Page 57 of Will It Hurt?

Chapter Twenty-Six

Aisla

The idea of rest was strange.

The last couple of days had been particularly wild. I’d been chased and strangled and threatened and kissed within an inch of my life, but now… I was lying in my own bed as though nothing had happened.

Other than my bruised knees and banged-up head—all very coverable injuries—I looked absolutely…

Normal.

I clutched a towel to my chest, staring at my reflection in the smudgy mirror. Maia had a bad habit of touching the glass when she gave herself a pep talk in it, and the floor-length mirror was constantly covered in her fingerprints. I told myself I didn’t care.

Especially now, when I couldn’t figure out where my head was.

I’d done everything according to my routine—had my supper, brewed a cup of honey tea with a dash of lavender, washed the grime from the covenstead away, but something felt… Off.

I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Maybe it was the change of routine. After all, I was used to the stability and predictability of set hours.

I watched myself sigh in the mirror, the towel lifting and falling along with my chest. The scrap of cloth was threadbare and a little too small for my generous hips, but I’d never gotten around to buying a new one.

I often told myself I should, but I’d just as soon forget the moment I set foot into a store.

The bruises were getting worse. I studied them in the mirror as I let the towel drop. They’d been dark red before, the color of a blush under the deep tone of my skin. But now they looked more mottled and purple. Anyone looking at them would be able to tell they were distinct finger marks.

Fuck.

Footsteps down the hall made me reach for the discarded shirt I was using as pajamas. I pulled it over my head as Maia walked through the door.

“Thought you could use this.”

She handed me the smallest gummy bear I’d ever seen. I stared at it in the cup of my palm, its neon green silhouette looking back at me.

“Thanks?” I ventured, unsure about her sudden stinginess. We’d often shared family-sized bags of sweets.

“It’s a gummy,” she said. “To help you sleep. I made it myself in the lab.”

“That’s good use of High Coven property,” I joked, trying to hand it back to her. “But the last thing I need is sugar right now. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

She tilted her head like a little bird, watching as I tried to hand her the gummy.

“Aisla. It’s a CBD gummy. Take it. It’ll help you relax. You said yourself that you barely got any sleep last night.”

Oh. Realization dawned as I blinked down at the unassuming bear. I’d never been one for recreational drugs, but this was promising. And Maia was right—I was too wired to get any true rest.

“It’s only a small dose,” she assured me. “I’ll let you decide if you want to take it. No pressure. ”

She let herself out, shutting the door behind her.

“Goodnight!”

My hair was drying at the ends, the warmth from the radiators making them stand up as though called by static.

Ah, fuck it.

I placed the gummy on my tongue and swallowed it quickly.

My muscles protested in tandem with the bedsprings as I lowered myself to the thick quilt. My legs and back were still sore from the day before. Between the running and slipping and being-thrown-up-against-a-fence-and-splintering-it, every part of me screamed for rest.

It took me a while to find a comfortable position, but once I did, my fingers instinctively reached beneath my pillow for a book.

The Vampyre’s Tryst

It was the last instalment in a series of queer bodice rippers from my favorite indie author. Two nights ago, I’d thought nothing of indulging in a little fictional fang play before bed, but now, it all seemed too real.

I flipped the paperback open and glanced at the words on the page.

“Say it, Ari,” Camilla breathed, propping herself up on her elbows. “You let me into your body, but you need to invite me into your heart.”

“But.” Ari’s eyes widened. “I’m not sure if I’m ready for that yet.”

Camilla’s touch drew shivers from the human. “An eternity with me. With us. What can be better than that?”

The words began to swim. I glanced around the room and everything was covered in a hazy sheen.

Lights, I thought, but couldn’t be bothered to get up.

My last thought was that Maia’s CBD gummy better not give me nightmares…

** *

When I next opened my eyes, the room was dark and the book was spread open across my bare chest. The clock on my nightstand glowed a little after five in the morning.

As I reached across the bed to turn off the lamp, something shifted in the darkness—a fluid shadow that rippled like smoke. Breath caught in my throat as dark eyes appeared, gleaming like twin pools of midnight, cold and unblinking.

I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.

“How the fuck did you get in here?” I scrambled for my duvet and pulled it up to my neck. “I didn’t invite you in. You can’t be in my house if I didn’t explicitly invite you in!”

“Invite me?” Her voice was different—silken and smooth without a hint of threat. “I don’t need to be invited into your dreams, little wytch.”

That made me pause as I tried to inch back on the bed. “Dream?”

“You’re looking at me as though this is some kind of trick.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You tell me.” She shrugged. “It’s your subconscious.”

I glanced around the room, looking for something that would indicate that this was the fantasy she insisted it was. Perhaps a faerie lounged in the corner or a bookcase floated in mid-air. But everything was as it should be, except for my pajamas, which lay at the edge of the bed.

“Why am I naked?” I blurted, trying to wrap my duvet more securely around my chest.

My question only brought forth another shrug. “It wasn’t my choice for you to be naked. ”

“You mean to tell me that I want to sit here without a stitch of clothing on?”

“Don’t you?”

“No!” I insisted. “Especially not around someone like you.”

“Is that right?”

My hands fisted in the covers as she left her perch by the window and sat on the edge of my bed. Thin fingers, pale and lithe, reached in my direction…

…only to pick up the half-read paperback.

“This is an interesting choice of literature.” She studied the artwork, which depicted the two main characters in stages of undress. “For someone who kills vamps for a living.”

“Neutralizes,” I murmured under my breath.

“Use whatever word you want,” she said, draping herself across the foot of the bed. “You’re reading fictitious pornography about the very people you kill.”

I reached forward to snatch the book out of her hands, but she held it steady.

How strange it was to see her here—casual, almost nonchalant—as she lay on my patchwork quilt in her sturdy brown wool vest and crisp white shirt.

Her lean frame was devoid of the tension and anger and depravity I’d witnessed firsthand.

Now, she looked almost… Soft. Like she had in the covenstead when she kissed me.

Fuck, maybe this was a dream… A life-like sequence meant to mess with my head.

“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” I said, trying to disguise the fact that I was tracing her luminescent skin with my gaze. “You’re not my therapist.”

“I’m surprised you have one,” she quipped, casually turning the pages of the paperback. “What do you think they’ll say about dreaming of the person who wanted to kill you? ”

I tried to snatch the book away again, but she moved back too quickly for my average human speed.

“Nothing I don’t already know,” I replied with a sigh.

“Which is?”

“That I likely have PTSD from almost being murdered.”

She set the book on the bed as she studied me.

“I don’t think you understand how PTSD works,” she began, pushing her fringe out of her face. “It generally involves flashbacks or triggers related to the trauma. Watching your attacker lounge in your bed isn’t PTSD.”

“I can process my traumas however I want,” I insisted.

“True.” She glanced back down at the book. “But you’ve chosen to do it naked in my presence.”

A flush of heat crawled up my neck and heated my cheeks. Damn it, why was it that I couldn’t escape a blush even in my dreams?

“Could it be that you wanted to act out a scene from this very interesting book?”

I shook my head, glancing away from the amusement I saw in her gaze.

“Because fang play sounds rather fun,” she teased.

“It’s fiction.”

My protest was lackluster and I knew it.

“Is it?” she countered. “Don’t you think the author was inspired by reality?”

My gaze dropped to her fangs.

“Because it’s fairly common among my kind to want to mark their territory.”

“What do you mean?”

Why the hell had I asked a follow-up question?

“Love bites,” she said with a quirk of her lips. “We like to leave our mark everywhere. From your throat down to the turn of your ankles. ”

Her fingers found my calf under the cover and brushed it lightly.

I froze.

“You bite people’s ankles like a dog?” I asked, refusing to give in to the sultry look in her eyes.

“Not quite like a dog,” she replied. “I promise you.”

An image flashed in my brain with Jinn on her knees between my bare thighs, my ankle hiked up to her lips as she sank her fangs into the vein that pulsed there. A quiver gave away the direction of my thoughts.

“Little wytch,” she said, her fingers rising to the buttons on her vest and undoing them with unnerving slowness. “Is it possible that you’re wet for me?”

No.

The protest stuck in my throat.

“Hmm? Are you trembling at the thought of having my fangs in you?”

Stop.

Her vest fell away, leaving her in the puffy white shirt that made it abundantly clear she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Remember our little game from earlier?” she said tugging at the tiny buttons.

“What game?”

I knew exactly what game she spoke of, but I didn’t wish to give her the satisfaction.

Her smile flashed in the lamplight. “The game where you prove to me that you aren’t affected by me.”

“Uh-huh.”

Words failed me as more buttons came undone in rapid succession.

“I think we should continue. Don’t you?”

“I… ”