Page 85 of A Serpent in the Garden

Remy, I said, chewing listlessly, you’re probably never going to see me again if your mother lifts her spell, not unless I die and find myself damned. You’re here, I’m mortal. I lived in Monde’s End, the most suspicious place in the world. I had no idea what Remy looked like, but going off his brothers, his mother and sister, I had to assume he couldn’t pass for entirely human. On the off chance that all would be forgiven when I made it back home, I could never take the risk of being caught in the company of someone demonic.

It was a bittersweet thing to reconcile. My mind and body would be my own but I would never speak to him again. I’d lose some little part of me that I never asked for or wanted but felt rather attached to at this point. Perhaps it would be like when my mother died, an awful sequence of depression and senselessness that would lighten as time wore on. Perhaps eventually I would look back on these past six years as a bizarre little interlude, just some odd thing that once happened to me.

A voluminous pause. And you think that means I would never see you again?

I think that’s the most likely scenario.

I wouldn’t just fuck off entirely after six years, Des, he said as if he were offended, as if he were telling me something any idiot should already know.

You will if you run off and get yourself killed, I wanted to say. I didn’t, but he heard it anyway.

It would take a lot to kill me, he said, as I drained what remained in my wine tankard. I’m pretty sturdy.

I hadn’t realized wine would make it so difficult to sleep. Monde’s End hadn’t had wine in a long time, eight years, probably, but how many times had I seen, when Lord Fletcher’s uncle came to town bearing his casks, men pass out in their dinner plates from drinking it?

That’s because you didn’t have enough, Remy said. If you’d had a flagon you would have passed out the moment your head hit the pillow.

I didn’t suppose I ought to ask for more; didn’t think I wanted any. My stomach swirled, my blood plunged through my body like I was in a panic, not simply lying in bed. I felt his offer to force sleep at the tip of his tongue but I batted it away before he could get a word out. I would have to learn how to sleep on my own eventually. My mind might be free of the demonic soon enough.

Dizzy twilight dozes, where I straddled the line between sleep and waking, wasn’t sure what were thoughts and what were dreams. A gold thread wove through it all. It set my teeth on edge, a tense residual tingle of Finn’s presence. I kept expecting to jolt up and find flames in the room, a tall, gold-shrouded figure looming over me. I couldn’t bear to leave you alone, he’d say, sliding beneath the blankets beside me while his brother grumbled and paced inside my head. The thought of it was a nightmare, left me feeling seasick, though maybe that was the wine tossing about in my stomach.

I tried to think of calming things; the skies of Frost, the thought of Livvy sleeping in the bed next to mine, the entire boring process of making bread, though for all my effort it did not net me much but laughter from my demon.

He’s not a monster hiding in the wardrobe, Remy said with a dry little laugh the fifth time it happened. Even Finn wouldn’t just invite himself into your bed. My bed, rather. Nobody will enter at this time of night without your permission.

He was wrong on that score, though.

I don’t know how long I lay there before I became aware that someone was with me. Even breathing that sent my hair fluttering, the feel of open eyes staring through the dark at the back of my head. I froze, my heart in my throat, immobilized on my side with a fear that stole my breath.

They moved a little closer and it was definitely a man; I could feel he was tall as he wedged his knee between both of mine, his chest sealed against my back. My pillow sagged beneath the added weight of his head.

Should I scream, play dead, leap out of bed? Yell for Remy? Where even was he? My mouth had gone dry, like it had been stuffed with ashes.

Hot breath on my nape, the bridge of a nose beneath my ear, the heavy, oddly reassuring weight of an arm slung around my hip. One thumb tracing the loose band of my borrowed, overlarge pants, the warm press of lips on the side of my neck. I felt the strength in his body, knew I wouldn’t make it far if I tried to get up. But that didn’t mean I had to meekly acquiesce.

In a mutinous little burst, I pulled away. An indistinct noise in his throat, like he was smiling, his hand settling on my hip. His face in my hair as if he were inhaling my scent.

And then he did nothing for a while, just lay there with me as if this were normal, like he’d been invited, and maybe I had invited him but somehow forgot? My heart slowed, eventually beating leisurely and calm, like it always had when I was with my mother, with Livvy and her family. When I felt safe. But it didn’t last long.

Lips in a blazing trail from the rim of my ear to my collarbone, a hand slipping back to the pants riding loose on my hips. My body had begun to respond without my permission, arching back into him as his thumb trailed slowly, painstakingly, back and forth beneath my stomach, chasing the gooseflesh he’d risen with his touch.

I wanted that stupid slow hand to creep beneath the band of my pants, but felt I didn’t need to say anything at all, that he already knew, that he was just playing with me. I realized I was right when the hand sneaked up my shirt instead, warm as it ran up my stomach and cupped my breast. He must have liked the hard nipple he found; his thumb circled it as he pressed his lips against my ear. His breath felt thunderous and sent a tremor down my spine despite his warmth.

He had two hands but was only using one, and not even where it would have been most useful. I grew irrationally angry then, suffering some sort of cardiac drop, which he seemed to know without my saying anything. I felt his mouth pulling into a smile at the internal clangor he’d created.

Lower, I thought. I want that hand much lower.

Was that a laugh I heard in response?

He gave me what I hadn’t asked for aloud, his hand slipping inside my pants. His heart pounded against my back at how wet he’d found me, his breath coming ragged. The pad of a finger slipping back and forth, maddeningly slow, and I knew good and well this unhurried posturing was a facade because the hand was nearly shaking in his effort to hold it flat against me and he’d grown stiff against my back.

Some sort of bastard offspring of a grunt and groan when I ground back against him, like he was angry, like I wasn’t following the rules, but angry meant rougher and two fingers firm against a place that sent lightning crackling at the dark edges of my vision. He shuddered behind me at the moan on my lips. I’d tried holding it back because I thought any audible reaction might send him back to teasing and I was correct. His touch turned feathery, erratic. I pressed my lips together to seal out a noise of frustration. He wanted me in a tangle; he fed on my reactions, so I would give him nothing until he gave me what I wanted.

And then, with his thumb thrumming against that nerve, he slid a finger inside me. His knee moved up further between my thighs to allow better access and I almost thought I’d die with relief, that the only thing that mattered was that he kept a firm, capable grip on me. That his fingers kept going deeper, harder, that his thumb kept working.

Did he hate or love the groans he was dragging out of me? He swore once under his breath like he was angry, but he grew harder all the while, burying his face in my neck.

He bit me at the same time he gave me the deepest stroke yet. I couldn’t breathe anymore, though it hardly seemed to matter. I pulsed against his thumb and rolled my hips to meet his fingers. My heart ran wild against my rib cage, like it wanted out. Tingling in my spine from his breath in my ear, ratcheting tension in those nerves he kept thumbing.