Letting all my jittery hesitation disintegrate, I grab Aurora by the waist and pull her close. My lips stumble into hers, bruising as the intoxicating taste of her fills my mouth. She deepens the kiss, her hands roving down my back and snarling in my laces. I let go of her only long enough to untie them, the front of my dress gaping open. She yanks at my sleeves until they’re hanging at my sides, and then there’s only my shift beneath.
Instinctively, my arms go over my body, hiding skin that looks like spoiled milk. Green veins like the poorly made seams of some grotesque doll.
“No. I’m—” Disgusting. Hideous. Vila.
The wounds from my early years split open and ooze. The horrified stares I receive from the courtiers at the palace—from my own patrons, paying me for the very blood that brands me a monster. I don’t want Aurora to look at me that way.
But she does not. Her eyes are so bright, like violet stars. She steps away and fusses with the fastenings at her back. The gown drops from her shoulders and pools like ink at her feet.
I cannot breathe.
Her moon-stained skin, soft and unbroken and utterly perfect. Without thinking I reach out and run my fingers along her pearlescent bare arm, gasping at the sensation. At the image of my greenish, scaly skin against her unblemished marble. But Aurora is not repulsed. Gently, she tugs my other arm down, ignoring my noise of protest—or terror. Her hands explore my exposed chest, clever fingers slipping under the straps of my shift and easing them off my shoulders. My heart is beating so hard, I’m sure she can hear it. The entire palace probably can, and they’ll storm in here at any minute and drag us apart.
But I can’t think about that once Aurora leans in and kisses my neck. A sound I’ve never made before escapes me, and I grapple for purchase, finding the slippery fabric of her shift that is so close to her skin I might combust. Aurora finds the dip of my waist. The sides of my breasts, her thumb caressing those curves in agonizing circles. Her lips follow, on my sternum, over my stomach, until she is kneeling and looking up at me, her expression like she’s worshipping a goddess.
“Are you frightened?” she asks.
Yes. Completely. But not of her. I’m frightened of this feeling that consumes me and promises to rip free of my body and set the entire palace ablaze. Of the way I want to taste every part of her. Devour her whole.
As if reading my thoughts, Aurora pulls her flimsy silk undergarment over her head and tosses it aside. Candlelight laps at her bareness. She is exquisite. I let my fingertips play in the hollows of her collarbone. Over her shoulders opalescent moonlight shimmers in diamond patterns, as if she is some scaled water nymph come to the surface. She leans into my touch, closing her eyes, her breaths shortening.
“Alyce. Please.”
A tremor goes through my whole body, starting at my feet and rocketing upward. Heat pools between my legs, an aching feeling of fullness I’ve never experienced. I want more of it. Want to let it break me and remake me new. And so, before I can lose my nerve, I wriggle free of the rest of my clothing, leaving nothing between me and Aurora. Sparks canter over the backs of my legs, my calves, the insides of my thighs.
My hands bury themselves in her hair, desire and longing and a dash of breathless anguish mixing together in a dizzying whirlpool of color. My head drops back as her lips and tongue discover places I never dreamed could feel so tender. And then she moans as her mouth finds somewhere entirely new, filling my whole body with a vibration that will shatter me.
The feeling intensifies, and I arch backward, bracing myself against the edge of a table. Aurora’s mouth moves quicker, tongue flicking against me, warm, wet heat traveling up the length of my body. My arms shake. Aurora grips the backs of my thighs. Sweat breaks over my chest and across my belly. And then, just when I want to beg her to stop, or to move faster, for the earth to yawn open and swallow me whole, my body goes rigid. An explosion begins where Aurora is inside of me, shooting through every fiber. Tingling in the roots of my hair. It is all I can do to sink to the floor, a limp puddle of soft bones and flaming skin.
* * *
—
We spend the rest of the long midnight hours wrapped in each other, ravenous. And with every shared heartbeat, I know that she is right—we are meant for each other. Two halves of the same whole, and I will not let my own uncertainty cleave us apart.
We don’t sleep until the night tinges gray, and even then it is only an hour, perhaps. Dawn is just blushing the warped windows when I startle awake, woken by the unfamiliar sensation of another breathing body beside me. The air is saturated with the smell of her—of our joining—and for the first time I feel that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.