Page 30 of Creatures that Breathe

Happiness will picnic on my grave.

Happiness is diabolical. It’s so fucking convincing. This girl, it whispers, strangling my better sense, setting locks on my files. She tastes like syrup.

Sweeter.

She remembers you, she wants you, hurry before she doesn’t. Forget everything else, chase this feeling.

Never let go of it.

A frantic, exploring grind of her hips against my hard, throbbing shaft pours fire and ice into my veins, torture and rapture. I press my forehead against her shoulder, heart slamming into her, and inhale rain and honeysuckle. My hand traces up her throat, taking hold of wet blue hair. She freezes, eyes hooded, mouth bruised.

I grip the back of her neck, drag my mouth up her throat. “Don’t stop,” I command raggedly. “Don’t you ever stop.”

Thank the Gods, she listens, hips rolling into me, thoughtless, hurried, hungry, entire body clutching me.

Happiness can suffocate you in a thousand excruciating waves. The small whimper of her mouth, the frustrated pull of my hair, the hook of her ankles behind me, locking us together, the way she says hot, like she doesn’t mean to, like she’s out of her fucking mind too, like she can’t believe she’s doing this.

We are. We are going to do this. Right here, in the miserable gray sleet, Happiness demands, raising the potency, now. Hurry!

And so we’re entwined, kissing, laving, desperate strangers in an alley on a wretched night. And I’m drunk on her, on this, diving headfirst into Happiness’s shallow waters. I forget to forget.

Forget the shackles inked on my skin, cinching tighter and tighter.

Pain can be ignored, but not when happiness is close.

Leni yelps, pushing back abruptly, smacking my arm. “Ow! Get off—”

She scrambles out of my arms, hissing, cradling her bottom lip. There’s pink on her face, and goosebumps dancing down her throat, tears in her eyes. A drop of pale blood spilling from her mouth.

My stomach drops.

I bit her. When the muscle in my thigh torqued around a busted femur, I clenched against the pain and ... I bit her. Hurt her.

The rain is an icy slap against my face as I watch her wipe the drop away, stare at the shimmery pink that definitely isn’t mine.

The alley smells of singed hair and old trash, and I wish I wasn’t so accustomed to it, to shadows and grime. But here I am, in this Godsforsaken place with a woman who has come to me for reasons I don’t understand.

She’s shivering and her lips are losing the pink flush, paling. Her vibrant waves are tangled around her face like she’s been caught in a windstorm.

She looks at me, touching her mouth. “It burns.”

Something inside me stirs. It’s not lust or desire, it’s oily and black and it makes me long to disappear. The wrongness of this moment.

Sucking on her teeth, she advances a half step forward. “Cross? Don’t—”

Done lurking in the background, pain charges. My leg quits supporting me. I crash to the side, smack the ground, bite my tongue, bang my head.

Happiness is a distraction.

And it flogs me. I lash against it, but it has hooks in me, marrow deep.

“Cross?” Worried fingers graze my arm.

I must groan, because her lashes flutter, and then she’s closer, toes licking at the inseam of my thigh.

One unbearable thought presses on me, pushes down my throat and takes root in my ribcage. Her skin is warm. She’s not cold. She’s shaking because she’s scared.

She should be.

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