Page 317 of These Tears

The pine here is wide enough to hide most of her. Her chest undulates beneath her coat, each breath scraping visibly through her parted lips.

My trousers tighten at the sight of her flushed and wanting, and the memory of last night – of her moaning against me – returns with painful clarity.

Leah yanks the scarf from her neck and stuffs it into her pocket.

Her eyes move between the slope, the stream and the thicker growth farther east, calculating which path might carry her beyond me.

She mutters something savage beneath her breath, catches the scarf before it slips free and stuffs it deeper into her pocket. One strand of her chestnut-brown hair refuses to follow order. It falls across the side of her neck and clings to the damp skin above her collar.

Her pulse beats beneath it, dissolving the forest and the moment until she is sitting across from me in the Stonebrook visitors’ room again.

The first day.

She had walked through locked doors and harsh corridors to place herself before a murderer, then remained stoically seated.

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it, Epicurus had said. The difficulty being confined to a narrow space behind those bars after she gave me something worth wanting beyond them.

Fear smelled on her so beautifully. Her hair defied the order she tried to keep it in, and she had to tuck it behind her ear repeatedly. Every few minutes, a strand slipped across her cheek and drew my attention towards the pale line of her throat. The pulse that trembled there.

I barely heard half of what she said.

I watched that little throat. Wondered how that heartbeat would feel against my thumb. Whether she would finally break that stubborn composure if my breath touched the place where her hair kept directing my eyes.

But I am broken. The fantasy plummeted into the darker waters of my soul.

I close my eyes. Tight. Tighter. The past won’t poison my present. I won’t let it.

Because that was fear.

This isn’t.

I know the difference now. She taught it to me.

She pushes away from the trunk and begins climbing a slope. Confidence enters her steps and makes her careless enough to leave the scarf half exposed from her pocket like a little flag.

I follow close enough to hear her breathing.

Then I stop abruptly. The movement makes a rock scrape between my boot and the ground.

Her head whips around. Breath catches.

In one moment, she stands still.

Her eyes meet mine. I watch the recognition enter them as the slow-simmering need low in my body splinters and floods every inch of me.

Then her lips part around one shallow breath. They twitch but don’t draw into a smile.

She darts into the woods.

The demon breaks loose.

Three seconds. I give her that much time, and not because she needs them.

Because I do.

The sight of her fleeing after looking directly at me tears through the last civilised layer of me.

A branch thrashes ahead.