Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (13 page)

             
The smile bloomed on my lips and I didn’t let my eyelids lift, although I could sense he had approached me more than before. Exhaling noiselessly, Cardew bent closer above my shoulder, and his warm endearing breath played in my hair, tickling my skin with it barely perceptibly.

             
The breath I managed to take was sharp and shallow – the obsessive bewildering scent his hair and skin were radiating was wrapping me into haze of enchantment, my heart was restlessly throbbing in uneven leaps, and I was sure that he could perceive it in the uneasy pulsation of the blood in my veins as his hand lightly caressed my neck as though to turn my head in his direction.

             
I glanced at him through my half-closed eyes to send him a warning that was meant not to inspire awe but to attract, and the heated sparks of anticipation and vivid yearning roaring into his gaze the darkness was turning pale-gray like scattered clouds mightily intensified, the explosion of emotions I could feel inside him so overwhelming that it was taking my breath away...

             
Excitement blasted inside me suddenly and briskly in such a fiery unstoppable detonation that in the first moment when Cardew’s lips tenderly glided onto mine, I was so stunned and overpowered by that feeling that I couldn’t determine if the contact was real or made up by my too lively imagination. However, when he reinforced the kiss and his satin-soft lips fixed more strongly onto mine, all my perceptions merged into one another, and I eagerly followed the instinct of the craving burning inside me...

             
My fingers pulled Cardew closer towards me and buried in the warm caressing crimson of his hair, while his hand slid down my back and ascended again, that time under the cloth of my shirt. His kisses were raining on me fiercely, with subtle but perceptible soft aggression, like berserk flashes of lightning in an extremely violent storm, but more lasting, lingering inside the surface of my skin itself, and filling me with thousands of thrills I was thirstily relishing.

             
Maddeningly imperceptible and utterly powerful at the same time, Cardew’s prolonged kiss was rendering me insane; slight, then insistent and uncompromising, the pressure of his lips onto mine was reaching towards the edge of cruelty, then softening to melting tenderness, and passing far beyond all limits...

             
I managed to take another breath just when his endearments scattered their sweetness down my neck and to the shoulders and thus gave me the chance to inhale. With an enslaving gesture, Cardew pushed me lightly to lay my head back on the elbow-rest of the massive stone bench, but it was then when I came to my senses enough to be able to control myself, and my fingertips pressed to his lips so as to block his enthusiasm and make him stop.

             
For a moment, Cardew froze motionlessly, and as I had unconsciously slipped down on my back to a lying position and he had lowered above me, I could see his silhouette sharply outlined against the overcast dark sky, the rare stars peering from among the clouds casting surreal bluish halo over his sinister-red hair.

             
A whole endless second passed while Cardew and I, having fixed unbending gazes at each other, were waiting for one of us to surrender, the furious tension in both electrifying the air around...

             
And then he lost his patience.

             
His hands clutched my shoulders in a sudden rough attack, and – without any intentions to play merciful and let me go – he tried to pin me helpless down to the cold stone surface and restrict my movements completely.

             
With low dark chuckle, I drove my long sharp nails into the sides of his arms above the elbows, and pressed deeply, forgetting the meaning of the word mercy as well as he had; the cloth of his shirt quickly coloured up in lively precious blood which spread onto the fabric in uneven spots seeming ink-black into the nocturnal darkness.

             
Cardew growled silently – not so much from the pain as of irritation with my disobedience and proud wrath – and his grip on me violently tightened more just out of spite. Nonetheless, my hands quickly locked around his neck, my nails barely touching his skin but threateningly set to drive into it, and involuntarily leaving on his throat marks of his own blood I had already shed.

             
“Don’t underestimate me,” I grinned victoriously as his hands, having quickly let go of my shoulders, gently caressed my hair in supposedly disarming seductive way. “You can’t have believed that you could force me, did you?”

             
“A foolish mistake,” Cardew confessed fast and pulled back, already looking normal and helping me up from where his passion had flung me. “You had blinded me –”

             
“You get carried away too easily,” I observed, graciously not implying all the irony I was capable of, as the bloody stains on his sleeves were making me feel a bit guilty... Alright, a lot. “Did I hurt you seriously?”

             
Cardew smiled without mocking me – I could sense the slightly twisted pride of his own heroism the annoyingly painful wounds I had given him were hallowing him with – and he shook his head, although the bloody stains on his clothes were speaking – rather shouting – for themselves; however, he hadn’t demonstrated even the hint of fear, not for a single moment, although I could have easily – if not deprived him of the ability to live by revengefully driving my long nails through the fragile construction of his neck, then at least cast him into lasting fluid boiling pain by cruelly tearing his soft skin there...

             
“Now you want me to prove I’m alright by taking my shirt off or what?” he chuckled negligently at my examining gaze, and I somehow managed not to burst into laughter as his hand too readily reached to undo the uppermost button.

             
“Of course no!” I flicked his fingers to both prevent him from becoming more scarcely dressed in front of me, and to punish him for relishing the idea itself, but – maybe not only due to the vague sense of guilt inside me – I brush-hit his hand so caressingly gently that his content smile clearly showed me the contact had been purely pleasurable for him; my arms fiercely went akimbo as I tossed my hair back to comically play indignant. “You know what, your imagination works faster than your mind.”

             
“It’s not my fault that you attract me so much,” the boy defended himself innocently as we were walking together back to the inside of the town.

             
“Oh, poor little one,” I laughed with scorn and, suddenly irritated beyond the border of jokes, turned my back on him and hurried forwards. “Then don’t hover around me if you feel so much endangered!”

             
“What?!” it was Cardew’s turn to burst into chuckling while effortlessly adapting to a faster step to catch up with me. “You think you are danger to me?”

             
Filled with stinging rage and offence, I stopped sharply, turning to face him; I was planning numerous evil plots to revenge on him, but – as we were already just in front of my hostel and I so much needed to stay alone to think through everything that had happened, I simply chose to abandon him alone as a sign of punishment.

             
“Now listen to me carefully,” I started with frosted determination, my tone so icy that I could feel the temperature of the air fall at once. “Don’t you think that you can play with me, don’t you dare considering me weaker than yourself!” this time I was dead-serious, not even a spark of playfulness or joking anger in my tone – all the fury inside it was unfeigned. “And be sure that if you had hurt me tonight, I would have hurt you back!”

             
And – ignoring the mildly expressed surprise in his eyes – I turned towards the building and disappeared inside, without even glancing over my shoulder when he called my name several times with variously tender intonation.

             
Furious and utterly scared at the same time, I was running upstairs as fast as I could, trying to reassure myself that the silent mystifying noises I was hearing around were either imaginary or casual – and not from the steps of someone chasing me secretly into the dark scarcely lit corridors. The door of my room closed behind me with a comforting friendly click and I hurried to lock it and turn the lights on: thankfully, no bulky toothy fire-exhaling mythological monsters were clumsily lurking anywhere in the visible space.

             
Calmer as I was alone, I relaxed on the edge of my bed, covered my face with my palms, and tried not to think of anything just for a moment so as not to get frenzied.

             
What was going on with me? Why hadn’t I stopped that dangerous rivalry with Cardew immediately after I had been warned?...

             
Was I waiting to get hurt so as to mobilize myself and draw back from him?...

             
If he let me go at all...

             
‘Love –’ a tiny voice cheekily hummed inside my head. ‘He won’t let you leave him because he loves you... and you won’t even try to as you love him, too –’

             
“No!” I pronounced it aloud with fiery stubbornness and decisively jumped to my feet.

             
If he loved me, would he ever try to hurt me?

             
The kiss Cardew had given me had been perfect – amazing, inspiring, unforgettable in the most purely positive meaning of the word – just that his forceful unwillingness to pull back when I had pushed him away had stricken me with real horror. Hadn’t that move of his been a proof that he was prone to violence, and that the line between utter tenderness and destructive aggression was too blurred for him?...

             
Could I ever totally relax beside such a person, could I trust him completely and remain off guard when I was aware of how quickly and for no obvious reason he could switch from sincere affection to devastating fury and the other way round?

             
The reminiscence of the moment when he tried to gain control over me returned to my mind as though especially to remind me that things could have become far more serious; given how physically strong Cardew was, he could have squeezed me so much more fatally that my breath could have been torn apart by his willpower itself, a single movement of his powerful iron hands could have effortlessly broken bleeding my both wrists – he could have simply blocked my way to escape, and shielded his skin from my pitiful attacks, he could have forced me with ease in whatever his violent wanton imagination could have wished for…

             
He could have killed me so disturbingly easily...

             
But he let me go.

             
So, I deduced logically, then Cardew hadn’t lost control over himself: he had all the time been conducting the display of ardent aggression in his reaction and no actual outburst of inability to restrain his impulses had happened – it had been something else...

             
Which was just making him even more dangerous than I had thought...

             
Remaining comfortably sunk into the warm pulsating darkness, I exhaled without raising my head; maybe the over-proud red-haired boy had merely wanted to urge me to respect him truly, to declare his superiority in a more severe primitive way – just to dominate over me, not to hurt me…

             
At least not seriously.

             
The metallic taste of blood informed me that I had been biting my lips too severely, but I felt too benumbed to react and the drops of blood hurried down my chin with maddening tickling.

             
If Cardew’s behaviour had been a game – a harsher and rather rude joke I hadn’t understood correctly – then I had treated him unfairly, and he didn’t deserve the stinging cuts my nails had so mercilessly left onto his skin.

             
And if that aggression had been real...

             
Oh dear, I had attracted a monster!

             
A monster that was hating me...