Page 36 of Hunger

I should leave. I've done what I shouldn't have done. I have crossed the line I drew last night when I stopped a quarter inch from her hair, and I should leave before I cross it further.

I don't leave.

I look at her face. The line of her jaw in the dim light. The soft curve of it from her ear to her chin. The fine pale skin pulled smooth over the bone.

I lift my hand again.

I turn it over so the back of my finger is what touches her. I don't trust my claws against her face. I draw the back of my finger from the soft place beneath her ear, slowly, along the line of her jaw, down to her chin.

Her skin rises to meet me.

She tilts her face up half an inch. Without opening her eyes. Without making a sound. The slight involuntary movement of a body that wants what's being given to it.

I reach her chin. I stop.

She exhales.

The sound is faint. A thin breath escapes between her lips. I've heard her breathe a hundred times now. I've spent hours listening to her breathe. This is a different sound. This is the sound of a body responding.

Everything in me goes still.

The wanting that's been a low fire in me for two weeks is suddenly a roaring thing. The contact at my finger is suddenly not enough. I want to put my hand against the warm skin of her throat and feel her pulse against my palm. I want to lower my mouth to the place where the back of my finger has just traced and put my lips against the line of her jaw. I want her to make that sound again.

I withdraw my hand.

I move slowly, rising from the floor. I cross to the window with the kind of careful step I take when I'm hunting and don't want to be heard. The latch works under my fingers. The window pushes open. I step out onto the ledge and close it behind me.

I climb down.

I stop at the base of the building. The wind is cutting now and I'm shaking. My hands are shaking. The shaking from two nights ago is back and it's worse.

I walk to the van. I get in. I sit behind the wheel with my hands on the wheel and the engine off.

The feel of her under my finger is still in me. The exhale is in me. The little tilt of her chin to meet me is in me.

I can't go back to the farmhouse.

I drive.

I don't know where I'm going at first. I drive out of the apartment complex and along the main road past the dark mall and out toward the edge of town. The streetlights thin and then end. The road becomes county. The headlights cut into a stretch of empty fields. The snow on either side of the road is gray and crusted under the high beams.

I pull off onto a service road and stop the van. I get out.

The field is enormous. The sky is huge and clear and the stars are out and the wind is moving across the snow in low cold waves. I stand in the field and I look up at the stars and I try to think.

I can't think.

She let me touch her. She felt my hand against her face and she didn't pull away. She tilted her chin into my finger. She made a sound.

I've known her for two weeks. I've seen her behind the counter of a hamburger restaurant and followed her home. I've killed for her. I know what other people remember of her — the rosin she used, the recital she played, the conversation she had with her mother on a Sunday morning two years ago. I know nothing she's chosen to tell me.

But she let me touch her.

It isn't enough.

I want her voice. I want her looking at me. I want her hand in mine the way it is now in the dark silence of her room. I want her awake and looking at me and choosing it.

I can't have that. Not yet. She doesn't know what I look like. She doesn't know what I am. The night I show her, she'll screamor she'll run or she'll go cold in a way I can't recover from. The good thing in my life will be over.