She kissed him and could attest to the difference between him and the others.
He tasted like iron and smoke and the cold of streets hewn by other men’s violence; she tasted like after-midnight and embroidery of silk, like the tang of the merchant and the soft boy and the alley that had once been a confession. Those things mixed in their mouths and made new, terrible music. He did not let her feed blindly. Every touch was a lesson. Every swallow a boundary.
“Look at me,” he said once, and the demand was so simple that it could have been untrue. She lifted her head; the hunger thinned into something like focus. “Tell me what you want. Out loud.”
Her voice came rough. “You.” It felt both too little and the only thing she could own.
“Say it properly,” he insisted, softer now.
She drew a
