Page 88 of She Who Devours the Stars

It wasn’t a normal kiss.

First, because Fern’s mouth was hotter than anything I’d ever known. A fusion of girl and myth and the kind of hunger that should have been illegal in a school trial. Second, when she kissed me, the city around us vibrated, every line of code in its mythic spine shuddering with a frequency that matched my pulse. Third, when our lips met, I forgot every reason I’d ever been afraid to want her.

She bit down, just a little, tugging at my lower lip like she was daring me to bite back. I did, because fuck it, why not burn with her? Our teeth clicked together, tongues fighting for territory, her hand tangled in my hair, my arms wound around her waist, and tugged her in so close it felt like we might short-circuit the trial’s safeties.

The world went white-hot. The ground heaved under us, the stadium seats catching fire again and again, every flare of heat mapping itself directly onto my skin. The altar at the center of the dais shattered, fragments tumbling up instead of down, then dissolving into blue dust.

Fern’s hand slid up my torso, slow at first, fingers memorizing the line of my ribs, then faster, rougher, until her palm was flat against my chest. My trial-supplied armor had vanished somewhere in the chaos, or maybe she’d simply disintegrated it to touch me sooner, leaving nothing between her skin and mine but sweat and the static charge of the dying city.

She cupped my breasts not like they were part of me, but like she had finally worked up the courage to touch some forbidden, dangerous relic. Not hesitant, reverent. Like she was used to wanting, but not having.

Me? I was used to being stared at, judged, labeled too much, too big, too obvious, too impossible to ignore. But Fern didn’t flinch, she didn’t shrink from it or pretend I wasn’t what I was. She wanted me, my body, my hunger, all of it, exactly the way I was.

Her thumb swept over my nipple, and I forgot every reason I’d ever been afraid to be seen. I felt my nipple pebble instantly, every nerve ending tuned to her touch. She moaned into my mouth, the sound reverberating through both our bodies, and then Fern squeezed hard, as if she wanted to see if she could leave a bruise.

I gasped, shuddered, and arched my back, pressing myself into her hand. The feedback loop was insane: every time I reacted, the city responded, the sky above us strobing between blinding white and event horizon black, trains in the distance screaming past on broken rails.

She broke the kiss, pulling back just enough to see my face. Her eyes were wild, wolf eyes, crazy, beautiful, and smoldering with mythfire. Her breath steamed in the freezing air.

“You want this?” she asked, voice rough as gravel.

“Please,” I said, and didn’t even care how it sounded.

She grinned, then dipped her head and took my nipple into her mouth.

I lost the plot.

Her tongue was soft at first, swirling over the tip, teasing, then harder, more insistent. She sucked, bit, and licked with a kind of precision that made me think she’d spent her whole life dreaming of this exact moment. My hands went to her hair, pulling her closer, and she growled, actually growled, against my breast, the vibration traveling all the way down to my spine.

She switched sides, dragging her teeth across my skin, leaving little marks that stung and then faded in the cold. The Augmented Reality overlay in my vision flickered with every touch, every bite, broadcasting raw data straight to my brain:

[SENSATION: 11/10]

[WARNING: POSITIVE OVERLOAD]

[CORE TEMPERATURE: ELEVATED]

[ERROR: BREATHING SUBROUTINE INTERRUPTED]

She slid her other hand up between my legs, palm flat against the inside of my thigh, fingers pressing hard enough to make me gasp again. I was soaked—no point pretending otherwise—and she didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask a second time before she slipped two fingers inside.

I almost came right then.

She worked her hand in and out, fingers curled just enough to hit right, thumb pressed hard against my clit. All the while she kept working my chest, switching back and forth, licking and sucking and biting until my whole body was locked into a single loop of pleasure and need and mythic collapse.

The city was coming apart. I could feel it, the data structure breaking down, the code unraveling, the entire world pivotingaround the axis of Fern’s hands and mouth and the sounds I was making.

She sped up, hand moving faster, tongue flicking over my nipple in time with her thrusts.

I lost it.

The orgasm hit me like a punch, all muscle and heat and raw code. I screamed and the city above us exploded, trains derailing and spiraling up into the sky, buildings folding in half, rivers of binary fire running down the streets. Every seat in the stadium blinked out, one by one, until it was just us, alone in the epicenter of a mythic apocalypse.

Fern didn’t stop. She kept her fingers inside me, kept licking and biting and sucking, dragging out the pleasure until I was shaking, unable to do anything but hold on to her and ride the wave.

Finally, when I couldn’t take any more, I collapsed against her, face buried in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. Her arms wrapped around me, strong and certain, and she held me tight while the world rebuilt itself from the outside in.

We stayed that way for a while, just breathing, the heat of our bodies pushing back against the cold of the new-formed city. The sky had stabilized, the trains had stopped, and the only sound was the slowing heartbeat in my ears.