After a while he slid a hand between us, running it up my thigh to the point where the throbbing was building more with every second. I helped him find the best place, showed him the right pressure, wordlessly, because we didn’t need words. I let out a gasp as he rubbed, faster and faster.
The tingling between us heightened, unfurling itself between our bodies like barbed-wire velvet, growing ever more intense and heated with the friction of our skin until it was so unbearable I whimpered softly. Cliff stopped moving, but increased the pressure of his thumb. My hips bucked, but he pushed me back against the sheets, kissed me more deeply, more breathlessly.
I moaned, feeling the sound itself make the hairs rise on his body–and I knew, I just knew, that in this moment he felt that it was trulyhis. That what we were doing belonged to us alone. The wash of realisation was too much. I moaned again, or maybe I was screaming, maybe I was sighing, maybe… I didn’t know. For a heartbeat my mind was suspended, everything ran into everything else. The burning flooded my body, searing into every cell, every thought, every feeling. I was standing in the flames, and I loved it, I loved it so much because I knew I wasn’t in them alone.
Cliff waited until the quiver in my toes had relaxed. Then he began to move inside me again, slower now, but a little deeper and harder. I shuddered with every thrust, especially when, minutes later, I felt him tense above and inside me. His teeth grazed mine as he kissed me again, just at the moment he came. And I… I wondered if he, too, realised in that instant why people called itcoming. Because, with the right person, it felt like you had reached somewhere, in so many ways that mattered.
My heart was beating softly, palpably, like a rubber ball bouncing around in my chest. A warm langour trickled through my body, into all the places that had been tingling seconds before. I traced invisible patterns on the muscles of Cliff’s back, waiting for his breathing to slow.
He kissed me lingeringly on the forehead, then he pulled away and flopped down onto the mattress next to me, still not letting me go. His hand reached around to the back of my head and undid the knot in the tie.
‘Hey.’ His face hovered close to mine. No crease between his brows, no strained focus in his eyes. Just a light film of sweat on his forehead, a mark on his cheeks from the tie, and a look of relief and happiness.
I smiled, because I felt the same. Carefully I brushed the hair back from his forehead, tracing the delicate scar that originated at his browbone. ‘Everything all right?’
He just nodded, and kissed me briefly on the mouth. I was so hot that my cheeks must have been on fire, but even that wasn’t unpleasant. I was naked and myself and… happy. I wassohappy, in spite of everything. For a while we lay side by side, fingers roaming over each other’s warm bodies, kissing sometimes, exhausted in the most wonderful of all ways.
‘What’s the deal with the tattoos?’ I asked, resting my thumb on the mark below his collarbone.
‘We’ve all got one,’ he explained quietly.
A flash of Jess came into my head, along with guilt–Zoe was still… lost, and Davie was still in hospital. His condition unaltered, although I hoped for better news every time I visited him.
Cliff continued. ‘If you put them together, it forms our coat of arms, the starling. Every time we enter a new body, we get it tattooed. A constant reminder that we’re only complete when we’re together.’
‘You don’t need them to be complete,’ I objected, kissing the scar on his temple. The part that belonged to him, to him alone, and not them.
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘I’m starting to feel that, for the first time in ages.’
I propped my head up on my hand, amused. ‘Just look what a bit of sex can do. Guess it’s like riding a bike, even at your age.’
Cliff groaned and laughed at the same time, putting his arm over his face. A wash of colour clung to his cheeks. He had never been more handsome than in that moment. ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘What, that you’re a hundred and sixty years older than me?’
‘Yeah?’
‘No, oddly enough it doesn’t. The stuff about your “family” wanting me dead, however, that does give me pause.’ I tried to keep my tone light, but Cliff was instantly on edge.
‘I won’t let them hurt you,’ he said, so earnestly that it felt at odds with the situation.
I knew he meant it, but at the same time, it wasn’t a promise he could make. I still wasn’t sure I really understood the League of Starlings, but what I did know was enough to realise that these people, if you could call them that, were willing to go to terrible lengths to protect their secrets. Or even just for their own enjoyment. They didn’t care about the lives of others.
‘You know this isn’t just about me, right? They’re a threat to everybody. After what Davie and I found out, I’m pretty sure what happened to June and Paulina isn’t a one-off. Even just what happened to Zoe… they can’t, I mean,youcan’t use people like that, Cliff. It’s not right.’ Whatever my feelings for him, I couldn’t separate him entirely from his family.
‘I know.’ He nodded slowly. ‘But I don’t know how to stop them. What I told you is true: leaving isn’t an option. We all have to stick to the rules the council has set for us. If we defy them, then—’ He broke off and shook his head, before rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. ‘There’s only one way to truly destroy the League.’
I sat up, instantly alert. ‘And what’s that?’
Cliff was silent. Strips of light broke again through the window, creeping across the bedding and his face, painting bright shadows on his pensive features. For a moment, I thought I saw a pang in his eyes: as if he were reaching a decision that caused him physical pain. A second later, he took adeep breath. ‘The artefact. We have to destroy it. Without it, we can’t switch bodies anymore. We’d be tied to the ones we’re in. Until… the end.’
My heart began to race. It sounded like a near-perfect solution. If we bound the soul-jumpers to their current bodies, they could all finish living out those lives. That meant making decisions, taking responsibility, discovering what they wanted for themselves and acting accordingly. They’d be stuck with the same struggles as the rest of us, forced to give this one lifetime their best shot. It wouldn’t undo the suffering they’d caused in the past, but it would stop them from ever doing it in the future. Then again, it would upend Cliff’s whole life, bring down everything his ancestors had built. Everything his parents had… died for. I eyed him uncertainly. ‘Is that a price you’re willing to pay?’
He stroked my cheek. ‘I’d pay any price,’ he said, with an almost reverent smile. ‘It’s the greatest gift you could give me. To have something finally worth risking everything for. Without that… it’s no life at all.’
Tenderness curled its warm fingers into my chest, and I kissed him. I paused, my lips still close to his. ‘I know you have your issues with this body, but I would help you learn to love it. I promise. Then you can live a normal life in it. Make your own decisions, your own mistakes, choose your own family. You can grow old.’
He clasped my fingers in his and pressed his mouth to the back of my hand. ‘Is it weird that that’s my greatest wish?’
