A/N: Phew. So sorry for getting all theological and spiritual on you guys at the end of last chapter xD I'll try not to get so weird again… I took some liberty with this chapter. You'll see evidence of that toward the end.
…
I knocked on the door to Carine's office—more a formality than for actual permission. She'd heard me telling Beau her story.
Come in. "Come in," Carine repeated the thought aloud, for Beau's sake.
We stepped into her office and found her sitting behind her massive mahogany desk, slipping a place marker into the newest Body of Health encyclopedia. "What can I do for you?" she inquired openly.
"I wanted to show Beau some of our history," I explained, "Well, your history, actually."
"We didn't mean to disturb you," Beau jumped in.
"Not at all," she reassured him, and then turned to me. "Where are you going to start?"
"The Waggoner," I decided, and rotated Beau so that he was facing the door we'd come in. I watched him take in the wall, packed with framed paintings, ones Carine had been collecting over her many years of existence, and had kept as mementos.
I towed him to the far left side of the wall, putting both hands on his arms—his heart skipped into a jog—and situated him in front of the painting in question. The Waggoner.
Carine noticed the acceleration of his breathing and heart rates with amusement.
Quite reactionary, she mused. She surmised his physiological response was due to the fact that I had my hands on him. She'd noticed it downstairs earlier, and had wondered about it then, but hadn't confirmed her suspicions until now.
An odd, glowing feeling filled me with pride.
"London in the sixteen-fifties," I explained, watching Beau's face as his eyes roamed over the small, sepia-toned painting at eye level.
"The London of my youth," Carine expounded.
Beau jumped at Carine's sudden closeness.
Oh, my apologies, Edythe, she thought, I'm unpracticed at maintaining the pretense at home.
I nodded slightly to acknowledge her apology, and reached to squeeze Beau's hand gently in reassurance. Once again, I marveled over how effortless it was to touch him now, when it had been a great difficultly only two days prior.
"Will you tell the story?" I asked Carine.
We both turned to look at her, and Carine cast Beau a soft, friendly smile, still feeling guilty over startling him. She wanted him to feel comfortable in her home.
"I would, but I'm actually running a bit late," she apologized, "The hospital called this morning—Dr. Snow is taking a sick day. But Beau won't miss anything." She smiled at me. "You know the stories as well as I do."
She turned to exit her office, and then we were on our own.
I appreciated the high esteem my mother held me in. Revealing our secret to the mortal species was punishable by death, and undoubtedly, we would all be persecuted if Sulpicia and the Volturi were to discover our breach. But Carine trusted me with the information, leaving it up to me to judge how much I would tell him. Love was love to Carine, and like Earnest, she was confident we would find a way to make things work to our advantage.
I pushed the thoughts out of my head, the musings intent on heading headlong down the long-worn path of anxiety and angst—how each of our advantages were different things, mine and Beau's. What was in my best interest, was definitely not in his.
"What came next? When she knew what had happened to her?"
Grateful for his distraction, which pulled me from my swirling self-deprecation, I prodded him half a step to the right, focusing on the next painting in the story—an old English countryside at dusk, the jagged heights of dark cliffs sharp against the deep purple sky.
"When she knew what she had become, she despaired… and then rebelled." It was difficult to admit these things, even to myself. I was able to empathize with Carine's horror, with her aversion to the life she'd woken to. The possibilities that she had pondered were not specific only to her mind, and I might have taken them a step farther than ideations if I hadn't had her companionship to ground me. Many times I had despaired for her, knowing how lonely and frightened she had felt. "She tried to destroy herself," I continued, "But that's not easily done."
"How?" Beau's voice was sharp with shock.
I shrugged, naming off a few of the more unassuming attempts. "She jumped from great heights. She tried to drown herself in the ocean. But she was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that she was able to resist… feeding… while she was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But she was so repelled by herself that she had the strength to try to kill herself with starvation."
"Is that possible?" He was quieter now, serious.
"No," I told him, "There are very few ways we can be killed." I hastened on with my story, speaking over his parted lips, knowing what his next question would be, and not wanting to answer it. "So she grew very hungry, and eventually weak. She strayed as far as she could from the human populace, recognizing that her willpower was weakening, too. For months she wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing herself.
One night, a herd of deer passed beneath her hiding place." I stared hard at the painting, finding the cramped cavity in the Cliffside I imagined she'd isolated herself in for weeks. "She was so wild with thirst that she attacked without a thought. Her strength returned and she realized there was an alternative to being the vile monster she feared. Had she not eaten venison in her former life? Over the next months, her new philosophy was born. She could exist without being a demon. She found herself again.
"She began to make better use of her time. She'd always been intelligent, eager to learn. Now she had unlimited time before her. She studied by night, planned by day. She swam to France and—"
"Swam to France?" Beau interrupted, flabbergasted.
I didn't see the novelty. "People swim the Channel all the time, Beau."
"That's true, I guess," he conceded. "It just sounded funny in that context. Go on."
"Swimming is easy for us—"
"Everything is easy for you," he interrupted once more.
I lifted my eyebrows impatiently. For one, there was much in my life that was not easy—not even close. Secondly, if he wanted to hear the full story, he was going to have to stop using up my tolerance.
"Sorry. I won't interrupt again, I promise," he apologized.
I smiled, doubting that very much. "Because," I picked up where I left off, "technically, we don't need to breathe."
"You—"
"No, no, you promised," I teased, unable to mask my laughter. I had been right. I knew he'd interrupt again. I held my finger against his lips, feeling the blood rush and swirl underneath, feeling his hot breaths against my skin. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"
"You can't spring something like that on me, and then expect me not to any anything." He spoke against my finger, and his voice was muffled.
Tenderly, I dropped my hand to his chest, feeling the warm pounding of his heart against my palm.
"You don't have to breathe?"
"No, it's not necessary. Just a habit." I shrugged nonchalantly. I'd long become used to the new physiological reflexes.
"How long can you go… without breathing?" His tone was incredulous.
"Indefinitely, I suppose," I surmised, "I don't know. It gets a bit uncomfortable—being without a sense of smell."
"A bit… Uncomfortable…" he echoed blankly.
His face was expressionless. I watched him for a moment, wondering if this would be the thing that made him run, never to look back. I removed my hand from his chest, hanging my arms at my sides and stood very, very still, knowing I wasn't doing a very good job of masking my agony when his expression grew concerned.
"What is it?" he breathed, hand against my cheek.
The contact reanimated me, and I summoned a small smile. "I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be too much. And then you'll run away from me, screaming as you go. I won't stop you when that happens. I want it to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile…" I struggled for some kind of absolution.
"I'm not running anywhere," he said, the promise apparent in his voice.
"We'll see," I managed to joke.
He saw through my thinly veiled deflection and frowned. "Back to the story—Carine was swimming to France."
I paused to shake off the negative feelings, and to mull over the next part of the story. Automatically, my eyes flickered to the biggest painting on the wall—and the most ornately framed and colored. Sulpicia, and the Volturi. To us, this ancient Italian family was the closest thing to royalty we had, or law enforcement.
"Carine swam to France," I pushed on, "and continued on through Europe, to the universities there. By night she studied music, science, medicine—and found her calling, her penance, in that, in saving human lives… I can't adequately describe the struggle; it took Carine two centuries of torturous effort to perfect her self-control." I could hear the reverence in my voice when I spoke of my mother, and all that she had overcome. "Now she is all but immune to the scent of human blood, and she is able to do the work she loves without agony. She finds a great deal of peace there, at the hospital…" I trailed off, overwhelmed by the incomparable being my mother truly was. To be faced with a future so daunting, and to make a satisfying existence out of it… To find peace within the daily tortures of her life, to possess the ability to revolt against the very natures of our being, and to find contentedness in doing so…
I lifted a finger to tap against the frame of the painting, refocusing myself. I could go on and on about the worship-worthy qualities of my mother.
"She was studying in Italy when she discovered the others there. They were much more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers."
I gestured to the grouping in the painting, situated on the uppermost balcony, looking down over the undignified courts with an odd sort of tenderness.
One note of startled laughter escaped Beau's lips, and I saw him fix his eyes on the golden-haired figure standing off to the side—yes, it was Carine.
"Solimena was greatly inspired by Carine's friends," I indulged. "He often painted them as gods." I laughed, realizing they thought of their selves in much the same way. "Sulpicia, Marcus, and Athenodora." I pointed to each in reference. "Nighttime patrons of the arts."
"What about that one?" he inquired, finger hovering just above the small, plain looking girl, in neutral robes. She knelt at Sulpicia's feet, clinging to her skirts.
Automatic, instinctual unease rose inside me. "Mele. A… servant, I suppose you could call her. Sulpicia's little thief."
"What happened to them?"
"They're still there. As they have been for millennia. Carine stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. She admitted their civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure her aversion to her 'natural food source', as they called it. They tried to persuade her, and she tried to persuade them, to no avail. Eventually, Carine decided to try the New World. She dreamed of finding others like herself. She was very lonely, you see.
"She didn't find anyone for a long time. But as monsters became the stuff of fairy tales, she found she could interact with unsuspecting humans as if she were one of them. She began working as a nurse—though her learning and skill exceeded that of the surgeons of the day, as a woman, she couldn't be accepted in another role. She did what she could to save patients from less able doctors when no one was looking. But though she worked closely with humans, the companionship she craved evaded her; she couldn't risk familiarity.
When the influenza epidemic hit, she was working nights in a hospital in Chicago. She'd been turning over an idea in her mind for several years, and she had almost decided to act—since she couldn't find a companion, she would create one. She wasn't sure which parts of her own transformation were actually necessary, and which were simply for the enjoyment of her sadistic creator, so she was hesitant." Carefully, I steered around the more inhumane parts of the story. Surely, Beau did not need to be made aware of the tortures she'd endured during her transformation—as if the burn of the venom was not enough. "And she was loath to steal anyone's life the way hers had been stolen. It was in that frame of mind that she found me. There was no hope for me; I was left in a ward with the dying. She had nursed my parents, and knew I was alone. She decided to try…"
The memories were clearer through Carine's mind, of course, and I stared out the window, not quite seeing the landscape below—instead, watching the various clips of those final days of my human life, through her eyes.
The fierce protectiveness of my father, working over me even as he faded quickly, his desperate pleas for her to save me… His jewel-green eyes wild with fever and delusion… The way he'd clung to her apron with pale, clammy hands, imploring her; he knew she could do more than was usual, he begged her to save me at any and all cost… And the small pieces of—now antique—jewelry he'd slipped into my hand the night before he died, as Carine watched from the doorway… The slim rings—they'd been my mother's—felt cool against my feverish skin.
She didn't know if Edward Masen knew what she was, or if he knew she was not quite human—of course, she suspected it—but his desperation made the final decision for her. The next morning, after he'd died and I was left a failing and doomed orphan, she began my transformation.
Loath to describe the explicit details of this part of the story, I cut it off short.
"And so we've come full circle."
"So you've always been with Carine?" he asked.
"Almost always."
Not wanting to share my insurgent days with him, I grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the hallway, searching for another distraction. As we left through the office door, Beau resisted, just a small bit, gazing back at the paintings and topographies we left behind.
We headed toward the stairs at the end of the hallway in mutual silence, until Beau spoke.
"Almost?"
I sighed—I should have known he would have picked up on that, though I'd done my best to be blasé. He was far more perceptive than I'd ever given him credit for.
"You don't want to answer that, do you?"
"It wasn't my finest hour," I confessed. I hoped he would leave it at that.
We began to climb the stairs to the third level.
"You can tell me anything," he told me quietly.
I paused when we reached the landing, and stared into his eyes for a long moment. I deliberated with my internal struggles—the parts that wanted him to stay; the parts that wanted him to go, to be safe. Hadn't I promised myself to lay everything at his feet, so that he could make the judicious choice for himself?
"I suppose I owe you that," I finally said, "You should know who I am."
I examined his face for any sign of apprehension, sure that he would not be able to process this without judgment—as he shouldn't. I was a despicable monster, and I did not expect him to ignore these very logical, very rational judgments about the darkest side of myself.
I took a breath, bracing myself for his reaction. At least he'd brought his truck, so he could drive himself home.
"I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence—about ten years after I was… born… created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn't sold on Carine's life of abstinence, and I resented her for curbing my appetite. So… I went off on my own for a time." I waited for his shouts of terror and disgust, for his staggering steps back down the stairs, toward the front door.
"Really?" he said in a way that belied his strange curiosity.
"That doesn't repulse you?" I was stunned—unable to quite believe it.
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"I guess… it sounds reasonable."
I laughed, one, hard sharp note of disbelief. Of course, why had I not expected the unexpected? I rolled my eyes as I turned away from him and pulled him down the hall.
"From the time of my new birth, I had the advantage of knowing what everyone around me was thinking, both human and non-human alike. That's why it took me ten years to defy Carine—I could read her perfect sincerity, understand exactly why she lived the way she did.
It took me only a few years to return to Carine and recommit to her vision. I thought I would be exempt from the… depression… that accompanies a conscience. Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only evil. If I followed a murderer down a dark alley where he stalked a young girl—if I saved her, then surely I wasn't so terrible." I glanced at him from the sides of my eyes, but he wasn't looking at me. He stared somewhere past my shoulder, deeply concentrated on my story. "But as time went on, I began to see the monster in my eyes. I couldn't escape the debt of so much human life taken, no matter how justified. And I went back to Carine and Earnest. They welcomed me back like the prodigal." A lump rose in the back of my throat as I remembered that day—their tearless sobs of elation, their embraces, the way neither of them had held a stitch of animosity toward me for defying them… "It was more than I deserved."
We'd come to a halt at the end of the hallway—I'd timed my story to end here. I had already given him more information than I'd wanted to share. But his expression was still fathomless. I was expecting to see some sort of fear or trepidation, but there was nothing but understanding and concentration in his eyes.
"My room," I announced. I pulled the door open and stepped inside, dragging Beau behind me.
I stood beside him, watching him take it in—the wall of windows on the south wall, overlooking the Sol Duc river and the mountain range beyond it, the western wall dominated by the shelves of CD's.
His eyes roamed over the thick gold carpeting and the fabric covered walls.
"Good acoustics?" he guessed.
I laughed and nodded. He missed nothing!
I picked up the remote from where it laid nearby and turned the stereo on to whatever had been playing weeks ago. I hadn't sat in here and listened to music in a long time. Part of it was to demonstrate said acoustics—another part was to fill the silence. I felt oddly vulnerable underneath his scrutiny.
He crossed the room to peruse the shelves of CD's, and I stayed where I was, watching his profile as he examined the multitudinous titles.
Part of me had craved this—having everything out in the open, the walls between us demolished. But I had not expected how good it would feel. It was like a thousand ton weight had been lifted off my chest, and I could finally breathe. Truly breathe, in a way I hadn't done in eighty odd years. It was blissfully liberating.
"How do you have these organized?" Beau's question broke me from my reverie, and I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear.
"Ummm, by year, and then by personal preference within that frame."
He turned to look at me. I wondered what my face was doing.
"What?" he demanded, his voice soft.
"I was prepared to feel… relieved. Having you know about everything, not needing to keep secrets from you. But I didn't expect to feel more than that. I like it. It makes me… happy." The word wasn't quite accurate, but it served its purpose.
"I'm glad," he replied, smiling, and I realized that I was, too.
I appraised his expression then, finding no trace of apprehension there, not a hint of fear or tension. Abruptly, my mood fell. Yes, I had shared all my secrets, there was nothing left to hide… And Beau had reacted oddly calmly about the whole thing. First Carine's awful demise and rebirth; her depression; my rebelliousness… How could he stand here, knowing I'd committed too many murders to count, and smile like that? How long would it take for him to truly process all of it? Would it be today? Or would it be sometime during the next week?
Beau read my troubled expression, and cocked an eyebrow. "You're still waiting for the running and screaming, aren't you?"
I nodded, suddenly warring with a smile. The audacity of his statement, his confidence… It was almost more enchanting than his bewilderment.
"I really hate to burst your bubble," he said, "but you're just not as scary as you think you are. I honestly can't imagine being afraid of you."
Surprise lifted my eyebrows—I could feel it—and then, slowly, I smiled. The casually spoken words were nothing if not a challenge.
"You probably shouldn't have said that."
I let a soft, playful growl rise from the back of my throat, watching his expression change, his eyes narrowing. I flashed my teeth at him, and crouched, preparing to pounce.
"Um… Edythe?"
The wide-eyed bewilderment… The sweet, sweet swirling galaxy in his eyes…
I launched myself at him, trapping him in my stone embrace as we cartwheeled through the air across the room. My black leather sofa slid across the floor and smacked into the wall when we landed. I kept my elbows flexed so that my arms would absorb his landing, careful to situate my other limbs on the piece of furniture around him so that I wouldn't injure him.
I situated my knees on either side of his hips, arms forming bone-colored cages on either side of his head so that he wouldn't be able to escape. Mostly because I was enjoying our closeness too much. The heat coming off his skin and soaking through my clothes was delicious, heady. My head swirled with his fragrance, his proximity, the closeness of his lips.
Suddenly I wanted to press my body closer to his, touch my mouth to his…
An unconscious sound vibrated in my chest, a purring sound of affection.
Beau's eyes were wide, pupils dilated, as he stared up at me. Hair askew, adorable rooster's tail sticking up in the back, as always. His heart was pounding, and if I bowed my arms just so, I could press my chest to his and feel it.
"Wow," he breathed, stunned. I was thoroughly enjoying this, more than I had thought I would. My thirst instinct had been shuffled to the back of my mind, predominated more-so by the playfulness, the ardor, the lust…
"You were saying?" I leered at him.
"Um, that you are a very, very terrifying monster." His voice was breathless, and the bursts of hot air that washed over my lips and cheeks did strange things to my thought directives. Scattering them, swirling everything together in a rosy, floating blur.
I grinned at him. "Much better," I approved.
"And that I am so completely in love with you," he added. His voice was quiet and husky and completely serious.
Stunned, my stomach twisted at his sweetly-spoken words, and—how could it be?—my dead heart seemed to lurch. Tenderness replaced the playfulness.
"Beau…"
I was just about to lean down to kiss him, when I heard Jess and Archie approach.
"Can we come in?" Archie asked from the door.
Beau jolted half-way up into a seated position. He probably would have smacked his forehead against my own if I hadn't been quicker, pulling him up and rotating him so that his back was pressed against the backrest, his feet on the floor. Then I draped my legs across his lap, an embrace that I adored. This was far safer, not to mention appropriate, for visitor's eyes.
Archie was standing in the doorway, watching our playfulness with amusement—of course, he hadn't missed a thing. Jessamine, however, was stunned by our interactions. Her mind was whirling.
How can she stand to be so close to him…? Isn't the bloodlust overwhelming?!
"Please," I said to Archie, who waltzed to the center of my room and folded himself onto the carpet.
Jess lingered in the doorway, watching my face with skeptic doubt. She wondered if I was completely in control—how I could be, with the rush of blood under Beau's skin swirling in the air between us.
Archie recognized his wife's discomfort and decided to tease her, as well as Beau, who he saw he would get a reaction out of. "It sounded like you were having Beau for lunch, and we came to see if you would share."
Beau tensed underneath me, and I grinned.
"Sorry." I threw a faux territorial arm around his neck, "I'm not in a mood to share."
Archie shrugged. "Fair enough," he conceded jokingly.
Of course, no one could fool Jessamine with theatrics for long. She recognized the mood in the air—my playfulness, my tenderness, my lust—purely for the body of the human boy next to me, the desire for his blood nowhere near comparable… This, she hesitated over for a moment, wondering how that could be so…
But she smirked, knowing she'd been played, and stepped a little further into the room, the tension fading from her thoughts. "Actually, Archie says there's going to be a real storm tonight, and Eleanor wants to play ball. Are you game?"
Excitement automatically flared. I loved our family's ball games. We didn't get the chance to play often—thunderstorms were rare in the Olympic Peninsula—but I remembered Beau.
"Of course you should bring Beau," Archie answered in reply to my tacit concern.
Jessamine threw him a glance. That can't be safe, can it? she wondered.
"Do you want to go?" I asked, turning to Beau. I didn't think I was quite able to hide my enthusiasm. If he didn't want to, I wouldn't go, however.
"Sure," he agreed immediately, only heightening my eagerness, "Um, where are we going?"
"We have to wait for thunder to play ball," I explained, "You'll see why."
"Should I bring an umbrella?" he asked, and the three of us burst into laughter. We were entirely unreceptive to the downfall, so this struck us as quite amusing; Beau, however, was not so waterproof.
"Should he?" Jess asked Archie.
"No. The storm will hit over town. It'll be dry enough in the clearing."
"Good," Jess enthused, and her excitement crackled, infectious, through the air.
We'll leave you two alone now, Archie teased as he unfolded himself from the floor, Have fun!
"Let's call Carine and see if she's in," he said to Jess as he rose.
"Like you don't already know," she replied teasingly as they headed back down the hall.
Archie shut the door quietly behind him, his thoughts playful and slightly suggestive in a brotherly, teasing way. I rolled my eyes.
"So… what are we playing?" Beau asked when they were gone.
"You will be watching," I refined. "We will be playing baseball."
He gave me a skeptical look. "Vampires like baseball?"
I grinned at him, not missing how much easier the word slipped from his lips now. It was something more—it was an acceptance I hadn't been prepared to feel. My good mood vaulted even higher.
"It's the American pastime."
We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I pressed my cheek to Beau's heart, listening to its mellow pulse. Every once in awhile it picked up and then slowed down, and he inhaled suddenly, as if he were about to say something.
I closed my eyes, just enjoying his closeness. Eventually, we would need to take his truck home, but for now I was content to go nowhere at all.
"So…" he finally said.
"Hmm?" I lifted my head, my nose brushing against the pale column of his throat, bumping past his Adam's apple and catching on the crook under his jaw. His breath grew jagged as my lips followed the same path.
It had been hours and hours since the same sort of desperation for his blood had burned my throat. And of course, I was on fire while I inhaled the succulent fragrance of his skin, yes, but I was elated to know that I was firmly in control of the reflex. I let the other desires win out for a moment, or two.
"Um…"
I grinned against his skin, inhaling the scent at the soft spot behind his ear, and then pressed my lips there. "Yes?" I whispered.
He shivered. "Will… Um… Everyone be at—the game?" His breaths were coming in shorter gasps, his heart pounding as I laced my arms around his neck and pulled myself up so I could kiss his face.
"Mmm," I hummed against his cheek, "Everyone?"
"Yeah," he gasped. "Eleanor, and Earnest, and um…" He gulped when I ran my fingers down his neck and across his shoulders. "Royal?"
I paused, hands on his sides, able to feel each curve of his ribs through his pullover.
"El and Royal will play," I said, "Earnest will come if Carine can get off work in time." I pulled back to look into his eyes, which were unfocused and dazed. "Would that be alright with you?"
"Fine by me," he assured me, but there was something there in his face, underneath the muddled expression.
Hmm. I would have to have a talk with Royal.
But for now…
I leaned back in, pressing my lips to his jugular, feeling the delicious flow of blood beneath the thin membrane. I carried the kisses back up over his jaw, his chin, brushing my top lip against his bottom one.
Automatically, his lips parted, pulling in ragged gasps of air, and his hands slid around my waist, pressing hard.
"Breathe, Beau," I whispered against his mouth.
His mouth opened and shut against mine a few times, as if he were trying to form words but couldn't.
Strange, intense desires were coursing like a life force through my desiccated veins, swirling in my stomach and my head. I pulled back an inch to allow the excitement in my body to subside.
Beau stayed obediently still, eyes shut tight, breath coming in harsh gasps.
When his jagged breathing and explicatory heart rate had calmed enough, I leaned back in to press my lips to his again. Immediately, his heart rate rocketed into high gear. I kissed him softly, slowly, brushing the tips of my fingers across his jawline, and around the back of his neck—aware of just how delicate he was, the thin, fragile structure of his spinal cord, his skull…
But I was firmly in control, as I pressed my lips just incrementally harder to his, feeling them give around my marble stability, tasting his essence on my lips… His breaths burst harder against my mouth, over my nose, and I knew I had reached my limit.
I pulled back and lowered my cheek back to his heart, feeling it, as well as hearing it, knock around wildly inside his ribcage.
"Are you alright?" I whispered.
He shuddered, and his arms flexed around me. "More than alright, I think."
I smiled softly, content, running my fingers back and forth over the bump at the edge of his shoulder, where his clavicle connected to his acromion.
My throat flamed with desire, and I stood, acknowledging that my body had had enough experimenting for one day.
I reached down for his hand. "Time to go."
…
A/N: Reviews are, as always, appreciated. And don't forget to check out Edythe's playlist on 8tracks! It's under the title of 'you pull me in like the moon pulls on the tide'. My username is wintersunshine. I posted the link in an earlier chapter—chapter 12, I think.
See you next time, lovelies! xo