Page 7 of To Regret a Raven

“It doesn’t sound very serious,”his sister’s voice echoed in his mind, causing fresh anxiety to coil in his gut. Things with Rena had always felt so urgent. Everything was a fire. Everything was an emergency. Everything was high-stakes. He could still feel the tension between them when she’d joined him on the porch that morning, an ever-present push and pull game where only she seemed to understand the rules.

Fisher had thought he loved it for a while. Or at least, he’d convinced himself that he did. But he couldn’t understand how his family seemed to thrive in the drama of their relationships, because the hot and cold of it all made him feel bone-tired. Love was fucking exhausting.

Butthis—whatever this was that he was exploring with Drie—was better. It brought him peace. So maybe there weren’t fireworks. Maybe there wasn’t love. And maybe this was just a friendship. He didn’t need labels or explanations. He just neededher. Those soft blue eyes were watching him, just waiting to see how she could help, like the angel she was.

He bent forward, propping his elbows on his knees and his chin in one palm as he smiled up at her. “It’s looking up now.”

He watched as a series of emotions flitted across her face, too quick to track, and then she stood from her swing and crossed the foot of space separating them. Her hands slipped around his nape, and then she was pressing their mouths together in a move so startling that Fisher never saw it coming.

Everything in his mind went quiet at once. All the frustration, the worries, the stress—wiped clean. All that existed was Drie. Her soft vanilla scent. The tips of her fingers toying with the ends of his hair. The softness of her lips as they parted to let her tongue caress the seam of his mouth.

His next breath came in a gasp as his hands gripped his knees in a bruising vice as he fought to keep his seat. To not get his grime all over her soft blue sweater.

“Why aren’t you touching me?” Drie asked as she pulled back just far enough to rest her forehead against his. Her lips were so close, the pull magnetic. Unavoidable. He tilted his head back to follow her, but she shifted further, making his hands clench tighter, resisting the urge to pull her back. “Fisher?”

He sucked in a deep, stuttering breath, the heavy floral breeze from the park just enough of a distraction to break thehaze clouding his mind. “I don’t want to get you dirty,” he mumbled, straining his neck further in an invitation—no, apleafor her to return—to bring back that blessed respite her touch inspired.

But then her hands were moving, slipping down his arms and curling around his own as she pulled them up, guiding his palms to her waist as she stepped fully between his legs. His fingers flexed instinctively, and she rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, holding his gaze captive as she bypassed his mouth to whisper against his ear.

“Don’t hold back on my account,” she said, sliding her lips along his jaw in a series of peppered kisses until she once more hovered a mere centimeter above his lips, the mingling breaths between them heady and full of promise. “I like dirty.”

3

WAITING

JULY 2016

Thursday nights had quickly become Fisher’s favorite form of torture.

Like everything else with Drie, it had somehow developed, without any conscious thought on his part, into a standing date night where he would bring a snack, she would pick a show, and they would spend hours wrapped up in thick quilts on her living room couch.

Despite appearing sweet and cozy on the surface, however, the blankets were actually a matter of survival as she kept her thermostat dialed to the previously unknown arctic-fucking-tundra setting. But even worse than the unmanly shivers he fought to quell and the double layer of socks he was forced to wear was the perpetual,ceaselessdesire that was slowly driving him mad.

Every little thing about Drie turned him on, from the compact curves of her snack-sized form to the slight hitch in her breath signifying an imminent laugh to the way she would smack his shoulder when he said something stupid. Even the hypothermic, glacial temperature of her apartment wasn’tenough to cool his blood, so he spent his Thursdays at her side, using her body for warmth and simply…waiting.

Waiting for her to make a move, because if he could offer her nothing else, he could offer herthat. Control.

Ever since that first kiss on the swings, he’d been hooked. Weeks later, when she’d let him taste her for the first time, he’d become obsessed. But it wasn’t until the first night they’d slept together, their second TV Thursday, that he recognized the situation for what it was: an addiction.

Drie was all he thought about, day in and day out. She occupied every little shadowed, depraved, forgotten corner of his lizard brain. Even though he knew she was too good for those thoughts. Too good forhim. When Fisher wasn’t with her, he was counting down the minutes, and when hewas, he was drowning. Drowning in his guilt and hope and lust.

Just waiting for the moments when her icy blue eyes would land on him, her lips stretched into that smile that warmed him from the inside out.

Waiting for her to speak in that soft tone that would glide through his mind, as smooth as honey and as melodiously familiar as the hymns his grandmother used to leave running on her cassette player.

Waiting for the touch of her skin against his, turning his mind quiet and his body pliant as putty in her hands. He would do anything for her. Absolutely anything she wanted. And he didn’t think that she even knew the power she wielded over him.

“Fisher,” she breathed, the tone alone causing beads of sweat to gather along his hairline as his heartbeat tripled its pace.Don’t be a lizard,he repeated his mental mantra as her hand slipped across his chest. His eyes snapped closed.

He cleared his throat. “Yes?”

In response, he felt a leg land on the opposite side of his, straddling his waist as her weight landed squarely upon his lap,revealing everything he’d been so careful to hide. Her fingers tangled in his hair in that way that made his toes curl, and he arched his neck to give her better access.

“Look at me,” she demanded.

On command, his eyes opened, and the blue fire he found in hers was enough to bring his hands up of their own accord, wrapping around the flimsy fabric of her shorts. He curved his wrists, rolling her center against his, and then dropped his forehead forward against her collarbone as they both groaned at the delicious friction.

Fisher wanted this more than his next breath, but every night they spent together, he grew more desperate. The desperation that came with knowing that those nights couldn’t last forever, and that every stolen touch may very well turn out to be their last.