Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 51407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 257(@200wpm)___ 206(@250wpm)___ 171(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 257(@200wpm)___ 206(@250wpm)___ 171(@300wpm)
The woman’s partner spins her, moving seamlessly from some kind of formal dance to something closer, designed to match the thrumming beat. Their hands stroke down her back, grip her hips, and pull her close. Close enough that I have to cross my legs and fight not to squirm. All that separates the two of them is clothing.
And then, in the logic of dreams, all their clothing disappears. I’m watching them closely, yet I don’t register it happening. One moment they’re dressed, and the next they’re both naked.
They’re . . . beautiful.
“I approve.”
I jolt so hard, I would have fallen out of my throne if not for the way my body seems anchored to it. Next to me, where there was only emptiness, now sits an identical throne. Its occupant sits haphazardly, one long leg dangling over the chair’s arm, their chin propped on a fist.
“Rusalka,” I breathe. She looks different, her skin almost glowing, light moving within like a live fire. It makes me want to run my fingers over the shifting flames to see if they’re warm. To have an excuse to touch her. I shake my head sharply. “You’re not here.”
“I think you’ll find that I am.”
“But . . . how?”
“Succubus, darling.” She’s not looking at me, her attention instead on the couple with their questing hands. One of them moans, and I can’t help shivering in response to the need in that single sound. Rusalka smiles, a slow curling thing that makes her lips look particularly kissable. “Dreams are our purview. We can’t travel to the human realm the same way the bargainer demons can, but my people have been visiting human dreams for millennia.”
That should scare me. I think it does. Maybe. “So you’re the one who’s been putting those dreams in my head my whole life?” Not my whole life, really, but ever since I hit a certain age, I’d wake up some nights too warm and restless and throbbing. I thought it was a manifestation of all the sin I tried so hard to avoid during my waking hours. But if it wasn’t me . . .
Except Rusalka is shaking her head. “No, love. We can manipulate the dreams a little, but the source is you. It’s what draws us to you in the first place. Beyond that, we leave evidence behind in the way of a particular energy signature.” She inhales deeply. “You’ve never been touched by one of ours.”
I want to call her a liar, but isn’t she telling me what I already know? I study her because it’s easier than looking at the scene developing, the dancers sinking gracefully to the floor that’s now a bed. Rusalka seems so at ease in her skin that envy sprouts its green tendrils inside me. What must it be like to experience that confidence, that comfort?
“You could find out, you know.”
I shudder. “You can read minds?”
“I can read desire. With you, it’s practically the same thing.” She grins, revealing tiny fangs that almost look like a vampire’s. “You are a burning pyre of desire, Belladonna. It’s a tragedy that you are so resistant to taking what you want.”
As if it’s that easy, even when I want to take something. I drag in a breath. “I’ve been told all my life that it’s a flaw, a sin, to want the things I do.” To want the people I do.
“A lot of people say that. I don’t care what they think.” Rusalka’s smile widens, but her orange eyes glow sympathetically in a way that makes me think she’s not judging me. “What do you think?”
Even Ruth couldn’t quite mask her feelings when I finally confessed that I find women as attractive—if not more so—than men. She told me that she loves me despite my sin, her expression so earnest, as if she wasn’t driving a dagger into the very heart of me. That was the moment I walked away from the church entirely, the moment when the rift between my sister and me became something I didn’t know how to cross. I still love her, but it hurts. It’s never stopped hurting.
“How can love be a sin?” I whisper, the words rotting in the very heart of me. I asked my father that once, and it was the only time he raised his hand to me. I swallow hard and say the words again: “How can loving someone be a sin? Why does God care what I do in my bed?”
“I think you know the answer to that, love.”
I hate her a little in that moment. Not for anything she’s said, but for the confidence that comes from her in waves. This person has never experienced the doubt I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try. I clear my throat. “It doesn’t matter.”