“No, you can’t,” she tried to insist, so faint it seemed almost breathless.
While he only got stronger, more sure.
“Even if I couldn’t, those aren’t the only clues.”
“What other ones could there possibly be?”
“The way you flush—not just in your cheeks, but down your throat, over your chest. How your pupils dilate, how your lips part, how your breathing changes. And most importantly, there is your scent. Oh, that scent, when the sensation inside you lasts for longer than a moment. It makes me want to draw things out, just to get a little more of it. To tease you, until there is nothing but that filling my senses.”
“And bythat,you mean—” she started to say, now so sunk into his every word that it seemed like a miracle she stopped herself, before she finished that terrible thought. But that was okay. That was fine.
He was happy to finish it for her.
“The sweet slickness between your legs, of course,” he said.
Because apparently there was another level of explicit in him.
And this one made her squirm.
“But I never get that way.”
“You are that waynow.”
She shook her head. Like someone caught committing a crime.
Even though the crime was his and all the ways he was speaking. Not just soft now but earnest almost. Passionate. “Mina, you are so wet I could catch the scent of it from outside the school. I can actually hear it, every time you squirm or squeeze your legs together. It sounds so slick, like you already have someone licking you there. Kissing you. Making you come so hard you soak thoselittle cotton panties I justknowyou are wearing. I know you are. And not simply because you’re that sort of girl, sensible and sweet about things like that. No. No. It’s because that sort of material makes a certain sound, when it strains over a swollen, slippery little cunt. When it turns transparent, because you’re so excited you make a mess,” he said, so fast he had to stop there and take a breath. She watched his chest heave, with a headful of the filthiest things she could imagine anyone saying.
And somehow, it madehertake a step towardhim.
She had to remind herself who he was, just to stop from going farther. “You’re just trying to humiliate me now,” she said, voice breaking in the middle. But he gave no quarter. He came for her, relentlessly.
“If I was, you wouldn’t be enjoying this.”
“I’mnotenjoying it.”
“Yes, you are. And you are because you know I’m not saying any of this to be cruel. I’m saying it because I want you tofeelit. I want you to know what you actually like and explore it. I want you to hear the words that excite you and sound them out in your own head, until all you can feel is that sweet ache between your legs. And all you can do ismake magic.”
“But it will be your voice I hear saying them.”
“So imagine someone else, then. Someone better than me.”
Like who?she thought. But as soon as she did, it came to her. That face turned toward Lilibet. The being from the Underneath saying that Bram was the best of us. “Someone kinder. Someone sweeter. Someone more loving,” she said, and as she did, she found her eyes closing. Just for this. Just so she could see someone like that a little better.
“Exactly so. He loves you so, so much. And everything he saysis because he does. He tells you that you make him weak with desire, desperate to kiss you. That when you kissed him for the first time, he felt himself come apart.”
“But it felt good, though.”
“Oh god, yes.”
“He loved it.”
“He did. He moaned into your mouth, to feel it.”
How do you know that?she wanted to ask him.
Despite how silly that was. This was just a deadly little game. A way to fantasize about something that couldn’t possibly be real. If it seemed so clear she could almost touch it, that was just because he was convincing. And she wanted to be convinced. “I can almost make it out. The way it burned through him and into me.”
“And can you make out other things, too? Can you feel other things?”
