Louder Than Love by Topper Jessica

Author:Topper, Jessica [Topper, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-09-16T22:00:00+00:00

***

Adrian’s bedroom was a tranquil masculine retreat of brown, gray, and crisp white. I was delighted to find his bed was a futon, although it was actually on a frame and ten times more comfortable than mine. Large square wall panels behind the headboard in a rich dark grain matched the wood on the floor and gave the room an insulated-from-the-world effect. Thick velvet drapes lent themselves to the mood as well. Adrian lit a large candle the color of the darkest chocolate, and the room instantly simmered with the same peppery smell that infused his skin. Fifteen stories below, the hushed and steady thrum of traffic could barely be heard, with just the occasional chirp of a truck horn or police siren breaking through.

He slowly began to undress me. “Nice plaster. Sexy,” he whispered, kissing my knee. I had cut myself earlier while shaving in the shower and had hastily slapped on the closest bandage I could find. I saw now it was one of Abbey’s Hello Kitty Band-Aids.

I pulled his T-shirt over his head. “I wasn’t exactly thinking of how good I looked this morning. More preoccupied with how I was going to bring myself to say good-bye to you . . .” He was kneeling on the bed before me, all those tattoos I had only begun to glimpse in pictures now fully exposed.

A thin, simple dagger ran down the middle of his chest, starting at his clavicle and ending with the point at his navel. “That’s a misericorde—used by knights to deliver the final ‘mercy’ blow to the mortally wounded.” His chest trembled as I kissed my way, openmouthed, down the blade. “Something I would have needed had you actually brought yourself to say good-bye . . .” The sharp tip was bordered by delicate red writing that looked vaguely Nordic.

“What’s this say?”

“Don’t you read Old Icelandic?”

“And you do? Come on . . . Portuguese is one thing . . .”

“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” he deadpanned.

I cocked an eyebrow, and he relented with a smile. “It reads að blanda blóði saman—‘to mix blood together.’” He took my finger between two of his and traced around the text. “Rick and I were big fantasy geeks in school, you know . . . Dungeons and Dragons and all that. His father was an art dealer, seventeenth century Swedish art mostly, and so we learned a lot of the Norse mythology from looking at all the paintings. There was a tale of these two blokes who were blood brothers, and we thought that was brilliant so we did the same, with an old flick knife I had, see, right here?” He extended his arm at the elbow to display a faded X in the hollow. “We were too young to have tattoos back then, but once we started getting inked, Rick brought up the blood oath thing. We chose identical daggers, and he pulled the quote from one of his dad’s old books. Kept its meaning a secret, even from the rest of the band.

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