THEY STOOD UP STRAIGHT AND PURE ON THE STALK, GRIPPING THE DARK LIKE PROPHETS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
❀
He goes still underneath the brush of her lips, and Bexley cannot decide whether she is pleased or disgusted.
Stop thinking about him. Stop thinking about him. She can’t. All the ways they are similar—golden, though in different shades, and the way his eyes don’t stray from her, and the way she has power over him in less than a word—
Her stomach clenches. August is too still, like a statue, like a butterfly who knows it has been caught. She’s seen it before—the way prey freezes when it sees the flash of teeth. She can hear his breathing. Feel the way his muscles shudder as she passes them. And she could kill him (why does she always think about this?) with one little spark. He would let her. She knows it. Or if not let her, there’s nothing he could do about it, and why does she always think about this, her chest is starting to hurt, he smells like summer and the white sand that patches her legs, why does she always think like this, like a predator. (I am not a predator.)
(I feel like a predator when:)
August touches her.
I don’t want you to touch me. But still she leans forward. You shouldn’t be touching me, but he is, of course he is, and Bexley’s mouth is going dry as it struggles to contain the horror of her bruising heart. Don’t touch me. The close gold of her necklace shifts, and she can feel his lips and the promise of his teeth against her skin, the place where it’s thinnest and her pulse is beating the deepest. An unreasonable shudder passes from her throat to the path he makes across her skin, and she is grinding her teeth trying not to something—please, or don’t, or that followed by a stop.
Stop thinking about it. Bexley closes her eyes. Inhales sharply. I am not a predator—the whole world is out there, and she has not killed it yet. That has to mean something. God, but her whole body is begging to—to do something, anything, and she has never been one to resist impulse—her eyes flicker open again, perfect ice-blue, and with a smile she tugs hard a patch of his bright hair, pulling him toward her. Her magic pulses, a bright dead thing in the pit of her stomach. She tilts her head again, and grins with a cool kind of sharpness.
How could you possibly be losing, she says, sotto voce and siren, When you’re around me.
The slow burn of her eyes is turning slightly unnatural.
