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I’m so incredibly tired of doing it all with a perfect smile pinned to my face, no matter how much I have to sacrifice to simply hang on.

“I didn’t ever want this!” I shout. “I just wanted to get the job I deserve and live a life of peaceful research. I never wanted to meet you, or anyone like you! I am so tired, Marcella, of realizing everything I’ve ever known is actually a fucking trap!”

By the time I cross the room, the wine is seeping into the back of my brain, and I don’t give a shit that I’m steadily approaching the precipice of drunk.

I raise my finger and point directly into her arrogant, gorgeous face. “You’ve ruined everything. I hate you.”

Her eyes don’t leave mine, sparks flying between us, the air thick with rage and sadness and need, always so much need.

“Well then,” she whispers, her tongue chasing across the surface of her lips, wetting them, “what are you going to do about it, lamb?”

My breath hitches as I tumble toward her, our lips crashing together. Our kiss bulldozes the frantic, replaying image of Dr. Sims begging for my help as Marcella drained him, killed him, of his eye exploding under the force of her tongue, a fine mist of blood in the air. She steamrolls right over the horrible black muck pouring into Lyle’s spine, the sound that woman made as she died.

Marcella’s fingers twine into my hair, her teeth scraping against mine as our tongues tangle together. Heat pools, heavy and syrupy, inside me, and I make a wordless mewl of wanting. She answers me with a roughened sound of her own.

Marcella’s nails scrape down the sides of my face as she pulls me closer. Our kiss is a battle, stained with tears and spilled gore. There are no winners; this is a pitched siege, and neither of us will give our softness easily. Her lips taste of pennies, of frankincense, of lies and hate and need, need, need.

I want it all. Unaccountably, viciously.

I stagger backward, my nails catching around her waist, pulling her toward the couch. With one hand, I rip the zippered sweatshirt over my head, so I’m only in a borrowed black lace bra and Marcella’s heathered sweatpants. Her body on mine, just the mere contact alone, makes my breath catch, and when she pushes me into the green velvet, tears of want spring to my eyes. Before she straddles me, she leans away, just a breath, to look at me, her lips bitten a pretty pink.

Deadly serious, Marcella kisses a hot track from my lips to my damp throat, down to my collarbone. She stops, patient and attentive to the hitch of my panted breath, her tongue scraping the half-moon dip of sinew and skin, humming softly as she tastes me. Her tongue darts out again, catching on me, microscopic barbs dragging over me like a cat’s. The tiniest pinprick of blood blisters to the surface, and Marcella slots her mouth over the injury and sucks, a sharp, heated, luxurious pain piercing through me. Marcella makes soft praising sounds as she works the cut with her tongue, her fingers gripping the sides of my neck. My skin splits wider, but I don’t care, I want it, I want it so much—

I huff a little cry, scrabbling for the back of her head with my hands so I can pull her closer, deeper.

“You taste so good,” she purrs. “I—I need you. Say yes, love.”

My insides zipper tight, head knocking back against the couch. Goddamn it. I need her, too. “Yes,” I breathe. “Please.”

Fuck. Heat blazes all the way through me as her tongue reaches the stacked, barely hidden ladder of my sternum, her pupils blown all the way wide and shining green. Behind the pillow of her kiss-swollen lips, her teeth change, needle-sharp and menacing. But instead of terrifying me, it fists something inside of me until I’m simmering, my cunt screaming for her touch. I’m slick already, and my god, I just—I just need her. A single word clouds my mind, narrows me to a point of blistering heat:

Please, please, please.

My pulse thrums visibly through the thin skin of my chest and Marcella merely watches the rise and fall of my breath, waiting.

“What?” I whisper, hoarse and wanting.

Her teeth catch her lip. “I’m looking at you. Reveling.” Her voice thickens with need, deep and endless, time pulling strangely.

A smile ticks across my features. “Don’t,” I rasp. “Don’t make me wait anymore.”

Marcella hums, taking a firm hand to my ribs. She curls her fingers around the wispy edge of the bra’s lace, her thumb strumming across my nipple. I gasp, electricity racing through my body and strangling the sound from my throat. Marcella’s lips press against mine hungrily, her other hand wrapping around the curve of my neck. I can feel her smiling against me, and it tears me open. The sounds coming from me are all animal, instinctual. My back arches so my whole body is touching hers, the cool stretch of black satin the only distance between me and ecstasy.

She’s immolation, her touch scraping jagged holes in all the walls I’ve put up. My heart jackhammers in my chest as she rips away with a stifled growl. Her eyes meet mine for the most fleeting of seconds, before she swallows hard and sits back on her heels.

I hiss with disappointment. I’m not truly myself, I realize distantly.

“No,” she says, almost to herself, her sharpened fingernails meeting the meat of her palms. “No, Lacie. We need to stop.”

“What? What do you mean?” I whine, the heady pull of the wine and the slippery heat between my legs desperate to be sated. “P-please,” I beg, the word a wet babble. “Marcella. We— I—”

Marcella picks her careful way off me and snatches up my discarded sweatshirt. She holds it out to me and my chest gives an unpleasant twinge. She clears her throat, pushing through her own emotions, a muscle in her jaw tightening. “No. This is very, very dangerous.”

“But what if that’s what I want?” I wheedle. “Right now, what if I want to be endangered?”

Huffing lightly, she turns away, picking up the nearly empty bottle of wine from the table and shoving the cork into the neck. “You’re drunk. Your reality has been crumpled up like cheap tissue paper. You’re not in your right mind, and nor am I, not after that rite this evening.” She looks over her shoulder at me, the dark gloss of her hair catching the chartreuse glow she no longer has to hide from me. “I know what I am. I know what you are. I … I can’t. I’m—it would be too easy.”

“Too easy to what?” I sit up on the couch, my mouth stinging from our kiss, blood throbbing in my pelvis saccharine and heavy.