Page 13 of Haunted Desires
She closes her eyes. For a second, I don’t know if I can take it. I’m desperate for her.
But instead of laying her down on the blankets, I bring the strawberry to her lips and watch her teeth sink into the berry.
Hazel bites daintily through the flesh, leaving only a thin sliver of red and the leaves behind. Her tongue darts out to catch the juice and fuck me I want nothing more than to kiss her. To taste both her and have my own dessert.
“Oh,” she says, covering her mouth with her hand. “That’s delicious. Where did you get it?”
“A place downtown.”
On the second strawberry, when I take her chin in my hand, she puts her hand on my wrist.
Hazel waits, her eyes closed and her mouth open, for me to feed her the strawberry.
There’s a tiny drop of chocolate at the corner of her mouth.
“You have something…” I gesture vaguely at my own mouth, but she just closes her eyes and lifts her chin toward me.
I can’t resist it. I just can’t. She obviously wants me to touch her, and I want to touch her so bad I might die from it before we leave this room, so I rest my fingers on her cheek and swipe the pad of my thumb over her full bottom lip, slow, all the way to that droplet of chocolate.
Then I press my thumb to her lips.
Hazel takes my thumb into her mouth and sucks lightly at the chocolate.
I make a sound I’m not expecting in the back of my throat.
Hazel doesn’t let go quickly. She lets my thumb slip between her lips, and then we’re just staring at each other. I can’t look away.
That’s when all the candles flicker and then go out.
Hazel
When the candles go out, the back room at the library is pitch dark. Fear wraps itself around me at first. The darkness is unsettling. But Finley’s here. Holding me and for some reason, I’m wrapped in more curiosity and excitement.
Usually, the lights would be on in the main room, so we’d have some leaking in around the old door in its frame.
Now, without any power in town, much less the library, it’s like trying to see through ink. The only reason I know Finley is still in the room is that I can hear him breathing, and his hands are on me, both gripping my shoulder and my hand.
“Finley…” I whisper, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark.
I’m warm, maybe even hot. My heart flutters and a nervousness comes over me. I’m so turned on I can hardly catch my breath. Something’s happened.
My heart skips a beat.
“Hazel,” Finley says. His voice is low and holds something to it. Something on edge and yet in a way that’s desirable.
And then there are voices. So odd. So shockingly close I grip onto Finley’s hand a bit harder.
The voices aren’t very clear. Am I really hearing someone hold a conversation outside the library somehow? That would be possible in my apartment, where the walls aren’t very thick, but the library’s walls are made of thick stone from its earlier lives as the town hall and the courthouse. We shouldn’t be able to hear chatter from a floor up and outside.
Confusion slips in but only for a moment.
They’re too muffled, cutting in and out like bad cell service, and there’s something about them…
A light comes on.
It’s been so dark that I put my hand up to shield my eyes, but as I blink, letting them adjust, reality sinks in: it’s not the candles.
Finley hasn’t lit the candles, and the power hasn’t come back on. It’s the spell. Not mine. It’s Finley’s. Holy fuck. Shock freezes my entire body.
