My airways aren’t closing, and my vision seems fine.
There is a rosy haze over everything. Like when Iris first walks into a room, and for a brief moment, she is all I can smell. That spicy, sweet fragrance that clogs my every breath.
I breathe it in, enjoying the tingle that spreads through my limbs. And it takes until it settles in my chest for me to realize what she’s done.
“A love potion?” I say.
Her smile is gone, replaced by round, watchful eyes, as she nods.
I crush her closer, kissing her so hard my dampener starts to constrict.
“Gods, you’re a fucking genius.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she says. “I had a lot of help from Kitty.”
“Kitty?”
She nods.
“She made sure it couldn’t be scented so I could surprise you. And the formula needed some tweaking to get around your curse, but it should hold.”
My eyes start to burn as I realize she’s thought of everything, and I close them briefly, inspecting the sensation.
So this is love?
This warm, suffocating, cloying feeling.
How are people walking around like this?
How do they get anything done?
Is everyone simply resisting the urge to trap their mate at home for all eternity? I’m almost positive that if I look away for even a second, I will die of starvation. And yet, I somehow feel as if this is the first breath I’ve ever taken.
“Princess,” I mutter. “My princess.”
She smiles because she knows it’s true.
She is mine.
Love or lust. Mated or not. She belongs to me, for now.
“Wait.” I rear back, holding her at arm’s length. “Let me look at you.”
She frowns, but doesn’t argue as my gaze rakes over her.
For the most part, she looks the same.
Full, fuckable mouth. Eyes deep as the earth. Brown skin so precious you’d think she was dipped in gold.
It’s all the same. But somehow different. More pronounced.
And then there are the new things. Things I hadn’t noticed before. Like the hairline gap between her two front teeth. The way her left eye is slightly bigger than the other. The little beauty mark between her breasts. And a hundred other little things. Maybe even a million tiny things. And I’d been missing them all this time.
When I haven’t spoken in a while, she asks me what I’m doing.
“Committing you to memory,” I say.
But I regret those words after they leave my mouth because they take her smile with them.
