Page 120 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

It’s far better than treating her like she’ll break underneath the slightest touch.

Chloe’s not built like someone tough, she knows this, with her relative short height and overall impression of being tiny, and most dates skate around her, like they’re worried they’ll shatter her apart with barely any contact. Like anything they do would scuff her up, reduce her to something lesser.

Like she didn’t become the best tombbreaker in the world by being pristine and pretty. Like she didn’t break out of Toronto, like she didn’t brute force the locking pits, like she didn’t destroy all semblances of traps in the stasis ward, like she didn’t destroy their flagship prison.

Like she didn’t first pick a lock at the age of seven, destroying her fingernails and developing calluses on each fingertip, the sort that confuse police and profilers.

And now, with him in the new body and her with the bruised ribs, he kisses her like she can take it. Like she can match it, like she can give as good as she gets.

And lord does she.

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Her back hits the windowsill, him rushing into her space, an inexorable force forward, clattering against the glass. The cold bites against her skin, where her shirt rides up and his blisteringly hot hand presses against her bare hip, a delicious contradiction of sensations.

The sort of contradiction she lives for.

She opens her lips to his, less of a welcome and more of a trap, and he takes it like he was born to. Both hands surge into her hair, twisting in her black strands, digging into her scalp, and she gasps against him.

Not in any pain, not in any distress, and he only uses it to press her deeper against the windowsill instead of pulling back.

Excellent.

Chloe lets him, let’s him push her more, instead using the distraction and the effort to grip him by the belt, snapping it open with a practiced click.

All college issued belts work the same, and he jerks in surprise at the actions, but she kisses him instead of breaking the contact, biting down on his lip.

He twists his hand tighter in her hair, almost to the point of pain, and her breath hitches in her throat.

“Oh, you want this,” he murmurs, his lips not leaving hers, and she swallows his words with her breath. “You actually want this.”

“Yes,” she whispers back, despite her heart pounding, despite the cold at her back, before she pulls off his belt in one decisive motion.

Now, she knows, in a remote sort of way, that this is different for demons. That the nerve endings are different, the experience is different, the emotions are different.

But the smolder in his eyes—his true eyes, not the ones in this too-pretty body—shows his want is just the same.

“You’re going to tell me if I do anything wrong,” Chloe orders, and his brows flash up. “I’ve never fucked a demon.”

“And I’ve never fucked a human,” he challenges right back, and the obscenity drips from his words, a threat and a promise.

“Good,” she whispers, and he pulls at the hem of her shirt, hitching it up until he curls his hand around her bare back, touching more of her skin, more of her.

She jerks back, tugging the shirt off completely, tossing the cheap material aside, and his eyes track down her front, like he can’t get enough of what he sees. Like he thinks this won’t last, that this’ll be his only chance to see, that he won’t be able to have this again.

The hand on her back spasms as his lips curl up into a smile.

“This is how you scryed me,” he murmurs, and she caused this smile, she gets to own it. “Stripped down to nothing but this, wide eyed and determined.” His voice dips down, almost to a growl. “And terrified.”

It’s not terror she’s feeling right now.

“It worked,” Chloe replies smugly. “I got my research back.”

Gentle, so gentle she almost aches, he places both hands on her ribcage, soft against the skin.

“I saw these scars, too,” he murmurs, running a thumb along the raised skin, along the strangely numb hypertrophic healing that still marks her. “And I immediately knew you were more than I thought.”

She shivers at his touch. “Well. You know. Toronto.”

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