Page 136 of Alchemised
“Well, since you’re a void of creativity when it comes to gratitude: Kiss me like you mean it,” he said, and then as if it were an afterthought, he added, “Based on your performance, I’ll decide how much information I feel inspired to part with.”
A kiss? Just a kiss? That was better than she’d expected, but she still didn’t want to go anywhere near him.
He was goading her. That was obvious. From the moment she’d knocked on that door, everything he’d done was intended to keep her on edge.
This kiss was intended to compound that. To seal her sense of humiliation and cement her resentment towards him, the belief that she was only being spared further shame through his leniency. He expected her to hate him, to be so distracted by her emotions that she was easy to manipulate into fuelling her own misery.
It was a game. None of this was real. She was a toy, something he’d thrown into his list of demands as a diversion tactic. She wasn’t a part of his real plan.
She had to remember that.
She stepped towards him.
Ferron was meticulously composed, from his smoothly manicured nails to his ageless face, all hiding the monster that lurked beneath his skin.
His pupils were contracted, his eyes flat with disinterest.
She gathered her resonance until she could feel its hum in her fingertips and tempered it faint as spider silk.
She wouldn’t manipulate him yet—it was much too early—but the kiss was an opportunity to touch him, to discover what he felt like. And what he felt for her. It would give her a starting point.
She slid her arms around his neck, not letting her bare hands touch his skin yet. Her fingers skimmed across the fine dark wool of his coat, pulling him forward.
He smirked as he leaned in, like it was fun.
When their lips were almost touching, she hesitated, almost expecting him to shove his hand straight into her chest and rip her heart out, the way he’d killed Luc’s father.
She trembled, and she knew he felt it.
His breath smelled like juniper: peppery, sharp, and fresh-cut.
His eyes were languid again, lashes low as he met her eyes. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her.
Murderers are still men, she told herself. And he was merely a boy.
So she gave him a slow, sweet kiss, the way she could imagine herself kissing someone she was keen on. She didn’t try to make it enticing or seductive. She let it be tentative. A first kiss, because it was her first kiss.
As she kissed him, she let her fingertips brush the back of his neck, fingers sliding up through his hair, following the curvature of his skull, and then she let a whisper of her resonance slip beneath his skin.
Ferron was not human.
She knew that the Undying were unnatural, but she hadn’t been prepared for how unnatural he would feel.
She could sense him, map him as she might anyone else, the beat of his heart, his nerves, veins, the currents of energy, all the interconnected facets of a body, but it felt wrong. Like trying to touch a mirror’s reflection rather than a person.
Ferron was there, physically. And he was alive, technically. But he was immutable in a way that her mind simply refused to comprehend.
She couldn’t let herself focus on it. She had to pay attention to what she was supposed to be doing, which was kissing him. Yet she found his physiology far more interesting than his mouth.
She let one of her hands slide down, palm pressed against his face, giving herself more direct contact, pulling him closer. She was losing focus, but his body fascinated her.
How was this possible? She couldn’t help but press a little closer.
The tempo of his heartbeat altered and then altered again.
Her mind abruptly recalled the physical reality of what she was doing: Her arm was around his neck, one hand on his face, body arched against his to counter the height disparity.
He jerked away from her.
