Theo carries me into the closest bathroom. It’s one I never use, but right now, it’s still damp from his own shower, and I wonder if that should bother me, him using it and creeping around my house while I was asleep.
No. It doesn’t.
He turns on the water and lets it run until it’s steaming. I peel his flannel shirt back, and I don’t have to say anything, because he strips off the rest of his clothes. It’s dim in the bathroom, the little window above the toilet letting in grey, snowy light, but I take him in, this towering, strong body I had not allowed myself to think about except in the darkest parts of the night, when my hand would creep between my legs.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and I don’t know what I’m thanking him for, not really. Maybe it’s just being here.
He smiles at me in that small way he does, and then he takes my hand and helps me into the spray of water. It’s shockingly hot, almost scalding, and after two days without electricity, I’ve forgotten what real heat feels like.
I tug him in after me, and he drags the curtain shut and then pulls me up to him for a kiss. It’s not like yesterday, when we didn’t kiss so much as devour each other. It’s slow, measured, careful. He runs his hand down the side of my throat, skims it along my arms, and rests it on my hips. I shift until I feel his cock press into my thigh. Then I wind my arm around his neck and squeeze his wet hair up in my fingers.
He said he loved me.
Right now? In this moment?
I think I might love him, too.
And that scares the fuck out of me.
38
THEO
The power comes on the next day, all the appliances in Chloe’s house suddenly erupting back to life. It reminds me of how it feels to revive, all that energy surging through you at once.
We’re in the living room when it happens. Chloe’s curled up next to me on the couch, reading from a stack of paperbacks she piled up on the floor. She let me stay with her, and I am grateful for it, even if every time I look at her, I feel a dull ache in my chest. Because I know she sees me differently than she did before the night of the killing moon. I can feel it sparking on the air between us, how everything had been perfect like the night we went camping, sitting close together in the warm summer air, and I ruined it.
It’s quiet, under the surface, but it’s there.
When the lights flick on, Chloe lets out a gasp of delight, drops her book in her lap, and looks up at the ceiling fan with something like surprise. “Holy shit,” she says. “That’s faster than I thought.”
I smile, like I’m pleased. But it means the generator, the thing that made her soften to me, isn’t necessary anymore.
It stays cold, although the sun comes out the same day the electricity turns back on, and the snow starts to turn slushy and wet. While Chloe cooks a big dinner for the two of us, using up the food she kept out in the garage so it wouldn’t spoil, I go out and clear a path from her back door down to the pier. She doesn’t ask me to; I just do it. I want to be helpful to her, to make up for all the hurt I caused.
ThehatredI caused.
It’s another thought that makes me feel tight in my chest.I hated you. It shouldn’t bother me; I have lived my entire life being hated, even before I began killing. I wrapped humans’ hatred around me like a shield and used it to keep them away from my territory.
But I never wanted her to hate me. At least she put it in the past tense.
The dinner is good; some kind of chicken stew with barley and carrots, plus bread that she smears with big chunks of butter. We eat at the dining room table, and I can feel something like contentment coming off her. It’s curdled, though. It’s not like it was in front of the campfire.
I help her clean the dishes when we’re done, loading them into the dishwasher instead of washing them by hand. Afterward, Chloe trails her fingers along my waist and looks up at me with her big doe eyes.
“Fuck me,” she signs, the electricity blazing around us.
I do, there in the kitchen. I shove her up against the counter, hard enough that she grunts, and then I yank her pants down and slide my fingers up into her cunt, hot and dripping for me. Her lust is sharp and undeniable. But so is the sadness lurking beneath it.
She moans, squirming down on my fingers, and I bring her as close to orgasm as I can before replacing my fingers with mycock. That makes her cry out and spread her legs and shove back on me, fucking me like she wants to kill me. Or kill herself.
When she grabs my hands and puts them on her throat, I give her what she wants, squeezing until she’s gasping and choking and her cunt spasms around me. Her desire drives me crazy; I pound furiously into her so that the edge of the counter slams into her belly.
I hurt her. She comes twice.
The second time, the ripple of her orgasm feels so fucking good around my cock that I spill my seed into her, breathing hard against her spine. When she pulls away, my hand marks on her neck are as beautiful as dark lace. When I press my lips to them, feeling the heat of the abrasions, she tilts her head back and sighs, her hand trailing along my hip.
“I have to go to bed,” she murmurs. “Do you want to come with me?”
