She frowned when that failed to get his attention, so she lightly plucked at the keys closest to her, inspiring an uneven melody, and knelt before him with her fingers laced atop his knee so she could cradle her chin between her knuckles.
“What’s eating at you?” She asked, tilting her head and grinning, aware of her words’ double meaning. “What emotion is inspiring you this time, maestro?”
Sorrow, I hope. Perhaps even a twinge of guilt.
Again, Terence didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, he continued to pluck away at the instrument’s keys. “You should leave. Run away while you still can.”
Jane couldn’t help but scoff out a barking laugh, she couldn’t help it. “If I could run away I would’ve done so already. Do you think I’d intended to have ‘becoming dog food’ on my itinerary when I left Milwaukee?”
A heavy breath rushed from his nose. His eyes failed to focus.
“My brother Elias killed our sister, mauling her by accident, then himself with poison,” he whispered. “Matthew never took a wife nor any friendly companions for fear of what he’d do to them. Our father made our mother weary and die at an early age; her heart simply gave up. And we could never grieve—Father wouldn’t allow it. To grieve was to be weak… I couldn’t imagine doing worse to you, Jane.”
“Damage has been done, I’m afraid,” Jane shrugged and tensed her fingers.
“All of this is my fault…”
It is.
She squeezed his knee. “Well, you have no control over the weather nor do you have control over the waters of the marshes.”
“But what about myself?” He shook his head, sneering as his lip trembled. “I thought I had control. I thought I knew what I could do to keep others safe from me so that I would not just become another shallow mound of earth. I—I shouldn’t have let you come here.”
She squeezed his knee again. “And yet here I am, and you certainly aren’t going to magically resolve everything by moping about it.”
He said nothing, but tears caught in the fissures of his face as a sob heaved from his lungs.
“All of this is my fault,” he whispered again, words muffled by tears. “If I just waited, if I kept you at a distance, if I would take a moment to discipline my heart and keep it tightly chained, then you wouldn’t be hurt. I wouldn’t fear the possibility of waking up to taste the powder of your bones upon my teeth, hoping that you did shoot me like wild game. And therein lies my true curse: how can Iloveyou? How can I allow myself to harbor affections for you when it is your very company that threatens to undo the chains forged for me? How can I protect you when it’s me that I am protecting you the most from?”
Love.
Even if she wished to, Jane couldn’t muster movement in her muscles. To comfort him, to stand and walk away, anything…
Love. She didn’t know what to make of the word, especially when it came from his mouth, the very same one that’d nearlytorn her apart, and she knew not if what he had felt in the first place was love at all or some other emotion misinterpreted out of naivety after a lifetime of little companionship. She was certain she didn’t love him back—she, in this moment, was terrified to. How could she love something that terrified her as much as he, quietly, captivated her; she hated herself for suddenly finding a muted excitement in being allured by something that held such danger. No wonder she mewled the way she did beneath the Terence-beast’s mouth. After all, has already tasted her blood, a part of her within him forever, it may as well have been a marital bond.
But she hoped she could learn to nurture the fondness that’d existed for him to flourish into the very thing she envied her parents for possessing. A love equal parts conditional and unconditional, requited and unrequited.
She sighed and stood, but then shifted so that she sat in his lap, and reached to cradle his face between her palms.
The hazel-brown of his eyes were deep, dark puddles overflowed with utter misery, and she failed to see any semblance of the beast within them. She brushed stray hair from his face, tucking them back into place in a petting motion so that she could seehim—his vulnerability, his pain forher—laid bare and aching.
For her.
Even if it weren’t love she yet felt, she knew sheneededhim. Monster and all.
“I can protect myself just fine,” Jane whispered despite the ache in her leg, and kissed him.
Her heart sparked, thrilled, when he froze beneath her, held captive under the claiming weight of her mouth. But, after a long moment, his arms wrapped around her and he kissed her back. The hesitation that made his lips feather-light seemed to dissipateas he was overcome with a newfound hunger, desperate to devour his fill, and a growling moan rumbled in the back of his throat as he took Jane’s mouth for his own. She held him closer, running her hands through his hair to keep him pressed against her neck even when he went to take a breath. The friction as she ground against his thigh in a needy rut caused stars to dance behind her eyes.
His kisses against the column of her throat were devastatingly tender, his trembling lips becoming like the mouth of the beast, holding her limply between its teeth. Only this time, he didn’t dare break her skin and only used such monstrousness to protect her and make himself hers.
“Jane…” he whimpered against her mouth before kissing her again; his breath hitched upon snagging her bottom lip between his teeth. He sighed and nestled into the crook of her neck, nose nuzzling just behind her ear.
Her chest heaved as he pulled her closer into him, and the heat from their bodies being so pressed together lured the thread of a groan from between her breasts. She only dared to open her eyes when she’d grown too afraid that the nightmare beast embraced her, with peeling flesh and bleeding claws, and released a heady breath when she saw it was only Terence—herTerence—who held her so passionately.
“I’m a monster, and I do not wish to be…” Terence kissed the very drum of her pulse as she leaned her head back to offer him better access. Tears heated the touch of his mouth, the ghost of another sigh against her skin. “But—please—if I’m to be one, then let me beyours.”
Jane held him there, her fingers curved into hooks of propriety that secured him in place to continue caressing the breathless whispering of her name across her skin. As the tingling, raw heat grew too fierce, she made him pause when she broughther forehead to rest against his. He would devour her later, in one way or another.
