Late Bloomer: A Succubus Comes of Age by Isla Monet

Author:Isla Monet [Monet, Isla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-21T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Picture Perfect

The lotus glen wasn’t the most original name, but I couldn’t say it wasn’t accurate.

That narrow gravel path wound its way upon a rock garden, replete with stone lanterns and seating nooks tucked beneath the umbrella of weeping cherry trees, whose pink and white petals fluttered on a perpetual, undulating breeze.

Lotuses and water lilies—some the size of my head—appeared to glow between the light-dappled liquid they sat on. It looked as though there was something within the water giving off its own source of light.

“Well, what do you think?” Thomas asked after a minute, making sure I had the time to crane my neck in every direction.

“I don’t think a place like can exist anywhere else.”

A massive dragonfly zoomed above the open petals, its wings like stained glass panels, casting a ray of colors over its perch.

“You’re right about that,” said Thomas. He crossed his arms over his chest, getting closer to the bank of white sand. “That’s one of the special traits of this place—Eden, I mean,” he clarified. “What’s normal here can only be brought about by extraordinary circumstances on the outside. It gets…”

“Tiring?”

Thomas laughed, but I didn’t, thinking back to the conversation Lanfen and I had in my dreams.

“You’re not wrong,” he said, beaming over the view. “And yet I miss this place. Every time I leave I feel like a piece of me gets left behind. My heart goes out to Adam and Eve. They never got to come back.”

“Maybe they were the lucky ones.”

Natalie’s broad smile flashed in my mind’s eye. After years of no contact, my fading memory rebounded with shocking clarity. There were moments I wondered whether I would recognize her voice, or if I could still pick her apart in a crowd.

It was so silly, I realized then.

There’s so much more to the people in our lives than the colors they come in, or the noises they make. It’s the micro-expressions they fall back on in conversations. It’s their posture when they say nothing at all. It’s their nervous tics and what they do in pregnant silences that fill in the corners of their being.

All the time in the world could pass, and they are still undeniably them.

Something brushed the back of my hand.

Fingers.

Thomas stared, and I wondered how many questions I missed while I’d zoned out.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to space out on you like that.”

He dipped his head towards his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

“I’m… not sure, to be honest.”

Thomas turned his gaze down the direction we’d come, and for an instant I panicked at the possibility of Natalie turning the bend.

He caught my startled expression and rejoined with a concerned look of his own, brows drooping low.

“No one is there,” he assured me. “And if they were, I’d tell them to leave.”

“Imagine denying anyone in paradise,” I joked.

“I’m imaging how paradise seems like such a prison to you.”

“To start, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.”

He didn’t say anything for a while.

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