Ali

“Marya Antonova stepped out into the night covered with Dimitri Fedorov’s fingerprints. She was bathed in his touch, head to toe. He’d always had patient hands; they took their time. They were hands meant for mastery. His fingers were tireless, steady, certain. He had the hands of an artist, a craftsman. Hands like the rays of the afternoon sun: slow, but sure. Constant. Heated in every place they touched.
His mouth, by contrast, was restless. He had the lips of a vagabond, never resting too long in one place. A pilgrim’s tongue, seeking holy ground. He would touch his lips to hers and it would be like home for a moment, for a breath, but then home would become the smooth stretch of her jaw, or the curve of her neck. Home would be the hollow of her throat. His mouth could make a home from the lines of her torso; buried in the twist of tension at her back. He could linger for a beat of time beside the bone of her ankle, his penitent fingers wrapped around her heel, and she would think, That is your home, too, and mine.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“If I lost my brother, I would chase his soul to the end of the world,” Lev said quietly, and Sasha stopped fighting for a moment, paused by the weary timbre of his voice. “If it were me, Sasha, I’d want to strike down everything in my path, just like this, so believe me, I understand—but if I can only have you as a fire, Sasha, as a flame of what you are, then I want you to burn for me. Do you understand? I’ll hold you if you want me to,” he whispered, his voice a crook of a finger to the tired tendrils of her heart. “Want me to keep you close, Sasha, keep you safe? I’ll do it. But if I’m going to know things—intimate things, like how you prefer to be touched,” he said, firmly, in a man’s voice—a lover’s voice—“things I know I’ll never be able to rid from my mind—then do me a favor and let me be selfish. Let me imagine you might have come to my bed for me, even if I can never h—”
He broke off when she kissed him again, restless fingers tugging at his coat. “Take this off,” she said gruffly, and he stared down at her, indignant.
“Haven’t you been listening?” he demanded, but she only stepped out of his arms, pulling her sweater over her head and watching his gaze drop. “I—Sasha, Sasha, I just said—”
“You want me to burn for you?” she asked. “Then watch me burn.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“The kiss between them then was brutally communicative, the rest of the conversation transmuted to touch. He asked permission and she gave it, her hips aligned with his; she begged him and he relented, tugging her backward to fall against him. She remembered his first kiss, how easy it had been, how difficult, how untamed and how helplessly delicate, and this was all of that and more, a thousand tiny earthquakes. When his hands slid to the curve of her hips she sighed between his lips, a moment of tender softness that could so easily have been a lie.
He leaned his head back, meeting her eye.
“I’m your enemy in the morning,” he whispered. Fair warning.
His hand traced the shape of her scapula, fingers brushing the length of her spine and then curling upward, possessive.
“I’m your enemy tonight,” she said, and kissed him again.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“Each color is an emotion. Together they tell a story, because that’s all that a life really is—a series of feelings and emotions that draw a person toward action or inaction.”
― Adalyn Grace, Wisteria