His Queen of Chaos
I drew it up and off her in one motion, and whatever she'd been building died in her throat, because she was bare underneath it, and I stopped breathing for a second.
I'd imagined her, four days of her at that long table, longer, since the funeral. But imagination was a poor thing beside Zariah Brooks bare in my room in the city-light: deep brown skin gone gold at the edges, the full weight of her breasts, the sharp cut of her waist and the soft flare of her hips, her nipples already tight, a thin gold chain lying in the hollow of her throat that I hadn't known she wore. She let me look. Chin up. Not shrinking. Letting me have the sight of her the way she'd let me tape nothing and take every