Goldie leaned in and licked him from base to tip, her tongue twining along his ridges. Splice cried out, and his vines writhed wildly, curling across her hand, her wrist, creeping higher to twine over her shoulders and cradle her head.
His hands scrambled against the cushions, fingers digging for anchor, his back arched and his breath broke into helpless gasps. “Goldie,” he whispered, fractured, “I?—”
His hips rolled into her mouth—tentative at first, then stronger, chasing rhythm. She moaned around him and let him sink deeper into her throat, her hands braced steady on his thighs. He cried out again, voice wrecked, vines shuddering in frantic ecstasy.
And then she felt it: an echo reverberating through her. Sensation and sound, light and pulse, all humming together, stringing a chord between her spine and the soil beneath Greymarket. It felt like the earth itself was opening to her.
Splice’s hips jerked, thighs trembling beneath her grip, vines cinching tighter around her shoulders. She could taste the precum pearling at his tip with a strange mineral tang, sharp and intoxicating. She moaned around him, eyes fluttering closed, her whole body shivering as though she were drinking down the roots of the world.
And then?—
—something lanced through her.
Cold. Jagged. Wrong.
Splice flinched.
The connection between them shattered. The pleasure that had been building like a tidal wave collapsed in on itself, sucked backward into a hollow nothing. His cock twitched once in her mouth, then went utterly still.
She looked up and pulled back, hand still moving on instinct, stroking blindly. “Splice?” she whispered. “What?—?”
He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring through her, face contorted. A strangled sound tore from his throat. “No. No, no?—”
Goldie yanked her hand away from him, heart lurching.
“Splice?” she asked again, sharper now. Her body was still singing, still aching for him, but suddenly chilled to the bone.
His gaze snapped to hers and twisted into something she didn’t recognize. Something perilously close to revulsion. His vines ripped backward all at once, slithering off her skin in a violent rush.
“No!”he shouted, louder now, panic breaking through in a full-throated cry.
She didn’t even have time to react before his hands clamped down on her shoulders, shoving her roughly away.
Goldie tumbled back, hitting the floor with a gasp, elbows scraping against the rug. She lay sprawled, stunned, her whole body trembling with the aftershock of something unfinished.
She looked up at him, heart pounding, but he wasn’t looking at her. His face was buried in his hands, shoulders hunched as though he might splinter apart under his own weight.
“Splice. Splice, what’s wrong?”
But he didn’t respond. Didn’t even move.
Shame and confusion slammed into her like a tidal wave. Her throat cinched tight. Her skin still throbbed with arousal, but now it burned, warped into something sharp and aching. Horrified silence bloomed in the room like a bruise.
A frantic knock rang on the apartment door.
Splice’s head jerked up. His eyes were wide, unseeing, the green of them blown out with some internal panic. Vines rippled along his arms and shoulders, trembling like antennae scenting the wind, or nerves misfiring beneath the skin. For one moment, he looked less like a man and more like something on the edge of rupture.
“Goldie? Goldie, it’s Jem! Nell called me! I brought cookies and wine! Are you there?”
Goldie scrambled upright, yanking her shirt down and fumbling her bra back into place.
“Just a minute!” she called, pitching her voice into a too-bright trill that bordered on hysterical.
Splice lurched to his feet, jerking his shirt closed, fingers clumsy on the buttons. His trousers hung askew; he tugged them straight with a sharp motion, jaw tight, eyes darting to the window as if weighing the possibility of escape.
“I’m coming in!” Jem called, the handle of Goldie’s apartment door rattling.
“Shit,” Goldie hissed, and flew across the room. She caught the door just in time, forced her expression into something approximating composure, and swung it open.
