She snorted a laugh.“Sorry.You weren’t special.”
“Damn,” he said, nuzzling his nose against hers.“But your wings come out when I make you come.That makes me special.”
Skye nuzzled back, ignoring the prickles of warning in the back of her head from how much she was enjoying this.“Yeah, I guess it does.”
“You aren’t going to lose your wings now, though, right?Our bargain is okay?Since the whole Metalfest shitshow was Jillian’s fault?”
“Mmm hmm,” Skye mumbled as Remi tangled his fingers into her hair and scratched lightly at her scalp.“Think so.Your soul was still in Hell last time I checked, so the bargain is fine.”
Her body was melting under his touch.She was sinking into a thick, syrupy ease.It coated her destructive tendencies and made her soft.For once she wasn’t worried about being weak in Remi’s presence.
“I…I visited your soul every day,” she said.“It was the weirdest thing because it always seemed so happy to see me.”
She felt Remi’s smile against her shoulder, but something uncertain buzzed in the back of her head.Did a soul have consciousness?Remi’s shadows certainly seemed like they did, listening to her, wanting to curl around her when she left them out to play.Maybe after the tour was over, she’d go to Hell to check on his soul again, just to say hello.
“It makes total sense that my soul is as obsessed with you as I am,” Remi said and smoothed his hand down the slope of her back to her ass and squeezed.
“Remi,” she said, leaning over to bite his shoulder.
He squinted open his blue eyes.“What?”
“If you lose your voice and can’t sing, we’re going to be in big fucking trouble,” Skye said.
He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nose.Then he sucked his lips into his mouth and lifted his eyebrows in question.
“Much better,” Skye said and patted his cheek.
He rolled his eyes but smiled.Remi’s fingers traced over her spine and then started drawing on her skin.
“My mom used to do that when I was little,” Skye said.“Draw shapes on my back and then have me guess what she drew.”She barely suppressed a jolt of surprise at the memory, at the easy way it tumbled from her mouth.
Remi didn’t notice her distress.“Mmm,” he hummed, almost happily.He drew a little circle and lifted his hand, waiting.
“Circle,” Skye said, smiling despite the way an uncomfortable emotion filled the back of her throat.Bitter and sharp, she did her best to ignore it by focusing on Remi’s fingers.
Remi kissed her nose as her reward for a correct answer.He flattened his hand and wiped away the image on her back like an eraser.
He drew a square next, and she gave her answer and got her reward.The next one was more complicated, and it was starting to become difficult to pay attention.His fingers were gentle and soothing, lulling her into a deep relaxation.The tingle of anticipation flitted down her body, all the way into the arches of her feet.She felt a little high under Remi’s attention.The quiet joy of it seeped into her bones and made each moment that passed seem to expand into infinity.Remi finished drawing.A square and a triangle and a circle in the middle.
“House?”she murmured.
He flattened his palm to rub up and down her back, erasing the image.“I was trying to draw the cigarette case you had that night in the alley, but a house is pretty close too.”
Skye smiled at the memory.“That was my mom’s.”
“Laurie has one too.”
“Yeah.My mom and his mom were friends before… Well, Laurie’s mom died.”
Remi hummed in contemplation.
“It’s actually not just a cigarette case,” Skye said, a yawn breaking up her sentence.The quiet luminosity of the moment gave the words she’d usually keep close to her heart a tender place to land.“It’s a concentrated essence of magic.It can turn into any shape.Magic can change form, but like energy, it can’t be created or destroyed.”
Remi was silent for a moment and then whispered, “Your necklace.”
Skye smiled.“Yeah.”
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and then his fingers found her back again, switching from shapes to letters.Spelling outTilted Hazefirst.It’d taken Skye a second try to get that one as her brain tried to focus while she was melting away.
