Of Beast and Beauty - Jay Stacey - Страница 30
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better-sounding than her grumpy moan. “What are … Where …” She blinks,
and for a second it looks as if her eyes are trying to focus before they go
empty once more.
“Do your eyes hurt?” I ask, hoping her cold sleep hasn’t left lasting
damage.
“No, but my head does. A little.” She winces. “More than a little.” Her
lids droop, and for a second I worry she’s falling back asleep, but then she
asks, “What happened?”
“I was about to ask you.” She shifts in my lap, and I’m suddenly very
conscious of the places where we touch and everything I was thinking
before she opened her eyes. Everything I was feeling. When I speak again,
my voice is rougher than hers. “I found you on the trail. You were cold and I
couldn’t wake you. I brought you back here and rebuilt the fire, but for a
while I wasn’t sure … I thought …” My arms tighten around her, but Isra
doesn’t seem to mind.
She turns her head, resting her cheek on my chest with a sigh. “I’m
sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“I shouldn’t have let the fire go out,” she says. “But I couldn’t find the
wood and I got scared, and then I was so cold and confused and … I … I
started remembering things. About my mother … her buttons …” Her hand
drifts to her chest, but hesitates there only a moment before coming to rest
on mine.
“I never meant for this to happen,” I say. “I didn’t understand. I—I
never meant to cut you that first night; I had no idea how fragile your skin
was. And tonight, when I left—I thought—I didn’t know it was so dangerous
for you to get cold.”
“I didn’t, either,” she says. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right.”
“It is.” Her fingers slip between the buttons on my shirt, brushing
bare skin. It becomes even harder to breathe. “I forgive you. Can you
forgive me?”
I start to assure her there’s nothing to forgive, but I can’t tell any
more lies. “I don’t know.”
She bites her lip. “Is that why you sound angry?”
“I’m not angry. Not at you. I’m just …”
“Just what?”
“Happy that you’re alive.”
“Me too. And grateful. To you. I …” She swallows, and her next words
seem to come harder. “I meant what I said. I’m not afraid of you. I’m … I
know it’s crazy … but I …” She lets out a tired sigh, and when she speaks
again, her voice isn’t much more than a whisper. “I’d like to see your face
again. May I?”
At first I think she means see me the way she did the first night, in
the garden, but then she lifts a hand into the air and I understand. She
wants to touch me.
“Yes,” I say, doing my best not to shiver as her fingers feather around
my eyes and down my nose, before her thumb smoothes across my bottom
lip. “Thank you for asking,” I whisper, lips moving beneath her lingering
touch.
She sits up, bringing her face even with mine. Her mouth is close; her
breath warms my chin. For the first time, she doesn’t smell like roses. She
smells like cactus milk—clean and salty and of the desert, like my
people—and I suddenly wonder if she would taste like all the girls I’ve
kissed in my life. There were other girls before Meer. After she found Hant,
I always assumed there would be more, but I never thought …
Even a moment ago when I …
I didn’t think … imagine … that she might …
A part of me still refuses to believe it, but another part knows what a
girl wants when her fingers linger too long on a boy’s mouth, and it knows
better than to hesitate. So I don’t. I pull her hand away, and risk a kiss.
Our lips brush, soft on softer, timid and testing, the barest friction of
skin against skin, but that’s all it takes to know that it’s right. Isra sighs and
twines her arm around my neck. My blood rushes and my body comes alive
and everything in me lights up like a sunrise. Like a night sky spitting stars.
Like her eyes when she smiles.
She kisses me again. And then again, harder and longer, and I forget
every reason this shouldn’t happen. I pull her closer and warm her mouth
with mine, moaning when her tongue slips between my lips and I taste
cactus and salt, but also a hint of sweet and a dark, velvety spice that isn’t
Smooth Skin or Desert Woman, that is only Isra.
And for a moment she is my Isra, and nothing is impossible.
TWELVE
ISRA
THIS is a kiss. This. This, this, this …
His smoke and wood smell filling my head, his Gem taste bittersweet
and perfect on my tongue, his arms around me and my hands everywhere
I’ve been dying to touch, and the memory of the killing cold banished by
the way he makes me burn.
I don’t care what he is, who I am, what’s wrong or right. There is no
shame or fear, only the driving need to get closer, kiss deeper, consume
and be consumed, to lose myself so completely that I will never be found.
I want to stay this way forever, with his chest pressed tightly to mine,
and his lips moving at my throat. With my fingers in his soft hair, his breath
warm on my skin, his hand—so hot I can feel it through my clothes—sliding
between us, down my ribs, over my stomach, down until—
I gasp and my eyes fly open, and for a bare moment I think I see
something in the air above my head—a hint of color, a flicker of light,
something strange and unexpected that makes me hesitate to push Gem’s
hand away. By the time the flicker vanishes and the familiar darkness
settles in, I am still … hesitating …
Hesitating …
A quiet, shame-filled voice inside demands I put a stop to that.
Immediately. But oh, it feels so good. So unbelievably good. I had no idea
that the ache inside could tighten into such a fierce, sweet knot … or that
Gem would know exactly how to untangle it.
Untangle me.
“Isra,” he whispers, making me shiver. I never thought … I never
imagined that he would feel it, too, this pull, this longing to touch and be
touched and oh …
I draw his mouth back to mine and kiss him until my lips feel bruised
and my breath comes faster. Faster and faster, until my head spins and
something overwhelming and frightening and beautiful rises inside me. My
fingers dig into the back of Gem’s neck and my legs tremble and I shift in his
arms, bringing my hip into contact with something I hadn’t considered.
Something that—despite what the bawdy ballads claim—feels
nothing at all like a pelican beak.
I bleat like a sheep and roll off Gem’s lap so fast, I nearly tumble into
the fire. I try to stand, but my legs are trembling and my knees are liquid
and I end up flopping onto my bottom and kicking a foot into the flames,
and suddenly Gem is cursing his ancestors—or my ancestors, I can’t really
tell—and snatching my boot from the fire and slapping at it, and the acrid
smell of burned animal skin sours the air, and the warm, beautiful feeling
vanishes in a puff of smoke.
I suck in a deep breath, and for the first time since Gem pulled me
back from the cold, my head clears. This is not a dream or a delusion. This is
real.
I really kissed the Monstrous boy I’ve been holding prisoner. I really
drove my fingers through his hair and tasted his taste and let him touch me
for so long my cheeks heat just thinking about it. It’s madness, but in the
moment the madness made perfect sense. I had no idea it would be like
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