Poison Tongue

by Nash Summers

  “What the fuck were you doing?” I shoved him hard, but his feet were planted in place. He barely swayed. His arms hung heavily down at his sides.

  “Levi.”

  He’d never said my name like that before. Something in his voice. Or maybe it was nothing. A lack of something in his voice, something missing.

  In the water something brushed against my ankle, once, twice—then the water came alive with writhing, slick black snakes, their golden eyes like a thousand and one hazard lights spreading out in different directions. They began wrapping around my legs, slithering up my thighs.

  “A gun, Monroe? How can you be so selfish?”

  “Selfish?” His jaw tightened. “I’m doing this for you, Levi. Whenever I’m around, you crack, you crumble, you begin to break apart.”

  “But if you leave, all the pieces of me will blow away!”

  He pointed toward the horizon. “Go home.”

  “No.”

  Monroe grabbed my arm. He wrenched me back, tugging me toward the house. This time I let him drag me along. The gun was no longer in the waistband of his jeans. He was leaving the swamp and the gun behind. I would let him take me anywhere.

  He wrenched open the back door and shoved me inside. We both dripped water from our soaked clothing, our hair, our skin. I turned toward him, put my hands out to stop him, but he didn’t let up. He pushed me backward down the hall. I tried to calm him, but he was transfixed, staring into my eyes, his jaw working, his fists clenched.

  By the time we reached the living room, my heart thrashed in my chest. Monroe breathed deeply, once, put his hands over his face. When he pulled his hands back, his eyes were no longer the clear blue color I knew them to be. His eyes were dark like burned coal. Snakes slithered around him. His ankles, his waist, his neck. I’d blink and they’d be gone. Blink again and they would reappear.

  Monroe pressed into me, shoving me backward until my back hit the wall. I stared up into his dark, soulless eyes. And those eyes glistened down at me.

  His knuckles brushed my stomach gently. His hand moved higher, his knuckles dragging against the wet fabric of my shirt. He paused at my throat, reached under my shirt, and palmed the amulet in his hand. He looked at it for a moment, cocking his head to the side. And then he yanked it hard, breaking it off my neck and throwing it to the ground.

  “I hate that fucking thing,” he said darkly. His voice sank an octave. Or maybe I thought it had because of the snake wrapped around his neck. “It burns when I touch it.”

  He leaned forward and kissed me, slowly, deeply, languidly, as though every moment until the end of time belonged to him and he’d decided to share it with me. His tongue pressed inside my mouth. Hot, cool, wet. My body went limp. I closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around his neck.

  Not a moment later, he grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me, slammed me against the wall hard enough to hurt. My teeth clanked together. My cheek pressed roughly against the wood panels.

  He crowded me, pressed his body against mine so there wasn’t a place we weren’t touching. He pressed hot kisses to the side of my neck as he reached down and pulled the hem of my shirt over my head.

  “Levi,” he purred into my ear.

  His hands went for my jeans. With one hand he pulled open the buttons on the fly. With his other he pushed my jeans and underwear down to my knees, leaving me bare. I stepped out of my jeans, and Monroe instantly kicked them away.

  Monroe whispered my name into my hair. He ran his hand down my flank, my hip, over my asscheek. I shivered and pressed my forehead against the wall. He kicked out my feet, forcing them apart with his own.

  He leaned forward, bit down hard on the flesh where my neck meets my shoulder. I hissed at the sting, squeezed my eyes shut, told myself not to rut against him.

  “Levi,” he whispered again, his lips against my ear. “You, with your spells and your ghosts and your fucking charms.”

  I groaned when he reached around and grabbed the weight of me in his hand. I was hard already, painfully so, waiting for nothing but the coarse feel of his hand around me. He pumped me up and down, up and down. His breath exhaled hot against the back of my neck.

  The feel of scales against my bare back did nothing to quell the thirst I had for him. If anything, it propelled me forward. The snake, his soul, brushed against my skin. It was ice-cold and dry to the touch. It felt foreign and strange as it weaved around me until its head peered over my shoulder and then brushed against my throat.

  “Even my soul wants you,” Monroe whispered.

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  The snake coiled snuggly around my neck. It squeezed, pinched, enough to make me see a dark sky full of bursting speckles of light.

  Behind me, the sound of Monroe’s zipper. There was a bit of shuffling, rustling. I kept my open palms flat against the wall and my eyes squeezed shut.

  I gasped quietly as Monroe’s cool, slick fingers pressed against me, and then into me. He murmured almost unintelligible words into my ear. Sweet promises, dirty things he wanted to do to me. Even dirtier things he wanted me to do to him.

  He opened me for him carefully, unhurriedly. We were both gasping for air. It felt like time itself was about to fall over the edge of existence and all we had left were these few shared moments together. My skin sparked everywhere he touched. It burned so hot, I could almost taste ash in my mouth.

  His fingers pressed far inside me. I could feel his knuckles against the tightness of my body. In, out. In, out. A slow tempo he set for us both. When he curled his fingers and pressed against the bundle of nerves he’d been searching for, my body quaked.

  When he pulled his fingers back, I had a slew of swear words waiting for him on the tip of my tongue. He reached up and laced his fingers roughly through my hair. I turned my head to the side to look at him. His gaze was on my profile, his eyes still unimaginably dark.

  I was about to say something but swallowed the words the moment I felt the smooth head of his cock press against me. The snake around my neck coiled tighter. Its tail flicked against my lower back, my hip bone. I bit my lip.

  The coolness of the wall pressed against my chest, but Monroe’s warm skin against my back burned hot, even through the fabric of his T-shirt.

  As he began to slowly shove inside me, he said, “I’ll never let anyone hurt you, Levi.”

  “I know,” I replied breathlessly.

  He licked up the back of my neck, pressed his lips to my ear. “No one but me.” The second the last word left his lips, he thrust all the way inside. I cried out from the roughness of it, the fullness of it, the way it felt to have him buried deep inside.

  We shared heavy breaths, pausing a moment. Monroe pulled back and pushed back in again. The tight pressure, the friction, all of it set my heart aflutter.

  I made a noise that made him chuckle, his lips pressed against the back of my neck. He set a leisurely rhythm between us. That easy push and pull. I couldn’t move if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to. Every part of me wanted to stay right there with Monroe as our bodies heated and our breathing grew hasty.

  The curse on his soul didn’t matter then. Nothing mattered then but him and me and the way we fit together, his dark soul and my ill-tempered one. When Monroe touched me, I didn’t care about the darkness of the swamp or how deep it was. The world could have it, and it could have the world. I didn’t need them any longer.

  I had him. I only wanted him.

  “You’re so gorgeous.” He reached around to the front of me, grabbed the backs of my hands with his palms, laced our fingers together, and pressed them hard against the wall. “So gorgeous and so unexpected.”

  “I’m going to save your soul.” I felt a tightening in my throat.

  “Oh, darlin’,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Not now that I have you.”

  I squeezed his fingers entwined with my own. When his name came out as a whisper on my lips, his pace quickened, his breathing rushed.

  He shifted th
e way he stood, changing the angle somehow. The moment he had, with each sweet press inside me, I could feel the head of his cock rub against the place that stole my breath away. A small gasp escaped each time he pulled back.

  Monroe chanted my name, rested his forehead on my shoulder.

  When he came, he immediately let go of my hands. He wrapped his thick arms around me, crushing me against him like he couldn’t fathom even an inch of our bodies not touching. I felt him pulsate inside me as I listened to the stark silence of his pleasure and then the ragged, uneven breaths that followed.

  He shuddered once, then twice. Releasing me for a moment, he spun me around so I was facing him. He crowded me, looked down into my eyes the moment his calloused hand wrapped around my cock and squeezed.

  My own breaking point was so close. I knew he could tell because he reached out one hand and tangled his fingers in my hair. The other, slick already, pumped me up and down, up and down. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back, hitting the wall.

  There was nothing in this great universe but the feel of Monroe’s warm body pressed so securely against mine, and the way his thumb traced the small slit at the tip of my cock.

  Monroe said my name the moment before I broke apart. I stared up at him, into those cloudless eyes of his.

  I could’ve wept from it then, what I saw when I looked into his eyes. So much darkness, so much evil. And yet, there was still the glimmer of something that shone so damn bright, just in those moments when I needed to see it most.

  I came all over his hand, and my bare stomach. His hand slowed as he watched my face, my throat as I breathed heavily. When I’d finally fallen back down to earth, he did something so unexpected, an almost silent sob slipped out of my mouth.

  Monroe hugged me.

  It was so simple. He wrapped his arms around me, pressed his entire body to mine, and hugged me. He said nothing and didn’t move for so long I might’ve thought he’d fallen asleep had it not been for the pounding of his heart I could feel at my collarbone.

  That was how the volcano of us erupted. Hot, heavy, slow. And then wrapped in each other’s arms, we told each other silent stories of understandings, thanks, and companionship with something as simple as a hug.

  Chapter 16

  WE STOOD together next to a riverbank. The water flowed easily down the stream, splashing up against the sides of the muddy ground, the rocks that lined the shore. Cerulean, impossibly blue water glistened and glimmered.

  The sky was a brushstroke of yellow and red against a pale beige backdrop. Heavy white clouds hung lazily in the sky. Birds flew overhead, tweeting as they flew past us. A gentle wind ran through my hair, brushing against the soft fabric of my clothing, tugging at it.

  On our side of the river, behind us, stood a forest of tall, dark trees. On the opposing side, nothing existed but clear, green grass as far as the eye could see.

  She looked younger than when she’d passed away, at least by a handful of years. Her long, blond hair fluttered in the wind. She watched me out of the corner of her eye, even as I stared out into the wide-open field.

  “I miss you,” I told her.

  She smiled. I could feel it. “I miss you more.”

  “You were right, Gran.”

  “I know.”

  I turned to her and grinned. “You didn’t ask what you were right about.”

  “I’m always right about everything, Levi. Thought you’d know that by now.” Her eyes twinkled with laughter.

  After a few moments of silence, I said, “I’ve met him—the devil. Although I think the only evil part of him is the curse on his soul.”

  She nodded as though it was what she was expecting to hear. “Can’t let him go, can you?”

  “No,” I admitted. My shoulders slumped. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding in. “But this curse, it’s killing him.”

  “There might be a way. But I don’t want to tell you. I’m afraid for you, for what helping this man might cost you.”

  “I think losing him might cost me more, Gran.”

  Again she nodded. “I was in love once. Young and stupid, and so very in love. With a witch doctor I met in Alabama. His name was Hank, but preferred to be called Mao Bristol. Every time I was around him, I thought he was driving me insane. And whenever I wasn’t around him, I thought I’d go insane from missing the crazy bastard.”

  She laughed, but the look in her eyes was sorrowful.

  “What happened?”

  She waved her hand at me dismissively. “Passed before his time. But what I’m saying is that I understand. Love—who can rationalize it?”

  “If anyone can, it would be you. I used to think you put the stars in the sky.”

  “I did,” she replied, deadpan. “But love is an even greater feat. Far beyond my reach.”

  The wind began to pick up. It pressed against my face, through my hair, tickling my eyelashes. I closed my eyes.

  “Levi,” Gran said. “In my spell book that your mama keeps. At the end of the book, there’s a passage. Read it. And be careful.”

  “Thank you, Gran.”

  “And make sure Ward is with you. You’ll need him.”

  I turned to her and wrapped her in my arms. I couldn’t feel her—not the touch of her skin, the warmth of her embrace, the tickle of her hair against my face.

  But even in death, I knew she was still there for me. And I knew she always would be.

  “I love you, Gran,” I whispered into her ear.

  “I love you more.”

  WE HADN’T spoken a word to one another since waking, but each knew the other was awake. I could feel Monroe’s hot breath against my hair, hear the pattering speed of his heart.

  The air felt lighter now than it had before. Something unspoken passed between us. Maybe it was how I’d come to the realization of how foolish I’d been. Gran told me I’d fall for a man like Monroe, and still I tried to change the stars. I knew what Gran said was gospel, yet I’d still tried to run from fate. I couldn’t run from that pull I had toward him any more than I could run from my own shadow.

  I rolled over and looked at him, unsurprised to find his clear blue eyes already intent on me. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  We’d collapsed last night. Breathing hard, barely able to move. Monroe had pulled out a few blankets and laid them down in front of the unlit fireplace. Falling into his arms felt as natural as waking. He’d lain on the blankets, looked up at me with sleep-lidded eyes, and smiled.

  That was it, that huge crack of thunder that rang in my ears. It hadn’t been the times he’d saved me from drowning myself in the swamp, or that sweet, hot first time we’d touched in front of the fireplace, or the way the gravity around him felt so damn strong to me.

  It hadn’t been any of those things. It had been his easy, natural smile. The way he spread his arms wide-open, calling me to him.

  That was it. And no number of amulets or curses or hexes would ever convince me that Monroe Poirier’s soul wasn’t worth saving.

  “What are you thinking about?” Monroe whispered. He leaned forward, kissed the tip of my nose.

  “Your soul,” I whispered back.

  He said nothing for a moment, just reached out and wrapped his finger around a strand of my hair. “That ain’t a good thing to think about.”

  I took one of his hands in my own, pressed butterfly-light kisses to the tips of his fingers. “Yes, it is.”

  Monroe kissed me. Slowly, deeply. And I kissed him back. I pressed my body closer to his, shifting under the blankets.

  “I bet your soul is the moonlight,” Monroe said softly. “I bet it’s the way a calm river looks when it’s soaked in moonlight.”

  I grinned. “I don’t think so.”

  He gave me another moment of thought. “Well, then I bet it’s something lippy. Maybe a Chihuahua. Yappy little things.”

  I punched his shoulder. He winced and laughed.

  “I already know what my soul look
s like,” I informed him.

  His eyebrows rose. “You do?”

  Nodding, I said, “You do too.”

  He reached out and wrapped his arms around me. He placed a kiss to my forehead, my cheek, my neck. “Is it a sunflower?”

  “No.”

  “Is it an owl?”

  “Nope.”

  “I give up. What is it?”

  “Ward. Ward is my soul.”

  Monroe pulled back. His eyebrows knitted, the corners of his mouth pulled downward into a deep frown. “What?”

  I rolled onto my back, put my hands over my face, and laughed. “I knew your face would look like that when I told you. I must’ve imagined it a hundred times.”

  “Wait,” he said. He sat up, leaning on his elbow to face me, the blanket slipping down his chest and pooling near his waist. “I don’t understand. How can another person be your soul?”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Ward ain’t a person, Monroe. He’s my soul.”

  “I don’t… understand.”

  I sat up, turned to him. “No one sees him but me and Silvi. And you.” I thought for a moment. “And Miss Annamae. And Mama knows he’s there. She can talk to him. I think he might appear as something different to her.”

  Monroe stared at me blankly. “Your soul is a ghost?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think of him as a ghost. I think of him as my soul. He was born into me, and I into him. There’s never been a moment of my life he wasn’t part of me.”

  “So.” Monroe watched me quizzically. “Why is your soul able to talk to you? And other people? And how can he just… walk around?”

  “Why is the universe infinite? Or finite?”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I thought he hated me.”

  “You’ve grown on him.”

  “Is that because I’ve grown on you?”

  “Of course.”

  Monroe leaned into me, wrapped me in his arms. He pulled us down so he lay on his back with me against his chest.

  “The man with a ghost for a soul,” he said. “Not sure I deserve you.”