Page 46 of A Serpent in the Garden

His lips were hesitant at first, probing, but then my mouth opened for his and our tongues met and he was kissing me so deeply the bottom fell out of my stomach. My heart stuttered; my veins brimmed with tremors.

This is horrific, It said, as my arms slid around Serich’s neck. I’ve never actually yearned to die before this moment.

Then go away, I shouted into that dim dungeon in my mind, feeling as if I balanced precariously on the knife-tip of sanity. Go hide in your corner and leave me in peace. I’ve never subjected you to anything of the sort before. You can’t give me this one thing? How much more will you take from me?

I expected sneering condescension. I did not expect to be met with silence, Its empty cell ringing with the echo of the back door he slammed behind him.

Serich’s touch shocked the frost from my bones, his kiss warming me from the inside out.

His hands were restless, everywhere: tangled in my hair, behind my thighs, draping one of my legs over his hip so I could feel how stiff he’d grown. A bite of cold air before his hand slid beneath my layers of clothing and cupped the swell of my breast; a thumb running over the tenderest part that had hardened at the chill night. He groaned against my mouth in a way that brought a sudden, violent rush of heat to my extremities.

“Are you sure?” he asked in a tortured whisper, one hand around the base of my neck. I felt his eyes searching for mine in the dark.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been more sure of anything. I wanted his mouth and tongue and hands; I wanted him to sink a finger between my legs to find the answer to that question.

I didn’t bother masking my impatience when I hissed out a yes and flattened my hips against his.

Lips on the well of my throat, where my pulse pounded. Fingers scrabbling at the waistband of my pants. He had them off quickly. When I went simultaneously loose and rigid as his hand discovered how slick I was, he groaned in a way that made me even wetter.

His finger met no resistance when he slipped it inside. My hips rolled toward it, wanting more, and whatever noise I was now making, Serich muffled beneath another kiss.

“Careful,” he said against my lips. “You might bring something to our doorstep.” And I would have answered but he’d found a cluster of quivering nerves and was rubbing his finger against it in a way that sapped my vocabulary of anything but a wordless moan. But then the finger disappeared and I felt a hot stab of annoyance.

“I wish I could see you,” he whispered.

“You can feel me,” I whispered back, my hand dipping beneath his waistband.

He grunted into my hair when I wrapped a hand around him. His pants were gone in an instant and he was on top of me, something both stiff and soft fumbling against me. The fumbling went on so long I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or scream, but the moment I’d been about to offer my assistance was the moment he figured it out. I choked on whatever sound was ratcheting in my throat, but the bright pulse of pain when he slid inside me made the sound dwindle into a whimper.

“Are you okay?” A hand on the side of my neck, his forehead against mine. He was panting as much as I was, his words wobbling beneath the strain. He went very still inside me as if he were too afraid to move an inch. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I kissed him, hard, feeling myself adjust to how much space he took up within me. I didn’t think I’d ever realized how hollow that space had felt until it was filled. “I’m fine.”

Pain receding, the grind of his hips against mine. Shallow and slow, much too shallow after a while. I rocked against every thrust in a tempo quicker than his, his groans vibrating against the side of my throat as he tried to muffle them against me. The noises bursting from my lips were a jumble of irritation and pleading and moans and I wished he could read my mind and realize what I needed because I wasn’t sure I could articulate it.

“You feel so good,” he breathed into my ear before his lips found my nipple through my layers of shifts. My back arched at the mouth on my breast but it was so careful and solicitous that it didn’t feel like enough.

You do too, I wanted to say, but give me more, I need more. I was burning and throbbing and wanting and biting back what could have been a scream of frustration or a moan.

We were a fumbling, clumsy tangle of legs and twined arms and moving hips and then there was a sudden uptick in Serich’s groaning and it was over before I knew it, before I’d wanted it to end, the grotto humid with our rasping breath and the echoes of his sated sighs.

I felt more like a collection of aches than a human, a quivering open wound. And then Serich was withdrawing and I felt a sudden emptiness but he was kissing me so tenderly my feral irritation melted away. He buried his face in my chest as his breathing evened, clutching me so close I felt our flesh might meld together.

He didn’t mention a word from the Book afterward. Not one.

An indistinct presence tickled the back of my mind. I heard a sort of muted murmur but it came from far enough away that I could easily ignore it and keep drifting.

Get up, something said, louder. I think I told it to go away.

Wake UP.

I grumbled in response, and then I was stricken by one of those horrible, full-body twitches that sometimes happen right when you’re on the cusp of sleep. If I were in a bed, I would have fallen out of it. As it was, I sat bolt upright on the peaty floor of the grotto, the arm Serich had slung across my body thudding to my legs.

Get up. It sounded very near the end of his patience. I need you to look for something.

I cast a glance at the gap in the grotto entrance, where a shaft of dark gray light swirled. I could hardly bear to look at it. My eyelids were heavy as a newborn pup’s, little more than slits. Can’t it wait?

If it could wait I wouldn’t have woken you.