inside her that keeps making her vision blur. She can feel the fire he described, that burning desire and want, bubbling in her own blood. If it is half of what he was feeling, she understands his desperation.
“Maelle?” He murmurs against her mouth, halting their kiss to peer at her with concern. His eyes are mostly blue now, she notes, and he is more himself. There is worry in his gaze, genuine concern and guilt and an entire catalogue of other feelings that shouldn’t have a place at the moment. He may feel guilty for this, but the fact that he is feeling guilt at all is proof that this is what he needs — that he would not be doing this if he had any other choice.
“I’m good,” she says, her voice husky. “It’s good.”
It isn’t even a lie. It does feel good. Criminally good.
Her hips are now rising to meet his on instinct alone, and her fingers have found their way to the muscles of his back. He kisses her again — slower this time, less desperate or demanding. His tongue traces the seam of her lips and they part instinctively, and the kiss deepens into something tender.
“Verso, I’m-I’m—” she pants, breaking their kiss, as the pleasure that has been steadily building is rapidly approaching its peak.
“Let go,” he says, moving faster against her. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
The orgasm is different the from the ones before — deeper, fuller, originating from somewhere in her navel and spreading through her like wildfire until even her fingertips tingle. She clenches around him, and hears his sharp inhale, feels his rhythm falter.
“Maelle—” he groans, stuttering, and his hips pick up a punishing pace, his control fracturing. “I’m going to — I need to—”
His eyes are black again, she realizes as she clings to him, holding on to him as he ruts into her like a beast, and the words register slowly, like her ears are full of cotton.
“Wait, Verso,” she gasps, panic rising as Sophie’s words surface to the forefront of her mind once more. “Y-you can’t — you need to pull out!”
The sound he makes to this demand is inhuman. It’s a growl, a low vibration right against her throat where his teeth are resting against her pulse. She pushes against his shoulders, wriggling beneath him to try to unseat him. “Verso, you musn’t!”
He cannot hear her, she realizes, seeing the black, fathomless gaze boring down at her, not a sliver of the man behind them. “Have to,” he says, the words slurred and heavy. His hands grip her hips and hold her still, keeping her in place for him as he drives into her.
She thinks of the Nevrons in the valley, the drumming, the golden clouds of pollen dispersing in the moonlight, and the dance that hadn’t been a dance. The tangible reality of baby Nevrons.
Have to.
There is only one reason for him to do so.
“Verso,” she begs, still squirming, still trying to push him away. “Please, Verso, hear me! Fight this! Don’t do this!”
She sees a glimmer of blue flickering in the pitch, and even as thrusts grow faster, harder, less controlled, she feels a spark of hope. “Please, Verso. I-I can’t have a baby. I’m only—”
The response to her plea is not what she hopes.
The blue in his eyes vanishes entirely, and the hold on her hips is nearly painful — she will have bruises, after, in the shape of his fingers. His hands slide to her thighs to lift her hips from the ground as he drives into her and comes, pressing them against his hips as if to encourage her to welcome it — or perhaps so he can pretend that she wants it. She feels him inside her, the hot ropes of his seed staining her insides. He does not stop thrusting until his orgasm his over, and even then he doesn’t pull out of her.
He collapses on top of her, nestled between her open thighs, and dares to press a kiss to her mouth, trying to coax some acceptance, some affection, from her.
She turns her head, refusing to give him that, and clenches her teeth so hard she fears they’ll crack.
It isn’t his fault.
She knows that.
She knows that.
But she hates him for it, anyway.
Verso, when he comes back to himself, cannot reconcile the exquisite heat of her cunt around his cock with the rising tide of guilt threatening to overwhelm him. He pulls out of her too quickly and feels worse when he sees her wince. Blood stains the tip of his cock, the evidence of his debauchery and his crime, but it is the sight of his cum leaking out of her that makes him want to retch. Her thighs are trembling, and he can see the bruises on her hips where he held her down.
She will not look at him.
Her head is still turned to the side, her gaze affixed to the forest beyond them.
His baby sister.
His mouth opens and closes. There is nothing he can say that will fix this. No apology that will make up for what he has done to her. He should have left when he felt the fever. Should have thrown himself from the cliff when he felt his cock stir just from touching her hand.
If that had been the first time his cock stirred at such an innocent touch from her, it might have been excusable. But it isn’t. It hasn’t been for as long as she has been Maelle.
He’s still kneeling between her thighs when she finally moves, her face turning towards him.
“You came inside me.”
He hates that his cock twitches when she says it, that revulsion and arousal are war inside him and arousal is winning.
“I—” The words ‘I’m sorry’ aren’t going to cut it. He can’t even bring himself to say them.
She sits up, and he watches as her hand tentatively reaches between her legs. Her fingers dip into her entrance, into the wet, puddling mixture of cum and arousal, and hold them up for inspection. He feels a wave of arousal so violent that he hurls himself away from her, scrambling for the clothes he had discarded.
“Verso?” She calls out, fear in her voice. “Where are you—”
He needs to leave. Now. Already, he can tell that the effect of the pollen hadn’t worn off — not completely. It could take days to wear off.
“Please don’t leave me.”
He stops, his feet anchored to the ground like they are bound by lead weights.
“Maelle—” His voice cracks when he says her name, guilt filling his throat until he chokes. “I-I’m not — There’s something wrong. And it’s still wrong. And I’m sorry, but if I stay—”
“I-I don’t want to be alone.”
It’s the fear in her voice that unmoors him. He has raped her, and she is begging him to stay, even though he may do it again, because her fear of whatever else might lurk in this world is greater than her fear of him. He is, perhaps, the greatest monster she will ever know.
“I will hurt you again,” he says, turning to look at her. “Whatever this is, I can’t control it.”
“I know but…” She trails off, and he can see that there is more than just her fear, something that she isn’t saying out loud. “Verso, it hurts.”
His eyes flicker to her leaking cunt and he feels bile rise up in his throat so acutely—
“My blood… feels like it’s burning.”
He stills, processing what she said, and there is still horror, but it is different now.
It hurts.
Not because he hurt her, but because he has infected her. Because whatever biochemical reaction the pollen had created in him has now spread to her.
He cannot leave, and the realization is gutting. He cannot leave, because her eyes are growing black, and if he does then the next person she stumbles upon will be—
The thought takes root inside him and jealousy grows from it like a cancer, vile and fast. No, he cannot leave. Cannot abandon her in this state, vulnerable and aroused.
“Verso, please, I don’t know how to — what to do to make it stop.”
He swallows, his eyes closed, and buries the guilt, the revulsion, the horror. He can feel the arousal kindling in his blood. Growing. Spreading.
“I know what you need.”
His hand, shaking, goes to the laces of his trousers once more. “Come here, Maelle.”