Page 109 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“You’re a menace,” he informs her, and she smiles at him. His arm still around her back, smiling and getting those small expressions in return. “Are you going to turn every comment about how to be a person back on me?”

“Of course,” she replies sweetly, before leaning forward and kissing his mouth, catching him off guard.

She would kiss that mouth a hundred times if the world let her.

“I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing,”he mumbles into her lips, definitely not stopping her. “I don’t want to do something to you that you don’t know what it is.”

“May I remind you that I am literally centuries old?” She breathes, letting her own hand drift to the elastic band of his pajama pants, her thumb grazing the skin below his belly button, and he twitches beautifully.

But still, his words deserve to be taken seriously, so she pauses, keeping her palm against his skin there. If he’s helping her with context and subtext and understanding things, she should extend that.

“I’m proposing sex,” she says blatantly, and he nods. Behind the seriousness and the attentiveness, there’s an almost manic hunger behind his brown eyes. “Or at least things on the way there.”

His throat bobs as he swallows, and her mind is briefly derailed at the thought of kissing there again.

“Have you, before?” he asks, haltingly, his eyes flickering down to her chest, to the skin revealed at her waist, to the slope of her shoulder.

“Of course,” she answers, and he briefly shuts his eyes in relief. “It’s going to be…different. In this body.” Which is an understatement. “But there’s a different sort of…desire in it. That I want to try.”

For a long moment, the only sound that reaches her ears is the rasp of his breath and the ever so slight buzz of the lighting fixtures.

“If you do,” Ambra amends, a strange, almost mortifying shyness creeping over her, flushing her cheeks.

Gurlien’s eyebrow twitches up, but he keeps his eyes on her, and even his lashes are blond this close, and there’s a smattering of almost invisible freckles that she’s never seen before across his nose.

He holds up a finger, like he’s going to list something out, and somehow, it’s the most charming thing he’s done that night.

“One,” he starts, almost imperious, and Ambra giggles at his tone. “Hey, I’m being serious. One, is it safe? I have heard so many stories about demons forming odd attachments after sex.”

“Hey,” Ambra says, then shrugs, and she’s still next to him, his other hand still on the small of her back, fingertips touching her skin. “They broke my bond. I don’t think I could ever form one again.”

His touch briefly tightens, chasing away the lump in her throat.

“And also, that’s such a reduction, demons have all sorts of sex without forming bonds.”

“Right,” he replies. “Then two, are you going to be weird about it?”

“Are you?” Ambra asks, and his eyes flicker down to her lips again, then to her chin, like he’s studying her. “I don’t know what weird would be in your mind. Probably?”

His lips twitch up. “This is why I like you, Ambra, you’re fine with me asking questions that anyone else would be annoyed by and you answer honestly.”

“Light kidnapping aside?” Ambra teases, and gets another smile in return. “I like it. Gives me a base idea of expectations.”

“I like knowing where I stand,” Gurlien murmurs, then gently, ever so gently, cradles her chin.

She stills, his hand blister hot against her skin, and her lips part. Her blood seemingly swirls, like just that touch could boil up something inside of her, leaving only the small sensation of the contact in her awareness.

He swipes the pad of his thumb over her lips, andeverything inside Ambra pulls her attention to that one little motion. All of her focus, all of her intensity, all of her mind.

“Tell me to stop if you need me to,” he murmurs again, then tugs her into a kiss, a slow kiss, achingly slow, like this one he’s taking his time in learning her lips. Like each moment is a scholastic study, an observation, and he can’t help but implement the research immediately.

She pushes back, unable to stop herself, and his mouth opens to hers, eager, and it’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful, sending a thrill down her back, straightening her spine and catching in her lungs.

His hand on the hem of her shirt shifts, pulling it up, and she breaks the kiss so she can pull it over her head, so his hands can touch more of her, can have more of her skin against him.

Immediately, he presses a kiss to her neck, down her shoulder, drawing a line with his lips on her body, before his hands traces on the scar underneath her breastbone, twisting around her ribs.

“What happened here?” he murmurs, running the pads of his fingertips along the scar, where it rests between the body’s breasts.

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