Page 57 of Monster Queen Rising

I have wanted her at every wrong hour there was. On a road. In a truck. Three rooms off a bleeding brother. Every time, I put it away, because there was somewhere to be.

Tonight there is nowhere to be.

I open the door.

She is against the headboard. The lamp is low. My shirt. Her hair down.

She looks up.

The line goes so tight my hands close.

She sees them close.

She does not move back. She sets the book on the nightstand and holds out her hand, palm up.

The dark lines come up at my throat.

Everyone who has ever seen me like this was about to be hurt.

She is looking right at me with her hand out.

I close the door.

Her shoulders come down.

I put one knee on the bed.

Then a hand.

I come up over her and she goes back into the pillows and lets me. Her eyes stay on mine the whole way.

I get my hand in her hair and kiss her and it is not soft. She makes a sound into my mouth. Her hands go under my shirt, flat on my back, and her slate comes up under her skin where her body is against mine.

I take the shirt off her. Mine. She lifts her arms for it.

I put my mouth on my mark at her sternum.

Her breath changes under it.

Her body under my hands is warm and dense and not human and it is hers. I want all of it.

"Fen —"

She arches up with my name in her throat.

I go down her.

Her stomach. Her hip. The inside of her thigh, where the slate goes thin and the skin jumps.

I put her legs over my shoulders. She is already moving. I lay my arm across her stomach and hold her down and put my mouth on her.

She is wet and open and hot and she goes off in under a minute. Both hands in my hair. Her heels driving into my back. A sound out of her that is not the voice and is not words.

I do not stop.

I take her through it. My tongue on her. Two fingers in her, curled, and I find the place that takes her hips off the bed and I stay there.

She grinds up into my mouth and swears at me.