Chapter 36
March still refused to come up, holding my thighs over his shoulders, licking me clean and taking his time now, completely intoxicated.
His eyes remained half closed, but I doubted he could see anything as he cleaned me up, then continued to bite down my thighs, slowly, savoring every inch of my skin.
Meanwhile, I was caught somewhere between shock and pure bliss, lying there, watching him when my eyelids weren’t too heavy to keep open.
Sleep had come for me all at once, viciously, but I didn’t want to give in. Not when March was still here.
I must have drifted away without realizing it, though, because the next thing I knew, he was on all fours, climbing higher on the bed, planting kisses all over my face.
I was smiling so big, even half-asleep like that, it should have been alarming.
Instead, when March lay on the bed on his side, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to move closer and curl up against his chest automatically—again, like I’d done all of it before, exactly like that.
And his arms all too naturally wrapped around my body, too, one around my shoulders, holding me to his chest, the other around my hips.
“Don’t sleep yet. I’ve got a question first,” he said, and his voice raised goose bumps all over my back, which he felt and rubbed away with his big, warm hands.
Must be the Everstill, I thought—or maybe I’d discovered something even better.
“I’m awake,” I muttered.
His warm lips pressed to my forehead. I raised my head instinctively, pressed my face to his lips so he kissed the bridge of my nose, and the tip, then my lips.
How can a kiss feel like this? I wondered. It couldn’t be normal, could it?
Maybe it was because of time moving backward?
Then he finally asked, “Will you let me do that every day?”
I stopped, leaned back a little, barely managed to open my eyes all the way. His boyish grin had my heart in a grip. My cheeks were on fire at the same time.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said, bringing his hand to my chin to raise my head again. “So innocent looking.” He chuckled, and I about died of embarrassment. “You blush so easily, but you had no trouble keeping my head down there.”
“Stop it,” I said, eyes squeezed shut, trying to lower my head, but he wouldn’t let me. He was laughing, the bastard, and he was pulling my head up, squeezing me to him tighter so that my body was flush against his.
He still wore his trousers, but his chest was naked. His skin was a million times better than silk.
“Oh, I’m not complaining, Velvet. Just answer the question,” he said.
“What question?!” Yes, I was panicked now. Very panicked because I remembered how hard I’d pushed his head down between my thighs. I remembered how little control over myself I’d had.
“The question I asked you. Will you let me eat you like that every day?”
Sparetime save me. “No! That…that’s—no!”
He was out of his mind if he thought I could talk about this just like that, no matter what I’d done while he’d been down there.
“Why not? I know you enjoyed it.” Another chuckle. He held up my head and planted kisses all over my face, and it helped because I got to keep my eyes closed. It was easier.
“Because,” I muttered, which wasn’t even an answer, but still.
“Are you a virgin, Velvet?”
He trapped me between his arms like he knew for a fact that I was about to jump to my feet—and potentially jump out the window, too.
When he didn’t let go, I tried to push him off. I really tried, but he had all that muscle. And his skin was so soft. And the hair on his chest was smooth and he was warm and he held me so, so well…
Damn him to all bad hours.
“Get off me,” I muttered halfheartedly.
“I’m not letting go, but you’re welcome to keep trying,” the bastard said, grinning. “You’re cute enough to eat again.”
“I can free myself, Heartling!” I warned him—and I could. I knew where to hit him. I knew where it would hurt. It wouldn’t be too hard.
“I know. But you don’t really want to.”
My mouth clamped shut.
Time’s Teeth, I didn’t.
As mortifying as I thought it was going to be, I stopped struggling. Settled against his chest again. Sighed.
Why in the world did he feel so good?
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he muttered, chuckling that sweet sound, rubbing my back while he pulled me closer. “On both accounts.”
I said nothing, only hid my face under his chin and kept my eyes closed.
Because it was most definitely a yes on both accounts.
I would absolutely let him do that to me every single day, and I was also a virgin.
Not because I’d planned to be, but because I’d only ever kissed a guy before, and it had been so embarrassing for me that I hadn’t even considered going to third base, let alone do something more.
Not sure why. I wasn’t a shy person in general, but it had just felt so sloppy and weird and…
off. Not like this. Not close, not for a second.
Thankfully, March didn’t make me say it, didn’t mention it again, only held me to his chest and played with my hair, my skin, muttering under his breath every now and again about how I should be impossible.
In my mind, I was a flower feeling the sun, blooming for the first time. It was the strangest thing to just lay there with my eyes closed, not participate, not do anything, just let him do what he wanted.
Yes, we were living in a strange world, and we’d woken up at a dinner table somehow, and the Great Clock had stopped, and time was moving backward. March didn’t trust me, and I wasn’t fully myself and didn’t know why—but this was okay. And even if it backfired, this would be worth it.
“How?” I whispered when March’s movements slowed down, and I was possibly seconds away from falling into sleep again. Which sucked because I wanted to stay awake to keep touching him, keep exploring him, take those trousers off, too, feel all of him the way I yearned to.
“How what?” he asked, and I lazily raised my hand to the middle of his chest, right over the soft hair that did its best to mimic a heart shape, to feel the one inside, beating.
The perfect rhythm.
“How do I keep you grounded?” That’s what he’d said when he was sitting outside the door earlier. It still spun in my head.
“Your memory,” March whispered against the top of my head. “You’re sitting on the grass, looking out at the lake. You’re breathing. You’re alive.” He paused for a tick. “You just…exist, and that’s enough.”
“Why?” Because it was a simple thing, to sit there and look at something, to just breathe. Not very special.
“I can hide out there with you,” he said. “I can’t really explain it.”
But I thought I understood. I drew from his memory, too. The joy he felt became my own. The pride. It was much more powerful than I could have thought in these gloomy days.
“Tomorrow’s the third trial,” I muttered against his chest, and when I was done listening to the perfect rhythm of his heartbeat, I moved my hand lower, my skin eager to meet him everywhere.
“And we’ll unwin that, too,” March said, running his fingers over my forearm as I touched his stomach. He held his breath, too, muscles clenched, but he didn’t stop me.
“And what happens then? What happens when we unwin the fourth?” Was I ever going to see him again? Would the Great Clock then continue to work normally? Would time move forward as it should, and would we even remember this?
Would all of this have even happened?
My chest hurt. My heart squeezed.
“Then we do what we can with whatever we have to deal with.” A kiss on my forehead. “We’ll be all right.”
I was choosing to believe that, for now, at least. Besides—I had plenty of ways to distract myself from reality.
My fingertips grazed the waistband of his pants, and March sucked in a loud breath, then grabbed my wrist. “Don’t.”
“I’m naked, in your arms,” I reminded him, and my cheeks did heat up, but he didn’t see it.
“I know. I’m lucky like that,” he said, and now I was smiling, too.
“Let me—”
“No,” he cut me off.
“Why not?!”
“Because you’re naked and in my arms, Velvet.” The way he chuckled. “I’m made of flesh and bones.”
“I know that,” I said, caught between flushing harder, hiding my face, and giggling like a schoolgirl right now.
“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand what you do to me. It’s painful.”
I looked down between us. He was hard, and I felt his cock through his trousers, against my hip. “So let me help,” I forced myself to say—embarrassed, yes, but also very, very turned on at the idea of touching him. Seeing him.
Tasting him—oh, my…
“No. Not tonight. Not like this. I couldn’t hold myself back, Velvet.”
“Then don’t.”
March crushed me to his chest, and I had no strength to keep pushing, so I gave in with a sigh. It felt too good to be pressed against him like this.
“I want to,” he said. “You deserve nothing less, since it’s going to be your first time…”
Maybe I was mistaken, but I was twelve-hours certain that that was a damn promise. I planned to hold him to it.
“What’s her name?” he asked after a little while, and my heart jumped again.
My eyes opened halfway. I knew exactly who he meant, but I asked anyway, “What?”
“The girl in the picture.” March nodded his head to the side just slightly, in the direction of my nightstand where Jinx’s picture was. He’d seen it before. Had analyzed it when he’d come to my old room, but he hadn’t asked then.
My stomach groaned like a machine. “Jinx,” I said reluctantly. “My sister.”
Like always, my first instinct when talking about her was to shut down, to keep all the words tucked safely inside my mouth, never let them out.
But there was something about the way I felt just now, something about being pressed against his chest, listening to his heart beating, savoring the heat of his skin. It undid me, unwound me.
So, when March asked, “Where is she now?” I actually answered.
“She passed away about two years ago.” Words I’d rarely said out loud before.
The way he stiffened next to me was evident. I closed my eyes again and pressed my cheek against his chest. His skin warm, smooth as silk.
“I’m sorry, Velvet,” he said, and I appreciated it because I knew he meant it.
“That’s okay,” I said, and it was.
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Hastenheart,” I whispered, and he pulled me closer.
“How old?”
“Twenty.” Jinx had only been twenty years old.
“My mother’s sister was twenty-one,” said March as he caressed my shoulder and back and hair. I was sorry for him, too.
There were plenty of diseases in the Clockrealm, but to me, Hastenheart was the worst of them.
It was called the Heart-Racing Syndrome, and it was sneaky, impossible to be detected until it was too late.
It made the heart age faster than the rest of the body, so the body remained young, followed the order of time, while the heart aged much faster, then stopped beating.
The sense of guilt I always carried with me for the past two years suffocated me.
I should have seen it, I should have known.
Her sudden emotional outbreaks, how she sometimes shut down and stared out the window for hours with both hands over her chest—and I’d hugged her countless times, too.
Hastenhearts skipped seconds all the time in their rush to beat, but I never once felt the difference because I wasn’t looking.
And Jinx never knew a heart should beat differently because she lived with hers all her life.
Such a curse. Death by old age when she was only twenty.
“I like her name,” March said, and that immediately pulled the corners of my lips up slightly.
“All the medics told my mother that she was pregnant with a boy. My parents prepared for a him for months, and when my sister was born, my parents were shocked. Mother thought it was a good idea to name her Jinx since she was already a little trickster.”
True to her name, she then went and tricked us again into thinking she was perfectly healthy, until one day she simply refused to wake up.
“I have a sister, too. Younger than me by eight years,” March said, and that made me raise my head a little to see his face. To see his smile.
“You do?” And why did I love the idea so much?
March nodded. “Her name’s Vera.”
Vera. I liked her name, too.
“Do you two look alike?” I wondered as I snuggled closer to him again, and March wasted no seconds in pulling me to him until I could hardly breathe. Perfect.
“Very. She’s mini-me—but with long hair.
My mother kept my hair long when I was a kid, too, and if you saw pictures of me then, you could never pick us apart.
” Something about his voice when he spoke just now.
Happy. Carefree. No inhibitions. “She’ll never admit it, though.
She claims she’s far superior to me in every aspect.
She’ll swear to you that we do not look alike, that if someone thinks we do, they should have their eyes checked. ”
He chuckled. I did the same.
“She sounds amazing, Heartling.” And I’d love to meet her one day, I thought.
“She is.” A kiss on top of my head. “You two would get along great, I think.” I agreed—and the thought made me giddy for some reason.
“Sleep now, Velvet,” March said with a deep, contented sigh. “We have a long day tomorrow.”
I fell asleep with his voice echoing in my head, feeling less alone than I had in a long time.