Page 101 of Serpentine Valentine
“The question is,” she whispered, leaning forward to place her forehead against mine so all I could see were those gray eyes like twin moons. “Are you okay with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you okay with loving a woman who is capable of hunting monsters and killing them if they deserve death?”
“Is this a habit you’re going to make?” I asked, following instinct instead of the rational voice in my head telling me all of this was wrong. “Killing predators?”
“No. But I’m going to kill this one.”
“Are you going to keep beating up students as the Man Eater Crew?” I could understand her complicated need for Morgan’s death. He’d raped her, destroyed her reputation, and threatened her future. But the others? They were bad men, but I didn’t think they deserved vigilante justice when the cops would do.
“No,” she admitted, tugging at my hair in a soothing way. “Some of the girls who were assaulted started a Man Eater Patrol. I’ve been teaching them self-defense, and they’re offering chaperone services now. We even have a sexual assault survivor’s group. I spoke at the first meeting, and I was able to do it because I knew you’d be proud of me for sharing my pain and helping others.” A pause, shimmering with fear and hope, emanating from us both. “Are you?”
“Oh, Lex,” I said on a gusty exhale, finally moving to hold her back, wrapping my arms around her waist to bring us flush. “You should be proud of yourself for what you’ve done, regardless of how I feel.”
“I do, but I need to know…” Her hands turned to claws in my hair, nails digging into my scalp a little too sharp. “I need to know if you can love me even after everything I’ve done.”
“Why?” The word tasted like blood in my mouth, like I’d carved it out of my heart.
“Because I’m so in love with you I can barely breathe,” she admitted, voice breaking, eyes filling, like the dam had finally broken, and emotion was rushing in through the scorched earth of her fallow heart. “I’m so in love with you that every day without you is almost more agony than I can bear, and I’ve been through a lot. I need you, Lux. You’re the light in the dark for me, and you always will be. I can’t promise to be easy and good after this. I think I’ll always be a little feral, a little violent, and a little afraid. But I’ll do everything that is within my power to be worthy of you if you still love me. If you want that future with me that I thought was too good to be true.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until I opened my mouth to respond and salt burst on my tongue, tears running between the grooves in my teeth.
“I love you,” I told her, and the words felt like an explosion from my chest, the loosening of an arrow shot from heart to heart. “I love you, Lex, and it might be wrong, the beatings, killing Morgan, turning in my own mom, but I don’t want to have a life without you in it. So I guess I’d rather be a little wrong than empty. I’d rather be with you than anyone else in the world no matter how good they might be.”
“Really?” she said, a little gasp like a puncture wound in a balloon.
“Really,” I agreed, holding her tight because I felt like I would float away. “I feel like I was born to love you, and I can’t believe anything about that is wrong.”
I barely got the words out before she was kissing me.
No, not kissing.
Devouring.
Eating me up like she’d die if she didn’t consume enough. Her tongue in my mouth, her teeth over my lower lip nipping and opening that split I’d put there earlier so my blood bloomed between us. It felt like a blood oath, a promise to be together no matter what darkness came, until the end of our time on earth.
“I love you,” she murmured between sipping at my lips. “I love you.”
I closed my eyes and gloried in it, kissing her back with all the desperation in my heart.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a little choked up, coughing the words. “I’m so sorry for hurting you. I won’t do it ever again.”
“I know,” I soothed, kissing her tanned cheeks, her mauve eyelids, her lush red mouth, a paint by colors I filled in with my lips.
We stood there for a long time, touching and kissing until our lips were swollen and our breath came in ragged pants. Finally, she hugged me, wrapping me up like delicate tissue paper in the box of her embrace. I felt so cared for, so seen that tears sprang hot and fresh to my eyes again.
She kissed them off my cheeks with smiling lips.
“Can I show you that something, now?” she asked.
I nodded, too overcome to speak.
She beamed at me.Beamed. Brighter than a full moon overhead and twice as glorious.
I followed a little dazedly behind her as she led us through campus to the edge of the woods behind Hippios House. Only when she started into the darkness did I hesitate, but she just shot me a reassuring smile and tugged me forward.
I didn’t understand at first.
