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White curls of hair brushed against the curvature of their spine.
A pair of hands, smooth yet iron-like in their grasp, secured tight around the bone of their hips; ten little red crescents glittering from the indentation of nails.
Their head was lowered, bowed down to rest against the twisted tangle of bedsheets for a beheading.
Smooth plane of their chest heaving out stifled breaths of air.
The wet snap snap snap of a witch bearing into them; each abrupt jerk eliciting high-pitched whispers of admonition.
He was taking his time, a painful denial of gratification.
A snake-like arm slithering up to rest on the back of an exposed neck.
Drawing the owner with the bronzed skin ever so closer.
Flat chest pressed taut into the spine of the apprentice.
Let me hear you beg for it.
The whisper was in their ear, graciously cruel lips pressed to the shell; gently flittering out between a viper’s smile.
The witch had won.
Breathing in that sultry air, the deliberate pace a quick crescendo into relief, the white knuckled grip tightened.
Meticulous, skillful fingers winding into their hair and pulling.
Back back back until something wanted to break.
Either the roots of keratin or the writhing pressure against friction.
Agonizingly steady.
The witch’s amethyst eyes fluttering shut, voracious smirk against the flushed red of his cheekbones.
He did little but let out a sigh, ruffling the strands of hair on the back of the apprentice’s neck, and it was all over.
A short-lived injection of heat.
Searing and hot, then immediately cold.
Cold like the empty space when he withdrew.
Cold as if he’d been holding a corpse.
And it startled him into wakefulness. Blood pounding through his ears and a damp mark on the front of his shirt suggesting nightmares.
Phantom memories.
There was no body resting beside him; dappled in love bites and shrouded in one of the witch’s own cloaks.
Only a dripping candle and a dreary malaise pressing into his shoulders.
They were sleeping in the other room.
Safe; secure; alive.
If he had to be haunted in the remaining years of his life – day or night by illusion, desire, memory – it was better than living without them.
Even if he had to stifle those thoughts, and guard them under lock and key.
.
.
.
Even if it drove him mad in the end.