nightfall || minsung

Chapter 16

He grimaced as if he were jealous. I smiled back, hugging him gently, and waited until he caught his breath.

Minho cleared his throat. "All right then—"

I kissed him again before he could finish. Maybe I was being overzealous — his lips shaped themselves around mine, yielded under the pressure. He didn't seem to mind. His face was warm and his hands were warm and he was warm. He couldn't imagine what his every touch felt like when I'd been a block of ice surrounded by blocks of ice for a century.

But then he parted his lips, and his honeyed taste flooded into my mouth.

And his blood... his sweet blood — burning just under his skin...

I held his face back as quickly and gently as I could manage. "Minho."

He knew to push himself away — fast. God, he tasted even better than he smelled. I wanted more, I wanted all of it. I was so close to it.

I dug my fingers into the ground. A moment of charged silence. Was I strong enough to unfreeze? The taste still clawed up my throat like fire.

I peeked one eye open, and then the other. Minho was curled up a few feet from me. Smiling, not afraid. Of course.

"Sorry," I murmured.

"It's okay. Sorry."

"It's okay. It was just a little close."

"And I smell too good?"

"Way too good."

"Other than that last part, was it" — he covered his face with his hands — "okay for you?"

I giggled — giggled, for Christ's sake. "It was perfect. You?"

"It lived up to my fantasies, no doubt."

"So you've fantasized about that before?"

He winced. "That's embarrassing, forget I said that."

"I'll move on, but I will not forget."

His nose crinkled delicately in my direction.

I crawled closer to him, arms upheld, just waiting for him to complete me.

"Can I hug you?"

His arms rose, eyes still caught on mine. I hugged him and he hugged back, head on my shoulder, leaning into me like I was all that could hold him up.

~ * ~

"Tell me more about your family," Minho said. The moon was out, crickets singing, but his eyes were on me, body cuddled up against mine in the front seat of his truck.

"What do you want to know?"

"How did you all find each other?"

"We've been building our family since... a while. Mostly it was by chance." We found each other more or less by happenstance. Felix and Changbin were the only ones who had intent to infiltrate our coven.

"And when it wasn't?"

"It's a long story."

He made a whiney sound.

"Okay, okay. I'm not the only one in my family with... gifts. Felix is a precognitive. He has visions of the future. It's how I knew you were in trouble in Port Angeles. Someone makes a decision, and it's like the butterfly effect. He stares off into space and sees the change as if he were watching a movie." I could have mentioned that he was a tricky, hyperactive nymph with a taste for drama — and his gift of foresight only intensified that — but I kept my biases out of it.