More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
time that I have long since learned to live without. Or perhaps, the time that has learned to live without me. These numbers continue to count up and then down and then begin again in a ceaseless rhythm. Strange, though functional.
I exhale that fleeting, ephemeral desire and return to a truth that is as lonely as I am: I am the last and the last, I must remain.
they may no longer have enough food to sustain their rapidly increasing human population. They are a species much like a virus. How greedily they consume.
in Population, beauty itself is a foreign concept to these humans. There is only survival.
would please me greatly to have you mess around in my kitchen anytime you like.” She yawns again, but tries to cover it with her hand. She laughs lightly and it sends pins and needles shooting through my thighs. My hand flexes, wanting to capture the sound in my palm and slip it into my pocket. “Did you mean for that to sound so dirty?” My abdomen clenches. “No.” “I didn’t think so.”
And I understand, with this vow, the strange…affections Notare Abel’s people and my own have afforded this fractured human with the ribbons on her wrists and the scars in her eyes. She can do whatever she wants. She can have whatever she wants. I just…want to be the one to give it to her.
Her tongue spears my mouth, sweeping it like it is a thing to be owned. If it is, I am more than ready to relinquish the right to it.
open the door a little wider and step away from it, moving closer to…my girl. Yes. My girl. She kissed me, so she is mine. Is that not how this works? I haven’t anyone to ask and, even if I did, wouldn’t care to hear a contrary answer.
“I want to be the knife in your hand when you go to battle and, when you’re backed into a corner, I want to be your shield.
“You don’t need to thank me. As you’ve already assessed, everything that is mine is already yours. You owe me nothing.” Nothing but your heart. It seems only a fair trade to replace the one I’ve lost to her.
find everything about her charming. I want to taste her, touch her, lick her every inch. And I don’t like the look she’s giving me now, because it suggests she might be amenable to all of it.
I devour all of it gluttonously, not wanting to waste a single droplet of her orgasm to the carpets below. It’s mine. All of it. Heart, body, soul.
You have changed my purpose forever. You have reminded me of right and wrong. You have given me back a sense of touch never known to my people. You are my guide, not just to Population, but through the silence of your skin that I find so frightening, so mesmerizing. I know you not half so well as I should, Edith, but I adore you and I care for you dearly and it is utterly beyond reason.
swings one leg over my hips and mounts me while I lay practically fucking catatonic beneath her. “Dear…fucking…suns…” I roar, insiria tangled in disbelief as she starts to slide up and down my length.
“I love you,” she replies. I kiss the center of her sternum, my eyes welling with a tear I’ve never shed. “When did you know?” “I suspected before…but when you stabbed me, I knew for sure.”
“You make me feel human, Ipalora, as if my life has begun again.” She looks up into my eyes and grins. “You make me feel immortal, like my life will never end.”
And I plan to put a baby in this one. At least, as I grab Edith by the waist and sprint down the street, I plan to practice as many times as her love will allow.
“I have been looking at this all wrong. It’s not about living out the duration of my existence, but merely living a lifetime. One lifetime. And I choose to live yours.”
“Unfortunately for you, you will have no choice but to accept me on the golden shores when I follow you. Because make no mistake, I will, whether you call for me or not.”
Population leaves no human survivors, only monsters and savages. And it looks like the shores of Population aren’t limited to one continent.
