He was trying to get up! The little shit! Anger came so easily, still, with all those lovely anger-words too. Rage combined with the pleasure but it couldn’t dispel it.

“Hang on. Alice. This isn’t how it works.”

“Then show me how it works.” She got up too, advancing on him. She felt like an animal—a predator. She wanted to pin him and devour him. “Does my body disgust you as much as it disgusts me? Too bad. You brought me back, you show me it was worth it.”

She was wearing one of his shirts, and it was big enough that she could pull it over her head in one angry swipe and drop it on the floor, leaving her naked except for a pair of underpants. Alice kissed him again, pushed herself against him, felt the electric roughness of his shirt on her breasts. He stumbled back until his head knocked against the door. With her hand she found his crotch and massaged it. Yes, that’s how it went. He used to like this.

He still did. He was getting hard under her hand.

“Isn’t this why you brought me back? So you could fuck me like you used to?”

Even she didn’t believe that, but it was the cruelest, bitterest thing she could think of. She wanted to do violence to him, the kind of violence he’d done to her, but he didn’t waver.

“I didn’t bring you back for me.”

And then he did kiss her. Not hard, but gently and firmly. That was it, you could do it that way too. He wrapped his arms around her, fitting her body against his, her head beneath his chin, and just held her. Memories inundated her, human memories. The night they walked out from Brakebills in the snow, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders. The day in Antarctica when they were foxes and he chased her the way she’d wanted him to do when they were human. The way he looked at her as if there was nothing else in the world for him but her. As if he loved her as much as she hated herself. He was looking at her that way now.

Suddenly she felt desperate to connect with him again. She’d been alone for so long. She needed this. Along with so many other things, she’d forgotten what it was like to need.

She put her hand up under his shirt, felt his smooth skin. Something strange had happened to his shoulder. She rested her head flat against his chest.

“It hurt, Quentin,” she said. “It hurt so much when I died.”

“I know. But this is going to feel good.”

—