Chapter 13
We end up, at Rosemary’s insistence, back behind her protective barrier. The house had helped by transferring the mattress in the guest bedroom to the middle of the sitting room, all the chairs and tables pushed against the walls.
She’d been a little lightheaded, after; I’d kissed the taste of the sticky toffee from her mouth, licking hungrily inside like I’ve been dying to do probably since the first time I’d watched her eat it.
I never want to leave this house. I never want to leave her embrace. I’m so afraid this is some kind of cruel dream.
She’s given us a cursory clean with the eshé and we’re now entirely naked, cuddling.
I’m lying on my back, propped up on the pillows, with Rosemary snuggled up on top of my chest. My right arm is wrapped underneath and around her, my palm cupping her shoulder, fingers stroking her soft skin.
Her right arm is curled around my midriff, her thick right leg flung across my thighs.
We need to talk about what she’d said earlier, about the dagbato not being here.
My grandmother had been mistaken. Or she’d lied.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the latter.
If she’s anything like my mother—a part of me, for some reason, feels she might be worse—then she definitely has some hidden agenda she wants neither Rosemary nor I to be aware of.
If there’s no dagbato, then who—or what—had killed Rosemary?
Who—or what—had killed my mother and my grandmother?
I push the thoughts away for now. I want to enjoy this, having Rosemary pressed against me, skin to skin, for the first time. She seems pretty confident about the strength of her wards, so I trust we’ll be safe as long as we stay inside it.
My head has never been so blissfully quiet. The missing ache of the hunger has me feeling almost bereft.
I’m full—completely satiated for the first time in my life, which means this rising desire to push Rosemary onto her back, to watch her willingly die for me again is coming entirely from me.
“We’re not doing that again,” I say, managing, by some miracle, to conceal my fear. My ugly desire.
Rosemary twists her head to look up at me, her expression morphing with hurt and betrayal. “What?”
“No. Not—not this. I mean …” I swallow as my body betrays me, filling my mouth with saliva at even thinking the sentence—of saying the words “kill” and “you” next to each other. “I don’t think I can kill you again.”
“Oh.”
I expect her to protest, to ask why, but she looks away instead, her eyebrows furrowed, shoulders drooping. Her scent goes a little sour, which confuses me.
Does she want to do that again?
Die for me again?
I swallow, over and over until I can speak without choking on it. Grateful she doesn’t have supernatural senses like me, that she can’t scent the wetness growing between my thighs.
I cup her cheek, tilting her head up so she’s looking at me once more.
“It terrifies me,” I confess. Fuck. I have to swallow yet again. “It terrifies me, how good it felt.”
Rosemary’s breath hitches. She grabs my wrist, her eyes wide, naked. “It terrifies me, too.” Her breasts heave softly with her rushed breaths, her scent going just as hot as mine. “But …” The word comes out pleading.
“Rosemary,” I try to reprimand, but my voice is thick, hoarse with lust.
“It felt good to me, too,” she says in rush. “I’ve died many times before, Genevieve. But this is the first time it felt … good. Right. This is the first time it’s actually meant something.”
“You said that before. What do you mean by that?”
I’m changing the subject, but she lets me.
She rolls onto her back, putting some space between us. I resist the urge to tug her back into my arms. She needs this distance right now, so I willingly give it to her.
“Remember I told you we were made to leave my village? After they found … after they discovered my gift.” Her throat bobs. “My mother was actually the one who’d made us leave.”
She stops. Her scent is going acrid at the memories. I want to hold her so badly, but I know she needs me to pause. To listen.
Eventually, she speaks again.
“The reason she made us leave was because, well. Up until that point, I hadn’t had a lot of friends.
My mum had been … a little overprotective after she’d discovered my gift, which meant I grew up a bit sheltered.
But after I’d gotten exposed, so to speak, she’d let me go to the boarding house for secondary school.
Maraya has its own education system, teaching both the arcane and everything else.
“Anyway, like I said, I didn’t have a lot of friends. And my set mates had heard about me. They’d been curious, or whatever. So they’d—” She stops talking abruptly, but I don’t need her to continue.
“Fuck, Rosemary,” I whisper, giving in and tugging her back into my embrace, holding her tightly. “Fuck. That’s so fucked up. What the fuck.”
“I know.” She laughs, but it holds no humour.
“That should never have happened to you. Fuck them. They shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. If they were here right now …”
She lets out a choked sob. “I’m sorry.” She wipes furiously at her eyes, but the tears don’t stop coming, spilling down her cheeks like water from an overfilled dam. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“That’s all right,” I murmur, rocking her against my chest, stroking my hands down her back as she sobs, her body shaking. “You’re okay, omemi. Let go. I have you.”
I hold her until she stops crying, until she’s crawling up my body, joining our lips messily, desperately.
“Please, please—” she whines, her begging going straight to my clit.
“Fuck,” I groan, licking hungrily into her mouth, gently pushing her shoulder until I have her splayed out underneath me on her back.
I lift up, resting on my left elbow, while my right hand slides slowly up her body, over one soft, plump curve of her breast until it’s wrapped lightly around her throat. Her pulse is a wild thing against my palm.
She stares up at me like she’d done before, with love and worship and complete devotion—she’s seen every single part of me, she’s seen the monster, for fuck’s sake, been on the very end of this depraved hunger, yet here she is, still, giving me absolutely everything.
And I’m fucking lost.
I feel as vulnerable as when Genevieve had had me literally cracked open, my ribs and heart and lungs—my stomach and intestines and other organs completely exposed to her devouring gaze.
I’d known it before, on some level, that what had happened to me back in my village had been messed up.
At first, I’d told myself it wasn’t a big deal.
I literally couldn’t be killed, and my set girls had simply been curious; what was the harm?
Hadn’t my mother done the same thing when she’d wanted to “confirm” my gift? What was the difference now?
A lot, it turns out. It had been a slow-acting poison, venom working its way up from my feet. By the time it had reached my throat, I hadn’t been able to even articulate it. I’d felt rotten. Used. Almost entirely detached from myself and my body.
My mother had noticed, eventually, and gotten the confession out of me.
She hadn’t wasted time, pulling me out of the school and subsequently out of the village with no warnings and no reprimands.
Looking back, I know she hadn’t gone to the council because they’d probably have said the same thing I’d thought back then.
What was the big deal? It’s not like I’ll actually die.
Which makes the situation with Genevieve all the more stark in contrast.
I’d expected something brutal, something selfish and animal, which was silly of me. Of course when I give her a gift, she’d treat it precisely as it was.
Her eyes are back to being pools of darkness, sucking in all the light. Despite that, I know her so well I can still read her.
She doesn’t look at me like I’m some curious specimen. Like I’m not even human.
She looks, and she sees me, the same way I see her.
She sees what I’m giving her, and she’s refusing to take it for granted. I see what she’s giving me—what it must’ve cost to bare her soul to me, and I’m doing the same right back.
Her hand, tipped in claws, squeezes around my throat. Not enough to cut off my air, but enough to remind me its there. It makes my pussy thrum.
She leans down to suck my lower lip between hers, gently licking the plump, sensitive flesh. I whimper. She kisses me, soft and sweet.
When she pulls back again, the veins around her temples are inky black, spreading from the corners of her eyes like the outstretched roots of a tree. All her teeth are pointed, sharp and glinting.
I want more. I want all of her.
She gently takes my lower lip between those teeth. We leave our eyes wickedly open as she worries at my soft, defenceless flesh with sharp fangs until I’m shaking, soaked between my thighs, my nipples stiff and aching.
Her teeth go back to their human bluntness, and I subconsciously relax.
Then she bites.
I cry out, the sound muffled. She sinks in hard, harder—working those blunt teeth brutally into my flesh until tears fill my eyes. I’m whimpering with pain, tears spilling down my temples when she finally tears the skin, my warm blood flooding into our connected mouths.
She moans in ecstasy.
Fuck, it hurts so fucking bad. Hurts so fucking good. My flesh clings to her teeth for a moment when she lets go. She licks at the wounds while I shake and shake, swallowing down the taste of iron.
My lip eventually heals, but I still feel the phantom, brutal ache when she kisses me, sucking on my tongue and my lips like she wants to drown in the taste of me.
She trails kisses down my jaw, my throat. I gasp, my hands flying to her head when she sucks my left breast into her mouth, her tongue—deliciously slick and inhumanly long—swirling around the sensitive, stiff peak. She licks and sucks, switching between my tits until I’m a shaking, needy mess.