1.26. Poor Beautiful Boy

Lisa didn’t play dumb or argue. Didn’t treat him like a fool or a child. Just lowered her eyes and murmured “Okay.” The wagon pulled to the side of the road and coasted to a halt.

Seth hopped from the wagon. Nervous energy washed through his limbs. “Be right back,” he said, and retreated for a time into the woods, and resisted the urge to stay there, to run off and hide from the vast amorphous whatever they were about to define.

He re-emerged onto the roadside. Lisa was leaning against the wagon, feeding barley to doleful Demetrius. She gave him a pat on the nose and straightened as Seth approached.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said.

Wind filtered through the leaves and brushed their shadows against the beauty of her still, watchful face. Seth had come up with what to say while he was walking back, but now he was looking at her again, and he had to crumple it up and throw it into his brain’s wastebasket.

Well, he needed to say something. “I know Annalise said—I know you said this was just how Lisa is. And I understand that, but if that’s all it is, if this is just Lisa being Lisa, uh.” He battened down the tremor in his voice. “I need you to rein it in harder.”

“Okay.” Lisa examined her hands. “I will. I promise. I got carried away, I know. I never meant to make you uncomfortable, or—”

“No, no. Uh. Not uncomfortable, no.” Seth forced himself to keep his eyes on her face. “It’s not that. It’s—I can’t—” Breathe. Blink. You have to get through this. “It’s messing with my head. I can’t keep brushing it off. I keep wondering how real it is, and getting distracted by it. So either we have to stop…”

He trailed off.

“Seth,” Lisa said, quietly, and Seth felt as rooted to the spot as he’d been when the seraph had stared him down. “Do you want me?”

The dam cracked.

“Do I want you,” Seth repeated, trying to pull the starter cord to restart his brain.

Yes, the Fox whispered. Say it. Yes. “Yes.”

It was only when she smiled, wide and lovely and relieved, that he realized the word had escaped him.

“Seth,” she breathed. She reached her hand out, palm wide to accommodate his. “Brave boy.”

He stared at the offered palm. He took it, and held Lisa al Ydris’s hand. And they stood, staring at one another, and Seth remembered to ask. “What about you?”

“Yes.” Her wide, callused fingers laced between his. “Yes, Seth. I do. I want you very badly.”

“Oh,” he said. The dam was washing away now. The flood worsened, threatened to sweep his legs out from under him.

“Of course I want you,” she said. “Look at you. Young, handsome. Superb at what you do.” She laughed softly. “And you know it, too. Cocky little thing. I like that. And I want you.”

“I’m… uh…” Seth’s heart was a caterpillar thrashing in its cocoon. “Short.”

“You’re the perfect height. Look.” A delicate little step, and she’d closed the distance to how near they’d been when they were dancing. “Your face, right where you want it.” Her left hand departed his, and landed on the nape of his neck. “Your hips, right where I want them.” Her right hand slid to his waist. Both hands applied gentle but irresistible pressure until his hips were pushing firm against hers, and the lower half of his face was submerged in cushioned round warmth. “Do you know what they call a man and a woman like us in Orwiny?”

His voice was so tinny in his ears, like the manly bass had left him. “What?”

“A watchtower.” The mirth always behind her words tickled at the membrane of her solemnity. “We could do it freestanding. Don’t even need a wall to lean on. Where I grew up, that’s the perfect height.”

A throbbing shiver along his spine alerted him to how hard he was. His pulse leapt. He tried to shift, tried to make some distance. But she shook her head, her chin rubbing his hair, and kept him stationary.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I don’t mind. I already felt it, remember? When we danced together. How you want me. It made me so happy, Seth.”

His ears were ringing.

“Am I hurting you? Your chest?”

Just a twinge. Not nearly enough to make him pull away, not from this. “No,” he said.

“Then stay.” Fabric whispered as her thighs rubbed together. The friction against him blanked his mind. “Such an indecent boy,” she cooed. “So salacious, Seth. Don’t you know I’m old enough to be your mother?”

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“I know.” He tried to take a deep breath but that just flooded his brain with her, with the leather and the apricot. “I know that.”

“And I’m unlit. I’d turn you. No going back.”

He looped his arms around her waist. “I know.”

“And there’s more of me. I’m just one head. What would Anna think, hmm? Or Annalise, for that matter?”

She was so solid. So big. Such grace in her bold, broad curves. He’d found it hard to meet those vantablack eyes. Now he found it harder to look away. “If it’s just—if it’s just the part of you that’s Lisa, just the head…” Just the lips. “Maybe that’s all right?”

Her grayscale tongue slid across the pillowy crest of her cupid’s bow. “Are you telling me you want to kiss me?”

“I’m just… philosophizing.”

A strained laugh from her. Was her throat as tight as his was? “But Seth. A kiss would be too dangerous.” She tsked and shook her head. “Surely you don’t want to desaturate this smooth, lovely skin. This warm tone.”