Exact Warm Unholy by Jeffe Kennedy

Author:Jeffe Kennedy [Kennedy, Jeffe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: NYLA
Published: 2016-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

~ 6 ~

In his bedroom, he’s lighting candles, of all things.

And he has the bed turned down, scattered with bloodred rose petals. He sees me looking and gives me a serious smile. “I told you—I hoped you’d come tonight.”

My heart thuds, beating against my ribs in a last-ditch escape attempt. I have to leave. Leave now before I crack open. I turn around, and his hands are around my waist before I take two steps. His mouth is against my cheekbone, the wings rustling between us. I cannot fly.

“Don’t run,” he murmurs, coaxing. “You like dim light, yes? This way we can turn off the lights. And you like red. I meant all this to…ease the way.”

It rattles my skull that he planned it out, that he expected me at Circle2 and that he’d predicted I’d come upstairs with him, observed what I’d like. Of course, if he’d been recognizing me all along, he knew my patterns. I’m too exposed.

“I can’t do this,” I whisper, not at all sure who I’m talking to.

“Okay,” he replies easily. “No pressure. Let’s sit, have our drinks and talk. Or go back downstairs and talk. Or dance. Whatever you like.”

I spin, and he ducks the stiff wing, his smile fading immediately at the look on my face. “What do you think this is?” I hiss the words through my teeth. “Do you think this is about talking and dancing and… and rose petals?” I fling a hand at the bed, my fingers tight in a fist.

He takes off the glasses and tosses them aside, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, do I? I don’t know anything about you, not even your name.”

“I am Eris, goddess of—”

He seizes me by the upper arms, the grip arousingly tight. “Not whoever you’re pretending to be. Mary, Tiffany, Syd, Bobbi—all of them. I think you’re all of them and none of them. I think you’re in my bedroom for a reason. I want to know more about you. I want you. Don’t go.”

I watch his lips move. They’re smeared with my lipstick and he still sports the magenta stain on the corner of his jaw. I want him with searing intensity.

“Help me out of these wings,” I say.

He relaxes his grip, sliding hands up and down my arms, as if comforting me. “Are you sure? We don’t have to have sex.”

“I have to. I need this.” I shrug off his hands, then the wings. I strip off the straps and let the black silk puddle at my feet. I’ve covered Eris’s skin with honey dust, so she gleams naked in the candlelight, her nipples rouged as dark magenta as her mouth. I’ve waxed her clean, so none of my natural hair shows. He stares at me, transfixed. Eris is beautiful, full of the allure of chaos, those destructive acts that are too compelling to resist. “Here are the rules. You can do whatever you like to me. Do the romance thing. I don’t care. But this is only fucking and only for tonight.

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