The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 12

A light touch to my forehead wiped away the beads of perspiration that patterned my skin, drifting into my hair and tenderly stroked away my nightmares. For a moment, I was home again; another place, another person. It was a brief blissful grasp of a time that no longer existed, if it had ever existed at all.

My slumber had been fathoms deep as if ghostly arms had dragged me under and held me there, far, far away from the surface and I simply did not have the energy to fight them. The blood that should have satiated my hunger had, in fact, exhausted me, my body decimated by four nights of incessant gorging on my victims, never feeling satisfied, never feeling that it was enough to make me finally stop. I could have gone on and on and the knowledge of that nestled uncomfortably in the back of my mind, like the growing, pulsating egg sack of a spider that you might find tucked away in the darkest recesses of your attic.

I had, during brief interludes, been able to scratch at the upper limits of consciousness, breaking through and taking blurred snapshots through heavy lids that would not let me remain awake for more than a few seconds each time. And each time that I had opened my eyes, Harper had been there, just as he was now, lying on his side and facing me, his hands smoothing back the damp hair that stuck to my temples, his fingers soothing skin that burned as if the sun raged overhead.

His emerald eyes never left me, blazing a trail across my face, his brow wrinkled with anxiety and his mouth set in a tight, grim line. I moaned and shifted towards him on the mattress; closing my eyes again and feeling his warm breath tickle my eyelids. Bunching up his shirt in my clenched fists, I held onto him, focusing only on his touch as his fingers brushed the nape of my neck, tracing the contours of my shoulders and slid down my back, making me shiver involuntarily.

I flinched when he kissed me, not expecting the softness of his lips as his mouth moved across my forehead and down my nose, finding my mouth and sucking gently on my bottom lip. His hands were firm on the small of my back as he pulled me against him and he held me there for a moment, his face touching mine as we lay still, just listening to each other's soft breaths. Finally I could stand no more and opened my eyes, wondering if I would surface fully to find someone else had taken his place; the intimacy of his touch more alarming than any hit or bite endured during my time in his basement pit. But it was still Harper looking back at me, still Harper's hands holding me and still Harper's mouth on my skin.

I crushed my mouth against his and his body stiffened as if he didn't quite know how to react and for a moment, I thought that he might pull away and leave me dejected and burning up on the thin make-shift bed. Soon I felt him respond, his tongue suddenly moving with mine, more insistent now, more like the Harper I had come to know. The hands that had touched me gently now pushed me onto my back and he rose above me, straddling me and tugging on my dirty t-shirt which he deftly removed and tossed over one shoulder. Unbuttoning my jeans, he roughly yanked them down my thighs, almost pulling me off the mattress with them and he discarded them too, looking down at me as I lay underneath him in just my underwear while he remained fully clothed. There was a time when I would have felt vulnerable like this, laying half-naked and at his mercy as he surveyed me with that dark, predatory look in his eyes. Instead I just grinned and hooked my legs around his waist pulling him against me and enjoying the roughness of denim against my thighs and his shirt buttons scratching at the skin on my stomach.

He kissed me hard now, his teeth nipping at my lip and chin, before finding my throat. Surprisingly he didn't bite down, instead he travelled lower, his tongue trailing down my chest until he reached my breast, releasing it from the cup of my bra and covering the nipple entirely. He sucked hard, just below the cusp of pain and I gasped, clutching at his hair and holding him tight as his tongue rolled over it again and again. When he moved over to the other breast, I sucked in a breath as his teeth pierced the fleshy part, enough to draw blood and his tongue lapped at the small wound, while encircling my nipple with his thumb, already so achingly hard under his touch.