Page 80 of Devil

Her lips part. “He?”

I kiss her shoulder. Smooth, slender muscle under linen. “Does that bother you?”

“No.No.I—” She looks away as a lonely expression overtakes her face. “I’ve felt that way before—about women, I mean. It felt like something I could ignore because it never left myself. I wasn’t dating anyone, touching anyone. It was only inside my thoughts, inside my body…but I still worried about what it meant. That I wanted things that weren’t allowed.”

“Half the stories in the Old Testament are about people wanting things they’re not allowed and going for it anyway. Jesus wouldn’t have a family tree if everyone had followed the rules.”

“That’s true,” she says, but that expression on her face is lingering still.

“Birdie, the Bible was written when women weren’t even considered people, like real people, and it doesn’t definitively mention women having sex with women at all. And since we’re not trying to keep our flocks of sheep inside a patrilineal line or superintend a fractious church in Corinth, I personally move that we set the Bible aside as the sole authority on sex.” She opens her mouth, and I interrupt her before she can say what I think she’s going to say. “And no, I’m not listening to priests or bishops either. Especially not them.”

She closes her mouth.

“Is it not enough to try to love as God loves us? With a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes and endures all things? That must be enough for him, surely.”

Her head tilts a little. “I didn’t think you believed in God.”

“Oh, I believe in God. We’re just not friendly is all.”

A quiet laugh is surprised out of her. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say anything like that. Like God is your competition.”

“And I don’t even ask for tithes. He could learn a thing or two from me.”

Birdie looks down at my chest. “I’ve spent a long time trying not to think about this. I might need to think about it longer. But thank you for listening to me, taking me seriously.”

“I take you more seriously than anything in the world, Birdie Cooper.”

She gives me a small, closed-lipped smile, like she thinks I’m indulging her or, worse, teasing her. I kiss that smile so I don’t break down and tell her everything.

I kiss that smile until her lips part and she ventures to curl her tongue against mine.

She makes a low hum in her throat, and I can’t stand it—I need to be closer. I need more.

I move her in my lap so she’s straddling me and pull her hips flush to mine. We both groan when her cunt moves over the thick ridge under my fly.

I slide my hands up her back as her kisses grow more open, more earnest, and I’m pleased with how I can no longer feel the knobs of her spine or the jut of her ribs. She’s still smaller than she should be, but at least she’s no longer undernourished. The satisfaction I take in that is primitive—and sexual. It makes me harder.

“Ry,” she says, breaking our kiss with a gasp. “I need to tell you something.”

I’m already unbuttoning her shirt, my eyes avid on the glimpses of silk bra underneath. “Yes?”

“I meant to say last night and earlier today, but I was scared to.”

This gets my attention. I’d very much like to see a flash of fear in her eyes if I’ve got her turned over my lap or maybe if I’ve just shoved her against a wall, but I don’t want her to be afraid to tell me anything, not ever.

She keeps going, as if she can read my mind. “I know, I know, you want me to tell you everything, even if I’m scared you won’t like it, and I’m telling you now, so don’t brood. I don’t want to go to this gala.”

I’m still frozen in the act of separating the placket of her shirt, my eyes on her face. Her teeth worry at her lower lip. “Is that all?” I ask, not sure I’m understanding correctly. I thought she was about to tell me that she wanted to sleep in another bedroom or that she wanted to leave altogether, and I’m not ready to trust the relief already rolling through me.

“I heard you tell your brothers that you wanted me to be your plus-one, and I know there are some nice dresses upstairs, but, Ry, I’m not gala material. I don’t even really know what one is. I’ll just embarrass you and sabotage your project, and it’ll make a mess of everything if I go.”

I push the sides of her shirt apart and then slide it off her shoulders and arms, letting it drop to the floor. Lilith responds like a shark to chummed water and half jumps, half tumbles to the ground, where she lands on the shirt and immediately starts trying to disembowel it. Birdie moves like she’s going to rescue the shirt, but I catch her face in my hands.

“Eyes on me,” I say.

She swallows. And nods.

“A gala,” I start, dropping my hands to her chest and slowly tracing up the thin straps of her bra with my thumbs, “is a party comprised of two kinds of people: people with too much money and the people who’d like to relieve them of that money. Sometimes the two groups overlap, but the important thing to remember is that we don’t care what the first group thinks of us.”