Page 154 of The Last One
He says, “Hmm. And these?” He traces the elk on my hip.
My skin warms at his touch. “Power. Nobility. Passion.”
“Passion,” he says. “And this?” He traces the snowflake-shaped symbol on my ass. “There are a lot of these.” He taps one, then another and another, and my body turns molten like the ore in his forge.
“More protection,” I say, my back arching more and more with each touch.
His face blooms with fascination. “Protection?” He lifts his eyebrows. “From?”
I say nothing—speaking requires breathing, and I don’t want to lose this heady sensation… Drunk and dizzy, warm and breathless, achy and disoriented. This feeling would be sickness if I wasn’t feeling so…alive.
Jadon slides his fingers from my ass to my thigh, to my hip, up my side, my neck, and shoulders until he reaches my cheek, the one injured by the otherworldly.
I’m growing faint, and now I release that breath. “How does my cut look?”
“Like it’s healing.” He meets my eyes. “But you remain flawless.” He traces my bottom lip with a finger, and his touch makes my skin tingle and pop.
“I thought we weren’t doing this,” I say, my mouth parting just a bit to trap his finger.
He shakes his head. “I don’t remember saying that.” He leans in closer.
“No?” I say, and then his lips are on mine.
My mind explodes, and my lips part under his. Our tongues tangle and dance as his hand explores my ass. I trail my fingers down…down…to find him hard. So hard. And as he deepens the kiss, I can’t help but hear his mind scramble—“I’ll hurt you, I want you, I can’t, I have to, what if I hurt you”—even as our kisses grow firm and more confident, even as my hand encircles him and his breath quickens…“I’ll hurt you I can’t stop I can’t lose you I can’t lose you fuck—”
A loud crack of thunder.
What the…?
46
It’s not raining, and the sky is clear. That crack isn’t weather.
I sit up.
Jadon is already on his feet, searching the sky. Before us, one wave after another of distorted air whooshes across the now-scorched earth.
There’s athingabove us, a badly drawn caricature of a vulture—like a child’s drawing—hovering over us with haphazard feathers, a mottled bald head, and a cowl with red, black, and brown feathers that crackle with bright-white lightning bolts that create thunder the moment a bolt hits the ground.
I know this bird.A gerammoc!A predator and a scavenger.
A bolt of lightning and aboom, and the gerammoc swoops to the ground and rolls back up to the sky with something in its claws… Waving arms. Faraway shrieks.
A soldier?
The gerammoc disappears into the sky, stopping only to drop that soldier into its hidden aerie, where it will peck and shock the man, who will suffer a slow, agonizing decline from wounds festering with worms and decayed flesh… Mercifully, days from now, the gerammoc will gobble the barely living soldier.
“We need to hurry,” Jadon says, offering his hand.
He helps me to my feet, and as I stand, the gerammoc returns, its luminescent eyes like bright-white lamps lighting the land below. The creature doesn’t caw or shriek, no. It sizzles.And those crackling wings!They would span the length of Jadon, Veril, and me if we stood on one another’s shoulders, and then added the lengths of this nook and the creek, too. One tail feather would cover my arm. A farmer could build a chicken coop on that boulder of a head.
Where did it come from? Where does it roost? Is this overhang one of its nesting places?
“Wake them up,” Jadon whispers, eyes on the sky.
I crawl over to sleeping Philia and shake her while keeping my gaze on the gerammoc. I shake Veril, who instantly wakes and gawks at what he sees crowding the sky.
Light from the creature’s beaming eyes falls upon rocks and trails and trees. The gerammoc banks left, and the creature focuses elsewhere. Darkness falls over us again.
