Page 92 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Yes,” I whisper.

His claws are already retracted, the soft pads of his fingertips gathering the cotton at my thighs. He lifts the nightgown over my head and the morning air kisses my skin before his gaze replaces it, moving over me slowly. The vines wrapped around his biceps tighten. He lifts me and lowers my body into the water. Heat swallows me to the collarbone, unknotting things I didn’t even know were knotted. Tiny blooms swirl against my skin. Sage rests his forearms along the rim. “Before you eat these, you should know they make you rather… uninhibited,” he whispers while plucking a glazeberry from the bowl and holding it to my lips. “And what I want to do to you today requires a yes you’ll remember giving.”

My lips part, and I hold out my tongue. He watches me with darkening eyes, but he doesn’t place the berry on my tongue. “I’ve wanted to seal the bond since the night I woke up, Sage. Nothing has changed. You have my permission, uninhibited or not. The answer is always yes.”

“Then let me improve the delivery.”

He places the glazeberry on his own tongue, and his hand slides around the back of my neck, the other tilting my chin up to meet him. He leans down, sealing his lips over mine. The berry passes between us on the first curl of his tongue. Something sharp punctures the fruit, and it bursts. Rain, cucumbers, sugar, and fizzy peaches flood my mouth, coating my tongue in the rich dark juice.

He groans against my mouth, tasting the sweetness with me, dragging his tongue against mine to lap up every drop before I can catch my breath. His claws unsheathe, pressing ever so lightly into the nape of my neck.

“Vresh,” he breathes, pulling back an inch. His lips are glistening with juice. “I am going to feed you every single one of these like this.”

A syrupy warmth spreads from my chest, sinking into my limbs, and making my head feel delightfully light. “Promise?”

“Mm.” He plucks another berry from the bowl, entirely too pleased with himself, and a slow smile spreads across his⁠—

Fangs.

He has two elegantly sharp fangs, indenting his lower lip right where his smile curves. I have mapped every inch of that mouth for hours, and Sage does not have fangs.

That’s what popped the glazeberry. That’s what I felt against my tongue. My whole body flushes hot at the understanding.

“Sage…” My breath hitches as I reach out, my wet fingertips hovering over his mouth. “You have fangs.”

His tongue immediately moves behind his lips, counting his own teeth. His eyes go wide. “... I have fangs.”

“Since when?”

He gingerly touches one with the pad of his thumb. Wonder spreads over his features. “They’re his.”

“Can he hear me?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to feed me a berry, Ashán?”

For a moment, there’s nothing but silence in the meadow. Then the left side of him surrenders, skin unraveling into smooth bone from temple to jaw, his soft lavender eye deepening into smoky black. The arm resting on the tub’s rim goes skeletal to the elbow.

His head tilts a fraction, listening to a voice only he can hear, and the blush that crawls up his throat arrives before the words do.

“He says—” Sage pauses and clears his throat. “I am not repeating that.”

“Sage.”

“It was anatomically ambitious, Eden.”

Warmth pools low in my stomach. “Tell me. Please.”

Ashán’s dark eye holds mine, steady and unblinking, while Sage’s mouth wrestles with itself. When he finally speaks, his voice has dropped into the lower register, like the night the Horsemen took me.

“He says…” Ashán’s eye flashes. “He wants to bite into your thigh while you suck the juice from his tongue, so he can feel you swallow him from both ends.”

My thighs press together beneath the water. The image lands exactly where he intended it to, and judging by the way Ashán’s eye tracks the movement, he knows it.

“Yes,” I breathe.

His skeletal fingers reach into the bowl, picking up a single berry. He holds it up between our faces. “He says since he cannot have both today,” Sage rasps, those new fangs catching his lower lip as a dangerous smile spreads, “he will settle for one end at a time.”