Page 68 of Tangled at the Root
Wetness spills out of me in mini-flood when she pulls out, then quickly flips me onto my back.
She looks like a werewolf, the kind in those old, horror movies; furred all over, with a snout and pointed, tufted ears and—for whatever reason—three pairs of horns and four fucking arms. Her shaft is shrinking, disappearing into what looks like a sheath.
She yanks me closer, my back scraping painfully along the forest floor, then leans over me, her features melting into something more human, the wolf’s snout replaced with her familiar nose and lips. Though her nose is a little too big, a little too pointed; her lips thinner, still animal; and those three sets of horns still protrude from her head.
She runs a large, hairy hand from my throat, down my exposed breasts, belly and thighs. “Rosemary …” She’s drooling even more than the first time, her saliva dripping in an endless stream from her parted lips, all her teeth serrated and sharp.
She looks wild. Desperate.
“Yes,” I whisper, arching my back in invitation. “Yes, you can—”
Claws prick painfully into my flesh. I jerk, sucking in a sharp breath at the sting as something hot and foreign floods rapidly into my bloodstream.
Then I can’t move anymore. She must’ve paralysed me again.
She’s more desperate this time around, even less contained. She drops down, sinking messy claiming bites all over my body, slurping messily at my blood. She tears at my skin, sheds it to ribbons—rips my chest open without finesse. I claw at the eshé like I’d done the first time, clinging on with bleeding fingernails, using sheer will and magic to keep myself here until the very last moment, to watch when she finally loses control and rips out my heart.
When I come to a moment later, she’s completely back in her human form, as naked as I am. Her eyes hold a faint golden glow, her tongue, still long and inhuman, flicks out to lick the blood from her jaw and lips.
She drops down onto my perfectly healed but still bloody chest, pressing a reverent kiss between my heaving breasts. When her arms come around me, they’re shaking.
“I’ll find a way to suppress it,” she whispers, her voice raw. “I’ll—”
“What? No.” I cup her face, forcing her to look up at me. “You don’t have to suppress anything. Not while we’re here. Not when you’re with me.”
She still looks so terrified. “What if, one day, I kill you, and you don’t come back?”
“I willalwayscome back,” I promise fervently. “I’ll always come back to you.”
Her throat bobs with a swallow. “But …”
“Were you lying when you said you’d never leave me? When you said you refuse to die, too?”
“No,” she says vehemently.
“Then listen to me.” I take her hand, pressing it between my breasts, against my fluttering heart. My drying blood makes the touch sticky. “Trust me.”
She doesn’t move, her palm pressed warmly to my chest, her gaze locked on my fingers, gently wrapped around her wrist. Whatever she senses makes her take a shuddering breath. Then another and another.
She doesn’t speak for a moment as she drops back down onto my chest, holding me tightly. “How can you love me?” She says into my throat, underneath my jaw, trembling, trembling. The words come out in Ibiiom, which makes them hit harder, landing in my sternum like a blow. “How can you see me—seethis—and still love me?”
“How can I not?” I whisper back, also in Ibiiom. “You were made to be loved, Genevieve.”
She lets out an anguished sound. I hold her, my hands stroking gently and firmly over her bare skin until she stops shuddering. We’re naked in the middle of a forest, covered in dirt and blood and other bodily fluids, but there’s nowhere I’d rather be but here.
She leans up on one elbow.
“I-I don’t deserve you.” Her voice is choked.
“Genevieve—”
“You make me want to live. You’ve always made me feel like I’m not—like I’m more than—” Fuck. My chest hurts at her struggle. “You make me feel likeme.”
“You make me want to live, too,” I whisper. “Even back then, even when I’d been so afraid of—” It’s my turn to struggle. I swallow. “You make me want to live, too. You make me feel likeme, too.”
“I love you.” Her eyes are glistening.
My eyes burn. “I love you, too.”
