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The first time Gale mentions it, Deia laughs. Not because she thinks he is joking. That is the problem, really. She knows him too well by then. She knows the look he gets when an idea has taken root behind his eyes, when curiosity has bitten down and refuses to unclench its teeth. He has that look now, seated at the edge of the bed in nothing but dark trousers and a half-open shirt, one sleeve slipped from his shoulder, hair loosened from its tie and falling in warm, careless waves around his face. He looks scholarly. Devoted. Mildly guilty. Dangerous combination.
“Say that again,” Deia says.
Gale clears his throat.
“I was merely suggesting that certain advanced applications of illusion and conjuration might, under mutually agreed circumstances, prove…”
His hand makes a vague, elegant gesture. Deia arches one brow.
“Prove?”
“…beneficial.”
She stares at him. Then she laughs. It is low and sudden, a little disbelieving, the sound slipping out of her before she can turn it into something sharper. She is standing barefoot near the writing desk, black silk robe loose over her shoulders, hair half-unbound and tumbling down her back in a dark river. Candlelight gilds the pale slope of her throat, the silver ornaments still caught in some of her braids, the curve of one horn shining like polished obsidian.
“Beneficial,” she repeats.
Gale’s dignity holds for approximately half a second.
“Yes. Well,” his mouth twitches. “I did consider several other words, but most of them were either too clinical or too honest.”
“Too honest?”
“Thorough.”
Her laughter stops. The room changes then. Only slightly. Only in the way air changes before a storm. A candle gives a small, trembling flare. The shadows along the walls deepen. Deia’s head tilts, and whatever amusement remains in her expression grows teeth.
“Thorough,” she says.
Gale looks up at her from beneath his lashes. There is still warmth in him, still that familiar tenderness, the softness that makes him kiss her knuckles before battle and murmur nonsense into her hair when he thinks she is asleep. Beneath it tonight runs something steadier. Darker. A confidence no longer asking whether it is allowed to exist. He has learned her. That is the thought that moves through her slowly, like a hand sliding beneath fabric. He has learned the difference between fear and hunger in her breathing. Learned where to be gentle because the body remembers pain, and where to be firm because the body deserves pleasure strong enough to overwrite it. Learned that she likes to be asked, then likes to be given no reason to regret saying yes. Learned that being careful with her does not always mean being delicate. Sometimes care means holding on. Sometimes devotion has nails.
“I would never attempt anything of the sort without your permission,” he says, voice lower now. “Nor without rules.”
“Rules,” Deia echoes, though she is already walking toward him.
“Yes.” Gale’s gaze follows her with open, helpless appreciation. “A word to stop. A word to slow. Your magic held close enough that I can feel if anything turns wrong. Mine open enough that you can pull it apart if you wish.”
She stops in front of him. Her robe slips another inch from one shoulder.
“And if I don’t wish?”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
“Then I am rather hoping you will enjoy yourself.”
Deia looks down at him. For a long moment, she says nothing. Then she reaches out and touches two fingers beneath his chin, lifting his face a fraction higher. His eyes darken at the small command, though he does not move otherwise. That is another thing she loves. How much power he can hold still. How much restraint lives in him, waiting, polished bright and sharp from years of use.
“You have been thinking about this,” she says.
Gale exhales through his nose, caught.
“A little.”
“Liar.”
“A moderate amount.”
“Gale.”
“A disgraceful amount,” he admits, and the honesty in it is so immediate, so warm beneath the wickedness, that something low in her belly tightens.
Deia smiles.
“There he is.”
That undoing thing happens to his face. The one she still does not think he knows about. As if some part of him, even now, after everything, cannot quite believe she wants the hidden edges too. The arrogance, the appetite, the cleverness turned indulgent. The man who does not only worship, but wants. He catches her wrist and turns his mouth against her palm.
“Say yes properly,” he murmurs.
Her pulse jumps. There it is. That beautiful, infuriating thoroughness. That refusal to take the shape of her desire from implication alone. Deia bends closer until her hair slips forward and curtains them both.
“Yes,” she says. “I want it. I want you. I want whatever terrible, brilliant thing you have been building in that obscene wizard mind of yours.”
His smile is slow enough to be a sin. He rises.
“Good.”
The spell begins with a kiss. That is the first surprise. Deia had expected words, perhaps. A flourish. Some elaborate gesture drawn from the vast and ridiculous theatre of Gale Dekarios’ mind, all long fingers and precise syllables, a conjuration coaxed into being by intellect before touch. She had expected the air to sharpen. The Weave to gather. That familiar bright tension that comes when magic leans close enough to breathe. Instead, Gale kisses her. Slowly, at first. His mouth finds hers with a patience that is almost insulting, given how little patience she has left. The room is warm with candlelight, amber and violet, the tower beyond the windows held in the deep velvet hush of Waterdeep at night. Somewhere below, the city murmurs to itself. Bells in the distance. Wind against glass. The soft hush of pages shifting on a desk where he had abandoned them without the slightest academic remorse the moment Deia crossed the room. His hands are at her waist. Firm. Warm through the black silk of her robe. Deia’s fingers curl in the open collar of his shirt.
“You are stalling,” she murmurs against his mouth.
Gale hums, a low sound that touches her more than it should.
“I am building anticipation.”
“You are preening.”
“Also true.”
She smiles before she can help it, and he catches the shape of it with another kiss, deeper this time, less patient. He tastes faintly of wine and ink and that impossible, infuriating confidence he has been wearing more often lately. It suits him. It makes him dangerous in a way she had not expected when they first met, when he had come tumbling out of a portal with a pretty mouth and a lecture half-loaded behind his teeth. Now he knows exactly what his mouth can do. Worse, he knows that she knows. His hands slide over her ribs. One thumb finds the bare skin beneath the loose fall of fabric and traces there, unhurried, reverent enough to make her want to bite him.
“Gale,” she says.
“Yes, love?”
“If you say one more thing about anticipation, I am going to set your curtains on fire.”
His eyes brighten.
“The blue ones or the embroidered ones?”
“All of them.”
“A grave loss for interior dignity.”
“Gale.”
He laughs, soft and pleased, then kisses the corner of her mouth.
“All right,” he says. “No more stalling.”
His voice changes on the last word. Subtle, but Deia feels it at once. The warmth remains, the affection, the teasing intimacy of him, but beneath it something steadier settles into place. His hand lifts from her waist and comes to her face, thumb resting beneath her lower lip. An invitation. A question. Her pulse answers before her mouth does.
“Tell me again,” he says.
Her eyes narrow, though heat is already spreading through her.
“You are very fond of making me repeat myself tonight.”
“I am very fond of hearing you choose,” his thumb brushes her lip once. “Humor me.”
She studies him. Candlelight moves in his eyes, brown gone molten at the edges. He is serious, despite the softness of his voice. Perhaps because of it. Whatever wicked thought he has brought to this room, whatever absurd application of advanced magic he intends to demonstrate, he will not take so much as a breath forward unless she meets him there. Deia swallows. The motion draws his gaze to her throat.
“Yes,” she says. “I want this.”
His attention returns to her face.
“This being?”
She arches a brow.
“You. Your spell. Whatever clever thing you have been dying to try while pretending you have not thought about it in exhaustive detail.”
The corner of his mouth curves.
“Exhaustive detail,” he repeats. “A fair accusation.”
“An accurate one.”
“Painfully.”
“Gale.”
He leans in, lips brushing the shell of her ear.
“Say stop, and it stops. Say wait, and we wait. Say my name like that again, and I may be tempted to forget every other language I know.”
That sends a shiver straight through her, sharp enough to make her fingers tighten in his shirt.
“Show me,” she says.
The Weave answers. It does not recoil from her now. That still catches inside her sometimes, a little blade of wonder. Magic had once treated her like a wound in the world, something to pull away from, something too raw and draconic to hold without flinching. Now it comes like a tide of light under the skin. It gathers at Gale’s shoulders, at his wrists, in the space between them, luminous and blue-violet, a language she is still learning to speak with her whole body. Gale murmurs a word. Then another. The room bends. The candles do not gutter. The books do not shift. The silken sheets stay rumpled from where he had already backed her into the bed once and she had dragged him down with every intention of ruining him. Yet something in the air changes shape. The shadows deepen. The light pulls into strands. The Weave gathers itself into a second outline behind her, bright at first, then human, then familiar. A hand, cool as moonlight, touches her shoulder. Deia stops breathing. Gale watches her face.
“Still all right?”
She does not answer at once. The simulacrum behind her is not fully flesh, though it has the suggestion of it. An echo given form. A pale-blue, spelllit mirror of Gale, his height, his hands, the shape of his mouth, his eyes luminous with the same impossible focus. Present. Controlled. Intentional. An extension of Gale’s will, Gale’s magic, Gale’s devotion made visible and scandalous and thoroughly, devastatingly unfair. Deia feels its fingers move gently along the slope of her shoulder, then still. Waiting. She exhales through parted lips.
“Oh, you arrogant, brilliant man.”
Gale’s smile turns soft with victory.
“Still all right, then.”
“Do not sound so pleased with yourself.”
“I am afraid that would require a humility I do not presently possess.”
The simulacrum’s hand slides from her shoulder to her throat, light as breath, tilting her chin toward the side. Gale steps closer from the front. His real hand closes at her waist. The two touches do not blur together. That is the worst of it. She can tell them apart. Warmth in front, cool magic behind. Human pulse. Arcane echo. Both his. Her knees nearly forget their profession. Gale notices. Of course he notices. The man notices everything when he sets his mind to a subject, and tonight she is the subject, the thesis, the entire bloody field of study.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs.
Deia’s laugh comes out unsteady.
“Already?”
“Continually.”
Then his mouth is on her again. The simulacrum’s hand turns her gently into the kiss, holding her still enough for Gale to take his time. He kisses her as if time has become obedient. As if the whole city has been persuaded to wait beyond the glass while he devotes himself to one woman and one wicked theory. The wet heat of his mouth opens her slowly. His beard drags against her skin. His tongue strokes hers with a patience that makes her want to claw through his restraint and see what waits beneath. Deia reaches for him, but the simulacrum catches one of her wrists. Not hard. Just enough. Her eyes open. Gale’s do too. There is the question again, silent and immediate. Deia tests the hold. The echo lets her feel resistance, then slackens at once when she pushes. A demonstration. A promise. Her pulse kicks.
“Clever,” she whispers.
Gale’s gaze drops to her mouth.
“I do try.”
“You are going to be impossible after this.”
“I was already impossible. This merely adds evidence.”
She laughs, and the sound breaks when the simulacrum bends and kisses her neck. Gale’s mouth follows the sound down. He kisses her jaw, her throat, the place beneath her ear that makes her grip his shoulder hard enough to bruise if he were less sturdy. The spell-echo behind her learns from him, or rather obeys him, a mirrored hunger that attends to the places he cannot reach. Its fingers slide along her arms, over the backs of her hands, up into her hair with exquisite caution around the ornaments he knows better than to disturb. Real Gale unties the robe at her waist. No hurry. That is the cruelty of him. He has become very good at patience when patience gives him power. The silk parts. Cool air touches her skin. Then his hand follows, warm palm spreading over her stomach, moving upward with a reverence that does nothing to soften the heat in his eyes. Deia’s head tips back against the simulacrum’s shoulder. The echo catches her, one arm coming around her middle from behind. Its mouth is at her throat. Gale is in front of her, watching the way she reacts to being held between two versions of him, and the look on his face is nearly enough to undo her before he has even begun. There is satisfaction there. A little wonder. A little wickedness. More than anything, hunger shaped by devotion. He looks at her as if he has been handed the privilege of worship and intends to do it thoroughly enough to leave marks on the soul.
“Do you have any idea,” he says, voice low, “how often I have imagined you like this?”
Deia’s breath catches.
“Greedy wizard.”
“Yes.”
His honesty lands in her like a spark in dry grass.
“Yes,” he says again, softer, as if savoring the word. “Very.”
The simulacrum’s hand slips beneath the silk and cups one breast, cool palm over heated skin. Deia arches before she can stop herself. Gale watches it happen, eyes darkening, and then his own hand follows the line of her body down. Warm over her waist. Her hip. The outside of her thigh.
“Stay with me,” he says.
She laughs once, breathless.
“You are literally in two places.”
“Yes,” his thumb drags over her lower lip. “And still I want your eyes.”
The words settle between her ribs, behind her teeth, low in the belly where desire has already begun to ache. She wants to mock him for it. Wants to say something cutting enough to make him laugh. Wants to keep at least one weapon in hand. Instead, she keeps her eyes on his. The reward is immediate. Gale sinks to his knees. The sight of it does something terrible to her. Gale Dekarios, pride of Waterdeep, archmage, professor, the Chosen one, beloved idiot, kneeling between her feet with her robe open in his hands and a spelllit version of himself holding her upright from behind. Candlelight limns the brown of his hair, the strong line of his nose, the almost severe concentration that comes over him when he is about to do something with immense care. He kisses her stomach first. Once. Then lower.
Deia’s fingers move into his hair. The simulacrum’s hand covers hers there, guiding rather than restraining, pressing her touch more firmly against him as if Gale knows exactly how much she likes to feel the living proof of him beneath her hand. He looks up at her from below, and there is no mistaking the command in that gaze despite his position. Watch. So she does. She watches him part the last of the silk with his hands. Watches his mouth follow. Watches his eyes darken when her lips part. Watches his composure fray at the first helpless sound she makes. He starts slow, because he is merciless, because he has learned her body’s temper and how it likes to be courted before it is conquered. The first stroke of his tongue is almost soft. The second is deliberate enough to make her thighs tense. Heat blooms hard and sudden, a wet pulse of pleasure that has her hand tightening in his hair. Gale hums against her. Pleased. The simulacrum holds her through it, cool hands steady at her ribs, her waist, one palm spread over her sternum as if feeling the thunder of her heart. Deia tries to speak. It becomes his name instead. Gale looks up without lifting his mouth.
“You smug bastard,” she breathes.
He draws back only enough to answer, mouth shining.
“Smug, yes. Bastard, only in spirit.”
Then his mouth returns, and every clever retort she has ever possessed burns to ash. There is nothing gentle about the pleasure after that, though he never becomes careless with her. That is the distinction. Gale is careful in the way a master calligrapher is careful with a blade. Precise. Intentional. Devastating. He reads every tremor, every shallow breath, every hitch in her hips when she forgets to be composed. He uses all of it. His tongue moves with a scholar’s attention and a lover’s hunger, slow when she begins to rush toward the edge, firmer when her breath turns thin, wicked when she tries to hold herself still. One of his hands grips her thigh. The other slides up, thumb circling with devastating patience while his mouth drinks down the wet heat of her. Her skin burns. Her breath breaks. Pleasure gathers so quickly it almost frightens her. The simulacrum kisses her shoulder. Its fingers find her breast again, cool fingertips teasing her nipple until Deia bows between them with a sound that would embarrass her if she had any dignity left to protect. She does not. Gale has taken custody of it.
The first climax catches her too quickly. She hates that he feels it coming. Hates that his grip tightens on her thigh just before it crests, that he knows, that he knows her, and then does exactly what is needed to send her over with a sharp, broken cry that scrapes against the candlelit quiet. The simulacrum holds her upright while her knees give, one arm firm around her ribs, its mouth pressed to her temple like a blessing offered by a blasphemy. Gale does not stop until she tugs his hair hard enough to be a warning. He pulls back at once. Her knees nearly give again from the sight of him alone.
“Still with me?” he asks.
Deia looks down at him, breathing hard.
“Unfortunately.”
“Good.”
He rises slowly, wiping his mouth with the pad of his thumb as if he does not understand the effect that has on her. Which is a lie. Gale understands perfectly. His eyes give him away. The simulacrum holds her in its arms, and then she is between them properly, Gale in front, echo behind, her back against cool magic while real hands cup her face. He kisses her. She tastes herself on him and moans into his mouth before she can stop it. Gale’s composure cracks. There. There it is. The scholar vanishes for a moment. The careful gentleman. The eloquent man with his elegant hands and his elegant vows. Something rougher shows through, still Gale, entirely Gale, freed from the polite architecture he so often builds around his wanting. His hand slides into her hair and angles her head. The kiss deepens until her breath belongs to him. The simulacrum’s mouth moves over the back of her neck. Its hands trace down her sides, gathering the robe, peeling it from her shoulders. Fabric falls. Candlelight spills across her skin. Gale looks. Just looks. The silence stretches until she feels herself flush beneath it.
“What?” she demands, because being adored too openly still makes some old, wounded part of her want to bare its teeth.
Gale’s thumb moves along her cheek.
“I love you,” he says.
It is not a distraction. It is not softness offered to blunt desire. It is desire, spoken plainly. Deia feels it lower inside her than any touch. Then his mouth curves.
“And I am nowhere near finished with you.”
Her laugh comes out breathless.
“There he is.”
“Was I missing?”
“No,” she drags her nails down his chest, feeling him shudder beneath the shirt. “But you were being terribly well behaved.”
“Ah,” his eyes gleam. “A problem easily remedied.”
The bed receives her like a wave. Gale guides her down, and the simulacrum follows, a blue-lit shadow at her back, hands beneath her shoulders, fingers threading with hers against the sheets. Gale comes over her, real and warm and heavy enough to make her body remember what it means to be anchored. The spell-echo kisses along her arm, her wrist, the inside of her palm. A strangely tender counterpoint to the way Gale’s body settles between her thighs, fingers working through the fastening of his trousers. Deia hooks one leg around him.
“Careful,” she says, though her smile ruins the warning.
He kisses the corner of her mouth.
“Never.”
“Liar.”
“Frequently.”
His hand slides down her thigh, lifting, opening her to him. The simulacrum’s touch steadies her from behind, cool fingers at her hip, mouth at her shoulder, and for a moment the sensation is too much and not enough in the same breath. Gale pauses there. At the edge. She can feel him shaking with the restraint of it. That undoing is hers.
“Look at me,” he says.
Deia does. He enters her slowly. The whole room seems to narrow around the feeling. Her lips part, but no sound comes. Gale makes one for her, low and broken against her mouth, forehead pressed to hers as he sinks in with a care that trembles on the brink of losing itself. His eyes close for half a second. Only half. Then they open again, fixed on her face as if he refuses to miss a single expression.
“Good?” he asks, voice rough.
Deia presses her heel into the back of his thigh.
“Better if you move.”
He laughs, but the sound breaks when she tightens around him.
“Demanding.”
“You like it.”
“I adore it.”
Then he moves. At first, the rhythm is deep and measured, each thrust drawn out enough to make her feel every inch of him, every deliberate return, every place where their bodies fit with almost unbearable rightness. The simulacrum holds her hands over her head, fingers laced through hers, giving her something to strain against. Its mouth moves along her throat while Gale’s hands grip her hips. The doubling of him fractures her concentration. Warm mouth at her breast. Cool mouth near her ear. Warm hands pulling her down to meet him. Cool fingers stroking the inside of her wrist. Gale inside her, solid and human and flushed with effort. Gale’s magic around her, luminous and obedient and everywhere he cannot be at once. Deia loses track of which sound belongs to which touch. That seems to please him. The next thrust turns it into something far less dignified. His face changes.
“There,” he murmurs.
“Do not start analyzing me.”
“Too late.”
“Gale.”
“Deia.”
He says her name with such heat that her eyes sting. It should not still surprise her, being wanted like this. Being known in a way that does not turn to hunger at her expense, but hunger with her at the center of it. She has been desired before. Feared. Watched. Used as symbol, weapon, monster, miracle. Gale looks at her and sees no contradiction in wanting all of her. The teeth. The claws. The temper. The grief. The softness she hides under barbs and shadow. The body that survived. The woman who returned to herself piece by piece, then chose him with both eyes open. The thought breaks something tender in her. Her hands tighten around the simulacrum’s fingers. Gale feels the shift. His rhythm falters, then deepens.
“What is it?” he asks.
She shakes her head. He slows at once.
“No,” she says quickly, hooking both legs tighter around him. “Do not stop.”
His brow creases. Deia grabs his face and kisses him hard enough to answer. He understands enough. He always does. The restraint leaves him by degrees. Gale would never truly abandon care with her. He simply lets the care grow teeth. Lets his wanting stop pretending it has to whisper. The rhythm changes, firmer now, fuller, his hips driving into hers with a confidence that steals the air from her lungs. The bed creaks beneath them. The candles tremble. The simulacrum releases one of her hands and slides its touch down her body. Its fingers find the slick, swollen place just above where she is stretched around him. Deia cries out. Gale’s head drops to her shoulder.
“Gods,” he breathes. “You feel…”
He does not finish. Good. Some things are better when language fails him. The simulacrum touches her with unbearable precision, cool fingers circling in time with the heavy movement of Gale’s body. Every stroke inside her makes that arcane touch burn sharper, brighter, as if magic itself has learned how to translate him into pleasure. Deia clutches at him, nails scraping down his back. He answers with a sound almost like a growl, and that does something wicked to her, something that makes her smile even as she is shaking apart beneath him. The echo bends close to murmur his voice against her throat, low and affectionate and obscene enough that she turns her face into the pillow to muffle the sound that tears out of her. Gale notices. Naturally.
“None of that,” he says.
His hand comes up, not to force, never that, but to turn her face back toward him with infuriating tenderness.
“I like hearing you.”
“You would,” she manages.
“Yes,” he says, with no shame at all. “I rather adore being praised for my work.”
She laughs, breathless and ruined.
“Arrogant.”
“Painfully,” he says, and thrusts into her again.
Her laugh breaks apart. Pleasure builds fast after that. Too fast. Her body still sensitive from the first time and helplessly greedy for the next. Gale feels it. Of course he does. He keeps the angle, the pace, the depth, and the simulacrum’s fingers circle her in time with him until the pleasure becomes a bright and brutal thing climbing her spine.
“Fuck,” she gasps. “There, Gale.”
Gale obeys her body with frightening devotion. Every movement becomes an answer. Every breath a vow. He drives into her with a rhythm that makes thought impossible, then slows just enough to force her to feel the fullness of him, the drag, the heat, the devastating care in the way he refuses to let pleasure turn shapeless. The simulacrum’s mouth presses to her breast, cool tongue flicking over her while its fingers work lower. Deia hears herself. Cannot stop hearing herself. Cannot stop. Gale’s gaze drops to her face.
“Oh,” he murmurs. “There.”
Deia hates him a little for sounding so pleased. Then he stops. Her eyes fly open. For a second she cannot process the absence of motion. Gale is still inside her, still hard, still breathing like the effort of restraint is killing him, but he has gone utterly still. Her voice comes out wrecked.
“Gale.”
His eyes are dark, almost black in the candlelight.
“I know.”
“You cruel little scholar.”
That smile again. Then he pulls out. Before she can curse him properly, his hands are under her hips, lifting her. The simulacrum moves with him, supporting her back as if the spell itself has become a cradle. Gale hooks her legs over his shoulders with a suddenness that knocks the breath from her. Deia barely has time to gasp before his mouth is on her again. The surprise destroys her. There is no other word for it. She breaks on the first stroke of his tongue. Her head falls back against the sheets. The simulacrum leans over her from above, one blue-lit hand at her throat, thumb beneath her jaw, keeping her open to the sight of Gale between her thighs. Real Gale looks up once, just once, and the expression on his face is so pleased, so intent, so thoroughly wicked that she makes a sound she has never made in her life. He hears it. The bastard smiles against her.
That is what undoes her. Not only his mouth, though gods, his mouth is devastating. Not only the surprise, though that had torn her composure clean in half. It is the fact that he knows he has surprised her. That he planned this. That some elegant, overeducated corner of his mind had considered how to take her apart in stages and decided that the best way was to give her pleasure, deny her, change the battlefield, and then make her surrender before she could regain her dignity. The simulacrum catches her wrists when her hands fly toward him. It holds them gently down against the sheets, giving her something to pull against, something to survive the force of it. Gale does not relent. He drinks down every tremor with devoted, wicked precision, his hands locked around her thighs, his beard scraping just enough to make her body jolt again. The echo murmurs at her ear in Gale’s voice, “Beautiful. Let go, love. I have you.”
That is what finishes her. Not the mouth, though gods, his mouth. Not the spell, though magic hums through every nerve. The words. The certainty. The impossible safety of being pushed past composure by someone who will catch every piece. She falls apart with his name torn open in her throat. Gale holds her through every second of it, hands locked around her thighs, mouth gentle only when the force of it begins to edge toward too much. The simulacrum strokes her hair back from her face, absurdly tender, a blue echo of comfort while the real man kisses the inside of her trembling knee. For a while, there is only breathing. Hers, broken. His, strained. The faint hum of magic. Deia opens her eyes. Gale is watching her. The look on his face is softer now, though satisfaction still lingers at the edges. He lowers her legs carefully, kissing each thigh before he settles over her again. The simulacrum fades back a little, still present, a cool hand resting at her side. Gale brushes damp hair from her cheek.
“Too much?” he asks.
She laughs, hoarse and helpless.
“You are asking that now?”
“I am nothing if not committed to timely inquiry.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” she drags him down by the nape of his neck. “I really don’t.”
He kisses her, slow and sweet, and she feels him smile into it. The sweetness lasts until he presses back inside her. Deia’s breath catches against his mouth. He groans, and this time there is no cleverness in it. His forehead drops to hers, eyes closed, body trembling with the effort of holding himself together. The simulacrum’s hand slides over his shoulder from behind Deia, pale-blue fingers briefly overlapping with her own where she grips him. The sight of it is strangely beautiful. Gale surrounded by his own magic and her hands. Deia surrounded by his body and his spell. Them, making devotion into something physical enough to sweat, to bite, to bruise, to laugh into.
“Stay with me,” he says again, rougher this time.
“I am.”
“Eyes.”
“Bossy.”
“Attentive,” he corrects, and moves.
The rhythm returns slower than before, deeper than before, every thrust a dark tide drawing her under. Deia is still too sensitive. Her body trembles around him, pleasure raw and bright along every nerve, and Gale feels that too. He bends his mouth to her shoulder, kisses there once, then bites softly enough to make her gasp. The simulacrum’s hand moves between them again. Deia’s nails dig into Gale’s back.
“Gods.”
“Yes,” he says against her skin. “That’s it.”
The cool touch does not enter where Gale already fills her. It does something worse. It circles the wet heat stretched around him, grazes the place where they are joined, then moves higher with almost cruel precision. The combination makes her body clench around him. Gale loses a sound into her throat. It is not elegant. It is not composed. Deia loves it viciously.
“There,” she says, half-command, half-plea. “Again.”
Gale smiles against her mouth, breath ragged, and does it again.
“You wanted more,” he says.
The words are rougher than usual. She nearly sobs from the pleasure of them.
“Yes.”
His hand tightens at her hip.
“Then take it.”
So she does. She takes the pace, the pressure, the dizzying fullness, the echo’s mouth against her breast, the terrible sweetness of Gale watching her come apart as if every sound is a spell he means to memorize. She takes him with her legs locked around his waist and her hands in his hair and her teeth against his lower lip when he bends too close. She takes the warmth of him, the weight, the rasp of his breath, the way his control becomes something visibly strained and glorious. She takes the fact that he is still holding back. That might be the cruelest thing. Not much. Not enough to make her feel handled like glass. But enough. Enough that she can feel the tension in him, the reins drawn tight, the care braided into every harsher stroke. Deia cups his face with both hands.
“Gale.”
His eyes meet hers at once.
“I am here.”
“I know.” Her thumb brushes his cheekbone. “More.”
Something flashes across his face. Hunger, yes. Concern first. Always that.
“Deia.”
“More,” she repeats, softer this time, her voice turning molten around the word. “I want you to stop treating your want like it needs to apologize.”
His breath catches. There. She has found the wound beneath the wickedness. For a moment, neither of them moves. Even the simulacrum stills, cool mouth resting against her shoulder, spelllit hands gentle at her ribs. Gale looks at her as if she has reached into his chest and closed her fist around the last trembling thread of fear. Then his expression changes. The arrogance does not vanish. The tenderness does not either. They become one thing, fused and luminous and dangerous.
“My love,” he says quietly, “that is a perilous request.”
Deia smiles, all teeth.
“Good.”
The next thrust steals the smile from her mouth. Gale does not become reckless. He does not lose the shape of care. He simply lets himself want her with the full, unhidden force of it. His hands grip her hips and pull her down to meet him. The bed strikes the wall once, hard enough to make a candle tremble. The simulacrum braces her from behind, one arm beneath her shoulders, lifting her enough that Gale can drive deeper. Deia cries out. Gale’s mouth finds hers and swallows the sound, then gives it back to her with interest. The rhythm turns relentless. Not brutal. Never that. But firm enough to leave her thoughtless, full enough to make her body lose track of where pleasure ends and she begins. His hair falls around both their faces. Sweat gathers at his throat. His shirt hangs open, useless, and Deia gets one hand beneath it, nails scraping down the warm, strong line of his back. He curses. The sound goes through her like lightning.
“Again,” she says, delighted and ruined.
Gale laughs once, ragged and low.
“You are impossible.”
“You chose me.”
“Repeatedly.”
“Then suffer.”
“Oh, I am suffering tremendously.”
The last word breaks as the simulacrum’s fingers press against her in time with one deep thrust, and Deia’s body tightens around him so hard his eyes close. When they open again, the look in them has gone dark and starved. She knows that look. It is the one he gets when an equation finally yields. When a spell locks into place. When he has found the exact pressure needed to undo her and is already wickedly, academically, lovingly pleased.
“There you are,” he whispers.
Deia would answer. Truly, she would. His mouth lowers to her breast, warm and hungry, while the echo’s mouth kisses the other with cool, arcane softness. The answer becomes a broken sound. Gale smiles against her skin.
“None of that dignity left, I see.”
“Fuck you.”
“Currently.”
The laugh tears out of her, helpless, breathless, and then he moves his hips just so and she clutches at him hard enough to make the laugh turn into a cry.
“Arrogant,” she gasps.
“Yes,” he looks up at her. “And adored.”
She hates that he is right. She loves that he knows. The next crest builds slower than the others. It comes from somewhere deeper, beneath the bright surface of sensation, beneath the slick heat and the pressure and the cool touch of magic. It gathers in the marrow. In the throat. In the raw place where Deia keeps all the things she will not say unless the dark is kind and Gale’s hands are on her. He knows. Of course he knows. His pace changes again. He stops chasing the sharp edge and begins driving into something deeper, each stroke grinding close enough to make her vision blur. The simulacrum releases her breast and slides a hand up to her jaw, turning her face toward Gale.
“Stay with me,” Gale says, breathless.
Her lashes flutter.
“Trying.”
“I know,” his mouth brushes hers. “You are doing beautifully.”
That should not undo her. It does. Her body clenches around him. Her eyes sting. Pleasure and emotion tangle so tightly she cannot separate them, cannot decide whether she wants to sob or bite or laugh or burn the whole tower down around them just to prove the fire in her has somewhere to go. Gale slows at once, misunderstanding for half a heartbeat. Deia locks her ankles at his back.
“No,” she rasps. His eyes search hers. She drags him down, presses her mouth to his ear, and says, “Don’t you dare stop.”
A shudder runs through him.
“As my lady commands.”
“Do not call me that unless you want me to get worse.”
His laugh breaks into a groan as she rolls her hips beneath him.
“I was rather counting on it.”
The simulacrum’s fingers return between them. Deia’s whole body jolts. There is too much now. Too much heat. Too much fullness. Too much Gale, warm and cool, real and arcane, laughing and groaning and watching her as if he could spend the rest of his life learning every way pleasure changes her face. The echo’s fingers circle her with maddening patience while Gale moves inside her, and the slick sounds of their bodies meeting fill the spaces between breath and candle crackle. Deia should be embarrassed by it. She is not. There is something almost holy about being this alive. Something vengeful. Something triumphant. Her body was once made into a site of violence. Now it is an altar only because she permits worship. Now pleasure is not something taken from her, but something she opens her hands around and says mine. Gale sees the moment it hits her. He always sees. His face softens for one devastating second. Then he gives her exactly what she asked for. The pace turns firmer, deeper, his hips snapping into hers with enough force to drive her up the bed. The simulacrum holds her there, cool hands wrapped around her wrists again, arms stretched over her head, while Gale lowers his mouth to her throat.
“Deia,” he says, voice gone ragged. “Love. I need…”
He does not finish. Her heart kicks. She knows what he means. He is close. The realization makes her dizzy. Gale, who has spent the whole night taking her apart with ruthless precision, is finally fraying against her. His breaths come shorter. The muscles in his arms stand tense beneath her hands. His hair clings damply to his brow. His rhythm loses its scholar’s elegance and becomes something more primal, still careful, still focused, but pulled now by need. She wants him undone. Badly. She wants the polished man broken open against her. Wants the eloquence stripped to breath. Wants to feel him lose himself because he trusts her enough to do it. Deia tightens around him on purpose. Gale’s forehead drops to hers.
“Cruel,” he breathes.
She smiles, trembling.
“Thorough.”
Something in him snaps. His mouth takes hers. The simulacrum’s fingers press down in a perfect, wicked circle. Gale drives into her once, twice, again, and the climax that tears through Deia this time feels like a storm finding shore. It does not strike. It consumes. Her back arches. Her cry breaks against his mouth. Her hands strain in the simulacrum’s hold, and the echo releases her at once, letting her clutch at Gale as the pleasure rolls through her in wave after wave. He follows her over with a sound that seems torn from the center of him, hips stuttering, body bowing over hers, one hand clutching the sheets beside her head while the other locks around her hip as if he might fall out of the world without her. The simulacrum dissolves as he falls apart. Light spills over them in blue-white threads, unraveling through the air like stars shaken loose from a torn sky. The cool hands at her wrists become mist. The mouth at her shoulder becomes breath. The whole second shape of him loosens into magic and disappears, leaving only Gale, real and trembling and heavy over her, his face buried against the curve of her neck.
For a long while, neither of them moves. The tower settles around them. Candle wax softens down silver holders. The night beyond the windows remains vast and indifferent, which is generous of it, considering what has just been done to the dignity of advanced arcana. Eventually Gale lifts his head. His hair is a disaster. His mouth is swollen. There is a mark blooming near his shoulder where she bit him without apology. Deia reaches up and touches it. He catches her fingers and kisses them.
“Still with me?” he asks.
Her answer should be sharp. Something cutting. Something about him being insufferably pleased with himself, which he is. Something about how she will never allow him to lecture her about dangerous magic again, which is also fair. Instead, she looks at him and feels, with sudden terrible clarity, the shape of her own happiness. Here. In this bed. In this ridiculous tower full of books and candles and one impossible man who loves her with his hands, his mouth, his magic, his whole overfull heart. She touches his face.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m with you.”
Gale’s expression softens so completely that it hurts. Then, because he is Gale, and because tenderness apparently cannot be allowed to stand without ornament, he clears his throat.
“I will admit,” he says, “there may be several theoretical refinements worth exploring on a future occasion.”
Deia stares at him. Slowly, she smiles.
“You are unbelievable.”
“I prefer innovative.”
“You are lucky I can barely move.”
His eyes gleam.
“A result I am prepared to accept as praise.”
Deia grabs a pillow and hits him with it. Gale laughs, bright and breathless and beautiful, catching her wrist before she can strike again. He kisses her palm. Then her wrist. Then the inside of her elbow, slow enough that the laughter begins to fade from her face.
“Careful,” she murmurs.
His mouth pauses against her skin.
“Too soon?”
Her fingers slide into his hair.
“No,” she says. “I am warning myself.”
The look he gives her then is devastating. Warmth. Hunger. Wonder. A man discovering, yet again, that love has not made him smaller. That desire has not cheapened devotion. That being wanted by her, fully wanted, boldly wanted, has returned some piece of him he thought ambition had ruined and shame had buried. He lowers himself beside her and pulls her close, tucking her against the heat of his body. No spell this time. No cleverness. Just skin and breath and the lazy, trembling quiet after pleasure has burned through them both. Deia rests her cheek against his chest. Gale strokes her hair. One pass. Then another. Reverent even now.
“You are thinking,” she says.
“A dangerous habit.”
“About the spell?”
“In part.”
She lifts her head enough to glare. He smiles, but his hand continues through her hair, slow and careful around the silver ornaments.
“And about you.”
“That is even more dangerous.”
“Undoubtedly.”
She waits. Gale looks toward the ceiling, as if the right words might be written somewhere among the rafters.
“I spent a long time believing magic was the only way I could become worthy of being loved,” he says at last. “Enough magic. Enough brilliance. Enough spectacle.”
His fingers pause at the end of her hair, then begin again.
“It is strange, discovering that magic is far better used as a way to love someone.”
Deia goes quiet. Her hand rests over his heart. Outside, the city breathes beneath the night. Inside, the candles tremble softly, their light gilding the curve of his throat, the dark spill of her hair over his shoulder, the sheets tangled around them like the aftermath of some private storm. She leans up and kisses him. Because she can. Because he is here, warm and alive beneath her mouth. Because he knows how to touch her without making her feel taken from herself. Because she had once believed desire could only be survived with teeth bared, and somehow this man has taught her that surrender, chosen freely, can feel like victory. Gale cups the back of her head and kisses her back with aching tenderness. When she settles against him again, his arms close around her.
“So,” she says after a while. “A theory.”
Gale’s mouth curves.
“A successful one, I think.”
She hums, considering.
“Needs further testing.”
His brows lift.
“Does it?”
“Rigorous testing.”
“Repeated trials, then.”
“Obviously.”
She smiles against his skin.
“Next time,” she says, “I get to surprise you.”
Gale’s hand stills in her hair. Then slowly resumes.
“My dear,” he says, voice carefully composed and very much doomed, “I would expect nothing less.”