Page 13 of SIN Bone Deep

He inhaled as he nuzzled up along the slope of my shoulder to my neck, and the satisfied exhale as his cold cheek rested against my own carried no body heat within it. The coolness of his skin did not matter whatsoever. A sort of madness overtook me, a rush of pheromones as heady and rich as the jasmine that scented the night. I turned my face into his, cheek and lips brushing against his until lip met lip, and my body swayed, bowing into him so that his hand against my back and the other that threaded its fingers into the depths of my hair to cradle my skull held me upright.

Our lips feasted greedily. I had never experienced a rush of such need and ferocious desire. I wanted to take him into me, to consume him, to make him mine. The taste of him on my tongue was like the forbidden nectar of sin, and I drank it down rapturously.

Our bodies collided, chest to chest, legs tangling, neither of us skilled at this coming together, both of us over-eager for it. Hands gripped into hair, mouths ravaged, and bone pressed against bone. He bowed me beneath him, lowering me to the grass, and I had a moment of sanity.

“I can’t…”

He stilled, holding me half suspended effortlessly, his breath panted in chills that rose goosebumps over my skin.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered the words dragged heavily through me. “I want to… But…”

He eased back straightening, and cupped my skull between his hands, sifting my hair through his fingers as he stroked it back from my face, his expression tender. “It is too soon,” he agreed. “I will wait… Time is infinite.” His lips brushed mine, and then he stepped back with a sweet smile.

As before, he seemed to fade off into the shadows, his eyes glowing with flame for a moment before he vanished completely.

I stood breathless, the heel of my hand pressed against my heart, trying to stop it from beating its way free of the ribs that held it captured. Ender might or might not be a ghost, but he was not human – that much was certain.

No fruit has ever tasted so sweet,

As that which is forbidden to savor,

And yet, if home ever held a flavor,

It is that shared when our lips meet.

SIX

Heed the North winds mighty gale, lock the door and trim the sail

– The Wiccan Rede

The weather was of the kind that kept people at home, with the wind blowing off the water and howling between the hills, picking up dust and debris, and hurling it at you with enough force to sting the skin. I fought my way down the hill and through the town, bitterly regretting not having taken the Ford. As I locked my bike up, in the distance a dog began to howl, and I paused, trying to write its melancholy off as just a lonely dog and not an ill omen.

The customers who did brave the vicious wind were short-tempered and impatient, making my time manning the coffee machine unpleasant. When I switched to clearing tables towards the end of the shift, one of the saltshakers had been left with the lid loose, and I spilled salt over the table and floor.

Cursing my clumsiness, I fetched the broom to sweep it up, only for it to fall to the floor as I reached for it, the rap of the wood against the concrete causing me to jump like a skittish horse.

I finished my shift by taking out the trash and saw Kristine Sawyer exchanging lingering kisses with her married lover by his car. They both looked at me as the bag crashed into the bin, and I looked away hastily, unlocking my bike and riding out as Kristine made her way in, giving her no opportunity to say whatever cutting barbs she had prepared.

A few streets down, the married man’s car drove slowly past me. I told myself that he was just being courteous around a cyclist, but it felt intimidating. I was so distracted in watching him continue down the road and round the corner that I did not see the black cat step off the curb and sit down before me. In avoiding the cat, my wheel hit the curb, tossing me onto the grassy verge.

“Fuck!” I picked myself up. The cat blinked at me with feline-disdain before swaggering off to sit on the wall, from which it watched me as I dusted myself off and inspected my injuries. I had grazed a knee and elbow in the tumble, and the chain had come off my bike.

I sat on the curb whilst I made my repairs. A magpie landed on the grass next to me. I looked up at the flutter of more wings and the warbling of many throats exchanging greetings. “One for sorrow,” I murmured to myself. “Two for joy. Three for a girl, and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret that must never be told. Eight for a wish and…” Nine. There were nine magpies. “Nine for a kiss.”

I could almost feel the cool of Ender’s lips against mine and taste him on my tongue. What if I had not stopped him? What if I had let him lay me down on the grass? Of course, I had to stop him, I scolded myself. I knew nothing of him, not even whether he was alive or a ghost. It was madness to do otherwise…

And yet, what if I had not stopped him? Vossen women were unlucky in love, but we were made for it. We were passionate, sensual beings, after all. Our power as witches was linked to our femininity, and to the power of being women, givers of life. I was eighteen, and at my age, my mother had been already pregnant with me.

Was Nova having sex with her boy? Probably, I decided as I rose and mounted the bike, testing the pedals to ensure everything was working. Part of me resented that my younger sister had preceded me to that rite of passage, but sibling rivalry was not reason enough to have sex with someone who was all but a stranger.

I barely braked in time for the car that roared along the main road from the beach and my eyes went automatically up the hill to where the little girl had ended her life and the grim reaper had been. I had dreamed of him again, sensual dreams that had left me aching when I woke from them. With the shadows of the tree outside my window traveling across my room in time with the shifting light of the lighthouse, I had brought myself to orgasm with my fingers, my mind shifting between half-remembered images from my dream, and the memory of Ender’s hands in my hair as he had kissed me.

As I puffed and panted my way up the hill it occurred to me that a grim reaper might be a ghost with a physical form. My dreams certainly wanted to believe that he had one. And I had caught that grim reaper’s attention, not long before meeting Ender… Maybe Ender was not a demon and not a ghost, but a grim reaper?

Was such a thing possible?

I was sweating by the time I reached the top of our driveway. A wink of light caught my attention over near the graveyard, and I paused, wiping sweat from my forehead, and pulling my top away from my damp skin as I squinted across the field and between the hedges and wild cottage garden that generations of Vossen women had cultivated. A man stood in the shadows of the trees, with a pair of binoculars pointed toward our house.

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