“How about you? Are you binging on this sacred ground for the answers you just want to hear?” Malice volleys. “Are you looking for the ideal instead of the truth?”
They fall silent, tripping over those questions. Perhaps they’re aware that visceral responses will result in shouting matches, which will desecrate the companionable mood.
Bickering is not worth ruining that, but Wonder packs Malice’s queries into her mind, to carry with her. She senses him doing the same as the atmosphere turns into a picnic. While their questions marinate, they leap from the tree. Rather than conjure refreshments, Wonder prefers to harvest blackberries and edible blooms, while Malice scoops mineral water from the brook after emptying and washing his quiver. In the interim, she catches him glancing at her across the glade, and he catches her as well.
Lilac perfume wafts in the air, toadstools contain poison, and willows swish like horse tails. Wonder and Malice resume their seats, this time relaxing across from one another on the same branch, their legs spanning the divide, their boot soles bumping. Employing his quiver as a makeshift drinking vessel causes them to snigger.
To compensate for the harder questions, they gush about their favorite titles and sections of the Hollow Chamber. It prompts a series of, “That’s the best chapter” and “I know, right?” and “You’ve got to read that one.”
Malice tosses berries into his mouth and talks with his cheeks full. Wonder sucks juice from her pinky, aware as his eyes follow the slide of her tongue. The neckline of his shirt slumps, revealing his collarbones and the sexiest throat she’s ever beheld. His Adam’s apple dangles before her like a plump grape, provoking a thirst that water fails to satiate.
As the day wanes, she familiarizes herself with details previously neglected. The fine hairs on his knuckles, the pump of that neck when he drinks, the glimpse of him tickling a dragonfly when he thinks she’s not watching. Their shared devotion to reading and learning, the recollection of hardbacks spread open in his hands, and how he licks his thumb before turning a page.
By eventide, they’re talk-drunk, lulled by the bubbling of brook water. Constellations convene, dusk soaking the forest in violet ink. Where have the hours gone? It’s irresponsible and unforgivable to squander time. Wonder should be sorry.
She should be.
Malice tosses his gaze around the forest. “Hmm. I think I’m a night person. Nighttime is so very dark, so moonlit. Have I mentioned how much more beguiling the moon is than the sun? This is the witching hour, when the stars are more active, doing all kinds of shiny things.”
Wonder teases, “Such as shining?”
“Like they’re fucking with you.” He swings his head toward her. “You look like a cherub, sitting over there all pretty and plush.”
“Enough with your trifling. But if you ask me, you look like a satyr, sans the horns.”
“I can live with that. Have you ever been toyed with?”
“Not in your context.”
Malice rises on all fours and crawls toward her like a panther, those black pants straining across his thighs and rump. Locking eyes with her, he swipes their provisions from the branch, discarding them with a backward swat of his wrist. Blackberries and petals spill to the grass, inviting the dragonflies to scramble after the pickings.
He stops when his nose brushes hers, forcing Wonder to uncurl from her sprawl, her stomach swooping. “What context is that?” he murmurs.
“I’m not playing that game with you, Malice,” she whispers.
“Of course, you won’t. It would require more expletives and less clothing. What would you know about those things?”
It sounds like he’s fishing—or doubting, or daring—but too bad.
Wonder crosses her arms, concealing the trembles.
Malice relents. He rights himself, straddling the bough, those solid thighs parting and clenching the bark. His feet dangle off the sides, the pose simultaneously impish, vicious, and luscious.
He demands to know if she’s a day or night person. For her, it’s the former because that’s when flowers flourish, and because that’s when a whole day of discovery stretches before her.
They indulge in more commentary. Malice is especially chatty, and when he’s not being crass or conniving, his eclectic train of thought diverts her. It’s a trait that his alter ego hadn’t possessed, as far as she knows, but it’s a charming place to reside.
Their knees tap as he lobs a question her way. “So what’s the other half of the legend? And what’s it to you?”
Wonder notes her reflection in his pupils. “I’ll tell you in the next life, when you’re reincarnated into something with whiskers and a tail.”
“And fangs? Please tell me I’ll have long, hard fangs in this next life.”
“To compensate for your missing tongue?”
Rather than his closeness, it’s his laughter that disturbs her, sounding so very like…so much like…
Watching her reaction, the mirth dies on his face. With one flick of a switch, he buries the humor in a coffin, stuffing it beneath a tantalizing inclination. “Don’t do that, Wildflower,” he warns. “Don’t give me that look, like you enjoy my voice.”
“Why?” she sighs—then yelps when he straps an arm around her middle and hauls her atop his lap. Her thighs split around his waist, her pelvis rocking into his.
The yelp flutters into a gasp when his hips give a subtle but intentional jerk, emphasizing the ridge pressed against her groin. “That’s why,” he rasps, the noise scraping her flesh.
Her body seizes, her blood running a swift course for that intimate spot, so close to him. But his words are a bluff. The reality is, his length isn’t fully amorous, not wholly aroused. However, its size gives the illusion of being erect.
If his actions were genuine, Wonder would shatter, perhaps grind atop Malice and bask in his hiss. But that’s not an option. He’s just using another crude tactic to prevent her from doing or saying something that he doesn’t like.
What is it about her reaction to his voice that offends him?
Thankfully, her tone remains steady. “You’re trying to scare me off.”
He steals a chrysanthemum petal from her ponytail. His tongue swabs the bloom into his mouth, where she imagines it dissolving inside him. “Is it working?”
She beams, a bright and badass expression that provides the answer.
Not on your life.
Malice’s lashes flap with uncertainty—and then wrath as she bounds from his embrace and shoves him off the branch. “Hey!” he snarls, tumbling sideways onto a lower bough, his body hooking over it and sparing him from a crash landing.
While he curses and glowers at her, Wonder blithely hops to the grass and struts off, concealing a grin. Another round in her favor.
***
At midnight, the sky darkens to violet. She wrestles with the linens, her calves tangled in the sheets as they abrade her skin. Something this soft shouldn’t be this rough.
Her nightgown straps cut into her shoulders, and her breasts crush against the satin, and it all feels wrong—no better than a restraint.
It begins to rain, droplets pattering against the window, the rhythm jabbing at her consciousness. Usually, this weather lulls her into slumber.