Page 164 of Eternal Ruin
So what if she died a little kissing him?
Kidan flipped them so she straddled his lap. He smirked, putting his hands behind his head. His arms were like the waves of a dark ocean, and she wanted to trace their grooves with her mouth. Climb their arches and kiss their dips. Pooling her braids over one shoulder, Kidan kissed up his bruised torso. Her attention was on his face, because human Yos couldn’t conceal how he felt under her touch. A unique sound slipped out of him, a cross between her name and a moan when her tongue slipped out again and licked, salt and citrus on his stomach. She knew he hadn’t meant to utter the sound when he shut his eyes, whispering, “What are you doing to me?”
Kidan wanted to hear it again. So she licked him again, savoring his sounds.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined that tongue of yours on my fang,” he confessed again.
Kidan sat up, her fingers grazing the waistline of his pants. “Well, there areotherplaces I can put it.”
Susenyos became alert, the widening of his pupils, the heat crowding it… God, she was in heaven.
Her smile grew. “If you’re into that kind of thing, I mean. I hear humans like it—”
He sat up at once, closing the space between them.
“I’m thankful I get to kiss you at all. Here and now. Let’s not tempt fate,” he declared, and proved it with a dizzying kiss that made her forget where she was. They were falling together, into one another, folding and adjusting to make space for the other. It felt so natural, Kidan wondered how she’d existed all these years without this part of her soul, that was so good, created just for her.
He was for her.
Susenyos drew back and breathed roughly against her. His face tightened like he was trying to solve a problem.
He watched her with unbridled intensity. Like a star that’d split into two to reveal even more galaxies. And something else, something both had cast aside because it was more dangerous than the artifacts breaking the world.
“I almost love… being human with you.”
Her spine melted as he reached for her bra clasp. His fingers hesitated, waiting for her reaction. She nodded.
“I love it when you surrender to me,” he whispered.
She tasted the word in the space between them, afraid it’d make her sick. But it was sweet like nectar. Like the fragile beginning of something.
Kindness requires surrender, he’d told her. And so what he really meant was:I love it when you’re kind to me.
She wanted to see how much further they could go, how vulnerable they could become with one another.
Kidan.The sudden crinkle of bones echoed around her. GK.You’re in danger.
There was a prickle, a pinch along her hand. She ignored them both. But the feeling returned, like a thousand ants biting her.
She placed a hand on Susenyos’s chest. He stopped at once.
You’re in danger, GK’s voice insisted, stronger now.
“What is it?” Susenyos asked.
Kidan brought her left hand between them, her face contorted with pain. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was burning likeice.
She hissed. “What the hell? My hand is burning like—ah!”
Bile lurched to her throat as her brown skin began to change color, darkening to the black of ash. Her veins were shot with black threads, dipped in ink. They were the visions that haunted Susenyos. Only now they were physically affecting her.
Susenyos was frozen still, voice thick with fear. “God.”
The pain burned from the inside out. Kidan lifted it higher between them and tried not to scream.
She wasn’t sure what was happening.
Because her hand wasrotting. Right before her eyes.
