Page 114 of Architecti
“There have been so few quiet moments this year,” I say into her shoulder.
Midnight kisses my forehead.“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m imagining all the things that can never be,” I whisper.
Her hand strokes my back, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same.There are barely thirty days left and still so much to do.
“The demon and the reaper, hey?”She huffs against the top of my head.
“Something like that.”
“I want you to tell me all of the futures,” she says.
I sigh as she spins me around and we slide to another section of the turret room.
“I’m thinking about all the campus walks in misty mornings that we can never have.”
Her movements speed up, I’m not sure if I’ve pissed her off, until she says, “Or the lazy mornings in bed, where I bring you coffee and those god-awful eggy circles you like.”
“You mean a pancake?”
“Yeah, fucking awful things.”
I laugh against her shoulder and then stop suddenly, my voice cracking.“I’m thinking about how we’ll never grow old together, wrinkled hands that won’t carve calluses in each other’s palms.”
Midnight spins me out, and I go twirling across the room.“I thought you said our fate is our own?This is the most fatalistic I’ve ever heard you.”
“I’m just tired.”
She tugs me and I spin in so fast my back ends up against her chest.She leans in and kisses down my neck.I moan and lean in as she kisses down my throat.
“You don’t have to do this, Midnight.You don’t need to fuck me this evening.”
She tuts at me, one of her hands skimming up the slit in my dress, dragging the fabric with it until her fingertips graze so close to my folds.I’m not wearing underwear, but she hasn’t realised yet.
“Need?Fuck, Lucy, don’t you get what you’ve become to me?”
I shake my head, trembling beneath her grasp.I don’t want to hear this, I can’t.I am barely hanging on to my self-control as it is.
She sighs against my scalp, placing a kiss on top of my head.“You can’t love me, I understand that.But it’s too fucking late for me.You have stitched yourself into my soul.You are in my marrow, in every breath I breathe and every thought I have.You are more than need and desire.I will crave you long after my soul has been taken.I will yearn for you in this world, and the underworld and any other that drags me from you.And until then, I will fight to find a way to keep you, because you are mine.No matter what fate says, you willalwaysbe mine.”
“Your words are poison,” I whisper, tears falling down my cheeks.
I have no resilience left.
“Sometimes the truth feels like poison,” she whispers and then spins me around and hoists me into her arms.She powers us forward until my spine hits the turret window.
“Midnight, the crowds, wh?—”
But she cuts me off with her mouth plunging over mine.Her lips are plump and needy.Her tongue pushes its way into my mouth and caresses mine.She tastes of mint and cider.My body responds to her the way it would a drug.
Instantly pliable.
Instantly aroused.
If I were wearing underwear, they’d be clinging to me.But instead, my thighs stick to each other.And the thought of her discovering my bareness only makes me wetter.
What am I doing?Why am I risking everything?
