KISS IT BETTER #6
“You can put it on, but only if I can complain the whole time,” she muttered, licking her lips.
Bal chuckled at her before tipping her head back. “I would expect nothing less, lovely,” he said.
The pet name gripped her stomach. For all her purring and climbing onto his lap and teasing him, this was the first time he’d gotten her so fluttery.
Before she could stutter through an answer, Bal smoothed a layer of salve over her neck.
She tried to strangle her groan of pain, and the hand not torturing her with kindness settled in the dip of her waist. He rubbed his thumb across her skin soothingly.
“I know, I know,” he whispered, his voice husky. His hand pressed warmth into her throat. “It’s almost over.”
Esme whimpered for reasons that had nothing to do with pain. This was not a filthy clash of teeth in an alley. This was worse; ten times more intimate, ten times closer. She’d had whole trysts with less caring than Bal had shown in a single swipe of his thumb.
“I’ll be okay,” Esme blurted. “You know that, don’t you?”
Bal looked up at her through his lashes. “You complain when I care for you. Why?”
“I don’t need the care,” she rasped. “I can’t die.”
“It is okay to indulge in things we don’t need,” he said quietly as he finished burning the air out of her lungs. Bal leaned back to appreciate his work and dried his hands.
This was not normal. Mina was an exception to the rule of Esme’s life.
Usually, lust ruled her relationships. Fine, she’d had a smattering of serious entanglements, but when those were set up against almost a century of life, three decades of devotion was relatively negligible.
Lust was reliable. Lust was predictable.
Eventually, all hands flowed south. There was nothing to misunderstand inside of lust.
On the other hand, her committed relationships had almost always been raddled with pain.
Omniel had ended with his name scalded down her spine.
Urias and Mak’kon ended with one half of her forever running off with a human and treating her terribly for fifteen years.
After that, she’d stuttered through her first two years with Mina, unsure at every step what love was supposed to look like.
Now, she credited that woman with teaching her the very definition of the word.
But Esme knew love in the context of one woman.
Everything else was a matter of simple desire.
Except Bal could have laid her out on this blanket twenty minutes ago and talked her out of her chemise.
He could have asked her up here with no blanket, no food, no medicine, with his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel and his lucky sheepskin in his pocket.
Esme would have known what that meant. But Bal’s lust wove through the larger tapestry of his affections she found herself bundled in.
It was itchy and stiflingly hot, and comforting and soft.
It smelled like lavender and blood and came with calluses and stuttering.
But she hadn’t shivered once tonight.
Esme nudged herself deeper into Bal, into this half-rough blanket, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
She tried him on. Her hips were splayed too wide across his lap to be comfortable, and up so close she noticed the gap in his front two teeth.
That little gap was damn charming when it peeked through his plush lips, a whisper on his breath.
He wrapped around her tight, shifting her higher on his lap to ease the strain on her hips.
Esme liked the way the blanket folded and crumpled against her.
“That salve did nothing,” she muttered. “I thought Mina told you. You’ll have to kiss it better.”
She dipped into him quickly, before her bravery slipped.
His mouth was warm, a little rough, and perfectly still for a second before he realized she’d kissed him.
Once he jolted to life, he curled into her, chased her kisses down when she tried to escape for a breath.
His tongue was laced with greed. When it swiped into her mouth, Esme knew he’d devour her kiss by kiss.
Hot air filled her head. She hadn’t breathed in far too long.
Bal might be sucking his air right out of her lungs.
She whined against him, nipping his bottom lip, and he moaned into the sharpness of that kiss.
Then her parched gasp must have told him she was suffocating.
He tore himself from her mouth like he was cleaving off a limb, his eyes glinting with desire so deep and sticky Esme could feel it lick up her spine.
Not just lust, though. Something murkier, thicker, honey-sweet and stone-heavy. Nothing Esme knew.
“Please don’t tell me we can only do that when you’re injured,” Bal panted.
Esme giggled and let him pin her to his chest. The joke wasn’t even good, but the laugh bubbled up from somewhere she didn’t know she could laugh from, almost an accident. Behind her, a bird took off into the night.
If Esme didn’t know any better, she might mistake the wild freedom of its flapping wings for her own voice.