Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

need them with his body heat. I rest my face against his shoulder, close my eyes and try to sleep. It takes a long time, and from his breathing and small movements, I’d guess that he doesn’t find sleep any faster than I do.

I wake to his mouth on mine. His arms tight around me and his hand in my hair. “Sweetness,” he says between kisses. “You awake?”

“Muh-huh.” I crack open an eye. Still dark in my bedroom. I definitely don’t have to get up if it’s still dark.

Look at me, he says into my mind.

I guess he remembered.

I stretch. Brush his dreadlocks over his shoulder as I wrap my arm around his neck, Flex my legs against his. And finally, look up into his eyes. Those dark eyes; the pupil shimmering with a trace of neon.

“Hi,” I whisper.

Don’t ‘hi’ me this morning. I didn’t call you a whore. You know I didn’t. Why the fuck did you decide to pick a fight with me when I was that confused?

I shove his chest and scoot away from him in the bed. “It sounded like ‘whore,’ Jou! Why would you decide to pick a fight with me now when you know I’m not a morning person?”

“’Cause we gotta get this straight,” he growls. He goes up on one elbow and glowers at me, eyes blazing so brightly I have to squint into the glare. “When I say somethin’ you don’t understand, fuckin’ ask me!”

“How about you don’t go using words I don’t understand, which sound exactly like insults!” I scoot back another few inches and pull the blankets over me. He doesn’t get to see me naked when we’re fighting, either. “Your post-whatever-amnesia is great, Jou. Very selective—”

“I don’t like it, either,” he growls. “Why d’you think I don’t come? Ain’t ‘cause I don’t want to. You make me need to sow you – worse’n any human I’ve ever been with – an’ then you use it against me when I fuckin’ do.”

“Sow me? I’m not a field, Jou! If you don’t like it, don’t come—” I snap my mouth shut when I hear how selfish that sounds. Am I really that mean? No, he’s just making me crazy. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I won’t anymore.” He turns his head away, letting his dreadlocks fall over his face. The lightshow dies to a faint glow. He rolls onto his front and props his head in his hands. Rubs his face.

“Jou, I didn’t mean that.” I touch his shoulder tentatively, and when he doesn’t shrug me off, rub my hand up and down his back. “I didn’t mean it. You should be able to come. I’ll just—” I don’t know what I’ll just. Damn. “I’ll work on a memory charm for you or something. I don’t know. But you should be able to come. It’s not fair on you.”

“I got a memory charm.” He turns his head and looks at the headboard. “Fuck, why didn’t I see it last night? I’m gonna have to paint arrows all around the room.”

I glance at the headboard, and the wall behind it. The wall he evidently wrote something important on, which I can’t see even with my Sight. The wall he had his back to all night. “Sorry, I guess I should have told you to read it. I can’t see it, you know. I didn’t know if it was still there.”

“It’ll be there until the wall’s torn down. You can’t see it ‘cause it ain’t written in your spit.”

“You wrote on my wall with spit? Gross, Jou.”

He chuckles. “Coulda done it with come, sweetness. Though you mighta been able to see that. Dries kinda shiny.”

Disgusting. “Will you tell me what it says?”

“No. Wouldn’t make any sense to you anyway. Like I said, it’s a memory charm. Just a way for me to find my way back. ‘Sides, you said you didn’t want to know my true-name.”

“Is that what’s written there?” I ask. It strikes me that’s a dangerous thing to have written on my bedroom wall. Just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean no one else can.

“Yeah.” He reaches out and hooks his hand around my waist. Pulls me across the bed and tucks me under him. “Next time, if I don’t look at that wall first thing, you remind me.”

At least there will be a next time. “Okay.”

He shakes his dreadlocks back over his shoulders and looks down into my eyes. “I didn’t like that. Wakin’ up and remembering how you looked at me. How cold you were after. How you yelled at me to get out of you—”

I frame his face with my hands. “I didn’t yell.”

“I didn’t like it, any of it. I wanted to sleep inside you.”

I can’t imagine how sore that would leave me; I’d better brew some more healing potions. “That’s a really bad word, Jou.”

“Hlore’s just a human who’s offered their soul to a demon, sweetness, nothing more.”

I tug on one of his dreads. “That doesn’t actually make it any better, given how I feel about that particular subject. Can we drop it? I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry I didn’t remind you about that wall, and I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.” Although I can’t see reacting any other way to being called a whore, whether it’s my body or my soul I’m selling. Whatever. “Let’s forget about it, okay?”

He leans in and kisses my forehead. Yeah, okay.

“Friends?” I ask, before I realize what a stupid question that is.

He looks down at me for a moment. “Never seen any point in bein’ friends with a human.” A smile slowly brightens his dark eyes. “But if that’s the way in with you, I’ll be your b.f.f.”

I shake my head at him.

His fingers trace my cheek, slip down my neck to my breast. He traces a familiar pattern on my skin, and my skin heats in response.

“Jou?”

“Yeah?”

“Um, didn’t this end badly last time?”

He chuckles. “Just means we need more practice, sweetness.”

His restored humor sets the tone