Page 97 of Outlaw Witch

I’m back to not sleeping again too, which is just the icing on the shitty cake. Seems no matter how many of Silver’s sister’s draughts I take, it’s no match for the nightmares that wake me at half-hourly intervals.

It’s been two weeks since the ritual failed and I’m fucking miserable, confined to a med bay bed in case I collapse or my system starts to fail even worse than it already is.

I can’t understand how it didn’t work either. It makes no sense that the ritual wasn’t enough. Which is frustrating the hell out of me.

But there are a couple of warm patches in this cold, dead world in the days that follow the ritual.

One is my brothers. They only leave me alone when they have to. When the business I should be running comes calling. I’ve reached a point where I’m too exhausted to feel guilt about it, but most of the time, they’ve stopped talking about the business in front of me.

I know why. I overheard Lucy—one of the med bay witches, talking about not overtaxing my system, and Ro and Z seem to be sticking to that. Instead, we shoot the shit. We sit around watching old movies and playing games with Seb.

The other warm part in my life is Silver. Straight after the ritual, when I woke up, I could feel a warm hand in mine and I figured it was Seb. It took a while to force my eyes open. Once I did, I was surprised to find, instead of my little brother, a small, perfectly formed hand was clutching mine. Like by the sheer force of her grip, she’d be able to keep me clinging to this plane.

She was all sad and looked at me with those enormous eyes filled with guilt, and the first thing I told her was to cut that shit out. Since then, she’s been here a lot. No more moping, though.

Something about having her here soothes me. It’s like riding on the rough sea before everything calms and clears.

After weeks of rough water, I can finally see the bottom.

And a bunch of treasure.

As the days go by, Silver becomes a regular in my room. I can hardly stay awake, even though I sleep for barely more than an hour at a time. I’m like a damn baby.

But when I wake up, she’s always right there.

She smells like cherries all the damn time. And even when I’ve spent the whole day sleeping, like the useless fuck I’ve turned into recently, I can tell when she’s been here. The entire room smells of her and I’ll wake up with my cock rock hard.

He seems to have a sixth sense for her having been around, even if the rest of me was unconscious.

I’ve even woken from nightmares, conscious of nothing but the darkness of my eyelids... and her voice.

She reads to me while I’m sleeping.

It’s cute as shit and the couple of times I’ve been too out of it to stop myself, I couldn’t hide that I was awake and she stopped. When I opened my eyes and focused them on her face, she was blushing like she was embarrassed. Her cheeks flushed and glowing, looking like a damn angel.

My chest went tight at that. I didn’t know what to do with myself or her, so I just squeezed her hand back.

It feels like we’ve known each other for years, not weeks. In the time I have known her, something inside me has been steadily growing and it’s accelerated its growth ever since the ritual failed. We’ve been spending so much time together. We talk, we play games; we watch movies snuggled together. But it never seems to be enough.

I want more.

I want to be able to walk around the streets, showing her my favorite parts of the city. I want to take her out for food and see what she enjoys eating best. To feed her cheese fondue and watch her eyes light up.

More than that, though, I want to make her laugh. To press my mouth against hers and find out if she tastes as good as I imagine. I want to sink between her thighs and lap at her clit until her pleasure runs down my chin.

I want to bury myself deep inside her.

But no matter how much I might want it, I’m not about to start something when I’m a weakened mess who can barely muster the energy to get up to shower or take a piss.

There’s another, darker, part of me that is getting more and more obsessed with her. It wants to sink its teeth into her soft skin, to mark her as mine.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

It’s a possessive voice inside me I don’t recognize. One that sounds scarily similar to the one cravingmeat. Meat. Meat.

It scares the shit out of me.

I watch her laugh at something Ro says and part of me goes warm and lax, while another wants to snatch her up into our lap. To bury my face in her neck.

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