48. Chug It #3
I swallow hard and grab the bottle off the coffee table. Snow sucks in a breath beside me but doesn’t stop me as I pull the cork free with a soft pop and tip the bottle back, drinking the whole thing before any of us have time to reconsider.
The petal tastes exactly like it smells. Rotting roses. Not completely terrible, but definitely not something I’d order a second round of.
By the time I set the empty bottle back on the table, the room has already begun to spin. Snow’s grip tightens around my hand as my vision fractures into overlapping pieces, the room multiplying around me like I’m trapped inside a kaleidoscope.
“One?” Snow calls, but her voice comes from somewhere impossibly far away.
Inside us, every boundary suddenly sharpens. For one terrifying second, I know exactly where each of us ends and the next begins, seven clean lines cutting through us more clearly than they ever have before.
Then the lines start slicing deeper.
Two grunts. Three cries out. Seven growls through the pain while Four swears violently, and I can’t tell which sounds escape our mouth and which exist only inside our head.
Snow squeezes my hand, and I latch onto the sensation with everything I have, her fingers, her warmth, the simple fact that she is still right there beside me. If there is anything that can pull us through this, it’s her.
The edges cut deeper, past thought and memory until pain detonates through our body. My back arches violently, my eyes clench shut and our head snaps backward as seven voices cry out at once.
Everything goes dark.
I blink, then blink again.
Snow is still sitting beside me, pitched forward with one hand wrapped around mine and the other hovering inches from my face like she wants to touch me but isn’t sure whether she should. Her blue eyes sweep over me, searching.
Wait.
I close my eyes and reach inward.
There’s noise. Thoughts, memories, contradictions, desire, all of it still moving through me, but there are no walls.
I try to call for Two, but the thought immediately tangles because I am Two. I’m One too, and Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven. Every impulse is still here, every memory, every part that once felt separate, but there is no clear place where one of us stops and another begins.
There is no one behind me and no one at the front.
Just me.
My eyes snap open. “Holy faefucks.”
Snow’s lips part as wonder slowly overtakes the worry on her face. “It worked. You’re eyes, they’re...they’re hazel.”
I stand and drag her up with me, then kiss her.
Her tongue slides against mine and there’s nowhere else for the sensation to go. No back of the mind, no distant corner, no one else holding the reins while the rest of me watches. Her mouth is on mine, her body presses against me, and every bit of it reaches me at once.
Mine.
Excitement, shock, relief and an entirely inappropriate amount of raging horniness crash through me together. I laugh into Snow’s mouth and reach down, scooping her ass into my hands until her legs wrap around my hips.
My hips.
The realization makes me laugh again, and suddenly we’re moving.
I take off around the apartment with Snow locked around me, spinning her as I race fast enough to turn the room into a blur.
Instead of dodging the couch, I phase straight through it, then through the armchair on the next pass, Snow shrieking with laughter against my neck as an illusion of fireworks erupts across the ceiling above us.
Gold, purple, blue and white bursts explode soundlessly overhead while I keep running, weaving through furniture instead of around it, faster and faster until Snow is laughing so hard she can barely hang on.
“Holy faefucks!”
“I know!”
The words tear out of me on a laugh as another shower of false sparks rains down around us.
I’m doing all of it at once.
No switching. No fighting for the front. No one else waiting somewhere behind my eyes for their turn.
Just me.
It really fucking worked.
My thoughts still collide, and my emotions still contradict one another, so apparently becoming one has done absolutely nothing to make me less of a mess.
But there’s no jockeying for the front anymore and no one gets shoved backward.
I’m here for every second of it, especially for the soft, delicious hellion currently kissing me like she’s trying to climb inside my body and verify the results herself.
Snow pulls back enough to look at me. “So what do I call you now?” Her grin turns wicked. “Other than Hottie McBoyfriend of Mine?”
“That is my official title to be used in all formal situation,” I say solemnly, “but the rest of the time you can call me Logan.”
The name comes out strangely, familiar and new at the same time, and my lips curve so wide it hurts.
Snow studies me for another beat before her smile slowly matches mine. “That’s going to take some time to get used to.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” I start toward the bedroom with her legs still locked tightly around me. “I plan to make you scream it about fifty times before morning. For, you know...practice.”
“Practice makes perfect,” Snow sing-songs as I kick the bedroom door shut behind the two of us.
Download the bonus epilogue: for those who want another sneak peek at Rap & Ryder.