Page 75 of Marked By Feral Monsters
My fingertips graze my neck where he gripped me tightly, thumbs cradling my face as he kissed the life right out of me.
It's an indulgence, really. Touch. It's something people take for granted.
To be devoured by something so warm, I wanted it to last forever. I stare out at the bench in the gazebo, where we talked and laughed and fucked.
A few nights ago, because I refused to grow old and become a recluse like Greta, I was sitting at a restaurant by myself, and then there he was… This man, this flesh and blood human with a wicked gleam in his eyes.
I couldn't look away. It was unnatural, this heat pouring off of him, but I'd grown so used to the cold, I reveled in it. All Icould picture was this man and my Eric flanking me, pushing into me from front and back—one, a burning inferno, the other, a glacial storm. A dichotomy of pleasure and pain, light and dark, good and evil.
Those beautiful, bright golden eyes never left mine, as if he could read my filthy thoughts. He confidently strode right up to me and asked if he could sit.
A strange shimmer poured off him, like heat haze on a hot gravel road in the summer. It reflected in the wineglass, the blood-red tannin legs dripping slowly down the inside of the glass, thick and viscous. We drank, and I felt unsettled beneath his constant, violently warm, predatory gaze. It felt like sex and something darker. Like he wanted to devour me.
"Why are you alone?" he'd asked.
I thought of Eric, and rather than saying,it's complicated, I'd replied, "I'm always alone."
"Liar," he'd said, then changed the subject. And later, when conversation flew comfortably, and things felt lighter, sparking the familiar clawing ache and worry of Eric stuck at home, feeling responsible for his pain, but also just wishing he could enjoy something as simple as dinner out with me, Nix asked, "Why do you look as if the sun has set forever?"
It was a strange thing to say, and I didn't know how to respond. After swallowing a gulp of Malbec, I muttered, "I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm enjoying this. I swear, I'm not… I'm not afraid the sun has set forever," I try to laugh, stealing his phrase.
"If you had no darkness, I might not be so attracted to your light."
My lips parted, and I sucked in a light breath, but he seemed unbothered by the weight of the conversation—that he just admitted he was as attracted to me as I was him, that he could see the secrets hiding inside me, tearing me apart. The heatbetween us ratcheted higher, more dangerous than before. He was seducing me without a single touch.
I shifted in my seat, suddenly needing to escape, but incapable of moving. There was something dark behind Nix's eyes. And maybe, recognizing that darkness, feeling a kind of kinship with it, made me feel safer somehow. He had secrets too, and I liked that. I likedhim.
He bought me dinner, and we talked over candlelight until the restaurant closed. And I thought, in another life, maybe, he could really be something to me.
But I couldn't bring him home. Eric would kill him; I knew that. I swear he nearly killed Marv, our neighbor, the other day when he knocked on the door and asked if he could borrow my pruning saw. Eric was becoming unhinged.
But it was as if I had no control. Nix just had a way about him. His suggestion didn't feel like a request, and I said yes. I was out of my mind with lust and intrigue and, hell, just excitement at touching a real human person, I let him follow me home. By sheer luck, I thought clearly enough to drag him directly into the backyard, bypassing the house completely. To my sanctuary, to a place Eric wouldn't follow.
Nix and I laid beneath the stars and talked all night long. We made love in the gazebo, and since I knew it would be our one and only time together, I didn't leave his side. I let him take me again and again, right out there in the open. He seemed lighter at my house, less intense than he had been at the restaurant.
It just felt… easy. Meant to be.
I woke up the next morning, and he was gone.
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my eyes. Nix would have said goodbye. He would have kissed me, woken me, even if he had no intention of a repeat. He still would've said goodbye.
I stormed inside. Eric was nowhere to be found. I stalked through the house, and a quick glance out front confirmed Nix's car was still in my driveway. I went back to the sanctuary, and that's when I noticed the disrupted dirt and grass in the backyard by the newly planted rose bushes.
At this rate, we could start selling the stems, the way they grow so big and vibrant, feeding off the decay below.
What a fucking tragedy.
Eventually, I found Eric. But by then, I was at a loss for words.
Four days later, and I'm still reeling.
Something's changing inside me. There's this hollowness, and I'm wracked with guilt, and honest, gut-wrenching sadness.
Someday, I'll get over Nix's death.
Someday, I'll know what to do about Eric.
A crack of thunder pulls my attention away from the gazebo through the kitchen window. The rain comes on fast, drenching the humidity, washing it down into the earth. The sound of the storm wails against the house, so I hurry to make sure all the windows are closed, and the candles and matches are easy to access in case we lose power, then go in search of Eric.
