Ingredients, bundled in fabric pouches, promise insight into the future, new love, and protection.
Lucky pauses, and I follow his gaze to a deep blue bottle.The label readsforget your regret.He lingers.
I desperately want to ask.
“There should be ahex your expotion around here somewhere,” I offer.
He turns to me, and the memories play so vividly over his expression that they almost project outward, like his body is here, but his mind is in another place, another time.“He’ll be doing that to himself; he won’t need any help from me.”
The memory ends, and his attention refocuses on me.Not sharp, no.Lucky’s attention is always gentle.But unwavering.Like nothing else exists.
“But I’ll gladly cause some problems for yours.”
“How sweet of you.”
The air pressure changes, heats.My breathing deepens, and each rise and fall shifts my clothes like a caress against my skin.I imagine it feels like his hands would.
“Any regrets?”he asks.
“No.”It’s a whisper.Huey has no place here, not in my future.“I need someone who wants what I want.”
Lucky steps closer, his voice soft.“And what’s that?”
The lights seem to dim.
“Everything.”
The touch of his palm on my waist is electric.
“I thought we weren’t meant to touch anything in here,” I whisper, letting him press me against the shelf.
“I’m making an exception.”
He teases the tip of his nose along my cheek, sending tingles through me.It wouldn’t take much to kiss him.He’s right there; all I’d need to do is move, tilt up, and make our lips meet, but I don’t.
The wait is a delicious kind of agony.Each second, each breath turns the heat of my blood up a little bit more, until wanting him is a song I can’t stop replaying in my head, over and over and over.
The kiss, when it comes, is lightning to my skin, more than the firm press of his mouth, more than the eager, searching curl of his tongue around mine.It’s overwhelming.A bass thumping deep into my bones.Moving.Vital.Life-giving.
It feels like falling, and I reach blindly for the case behind me, my palm catching on a strange stone.I pull back from the kiss and pick it up.
It’s glowing.
Faint pink light coats my fingertips, illuminating the deep, swirling patterns within the crystal itself.They have no beginning or end, stretching endlessly into the stone itself, although it’s no bigger than my hand.
I can’t look away.
“Touch it,” I tell Lucky.I don’t know why.
Slowly, he reaches out …
* * *
Make Your Choice:
something magical happens(go to 42)
nothing happens(go to 49)
