Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

“Time for what?” She sniffed over me with great delicacy for such a huge creature, jaws parting as she inhaled my scent over her tongue, like a cat. “Mmm… you smell really good. Like food, and boy, and… mmm… all the things you were doing with Suri.”

“Okay. You’re in heat.” I drew a deep breath to steady myself, but in doing so, breathed in whatever it was being released through her skin. “Fuck. What do I do? I’m not sure a night of snuggling is a good idea.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to break your promise to me, now would you?” She uttered a drawn-out rattling sound, more resonant than a growl. It made the hair on my arms stand up.

I put my hands up. “You’re in heat, Tidbit. You’re wound up because I’m wound up, I’m wound up because you’re wound up, and-”

She snorted a cloud of hot, iron-tinged air in my face, then lowered her head and padded backwards on the dark stones. As she did, I noticed that her eyes were no longer violet. They were a blazing, glowing molten silver, and they were utterly fixated on me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she was about to launch herself into the air, run off crying, or eat me.

She did none of those things. Instead, she reared up tall on her hind legs, concentrated, and shifted down. Maybe it was the booze and the lingering high, but the way her body dissolved into a shower of kaleidoscopic light was abnormally mesmerizing, especially when the light cleared and left her standing nude in the center of the courtyard. For a moment, she was perfectly outlined by the glowing haze of mana, and I felt something deep and primal stir to life behind my eyes. Karalti seemed to sense it. She rolled her head to look at me over her shoulder, lips parted, eyes hooded.

“You know what to do,” she said. “I can feel the way you feel, right? Tonight, I felt what you were doing with Suri. Your heart was pounding so fast. I could hear it while I was sitting there, trembling, while that idiot Soma talked and talked… but the whole time, I was thinking about you.”

“You uh... you might want to put some clothes on.” I drifted toward her, glancing toward the lit towers ringing the courtyard.

“Oh, I might, may I?” Karalti flipped her hair back over her shoulders and lifted her chest up as I drew closer. She was a whole other creature to Suri: small and slim and lithe, small-breasted, her skin pale and pearly. Her being in human form did nothing to dispel the cloud of pheromones engulfing me like a hurricane. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d pulled Karalti into my arms and buried my nose in the heavy, silky length of her hair. And once I started drawing deep breaths of her, I couldn't stop. She squeaked in surprise and tried to push away, but I caught her, roughly, and pressed her back against my chest.

“Hector?” She moaned as I clutched the back of her thigh with an armored hand and squeezed, hard enough that the moan turned to a gasp. Her head tipped forward, sending her hair swirling over my nose and mouth. A dizzying wave of heat flushed through my skin, and for one breathless moment, I was sure I was about to compulsively strip off my clothes and take her right here, right now, right in the middle of the fucking courtyard. It was pure lust: selfish, compulsive, and unstoppable. The trance was broken when she suddenly shoved back from me, tearing herself out of my hands.

“Oh my god. Karalti. I am so...” My apology was cut short when I saw her - really saw her. Her lips were flushed, skin peppered with goosebumps, her muscles taut with excitement. She was panting, chest heaving. Her eyes blazed molten silver, wild and feral. “So…”

“Catch me.” Her lips peeled back, and she snarled at me like a wolf as she backed up a few steps, light and graceful on her bare feet.

Karalti turned and sprinted off in a cloud of intoxicating perfume, and the desire to run surged back into my awareness. Before I realized what I was doing – before I had the sense to stop myself – I took off after her at a sprint.

My dragon laughed mockingly as she vaulted up onto some rubble, then sprung up to the shattered castle wall. She pulled herself up with inhuman speed and strength, pattered along the edge of it with the certainty of a cat and burst forward as I half-Jumped, half-teleported up behind her. The dragon was absolutely fearless off the ground, leaping out of my grasp onto a scaffolding rail and swinging herself up onto the rickety catwalk like a gymnast. I scrambled up after her, right into a cloud of lingering scent. Heart laboring, pulse pounding in my neck, all the hand-wringing I’d done over the ins and outs while Karalti had been growing up was shoved aside by the pure bull-grade testosterone surging through my veins. The catwalk shuddered and swayed under my boots as I put my head down and ran as hard and fast as I could, trying to head her off before she reached the shadowed vault of the tower ahead.

“Come on, lancer boy! I thought you could jump?” Giggling with delight, Karalti bounded from the edge of the scaffolding like a cat. She leaped to the ledge, looking back at me with an expression of wild, unadulterated lust, just before she vanished into the darkness of the tower.

I growled, following my nose when my eyes failed me. My boot slipped on the ledge, but I stumbled forward and, on pure instinct, vaulted into the first open window and followed the flick of Karalti’s hair around the corner. She bowled past a shocked patrolman, who flattened himself against the wall as I shoved by and dashed forward into