Chapter 42 Arthur
Arthur
She was radiant. Furious and bright, just how the sun should be. I brushed the dirt off my palms as she stepped closer and shoved her hand against my chest. I caught her by the elbows. “The last I saw you, you were writhing in agony.”
My heart fluttered. “I’m okay now.”
For the first time in my life, I knew I would tell her about the monster. What it had done for me. What it had become for me.
Eva’s hands settled on my biceps, holding me as I held her. “You left,” she said again, her voice cracking.
My chest ached as I flashed back to another night. I hadn’t even said a real goodbye when I’d left eight years ago, leaving her only a roll of film negatives, our memories trapped on acetate. It was a pittance, just like the Polaroids Mom had left me whenever she’d gone away. The coward’s goodbye.
But I wasn’t running this time.
Eva looked past me to the ruin of her home, dejection flashing across her face. “It’s so much worse than Dad described.”
What could Jack have even said? I wasn’t sure it was possible to convey this level of devastation without seeing it yourself. To lose a home was to lose a sanctuary. I would know.
“We can rebuild it,” I said.
Eva sniffed. “What are you even doing here?”
The promise I’d made sat at the very front of my mind. Maybe I’d initially come to Audrey for selfish reasons, but now? I truly wanted to let Mom go. I was ready.
“I had to get her ashes.” A swallow bobbed in my throat. “I’m going to fix things.”
Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I could have sworn Eva’s gaze dipped to my mouth.
A heaviness weighed in the center of my chest as I flashed back to the meadow, to the wilted crook of her body in the grass.
I’d thought I’d lost her, and for a moment, the world had collapsed.
I wasn’t going to let her go so easily now.
If she made me beg, I’d get down on my knees.
I drew her closer. “I meant what I said before, bee girl. I want to earn your trust again.” I softly squeezed her upper arms. “Can I try?”
Eva grabbed my shirt and pressed onto her toes. Our lips met once, then again with more hunger. My hands clutched the bend in her waist. But too soon, Eva pulled back. “You want to stay?” she choked out.
“Of course I want to stay.”
She cupped the back of my head, fitting her thumb just under my ear as she dragged me down to her. This close, I could feel the trip of her heart, and tenderness welled inside me.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I husked out. “What happened at the meadow… If you don’t want this, we don’t have to—”
“Arthur.” Her voice dropped a register, and she shook her head slowly, the tip of her nose teasing mine. Behind her, the colorful pots of garden herbs swelled and stretched. “I do. I want this.”
I stared, letting the words crack open inside me, like seeds in fallow soil. Pleasure warmed the center of my chest, and I pushed away my instinct to flee.
I let myself be wanted.
“You do?”
Eva nodded. “I want so much from you it hurts.”
She looked so vulnerable in her confession. She looked so brave.
“Come on.” Knitting our fingers, she walked backward, leading me toward the greenhouse. I nearly tripped over my feet to keep up with her determined pace, a laugh huffing out of me.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“Fixing things.”
“What—”
Eva cut off my question. “Do you remember the day we met?” she asked, pushing the door open and dragging me in with her. I flashed to the meadow, to the way she’d pushed me against the door, cool against my feverish skin, rain scudding down her arms and the damp of that old sweatshirt.
Eva pulled me forward a few steps, then stopped. “It was right here,” she said softly.
“I remember. Your rake broke my nose.”
“And you refused to let me apologize,” she said with a grin. “You didn’t want to know me then.”
My heart beat hard in my chest. “I want to know you now, bee girl.” I moved one of my hands back into her loose waves, grasping her nape. The bow of her lips was ripe and pink, like something to pluck and devour. When I kissed along the ridge of her jaw, Eva sighed.
The smell of the sun on her skin assaulted my senses. I tugged her hair at the roots, tilting her head back as I planted warm, open-mouthed kisses down her neck. “I tried to stop wanting you.”
“Me too,” Eva whispered.
Maybe it was the wild honey lingering in my system, or the throb of her pulse and the spark of desire heating between us, but something in the room changed.
I felt it before I looked up and saw the sway of potted herbs stretching new growth out in thin blades of bright green.
My nose filled with the smell of summer.
It was mortars and pestles, freshly ground basil, the bleed of petals down scissor blades as Eva prepped her worktable for some new infusion she wanted to try.
“And did you?” I asked softly. “Stop wanting me?”
Her swallow transfixed me, the way it moved down her throat in delicious confession.
I wanted to eat it, to suck the skin until she was strawberry red, bruised and wanted and mine.
Maybe I was depraved. Maybe all the time we’d lost was catching up to me at once, waking my baser desires.
She made me want to worship things. The sun. The soil. Her.
“I thought I had,” Eva said. “Until you came back.”
My eyes shuttered. “I’m sorry I left.”
“I know.”
This time would be different. I was already different, because of her.
Long after I’d left, the memory of her had become my anchor whenever I’d felt myself slipping back into the dark.
It wasn’t just how I’d loved her. She’d woken up my hunger for life and made me believe, deep down, that I was worth my own fight.
She’d made me want to live again.
Eva slipped her hand beneath my shirt, so near to where the sprout had bruised my ribs. Her eyes shone with questions. “It’s okay,” I murmured, not wanting to discuss my tithe. Instead, I took her by the hips and swung her so her back faced the counter.
Ours had been a soft love, and I’d often let Eva lead.
Something in the bite of her nails told me she didn’t want that right now.
Maybe I didn’t either. For the first time, I trusted myself to fully let go and need her irreverently.
I wanted to be hers again, to show her how well she undid me with a single command.
Suffer me, then.
I’d never forgotten that instruction, and the spell of it wrapped around me now.
Bending, I wrapped one hand around the back of her thigh. Eva gasped, then palmed the counter behind her and lifted herself onto it, knocking planting cups, seed bags, and photographs onto the concrete below. My heart tripped when I recognized the images as those we’d taken together that summer.
Eva spread her knees and tugged me closer. She met my kiss with a vow of teeth, as though I, too, were something to devour.
“Get this off,” Eva husked, already lifting the hem of my shirt. “I want to touch you.”
I forgot my anxiety about the sprout and shucked the shirt off, already reaching for the neckline of her sundress and tugging it down. Eva’s sigh when I cupped her breast made me lightheaded. Fuck, I’d missed this. Missed us.
“You scared me, back at the meadow.” Eva skimmed a thumb down my side, her eyes glistening. “I don’t want you to hurt for me.”
Tenderly, I took her face in my hands. For so long, I’d lived beneath a cloud of the monster’s protection, turning numb whenever the world became too much. I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to feel everything, even if it hurt.
“I’ll be all right, Ev.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “You’ll scar.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” I echoed what I’d said to her only days before. Somehow, it didn’t hurt so much anymore.
Scars were for survivors. And while mine used to make me feel weak and ashamed, now I saw only the courage it had taken to keep on fighting.
“Besides,” I murmured. “Now we match.”
She’d always been my opposite, the sun that gave shape to my shadow. So what if now we had twin marks to show for it?
Eva laughed wetly. I tucked a blond strand behind her ear and leaned in.
Her lips parted under mine. Strange, how quickly sadness could pour its way into desire.
In seconds, the drag of her tongue woke a pleasant shiver over my skin.
I took her lower lip in mine, and her answering moan sent a stroke of heat down my body.
Eva’s fingers skated down my stomach, over the center thatch of hair at my navel to the skin at the top of my jeans.
Her sundress was bunched down to her waist now.
The lovely scrunch of color beckoned me, and I dragged her to the edge of the counter, loving my mouth over every exposed inch of her I could reach.
It wasn’t enough.
I hit my knees, desperately pushing the soft cotton skirt up her thighs. “Please. Let me,” I begged.
Eva nodded, lifting her hips as I adjusted the dress to allow her to better spread her knees. She swayed above me, the sun backlighting her curves and catching in the gold of her hair.
She was everything holy. Everything I wanted. I disappeared beneath her dress, kissing her inner thigh. Heat washed over me. The humid greenhouse. The burn of so much desire. Her body, warm and wet and wonderful.
When I closed my mouth between her legs, Eva gasped, arching against me.
I’d missed this, too.
She knit her fingers into my hair. I lost track of the minutes as the greenhouse frenzied around us, plants overgrowing their pots and tipping off their purchases.
The shatter of terra-cotta made Eva jump.
I flicked my tongue. She cried out. “Arthur,” she pleaded, rucking up the skirt of her sundress farther. “I… I need—”
“I know what you need, bee girl.” I threw her legs over my shoulders, keeping her steady with one hand braced on the top of her thigh, my other arm curling around her. With my face buried deep, I sucked and kissed her until I couldn’t breathe.