Page 19 of The Librarian of Souls
9
Joanna
This is the worst hangover I have ever had in my entire life. No homecoming or frat party could have ever prepared me for the way my body screams at me. My stomach rolls and my eyes are glued shut as I turn onto my side. The bed dips, but I can’t find the edge. That doesn’t stop how I heave. My gut riots against everything and anything.
As the first round of purging begins, hands and arms move my body. The antiseptic smell of bleached plastic fills my nose and I throw up. A voice washes over me, warm and firm, as my body expels all the horrible things inside it. Cool water is pressed to my lips when I am done, but it hurts to swallow.
A hand presses to my forehead and now there are more voices. I don’t know what’s going on. My eyes won’t open. I’m scared. My heart pounds in my chest frantically, desperately trying to send a message to my heavy body. Run. Get out. Wake up.
“Sleep, Joanna,” the warm voice whispers in my ear.
It tickles but slows my racing pulse. Sleep takes me quicker than it ever has.
***
The ocean waves crash into the sandbar.Behind me, I can hear the bass music from the cottage pumping. This vacation has been everything I could have ever asked for. Swimming, eating, and catching up with friends who I haven’t gotten time with in ages. I should probably go back inside. The bottles of wine were piling up well before I needed some fresh air. It’s also not the safest thing, being this close to the water with the amount I’ve drunk, but listening to the girls plan a shopping trip was starting to grate against my good mood.
I pull my knees up, my belly hindering them from getting too close to my chin. The action is still comfortable, it still feels like a hug. I wish someone would hug me. I can’t think of a time when I have gotten more than a quick arm tossed around my shoulders. My heart craves more. My body craves the warmth of another, but I know I won’t get it from the people I am with, my friends.
“Darlin-”
The sudden word sends a fierce shiver down my spine that it never has before. My hands clench around my linen trousers when I look up. Augustine stands on the beach in the clothes he wore in his office. His shirt is loose and stained with something, hanging out partially from his trousers. The metal clip that holds back his dark tie glints against the soft glow from the cottage at my back. The brown leather of his boots is coated in sand, and I feel like I am somehow at fault for that.
“Please don’t say that,” I whisper, trying to swallow the unease that twists in my belly.
“You called for me,” he says, eyes looking down at my phone. I squint, trying to remember if I did that or how I got his phone number at all. “How are you feeling, my da-”
He cuts himself off before he says the word, but it was there on his tongue. My heart lodges in my throat. I feel exposed and vulnerable, and I don’t know why. Tears pool in my eyes. Something is so horribly wrong, but I don’t know what it is. My body feels like it is being wrenched in two all of a sudden, the peace of the beach slipping through my fingers like the sand. I turn away from him.
It’s true, I wanted Augustine here. I want to feel his warmth and I want him to put me back together again. I don’t know why, I just know he can. For whatever reason, he knows what I need. There is so much happening around me that I can’t explain, the energy in my limbs and an awareness that this isn’t the cottage from my memory. I am in control, but my emotions are rioting against what’s right in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” I choke on the words though I don’t know why.
“Do you speak French?” He asks, his voice firm as he takes a seat next to me on the sand. He sits primly, if that is even possible, in the sand, back ramrod straight and ankles crossed.
“No.” And for some reason, I feel ashamed of that. Augustine oozes wisdom and higher, private education from every ounce of his being and I feel unworthy of his attention. I am a dead end, a drone.
“Mon abeille,” he breathes, the tone of the endearment worshipful and hungry. “I will always come when you need me.”
He says more in French. The words sound sad and rushed in a way that is so unlike him.
The intensity of his promise does something to me, though. My twisted stomach buzzes like a hive of bees is living inside it. My skin thrums with energy and lightness as I have never known. I feel like I have a sugar rush that won’t ever end. Its sweetness coats my tongue, but there is a sickliness to it as well that only makes me crave more.
He reaches out for me and grips my chin so gently. “You are a queen to me,mon abeille, let me treat you as such. Give yourself to me, here, and in the mortal realm, and everything you have ever desired will be yours. I promise.”
The words to question him are on the tip of my tongue, but my mind can’t keep up with my body. My fingers wrap around his suspenders and pull him to me. His lips touch mine with such a softness, such tenderness, it makes my chest ache. I press harder, goad him with nips and licks at his full lips until his fingers are digging into my chin and holding me still. My body pulses and drips with warmth.
I want him, all of him. I am drowning in my need for a man I barely know, and I don’t care. I’m alive for the first time since I was sixteen. Even at his office in the library, where the weight of exhaustion hadn’t stopped me from letting Augustine eat my pussy like it was his last meal, it didn’t compare to every sensation trying to burst from my body from this kiss. I chase the taste of honey on his lips, begging for this feeling to never end. Every stroke of his tongue against mine sweetens the thoughts in my head, making it hard to think of anything but what I need. A desperate ache that I know only he can fulfil.
Augustine breaks the kiss, his eyes blackened with glowing golden irises. My heart jumps in my throat at the sight, theothernessof his form slipping out from behind him in long tendrils and sharp spines. Dark veins appear in his arms until they are black, and the fingers that grip my chin become sharp-tipped. They press into my flesh with so much familiarity my cheeks heat.
My dream lover.
The thought stretches out before me, turning opaque and sticky like the taffy my mimi took me to see being made at the Harbour Crest Pier. The longer I think about the dream, the lover in them turns from a clear liquid imagination and solidifies into Augustine. It has always been him, whatever he is.
His lips spread in a lazy smile like the one that morning a week ago, except now it stretches across the whole expanse of his face. Sharp teeth glitter in the dim light from the cottage.
“What’s happening?” I whisper, fear and arousal battling for control of my body. My fingers flex against his chest and warm black sand grips them in return.
