Page 106 of Moonlight Hearts

“I don’t want to,” I whispered.

“What did you just say?”

I nuzzled closer.“This is nice.I want to spend time with you, Soyer.Don’t tell Dwayne.”

“Fuck me thrice.”

“So many fucks.”

“Well, they’re necessary fucks.”

I looked at him.“So did you?Go to school as much as Elias?”

He rolled his eyes.“I don’t think so.I…well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Tell me, please?”

“I just wanted to learn reading and writing.I’d seen the books, the illuminated manuscripts.They were treasures.I wanted to learn how to do that.So I may have—fuck.”

I gasped, taking a step back though my hands still rested on his hips.“Did you go to a nunnery?”

“Ssh!Keep quiet.It was an abbey.I thought I could handle the corruption and the secret sex they all had, but I didn’t last a month.”

“Wow.”

“I did learn reading and writing though.”

“In a month?That’s impressive.You’re talented.”I tried to imagine it, Soyer in a monk’s robe.I couldn’t.“How did you even get in there?”

“I lied, how else?”He shook his bunny.“Definitely not this.I did attend various universities here and there, but I never stuck around for a degree.A lot of the time, I had ulterior motives.”

I pulled on the ear of his bunny.“You liked learning a trade better, didn’t you?Like when you learned about watches and clocks, you liked that because it meant that you were independent once it was done, could set up your own shop eventually.”

He looked at me for a long time.“That’s very insightful, my heart.Now, we were talking about fucking, which this is not the place for.Are you going to learn how to get a bunny from a crane today or not?”

“A dare?”

He shrugged.“Sure, why the fuck not?”He rattled his coins at me.“I dare you to crane something cuter than my bunny, Amory.”

Soyer knew me too well; I couldn’t possibly say no to that.

Chapter Thirty

Iwentthroughthewhole two cups of coins, but I couldn’t get even a single stuffy to fall into the chute for me.Soyer looked at the bottom of the last cup.

“There’s one coin left in here.Amory, would you like me to get you another cuddly thing?”

I groaned.“Yeah, please.You’re cheating, aren’t you?There is no way this is right.”

He cleared his throat.“You got remarkably close with the jellyfish.”

“I guess.”Two of its long arms had dangled into the chute, but that was it.

Soyer picked the last coin from the bottom of the cup.“I’ll get you that one.”

He pointed to a black dog with blue eyes.It looked like a cutely stylized version of a werewolf.

“That’s how you see me?”