CHAPTER SEVEN
BUNNY
Chewing the last of my crust, the hours I spent with Razor this morning play through my mind. They have been. Each frame of him, every smell of his cologne and the stolen glances that carved the syllables of his name into my veins.
It’s pathetic. But it feels like he owns my heart. I’m just not willing to let him in.
He’s secretive and sneaky. And he doesn’t think. He just… does. He’s the polar opposite of me. Yet he has a way of convincing the darkest parts of me that it’s okay to be slaughterhouse.
Life isn’t the yellow I forcefully paint it. I just… I don’t want to clip someone with my rust and infect them with tetanus.
Ora plucks a wedge of pineapple from her piece of pizza, stretching her arm back over her shoulder from the floor and passing it to me on the couch. “Get out of your head, Bun.”
I accept the acidic fruit, popping it into my mouth with a sigh. “I am pleasantly present.”
With one hand painting her spread toes on the carpet, Gwen takes a bite of her slice and flops it toward me. “I don’t like dick, and I can tell you’re thinkin’ ‘bout it.”
The pineapple goes down with a sting that has me latching around my cup of water on the side table and taking a big drink.
“Yeah, that’s dick,” Gwen nods, her bobbing blonde rollers sending all the girls’ attention right at me. “Did you finally fuck someone? You’re glowin’ a bit, juicy girl.”
“Razor,” Aries inputs, the cushion next to me shifting with her lean.
Accidentally setting my water down with force, the sweaty glass clanks onto the coaster. “No. Oh, my God, no. We went to the library and hung flyers. That was it.”
The lamp humming next to me is seeping down into the flames coming up through my face, like I’m experiencing the close impact of the sun. But really, I’m just a nervous glass teapot that cracks under pressure.
Duse stops her sewing machine, snipping the thread and pulling out the final one piece she’s been working on. “They’ll probably be back from… whatever they do soon. Do you wanna try this on?”
I grin, nodding and getting up from the couch. “Thank you for doing this.”
Getting it flipped right side out, she turns her smile from the shimmering, blood orange droplets up to me and passes it over. “It was long overdue. Now we’ll all be cohesive for the big bang.”
The big bang.
“Did, uh… Did Razor get Carl’s permission?”
Duse slowly shakes her head, smoothing over my worries with a placid expression turning her lips down.
The screen door behind me screeches, and instead of giving him any of my attention, I maneuver around Gwen and Ora on the floor and close myself in my bedroom to escape the expected embarrassment of Razor being in the same room as me.
The girls don’t mean harm. But this is already a battle I’m barely surviving, and I don’t need additional wounds of encouragement.
I cannot have sex with him. I cannot kiss him. I need to stop thinking about him. And he needs to stop coming near me.
Setting my newest performance piece on my bed, the shoddy fan whispers against my skin, tousling my hair across the everlasting dampness I’ve been surviving in.
That’s my problem.
I’ve been surviving. Not living.
Goosebumps shrivel my back, feeling the presence at my door before the hinges even squeak.
I make the conclusion that it’s not Ora very quickly. She barges in because, well, it’s her room, too. So, the uninvited body slipping inside and closing the door is triggering the juvenile panic of being infatuated.
No. Oh, no-no-no.
I just admitted it. Fantastic.
“Got you this.” Razor swerves around me, sticking a can of Coca-Cola out while collapsing back on my bed.
He’s in my bed. On my white blanket. And he’s sweaty. Dirty. His hands are grimy from installing my spare silks in the Globe—and whatever else he was up to that sent him back home with his overalls folded down to terrorize me.
Accepting his offer, I shun a grin and slide Duse’s hard work away from him. “Thanks.”
He smiles, tucking his filthy arms behind his head and watching me crack the tab. “Do I make you nervous, Bunny?”
The burn of sweet chemicals coats my tongue and launches down my throat, my stomach immediately dipping. “W-what? N-no, I-”
He raises a brow, intercepting my lie.
I accept defeat, dropping my shoulders with a huff. “Yes. Everything does.”
“Why’s that?”
The loaded question insults my nervous system, which only further proves my point and curls my shoulders inward. “I don’t know.”
He studies me, his thick brows lowering his eyes sharp for a scrutinizing scan of how awkward I become.
I can’t even hold his eye contact right now. I feel naked and exposed and stupid. Like, I’m an illness people are afraid of catching.
He must not be worried about falling sick, though. He’s cruising my demeanor while sitting upright, and as he gets to his feet, all I can think about is how badly I want him to lay back down so I can retry, so I can explain that I’m worried about taking up too much room and saying the wrong thing.
He’s leaving because you’re pathetic.
The whites of my eyes sting, losing sight of him moving around my peripheral. Naturally, I expect to feel his heat slip away, hear the door open and then close me in with my loneliness.
But he lingers behind me.
My hips begin aching, accommodating the embers on my skin with a flush of pressure through my pelvis that flicks dopamine up my spine.
Like he can sniff out the reaction, he draws his fingertips up my vertebrae. Tenderly. Softly. Making it a point to slowly influence my shoulders to straighten with each notch he passes over.
“Like that,” he whispers.
Trailing up my tank top, he brushes circles between my shoulder blades, instituting chills to tighten my nipples.
The air becomes hot, each breath dropping my chest low and raising it high. If I wasn’t an idiot, I’d do like Aries said and own my power, spin around and let him take my top off, watch him fall back down to his knees and placate this infuriating need with his tongue around my nipples.
Maybe I’m not an idiot, though. Maybe I’m saving myself.
“Now, hold it. Just like that for me,” he whispers again. This time, against the crook of my neck, sinking his airy guidance into my depravity.
It’s hypnotizing. My synapses register reality, how close he’s standing against me, the featherlike touch he’s running up the back of my neck—but I can feel the kisses he placed on my stomach almost twelve hours ago.
The phantoms dance with his breath against the side of my neck, pressing the same longing affection where his lips are mere inches from actually touching me, teasing me with how good it would feel to have him take me on a ride of ecstasy.
“Are you gonna remember?” His fingers dust across my shoulder, the faint glide traveling down my arm. “Or do you need me to correct it every time I catch it?”
And… now I’m digging myself an even bigger hole by fantasizing in vivid detail.
My ears heat, acclimating to the ferocious rhythm that’s causing my skin to slicken even more. I squeeze the cold can, tracking the extra touch drifting around my waist. “I’ll remember.”
“All by yourself?”
“By myself,” I nod.
He hums thoughtfully, forming his giant, dirty hand around mine. “Well…” Pinning my palm to the can, he ushers it to my mouth, slowly skating his other fingers up my navel. “If you ever need help with anything, you let me know.”
My lips mold to the lip of the can, taking the small drink he wants me to take. The carbonation is more intense this time, trying to swallow the burn when my insides are already steaming.
“What… would I need help with?” Looking out the corner of my eye, I meet his dark yearn shadowed by his messy hair.
“I’ll let you decide that, little bunny.” Smirking, his touch fades away and he straightens to his height, devouring me with his eyes while backing up.
His glazed abs roll with each step, his hand coming over his waist to grip the extra fabric folded over his… dick.
“I’ll be waking you up for practice,” he smiles, grabbing the doorknob and pausing to finish being a glutton of obscenity. “I hope you sleep good. I’m gonna wear you out tomorrow.”
I probably look like an impressionable teenager seeing a suggestive denim advertisement right now.
My vise-grip on the soda can has it denting and popping at chest level, and I’m fully facing him with a loose jaw, not even attempting to tame the visible effect he’s beginning to have on me.
He winks, then slips out the door, leaving me whimpering to myself.
I’m supposed to be avoiding him. But that feels like removing pain from pleasure, like I’d be missing out on the one thing that reminds me I’m not hopeless.
Morning dew smatters my ankles, walking through the grass with the last bit of moonlight reflecting off the only precipitation we receive here.
There’s a faint chill this morning. It’s scattering down my spine, causing me to fold my arms over my chest while passing through the tunneled clearing of trees toward our gate.
I got myself up. Well, I didn’t really sleep, so I kind of just rolled out of bed when it felt right, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and ate some dry cereal, all in the company of my own voice.
Razor’s messing me up.
As much as he forces me to get nose to nose with things that make me uncomfortable and is helping me learn how to stand strong, he’s disheveling the perspective that makes me long for life outside of Vore.
I deserve more. And if that’s not possible, if digging up the dirt that was thrown over the life I was living prior to my memory wipe—I don’t want to be alive at all.
I don’t want to be consumed here.
It feels like I didn’t even get to enjoy my few hours of freedom yesterday because I was just chronically thinking about the lies I’m fed, the secrecy that weighs the air heavy, and how badly I want to grab Razor’s face and kiss him for the taste of someone else’s poison.
You see why I’m up before the sun and walking alone with the moon?