Page 113 of A Requiem of Fire and Ice

“More like memories. Do you get them?”

Pandora raises her arms and stretches, revealing her purple panties. “Mine come when I’m awake.”

My focus lingers on her thigh, noticing the ends of her scars curling like flames. She lowers her hands and tugs the shirt down to cover them.

“Are they all dead?” I say.

“No…One of them escaped.”

“If you live, I will make sure Alad finds them for you, and then you can get your revenge—that is, if you still want it. But I know I will hunt them down until they’re afraid of their shadow.”

Pandora takes a step toward me, and her shoulder brushes against mine. “I can always count on you, which sounds weird to say to someone who wants me dead.”

I huff a breathy laugh. “It’s fucked up when you look at it, isn’t it? The first time my heart beats, I want to kill the cause instead of understanding it.”

She touches my arm, steps away from the railing, and guides me toward her room. “Do you want to come in? I can make you forget about your nightmares tonight, Reen.”

“How so?”

She jerks her thumb into the room and says, “You left Connect Four in there, and I still have a score to settle with you.”

My shoulders tremble, laughter filling my bones. For a moment, I thought she was insinuating sex, which would be unlike her. Maybe it’s because I want to be the one inside her.

Pandora lures me into her room. Her movements are cautious and beyond careful, as if she’s afraid to scare me away. When the door closes, the light beside her bed flickers on, and we sit across from each other with Connect Four in the middle.

We don’t sleep. Our mouths move until they’re numb and tired from talking, and our throats tighten, becoming hoarse from the laughter. She’s definitely a tapeworm that’s burrowing inside me, and someone who can break my walls when I’m around her. She shows me it’s not so bad being…human. It’s a strange sentiment, considering humans don’t exist anymore.

Still, how she shows me I’m not this fearsome mutt who takes orders without care can be seen as admirable.

Pandora slides the blue coin into the slot, drawing across four lines. Thick lashes flutter, and she looks at me submissively as she says, “Touch me, Reen.”

Birds caw in the distance as the sun rises through the mist. But we’re still in the room, and the day hasn’t broken to us, and the night still plagues our minds.

Coins and the game clatter to the ground. Her breath hitches as I drag her toward me, and her legs wrap around my waist. Her hair slips like silk through my fingers, and I force my mouth onto hers, hungry to devour every fucking breath she makes.

My tongue tastes her longing, lust, and desperate need for love. Through it all, her breath hitches, and as I break from the kiss, her fingers move between her legs, but they shake. She is afraid…no, repulsed to touch herself. “I don’t…” Dark eyes turn to me, and she strains a smile. “I haven’t touched myself since Desmond.”

I take her hand, and she lets me guide her hand between her legs with my hand over the top of hers. She hitches a breath, squirming and unsure what to do as I rub my fingers and hers against her supple clit.

“Reen,” she pants.

She looks down when I pinch her chin with my thumb and forefinger and lift her gaze. “Eyes on me.” My finger slips inside her warmth while hers stays on her clit. She’s soaking wet. Her juices drip the more I slip in and out of her. Fuck, the way she coats my fingers.

I keep my movements slow, easing her into it. Pandora needs to understand her body, how it moves, and how it feels before I can let what I want to take over me.

Her arm wraps around my shoulder, and she wiggles closer until her forehead presses against mine. Strawberry kisses in her hair, and her shaky, hitched breaths escape her as I slip two fingers inside her, separating them and letting them circulate her warm fucking walls. For an ice elemny, her pussy is as warm as my skin.

Fuck, imagine it wrapped around my cock.

“You make me frustrated,” Pandora says against my lips. “I can’t place you, but as much as I hate you, I want you.”

I twitch a smirk. “I hear the best fucks are ones filled with hate.”

She breathes a laugh, tips her head back, and moans. “Fuck, this feels so good, Reen.”

I stare at her neck and the slenderness. The hand on the left side of her waist twitches, hungering to snap up to her throat and tighten until she breaks. My heart pounds, and my chest rises and falls. Whispers in my ear tell me to grip her throat until her breaths fall from panicked lips—the itch of wanting her dead.

My hand moves up with the desire to choke her when I see the smile alight on her face. Her mouth parts and light moans cause me to snap away from her exposed neck and to Pandora, high on life for the first time.