This whole thing is, she thought. But she touched the knife she’d found to her palm, anyway. She pressed, thinking it would be difficult to draw blood. That she would be timid, too queasy to hurt herself, that it wouldn’t be like it was in the movies. Yet red welled up the moment she did it. It spilled down her hand and wrapped around her middle finger, like a ring.
Then dripped onto him.
Only a drop of it, but apparently a drop of it was enough.
He bucked, to feel it. A sound came out of him, so close to a moan of desire she couldn’t have split the two with a razor. It made her heart jolt in her chest, and that hollow muscle feeling increase tenfold.
Though it wasn’t either of these things that really got her.
It was the way he turned his head, and then pressed his open mouth to his own upper arm. Right over the swell of pale muscle, teeth breaking skin almost immediately. As if he could quell the hunger with the taste of his own body.
And when he realized he couldn’t, his gaze slid to her. Heavy, lustrous, full of longing. He murmured words, so low she almost didn’t hear them—or maybe didn’t want to. Because now they were in her head, running over and over on a loop:You are my every torment, you are my every torment, you are my every torment.
It was the reason she wanted to stop.
It was the reason she couldn’t.
She let the next drop spill over his lips. His closed lips that parted the moment the red kissed them. He let his tongue dart out to catch it—quick at first, as if to get it over with. But thenonce he’d tasted it, once he had that salt inside him, his eyes rolled closed. And he licked again, long and slow.
Sensuously, her mind suggested.
Because her mind was a traitor. It was already turning on her, before he’d even tried to talk her into something terrible. And then he did, and oh, it was so much worse than she’d imagined. He didn’t tell her to cut more deeply or press the wound to his mouth. He didn’t strain up, hoping to sink his teeth in.
He said, “Let me lick you.”
He said, “Let me stroke all wet and soft all over you.”
He said, “I won’t use anything sharp. Only the sweetest and tenderest of things.”
And it got hold of her like nothing she’d ever known. For a moment she thought he’d thralled her—it was that intense. It made her heart thunder; it made her breath hitch in her chest. She could almost feel what it would be like, before she’d even lowered her hand to him.
Then found that she had lowered it, without actually being aware.
Her palm was now barely an inch from his parted lips. He could have lifted his head and done just as he’d suggested. But she suspected the reason he didn’t. It wasn’t as satisfying to take it, when another second might see her freely give it. Just a little more of this heavy tension, just a few more thoughts of what that sensation would be like.Just one more word, she thought.
And he gave it, too.
“Please,” he said.
She had to put her other hand around her wrist, to stop herself from immediately giving in. And even then, she could feelher resolve crumbling. Her grip shook; it was like holding up a thousand-pound weight. One that gained another ton for every second she held it. Soon, she was so close she could feel his breath on her skin.
She could feel that tongue of his, stirring the air around her hand.
Almostlickingher. Her almostlikingit.
And all while he lost himself completely. That red was now flowing over his lips, and it made him frantic. It made him moan and rock—like someone being fucked. Every bit of him entirely abandoned to the sensation, unaware of where he was or what he was doing.
She suspected that was how it happened.
He didn’t mean to do it. He just wanted to get as deeply into that deliciousness as he could go—and when he did, something slick simply brushed against the thickest part of her thumb. Barely anything, no part of the place sensitive at all. Yet the effect was stunning. It made her gasp.
She gave in to that weight without a moment more of fight.
Just to get it again, just to get it one more time.
That sweet flicker of his tongue over her skin.
And somehow, he did just that. He immediately followed the path that blood had made over her fingers, until he had found that curve between two. That intimate space, far more sensitive than where she had felt him lick first. Though she had to say, it wasn’t the physical sensation that made her act.
