Snow

23 | such a slut

❝we sleep with each others friends,
sneak around, fall apart...
and come back for more.❞

❘❘

"TAKE A SHOT."

I hook my fingers into the collar of his shirt and reel him closer. "A shot?"

A tipsy grin chases the high, boyish and dizzy in an intoxicating, self-destructive sort of way. I can't deny that I love it. "Por favor, mamita," Rio drawls softly, barely a whisper under the buzz and hum of conversation that traps us together. "Por mí."

For him? What makes him think I'd do anything for him?

My brows raise. "I'm already three drinks in, papi. I could go for something a little... stronger."

"Mmm." Our lips meet. The kiss is hot, clashing with the room temperature of our newest escapade. Sitting at another bar in Bushwick with an open tab. All the money we can steal, all the money we can blow on booze. "You really do always want more, Neva."

"It's a curse." I tease his bottom lip between my teeth. "¿Puedes darme más?"

"We do a shot," he breathes into the kiss, "and then we do a line. ¿Sí?"

Rio pulls away gently—with glazed eyes and a dazed smile.

It's so easy.

We waste money on shitty shots of tequila, and we waste the morning in a bathroom stall. We snort and sniff and string together sentences that don't make sense. We say things that I don't remember the next minute.

We shake and we sigh and we storm through a snowstorm in a soft, sensual sunrise.

We fuck in a bar bathroom.

And when we stumble to the sidewalk, the words just keep falling and fading and fighting to find real meaning. I hear him, but I can't understand. There are some things I don't think I'll ever understand.

"I didn't really want to," Rio admits in a timid tone, his words slurring together. "I was hoping you wouldn't be there."

I trip, but he catches me. "¿De que estás hablando?"

"Julian wanted me to do it."

Vaguely, I know who Julian is, but I don't care.

"I pulled a gun to scare him," he says so fucking softly that the words kiss my cheeks... like a long, loving stroke of a secreto. "I wasn't going to shoot him."

I peer up at him. In a watery whisper, withering through the early morning light and caught in the early fall breeze, Rio blurs. "Really?"

"Nah. He owes us money."

Us.

My brain latches onto that word; my heart hiccups with the reminder. It feels like dull devotion, a breathless, bleeding promise that I'm not alone.

I cling to him...and I don't let go.

When we crash through my apartment door in a mess of moans and murmurs, somehow tearing into a second wave of want, I can't let go. My nails dig into his shoulders, desperate to climb under his skin and live in his veins, swimming like watered down blood in another person.

Every kiss peels an article of clothing away; every gasp pushes us to the back of the apartment. I drop something, he yanks at a hem, we rip away from reality, we rise, and then we descend into dusky darkness. It envelopes us like warm sheets, billowing up and burying us alive. There's no way to describe the feeling of cotton on raw skin, just like there's no way to describe the euphoric taste of nothing.