The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2)

by Eliot Schrefer

This is how you get me to obey. A heaping dose of flirty flattery from someone with glittering nose jewelry and an imp’s worth of secrets behind their eyes. I’d betray my country for this tech right now.

A police officer gives me a long look, but he licks his lips lewdly when I pass. That’s fine. You can stare at me because I’m hot. Just don’t stare at me because I’m supposed to be arrested.

It’s the dearest friend of loneliness, shame.

There’s Sheep, pink and shorn, scabbing from her infestation, watching us from the relative safety of the tree line. She’s shivering. A sheep shouldn’t be shorn in these temperatures. I need to knit her a coat.

😭

I start to cry. Quietly, so my brother won’t hear me and come kill us.

She might actually look remorseful. Or not. It’s hard to tell such things with a sheep.

But what if . . . what if that me has found some happiness? What if he has found someone, some people, to rely on? If he even has a family?

😭

I almost wish I could stick this information into a fly and shoot it to the Coordinated Endeavor: just be quiet for a while, Ambrose—then Kodiak will come to you.

didn’t mean to make fun of his labels bullshit. I should offer something fruity about myself, maybe, to make him feel better?

Part of me feels it’s mean for him to compare me to a piece of meat. And part of me wants to coil around Ambrose as he says these words of desire, ask him to repeat them while I purr like a cat.

“Well, Kodiak, I’d welcome you anytime. Or donate, if that’s what you prefer. It’s what I prefer, I guess. By a hair.”

“I refuse to use this ludicrous terminology in reference to my own body,” I say. Then I grin. “I will be happy to go hut any shihut who disagrees.” Ambrose is so outraged that he squeaks. Adorably. “See! You just used ‘bottom’ as a punishment, Kodiak.”

This arousal isn’t helping. Maybe we could help each other with that feeling after all. I could show Ambrose just how welcome I am to his donating. I chuckle at his charming, ridiculous righteousness. Then I turn on my side, toward him. He’s asleep.

cannot believe Kodiak is a bottom

I place my hand at the back of his neck, working my fingers through his overgrown hair. The orange light of the nuclear explosions glints on his skinprint mods as I crush my lips against his.

SOB

will live in these current moments as fully as possible. Then I will be gone. Ambrose will be gone. Sheep will be gone. It arrives. The brightness between us.

MY HEART