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There is something in his eyes.
Seraphina can’t quite place it as she looks at the man standing across from her, a smirk on his face and something gleaming in his gaze. It makes her stomach flip, the air captured from her lungs without any forewarning. She knows exactly who she is, of course she does, but that doesn’t make her any less curious.
“Percival Graves,” he introduces himself as though she wouldn’t already know.
“Seraphina Picquery,” she responds, watches as his expression widens into a smile and feels her own lips curl at the corners before she can contain it.
Their fingers touch and Seraphina, for a moment, struggles to breathe. She watches as the look in his eyes only brightens, uncontrolled and shameless in the fact.
Oh, she thinks as his thumb brushes against her wrist, this is going to be interesting.
If she were stronger willed, Seraphina wants to believe that she would be able to leave the other alone. He watches her during their classes, making no attempt to hide it, and only smirks when she meets his gaze. He is unrelenting. He is everything that she has been told not to be:
He is not kind. He is not humble. He is rough at the edges with a sharpness that makes her blood thrum hot beneath her skin. He is uncontained in a way that Seraphina only wishes she could be. He is shameless in a way that makes her toes curl within her shoes. It is everything that she shouldn't want, yet there's a part of her that needs...
Seraphina should hate him, but she finds herself giving him everything that she has to offer.
“Show me,” he demands when they’re alone. It’s too much of a risk, she knows, but she hadn’t been able to say no. She forces herself to breathe through the adrenalin that bursts through her, fingers trembling as she presses them into the palm of her hand. He wants too much. He expects too much and Seraphina still gives it to him.
“Show me!” Percival’s voice becomes a yell and, without a word, a spell is thrown towards her. It’s meant to disorientate her. It’s meant to make something within her unlock.
It works.
She throws up a shield on instinct and then she’s firing spell after spell after spell—
If she were asked if she intended to actually hurt him, Seraphina wouldn’t have an answer. She wouldn’t know what to say, but there’s a grin on the man’s face and his chest heaves as he fights back.
It’s the most fun she’s had in years.
It’s the most alive she’s ever felt.
The realisation scares her as much as it excites her.
He groans against her ear and all she can do is dig her fingers into the flesh of his shoulders, let them drag downwards. She knows that it will sting, that it will potentially leave marks, but Seraphina can’t find it within herself to care. Percival arches his back as though he cannot decide whether to press into it or squirm away.
Seraphina digs her knees into his side and makes him stay.
Percival presses his mouth against her neck and exhales, breath warm and spreading goosebumps across her skin. She wishes that she had more control in this situation, but he looks up with a question in his gaze and she wonders if he thinks the same.
Please, she wants to say, but instead she nods and Percival stutters out a noise as he allows his hips to move. Adjusts his grip on the top of her thighs, presses fingertips into places that his mouth had already left bruises. A tremble drags through her and parted lips curl into a grin again.
“Show me,” he whispers like all too many times before, but it’s different now.
She wants to tell him to earn it, but a hand drops between them, rubs circles and all Seraphina can do is gasp. She grips on harder with her knees and digs teeth against her own bottom lip, wonders if the emotion intensifying inside her chest is love or something different. She doesn’t want to know.
“Show me,” and the words are more of a beg this time and Seraphina is helpless to do anything but nod, fingers moving from his back to his hair. She’s not careful – she’s not nice – as she pulls his mouth up to cover her own. As she muffles a gasp between his lips and rocks her own hips down against his.
Percival groans against her mouth, the most vulnerable that she thinks she’s ever heard him, and it makes her head spin.
When he lays beside her, eyes soft and open, the emotion terrifies her. Fingers trace across the bare skin of her waist and Seraphina kisses him again to stop her thoughts from showing.
I love you, she wants to say, but instead she lets a hand stroke across the side of his face.