Page 11 of Currency in Flesh

Lady Cora’s fingers tasted like blood and fruit. She forced them between my lips, pulling my mouth open. I opened for her willingly, waiting for whatever she would give. A handful of pomegranate seeds tumbled onto my tongue, but before I could bite down on them, she grabbed my face, her nails digging into my cheeks as she kept me from closing my mouth. I was certain now that her eyes were indeed glowing. I could see what looked like the flicker of flame from within their shocking green depths.

I didn’t know what I was asking for, but I asked anyway.“Please.”

A wicked smile lifted her carmine lips. She knew she had won, that whatever power she held over me had cracked my resolve. I was furious with myself, but I couldn’t help it. Her fingers held my mouth open with bruising strength and she brought her face so close that her nose brushed mine. I felt her hot breath on my lips, and then she spit into my open mouth.

Within a fraction of a second, I felt countless conflicting things. Disgust, anger, shock. But when she pulled my mouth tohers and kissed me like I’d never been kissed before, the only thing I felt was need. I swallowed down the taste of Lady Cora and ripe pomegranate. Her too-long tongue snaked its way past the point of comfort once again, but this time I reveled in it. I dropped my jaw, relaxing my throat and accepting her intrusion. I gagged, but it only served to stoke my desire. I felt used and filthy and I loved it.

All my life, I’d been forced to submit to men. I’d had to speak more softly, repress my ambitions, find ways to manipulate rather than simply asking for and receiving what I deserved. I had been meek, rolling over and accepting things—cocks I didn’t want, duties that weren’t mine, rules which somehow only applied to me. This felt different. It felt safe, letting go with Lady Cora. It made absolutely no sense—she hadabductedme, taken my life, tied me up, made me bear witness to horrific torture, touched me without my consent. Yet here, beneath her long, lithe body surrounded by velvet and darkness, I felt safe. “Cora…” I rasped when she at last pulled her tongue from my throat.

Her hand slid down my side, fingers slipping beneath the hem of my dress and pulling it up to expose my thigh while she kissed her way down my chest. “Yes, daffodil?” she whispered against my collarbone. “Tell me.”

“I—”I want you. I need you.I felt like the words were trapped behind an iron door. I had so little left, but pride was something very difficult to shake. I tried again. “I?—”

Her mouth moved over my breast, lips closing over my peaked nipple. Even through the fabric of the dress, I could feel the heat of her breath and the caress of her dexterous tongue. I couldn’t speak. My back arched, begging wordlessly for more. “Say it,” she murmured as her teeth scraped over my unbearably sensitive flesh.

But I couldn’t. I knew what she wanted, she had told me as much herself.

I will not touch you again until you beg.

With a final flick of her tongue, she lifted her head from my chest and sat up, still straddling my hips. “What you spoke in the meadow, you are not permitted to speak it again.”

My mind was foggy and it took me a moment to remember how this had started. I had made a comment implying the souls in the meadows would prefer Lady Cora to myself. I wasn’t entirely sure where the issue lay. She was conventionally beautiful—long blonde hair that looked like spun silk, tall, thin but still possessing the curve of hips and high, full breasts. She looked like a movie star. Surely, she knew this?

“I don’t understand,” I replied. I tried to pull the velvet sheet over myself, uneasy with the way my chest spilled out of the top of this dress when I laid down. Lady Cora’s lightning fast hand pinned my wrist to the bed before I could.

“I have existed a very long time, long enough to watch the tastes of humanity change more times than I could count. My tastes, however, have been a constant. There is no part of you I do not wish to look upon. I did not choose to keep you with even the slightest of pure intentions. I want to devour you, pet. Whether with my eyes, my tongue, my hands or my teeth—Iwillconsume you before this is through.”

I should have been frightened. There was a very real possibility that she spoke in literal terms, and at some point she might actually eat me. There was nothing human about her if you looked past her appearance. She moved like a cold-blooded creature—too fast, too precise. Her eyes held no semblance of humanity, only predatory focus. I swallowed thickly when I thought of the sensation of her tongue penetrating my throat. No, Lady Cora was not human whatsoever. But she had yet to cause me any real harm, outside the part where she forced me to drink from the river of the dead and dragged me to the Underworld. I raised my eyes to hers and nodded my assent.

“Good,” she said. “I feel suddenly compelled to pay your darling husband a visit. Would you care to accompany me?”

The arousal that lingered throughout my body abated in a flash of icy dread and blunt contempt. Knowing her urge was born out of anger at my self-deprecation made it worse somehow.Shewanted to punish him for making me react as I did. Shouldn’t I feel the same? But the many years of hurt and fear had gone from a thinly layered stack of memories to a wall built of my own weakness. I had been too chicken-shit to leave and too hesitant to kill him. Again, guilt rushed over me. Sean was a terrible man who did terrible things to me, but what kind of person had I been to plot his death? Lady Cora said I would have gone to the meadows, but I didn’t understand how. There was something fundamentally corrupted in my soul to permit me to genuinely plan a murder. My mother would have shaken her head at me.An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

While lost in my thoughts, Lady Cora had climbed from the bed and changed her attire to a similar pair of pants, calf-length black, heeled boots, and a fitted leather halter top with a high neck. Her hair was drawn up in a high ponytail, flowing down her bare back like molten platinum. I noticed what looked like a scar between her shoulder blades and wondered what could possibly harm a being like her.

“What are you?” I blurted out. My cheeks flushed immediately. What a stupid fucking question. Did it matter what sort of creature she was? She controlledrealitydown here. Whatever she was, it only mattered that she possessed unfathomable power.

One of her sharply angled brows lifted. Her fingers tapped against her thigh for a moment before she spoke. “Humanity has always had a proclivity for categorizing the unknown and unknowable. I think it makes you feel safer, to have some kind of designation for things you do not understand. I have been called many titles and been thought of as many thingsthroughout time. The only real answer I can give you, little daisy, is it does not make any difference what you think of me as. It will not make you any safer.”

She turned, hair whipping around. I hadn’t answered her, but my body made the decision for me. I stood, adjusting the dress and straightening my corset, and followed her into the pit.

Six YearsAgo

Sean’s handsmoved quickly to knot the silk tie at his neck. Our reservation was at nine, but he needed to stop at the office first to pick up a file, so I was expected to be ready by eight. I had chosen a fuchsia bandage dress that hit an inch below my knee, and paired it with silver pumps. For our last anniversary, Sean bought me pink sapphire earrings set in white gold, and I thought they were the perfect accessory for this dress. I looked good—spanx had smoothed my lumps and bumps into hourglass curves, and the neckline was cut at the perfect level to show off my cleavage.

“Is there something else you could wear?” he asked, thick brows drawing together as his eyes scanned up and down my body. “That color is garish and doesn’t match my tie.”

I tried not to let my face fall. “I bought it to go with the earrings you got me!” I said cheerily, turning to show him. “They’re the perfect color.”

His mouth turned down at the corners. “I didn’t buy those. I would never have given you something that shade of pink. It looks like cheap plastic Barbie jewelry.”

“They were my anniversary gift,” I replied. My fingers reached for my ear, but I dropped my hand before he could see my vulnerability.

“I don’t recall.” He had turned back toward the mirror, angling his face to run a comb through his beard. “Wear something blue.” His tie was a deep cerulean that managed to look understated against the pale slate of his shirt.

He looked at himself the way I wished he looked at me.

I shook off my disappointment and smiled. “Okay. Give me fifteen minutes?”

---