Page 67 of Half the Summer's Night

“That’s why you killed him,” I whisper.

Nameless nods. Then he brushes his hand over my hair, smoothing it away from my face. I can see his eyes searching mine. They aren’t as dark as I thought; they look hazel in the glaring light of the examination room.

“Why did you destroy his face?” I ask.

“I wanted to be here when you found out who he is,” Nameless responds.

Then he reaches up, his eyes never leaving mine, and lifts his mask to show me his lips.

Did I see that mouth at Neptune’s Adventure? I imagine him hanging off in the shadows, watching me. Faceless except for his red tongue slipping out to lick his lips as I moved to each station, laughing with Rowan. It’s all I can see of him—his mouth, his eyes. The rest of him is hidden.

I can’t grasp onto an image, even though the idea of it, him watching me in the sunlight, sends hot prickles over my skin.

“You wanted to be here?” I echo. “Why?”

But Nameless doesn’t answer.

Instead, he kisses me.

25

ABI

Ididn’t realize how desperately I’d been waiting for Nameless’s kiss until it happens, until he’s pulled me up against his warm, strong body, his arms wrapping tight around my shoulders. His tongue probes into my mouth, deep and searching, and all I can do is slump into his embrace and kiss him back.

“I wanted to see your face,” he whispers, breaking the kiss to speak into my skin. “When you saw what I did for you.”

He moves his mouth down to my throat and sucks hard on the skin there, right against my pulse. I moan and slump backward. When my bare thighs bump up against the drawer, I startle at the cold against my skin.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I protest, although it sounds feeble even to me, especially as Nameless slides his hand up to squeeze at my breasts, his mouth still exploring all the sensitive places along my neck.

“He deserved it,” Nameless mutters, shoving up my flimsy T-shirt. I don’t stop him. I should stop him. But before I know it, the shirt is gone, and my skin shivers in the cold air of the examination room. “No one has any right to talk to you like that.”

He shoves me back, lifting me onto the drawer.

The drawer with the body.

“What are you?—”

Nameless swallows the question with a kiss and unlatches my bra. I moan into his mouth, fear and disgust and desire twisting together. This is wrong. This is so fucking wrong.

And yet the space between my thighs is on fire.

Nameless slides his hands down to my shorts and fumbles with the button, still kissing me with a furious hunger. I can’t feel the corpse, but I’m aware of it behind me. The guy who catcalled me, who humiliated me over nothing. Reduced to cold, ruined meat.

Nameless pulls down the zipper on my shorts, slow and teasing. At the bottom, he stops and pulls back and looks at me, his lips swollen from kissing.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he says in a voice brimming with smoke and sin. “Right here.”

Dark, dizzying lust shoots straight through me. No. No, Ihaveto stop this. This is wrong. This is depraved. This is?—

This is the hottest fucking thing that’s ever happened to me.

Nameless drags my shorts down, bringing my panties with them. He kneels in front of me, guiding one leg out, then the other. I shiver—from the cold air. From my horror at myself. From the scorching desire brimming in my clit.

“Are you going to tell me to stop?” he murmurs against my calf, kissing it softly, working his way up.

The cold metal presses into my thighs, making me shake. I don’t know how to answer, so I don’t.