Page 16 of These Hallowed Bones (Bloody Desires #3)

Micah

I dreamed of my mother.

Not how I'd last seen her in life. The body hanging from the ceiling fan was gone.

The mottled blue-gray skin had vanished.

The vacant eyes fixed on nothing had disappeared.

Instead, she stood in a field of tall grass, wearing the yellow sundress from the photograph on my grandmother's mantel.

She faced away, hair moving in a wind I couldn't feel.

When she turned, her features had been replaced by a smooth, blank canvas.

I woke gasping, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings. The moth glowed faintly in my arms. I'd never slept with a toy before. Yet holding the plush creature against my chest felt like reclaiming something stolen from me long ago, filling a space that had been empty my entire life.

Memories of the previous night unspooled in my mind.

Ezra's hands on my body. His voice in my ear, low and commanding.

The pleasure that had torn through me in waves, breaking apart everything I thought I knew about myself.

The way my body had opened for him, accepting sensations I'd been taught were forbidden.

A soft knock drew my attention to the doorway, where Ezra stood watching me.

Already dressed in charcoal slacks and a thin cotton t-shirt in deep burgundy, he held two steaming mugs.

His silver-streaked hair was combed back from his forehead, accentuating the sharp planes of his face.

His expression revealed nothing, yet I felt stripped bare.

"You slept deeply," he observed. "No dreams?"

"None that I remember."

He crossed the room and handed me one of the mugs. Our fingers brushed during the exchange, and heat shot up my arm, spreading through my chest and settling low in my belly. His touch had rewired my nervous system overnight, making even the most casual contact electric.

"How do you feel this morning?" His eyes never left my face, studying me as if I were a rare specimen under glass.

The question was simple enough, but I struggled to answer. How did I feel? Raw. Open. "Different," I said finally. "Like something's changed."

"Something has," he confirmed. "You've taken the first step toward becoming."

“Becoming what?”

“That remains to be seen.” The pause stretched, but the silence didn’t feel empty. It felt…pregnant. "Come have breakfast when you're ready," he said, moving toward the door. "I've laid out fresh clothes for you in the bathroom."

After he left, I made my way to the shower, steam filling the glass enclosure as I stepped inside.

Hot water sluiced over my body, and I became acutely aware of new sensitivities.

My nipples tightened under the spray, each droplet a tiny electric shock against the tender flesh.

Between my legs, my ass ached pleasantly, the rim still sensitive from Ezra's attentions the night before, from the careful way his fingers had breached me for the first time.

I ran my hands down my chest, stopping to pinch my nipples, trying to recreate the sensation of Ezra's touch. It wasn't the same. My fingers lacked his certainty, his knowledge of exactly how much pressure to apply.

Curiosity and hunger drove my hand lower, reaching behind myself.

I circled my entrance with tentative fingers, feeling the slight tenderness there.

The memory of Ezra's fingers inside me, of the pleasure he'd coaxed from my body, made me bold.

I slicked my finger with soap and pressed inward, breaching myself for the first time.

The intrusion felt strange, clinical. Nothing like when Ezra had touched me. I pressed deeper, crooking my finger, searching for the spot he'd found so easily.

I couldn't find it. Or maybe I did, but my touch only produced a dull echo of what I'd experienced with him. My wrist cramped at the awkward angle. My finger slipped. Frustration mounted where pleasure should have bloomed.

I gave up, withdrawing my hand with a sigh.

I rinsed myself off and dressed in the clothes Ezra had left for me, feeling disappointed.

I found him in the kitchen cutting up berries. His fingers were stained bright red, and I had the strangest urge to suck them clean.

"Sleep well?" he asked without pausing.

"Yes," I said, sliding onto a stool at the island. "Thank you for the clothes."

"They suit you."

Breakfast was perfect, of course. Everything Ezra did contained the same precision, the absolute confidence in his own mastery. We ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes before anxiety began creeping in around the edges of my thoughts.

Today, I would return to campus. To my apartment with its water-stained ceilings and drafty windows.

To my normal life, that suddenly seemed like a costume I'd outgrown, a role in a play I no longer believed in.

How could I go back to that after what had happened here?

How could I pretend to be the person I was before Ezra had peeled back my layers and exposed what lived beneath?

I caught myself chewing my sleeve again, a childhood reflex I’d never fully unlearned.

The fabric went damp against my tongue, grounding me in the present.

It was a sensory thing, I thought. Or had thought.

But after last night… Maybe it wasn’t just about comfort.

Maybe it was about reclaiming something I’d been taught I didn’t deserve.

My eyes drifted to Ezra’s chest. Through the thin cotton of his burgundy shirt, I could make out the faint outlines of his nipples.

I remembered how they’d felt in my mouth: soft and firm at once, soothing in a way my sleeve never was, but that was only part of it.

There was something special about being held, having my face pressed so close to the soft beating of his heart.

Something that made me feel alive . That comfort had gone deeper, reached something in me I didn’t know could still be soothed.

What I’d once called a bad habit, he’d turned into a kind of communion.

My sleeve felt like a stand-in now. A trace memory.

A coping mechanism that had always longed for something real.

Ezra’s hand entered my peripheral vision, gently tugging the sleeve from between my teeth.

Heat flared across my cheeks—shame, old and reflexive, like a bruise pressed too hard.

My grandmother’s voice rose up unbidden, sharp and punishing: Disgusting.

Stop that this instant. Only babies suck on things. Are you a baby? No? Then what are you?

“Sorry,” I murmured, bracing for judgment I knew he wouldn’t give, but the instinct ran deep.

Ezra said nothing. He just refilled my coffee, the quiet act more generous than comfort. No reprimand. No lecture. He let it pass, like he trusted me to decide what it meant.

"You have studio time booked this afternoon?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Yes. Three to six."

"Would you prefer to work here instead? I have papers to grade, but my studio is at your disposal."

The offer made my heart race, blood rushing in my ears like ocean waves. Another day in this sanctuary instead of the busy campus studio with its constant noise and interruptions. Another day in Ezra's orbit, breathing the same air, existing in his carefully curated world.

"Yes," I said too quickly. "If that's okay."

"I wouldn't have offered otherwise."

***

Ezra sat at his desk in the corner of the studio, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he graded papers. I stood before a blank canvas, paints arranged on a nearby table, brushes lined up by size like soldiers awaiting orders.

The past hours had taken on a dreamlike quality.

After breakfast, Ezra had shown me his extensive art library, allowing me to select books to browse while he made phone calls.

Then a simple lunch of soup and bread, eaten on the back deck overlooking the forest. Now this.

Ordinary moments that somehow transcended ordinariness through their very permission to exist.

Ezra let me use his personal paints, the bone ash mixtures we'd worked with yesterday.

The brush seemed to know where it wanted to go, dragging my fingers along rather than being guided by them. Like a planchette on a Ouija board, my hand glided across the canvas, leaving strokes I hadn't planned, forms I hadn't conceived.

Time dissolved as my hand moved almost independently of thought.

Colors mixed on my palette, transferred to canvas in strokes that seemed to come from somewhere outside myself.

The paintbrush found its way between my lips as I worked, another unconscious habit I usually caught and stopped before anyone noticed.

With Ezra, I forgot to monitor myself, forgot to police my movements for signs of weakness or sin.

From time to time, I glanced over at him.

He'd removed his suit jacket as the afternoon warmed, the thin t-shirt as his only covering.

When he leaned forward to make notes on student papers, the fabric stretched across his broad back, outlining the muscles beneath.

When he turned slightly to reference a book, I could see the way his nipples peaked against the fabric.

I caught myself staring and quickly looked away, but not before his eyes lifted to meet mine. He didn't comment, just watched me for a long moment before returning to his work.

My attention returned to the canvas, to the strange communion between brush and paint and the images emerging without my conscious direction. The bone ash mixture moved differently than ordinary paint, sometimes seeming to flow upstream against gravity, settling into patterns I hadn't intended.

Only when I stepped back to assess my work did I realize what I'd created.

Ice flooded my veins.