Page 61 of Lucy Undying

Iris

I kiss Elle back too fast, too hard.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything like this. Since I’ve trusted that the person I was with wouldn’t run, or take my mother’s money, or betray me.

Elle dances like she’s trying to exorcise a demon. She looks sad when she doesn’t catch herself and school her expressions. She wrinkles her nose when she laughs. She’s funny and smart and beautiful and kind, and she’s here now, with me. By choice. Unlike in Whitby, I don’t want to consume her. I don’t want to use her to quiet that ache inside for a few stolen minutes. It’s not about me and what I need. I want to celebrate her. To connect with her. To worship her.

I pull away and put my lips against her ear. Linger there for a few breaths to get myself steady. Then, keeping my voice as soft and low as a purr, I say, “Ask me to kiss you slowly.”

Elle goes still against me, like a rabbit about to flee. I’ve ruined the moment. I’ve blown it.

Then she whispers, “Kiss me slowly. Please.”

I trace my lips along her jaw, letting the magnetism of her mouth draw me back in. I wasn’t wrong to compare her lips to a rosebud. They’re velvet-soft, blooming beneath my own. I weave my fingers into her hair, cradling the back of her head, not grasping or grabbing. Careful, careful. Tender.

Forehead-to-forehead, we stop and breathe in sync. I’m about to brush her hair away and move to her neck, to capture her butterfly pulse in my mouth, but she puts a hand against my cheek, holding me there, keeping me still.

“Ask me to take my dress off,” she says, her voice unsteady.

“Take your dress off…please,” I add, the word curving out of my mouth like a smile.

Her fingers tremble as she undoes the buttons. I want to help her, but the waiting is delicious. The seconds stretch taut between us. She slides her dress off her shoulders and it falls to the floor around her feet, pooling there like she’s a myth rising lovely and impossible from a pond.

I trail my hand down her throat, lingering at the place where neck becomes shoulder. Then I rest it, palm flat, in the center of her chest. I stretch my thumb and pinky, brushing the soft fullness of her on either side. She’s so beautiful that looking at her is a hook in the center of my chest, tugging on something painful and yearning.

But still, I linger. I go slowly. I ask, and she asks, and we both answer.

It’s a gentle, aching unearthing as we peel off layers. We experiment with touch and taste, pressed against the wall, then on the couch, eventually making it to the bed. Elle is a garden, subtle and beautiful and surprising, and I am as serious about making her bloom as I’ve ever been about anything in my life.

When she navigates my body, her lips against the curves of my breasts, her small hands somehow everywhere, it’s like she knows what I’m responding to before I do. Like she can hear the swell of desire and instantly divert into the wave, riding it for as long as possible.

We move together until at last we’re spent, lying diagonal across the bed, our legs still tangled. Elle turns on her side to look at me. For once I’m not self-conscious of how exposed I am. It was clear in the exploration of her hands and the press of her mouth that she loves the soft fullness of my belly, the place where my thighs kiss against each other. That in my softness she doesn’t find weakness or failure, only pleasure. Only tenderness.

She cups one of my breasts, no urgency in the motion of her thumb brushing back and forth over my nipple, only idle enjoyment.

“Ask me,” I say, trying to keep a straight face, “if my little butter chicken has replaced actual butter chicken as the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”

She snorts an inelegant explosion of laughter and grabs a pillow to throw at me. I take it and put it behind my head, absolutely spent and absolutely content.

“But seriously.” I want to be sincere. I want to tell her what that meant to me, how it felt. “I—”

“Ask me if I know what you mean without you saying it,” she whispers.

I lean my head close to hers and she brushes my curls away from my eyes. I close them, wanting to exist infinitely in this moment. No past, no future. A line of Emily Dickinson dances through my mind. “Forever is composed of nows,” I quote, needing only this now and nothing else.

But now can never last. The past is always with us. And on us, in my case, as Elle is discovering.

“These bumps are scars, aren’t they?” Elle asks, running her fingers down my arms.

“I have an autoimmune disorder. It’s similar to cold agglutinin disease, which you’ve never heard of because it’s rare, and our version is even rarer. It’s so unusual they nicknamed it after my family. Gold agglutinin disease. Cute, right? If I get too cold, my body starts attacking my blood cells. I’m mildly anemic on a good day, dangerously anemic on a bad one.” I brush my arms where old IV scars linger. “When I was growing up, I had weekly blood transfusions. They’d pump out all my gold blood and pump in regular blood to replace it. But it never made me feel better, so as soon as I got away, I stopped doing it.”

“Are you okay now?”

I shrug. “It’ll kill me eventually. But not today, which is good enough for me.”

She lets out a noncommittal noise. “And what happened here?” Elle traces the scars on both sides of my abdomen. I’m surprised she noticed them. They’re little white crescents, like someone pressed a thumbnail too hard against the skin.

This time I’m tempted to lie, or kiss her, or deflect. But I told Elle I wouldn’t try to protect her from monsters.

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