In the Thick Darkness
"Are you certain you won't regret this?"
Barcas asked in a tightly constricted voice.
The slightest flicker of hesitation, she was sure, and he would push her away and walk out. So she nodded at once.
For a long moment he stared into her eyes as though he meant to pierce straight through them. At last he wrapped one arm around her waist and rose from his seat. Thalia instinctively clutched at the fabric of his clothes.
With a soft click-click, two golden buttons that had been clinging precariously to his chest rolled free and struck the floor. While her eyes followed them unthinkingly, something soft and yielding pressed up beneath her—the bedsheets.
Thalia looked up at him with a gaze steeped in unease. Having set her down upon the bed, Barcas shrugged off his already-parted coat and cast it aside. The wavering firelight licked greedily over a torso sculpted as smooth and hard as carved stone.
For an instant her heart gave a violent, fluttering spasm.
She dropped her eyes in haste. Barcas cupped her cheeks in both hands and forced her face upward so that she had no choice but to look at him.
"It isn't too late. If you tell me to leave, I will withdraw without a word."
It was a question that tore even the last shred of his pride to pieces.
Thalia steeled her reddened eyelids and glared up at him.
"My decision hasn't changed."
So please—stop asking.
She swallowed the plea that had risen as far as her throat. His hand slid down the nape of her neck. Thalia flinched and went rigid.
As though putting her to some test, Barcas fixed a cool stare upon her face while his fingers traced the cold-sweat sheen of her skin, then settled on the topmost button at the hollow of her chest. He lingered there a long while, as if granting her time to refuse, before slowly, slowly working the loop free.
At last the front of her dress parted, and the soft swell of her cleavage was laid bare.
His blue eyes, sunk deeper than usual, settled over it. It felt as though her heart might shatter her ribs and burst free of her body at any moment.
Biting her lip against the shame, Thalia seized his wrist the instant his hand descended toward the second button.
"The lights—put them all out."
He stood motionless, merely looking down at her. Under a gaze that seemed to see straight through to the cowering truth inside her, Thalia raised her voice.
"Didn't you hear me?"
Only then did Barcas rise and extinguish the candles placed about the room.
A dense shadow fell across the chamber, and his outline grew faint. But it was not dark enough to satisfy her.
She pointed her chin toward the fireplace.
"That too."
The man who had been watching her in silence approached the hearth and lowered the cover.
At last a thick, clinging darkness swallowed the room whole. Thalia drew a deep breath and wrung out a suppressed voice.
"Now… come here."
But no sound of movement reached her.
Scanning the dark with dilated pupils, Thalia parted her lips in a pitiful whisper.
"Barcas… wh-where are you?"
As the silence stretched on, a choking sensation grew stronger and stronger.
Had he left her behind and vanished?
Despair closed around her. She was gasping roughly for air when one side of the mattress dipped.
The moment she found his shadow, Thalia thrust out her hand in desperation.
There was no strength left for dignity. She flung her arms around his long, taut neck and drew in his scent as though it were air itself. She had to be certain she had not been abandoned alone in this blackness—that he was still with her.
"Hold me. Right now."
Only when the fit of panic had begun to subside did she manage to force the words against his ear. The man who had gone rigid as stone laid her back upon the bed.
Thalia looked up with finely trembling eyes at the black shadow hanging over her. Onto skin gone cold as ice, a hand of startling heat came to rest.
She startled and tucked her chin as his fingers closed on the front of her dress—and in that same moment the skirts were rucked up above her waist.
Realizing he meant to strip her, Thalia cried out hysterically.
"N-no! Don't take them off!"
The dark shape above her head went still in an instant.
Thalia gripped his wrist and added in a rush,
"Just do it with the clothes on."
"…Are you telling me to rape you?"
A rough voice rang against her ear.
Thalia barely managed to swallow the sob clawing its way up her throat.
"It isn't rape. It's just… just the way I want it. That's all."
Without the heavy folds of the dress to hide her body, she did not think she could endure his touch at all.
She swallowed the rest of the thought and pulled at his shoulders with every ounce of strength she possessed. Barcas went rigid for a moment, then exhaled a ragged breath and came down over her.
A wet tongue forced its way between her lips. She drew the flesh in deep, as if by long habit, until it seemed ready to pierce her throat, and a scorching breath filled her lungs.
It felt as though she were inhaling flame. Dizzied by the heat, she pulled his neck harder—and felt a large hand work its way between her thighs.
Fearing that hand might brush her legs, Thalia hurriedly parted her knees. Long, firm fingers settled at once upon the most sensitive place. In that instant an unexpected wave of revulsion climbed her spine.
She spat out his tongue and gave a small, rapid shake of her head.
"Th-that—I don't like that. Don't."
"If I don't ease you open, you could be hurt."
A coaxing murmur scattered against her ear.
Thalia shook her head more violently.
"I-it's fine, so just do it."
"…Not until you're ready enough."
Murmuring the words low against her ear, Barcas began to move his fingers with deliberate slowness.
Thalia's belly twitched; she drove her nails into the marble-hard plane of his shoulder. Every pore in her body seemed to open, and cold sweat ran in streams.
The thought that he was touching the filthiest part of her was unbearable. The truth was she had never wanted him to know that such an ugly place even existed on her body.
Trembling, Thalia soon lost what little patience she had left and pressed him in a rough voice.
"Th-that's enough. It's enough, so… just do it."
"Not yet."
"I don't… want to wait any longer. Hurry and do it."
If he drew this out any further she might lose her grip on consciousness entirely. She was on the verge of saying so when she felt the solid muscle sheathing his body contract all at once.
A moment later came the sound of a belt being undone, and a tightly cinched waist settled between her thighs. Thalia drew every sinew taut as a bowstring.
A heavy pressure gathered below. Instinctively she tried to pull her hips back, but the force only grew more extreme.
The sensation of something crushing inward through her belly made her mouth fall open of its own accord. No scream came. Like a fish hauled onto dry land she worked her lips soundlessly, then rolled his name over the tip of her tongue.
Barcas. Barcas. Barcas.
With the desperation of a drowning person clutching at a scrap of straw, she repeated his name again and again—and still he pushed deeper.
At the pain of a body being torn, a raw sob finally broke free. Hearing it, Barcas at last halted his advance.
In eyes grown accustomed to the dark, a face appeared faintly—the face of a man enduring something terrible.
In that moment a pain that surpassed any torment of the flesh pressed down upon her chest. More than the act of being invaded, that expression—as though he were suffering some ordeal—hurt a hundred times worse.
Thalia crushed the sob that had clotted in her throat and bit down hard on her lip.
Please don't frown.
Don't look at me like that—like you hate this.
The words circled endlessly inside her mouth before she forced them down. The man whose gaze had gone pale slowly drew his hips back.
Realizing he meant to stop, Thalia clung to his back with stubborn ferocity.
"No. Don't stop here."
There is no need to feel wretched. No need to suffer. I am only using him for my own purpose.
Repeating the thought to herself, Thalia lifted her hips through the pain.
The loosened joining deepened again, and two sweat-slicked bodies tangled into one. At the same time a sound like grinding teeth reached her, and a somewhat crude rhythm began.
Thalia endured his movements with desperate resolve. Her lower belly grew steadily hotter, as though she were cradling a lump of iron fresh from the forge.
It was so strange. That a body which had always been cold as ice could burn so fiercely.
Clutching the powerful, sweat-slick frame tightly and panting for breath, Thalia absently raked her nails down the hard, swollen muscles of his back.
As the motion quickened by degrees, her vision reeled and swam.
How long was she driven and driven again on those rough currents, like a wrecked skiff adrift? The movements that had grown steadily harsher at last reached their end.