Microsoft word 9781409.., p.10
Poison Kissed, page 10
Cobalt whimpered and pressed his forehead on mine, thumbing my wet hair from my cheeks, his dusty scent sweet solace. “Don’t, Min. It’s over. Let it go.”
“I can’t!” A sob tore my chest raw. Cold hard flesh, crushing my guts from inside. Sick vomit spewing into my mouth. I clawed at Cobalt’s hair, wild.
“You can.” Cobalt kissed me, once, again, a swift crush of lips and tongue and sharp fairy teeth intended to distract and shock, and at last the horrid sensory violation ripped free, images and sensations spinning off into some blacker void.
I gasped for blessed, untainted air. Dim patchouli smoke filtered in, comforting. My racing heartbeat calmed, little by little. My body ached, and I swam in space, weightless, in neither present nor past. Distantly, I saw Cobalt rocking me in shaking arms, the earthy smell of his hair, his lips hovering hot on the corner of my mouth. Like he held some other helpless girl, and I was just watching.
Dimly I felt him speak, his chest vibrating on mine, his addict’s need still raw and unsated in the way his body trembled and shivered, feverneedy. “S’okay. Enough. Try ’nother time—”
“Nononono . . .” My syllables slurred, but black determination poured into me like sticky tar. I’d see that killer’s face tonight if it tore my heart out. I twisted my neck, sliding my sweaty cheek on his, searching for his mouth. “Moremoremore. Gimme . . .”
His lips tasted fresh, like pine. He gasped into my mouth, the memories flowing between us like water. Glimpses of his mind, a black alley, his phone’s neon shine, a dark fairy kiss, guilt, a throbbing headache, a sweeter ache flowering in his groin.
He whined like a puppy, his sharp teeth grazing my tongue. “You hurt so much. You want more? I got a special one. Help you see.”
Anticipation burned, even as the stupidity of it all washed my muscles to water. Trust a guy who’s already up to his eyeballs in glitter, rubbing his hard-on against your thigh and whispering about pain. Good move.
I knew he didn’t do it for my sake. He was a junkie, just like me, only for a darker, more lethal drug.
But Cobalt shared my pain. He took my money when he knew it’d hurt him. He held me when otherwise I’d be alone.
I summoned my voice, groggy with confusion. “Yeah. Hit it.”
He uncorked another shimmering indigo vial and pressed it under my nose. Faint alarm pinged, somewhere in the minute part of my brain that didn’t slaver like a rabid beast at the sight of that sparkling temptation. That dark blue looked menacing, evil silver glitter winking at me like demon eyes. Something wasn’t right.
But the dribbling beast chewed my common sense to mush. I didn’t pause or think. I just inhaled.
Brightness rained, shiny and delicious. Drugspell burned my nose, my sinuses, my throat. My eyes stung fresh and watery. My limbs swelled with starry warmth, and a slow jitter of desperate relief jerked my spine. So soft and shiny, floating weightless on fruity nectar. Bliss, this stolen emotion, some other creature’s happiness bottled just for me.
Pleasure rippled softly through me, warming me, like someone licked slow and gentle between my legs. My thoughts twinkled like glitterbright stars, distant and clear. I groaned. I’d do unconscionable things to feel like this. I already had.
Cobalt gasped a smile and finished the sparkle off with a wet sniff. He sighed, raw and rough, his eyes glimmering. I relaxed in his arms, dimly aware that he laid me back on the sofa, sniffed at my throat, buried his nose in my hair. “Come on, pretty. Remember for me. Let me in.”
I gripped his knotted blue locks and pulled him down to me. We connected with a crunch, our minds slamming together like cosmic jigsaw pieces. Flashes of his guilty desire, stabbing pain, a rabid thirst for mental contact.
And then, it was all me.
Whirling back through black oblivion, evil-smelling wind dragging my hair over my face. A thousand dark images, smells, sounds, swirling in jagged fragments like a smashed mirror. The night the giggling spriggans caught me, stupid drunk little girl stumbling alone in the dark around scarlet-topped flametrees in Fitzroy Gardens, my dress smeared with beer and lipstick, my best and only weapon lost to cheap wine and laryngitis I caught on my knees in some dark sweaty corner.
Backwards in time, a riot of intoxicated brawling and faceless un-friends, falling into gutters with blood in my eyes. My first knife fight, flashes of steel and reflexes jerking tight, the shock of blood and my skin splitting open, glass shattering as I scream.
Back again, to shoplifting, purse-snatching, grifting for cash, picking horny old men’s pockets and stealing plastic chips at the blackjack tables beneath glittering casino chandeliers, crafty fingers and a flutter of painted lashes while the dirty sods fingered my ass. Stolen cocktail dresses that never fit properly, black bruises on my thighs, my limp blue hair pinned up to make me prettier. Always hungry, always broke, always scraping for a score.
Further back, fevered, breathless, broken bricks against my back and delicious fairy flesh yearning against mine, smooth clawed fingers teasing up my miniskirt, the dark-eyed fairy devil who fed me my first bloodlaced sparkle hit just so he could get laid.
Before that, nights spent crouching in freezing shadows under the rainbowsprayed Jolimont railbridge with greasy drunks and hookers. Stealing a blanket from a mad old bag lady. Sallow skin and pimples and digging in the garbage for junk food, scratching another girl’s face when she grabbed the half-eaten burger first.
And then, there I am, crouched in terror behind that dusty sofa, those horrid footsteps crashing in my ears like helldrums.
“That it? We there?” Cobalt fisted my hair tightly, trembling, his sharp fairy teeth clattering with my terror. Fragrant black glitter shivered from his wings, warm like butterfly dust on my skin.
My throat corked. I nodded, and squeezed my eyes shut. I forged my concentration like steel, filtering out everything, the candlelight piercing my lids, the pain. Cobalt’s fevered body on mine, his palms seeking my warmth, crafty fairy fingers dragging my zipped corset open. The strange drug glittered darkly along my optic nerves, skewing my vision with silver like a moonlit ocean, ringing a jerky carillon in my ears.
This time, it’d be different. This time, I’d remember.
My head split with agony as time ground forward, inexorable slow motion, moment by tortured moment.
My mother wails and thrashes weak limbs. The footsteps click softly forward. Click. Click. I wrap my arms around my knees, and my elbows crack, one by one.
Click.
A tear runs down my nose. Plink. It hits the floor like glass, so loud, I cower. My guts ache like hell. If I lose my bladder, he’ll find me, kill me, rape me. I squeeze my eyes shut.
On the sofa, I groaned and sweated, my pulse aflame. Cobalt whimpered and pressed his face into my naked chest. His inkblue tears smeared dark on my breasts. I didn’t care. I willed that terrified me to swivel her eyeballs north, just for a moment. My breath ripped shorter, faster, and . . .
Click.
My teeth rattle together. I clamp down hard. My tongue slices, salt and sting.
Click.
He stops. Mother’s nails screech and rend the wooden floor apart.
“Please. Stop it. I can’t.” Cobalt sniffled, hot and wet on my breast. His face slid clammy with my pain, and in the depths of sweet sparkle psychosis, I felt his hooktaloned memoryspell withdraw, stinging like a wicked knife curving from flesh.
The images dimmed, sounds vanishing like smoke.
Horrorworms rippled my skin. I could see them, dirty brown worms, wriggling under there, cheap effects from a sparklebright horror movie. Desperately I dragged Cobalt’s hands to my hips, making him work my buckle loose. He needed contact. So did I. My voice trembled. “Help me. Just a little longer.”
Cobalt sobbed, but let me wriggle my pants down, let me guide his hand between my legs. His cool fingers quivered on my bare skin, warming me. He sighed, and gradually the scene sprang alive once more, melting back into my mind like burning film rewound.
My spine crackles cold. Sweat dribbles down my temple. A moth darts under the darkened lightbulb, lost.
My mother moans, her pretty voice shattered, and her words stretch into a ghostly howl.
Pleaassee. Heeellp meeeee.
The sound skewered deep into my ears. Long fairy fingers eased inside me, comforting, that gentle palm pressing against my flesh, drawing pleasure from my belly that I didn’t want. I writhed, warmth sliding against cold disgust.
Clothing whispers aside. Iron scrapes on leather, and soft fingertips swipe steel as the killer pulls his pistol.
Clunk.
The slide springs back.
My body quivered with urgency. Please, little innocent girl. Open your eyes. You must have opened your eyes. Just for a second. Let me see.
Clink. Crunch.
Bullet in the chamber.
Slap, hiss, smack, as my mother struggles, her hair dragging on the floor.
I muttered, flinging my head from side to side, rusted chains bursting from my skull and growing into the sofa like weeds to hold me down. “Harder. Show me more.”
Cobalt’s tongue licked around my nipple, hardening it. He sucked it into his mouth, and as he groaned and swallowed, relishing the taste of my sweat, that shiny steel memoryspell sliced deeper.
I lift my head, and my eyelids flick open.
Shock riveted my nerves. My nails clawed at his jeans. I spluttered, “Fuck. It’s working. Don’t let go.”
I knew it. I did see. I’d just hidden it away, all this time.
Light burns sepia, shapes odd and twisted like watermirrors. The shadows stretch and flow, ink puddling on glass, the air twinging sweet with strange flowers. My body feels light and free. I stretch, my thighs cramping sweetly, and suddenly I see her.
I can see my mother. Sprawled on the floor in a heap of bruised limbs and tears, that lovely silver hair torn.
My heartbeat thunders. I swivel my blurred gaze upward, and the killer’s dark silhouette scorches my eyeballs black.
Dread and hunger shoved hot wires through my veins, searing them raw. There you are, you murderous son of a goblin. Show me your face.
The images wavered and faded, the memoryspell blunting again. I screamed in frustration, and tiny sawtoothed insectmen leapt down my throat, yelling and ripping it to shreds. My head throbbed. Cobalt shuddered against me in a fever, his pollen-sweet hair caressing my face. “There’s more. I can’t reach. Please, let me go. . . .”
Swiftly I dragged our clothes aside. Damp leather peeled from my legs like paper. I wriggled to get him between my naked thighs. He felt strange there, his body lean and slim, twisted fae muscles shifting in his chest as he flexed velvety black wings to keep his weight off me.
Above my head, the dead lightbulb swings. My mother moans, and as the image shimmers again, the killer leans over her, his head turning to one side.
I wriggled, fumbling to touch him, make him touch me, get that connection back. My words slurred. “C’mon, C. Don’ . . . flakeonmenowww . . .”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
The images ripple and fade like heat haze. Dimming. Dying.
“Now, C.” My voice scraped raw. In my haste to undress him, my nails on his narrow fairy hips scratched up blood.
His dark eyes glowed silver. He wriggled like a worm from his jeans and slid his warm white body onto mine. After a moment, he even looked into my eyes. Edgy, remorseful, sweet. I wrapped my leg around his thigh to show him where, and he pushed his twisted length into me with an urgent sigh.
His cock was long and thick, and it stung, I’d been alone so long. He felt strange and good inside me, his hot fairy flesh alien but so familiar. My sex-starved muscles stretched around him, stroking him, warming my insides with sweet friction. He moved, and I groaned and parted my thighs to let him in, the sensation exciting yet soothing. He wasn’t the man I wanted, or how I’d wanted it to be. But I didn’t care, not when he slid his open mouth on mine and thrust harder into me, and in my mind he clenched a pale fist around his spell’s wickedshiny blade and rammed the twinkling point deep into my skull.
Bone cracked as he twisted it. Flesh sliced. My ravaged brain screamed, and the memory came scorching back on his breath, a flash brighter than the sun.
My sofa lurches into view, the broken table, the torn rug beneath. Black silhouettes merge and sever, rippling like hot ghosts at first. The shimmer-killer crouches over the cowering shimmer-woman. His back’s to me, dark coat dragging in the dust, his pistol’s evil glimmer a sharp slash of clarity in muddled shapes. He’s saying something to her that even I can’t hear. She writhes, her voice torn, and now I can see her face, she’s sobbing, tears streaking like dirt. “Nooo . . .”
Horror iced my blood, sharpening my slow pleasure to razors. Cobalt licked hotly at my nipple, his teeth scraping sharp delight. The knife wrenched sideways, slicing my brain to mush, and pain clawed my nerves, mixing with the growing tension, making it hurt and pleasure me in equal measure.
My drugthick sinuses ached. I’d never seen this before. Never had to watch the killer loom over her, see her last word ripped from her mouth. A greasy black hatebeast spat vile curses in my heart, and I strained against Cobalt’s body, searching, begging.
Images waver and solidify. I can see her face again, her streaming eyes pleading for mercy. She stretches her ripped hand out weakly, fingers straining, fending him off. The killer stands, cocks his head to sight along a steady arm, and fires.
Slam.
Blood splashes. The empty cartridge clinks on the floor and rolls away. She slumps, still.
I sought Cobalt’s mouth in a fevered kiss, drinking his rainy taste, willing him to work himself farther into my body, that wicked spell an inch or two deeper into my mind. He kissed me back, his tongue alive on mine, letting me use him, fuck him, claim his fairy tricks as my own. I tilted my hips, searching. His breath hitched short, an addict glutting himself on my agony.
I couldn’t blame him.
The killer stands motionless, coolly studying her corpse.
Strange emotion washes my blood warm, parches my throat. Not hate. Not fear. I try to swallow, and an insane cracking sound erupts from my throat.
He tilts his head, alerted. The image tightens, focuses, rippling edges sharpening. His fingers twitch on that glimmering pistol. Slowly, he turns, and a hot fist of anticipation squeezes all the blood from my heart.
Tension racked my nerves, chewing like rats. Cobalt groaned, his cock swelling inside me and his skin flushing dark like he was about to come, and in my mind he peeled his lips back from gleaming eelsharp teeth and ripped a bloody chunk from my chest.
I see his pale chin, bruised and bloody. The marble line of his cheekbone. A soft fall of hair, shining like a halo in the dim light.
Hot blood sprayed. I screamed, the phantom pain wrenching deeper feeling from my guts, a rich anti-orgasm that chewed all the way to my toes. I wailed, magical vibrations shattering the fragile glass walls of my consciousness. My dreamself came crashing through into the present like a burning petrol bomb, and in the mangled black corridor of my memory, the killer’s razor gaze fixed on mine.
Brilliant green eyes, unblinking—so beautiful, my heart spikes.
Blood shining on sensuous lips I’d kissed in a hundred feversoaked dreams.
That gleaming pistol, gripped in slender white hands that crackle and split with glossy black webs. As I watch, a green venomdrop slides down the glossy steel barrel and plinks onto the floor.
A scream hollows my stomach sick, but it won’t come out.
My jaw works. Silence.
He blinks. Just once. Soft snowblond hair tumbles in his eyes.
And then he flexes those clever fingers to squelch the webs away, and walks out.
Hellbirds screeched and clawed in my ears. Blood gushed from my wounded chest, my heart exposed and throbbing. Cobalt ripped the knife from my skull and flung it away in a hail of blood, but the image stayed, scorched into my retinae forever.
Joey. My mother. The gunshot’s evil crack.
He’d rescued me. Taught me, protected me when I was weak, earned my respect and my loyalty. Caressed my hair, kissed me, made me burn for him in ways no man ever had.
All false. All done knowing he’d destroyed my life.
Everything he’d ever done for me was a putrid lie.
A raw shriek of agony exploded in my throat, and died.
Sickness ripped me. I scrambled to get up, to push Cobalt’s fevered body away from mine so I could sprint away into the night, huddle in some hot dry gutter and swallow my tears, scream ragged melody to the darkness and pretend this hadn’t happened.
But wings descended like hot black velvet to enclose me, clog my ears, smother me. I struggled, but suddenly Cobalt’s lithe fairy weight was enormous, his hands like shackles on my wrists, his flesh inside me strong and immovable like steel.
Panic tore my blood. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t breathe. Terror dragged my lips apart, but I had no air to sing. My vision bled scarlet. My body thrashed one last weakened protest, and the light died.
She whimpers, fighting, but it’s too late to pull away. With one final shudder and clench, Cobalt empties himself into her, guilt and desperate need spurting through his memory-drenched blood. The sting of her horror drags deep pleasure over his nerves, better than the orgasm, and he gasps and swallows and drowns in it, letting the fix consume him, already fearing it’ll be too long before he gets another.
Her body jerks, dragging one last hot draft from his balls, and he groans at the delight of it. He fumbles long fingers in her hair, belatedly trying to quiet her as the last shocks rack his muscles. “Sorry,” he whispers through gritting teeth, “sorry sorry sorry,” and he means it, he didn’t intend for it to be like this, kissing and touching and sweet girlsmell on his skin but he wanted her and she needed him and now she’s not moving, she’s limp and flushed and her pretty red eyes have rolled back and she’s not moving, not one little bit.
Guilty spider feet track into his aching wingjoints. He’d known that supercharged blue sparkle on top of the memoryjuice would be too much. But she wanted it, and he had a job to do, oh yes, jobs and secrets and tasties, oh my.
