Magic
Nyomi
Foralongwhilewe held still.
His chest rose under my cheek.
Fell.
Rose again.
The ocean's hush returned to the open window. The drapes lifted in a slow breath of breeze. Somewhere down the hall, a soft footstep passed and faded.
The mansion was settling back into morning around us, and the staff was surely cleaning everything up from the party.
I wonder if Hiro actually slept under that claw last night.
I made a note to ask him.
Kenji adjusted his hold on me. Those muscular arms closed around me again, slow and unhurried. One curling under myneck. The other heavy across my waist. His thigh slid between mine. His hand at my hip traced a slow circle.
Over and over.
Anchoring me.
I was inside him again and it was a cocoon of passion and protection, warm, healing love and deadly obsession.
I shut my eyes and let the heat of him soak into my skin.
For some foolish reason, I saw a slow, soft-bodied caterpillar in my mind, disappearing into a cocoon it had spun out of itself.
And the cocoon sealed shut.
And inside, its old body came apart in the dark so something else could be built from the same material.
I had read about that once. Caterpillars didn't simply grow wings. They dissolved themselves first. The whole time the cocoon kept them safe while everything they used to be turned into a soup of cells. And then, inside that warm darkness, the new body began to assemble.
Wings.
Antennae.
A tongue made for nectar instead of leaves.
A creature that could no longer crawl.
A creature that had to fly.
Maybe, I was still tipsy from the party last night.
Still a bit. . .intoxicated.
But I still felt like I was changing and Kenji was holding me through mydissolving.
I was the caterpillar.
He was the cocoon.
And what would come out the other side of this. . .I didn't know yet.
