“Only I get to decide when I’m done exploring.”
I fill my palm with him, dense and weighty, testing the heft of him as I gently lift. Death hisses, his skeletal jaw unhinging slightly as his hips buck forward, seeking the friction of my grip. He’s starving for this. Just like I thought.
My eyes go to his throat.
Wed him. Bed him. Slit his throat.The words heat my blood, sharper than the strange desire uncurling in my belly.
I tighten my grip, sliding my hand back up the formidable column of him. The motion draws a broken, hissing gasp from his throat, his hips jerking instinctively to meet my palm.
“There was no need to hide this,” I murmur, my thumb circling the weeping head before dragging back down the vein-roped shaft. “Could’ve showed me sooner.”
My hand continues its slow, rhythmic work, stroking him from root to tip, and the effect is devastating. Every glide of my palm pulls a ragged, broken sound from the depths of his chest as our faces drift closer once more.
He tries to turn his away, the sharp angle of his jaw tense with desire. “Don’t…”
“Why not?” I whisper, drifting closer until the tip of my nose brushes against the cartilage of his.
His groan warms the air between our mouths. “You have to stop.”
My lips brush the corner of his human mouth, soft and tentative. He jerks back, a sharp intake of breath, but I follow him. I trace the line of his lower lip until I meet teeth. We hover there, suspended in a terrible, beautiful gravity. He wants this. Gods, he wants this so much that the heat radiating off him feels like a physical weight.
I squeeze him, hard, at the same moment I tilt my head. His resolve shatters. A low, anguished noise tears from his throat, and he surges forward to bridge the gap.
Our mouths connect.
The right side of his mouth acts as Vale would—lips parting, warm and soft. But the left… The left is a threshold of hard, unyielding ivory. My tongue darts out, tasting the stark difference, sweeping against the smoothness of his exposed teeth.
It should horrify me.
Instead, it maddens me.
The contrast of soft flesh and hard bone is tantalizing. I moan, the sound vibrating against his skull. My strokes slow, growing heavier, dragging the skin of his cock tight until he matches my rhythm with a desperate, bucking grace. I’m lost in it, the scent of carnation, the sensation of bone pressing against my own teeth as I?—
Death rips his mouth from mine, heaving. “Enough!”
It isn’t just a shout; it’s an ancient roar that silences the woods and arrests my heart mid-beat—his clenched teeth, those black pits of his eyes wide with something close to panic.
I could argue that I haven’t reached the end of my explorations yet, but what’s the point? Looking at the rigid tension in his frame, I’d be arguing with an earthquake. But that only gives me wiggle room, doesn’t it?
I slowly withdraw my hand, smoothing my skirts with a composure I don’t feel. “Fine,” I say, my voice steady despite the rapid hammering of my pulse. “I’ll consider myself done exploring, if…”
He exhales, a long, annoyed breath. “If…?”
“If you come to one of the orphanages with me.”
His skull tilts, incredulous. “You want to parade Death through a house of children?”
“I wouldn’t mind, but I’m sure the carriage would prefer your Vale costume,” I say. “Agree, and we’re done here.”
Death straightens his neck while shadows knit up along those knees still pressed into the ground, the fleshy side of his mouth thinning. “I will accompany you.”
Then he rises. It’s a sudden, soaring ascent, and yet I see it, the red flutter behind the white of his ribcage. His…heart?
“Wait!” I don’t think. Impulse overrides sanity, moving my arm before my mind can catch up to the horror of what I’m doing. I reach up. No, not up.
Up and into.
My hand passes through the bottom of his ribcage, reaching into the warmth of his chest and straight for an organ that beats wildly against my palm.
