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“The serpent shows the way to hidden things…”
Because somehow, the snake felt like a gift. A promise. That someday, someway, I’d be able to move on from this horror—shed my old skin and be reborn something stronger. Something powerful and terrifying.
“Vengeance is mine, and I shall repay.” —Tolstoy
A woman. It was hard to explain why I was suddenly breathless at the sight of her. Oh, she was lushly curved, deep hand holds between tapered ribs and flared hips, shapely legs bared beneath a short black skirt, and leather boots laced to mid-calf. Her breasts were obvious beneath her conservatively buttoned black blouse, but they would have been obvious in anything she wore, heavy, but high with youth. It was more than her coloring, which was striking, the pale eyes beneath dark, arched brows and thick lashes, the sun-warmed, almond dark complexion, and all that hair, a curly mass of black
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That she was edible, worthy of drooling over, capable of satiating my sudden hunger.
Tell me the secret of your sorrow, she seemed to say. And for some inexplicable reason, I wanted to share with her.
I didn’t want to sleep with her. I wasn’t into women that way. I just wanted…it was hard to say, but the closest I came to describing it while I sat beside her, nearly obsessing about her, was that I wanted to be in her orbit. Not close, if she wouldn’t allow it, but in the vicinity of her energy. Being near her made me feel itchy but alive.
Take a picture. It’ll last longer.
Fine. Meet me in the library tonight on the second floor near the Ancient Greek section. I’ll bring my camera.
I’d been born to love women, and they were all that intrigued me. Yet I’d never tried to turn that charm that seemed to ensnare men in their direction.
Xoxo, the Man Eater Crew The only thing standing between women on campus and the men who were systemically allowed to hurt us and get away with it.
Oh God, but I was entranced. It spooked me. As if I was a horse, I felt skittish and irrationally afraid. Something in me—this heated, writhing mess of something—sensed a storm coming. A reckoning.
“You taste good,”
“Brave girls use their words,”
“Are you brave, Lux?” “Why are you calling me that?”
“You’re light.” Her nose rubbed along the side of mine. “Bright and cheery. Friendly and sweet. A proverbial bonbon.” She hummed and the noise traveled from her lips to my cheek as she brushed her mouth against me. “I wonder if you’ll melt on my tongue.”
“And what are you?” “Dark,”
“Sinful and violent. Righteous and self-important enough to convict the wrongful when no one else will.”
“Do you want to know what sinful tastes like, Luna?”
“Now that I’ve tasted your skin and your mouth, I won’t stop until I know what you taste like between those beautiful thunder thighs.”
I’m sorry you’ve become an example of what not to be. I’m sorry your beauty made you dangerous.
A beautiful, ethereal girl who quoted Shakespeare back to me? Why did Mina Pallas’s daughter have to be like this? So pure. So fucking perfect in ways I hadn’t expected.
“I want you, too,” I admitted. Even though I spoke the words like an insult because I was insulted that my body could so easily betray me. “I want your pretty face between my thighs. I want to be the one to give you your first taste of a woman. Do you know the flavor? Have you ever played with yourself, then sucked your fingers clean of the cream?”
“I think you’d like it,” I practically purred, the words rolling off my tongue. “The way I taste. Like salted pasta water. I think you’d become addicted to that slick sweetness. To the feel of it on your tongue. I think I’d have to pry you out from between my thighs, greedy little thing that you’d become. It makes me wet just thinking about it.”
gold than the rest of my skin and as smooth as silk. “I’m so sensitive like this. One touch of your hand, one suck from your mouth, and I’d shatter for you.”
“I’ll make myself come for you, Lux, but next time, I expect you to get on your knees for me and ask nicely to do it yourself.”
“Come for me, Lex,”
“I want to watch. I want to know what you look like when you do.”
It seemed foolishly romantic, as if I fancied myself some kind of Prince Charming waking the princess with a kiss. In truth, I knew it would take more than a single kiss to wake Lex up from the nightmare her life had become since last Halloween.
“It takes courage to love someone who thinks they are broken, and you reek of fear. It’s easy enough to say that to us,” Juno said softly, standing up in eerie tandem with her sisters so they loomed over me, pretty yet somehow monstrous beneath their skins. “Come back when you’re ready to tell the world.”
But I wasn’t interested in the slightest. How could I be when a pretty, fae-looking strawberry-blond wouldn’t leave my thoughts?
She looked dangerous and entirely untameable, a wild thing trapped indoors crazed by claustrophobia. And I’d been the one to stop her. Me.
If you’re the light, I’m the darkness. Violence becomes me like kindness does you.” “Maybe I need a little violence in my life. Maybe I like a little chaos,” I taunted, boldly stepping even closer so that our breasts brushed and our breaths comingled. “Maybe I long for your brand of darkness.” “Don’t play with wild animals unless you’re ready to get bit,”
“I want your teeth on my throat more than I’ve ever wanted someone else’s mouth against my lips.”
“That’s it, my sweet girl,” she murmured against my mouth before nipping at my damp bottom lip. “Rub your pussy against me. Use me to get off.”
“Please,” I begged her, unable to articulate exactly what I needed, only that I needed her. “Lex.”
My whole life, I’d wanted this. A woman to know like this: carnally, emotionally, spiritually. I’d dreamt of tracing curves and lines with my fingers, of being allowed to taste from the well between soft thighs, and the peak of a breast, the silken areola and the turgid nipple. That I was being blessed with the opportunity to do so now, after everything that had happened to me, but also with this girl who made me feel almost clean and new again, nearly brought me to my knees. So I decided to give in to the sensation and dropped to them.
“Come here,” I demanded from my place of worship. My mouth was so dry the only thing that would satiate my thirst was her.
“I’ll give you what you need,” I told her. “Just be a good girl for me. Spread your legs wider.”
She tasted like every fantasy I’d ever had. I’d been drunk with one kiss in the library. High after a single pass of her questing hand over the lower curve of my breast in the bath. And now, I was forever addicted from the moment she parted those thick thighs to give me access to the dark, wet heart of her.
“I love knowing I put these marks on you.”
“I love believing that my touch can erase anyone else’s touch before it.”
“I know it’s not enough to erase what happened to you, but I’m going to love your body until it’s singing, and any thought of him is lost, at least for now.”
“Lux mea.” I realized I was chanting as I started to come to. “Lux mea.” My light, my light.
“Lux mea.” My light that shines in the darkness.
I wanted to know that girl. I wanted to cherish her and protect her. I wanted to love her. And honestly, I was already more than halfway there.
“I don’t have much in me to give anymore, Lux, but yes, I care about you. I wouldn’t be able to bear your touch if I didn’t, let alone crave it the way I do. I wouldn’t be able to show you glimpses of the pain shredding my insides to bits every day if I didn’t trust you to be good to me.”
I’d never loved the idea of power play before, but with Lex, I loved it when she took me with that fired intensity. Even though I was the one making her come, we both knew it was because I wanted to please her, worship her. Be owned by her.
“I want to fill your mouth with me again. My flesh, wet for you, my name aching on your tongue as you beg. I want to be everything you taste and breathe and speak. I want to be the only thing on your mind because you’re the only thing on mine, and that’s the best fucking gift you could give me. Get on your back, Lux. I’m going to fuck your face now and then after you’ve made me come, I’m going to make you scream my name.”
“When I come, drink it all up,”
