Page 103 of The Gathering
“Do you have any idea what this thing wants from you? What it has beenbeggingme totake.”
“Take?” she echoed, then shot up her index finger as if setting her conditions. “You cannottake.”
“This thing doesn’tlistento reason, Hope,” he argued.
“Well, it’s listened all this time,” she countered.
“And I’m not the only one not fit for you to conduct your proper check-up.”
“Me?” she asked, ready to laugh.
“Yes, you,” he swore. “Would you like to know what my gifts have shown me about you?”
She became slightly guarded but couldn’t resist. “Yes.”
“Thatyouare not just free, you’rereckless.”
She sighed and sagged and crossed her arms.
“Not impressed? Let’s go with from the moment we began speaking, you’ve been obliviously aroused.”
Thatwidened her eyes.
“And my conditionseesit,tastesit in the air,smellsit. And your logic lusting? It’sliteral.”
Her mouth dropped.
“Oh yeah,” he confirmed lowly, his lust a thousand degrees now. “Youspreadfor it. You getoffto it. You fucking orgasm to it. And I watch until I’m out of my mind withjealousy.And thatoh shitlook you’re wearing on your beautiful face right now is literally making me want to…holyfuck, I just said all that.”
He headed off the porch, pulling his phone out as Hope ran past him and blocked his path with both palms up and aimed at him. “Wait!” she said when he didn’t slow.
He stopped at her hands, and she snatched his phone and put it behind her, breathless, eyes cast down. “Don’t go, please. I heard everything you said and… I’ve never heard anything so… devastatingly… shocking and…accurateand I can see now that my freedomisreckless because it hurt you, I should have… if I had known…” She finally looked up at him, her face flush. “I would have been…”
“You can’thidefrom me anymore than I can hide from you.”
She slowly returned his phone to him. “I don’t think it’s a reason to run off.”
Fuck him she needed to help—sheneededto beneeded.
“I can’t guarantee your safety if you attempt anything with me.”
Excitement surged in her transparent face. “You wouldneverhurt me,” she said, tossing out the absurdity.
“Not in the way you’re thinking.”
Her exuberance slowly dimmed as she considered. “So your…diseaseismakingyou want me,” she muttered, soundingverydisappointed. But not defeated.
“I know that the craving I have for you isviciousandperfect. The second you mentioned meeting others like me I decided I’d never bring you, because I will never want to share what’s only mine. It’s selfish, it’s violent, it’s psychotic. Why the fuck do you have that look?”
Her face snapped up, bewildered and dazed.
“You look as though I described your deepest fantasy!”
“Well, I… don’t see anything wrong with being vicious and perfectly obsessed over the one you… merge with.”
“Psychotic too?”
She shifted a little and held her arms, looking between them. “Psychotic is a tricky term and subjective to specificities. Passion can be volatile and explosive and… possessive without being psychotic.”
