“It did?”
“Yeah, for weeks after that. Even though you drowned it in the lake for your revenge. Even though I had to change the seats, I’d still smell you. I’d get a whiff of your candy smell and just like that I’d get a motherfucking boner the size of your pretty little arm in the middle of the day.”
I press my lips then, to stop my laughter from spilling out.
This is not a laughing matter. None of this is, but I can’t help it and he obviously notices, obviously, and growls, “You think this is funny, Fae?”
Dutifully, I shake my head. “No.”
“If your brother knew I was taking a hit of his sister’s scent every time I drove my car, he would’ve drowned it in the lake himself. He would’ve hunted me down and this time instead of using my body as a punching bag, he would’ve killed me.”
“But you could’ve handled him, right?”
He gives me a lopsided smile. “Fuck yes.”
“Now I’m happy,” I blurt out.
“What?”
I swallow, debating whether I should tell him but already knowing that I will.
Already knowing that I’ve drunk the potion now and it’s making me crazy. So much so that I arch my spine and move against him. His hard body shudders and I revel in it.
I revel that I made him do that.
“That you suffered,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. When I was crying in my pillow at night and in classes and during lunch and practically all the time, I’m glad you were suffering too. I’m glad that when you were haunting me, I was haunting you too.”
Maybe that’s what I want.
I want to haunt him, his dreams, his thoughts, his empty chest like he’s haunted me.
Maybe I want to be his demon like he is mine.
A demon that needs to be exorcized.
Maybe I want to be his Fae in all the ways he is my Roman, even though I don’t want him to be.
“You want to hear all the ways you’ve haunted me, Fae? All the little ways you’ve crept up on me over the past two years?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Let me tell you about that then,” he says, finally letting my hands go, and so I touch him back.
While he puts his hands on the tree, making a cage of bones and muscles, I put mine on his waist. I touch him, his strength, his heat even though he’s always cold on the inside, after two long years and my eyelids flutter.
My fingers jerk with life.
“Let me tell you about that night, when I saw you sneaking out to your studio. I’d just driven down from New York after a long fucking day in that shithole office to go to another shithole office and I was tired as fuck. But I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to drive around, and there were a million places I could’ve gone to but I chose that highway for a reason. I chose to cross over from Bardstown to St. Mary’s for a fucking reason. I chose it for you.”
He licks his lips, shifting his body against mine, and I’m so hypnotized by his words, by him, that I shift too. “Because I knew that’s where you lived. I knew that beyond that brick fence, you might be sleeping in one of those cinderblock buildings. But you weren’t, were you? You were sneaking out. After everything that I did — not that I did a lot — but after how I wanted to keep you safe, you were running around town at midnight. It pissed me the fuck off, Fae, I’m not gonna lie. It made me furious. It made me want to pick you up off the road, put you in my Mustang and drive you to an isolated, unknown place just to put the fear of God in you. Just to teach you all the dangers lurking in the night.”
He is the danger.
Him.
I’ve always known. I’ve just not cared and even now, a current goes through me at his furious words.
I fist his t-shirt, his muscles rippling under my knuckles. “But I’ve been doing it for two years now. It’s perfectly safe, Reed, and —”
“I know,” he says with clenched teeth, cutting me off. “I fucking know. Why do you think I showed up at that shitty bar the next night? My sister didn’t just tell me about your fucking cupcake shop and she doesn’t just tell you things either. She tells me things too, and for the past two years, she hasn’t shut up about you. Every time she talks to you, every time she sees you, she can’t stop talking about you. And I pretend that she’s bugging the fuck out of me. I stomp and I kick things and I tell her to shut the fuck up. All the while hoping that she won’t.”
My breaths are all jumbled now.
I’m breathing so fast that they’re stumbling, falling all over each other. “I-I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d… I didn’t know.”
I did haunt him then. I did.
He lowers himself even more then, pushes his chest into mine. “Yeah, you didn’t. You didn’t know that even now, my Mustang smells like you. Even now when I get inside it, the first breath I take is you.”
Before I can say anything to that, he does something so… primitive and primal that all I can do is let him.
He smells me.
With his hands still planted on the tree by my head, he dips his face and takes a whiff off my forehead. But that’s not all. He grazes the side of my face with his nose as he smells me there too.
And he growls.
Like he really is an animal, a predator, and I bite my lip really, really hard.
So hard that I think I taste blood.
But it’s okay.
It’s fine because everything else inside me is bleeding too. Everything else inside me is bleeding lust.
Thick and tangy and coppery and so, so syrupy and delicious.
“Geranium,” he rasps against my skin. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He nuzzles his nose on my jaw. “And sugar.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Rare body oil.”
I tilt my head back even more, giving him access to my neck, to my scent as I hold on to him like he’ll save my life, when in reality, he’s the one drowning me.
He’s drowning me in desire, and wordlessly I nod as he rubs his nose on the column of my throat.
“Because you like them. Still.”
“Still.”
He looks up at me then, bowed over me with his strong, big body. “You wanna know how you haunt me, Fae? This is how.” He shows it to me again by taking a whiff of my skin and I arch into him. “This is what you do to me. This is what you did to me two years ago. You made me an addict, a junkie who’s looking for his next fix. Who’s been looking for it all this time. Because two years ago, I had a taste of a drug. I had a taste of my Fae and she’s been in my system ever since. She’s been running in my veins, my bloodstream and I’ve got no way to purge her. I’ve got no way to get rid of her. And I’ve got no way to get more of her either. So I’m stuck. I’m stuck with this need. This ache. I’m stuck with you. I’m nothing but haunted, Fae. I’m nothing but this ache. I’m nothing but pain.”