Page 203 of Hunters and Prey

The Nearer Side

––IGASPED, CHOKED, jerking awake.

Sound erupted around me.

I heard it, somewhere above and around me on several sides.

Emotions bombarded me, along with a wash of tense, vibrating light, sparks and ripples of panic and surprise, terror and shock… then a thick pulse of relief.

I couldn’t focus on any of that though, not at first.

It was all both too near and too far for me to make sense of it.

I couldn’t see. A kind of film covered my eyes, one I had to blink my way through to see a goldish-orange light shining from directly above where I lay. That light shone right in my eyes, but for some reason, it didn’t hurt.

I was covered in sweat, more adrenaline than blood slamming through my veins, fear making my light ripple out in hard patterns. My heart hammered so violently in my chest, I was sure I was having a heart attack.

I was lying down.

My back rested on something soft, something so incredibly fucking soft and comfortable, I didn’t want to move. For some reason, the mere fact that I was lying down, that my body was just lying there, fully relaxed, not moving or feeling any urgent push or pull to move––that fact alone brought so much relief I could barely comprehend anything else for a few seconds.

Some part of me was almost okay with dying if it meant I could just lie there, on this achingly soft and comfortable surface, for just a little while longer.

Then I saw him.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, I realized what I was looking at.

That gold light sharpened, as the source of it sharpened in my vision, too. My eyesight locked in on the room, on his face, on the window behind him, the ceiling above him, the faces that looked down on me from further away in a worried-looking ring.

All of it clicked abruptly into focus.

I blinked at him, then around at all of them, then back at him.

His eyes were glowing.

The gold flecks stood out as they glowed at me like warm fires, like flickering candles lived inside each of his irises.

“Black?” I said.

My voice sounded doubtful.

His relief hit me in a heated wave.

The intensity behind it stopped my heart, even as it opened my light.

I felt him react to that, too––even as his light opened in return. I felt that fire-like, coiling heat of his, those complex structures that lived beneath his feet. They grew almost liquid as they wound up into me, grasping some corresponding part in my light.

When I looked up next, gasping from what he was doing to my light, something he normally only did during sex… there were tears in his eyes.

Before I could speak, he leaned down, clenching my hair in his hand.

He kissed me on the mouth and I kissed him back, opening my light even more. He let out a heavy sound when I did, kissing me harder.

For a long-feeling few minutes, nothing else mattered.

It crossed my mind how badly I’d needed this.

The one thing I hadn’t felt comfortable asking him for, not after what Nick had done to me on the roof, was the one thing I’d needed from him the most.

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