“Aren’t you cold?”
“No.” He tipped his head back to look at me, his smile still crooked even upside down, and those eyes still impossibly blue, glinting like polished steel in the dappled light. “Maybe.”
I wanted to touch, even though that’s all we’d been doing for the last hour since we’d landed in the grass, heavy and tired but not too tired to desire him.
I was an addict, that’s what he told me anyway. And every time I had to remind him he’d made me that way; needy, reckless, hungry. And he would smile, killing me again, twisting that knife in my gut until I bled for him, bleeding want instead of blood and bile. And every time he’d rock up onto his toes and stretch that long tender neck to my ear, his wet lips teasing hot breath over my skin and whisper, “The first one’s for free.”
Except it never is. And I had paid. Dear god, I had paid.
“We should go,” I said, pushing myself up to stand, brushing the leaves and grass from my suit pants. “I don’t wanna get caught with you half naked.”
“No?” He sounded genuinely surprised. But then his long fingers skimmed down his delicate belly and disappeared beneath his waistband. “How about completely naked?”
I swallowed but it was tough, feeling like I was collared but too tight, almost too tight to breathe. I begged him. “Please. Don’t. I just—”
But it was too late. The button was popped, the zipped lowered and the fabric already sliding away.
I didn’t remember getting to my knees but there I was, face buried in him, tasting every inch, every place. I didn’t remember him pushing me back, or unbuckling my belt or straddling me.
But with him, it was easy to forget. To forget time and place. Or to show up for my job. To forget family. Friends. My own name.
As he moved, beautiful and unreal, like the sunlight on his skin giving an illusion of the leaves dancing above him, I tried to remember what life was like before that crooked smile and those ghostly eyes…or when I last ate or drank or slept.
But then a wave of pleasure pulsed through me. I couldn’t help but throw my head back and moan like a whore. He bent closer, gently touching my cheek with his icy fingers and whispering, “Shhh, baby,” before he sank his teeth into my already ragged throat and made me forget about anything other than the tilt of his hips and the slowing of my heartbeat and wanting it to go on forever and ever and ever.
Just like he’d promised it would the first time.