Chloe’s eyes gleam. “No, I didn’t,” she signs back.
That’s all it takes. Days’ worth of desire surge up in me, and I lunge at her, moving with my unnatural speed. Chloe barely has time to shriek in surprise before I have her over my shoulder, her feet kicking out in front of me.
“Oh my god!” she cries, grabbing big handfuls of my shirt. “Holy shit, you’re strong.”
I carry her up the stairs and into the bedroom, relishing the heat of her body as she squirms against me, as her breath comes out soft and a little panicky. I wish I could tell her she doesn’t have to worry about me dropping her. To me, she weighs almost nothing.
The bedroom is just how I remembered it. Tidy and unadorned. One corner of the bedsheet has been pulled back, the pillow shoved up against the headboard, a beat-up old paperback on the bedside table. Little pieces of her that I can’t see from my telescope.
I toss her on the mattress, and she squeals again, more excited than afraid. I can taste her exhilaration as she spreads her legs for me and peers up through the loose tangle of her hair.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” I sign.
Her cheeks darken. “I wasn’t sure,” she whispers. “If you wanted me to—” She gestures in the direction of the lake. “Or if you would come here.”
I growl softly in the back of my throat and kneel on the bed. The last thing I want to do is explain about the killing moon.
“You can always come to me,” I sign. “You are a guest.”
Then I crawl toward her, trapping her between my body and the mattress. She slumps back, staring up at my face, her lips parted. I brush them with mine, sighing at the way she shudders against me.
“What are you going to do to me?” she whispers.
I kiss down the side of her throat and think about Hanging Lake washing over her while I was buried in her cunt. Then I pull back so I can ask, “What do you want me to do to you?”
I can feel the effect the question has, that sudden flare of shame.
“I don’t—” She stops, her breath shuddery. “I can’t lie to you, can I? You’ll know.”
“This is about the lake, isn’t it?” My fingers cast flittering shadows across her chest from the rosy lamp burning on her desk. “When the water washed over you?”
Her shame deepens, the scent of it so strong it drowns out everything else, including her sweet arousal.
“You liked it.” My heartbeat quickens. “That feeling like you were drowning.”
“Dying.” She whispers the word instead of signing. “I like the idea of dying.”
My cock throbs. Heat bursts up in my belly. It’s yet another reason to explain why I felt so drawn to her that first momentI saw her standing there on the pier, bathed in falling sunlight. Another explanation for why I can’t stop thinking about her, why she pulls on me like the killing moon. It’s like we’re meant to hook together. A monster made for nothing but killing, and a woman who comes at the thought of death.
I can’t say all that to her. I don’t have the words, not even with my hands.
“You were never going to die,” I sign instead. “I won’t let you.”
Chloe breathes out. “I know,” she whispers, her hand coming up my arm, trailing along my bicep. “You can tell that, too, can’t you? When I got too close?”
She was nowhere close the other night. There’s a slowing that happens when a human approaches death. A quieting, like the wind dying down. I would tear this world to shreds if I ever heard it coming from her.
I nod, though. I can sense what she wants, what she’s too afraid to ask. And maybe I’m afraid to ask, too. Afraid to do it, afraid that it might stir up the killing moon.
But Chloe is staring at me with a hunger in her eyes that makes my cock ache. A gift only I can give her.
“Do you want to do that now?” I sign slowly. “Come close to death?
The room in the air buzzes.
And all Chloe does is nod.
24
