Page 25 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

What about Granny McCoy? Was she a decoy, or the real deal?

The cat leaps into Cordie’s lap. It aims a single claw at my neck and hisses. “I am not your buddy. I?— ”

The cat stops talking and sniffs me. Then it licks Cordie’s neck.

“Hey, pussy,” I snap. Fuck no, does this cat dude get to lick her. The last time I licked her, something real bad happened. Even touching her the right way didn’t undo what I caused. “Ever hear of personal boundaries? Stop it.”

“Says the man who was touching her body intimately when we both know she would never invite you to do so.” It hisses, then pulls its head back to study me. “You smell wrong, yet you taste familiar. What are you?”

“I’m the guy who’s trapped in Cordelia’s body, remember? Got any ideas for how we can switch back?”

It swivels its head toward the front door and twitches its whiskers again.

“She’s coming. I cannot return to her until I am certain that it is safe to do so.

” In a flash, it slides its claw down Cordie’s nose with enough threat to make me pay attention.

“Listen to me, Mr. Castellaw. You will protect her body with your life, with your very soul. Or you will answer to me.” It leaps down to the carpet, making a beeline for the nearest open window.

Fuck. I need more answers. I can’t protect Cordie without knowing what we’re up against. “Where are you going?”

“To find out what in the seven hells has transpired in this infernal town for the past twenty-nine years. I need more information before I can determine the best course of action.” It glances over its black furry shoulder at me.

“Not a word of this to Cordelia. Her very life depends on your secrecy. Heed my words, odd creature. Trust no one.”

It disappears, and I cock Cordie’s head back in confusion. I’m the odd creature?

I open Cordie’s mouth, then snap it shut when the front door slams open.

She’s here.

She came back for me.

Without the clock on the wall, I have no idea how long we’ve been staring at each other. All I know is that something isn’t right. Something’s changed.

My eyes are clear and focused. I don’t smell anything unusual. My expression doesn’t give anything away.

Cordie just stands there in the doorway, not moving, like she’s waiting on me to break the silence.

The missing cat took off with my tongue after all, because I don’t know what to say. I can barely look her in the eyes. Twenty minutes ago, I was touching her naked body.

The cat was right about one thing. She’d never invite me to.

She licks my lips then croaks, “How are you feeling?”

She’s asking me how I’m feeling?

What happened to hating me? Dismissing me? What happened to all the things she remembers, like everyone else in town?

I don’t want to lie to her, not after the liberties I took that didn’t even help. “Like I drank a bad batch of moonshine. You?”

She nods, then closes the front door behind her, staggering deeper into the room.

I watch in silence as she makes her way closer to me. Her stiff movements make it seem like she’s drawn to be here but doesn’t want to give in.

I get that. Boy, do I get it.

“Duke,” she whispers. “I—I’m sorry. About before.”

I blink rapidly, like it’ll make her ears work better.

She slowly pulls her gaze from the floor to look me in the eyes. “I think something’s wrong.”

I latch onto my arms and sink her fingers into my skin. “What happened?”

She shakes my head. Averts my eyes. Licks my lips again. “I went to The Flame.”

“Did Neveah?—”

She pierces me with a sharp glance. “Why are you so against Neveah all of a sudden? You don’t have a problem with any other woman in town.”

Something about the way she says it makes goosebumps race along her skin. I don’t want to guess at why, not after everything I’ve heard and seen today.

“What happened at The Flame?” I ask more gently.

“I—I saw things,” she whispers.

I nod encouragingly. This is good. Maybe now she believes what I was trying to tell her earlier.

“Things that weren’t real,” she continues.

“Like what?” I press.

Just because she’s been living this way her whole life doesn’t mean she’s been able to see things for what they are. How could she when she’s never known any different?

“Wallace…looked like he changed . I should’ve been afraid of what I saw, but I wasn’t, because it had to be my brain warping things,” she rasps, shakes my head, and swallows hard.

“What if we’re losing our minds because we’ve already lost our bodies?

What if we’re racing against a clock that we didn’t know about before? ”

I glance again to the empty spot on the wall.

Without warning, she crumbles, slipping out of my hands to land on the floor in a heap of my limbs. A choking sob cuts through the loud silence.

I haven’t heard myself cry this hard since…since Mama died.

Or since Cordie came home from college and announced to the whole town that she had a boyfriend.

The memory slams into me like a fucking brick wall.

I didn’t even know that I was walking toward it, but it’s impossible to forget that kind of pain, not even the memory of it. Even now, it feels like someone is driving a pitchfork into my chest and shredding me into less than nothing.

I don’t know what’s happening to me. My fucked-up mind is worse than it’s ever been. I drop onto the floor with Cordie and do my best to wrap her much smaller arms and legs around my body like a cocoon.

She doesn’t push me away and doesn’t return the embrace. She wails.

That she’s letting me hold her at all destroys something in me.

That thing that I’ve been clinging to suddenly doesn’t matter anymore. It’s gone, like it was never there .

Like I…imagined it.

“I know. I know,” I croon as I rock us back and forth.

“I don’t,” she shouts. “I don’t know shit! The only person who ever loved me is gone, and I’m stuck with you, and?—”

Whatever she was going to say next is lost in another gut-wrenching sob. She’s breaking the heart inside her chest with every gasp for breath.

“We’re gonna figure this out,” I swear. “Get out of the wrong bodies then get you the hell out of this town. I’m not gonna give up, Cordie.”

“Please,” she keens. “Please. I can’t take it anymore.”

Darkness swirls at the edges of my vision. Her voice is her own in my mind.

“Please,” she cries. “Please.”

My voice sounds distorted and wrong, mine but not.

I don’t know what I say to her. All I see is what I’m doing.

I’m in my body, fucking her pussy raw. Reveling in the tears that slide down her cheeks, and the way she moves against me. Pushing her thighs wider with my claws and keeping her right where I want her—submissive to me and only me.

I have to physically shake the movie out of my head.

We really are losing our minds. The longer I’m in her body, the worse these dark fantasies are getting. They never used to be this detailed, this frequent before. This…unhinged.

“Cordie,” I whisper in my ear. “What are you thinking right now?”

“I miss her so much,” she stutters. “I have no one now. No one. She’s the only person who ever loved me.”

I pet my own hair and continue to rock us on the floor.

“I won’t lie to you. It’s always going to hurt. That pain won’t ever go away.”

“You’re the worst, Duke Castellaw,” she cries. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” I rasp.

But I don’t know why . Or how .

What happened to us? To all of us?

Something’s very wrong, something more than our switched bodies. Something more than a clock that’s really a cat named Cornelius, of all the damn things. Something’s wrong with the minds of everyone in this town, including ours.

“I hate you,” she mumbles into her neck where she’s pressed my face.

“I’m so sorry, Gingersnap.” It’s a stupid thing to say. If half of what I’ve heard is true, then no number of apologies will ever buy Cordie’s forgiveness. “Hold onto that hate if you need to. It’ll get you through until we figure this out.”