Theo and Sandra

I walk back to the hallway once she's gone and find it empty. I walk through my open bedroom door and find Theo sitting shaken in my arm chair, next to the brick mantle he was pounding into me against the other day.

"So. What do you think about yourself now?"

He looks up at me, and his eyes aren't one bit back to normal. "What was that supposed to do?"

I make to sit on the edge of my bed, but with those eyes tracking my every move, I feel hunted. I shove my hands in my pockets.

"I overloaded your system with our combined... whatevers, and let you do what you would with it. And determined..." his eyes are piercing me, and I feel myself calling to him. "You're more of a lover than a fighter."

"What if I'd decided to fight?" He stands and lifts the hem of his shirt over his head. My eyes fall to the naked waist and arms, sweep over his chest and shoulders. Sturdy.

"Then we would've fought," I answer, wanting to move closer to the bed but thinking it better to stay still so he doesn't grab me up and put us in the same exact situation as before.

"Who would've won?"

"We can find out next time if you want," I offer, taking my hands out of my pockets to receive him. He wraps his arms around me, and I fight the urge to connect with him again. Amazingly, I can feel the lines within him pulling and coaxing at mine.

"Open up," he tells me. His eyes are ever dark and focused, and I wonder if he's still in control.

"Let's get to the bed," I suggest, stepping back just for him to dog my steps and wrap around me again. "Come on, Theo, and we can stay there all day."

He follows me, never letting his arms draw more than an inch away from my body. When my legs hit the bed he sinks down to the floor and my clothes start disappearing at an insane speed. I fall back naked, his tongue diving into me before my back even touches the comforter.

"Open yourself to me," he demands, lapping at and soaking everything he touches.

I feel my own sense of pride flare at the commanding tone of his voice, and feeling steadier than last time I push back against his insistent threads all the while moaning at the nip of his teeth at my skin.

"Fucking bossy," I snap, grabbing the base of his ponytail in my hands and drawing him as close as possible to my center.

He bites, harder, and I mutter into the still air. "Are we doing this again, Sandra? Remember what happened last time?"

He traces a hand up my side to cup my right breast, then runs damp fingers over my bottom lip.

"Just let me in. We don't have to fight about it. Let me make you feel good. Don't you want to feel that again?"

I rub the side of his face and look down into his eyes, torn between letting him have his way and maintaining some sense of control. But I realize, he gave up control the first time I asked to hold his hand. He never asked for it back, even though what we've been doing has had him raging against himself and his history.

I just drop my barriers like a veil and lay there, open and waiting. Physically, Theo starts rising up over me, a hand palming my pussy like he's keeping it calm.

The threads of him are hesitantly prodding around mine like a dog sniffing at the base of a tree, and when he tentatively sends a few thin cords to wrap around mine we spasm together.

I try to hold still as he enters me, but I think I'm already riding that first crest, unable to make but a few pleasured grunts. As our lines spiral together and blend, he holds my hips still, his body shaking above me.

"Sandra."

It takes me several long moments to come back to him. He draws back and sinks into me, and I moan luxuriously.

"Do you want me?" His hips stutter, and I know neither of us have much longer.

I feel my limbs tighten up and squeeze myself over his thrusts. "Every fiber of me wants you, yes."

He crushes me with the weight of his body and draws me in for a kiss, and all I see from there is dark and beautiful.

...

"Mmm."

"Yeah? Am I heavy?"

"Beyond heavy, baby. I wanna breathe."

Theo grunts, rolling off of me and dragging me fully onto the bed. Our lines are still connected, embracing quietly and contently. The brown has bled back into his eyes, and I stare into them, worn and satisfied.

"Thank you for letting me in," he says, situating our bodies so that I'm turned into him with a leg over his hip. We're still connected in a much more tangible way as well.

"We're going again?" I ask, pleased. He promised an again, and another again.

"This time, I want our... lines? I want our lines separated." He's rubbing circles into the still-spasming parts of me, and I roll my body over his fingers.

"Oh. Why?"

"Because I want to hear YOU say you want me while I'm fucking you."

I stare at him, and he shrugs. "I can't explain it."

"Well. Okay," I respond, mentally loosening my part of the embrace. Theo is still wrapped tight up in my essence though, and I feel my eyes glaze over with the strength of him.

"Theo, do you know how to let go? You're still, uh.... with me."

He shifts under my leg. "Oh, shit. Lemme see."

"Just, imagine you're pulling threads of yourse- FUCKIN GODDAMNING SHIT-"

Theo is on me in a flash, both his arms around me and his essence cleaved to mine, caressing the spots where he uprooted them from me. "Sandra, Sandra, are you okay?! What'd I do??"

I'm breathing rapidly, reeling from his inexperienced retraction. "You don't want to, do it that, fast," I bite out, his worried face hovering over mine. His eyebrows crumple in distress.

"I'm so sorry, Sandra. I haven't been able to do anything right, and you just keep getting hurt because of me."

I try to sit up, but Theo presses me down into the mattress sternly. "Are you okay?" The beast still wrapped within me asks the question with as much concern as he does.

"Theo. It's okay. You didn't know." Only when I give up squirming under him does he sit back up.

"How do I do it right?"

"Well... imagine your lines as vines wrapped around the trunks of mine. You want to slowly and carefully loosen the grip of all your lines from around mine and pull back. If you snatch them, you pull on the other person's... nervous system? Nerve endings? I never paid much attention to what my mother called it, but it fucking hurts."

"I'm sorry."

I grab his face and draw his head down to my chest, ear pressed against my sternum. "You hear that?"

His shoulders sag as he holds his massive head to my damp breasts, listening to the content, if slightly accelerated, beat of my heart.

"It's okay, Theo. I'm alright. We're alright." I stroke his head and shoulders, cradling him as I feel his threads slip sluggishly away from mine. It makes me shiver with cold, even though the man himself is still wrapped around me.

When we're separate again, he lifts himself up and off the bed, the excitement of the moment now gone and replaced with an air of caution.

"I'm sorry about the first time," he says, looking solemnly into my eyes. "I'm sorry I left you like that... the whole thing. What I was trying to force you to say."

I lean my head back against the mattress. "I'm not sorry at all. You fucked me good, even though I wanted to murder you when you left."

He looks over at me, curious and uncomfortable. "Even though I, uh... I had you by the throat for a bit."

"Yeah?" I feel a smile creeping onto my face, and I ease one of my legs over to the other side, wriggling around under his gaze and feeling the swollen, wet, well-used lips between my legs slide against each other.

He can't take his eyes off of me, even with the very evident caution plastered across his face.

"You know, I woke up sore too. Felt like you fucked me with a kettlebell. The next day, I'd just run my hand over my pussy and be reminded of you fucking me against that wall."

His face is priceless, jaw slack, and I'm drowning in power, one hand sliding across my own throat.

"Getting fucked in the throat and trying not to beg you to let me cum... that was the best part."

Any degree of hesitation he had is discarded as he climbs back up over me and removes my hand on my neck to put his own there. "Fucking filthy mouth, Sandra. You like when I treat you like a whore?"

I just nod eagerly under the pressure of his tightening fingers, temporarily pinned to the bed as he adjusts himself back over me. I feel his second hand sweep down and palm my ass, and I moan in approval.

"Always flouncing around, begging me to fuck you with your eyes. I've pictured making you my bitch in every room of this house. Out in the fucking front yard. Out in the woods where you hightail your ass when you need to get away from how bad you want to cum on my dick. Everywhere."

"I need you."

His hand loosens around my throat, and I try to calm the movement of my body, realizing my hips are slowly circling around the empty air in anticipation.

"I'm not sure you mean that." Theo examines my eyes, and I wait for the disappointment to appear in his. It doesn't. He plunges unseen fingers into my pussy and I shiver under him, before he sets me to trembling.

"I need you, Theo, please. Please be with me. Take it?"

His breath hitches as he maneuvers over me, fingers never leaving my body for a second. I grit my teeth as a small wave of pleasure crests and crashes over me.

"I want you to just take it," he warns me, lining up. "I want you to be grateful for whatever I let you have."

I nod frantically and my eyes shut with the sensation of my pussy fitting around him again. "Thank you, Theo, fuck. Fuck."

"I am," he chuckles darkly. He clasps his hands over mine and draws my arms straight over my head, bringing my back to a strained arch and the head of his dick almost uncomfortably against the inside of me. Guess he has a favorite position. I writhe against the twinge of discomfort and am surprised to feel it turn to a hazy painful pleasure. It might be my favorite, too.

I don't have time to dwell in it; he starts laying into me, and the first sound out of my mouth is a whining moan. I push my palms against his hands, suddenly waylaid by his rocking, damning thrusts. All I see is the urgent expression on his face, the sweat beading and casting a sheen across his neck and chest.

This I focus on while my mind is turned inside out and displayed before me, dazzling abstract shapes spinning in my empty head as I feel his hips meeting my flesh even harder.

"Let go, Sandra. Just let me fuck you. Let me show you," Theo instructs. "I need.... ohhh, fuuuuck."

My body fights under his as his hips jerk, and he lays his whole body over mine to stop the writhing and, I can't help but think, to make sure that not one drop escapes. The idea makes me flex around him, and he shoves me down further into the mattress, cursing.

I'm murmuring gibberish to him, stroking the back of his head as he lays his forehead in the center of my chest.

"This could kill me," he says, wheezing.

I smile and chuckle silently, causing his head to bob up and down on my chest. "Maybe we should stop, then."

He lifts his face to me, and the solemnity in his makes the humor in mine fall. "I could die tomorrow and it'd be worth it, Sandra."

And I believe him.

...

The only bad thing about being in a relationship with Theo is how much my work progress slows down. Instead of doing all-nighters in front of the sewing machine, or locking myself up for a quick week-long project, I'm spending my nights -- and more often than I'd expect, my days -- moaning, usually crushed underneath him or pinned against a wall. Although I think it's an even trade. Probably significantly more than even.

We come home from the Saturday farmer's market one week, after he's spent the last few days on a work trip in the district over, and he has yet to ask whatever question I know he's had on his mind since before he left.

"You wanna talk, Theo. Talk," I advise him in the comfortable silence, pulling a bundle of greens out of the canvas bag I carried in.

"Huh?"

"You've had something to say to me for the past week and a half, it feels like, and we should deal with it while we're cooled off."

He sets the honeydew melons from the cart in the hall down on the counter. They're small, but guaranteed to be tooth-achingly sweet.

"You didn't want to wait until I was ready to say something?"

I consider this. "Well, you don't have to say anything if you don't want to. But I hate living in suspense."

He nods, leaning back against the counter. "I love you."

It's one thing to know it when he looks at me, but something else entirely to hear him say it. I just clutch the last bundle of mustard greens in my hands and wait for him to make his demand.

"Sandra."

"Yeah?"

"I just told you I love you."

"You did. You did. Fuck," I whisper, placing the bag down behind me and rushing forward to him, placing my hands on the sides of his face for a tender kiss. He covers my hands with his own, thumbs idly brushing over my wrists.

"Eventually, baby, I want you to say you love me."

There it is. I stall, just like a car, before my brain jumps back into function. "How long has it been? Since you've felt this way."

"For a while now," he laughs. "I think you love me too, or care about me. But," he says, looking down at our hands. I watch the faintest line of concern appear between his eyebrows. "If it's not like that for you, I'll still make love with you. I just don't know how long I can do it, without... You know what, just tell me and we'll go from there."

"Okay. I..." I'm about to pull a bitch move and say something cowardly like I have love for him. But it's not the truth.

I grip his hands tighter. "I want you." It's not an answer, not yet. Theo searches my eyes, and I'm afraid that if I let him hold my gaze too long, frustration will seep into his. Or worse, amusement.

"You don't love me?"

I do. Oh. I do.

"I...m..." His eyes are swallowing mine. I feel his lines reaching out for mines like a hand, and I don't know what to do.

He steps away, and I want to snatch him back.

"You never say what you have in those eyes, Sandra. I'll be..." He's swallowing back tears, and I want to kill the person doing this to him. Me. I want to kill myself.

I do love him. I can't say it. The words won't leave my mouth. I watch him take the porch steps almost in one leap, and I can feel the tears on his face, can feel stray ones hit the dust over the gravel on my land.

"Theo."

A word leaves my mouth, unbidden. I'm frozen in the middle of the doorway now, disoriented.

"Theo. Theodore."

And now I literally can't move. He's walking, entirely off my property now, and I want to sink to my knees and become the road under his feet.

I cast lines to him. I don't know how many.

...

"Sandra."

There's frantic huffs and panting above me, and a flurry of hands across my head and neck. My upper body is cradled very uncomfortably in an upright position.

"Sandra? Can you hear me? I need to call somebody. God. Fuck this," Theo continues, jostling me back down to the ground.

And I still can't move. I hear the dialing, the ringing, I hear the psychopath pick up and croon a greeting into his ear. I want to snatch the phone out of his hand, and I want to crush the screen between my teeth.

It takes her about an hour to get to my front porch. By then, Theo has me under a light sheet on the bed, and I'm burning with rage and worry. I can't cast anything. I know this is her magic, and I don't know the purpose of it but I know I would hide Theo if I could.

He leaves me to go let her in, and in a moment I hear the measured footsteps coming up to my bed. The cool hand to my forehead does nothing to assuage my anger.

"She's seething," my mother says, a grin coloring her words. "Can you feel it?"

"What's wrong with her? Is she going to be okay? I left the house and she, I guess she called me back, and I turned around to her just on the floor. What can I do?"

A beat of silence. "Oh, how could she not fall in love with you? Go get me a pot of water from the faucet, love."

Another beat of silence. "And I'll explain what's happening, how's that?"

Does he not want to leave me with her? The silence continues, and eventually my mother sighs. "Fine."

She takes her hand off my head and I hear footsteps towards the kitchen. I refuse to acknowledge that her touch had been welcome. Theo takes my limp hand and squeezes it, and I desperately want to squeeze back. I've seen him worry over the littlest things, and I just want to sit up and soothe the agitated twitching in his shoulders that starts up whenever something is bothering him.

"This should do it." The click of footsteps again, and the hollow, sloshing sound of water in a saucepan. I know what she's about to do, and I can't even move my body to brace for it.

The contents of the pan are upended on my head, and my eyes finally snap open. I let my body constrict and cough as I lament over having to prop my heavy-ass mattress against the wall to dry after I finally get everybody out of my fucking house.

"The hell?! Sandra!" I'm yanked halfway off the bed, away from the grinning witch. Theo hoists me higher in his arms, and I let him, laying limp and lightheaded against his shoulder. "What's wrong with you, lady?"

My mother doesn't answer him, but peers down at me, hand on her cocked hip, swinging the dripping pan around by its handle. "Hey, sweetheart."

Theo's almost trembling with anger, I realize, as I adjust in his arms. His grip is iron tight, and he's showing no signs of letting go.

"Theo? Baby, let's go to the kitchen table and all sit down. She probably has some bullshit explanation."

My mother laughs. "I always do, Sandra. Come, young man, release my daughter. I'm too fond of her to cause her any harm."

She prances out of the room and starts knocking things around in the kitchen, and I sigh. "I dunno exactly why yet, but she cast a paralysis spell on me. She knew you'd call. Come on, baby."

"Yes, baby, come on!" We hear from the kitchen. Theo almost growls, gripping my hand.

She's at the counter making broth with the abundance of vegetables I always have now, due to Theo being over almost every day. I sit, and Theo follows suit, sullenly. I grab his hand, but his fingers remain slack in mine.

"We have a few things to discuss, don't we?" She brushes the last of the hastily-chopped vegetables into the bubbling pot from the chopping board, then slides gracefully into the chair across from us. The same seat Theo was in when I first tested his lines.

"How and why did you cast that on me?"

She plunks her head in her hand, a gleam in her laughing eyes. "Determining potion I had you drink when you were nine."

Theo makes a sound next to me, and I squeeze his hand.

"Wha- okay. Why."

"So I could meet your partner, of course."

I feel my eyebrows furl. "Ma. Come on. This isn't twenty questions."

She's silent for a moment, but there's no crease of worry or remorse in her satiny skin. "No one cares for suspense these days, do they?"

"Ma if you don't come out with an explanation I'm not coming over for your birthday."

"An antibiotic I crafted for you when you got sick right before your tenth birthday, with that awful cough that just shook your little body to bits. Remember?"

I nod. She spent hours making it bright blue because that was my favorite color at the time. Memories like those are the reasons I still make sure to call her every few days.

"I figured I'd add something extra, just for my own peace of mind." She sits forward, and only then does Theo's hand come alive in mine, curling warm and tight around my fingers. "When your partner is determined, by you, you're... placed on hold, I suppose. And I'm... alerted."

"But you didn't know when I called you," Theo interjects.