Page 64 of Night of the Witch
I suddenly regret telling him that this was all I wanted, nothing more.
We need to sleep.
But I need to not think, to not feel, to justnotin every way. I’m still in pieces from my nightmare, still driven to mania in the cold, and so my body starts shaking again, and Otto pulls me closer.
I arch into the motion, head rising, and in the darkness, I can feel his face level with mine now. Can taste the way his exhale re-forms the air, the spark and spice of his breath coming in a quaking gust that sizzles across my tongue. I can’t tell exactly how far away he is from me, but I can feel the space, or lack of space.
I shift closer.
The darkness is consuming again. It is delirious and hypnotic and dangerous, spinning a web of perceived absence, a dreamlike void, as though nothing that happens here really exists.
So the way our lips suddenly rest against each other.
The way we both hold there, kissing but not, bodies entwined.
It is a figment.
It isn’t real.
His head tips, mouth sliding against mine, rough edges and soft, pillowy bottom lip. I think I feel the flick of his tongue, for a second, the quickest, tentative prodding at my mouth.
Heat flames to life in my belly, soothing the tremors, launching outto the tips of my fingers and the arches of my feet. It’s that heat that melts through the frozen part of my brain, the numbed echoes of me, and I yank down, curving into his chest, holding my head into the space between our bodies.
Oh, schiesse, what did I do?
What didhedo?
My hand fists in the back of his shirt. I’d move away if there was room, if it wasn’t still freezing. I should ask him to go back to the corner. I should tell him to leave.
“Get some sleep,” I whisper into the hollow against his chest.
I can feel his heartbeat thundering. It matches the pulse I feel in my throat. Rapid, clawing thuds.
“You too,” Otto whispers, and save me, it’s hoarse, so hoarse I can hear the restrained thoughts whirling through his head too.
I tuck my chin to my chest and force myself to lie as still as possible.
18
OTTO
The morning comes too soon, but I have been awake for hours.
We were born to kill each other.
And yet she tucks her body close to mine.
I can feel her heart beating. Her soft breaths coming in little huffs. Her delicate eyelids closed in slumber, the long line of her bare white neck centimeters from my lips.
Heat flushes my body at the thought of how close we are.
How close wewere. She pulled back last night, but a part of me—most of me—longs for her to look up at me now, to tip her lips to mine, to cross that bridge we did not cross in the dark.
I never wanted to wear the black cloak of the hexenjägers. I am no hunter. But dear God in Heaven, I think I shall be seeking the quiet peace I feel when she lies in my arms for the rest of my life.
She stirs, murmuring in that liminal space between sleep and awake, and I close my eyes, wishing for the sun to eat itself in fiery death and cast us in perpetual darkness rather than rise.
“Otto?” she asks softly. It’s a tentative whisper, an uncertain question, an olive branch.
