Page 11 of Devil

Three more seeds on his fingertips. “Do you know why I left you the fruit?” he asked in a low voice.

I shook my head.

“I liked watching you eat it. Open.”

I opened, accepted the seeds. He left his fingertips in my mouth so when I pressed my lips together, his fingers were briefly enclosed.

His dark gold eyelashes fluttered.

I chewed and swallowed after he pulled his hand away. “I didn’t know you were watching me. How could you be watching me?” Two whispered questions in one sentence, because I had no idea how he’d been able to see me eat them inside an empty classroom. And also how couldhewant to observeme? I had nothing to map this onto—no experience, no idea of a world where someone like Ryan Bell would want to watch me eat fruit.

“It wasn’t hard,” he informed me, “because you’re too naive to imagine all the ways someone could watch you. You’d look around once or twice and get to eating.” His breath caught on the last word, like he was savoring a deeply erotic memory.

I supposed he was right that I hadn’t considered the ways someone could hide, shift the old movable panels between the art classrooms or angle themselves outside the windows in exactly the right way. “I just…I don’t think I understand. Why?”

His expression grew pitying. “Sweet Birdie,” he murmured. More seeds were pressed to my lips, and he didn’t have to instruct me this time. I opened and ate as obediently and automatically as if I were at the front of the communion line.

What was I doing?

I caught his wrist as he dipped his hand in the broken pomegranate for more seeds. If I’d been thinking clearly, I might have guessed that he’d be irritated, angry with me for stopping him. But instead, he seemeddelighted. A boyish grin broke across his face and a dancing light moved inside his pale eyes. I couldn’t handle that grin and dropped my gaze down to where my hand circled his wrist—or did its best to. His skin was so warm, and his wrist was strong in my hand, and the hair on his arms was slightly thicker than I’d first thought.

I realized that Bell was the first new person I’d touched in years. Kaitlyn and I sat alone at Mass, so I didn’t even shake hands with anyone other than her during the sign of peace. And for touch in general, there was the occasional hug from Kaitlyn, the even rarer hug from Busy, and that was it.

His wrist was so warm.

“This is the first time you’ve touched me, you know,” he said, and when I dared a glance up at him, he was smiling indulgently down at me.

“What’s happening?” I asked in a whisper. “Why are you doing this? Feeding me?”

Even the reply felt indulgent, like he was humoring my questions out of affection. “Because I want to.”

“But why?”

“Because I’ve been thinking about putting my fingers in your mouth since the first time I saw you.”

It was such a raw admission. My heart was speeding, my hand shaking where I had it wrapped around his wrist, and I’d never—I’d never thought about what he’d just said. It had never occurred to me that was something a person would want to do, but the idea of it, the memory of Bell’s throat working as his fingertips slid against my tongue?—

My skin suddenly felt translucent, as if Bell would be able to see that I was glowing like a furnace inside.

Since the first time I saw you.For months then? He’d been thinking this formonths?

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

He sounded amused when he spoke. “You don’t believe me?”

It wasn’t a matter of belief at all. There was simply not a world where he noticed me, thought about me, wanted to touch me. He was like a statue brought to life, and I was a woman who might as well be a statue.

I shook my head again. Of course, I didn’t believe him, but saying that was futile. He already knew, surely. I opened my eyes but kept my gaze on the floor as I let go of his wrist.

“Why are you afraid to look at me?” he asked.

I remember wishing I had more time to think of a lie—or to protest that I wasn’t afraid, which would have also been a lie—but I’m a slow thinker. I’m not stupid, or at least I like to think I’m not stupid, but my thoughts unfurl like flowers and creep like roots. Cautious and organic. When you act out your thoughts with a chisel and a rubber mallet, you have to take your time thinking them because you have to be right.

I could only tell him the truth. “You’re too much,” I answered quietly, my eyes still cast down. His tennis shoes on the 150-year-old planks of the coach house were surreal. “Looking at you is too much.”

“I’m too much,” he echoed disbelievingly, like I had some nerve. “I’m too much?”

I looked up at him, startled.