Page 26 of Spread Me
“No.” Kinsey laughs. It sounds nervous even to her own ears. “No, but check anyway.”
Saskia’s fingers skate across Kinsey’s shoulders, trace their way down her arms, turn her hands over and caress the insides of her wrists. “Your hands are shaking. Do you need some of Jacques’s rum?”
Kinsey doesn’t answer. She feels feverish. Her skin is so sensitive that she can feel Saskia’s breath stirring the air in front of her, can feel the shift in temperature when Saskia comes closer for a more minute inspection. Cool fingers lace between hers, tug her hand upward.
“You have a birthmark on your palm,” Saskia whispers, and Kinsey could swear that she feels lips moving just nanometers from her wrist. “Are you a vampire?”
“Do vampires have birthmarks on their palms?” Kinsey asks, startled enough that she almost opens her eyes.
“How should I know? I’m not a vampire.” Saskia allows Kinsey’s hands to fall to her sides. She takes Kinsey by the shoulders again, turns her around. Her hands on the back of Kinsey’s neck elicit a sudden shiver. “Are you cold?”
The entire building shakes as the wind slaps a firm palm against the broad side of the research station. “No.”
“Mmm. You’re such a mystery. What’s this?” Saskiarests her palm against the swell of Kinsey’s hip on the left side. “You have a bruise.”
It takes a moment to remember. “From the exam table,” she says. “I ran into it when Domino cornered me in the exam room. It’s funny, I didn’t even feel it, but it must have left a hell of a mark.”
“A hell of a mark,” Saskia agrees softly. She gives Kinsey’s hip a gentle squeeze, as if she’s reluctant to let it go. “I’m sorry that happened, Kinsey.”
Kinsey shrugs. “It’s okay. It wasn’t really Domino, you know?”
“Still.” Her hands travel again, tracing a path across Kinsey’s belly. Her breath is warm on the back of Kinsey’s neck. “It shouldn’t have happened like that.”
Eyes still closed, Kinsey turns her head as far as she can, until she feels Saskia’s lips brushing the cusp of her ear. “What are you doing back there? You’re not going to be able to see if you’re behind me,” Kinsey murmurs, her voice rough.
“I can see everything I need to see,” Saskia replies. Her arms are around Kinsey’s waist. The skin of them is velvet as her hands dip lower on Kinsey’s belly, trailing gooseflesh behind them. “You and I both know you’re still Kinsey.”
“And you’re—Saskia,” Kinsey says, the name gasping out of her as she feels the sudden crush of breasts against her back, the slip of a thigh pushing between hers from behind, the chill of Saskia’s necklace at the nape of her neck. “What are you—”
“Shhh.” Saskia’s fingers shift lower still, impossibly soft, impossibly cold.
Kinsey’s heart is in her throat. Her skin is on fire. Need floods her, fills her from the bottom up, starting rightwhere Saskia’s fingertips are just brushing the coarse hair between her thighs.
She doesn’t fight it. A feverish buzz dizzies her entire body. The feeling takes her. She lets it happen, tipping over into thoughtless, wordless need. She shifts her weight, leans back into Saskia’s chest, tilts her head to expose her neck in hopes of Saskia’s lips and teeth finding their way to the tender flesh there, raises her hips, eager, shameless.
Saskia pours a whisperedyes yes yesinto the cup of Kinsey’s ear. She presses in close, her tongue tracing a line down the side of Kinsey’s neck. Her fingers sink into the softest part of Kinsey’s belly, leaving a cool trail of something damp behind them, a slow drift of sand falling between Kinsey’s thighs as they find their way home—
Kinsey’s eyes snap open, her arousal congealing into dread. Saskia freezes at the sudden tension that thrums through Kinsey’s body. “Wait,” Saskia says, but Kinsey doesn’t wait, because it’s already too late. She already knows the truth. She just has to look down to confirm what she can feel.
Saskia’s hands are still where they were resting just a moment before. One cups the small swell of Kinsey’s belly; the other is nestled in her pubic hair, a mere breath away from her undoing.
The one on Kinsey’s belly looks just like Saskia’s hands are supposed to look: slim, pale, nails bitten to the quick.
“I should have known sooner,” Kinsey says, closing her eyes. “I should have known the second I started thinking about what it was like for Jacques to fuck you. I don’t have those thoughts. Not about you.”
“It’s okay,” Saskia says, her lips against Kinsey’s shoulder. A few grains of sand slip down over Kinsey’s collarbone.“Just ignore it. It doesn’t have to be a problem if we don’t make it a problem.”
The hand that rests at the cusp of Kinsey’s sex shifts. Kinsey lets out an involuntary whine at the damp pressure it exerts so close to the core of her desire. She can’t deny what she feels—she wants this. Her body wants this so much she could scream.
But she also can’t deny what she sees. She forces herself to open her eyes again, to look at the thing she’s struggling so hard to resist.
Saskia’s right hand no longer has the slender, clever fingers that traced their way across Kinsey’s shoulders, down her back, over her hips. There’s still a wrist, still a palm—but that palm doesn’t terminate, doesn’t split into five independent digits. Instead, it stretches into a thick rope of muscle, slick and pink, knotted with veins and tendons.
As Kinsey stares, Saskia turns her hand over, showing Kinsey the rest. On the side where Saskia would normally have fingerprints, there’s an expanse of wet, bumpy flesh, divided down the center by a faint line. It flexes as Kinsey watches, lithe and supple, questing, tasting. Promising.
“You made a tongue.” She makes herself say it out loud. “Your hand has a tongue.”
Saskia turns the hand back over, so Kinsey can see the underside of the tongue. “I know,” she says. “You were supposed to keep your eyes closed. Tongues aren’t nice to look at.” There’s a smile in her voice. “But they feel good, don’t they? Let me taste you, Kinsey.”
