Lifetimes pressed into ten fingers and rewrote our new story on our bodies.
We found ourselves tangled with the bedsheets.
She whispered sweet nothings in my ear.
The night held us in its hands.
Mouths alive, palms pressed to palms, fingers woven, breasts sliding against my chest, and submerged deep inside her was when her orgasm gripped mine, and my own began to pulse. The vibrations started in my bones, and I felt the change shift in my veins. It felt like an injection of rapture straight into my blood, an endless and enduring climax.
Then my magic expelled a silver aurora around us, protecting us. It had never happened like this before, and I pulled my hand over her eyes and looked around the illuminating room. It seemed as if the galaxy had fallen around us. Or the world had been turned upside down, and we were hanging in a star-filled sky. My heart was calm, but my body was spent and tipsy and spinning.
“This can’t be real,” I breathed out, my soul drunk from it. I dropped my head, watching Fallon pull her bottom lip between her teeth. Then she parted her trembling lips before I filled her with my kiss once more, losing ourselves all over again.
Fallon
The large awning window stretched across the wall over his bed. There were no curtains. No blinds. Nothing but a backdrop of the woods. The cold, fresh morning air slipped through the opened window from the bottom because he’d cracked it before we’d fallen asleep. It was so cold in his bedroom, but I felt at home here, lying bare between his warm sheets. Julian slept with his turned head under a pillow and on his back, one hand above his head, the other laying naturally across my hip.
Julian had always disappeared before morning came, and I’d never seen him sleep when the sun rose. It was fascinating, watching as his chest and stomach filled and fell in a soothing cadence. All these things inside him working together so beautifully without effort.
I sat up against his headboard, pulled the blanket up to my chest, and looked around the bare room. I picked up a book from the nightstand.Frankenstein. There were mug rings on the cover. The book was treated like a favorite childhood blanket or stuffed animal. I opened the book and flipped through it. Julian’s handwriting filled the margins. Black ink had sentences underlined, and pages were creased at the corners. It was fascinating.
Julian stretched beside me, and his hand moved from over his head. He rubbed his chest, slid his palm down his torso and under the blanket, where he grabbed himself. His other hand that was laying on me moved too, and his fingers canvased my skin like a map, recognizing everywhere he’d journeyed through the night.
“Are you awake?” he asked from under the pillow, squeezing my thigh.
“Yeah.” I quickly closed the book, held it close to my chest.
“In the drawer of my nightstand, there’s a mask. Hand me one?”
The drawer slid out smoothly, and inside were a collection of plain black masks. I grabbed one and reached behind me to drop it over his chest.
I stayed on my side, faced the doorway when I felt the bed shift as he rose. “Okay,” he said, and I turned back, laid against the headboard beside him.
Julian pushed his fingers over his eyes, through his hair. Then he looked at me. And I wished I knew what was going through his head, knew what he was thinking. He looked at me like he’d never seen anything like me before. He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time, each time.
“Have you read it before?” he asked.
Read it before?And Julian’s eyes fell to the thing clutched to my chest. “Oh,” I said, then looked down at the book’s cover. “No. I mean, I know the story, but never actually read the book.”
“Then how do you know the story?”
I tucked my smile into a straight line. “Everyone knows the story of Frankenstein.”
Julian shook his head. “The story could be different depending on who you heard it from. Filmmakers, critics, people who’ve read it, they all retelltheirversions, their perception of the story, but you have to read the book for yourself to findyourstory.”
I raised a brow. “I didn’t know you liked to read.”
Julian laughed lightly. “I don’t, actually. I just like this one book. I’ve memorized it.”
“You’ve memorized it.” It was a statement. An incredulous statement.
“You’re doubting me.”
“No, I’d never doubt you.”
“Choose a page number,” he challenged, and I smiled. “Go on, I’m not kidding.”
My smile was burning my face, and I flipped through the book, feeling Julian’s eyes on me. Then I turned to face him so he couldn’t see the words or cheat. “Page forty.”
