𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐓 ❅ (𝐠𝐱𝐠)

20| carrot cake

Lily still did not come to sense the figure who's towering shadow now loomed over her, that was, until their unforeseen yet merciful hand had become placed on her shoulder.

Immediate terror perturbed all the nerves under her skin, and naturally, her body released a searing rush of adrenaline to course through her bloodstream. She felt her heart sink—her mind automatically consumed by the most ominous of prospects. And that potent fear for the worst transpired into a piercing shriek as she spun herself around to discover the formidable being.

But when her eyes, widened by sheer trepidation, flashed up and upon an intimate smirk of luscious dark pink lips, that feeling subsided, and was then replaced by a turmoil that warped her brain. And it was through those same lips, a brief dark chuckle then emanated—one so fiendish yet heavenly pleasant to her ears.

"Miss?" she rasped in a soft murmur, her disquieted heart continuing to pound immensely in her chest as she then attempted to moisten her thirstful mouth with a subtle swallow.

Looking down upon the visibly bewildered and frightened girl, her eyes large and glazed with pink lips set in a slight part, Ms Valentine seized a sort of entertainment from it. It was inherently cruel of her, startling the girl like that, but her reaction excited a heinous part of her that lurked within the depths of her mind.

"Oh my. Am I truly that abhorrent to look at?"

As the woman puckered her sultry lips in a forged pout, Lily couldn't help but admire for a moment—the soft glow of her skin as the subtle warm hues of the nearest lamp post kissed the high points of her face, until her eyebrows then threaded together and a small pout too formed on her lips, but the difference was, hers was real rather than merely playful.

"You scared the shit out of me," she complained, placing a hand on her pattering heart to exemplify the scare of her life that she had just experienced. But her efforts to derive some pity and repentance from the tall woman were in vain as a widening grin was all she received in return. "I thought I was about to get murdered."

"Maybe I am a murderer," the woman suggested mischievously, her brow quirking up as she began in a fluid saunter around to her side of the bench, "after all, I do recall you saying that you wouldn't be surprised if I took your life."

Lily's languid gaze pursued her most curiously as she circled her; the tall woman's cat-like eyes of a shrewd green unfailingly obsessing over her as she progressed around. And when her boundless legs clad in sheer tights ceased their fluent movement directly before her, Lily's eyes trailed up her every curve to the enchanting face that beheld her.

In the brief silence she returned, she worried that the precarious withdrawal determined her translucent to the perceptive woman. So as she rolled her eyes and turned her mouth to the cigarette clasped between her fingers, she took a long drag in hopes the thick smoke would asphyxiate her unsteady heart to a wearied quiet, and complained once more in a childish temperament. "You almost made me drop my cigarette."

"I deem that more a favour, sweetheart," the woman replied in gentle breathy tones, straight brunette tresses shifting around her face as she tilted her head in a pique of curiosity. Her eyes nimbly flickered over the girl's petite stature which mildly expressed its affections from the cold. "What are you doing out here?"

Furrowing her dark eyebrows together, Lily's mind immediately shut off her entire body to freeze up in defence. Her raw cheeks swelling with a deep pink hue from the nickname the woman occasionally used, she pulled her knees closer to herself—pressing them further into her chest as if to harbour the most sacred of truths that lay upon her heart. "I could ask you the same thing," she challenged, yet meekly with a voice that was soft and drowsy.