Page 14 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

Chapter

Eleven

DUKE

The second she opens the door, I wrap her in a hug that feels a hell of a lot like coming home.

Until she shoves me away.

I gasp for air. Everything hurts. Everything feels wrong.

Not just because she says, “What the hell?” with my voice, my mouth, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I…” Have no excuse for what just happened.

I’m not about to tell her the real reason that I broke my own damn rule . Again.

She glares at me, then stomps further into her house while I lean against the door frame, still trying to catch my breath. I watch as she sits on the floor in the middle of a pile of books, then buries her nose in one.

Even in my body, it’s such a familiar scene. It was how she coped.

I’m dying to tell her that I didn’t know, that I had no idea how hard her life has been all these years, living in a town that treated her like a ghost .

The truth is…I’ve always known. I couldn’t look the other way today.

They stared right through her, like she was made of air instead of flesh and bone. Mr. Hooper flinched when I called his name. He glanced around, paled, then ducked into the liquor store.

I went into the grocer, into the laundromat, into the post office. Every time I said hello, I got no response. I asked Mary Sue Bennett how her new baby was doing. She kept chatting with the nurse at the front desk of the medical center like I hadn’t said a word.

Half out of my mind, I stood in the middle of the ER waiting room and screamed, “Help!”

Not even a doctor in a white coat looked my way.

I stumbled home and replayed every second of yesterday. Tried to sleep, hoping I’d wake up to find it was all a bad dream.

Woke and came straight here.

To her.

“Listen,” Cordelia says conversationally.

“I know this is day two of our own personal hells, and that you’re probably as freaked out as I am to realize yesterday wasn’t a bad dream.

I get it, Duke. I do. But if you ever touch me again without my permission, I’m going to rip your broken dick off, even if I have to suffer the pain of your castration. ”

That snaps me out of my spiral pretty damn fast.

Sweat breaks out on her forehead as my imagination runs wild.

Did she do the same thing I did yesterday? Did she go out on the town, just to get the chance to walk a mile in my shoes? To have people actually talk to her instead of fucking ignore her?

After what I experienced yesterday, I wouldn’t blame her.

“Why do you think my dick is broken?”

She wouldn’t have tried for a hookup yesterday. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. She might be lonelier than I ever imagined, but she wouldn’t trick a woman into having sex with a stranger.

Cordelia McCoy may be a lot of things, but I can vouch that she’s no liar.

“I—” She hems and haws with my face still buried in the book, then blurts out, “I think something’s wrong with you. With your body, I mean. ”

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask very slowly.

I already know, but the only way she’d find out is if she did the thing.

“Your dick is hard all the time,” she wheezes.

She finally lowers the book. My face is redder than a tomato.

“Is this normal? I know about morning wood, and that’s fine.

I’m a grown woman. I understand how the male body works.

But you have morning wood, mid-morning wood, lunchtime wood, dinner wood, middle-of-the-night wood. What’s wrong with you?”

I blink at her so many times that my vision turns fuzzy instead of making my ears work. Her ears. Whatever. My brain isn’t doing much better.

I’m not hard all the time, even when she’s not around.

I’m a grown man, just like she’s a grown woman. Sex isn’t the only thing I think about. Sometimes I have other things to do. Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I’m just not in the mood.

“What do you mean, my dick is hard all the time?” I sit on the couch before her damn legs give out. “You’ve only had it for a day. How would you know?”

She gestures toward my crotch. Sure enough, there’s a definite bulge behind the fly of my jeans.

“I know it’s only been a day. That’s why I’m worried that it hasn’t deflated in the past twenty-four hours.

I’ve seen those commercials for Cialis on TV.

An erection lasting longer than four hours requires immediate medical attention. Should I go to the hospital?”

A sob catches in my chest.

If she goes to the hospital, they’ll take care of me. If she really had been bleeding yesterday, they wouldn’t have even noticed her death.

“Jerk me off,” I rasp.

She jolts like I slapped my own face. “ What ?”

I gesture toward the tent in my jeans. “Choke the chicken. Slap the meat. Spank the monkey.”

I have to joke about it. I can’t cry, not in front of her. She deals with enough every day of her life.

More importantly, I can’t ask her how bad it might still be—if she’s as lonely in Charleston as she’s always been in Utopia .

I don’t want to know.

She narrows my eyes. “Got any more euphemisms you wanna impress me with while you’re at it?”

I startle.

She’s impressed?

With me?

The hit of happiness fades just as quickly as it bloomed.

I shrug. “Maybe you just need to drain the built-up baby batter, then my dick won’t annoy you so much.”

She drops the book to the floor then rubs my forehead. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

That makes two of us.

My God. I spent the past decade reveling like a king, ignoring that I couldn’t get her out of my head and enjoying whatever I could hold onto with both hands.

And she…

“Do you need me to walk you through it?” I ask gently.

“I’m not a thirty-year-old virgin,” she hisses at me.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask if whoever she gave that honor was good to her, but I just—can’t.

“Is there anything I should know?” I ask instead. “About your body? About what it needs?”

“I promise not to do anything to alter your appearance in any way, so long as you promise the same. Please don’t shave my head or pierce my nipples.” She folds my hands in a prayer pose.

“Agreed,” I say around the dry laugh that’s caught in her throat. “But that wasn’t what I meant. Do you have any allergies I should know about?”

She narrows my eyes. “This feels like a trick question. If I tell you that I’m allergic to—” She suddenly rolls my lips between my teeth.

I study her as much as I can while she’s wearing my skin. We’ve never liked each other, but her response makes it seem like she’s been bullied within an inch of her life.

I know that ain’t the case. I saw it for myself. Being ignored isn’t the same as being abused.

I can’t ask her about that either. Because I’m a fucking coward. Because I’m terrified that if she gives me the name of a single person who made her life miserable, then I’ll go to prison for murder.

“I won’t hurt your body while I’m in it,” I promise. “If you have an allergy, then you need to tell me. If you take any kind of medicine every day, then you need to give me the pills.”

“Oh, shit.” My eyes widen. My cheeks go red all over again. “I, um…”

I lean forward on the couch. There’s a feeling deep in the pit of my gut that insists whatever she says next will change my life.

“With everything that’s been going on the past week, I haven’t taken my birth control,” she admits with downcast eyes. “If we can’t get back into our right bodies before I have my period, then life is going to get a hell of a lot worse for you.”

I don’t have to wait. A sharp pain in her chest reminds me of the time that I?—

I stand up quickly and rub the spot between her tits. There’s not much room in this valley, and I’m hyperaware of the firmness of her breasts. The pain overrides my panic. “You lactose intolerant or something?”

“No.” She knits my brows together. “Why?”

“Indigestion,” I guess.

She’s a little clumsy when she rises from the floor. Her glare is sharp though. “I have a thirty-year-old’s body. You wouldn’t be paying the price if you hadn’t eaten a bunch of ramps yesterday.”

I can’t deny it. I still stink, probably because I haven’t figured out how to wash her body yet.

I wince when she storms into the kitchen, then relax when she returns with a handful of antacids.

She thrusts them toward me. “Eat these and stop feeding my body shit. If you wanna hurt yourself, be my guest. Don’t whine to me when you pay the price instead of me, though.”

“Thank you,” I murmur before shoving them all into her mouth.

“Stop being so nice to me,” she mutters, striding back to the pile of books. “It’s freaking me out worse than knowing what your erections feel like.”

“You want some help sorting through stuff?” I ask with a mouthful of chalk. “If we get out of this by tomorrow, then maybe you won’t have to wrangle the trouser snake.”

She rolls my lips between my teeth again. This time, it looks like she’s fighting a smile. It disappears as quickly as it came on.

“I, um, I’d really rather go through Granny’s things alone. These are the last pieces I have of her, and I want to savor them.”

I nod. I remember that kind of grief all too well. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

“Right,” she mutters. “God forbid you do anything else to get us out of this.”

I don’t know what else to fucking do.

“I asked around town yesterday,” I admit, without telling her the whole truth. “None of the elders had much to say.”

She scoffs. “Of course they didn’t. No one’s ever had anything to say to me. I bet if I went around in your body and asked questions, I’d learn the secret location of the Library of Alexandria.”

“You should,” I blurt. “Use me while you’ve got me.”

I mean it in more ways than one, even though her chest feels like it’s splitting open all over again.

She raises her gaze to me. My eyes look as dead as I’ve felt some days. “If it comes down to that, don’t think I won’t.”