He shifts his wing back behind him and wraps his arm around me instead. I find a way to slide one arm under his neck. We’re breathing each other’s air.
It’s a little claustrophobic.
“Are you comfortable?” he asks softly.
“No,” I whisper.
“Me neither.”
“But don’t move,” I say. “Not yet.”
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
I wake up, and my right arm is dead. No blood in it at all. I pull it out from under Simon, and roll over, shaking it out. My throat is on fire, I ignore it.
I wake up, and the room is blood red.
The sun is shining, and Simon’s wing is spread over my head.
I wake up, and the room is pink. The sun is setting. Simon’s wings are behind him, his arm is around me. He’s pulled me in tight, my back to his chest, our hips nested together. He’s breathing heavily on my neck. I can’t remember ever being this warm.
Sleep finger-walks up the back of my skull and pulls me under again.
I wake up, and it’s dark. Simon’s arm is around me. My back is against his chest. His breath is harsh and uneven on my neck. He’s awake.
“Simon?”
“Yeah.” His voice is rough.
“What time is it?”
“Don’t know,” he says into my hair. “Didn’t want to move.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the middle of the day.”
“Maybe not.” He tucks his hand under my ribs and pulls me even more snugly against him. He’s rubbing his face into the back of my head. “You smell so good, Baz…”
I close my eyes. I let him move me.
“So good,” he says, pushing my head forward. “I can’t get enough of it. I can’t swallow it. And it … it doesn’t help to hold my breath…”
He inhales again. Unsteadily. Then he’s biting my scalp, his mouth wide and wet in the hair above my neck. “So good…” I think he says. “So good.”
He bites right at my hairline. He’s found the scar there before, stretched and faded. “If it were me,” he rasps, “if I were you…”
He bites and bites.
“I’d drain you fuckin’ dry, Baz, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
My fangs break though my gums—that happens, it’s all right, I try to suck them back. I try to turn, but Simon holds me fast against him.
I let him.
I lay my arm atop the arm he has wrapped around my stomach. He’s champing at my neck now, sucking. He knows he can suck hard; there isn’t enough blood in me to leave a mark. “I can’t get enough,” he says, hot behind my ear. “Baz, help me. Help me. I can’t get enough.”
“I’m right here,” I say.
“I know.” He bites hard on my ear, pulls at it. “It’s not enough.”
“Simon…” I press my head back into his face. He grinds his nose in my hair. “Simon, are you saying I’m not enough?”
“No. ” He practically shouts it into my skull.
I push his arm away, forcing him to let me turn. I push him back onto his back, onto his wings; I push his head down with my chin. I hold his wrists above his shoulders. He’s still trying to bite at me.
“I’m right here,” I say.
“I know…” He’s growling.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know.” His tail coils like a steel cord around my leg.
I’m careful with my hips. Even as he’s mauling me. （Land mines.
Permissions. Boyfriends being boyfriends, etc.） “You smell so good,” he says, burrowing his face into the neck of my T-shirt. “I don’t know how to get enough, Baz—I don’t know how I’m supposed to get enough.”
I’m holding myself over him, my hands on his wrists, my knees bracketing his hips. He works his wings around us, pulling me closer. Then he latches on to my collarbone, right through my shirt. “You smell so good, ” he says, his mouth full of me.
Simon Snow smells like my aunt’s shampoo. He smells like iodine still.
Like ham. And butter. Like PG Tips.
He smells like sleep—sour breath and too-warm skin.
He smells like blood, always. His blood. Salt and milk and something burnt. （It used to be fire, now it’s ashes.）
He smells like sex.
I can’t help knowing this. Any of it. It’s in the air I’m somehow still breathing. But I don’t know what to do with it. What he wants me to do with it, what I’m allowed to do with it, what will help … What will lead to something strong enough to lean on between us.