Page 43 of Starve
I’m prettysure I’ve never slept better in my life.
Waking up without being afraid that something is breaking in or from some shitty nightmare is a nice experience. And I fully expect to see Cairo gone now that the sun is up. It’s what always happens to monsters and myths, after all, and he’s a bit of both in my mind.
But when I turn over, my arm brushes against something warm and solid. I open my eyes to find him right beside me, his eyes on my face and his expression thoughtful. He reaches out to me, and just when I think he’s going to do something sweet like brush my hair back from my face, he instead wraps his fingers around my throat and pulls me to him with a purr of possessive satisfaction.
“You look good like this,” Cairo tells me in a husky, soft tone.
“Like what? Tired?” I murmur, not fighting his grip on my neck or particularly freaked out about it. “Post-panic and post-slightly dissociative?”
His mouth twitches in a grin, and he rolls his eyes. “No, little bird. Marked as mine and worn out from what I did to you. Though I want to do so muchmoreto you. I was keeping myself a little human, for you.”
“What?” I ask, surprised and more than a little confused. “What do you mean?”
Cairo’s eyes glint with amusement. “I’m a monster, Fern,” he reminds me, seeming happy to point that out again. “If I were to indulge in what I really want with you, then you wouldn’t be getting out of bed today. I wouldn’t let you.” He speaks with such confidence that my stomach twists and I feel like my chest is full of butterflies.
Before I can remark on it, Cairo glances toward the window, his eyes go serious and his smile fades. But he doesn’t let go of me. Instead he shifts to wrap an arm around my shoulders, his chin resting against my hair with my face pressed to his shoulder. With anyone else, I would’ve called the move cute. Affectionate.
With Cairo, it screams possession. Like he sees me ashisand is just proving it in any way he pleases.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, when all I feel is the too-fast beat of his heart and his slow breathing. He’s warm against me, like always, and it’s hard not to just close my eyes and drift back to sleep, even though my instincts won’t let me completely forget he’s neither human nor absolutely safe.
“Yes,” he sighs suddenly. “Unfortunately. Lately there’s always something wrong.” He moves his hand, allowing his fingers to skim down my back, like he’s trying to touch every bit of me he can. “They’re restless.”
“Who?”
“The others like me.”
For a moment I only focus on the feeling of his fingers drawing senseless shapes on my back. But my curiosity gets the better of me, and I can’t help it when questions bubble to my lips; my urge to know more about him is unstoppable. “What are you, exactly? And don’t say a monster. That’s incredibly vague.”
Cairo huffs out a laugh, and I swear I can sense him rolling his eyes at my attempts at humor. “I didn’t know you needed a label for everything, Fern. But to be honest with you, I’m not even sure what you’d call us. Some of the others say we’re cursed, so I’ve always gone with that.”
“Cursed like you pissed off a witch in a chicken-legged hut?” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice, and I pay for it when Cairo rolls me onto my back, caging me in when he rises above me on his hands and knees. His face is close enough to mine that his eyes look black, but a second later they reflect the light, becoming an illuminated green and incredibly unnatural.
It’s creep in a way.
But I’m starting to be less afraid every time I see it. It’s justhim. Just a quirk about him that exists, rather than something necessarily bad. He bares those too-sharp teeth that he didn’t have at the asylum, prompting more questions to line up in my head.
“No. Cursed like we did something awful in order to survive, then we paid the karmic price for it.” He clicks his teeth near my face, pulling an involuntary shudder from me. “It gets cold in these mountains.” His voice takes on that eerie, ambiguous quality again, where he doesn’t sound like himself, but like a jumble of voices all at once.
“How do you do that? The voice thing?”
By now, my inappropriate curiosity barely phases Cairo. He just blinks, and I see his throat working as he considers it. But then a slightly less-than-friendly smile appears on his lips, and when he opens his mouth, he says, “How do you do that? The voice thing?” In a perfect copy of my voice and tone.
An involuntary shudder goes through me as fear coils like a cold snake in my stomach. That’s something I don’t know how to get used to, and he doesn’t act like he’s bothered by my fear. “You ask so many questions, don’t you?” Cairo laughs darkly,back to his own tone. He leans down, and before I can do anything other than give a quick, surprised inhale, his lips find mine.
He isn’t sweet. But that doesn’t surprise or disappoint me. He’s voracious and hungry. His kiss is starving, like he wants to eat me from the inside out. Cairo’s tongue is possessive, tasting every inch of space between my lips like he hasn’t done it before. Once in a while I feel his teeth against my mouth, but he never bites down. When I try to sit up a little bit though, a hand is quickly splayed at the base of my throat, and a low growl drifts from his mouth to mine.
“Stay,” he orders, in a voice that tells me it’s not up for debate. “Youstay.” I do, expecting him to get up and pull his disappearing act. Instead, he goes right back to kissing me. Cairo is unhurried, and thorough. When he’s done with the inside of my mouth, he moves to my face, then my throat; dragging his tongue up the side of my neck in long, savoring sweeps while a purr builds in him.
“Feels like you want to eat me,” I say on a breath, pressing my thighs together as arousal flares to life in my stomach.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Well, that’s because I do.” He captures my mouth again, pinning me to the bed with his hand on my chest once more. Cairo doesn’t offer an apology; he just spends a good five minutes licking and nipping at my mouth until my lips are sore and swollen before he finally sits up.
His eyes dip to where my thighs are pressed together, and a small smile twitches at his lips. He shoves the covers back and before I know what he’s doing, reaches down to shove his hand between my thighs, easily getting between them.
“Poor thing,” he purrs as he slides his fingers against my slit and dips them inside teasingly. “My poor little bird.” When he pulls them out, his fingers are slick and glistening with myarousal. I watch as he brings them to his mouth, his tongue laves against them and his eyes drift shut.
“Something to remember you by,” he tells me, getting to his feet.
