Chương 27: 1.26. Poor Beautiful Boy

Lisa didn't play dumb or argue. Didn't treat him like a fool or a child. Just lowered her eyes and murmured "Okay." The wagon pulled to the side of the road and coasted to a halt. Seth hopped from the wagon. Nervous energy washed through his limbs.

"Be right back," he said, and retreated for a time into the woods, and resisted the urge to stay there, to run off and hide from the vast amorphous whatever they were about to define. He re-emerged onto the roadside. Lisa was leaning against the wagon, feeding barley to doleful Demetrius. She gave him a pat on the nose and straightened as Seth approached.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said. Wind filtered through the leaves and brushed their shadows against the beauty of her still, watchful face. Seth had come up with what to say while he was walking back, but now he was looking at her again, and he had to crumple it up and throw it into his brain's wastebasket. Well, he needed to say something.

"I know Annalise said—I know you said this was just how Lisa is. And I understand that, but if that's all it is, if this is just Lisa being Lisa, uh." He battened down the tremor in his voice.

"I need you to rein it in harder."

"Okay." Lisa examined her hands.

"I will. I promise. I got carried away, I know. I never meant to make you uncomfortable, or—""No, no. Uh. Not uncomfortable, no." Seth forced himself to keep his eyes on her face.

"It's not that. It's—I can't—" Breathe. Blink. You have to get through this.

"It's messing with my head. I can't keep brushing it off. I keep wondering how real it is, and getting distracted by it. So either we have to stop…" He trailed off.

"Seth," Lisa said, quietly, and Seth felt as rooted to the spot as he'd been when the seraph had stared him down.

"Do you want me?" The dam cracked.

"Do I want you," Seth repeated, trying to pull the starter cord to restart his brain. Yes, the Fox whispered. Say it. Yes.

"Yes." It was only when she smiled, wide and lovely and relieved, that he realized the word had escaped him." Seth," she breathed. She reached her hand out, palm wide to accommodate his.

"Brave boy." He stared at the offered palm. He took it, and held Lisa al Ydris's hand. And they stood, staring at one another, and Seth remembered to ask.

"What about you?"

"Yes." Her wide, callused fingers laced between his.

"Yes, Seth. I do. I want you very badly."

"Oh," he said. The dam was washing away now. The flood worsened, threatened to sweep his legs out from under him.

"Of course I want you," she said.

"Look at you. Young, handsome. Superb at what you do." She laughed softly.

"And you know it, too. Cocky little thing. I like that. And I want you."

"I'm… uh…" Seth's heart was a caterpillar thrashing in its cocoon.

"Short."

"You're the perfect height. Look." A delicate little step, and she'd closed the distance to how near they'd been when they were dancing.

"Your face, right where you want it." Her left hand departed his, and landed on the nape of his neck.

"Your hips, right where I want them." Her right hand slid to his waist. Both hands applied gentle but irresistible pressure until his hips were pushing firm against hers, and the lower half of his face was submerged in cushioned round warmth.

"Do you know what they call a man and a woman like us in Orwiny?" His voice was so tinny in his ears, like the manly bass had left him.

"What?"

"A watchtower." The mirth always behind her words tickled at the membrane of her solemnity.

"We could do it freestanding. Don't even need a wall to lean on. Where I grew up, that's the perfect height." A throbbing shiver along his spine alerted him to how hard he was. His pulse leapt. He tried to shift, tried to make some distance. But she shook her head, her chin rubbing his hair, and kept him stationary.

"It's okay," she whispered.

"I don't mind. I already felt it, remember? When we danced together. How you want me. It made me so happy, Seth." His ears were ringing.

"Am I hurting you? Your chest?" Just a twinge. Not nearly enough to make him pull away, not from this.

"No," he said.

"Then stay." Fabric whispered as her thighs rubbed together. The friction against him blanked his mind.

"Such an indecent boy," she cooed.

"So salacious, Seth. Don't you know I'm old enough to be your mother?" This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"I know." He tried to take a deep breath but that just flooded his brain with her, with the leather and the apricot.

"I know that."

"And I'm unlit. I'd turn you. No going back." He looped his arms around her waist.

"I know."

"And there's more of me. I'm just one head. What would Anna think, hmm? Or Annalise, for that matter?" She was so solid. So big. Such grace in her bold, broad curves. He'd found it hard to meet those vantablack eyes. Now he found it harder to look away.

"If it's just—if it's just the part of you that's Lisa, just the head…" Just the lips.

"Maybe that's all right?" Her grayscale tongue slid across the pillowy crest of her cupid's bow.

"Are you telling me you want to kiss me?"

"I'm just… philosophizing." A strained laugh from her. Was her throat as tight as his was?

"But Seth. A kiss would be too dangerous." She tsked and shook her head.

"Surely you don't want to desaturate this smooth, lovely skin. This warm tone." His ears were ringing.

"Just a kiss wouldn't do that."

"A kiss? No. Not a kiss. But it's been a long, long time since I've been kissed. So many solitary, aching years. And if you kissed me, Seth, you'd have to take responsibility for it. You'd find out how desperately I've been holding myself in check." Her broad fingers fanned out across his back.

"And how strong I am."

"How strong?" he whispered, and she pulled him even closer, and he let her. The muscles in her core lengthened as she arched her spine. Her breasts invited him further into the hot, heart-pounding bliss between them. His eyelids were heavy. He felt drunk.

"Stronger than you, Seth," she whispered, her voice scratchy and low in his ear.

"Strong enough that I don't think you could stop me."

"Stop you?" He was so hard it was making him dizzy, and Lisa didn't care. She only got closer. All he could do was remember to blink and breathe.

"From what?"

"From pinning you to this wagon," she whispered.

"And doing anything I want to you. Right here by the road." Her chest pressed against his and pulled an involuntary noise from his throat.

"And those things. Oh, Seth. Poor, beautiful boy." She buried her face in his hair and took a deep, ribcage-expanding inhale.

"They would snuff you out like a bedside candle." Her hand slid upward, from his spine to the back of his neck.

"Don't you remember what you were told, about what the big bad Verdugo does with little misbehaving thieves like you?" Her fingers curled in. Her thumb caressed his jawline. He—was that a whimper? Was Seth il Gutierre fucking whimpering?

"I'd steal your soul away. Just like you feared. Just like the old wives' tales. Your beautiful brown eyes would go black as ink. And you would be mine." That big hot thumb tucked under his jaw, to his neck, to the Adam's apple she'd admired, and nudged his face upward, inches from hers.

"I'd take you away from everything you've ever known. And I would never, never give you back." He swallowed. She watched it—felt it under her fingertips—and licked those full, ripe lips again.

"Your heart is beating so fast," she whispered.

"Am I frightening you?"

"No," he murmured. Suddenly her heat, her pressure, her breath. It was all off him. She took a sinuous step backward.

"Of course, you were just philosophizing." He sighed out his held breath. That was mean.

"Of course." She planted a boot on the wagon step and hauled herself back into the driver's seat.

"And if you hadn't been, well. I have a rule, I'm afraid. It's a rule that I feel strongly enough about that even when I'm Lisa I have to hew to it, frustrating as it is." He took a couple of shaky steps back toward the wagon, then paused to tuck his stiffness upward into his waistband.

"Rules? I love rules. What's the rule?"

"Anyone who wants to kiss me has to kiss Annalise first." She wrapped one huge hand around his forearm and tugged him onto his wagon seat. The limerence that had seized him—seized them both—was ebbing. She flicked the reins and the greater part of it drained, left in the clearing they were departing. His heart was finally giving his ribs a break from its hammering.

"Annalise was there first," Lisa continued.

"And I'm her most of the time. And she's really the most sensible one, nine times out of ten." With that, she sighed and settled into her task. They rolled along in nebulous silence, cresting another hill. The whole world stretching out before Seth, it felt like. And all he wanted was what she'd promised. For her to take him away from it, and never give him back.

"Now if I recall correctly…" He pulled his thieves' tools out again.

"We'd just made it to the tension wrenches."

"Uh huh." Lisa grinned indulgently.

"And what are those?" Early evening brought the chill of winter's promise. Crisp leaves crunched under the wagon's wheels. On the horizon, a waving pinprick of light, like a rogue star: the carriage was ahead. Lisa brought the wagon to a halt again, with the black iron and attendant black horses just resolving from their smeary distance. The Verdugo and the Thief sat together and watched the movement ahead. Tiago and Ofelia, roused from relaxation, coming to greet them.

It had been like a strange dream, delightful and terrifying and horny, and now it was ending.

"So," Lisa said.

"So," Seth said.

"So it's time for me to switch back," she said.

"Annalise again." He shrugged.

"Okay."

"Seth, listen." Her brows knitted together. He sat up, drawn into her seriousness.

"I'll pull away from you. I'll convince myself this is a mistake, that it's impossible. You're a young crook and I'm an unlit executioner and this is a terrible idea. I'll tell myself that it's foolish to want you, and greedy to take you, and evil to turn you." She tilted her head and moved closer to him. Close enough he could hear her blinking.

"And perhaps I'll be right." He wanted to argue, but she continued apace.

"But I have been lonely, Seth." Her breath tingled his lips.

"So lonely for so, so long. I've felt so unwanted and so unlovable. So broken-down. And you're the first one--in I really can't bear to tell you how long--to make it stop. And when I'm Annalise, I won't think I need this, whatever this is. But sensible as she so often is, Annalise is an idiot sometimes. Just like the rest of me." They could see Tiago's face now, framed in the corpselight as he jogged toward them.

"Look." Lisa's voice grew fast and urgent.

"I can't blame you if this is all too bizarre and complicated and you decide it's not worth it. But it's still me. It's always me. It's always these feelings. How I act on them is what changes, but all of me has them. You understand?"

"I'm trying to," he said.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm trying, but—""I know you are, Seth. And I am grateful beyond words, and I'm so deeply sorry." Lisa's eyes flicked to her approaching son and back.

"Just promise me something, okay?"

"What?"

"Don't give up on me," she said, and then she screwed on a smile and stood in her seat to wave, as the al Ydrises arrived to welcome their mother home.