Page 157 of Creatures that Breathe

Then she’s kissing me again. More sure of herself and of me, she winds her legs around my waist, until I’m crowded up against her, chest flush with hers. She kisses the spot I like to wreck on my lip, overly tender and sweet, flips princess eyes on me. “Cross, I—”

I retreat, bend away, mop through the heady thoughts swirling in my head, and seize the tattoo machine. “Now me. Leni. In the same spot.”

Silence. Then, “No.”

“Yes.” I almost laugh.

“No,” she repeats deadpan. “I’m not contagious. You’re not going to lose your memories.”

“No, but I’d like to build some.”

The neon flickers over her like little rippling waves of amethyst as she drinks me in. She shakes her head, bright bangs dancing. “You can’t have a face tattoo,” she informs, reaching up to run her fingers over the rough skin of my lips. “That’s not very stealthy.”

I press a kiss against her fingertips, and remind her, “You’re the only one who can find me, and I already have tattoos.”

There’s undoubtedly an argument waiting on her tongue, but she relents, seems to understand that I need this from her, despite the absurdity of it.

Carefully, she takes my hand, flattens it over her thigh, pins the finger that means more than the rest. The buzz of the machine fills the room, and I don’t think to register the pain as she draws on me, lashes casting tipped shadows on her cheeks, hair escaping the tuck behind her ear.

I fix it with my free hand.

I’ll never deserve her, but I’ll never stop trying.

“How’s that?” she asks, holding my hand up to the light. A black letter L with a heart nestled in its corner just below my knuckle.

The first tattoo I’ve ever asked for. “We’ll have to finish that.” I tell her as I drag her to the edge of her seat. “Eleni Amiace.”

A part of me. For eternity.

It scratches a deep, hidden itch that’s been unknowingly aching in my bones, and scorches through me, lighting the very thread of my existence in a blaze.

My control shudders and snaps and before she turns off the machine, I’m all over her, lips fused with hers in an insatiable kiss, running off fumes of raw animalistic need.

My palms trail up her thighs, fingers hooking under the hem of her skirt.

“I remember this,” she whispers into my ear, breath coming out ragged and heavy. My tongue is laving down her throat, sucking and mapping. “I get it every once in a while, snippets of you, of us. How perfect—” she gasps when I find the sensitive spot under her ear and buckle down. “Fuck, how much I want this, it scared me.”

The confession fractures something inside me.

That’s why she flinched.

Because it was too much.

Because it was exactly what I felt, because it was intense and breathtaking and life changing and giving in meant giving yourself over forever, completely. Never going back.

If I had known—

My stomach tightens, a low coil of heat singeing bright red as I grip her thighs, hitch her leg around my hip, and kiss her, hard, the way she likes.

The edge of her skirt rides up as she spreads for me, leaving her bare against my belt and zipper, and I lose my mind a little. Buck against her. Press my fingers into the meat of her ass, pin her to me, and bite the tendon arcing from her neck to her shoulder.

She moans, throwing her other leg around me to ride me, all shaky breaths and little sighs. “Have we done this before?”

My lungs empty, my painfully hard shaft pulses against my zipper. I exhale harshly on her shoulder, pry myself back. “Yes. We have.”

“And how did I do?”

My blue haired professor wants to be graded. I choke on a laugh. “Have you been taking interrogation advice from Drake?”

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