14. Your Intuition Is Easy To Find! #2
The sound he made in my mouth was animal; a rough, low whine of something close to pain.
I kissed him harder, a rush of adrenaline alight in my veins, heat flooding my body.
I slid my tongue along his lower lip, sinking my teeth in lightly.
His nails bit into my waist. He tried to speak, the words punctuated by me, the crescendo of my desperation. “What are you doing?”
My heart was beating so loud I couldn’t hear my thoughts. I broke the kiss but only barely, my mouth still close to his. I drew my nose up along his, rested my forehead against his, ran my hands greedily over his head, along the silken tactility of his buzz cut.
He shifted me roughly, my back now pressed to glass.
I jumped at the chill—I thrilled. I kissed him softer.
I brought his knuckles to my cheek. They were still raw and bruised from whatever fight he’d been in lately.
I grazed them with my lips, a slow brush across the peaks, awareness settling in.
It throbbed in me, whatever this was, the danger of it.
Of him. I moved to disentangle myself when he kissed me again, catching my lips in a messy jolt. Uneven alignment.
The whole thing was molten, tropical, my cheeks flushed and feverish.
His hands bracketed my ribs. I didn’t have a single thought in my brain—guiltless, numb oblivion.
I understood addiction now. I laughed a little and kissed him harder, aware of so many things: I didn’t even think I liked him.
I found him a little bit whiny and annoying.
I felt sorry for him, which was profoundly unsexy.
And there was the constant non-zero chance that I might ultimately die for my sins.
He tugged my hair lightly, gently, to lift my chin.
His lips brushed over my throat, his thumbs hooking greedily behind the corners of my jaw.
I shimmied up a little to wrap my legs around his hips, pulling him in tighter.
He answered by pressing my hands to the glass, pausing to scrape his teeth along my inner arm.
It deepened and I sank into it. I rolled my hips and he answered, thrusting up slightly from below.
Call and response, pressure met with pressure.
Something shifted—I felt a small explosion in my brain.
It was an impact that should have woken me from the trance; from the inexplicable build of this twisted dream.
He leaned away for a moment, looking at me.
He was staring, almost disconcertingly, at the shape of my mouth. Or something on it.
“What?” I asked. More warmth than sound.
He shook his head. Nothing.
His fingers drifted down, running along the lip of my jeans, stroking the clasp with one slow motion of his fingers.
The blanket of heat inside the greenhouse was such that I started to feel powerfully drowsy, a rumble of a sigh unfurling from my throat unbidden, like in the moments between consciousness and sleep.
His hand pressed flat against my skin, palm stretching out across my navel, underneath my shirt.
The material of it clung to the shape of his hand, sodden with rain and humidity.
There was an odd fragrance, the fleshy scent of orchids.
An overripe sweetness rotting within each bloom, the occasional heady waft of open flesh.
He nudged my chin up again with his nose, running the span of my neck with his thumb like the strike of a match, a faint flicker in the dark.
For a moment his hand shifted, rising up to carve a noose around the base of my throat.
My breath grew thin with panic, fear, desire.
The pressure was faint, but it was there, it was real—the possibility that this was another version of gentleness; that there were other notches on the scale of violence he possessed.
He kissed me again, softly, and I panted into his mouth, saying nothing.
A fog of lightness filled my vision as I capitulated.
I kissed him back. When he broke the kiss, I already knew what his eyes would look like.
The monster in Julian de Witt was staring hungrily at me.
He released my throat and I exhaled, collapsing forward a degree to catch my breath.
He bent, then, ever so slightly, to run his tongue along my neck, followed by the light scrape of his teeth down to the divot of my clavicle.
A whimper tore free, to my humiliation. A low, keening sound that couldn’t reasonably be called fear—instead it was pleading, or acquiescence.
The soft death knell of what might have been a yes.
It was enough to wake me, finally.
“No.” I shoved it away—him, the monster, that look on his face, that unbearable glint of mockery, like I’d fallen directly into his trap.
I slid a little on the wetness of the greenhouse floor, watching him fumble, elastic, among the tendril reach of vines.
I ran, relieved now for the chill, back to the house, rain falling so hard it seemed to rattle my bones, to match the cadence of my heartbeat.
I threw myself inside the main house, shivering hard, unsure what exactly I had planned to do from there. Who was I now?
What part was I playing?
“Anya?”
William de Witt stood at the base of the stairs from which he’d just descended, clearly on his way to or from bed. He wore reading glasses, an open dress shirt, a pair of soft-looking sweatpants. “Are you all right?”
It took me a moment to find the words. “Fine, thank you. Sorry. I just…” I gestured vaguely toward the front door, my car, a version of the life I lived where I didn’t willingly commune with monsters. “My mom needs me, I have to go.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” William shook his head, shifting his weight from one side to the other. “Didn’t Genesis tell you? The canyon roads are closed for repair. Mudslides.”
“What?” The thudding in my chest got louder.
“From the fires earlier, and the winds brought down a tree—” He waved a hand.
“It’s just too dangerous to drive right now.
” He gave me another slow look, taking me in like he could read the truth of me from every little hint of gooseflesh.
“Which also means we likely won’t have any daring escapes,” he added, gesturing behind me to Jude’s room, where he must have thought Jude was.
“So you’re probably off duty for the night, but don’t worry.
We’ll have Genesis do up one of the guest rooms for you. ”
“What, oh, no—” I fumbled through my attempts at polite demurral. “I couldn’t possibly—”
I heard the sound of a door opening from somewhere outside, either the courtyard or somewhere farther away, and I swallowed. I was reminded how close I was to the edge of my own sanity, how very dangerously close.
(Could I Survive It?)
The calculations I always ran came up empty.
Or rather, I’d stopped listening. I didn’t have a plan.
I’d already forgotten how to run.