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Breathe.
They’re stuck here for the next forty-one minutes. Forty minutes and fifty seconds, now.
Inhale for four. Let’s count.
Now, hold for seven. One, two, three, four…
Exhale for eight. Good girl.
The exhale is the hardest part, the part where she feels like she might never breathe again once it’s over. But he talks her through it until her limbs have stopped shaking and the dim world comes back into focus.
She’s sitting in his lap, her knees tucked to her chest, his long legs splayed out around her. He can’t make a fire; it would use up their oxygen too quickly, but there’s a soft blue glow from some kind of fungus growing around the small circumference of the ceiling that Billy-Ray promised was safe.
Just like he promised he’d be back for them in forty-five minutes.
Valkyrie’s breath falters once more. She turns her face into Skulduggery’s chest. “You’re sure?”
And even though she doesn’t finish the question and even though her voice is muffled against the silk of his shirt, he answers, “If it wasn’t the best course of action, I wouldn’t put you through this. You’re doing very well, Valkyrie. You’re being very brave.”
She nods once, firmly, and inhales for four.
After a few minutes of slow breathing, she feels alright again—almost sleepy. She tentatively turns back toward the front of the small space, staring at the wall of dirt in front of them, the tendrils of root creeping out of the earth.
She stares at this for approximately one minute before she gets bored.
Then her eyes wander to Skulduggery’s legs, sleek pinstripe trousers, limbs spread wide to give her space. She focuses on the sensation of his chest pressed against her back, the way he’s almost tall enough to curl over her. If she settles back, she can feel the jut of his pelvis, his hip.
She shivers. She looks at his hands, settled almost awkwardly on his femurs, and reaches for them.
“Valkyrie?”
“Hold my hands?” she says innocently, and after a moment’s hesitation he turns his palms up so that she can lace her fingers through them. She runs her thumbs over the tiny bones where the base of his thumb would be and feels a tingle up her spine.
“Skulduggery,” she whispers, “I think I know what would make me feel a lot better.”
“Oh? And what would that be?”
Positioned like this, her back to him, makes it easier to be bold. “You could touch me.”
She feels his hands freeze in hers, which is funny, because she could have sworn they weren’t moving to begin with.
“Touch you… how?” he asks slowly.
She lets her voice drop low, the way her reflection has heard in those videos that the girls sometimes pass around in school. “You know.”
For a minute, silence. She thinks she’s fucked it up—not for good, obviously, but definitely for a good long while.
And then, his voice measured but deeper, lower, really low, in a way that makes her embarrassed she even tried: “Are you sure?”
For just a moment, she wishes she could see his face. Sitting here between his thighs without the usual tells—the angle of his skull, the set of his jaw—it’s impossible for her to know what he’s thinking.
All she can do is make her best guess.
“Please,” she says.
He doesn’t ask her what she wants, if she’d like to move, if she’d like to face him—just slips his hands from hers and slowly unzips her jeans before dipping his hand under the waistband. She inhales sharply, bucking her hips before she can stop herself.
“Have you done this before?” he murmurs. His voice is right at her ear, making her shiver. She’s always loved his voice, has craved it since they first met, has—against all reason—wanted to drink it, wanted it somehow inside her.
“To myself? Yes. With someone?” She pauses. “What would you prefer to hear?”
“That I’m to the first one to have you like this.” As he says it he draws a finger up through her center, from the place where she’s wettest to the place that feels most electric at his touch.
She’s mildly amused, though she has to work hard to stop her hips from bucking again. “You don’t feel guilty?”
He pauses and she could swear shes hears him tilt his head. “Do you?”
“I’m the innocent young girl,” she reminds him loftily. “I don’t have to feel guilty.”
At that, he slides his gloved hand into her underwear and presses against her hole. She barely suppresses a gasp. Then he seems to think better of it, extracts himself and peels off the glove. It’s rare that Valkyrie gets to see his fingers exposed: She feels oddly compelled to run her tongue along each delicate bone.
He tugs her panties to one side so that she can see him touching her. “What you are is a rebellious, insubortinate, troublesome… What was the word I used?”
The laugh bubbles up from deep inside her chest. “Rapscallion.”
“Rapscallion,” he says, satisfied, as he slides one long finger into her.
And oh. It never felt like this, before. Not on her own. Maybe her fingers are too small, or maybe she just didn’t know what she was doing, but this is—it’s not like how it feels when she touches her clit, either, it’s so—
“’m so full,” she whines.
He crooks his finger and she gasps.
“You’ve been thinking about this,” he says, and it isn’t a question.
She squirms.
“What did you imagine?”
“Just this,” she says honestly, letting her head fall back against his chest. From here she can just make out the angle of his jaw. “Just your fingers.”
Catching onto the plural, he immediately pulls out and then thrusts back in with two. Jesus. She’s so wet, she can see the shine on her own thighs and on him, each slick bone of his fingers catching the light.
“You’re so…” Her breath catches.
“So?”
“Hot,” she admits, even though she knows he’s going to be insufferable about this later, going to mock her in public with some double entendre when she least expects it. “You’re… you make me…” He strokes her insides, presses up, and she chokes on whatever nonsense she was going to say next.
“I wish I could do this properly,” he says wistfully, as if he doesn’t have her shaking and gasping and thrusting up into his hand.
She can barely get the words out: “What is that supposed to mean?”
He hums, bemused. “Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m—missing a few relevant parts, these days.”
The thought makes her clench up, recoil. Suddenly it hurts a little: The cavern seems to contract along with her muscles.
Skulduggery makes a soft noise and moves as if to pull out, but she grabs his wrist, shakes her head more furiously.
“Don’t stop,” she says through gritted teeth, “Don’t—please.”
His fingers remain where they are, but his movements have completely stilled. “My apologies for bringing it up.”
His tone is cool, clipped, composed—meaning she’s hurt his ego terribly.
“It’s just,” she says desperately, “I told you, I imagined you.”
For a long, terrible moment, the only sound in the cavern is that of stalactites dripping onto the cold floor.
Finally, he says, “I can’t even kiss you.”
Valkyrie huffs in disbelief before she can stop herself—is that what this is about? Resisting all urges to squirm around his fingers, she lifts one hand to his jaw and guides his head down until his teeth are brushing against her cheek.
Maybe at this point a normal girl would feel nothing. But Valkyrie has not been a normal girl since she saw the scarf fall away from Skulduggery’s face: She keens softly, rutting up into his hand.
“You’re ridiculous,” he murmurs, and presses his teeth harder to her cheek just briefly before nipping at her earlobe. A shiver rushes up her spine from the base of her back all the way to her neck which feels barren, suddenly, empty and touch-starved and lost.
She whines and tilts her head to one side, pleading, thoughtlessly trying to curl her fingers into the space between his jaw and cheekbone. Her touch meets some resistance, like pressing against the surface of a pool, and Skulduggery makes a choked sound she’s never heard before.
She quickly retracts her hand, feeling dizzy. “I’m sorry, I—did I hurt you?”
“No,” he says, sounding wrung out.
She breathes in sharply. “Then can you please move before I set this whole cavern on fire?”
For once in his life Skulduggery doesn’t say anything, just thrusts his fingers in and up, right against that spot that lights up every nerve ending. At the same time he closes in to wrap his left arm tighter around her, feet shifting to pin her legs open, teeth scraping at the soft flesh of her neck.
“Skulduggery,” she groans. “Skulduggery, I—”
“Tell me,” he coaxes, and oh, that voice.
“I missed your voice,” she whispers, reaching her arm up around his neck to pull him even closer. “When you were gone, I’d—I thought about you holding me, telling me—how proud you were of me, how good I’d been, how brave, and I—” Her face burns but she keeps going, squeezing her eyes shut and focusing on how full she feels instead of the words tumbling out of her mouth, “I thought about you touching me. I keep thinking about it, Skulduggery, I keep—I can’t help it, every time you look at me, at the end of every fight, every time you say my name—”
“Valkyrie.” His tone is smooth and low and such a contrast to the rising tempo of his fingers that she whimpers.
“I thought I was just going crazy because you weren’t here,” she says, turning her head so that her lips brush up against his jaw. Again she’s overwhelmed by the urge to lick, to taste, to leave the gleam of her spit on bleach-white bone. “But now you’re back and I—ah—it’s even worse, I just—you’re always touching me and teasing me and you look so fucking good it’s not fair, after this is over I don’t know how I’ll—God—but you better forget I ever said any of this,” she chokes out, “Your head is big enough as it is.”
“No chance in hell,” he replies.
“You are so—fuck.” She can hear it now, the slosh of her own insides, and she wonders if she should be grossed out or embarrassed or something but it just turns her on even more, watching his fingers move at that punishing pace inside her. “Harder, Skulduggery, please—”
“Greedy girl,” he murmurs, but he adds one more finger and fucks her even harder and he’s greedy too, she thinks, because he’s taking everything she has to give.
She tightens her grip on his skull, nails scraping against his parietal, wishing they were sharp enough to leave a mark. “You imagined this,” she says, half accusing, half hopeful.
He doesn’t say a word, which is as good a tell as any.
Valkyrie comes with her eyes squeezed shut and the lapel of his suit between her teeth, tasting damp silk, feeling white-hot, registering neither her own scream nor the sensation of her hips lifting fully off the ground.
Afterward, her head limp against his chest, her thighs still trembling, she mumbles, “Have you done that before?”
He zips her up and carefully replaces his glove. “I had a child, Valkyrie.”
She smacks his femur weakly. “I didn’t mean sex. I meant—sex like this. As—you know.”
“As a skeleton.”
“Well… yeah.”
“Sure.”
Valkyrie raises her eyebrows. “And people liked it. Your… skeleton-ness.”
“Takes all kinds,” he says mildly.
“Then what the hell were you on about?” she demands, twisting around to look at him. “Calling me ridiculous and all that? You made me feel like a total perv.”
He runs a finger along the brim of his hat. One of the same fingers, incidentally, that was just inside her. “Well-adjusted people do not want to have sex with a dead man, Valkyrie, just as a rule of thumb.”
She blinks. “Since when have you cared if I’m well-adjusted?”
“What? I care.”
“You’ve got me stuck a hundred meters underground,” she says, “Again.”
He gestures loosely. “You’re not even having a panic attack anymore.”
“Once we’re out of here, I’m going to kill you again.” She turns around to stare moodily at the dirt, the warm afterglow already dissipating.
One minute passes, then two. Surely Billy-Ray is late. Valkyrie chews at her bottom lip, finally mustering up the courage to ask: “Can you feel good, too?”
There’s a brief but dreadful silence. “Can I orgasm, you mean.”
She perks up. “Can you?”
“No.”
“Is that why you wanted to—” She hesitates. “Is that why you wished you could ‘do it properly’?”
“No,” he repeats softly. “You just—deserve someone who can give you everything, Valkyrie. That’s all.”
Valkyrie thinks of the long, interminable year without him. Thinks back to her life before him, that hazy and unmemorable decade.
You already have, she wants to say—but that’s when Billy-Ray grabs Skulduggery by the collar and she just barely remembers not to scream.