Page 32 of Skyn
I push my burger slightly closer to him, just in case.
“Yeah, it’s…it’s good,” I manage to say, watching him with a growing pit in my stomach.
He looks over at me, still chewing, still locked in.
And for the first time, I sense it.
That edge in him. That hunter learning the limits of his own hunger.
“I want to taste everything,” he says. His gaze slips from the burger to me, lingering too long, and heat—undeniable, visceral—snakes in my belly. I swallow hard; an image of him, his face buried between my thighs, flares hot in my mind.
I want him to look me over and tell me, in that scientific way he has, what is beautiful about me. But he’s staring me down like a jungle cat, and my voice can barely make it over my vocal cords.
His eyes are like hands on me, and they lock in on my mouth. Before I can even start to protest, he leans in, grabbing both sides of my face, and kisses me, quick and sharp.
It’s so fast that it takes me a moment to process it. He pulls back just as quickly, and I’m left breathless, my lips tingling.
“What…what was that,” I ask. My underwear feels tight, like I’m pulsing out of them, and I cross my legs for fear that he may have the heightened senses to smell my desire.
He shrugs and leans back slightly. “You’re so good at beating the probability matrix,” he says, his voice low and smooth. “I wanted to try to do it.” He taps my dangly earring and traces his thumb along my jaw.
He is entirely too nonchalant. This is nothing to him. A hot kiss on the mouth. Testing a hypothesis.Did I do that to him?
“Well, try on your hand. Not me,” I say, but don’t mean it.
“Illogical. I can anticipate my own moves. Where is the surprise in that? But I can never anticipateyourresponse.”
“Proud to be another Iku lab rat at your service,” I say, with a mocking little salute, but he just watches me, and the look can be described only as—I’m sorry—desperately horny?
“No,” he says, like that explains everything. “I think that’s why you’re so good at upending my statistical models. You’re a hard woman for me to predict, Fawl.”
“Because you’re obsessed with these unified theories. People aren’t always rational actors, Ben.”
His tongue darts out, grazing the edge of his lips. It’s fleeting but electric. “You make me curious,” Ben continues. “I haven’t been curious in so long, Fawl. Last time I felt it, I was a boy.”
I am taken aback, and a flock of birds flies into my stomach. My pulse thuds under his heavy-lidded, almost-drunk gaze.
He’s kissing me again, and this time there’s noexperimentin it. His mouth crashes into mine, and the world goes liquid. His hand slips around my waist, pulling me closer, and I’m not resisting.
Not at all.
The second my mouth yields to his, I lose the thread of everything—my balance, my breath, my sense of what comes next. The kiss floods me, hot, consuming.
Hungry.
Powerful.
His other hand slides up, cupping the back of my neck, drawing me closer until there is no space left between us.
His tongue slides in, slow at first, then purposeful, teasing the edges of my restraint. I gasp, and then?—
Oh God.
He sucks on my tongue, and it’s obscene, it’s possessive, and it sends a hot, splintering shock straight down my stomach. What the fuck happened totesting the matrix? This isn’t a test—this is raw, unrestrained hunger.
And my body—traitorous, eager—moves before my mind can catch up and straddles him.
“I like you on my lap,” he says between kisses.
