Page 89 of Creatures that Breathe

I wish she’d eat.

Some primal instinct within me yearns to feed her, to indulge her, to pour fresh springwater between her lips, and place peeled grapes on her tongue.

I just want her strong. Nourished and ready for the hell that’s pouring down on us.

“It doesn’t have to be brutal or violent,” I say, casually setting the best, crispiest fries closest to her. “Sex doesn’t have to be about dominance or control. It can be just pleasure. It can be … sweet, Leni.”

She likes sweet.

Her icy cool eyes find mine, and I’m struck, again, by the force of her beauty. A walking contradiction, vulnerability and strength. “I’m tired of pain,” she whispers.

My stomach clenches. I can’t help but ask the question I’ve been fighting all day. “Is the prince really so archaic that he won’t marry you if you’re not a virgin?”

“He wants to put a collar on me,” she croaks. “He wants to break me into submission. And you’re asking me if he’s archaic?”

Another rhetorical question. One I deserve. “He’s not going to touch you,” I vow, dark, grisly, clamping down on a surge of my gift.

She doesn’t respond.

I long to wipe that awful, terrified look off her face, return us to moments ago, her hand on my thigh, her eyes alight.

I angle her to face me, let our knees brush, tuck her hair behind her ear and follow it with my mouth. Barely a kiss, but it throws gravel into my voice, “You smell good.”

“I smell like you.”

“You taste good too.” Not even the beer stripped the taste of her from my tongue, the syrup sweetness.

Her responsiveness, her moaning my name, writhing in my bed.

My tattoos bite and sting. I clench my teeth, grit out, “Phoenix.”

“Yes, right.” She clears her throat. Blinks rapidly. “What were we … What was I saying?”

Fuck it.

Fuck the curse. Fuck this mess. “Something that can wait, something we can hold off until …”

Until when? Until she’s no longer hunted by the only creature I can’t kill?

Until the curse is lifted?

We’re immortals. There’s no end. No waiting.

“No, it’s alright,” she says. “I need to say it now or there’s a chance I never will.” She shuts her eyes. “The Phoenix didn’t fight with Kadmos because they were afraid to lose their memories. They don’t.”

“But you said—”

“They remember how they’ve been hurt,” she explains, hurrying her words, as if she’s afraid she won’t make it to the end. “Therefore, in a Phoenix’s final death, after dying repeatedly, they’d only know pain. Have lifetimes of it. Some records state the Phoenix were the best slaves in the realm because they could be trained by pain.”

Cold dread scours me. Trained by fear. “And if they died,” I realize. “Slavers could start over.”

She purses her lips. “Glad I don’t have to spell it out.”

Not to a man who’s seen the worst in the world. “Could you retrieve these records?”

A wave of her hand. “No, they’re gone.”

“Gone?” I ask. “How? How’d you get them?”

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