Page 30 of Eat Me Alive
I chew on my lip. “How long in human time?” There’s an iridescent sheen around us and I have the ridiculous intrusive thoughts to stick my tongue out and taste it.
He thinks about it for a moment, still braiding his dripping hair.“I believe twelve human hours.”
“We have twelve more hours of night left? Are you for fucking real?” It’s my knee-jerk reaction to shock.
He grins, showing me his sharp set of chompers.“Yes, I am for fucking real.”
This just goes to show how extreme the heat is here. Even long nights can’t protect them from drought. I breathe in, and I know that glitter is in my lungs.
I scratch my head as something between my thighs pound. “If that’s the case, we need to get some work done. Scope the people. You guys don’t sleep, right?”
“Ido not sleep. The others rest.”
“Oh, is that because you’re the chief of the island?”
There’s a sinister air in the way he stares at me.“In a way, yes.”
I bite the inside of my cheek in annoyance. He is being deliberately evasive. “So, can we visit them tonight or not?”
He drops his hair, the tail-tip of it landing against his loin cloth. Without a warning, he stalks toward me, his eyes glinting with mischief. Automatically, I back away. The panic makes me immune to my ankle’s pain, but as the bed hits the back of my thighs, I can’t help but fall helplessly.
He falls along with me, locking me between his arms.
My heart skips a beat then flutters.
“If you ask nicely, we can.”He is teasing.
I am a sputtering idiot. I could have put him in his place, demand he take me to them. But his proximity is intoxicating.
“P-please, Datu..?”
He blinks slowly.“On your knees,”he commands.
I can’t fight the authority in his voice. I’m drunk in his presence, soaked. Drenched in pools of wine that’s Datu.
“Are you for fucking real?” I squirm but the fight in me is feeble.
His grin just grows wider.“I am always for fucking real.”
I must be dead, or dying and having a ferocious fever dream. He backs away from me and crosses his arms, waiting.
“I have time,”he says, devilishly low.
“I’m injured,” I counter weakly.
“Not for me, you aren’t.”
Unable to help myself, I drop to my knees. The call is instinctual. I’m a small needle pulled by the Magnetic North.
“Your hands, Xiaoyu. On the ground, yes. Yesssss.”
My skin is on fire, my nipples puckering underneath my ripped camisole. The blanket falls off me, and I’m there, crawling with single-minded purpose. To revere Datu on my hands and knees. I want to skin him with my tongue, rough and violent.
God. What is wrong with me?
My teeth are aching as he licks his lips. Behind him, something tall starts to grow. It’s made of black stone blanketed by climber vines. It has taken the form of a tall throne. If one can bloom,this does. It’s an inflorescence of coiled dionaea, the snap-trap an alluring deep, deep red…
He crooks his finger at me.“Closer.”
