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I crossed my arms. “But wouldyousay that?”
She raised her chin, the blue of her eyes fading away, the black getting larger.
I felt nothing as I stared back, defiant.
Sorina shook her head as if she were shrugging off a nightmare, a wilted try at something. “No. I would not say this is my room. Your wording, your intention, it will never get by me, Nicholas. You say I’m a riddle—an omen—and I say you are a poem. But I am not in the mood anymore. And I think you should leave.”
“Why?”
“I’m hungry.”
“So? I can talk while you eat.”
She smiled then, and I again noticed her teeth, her long incisors. “Yeah, you can. But that may spoil the meal.”
I waited for the warning I felt when something terrible was about to happen. The ache in my chest. But nothing happened. My mind told me to fear her, but I never felt that feeling. Not the way I had when I met the Deacon. I felt ready to spring, ready to chase.
“Why were you hiding on the hill in the woods tonight?”
“It’s not safe up there.”
“The vampire king on the hill, like Billy said?”
“Don’t listen to him.”
“Why not? I think he may be the only one in this town telling me what I need to hear. Not you, not Diana, not even Kyrie, but she just doesn’t know what’s going on. Maybe I should introduce her and Billy.”
“Bold of you to assume everyone in this town doesn’t know each other and hasn’t broken bread together at some point in that little café yourauntis hiding out at. The roots of this town run deep. They follow the same cycle as their fathers, their mothers, and so on.”
“Except the ones that leave,” I said, thinking of Amber’s missing persons poster.
“No one leaves. They just go somewhere no one can find them.”
I reached out, grabbing the post of the bed. “Stop talking in riddles.” My vision blurred, and I recognized the change in my voice, the deepening. It’d only happened a few times in my life, and every time it did, people around me looked scared of me. I remembered the night on the ranch, the last night. The way Valerie trembled, then grabbed my hand, taking me away.
She could barely look at me for weeks after we left, but never left me. I kept waiting for it. For her to leave me behind.
She didn’t. Though, at times, I wished she would.
Sorina wasn’t scared of me. Instead, she stepped closer, invading my space. She reached up, placed her hand over mine, and pulled it from the bedpost.
The wood was fractured, and a crack edged down from the place I’d grabbed it.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know …”
It happened then. My body came alive, crackling. And it didn’t hurt, not the way it had on the stage. Sorina let go of my hand, gripped my neck, and brought her mouth to mine.
I’d been used before, stripped bare.
But I’d never kissed someone. I wasn’t worth that; I didn’t want it from the women on the ranch. Grown, using a child. They were vile, walking demons in my mind.
Sorina’s mouth was soft, pleading. I exhaled, and her tongue slipped in, lapping with mine. It was all it took to make me hungry.
Desperate for her.
Her hand threaded in my hair, and I wanted her to touch me. I wanted her to feel me everywhere. I grabbed her back, pulled her body to mine, and mimicked what I knew a body could do and what women wanted to feel. I’d watched it before. Seen the way humans turn into animals in a wide room. The room was small, warm to her coolness. I gripped her dress in my hands and pressed against her as her mouth turned hungry, too.
I was hard, and I pressed against her small body. Then, just as a moan escaped my mouth, she pushed me away, hard. My back was against the wall, and I’d flown three feet.
