Chapter 21 #2
“What kind of a savage would do this? Why would anyone break these things?” Seth asked from the other side of the room, and I kneeled close to the biggest pile of timesand in front of hours 10, 11 and 12.
It looked like it had been a long time since someone had been here, but I could have sworn that something was written there in the sand in front of hour 10.
I could have sworn I saw 3-6-9 and then an arrow, and—
“Whatcha looking at there?”
Levana stepped right onto the sand and sent it flying in the air, straight into my face.
Coughing, I stood up and tried to wipe it from my eyes and tongue while she grinned.
“Sorry.” She wasn’t—she had absolutely done that on purpose. “Anything interesting in these broken pieces?”
So many words at the tip of my tongue.
I wanted to make her cry. I knew I could.
Instead, I forced myself to turn around and walk away because wasting energy insulting Hands was not the way to get to the end of this sooner. My time would come.
“Guys, look!”
We all turned to find Mimi kneeling in front of the Thirteenth Hour, her hand raised, a black spider walking along the palm of her hand—and she was smiling.
I flinched, and so did most of the others.
“Look at this, guys. I used to be terrified of spiders!” Mimi exclaimed, like it was just the most fascinating thing in the world, that spider. She moved her hand up and down as it spun around her fingers, down her knuckles and on her palm again. She was even laughing.
“Put that down, Mim. It might be venomous,” Russ told her, but she didn’t care. She stood up with her hand in front of her face, completely in awe. Her eyes sparkled.
“You don’t understand. I wouldn’t sleep for days if I saw a spider in my house,” she said. “I used to be so, so afraid…” She watched as the spider slipped down the thread it made, hanging from her middle finger, toward the floor lightning fast.
Mimi looked up at nobody in particular. “What happened to it?” she said, more to herself than us, her smile slowly fading as if the thought was just registering to her mind. “What happened to my fear of spiders?”
Well, I had no idea what had happened to her fear of spiders, but I would rather keep away from them myself.
“So, we need to fix these hourglasses and create a working clock again—without activating this baby,” said Anika, touching her hand to the bulb of the Thirteenth Hour. It was slightly bigger than the rest. “Sounds easy enough.”
But it didn’t. Because how did one activate the Thirteenth Hour in the first place?
“We need to fix the broken glass, put the timesand back in, see if it works first,” March said. “We’ve got Sparetime to do that, don’t we?” He pulled out the Life Clock from his pocket and looked down at the pointers. Most did the same.
Yes, we had plenty of Sparetime to magic broken glass and make it whole again. But was that really what we ought to be doing?
Seth clapped his hands hard and loud, making us jump. “Let’s get to it, sandbrains. Let’s fix this broken clock and get out of here!”
Something was…off.
I watched them gather around the sand and the broken glass, trying to figure out which belonged to which, and who could afford to spend more minutes from their Life Clocks.
Levana and Russ decided they’d spent enough at the tea party, so they were going to sit this one out and only help with gathering the sand and the glass shards.
They split up into pairs to start fixing the hourglasses faster, and I made for the twelfth hour, hoping to be able to do it alone.
They would just slow me down, anyway. I worked better by myself.
Until…
“March—I said, I’ll be at the seventh!”
It was Levana. She was so loud I had no choice but to turn and look behind me—at March who was striding toward me and Levana who was standing behind him, calling for him to get back.
Something like jealousy and triumph invaded the rational parts of my brain so suddenly. The sensation knocked the breath out of me. I turned to the pieces of glass again, pretending I didn’t see March coming, hoping he’d go to another hour, but praying he came to me.
He did.
His energy was so vibrant it touched me physically when he squatted next to me in front of the broken hourglass.
My cheeks were on fire.
“You should go work with them. I got this,” I muttered out of sheer awkwardness.
He stopped picking up shards and looked at me. Grinned. “I’d rather watch you flushing from close up,” he said. “Your freckles almost disappear completely. It’s like magic.”
The bastard. I looked at him, teeth gritted.
“I don’t need your help, Heartling,” I spit.
“But I think you do. I think you’re a bit…out of focus since last night.” That grin.
My ears steamed. “You can’t seriously be assuming that you’re distracting me.” I tried to sound incredulous, but he was. He was very, very distracting to me.
“I don’t need to assume,” March said, perfectly unbothered as he continued to pick up the pieces, then paused for a split second to meet my eyes and say, “I remember,” and winked.
Sparetime save me, my body really had become my worst enemy. I was pissed off and turned on at the same time, and I had no idea which part of me had control of my vocal cords just now, until I heard my own words.
“You’re right—I remember, too. I remember you’re much more tolerable when you’re on your knees and not talking,” I said in a rush, and if I could have slapped myself in front of everyone, I would have.
If I could grab myself by the shoulders and shake myself until I came to my senses, that’s exactly what I’d be doing right now.
Because I must have lost my damned mind.
For a second, March was speechless. I felt him looking at the side of my face, but I was so flushed, so embarrassed that I didn’t dare turn to him at all. I just pretended to pick up shards and cut my fingers in the process three times because my hands were shaking.
“Should have known your tongue is velvet-smooth, too,” he whispered, so low I barely heard him, and I needed to hear him, so I was instinctively leaning closer and closer as he spoke. “Like your lips. And your nightgown.”
Impossible not to look at him now, but he was focused on my lips and on the side of my neck. His eyes were red like he had embers burning in them, and my anger evaporated so fast, leaving way only for arousal.
Fuck, my mouth was so dry.
“Exactly like the taste of your skin.” His tongue came out and he licked his bottom lip, and if he did that again, I was going to come. A miracle I managed to pull my lips inside my mouth before I moaned.
“Admit it, Velvet. Admit you liked it.”
But I didn’t just like it—I loved every second like I never knew I could love anything in my life, before or after, then or now.
“When you don’t talk? I did—I already told—argh!”
I was doing perfectly fine with the lie. I would have pulled it off, I thought, except a piece of glass hidden in the piles of timesand got me right on my index finger, and it went deep, deeper than the others. The pain was instant and it took over my mind. Impossible to contain the little scream.
“Tsk-tsk-tsk,” March said with a chuckle as I shook my finger, as if that was somehow going to stop the pain. But it was bleeding, and it stung, and now I was even more pissed off than before, when…. “So distracted, it’s a shame.”
He grabbed my wrist, secured his other hand around my cut finger, then brought it to his lips.
“What are you—”
He took my finger into his mouth and sucked.
My jaw touched the floor.
Everyone was here, even if they were all working on their hourglasses. They could still see us.
But March didn’t seem to care at all. Instead, he sucked on the blood and held my eyes and didn’t hesitate a single second, even when he could tell that I’d frozen with my lips parted and my eyes wide, unsure whether to believe this was really happening.
His tongue was so soft but firm against my finger.
The way he pressed it with just the right pressure left me breathless.
No wonder I was so turned on by him licking my finger—the way he moved that tongue was absolutely criminal.
Sexual. And he, of course, did it on purpose.
Seriously, Ora. Was I really so easy?
Yes. With him I was, apparently.
“There. All better now. I think you’ll survive.”
“But you might not,” I muttered despite my better judgment.
And I meant because I’d kill him, but of course, he pretended he didn’t get it, and he winked at me again.
“Oh, but I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Just keep that soft skin of yours away from these sharp objects, Velvet. I’ll pick up the glass.”
Stunned. That’s what I was. Perfectly stunned.
“I can…” be more careful, I was going to say, but thank Time I stopped myself because I’d have proven him right—I was distracted. More than distracted by his proximity and his words.
“Sit there and watch me. I’ll fix the glass. You can take care of the timesand,” he said with that grin, and continued to pile up the pieces near his feet.
“I’ll fix both. You lost too many minutes at the tea party,” I said through gritted teeth and made to start picking up pieces again, but he grabbed my wrist a second time. Gently.
“Smooth, Velvet. If the others heard you, they’d think you care,” he said.
“I don’t care, but it’s the logical thing to do.
” And I didn’t. I really didn’t. As much as it confused me, or as much as some part of me thought I should, that was the simple truth: I didn’t.
Whether that made me a bad person or not didn’t matter—this really was the logical thing to do.
He’d lost ten minutes at the tea party when he aged, and though he’d gotten his youth back, the minutes in his Life Clock had remained the same.
“And besides—the others can see you, too.” I turned, looked back, and the others were all hunched over piles of timesand and broken glass, but Levana was throwing looks our way every few seconds. She most definitely saw.