Chapter Four
Penny’s eyes fluttered shut as she felt him slipping on top of her. Not inside, not yet, but soon. “You want this, lover?” His voice was a distraction in the blissful break from the heat.
“Mmm,” her voice was a moan, her hips insistently moving with his.
“Look at me?” Brax knew he was ruining the moment. All the moments were already tainted by the past, he just wanted to make something good, something new—and he couldn’t let go.
Green eyes looked up at him, not shy, not seductive, simply steady.
“You’re hard to miss. You’re all I want to look at.
I could look at you for days...” Penny ran her hands possessively over the body on top of hers.
Long, lean, white muscles, twists of spine, angles and planes of shoulders and jaw, tight legs, tight arms, holding himself above her.
I thought I was above him, the normal human beside a demon in human form. He was something that shouldn’t exist, ought to be exterminated. Now he’s above me. I looked down on him. And now... oops.
He’s the one helping me. Saving me from being wiped out. He won’t die, just suffer. I’m the one who could—
Double oops. He was talking to her, looking at her with such concern, stroking back her damp hair and kissing her flushed forehead gently, peering into her eyes.
“Huh?”
“I said, ‘I know all the things we said, but this is the last exit, baby.’ You do this, and you’re not going back. Do you wanna get off this ride? Go back?”
Back to a place where I hate him, and he looks at me, and I catch him sometimes, and I see...something. And that makes me hate him more, because I know what it is. And I’m not supposed to want it. Not supposed to let monsters in.
“Back to where I hate you?” Penny whispered.
“Maybe. Yeah, I guess. That’s better than both of us hating both of us, which is what’s likely to happen, cute truces and signed papers or not.”
“No. I wanna go forward. New place. Away from all the bad and the fire and the monsters. Take me someplace new. Vacation time.”
“I think the witch with the twitch upstairs had that in mind, and you see how that went.”
Penny pouted at him.
“I like the tropics,” he admitted. “Moonlight in the heat, the waves... But I don’t need it if I have you, Pen. The sun is in your smile, the heat you give me...”
“Well... I wouldn’t mind going someplace cooler. I like the climate up here—just not everyone thinking I’m nuts because they can’t see what I see.”
“We can see things together now,” he whispered, his larger body over top of hers. “I’m new in this part of the world. You can show me around. I can take you down South—anywhere but New Orleans, that is, and show you the sights.”
“By moonlight. And I could show you places by moonlight, I guess. Maybe... Maybe with your own personal monster, the other monsters behave?”
Brax snorted. “The ones around here already behave, Penny. I’m the odd duck.”
“I like ducks. Ducks on the lake at Grove Park. Used to skate there, too. I liked to skate. Like it cool. Ice cream on hot days. And... popsicles. I like popsicles.” Her fingers trailed down his back and moved around to the front, eyes blurry as she looked at the sparse dark hairs at the base of his torso and the thick white length now in her fist. “Let’s go. ”
HE LOOKED DOWN AT HER. So much smaller. So much hotter. Warmer, even when he wasn’t freezing to death. “Let’s go,” she says.
Maybe that’s as romantic as it gets when you’re former enemies and currently trapped in some witch’s snow globe.
“Let’s go.”
She guided him in as he pushed past her palm. She breathed out, and he breathed in, lips brushing, then sticking, staying, bodies uniting.
“Fuck, Penny, sweet little paradise...” Brax gasped and couldn’t find words to match the sensations as he felt himself breach this sweet little fortress. He shook the way you do after being out in a blizzard and suddenly finding yourself in front of a roaring fire. “Fuck, burn me alive.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. You’re not living.” Penny replied, gasping and giggling while clutching him closer.
He put his head to hers. Tightest, warmest paradise, and when the girl said, “Let’s go,” well, she effing well meant it.
No build up with this one. She was starving, no, burning, and he could put the fire out.
Her legs went up over his, back arched, breasts pushed up, and they writhed together, bodies making sense when sick and scarred minds could not. “My girl is on fire...”
ON FIRE. YES. SHE HAD been.
Now, she wasn’t, no matter what he said. She was finally cooling off, and ooooh, it was amazing.
“Brax,” she moaned, head thrashing pleasurably.
“Not gonna burn you, because you’re too cold.
Oh, so perfectly cold, yes, cold!” Cold and thick, thick cock pushing apart dripping hot walls.
No one had ever filled her this way, or connected with her like this.
It was snug and a little painful for a second, but the escape from the fever was so instantaneous that it paled and disappeared in seconds.
When she said “Let’s go,” she meant it. This was going into battle, fighting something inside her, maybe something she’d been wanting as well.
No tentative, no slow. Brax charges in with me.
Maybe that’s how it is with monsters. They know how to fight. Could they know how to love, too?
They must. Brax gives it everything he’s got.
I like everything he’s got, and I’m pretty sure every inch is inside me.
Yes. Want Brax. Want this Brax, the Brax I can see now.
My vision is a little blurry, but a lot of stuff is clearer.
She pulled back from the hungry kisses she was exchanging with him to inform him in a happy babble, punctuated with little nibbles to his jaw, “I want this. I told you I did, and I was right. You’ll just melt, and then you’ll melt in me, and it’ll be awesome.
” Penny let out a raspy, ragged sound that was part relief and part pleasure.
“You get what you want, I get what I want. We are very... what’s that word when things go together? ”
“Complementary?” he shifted inside of her, but didn’t get far, not in her desperate, pulsing grip.
ALIVE. HE DIDN’T COMPLAIN about the fact that she clung to him as if she’d been painted on. Marietta’s hands had often had the grip of madness, blood-soaked, possessed, and no longer fully human, her soul long since shared with something dark and dreadful.
Penny held him like no one else ever had. His past lovers—they weren’t lovers. They were users, or he was the user, and things broke apart.
Even when she was fever-addled, Penny was somehow sane.
This was the grip of certainty. He regarded her, nose-to-nose, sure this revelation would be shared.
And what did his girl say?
“That’s a good word. Complementary. A big word. Like cathartic. But not what I wanted. I know. Twinsies. And c-words.”
He jerked his head back. “Penny!”
“What?”
“Well... I was gonna... I didn’t expect you to say that just then,” he concluded lamely, reminding himself that sick brains can feign certainty very convincingly.
“Oh. Sad now?” Penny pressed her hands with their swollen skin to his cheeks, steadying his head above hers. “Oh! Not that c-word. Cathartic. Complementary. See? C!”
He chuckled. “Not sad, sweetness,” he lied.
She bit his lower lip smartly, drawing blood, kissing it off while still looking into his eyes. Down below, Brax’s cock jumped hard and hit a nerve cluster that previous suitors must have failed to locate based on Penny’s gasp and eyes taking a brief tour to the back of her skull.
“Mental note. Brax likes bites. Duh. Vampire.”
“You’re saying the mental notes out loud, lover.”
“Did I?”
“Mmhm.”
“Am I right?”
His cock jumped again. “Oh, baby. So very right. Can we play?” If he was lying, pretending that her oscillation between sure and loopy didn’t touch any raw nerves, he might as well do the whole bit and assume his most comfortable role, smug bastard extraordinaire.
But for Penny, a sensitively smug bastard.
“We can play. But no more lying. You lied to me. You were sad. I thought you wanted me.”
“I do! So much. But I know it’s not for the same reason. You want to feel the cold, and I want to feel the burn. This kind of burn.” He placed her hand over his chest, above his stilled heart.
“I want you. I want this, Brax. Not beneath. Not above. Well, ‘sex above’ is okay...” She twined her fingers through his hair and slid the other one down his chest, over stiff, small nipples, making him moan.
“Want me?” Too good to be true—and too wrong to be true. He shouldn’t want this, not long-term.
Lies, lies, and more lies...
“Mhmm. The good monster by my side. Fight the bad things with me. Not against.” Words were brief by necessity. Air was escaping, sweat pooling.
“I will. With, not against.” He wasted no time in sealing the promise with a kiss, but quickly broke the contact.
His girl was shivering. Shaking. Convulsing?
“Penny?” Is this how hot little firecrackers like her come?
I mean, she’d probably send me into a full-blown seizure, the way she’s wrapping her tight little slit around me, pumping me, rolling under me, those hips. .. He grunted out a sound of pleasure.
“Don’t stop.” Heat was draining out of her. Color, too, skin no longer the burnt peach, fading to a deeper-than-normal golden tan.
“I think we need to stop. Not sure this is normal.”
“Nothing is normal here, nothing is normal today. But I feel better. Lucid. Happy. Oh, fuck, yes... very happy,” Penny groaned as he resumed moving inside of her. “Also, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’ll bite you in a minute!” he snarled against her shoulder, eyes burning into hers from the side, irritation on the lips that had just been kissing her.
She took his threat complacently. “Can’t. Cooties.”