Temporary.
Fallible.
Already broken.
I was an outside observer. And for one day, I’d been allowed to stare at the vision of a life that I would die for. A life that I could never reach out to touch without it bursting into flames.
“Why did you bring me here?”
It felt like I was screaming into an abyss.
My body began to shake. I grabbed a vase from the windowsill and smashed it against the floor.
“Why?”
He finally looked at me, but his expression remained blank, his lips unmoving.
My eyes burned as tears flowed. I launched forward and gripped his shirt. I tugged it so violently it ripped.
“Answer me!”
Seizing my hands, he wrestled me to the bed.
I punched.
I kicked.
I tried to bite.
He dodged it all. He climbed on top of me, his knees pinning my legs against the mattress, his strong hands stretching out my arms above my head.
“I’m not here to comfort you,” he said, staring down at me. His voice was husky, his breathing heavy. “Because I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. Hell, I don’t have any answers. I’m not going to pretend that I do. I’m not going to pretend that everything is going to work out. Because I don’t know that it will. Christ, any look at my history will tell you that it definitely won’t. All I know is that I needed to see you again.”
I stopped struggling beneath him.
His hold around my arms loosened and he gave me back control over my legs.
I reached up to touch his cheek.
He gripped the back of my neck with one hand and lowered himself over me. He traced my lips with his mouth as his other hand reached beneath my dress and settled over my abdomen.
Then he kissed me so hard it hurt.
He paused only to pull off my clothes. I stood up to tear off his already damaged shirt while he discarded his pants. Pushing me back down on the mattress, he remained standing over me. I suddenly felt shy as his eyes roamed the length of my body. He smiled slightly—on seeing me blush, I assumed—and after a few moments, he lowered himself again, his tensed-up body pressing against me.
As his hip brushed against the black rose on my inner thigh, more tears welled in my eyes.
But I fought them back.
I’m with Kiev. And right now, he’s all that exists.
He is my world.
He is my life.
And I wanted to give him more. More than he could take. As he touched deep inside me, even taking all of me didn’t feel enough.
He rolled onto his back and pulled me on top of him. Brushing my hair aside, he kissed every inch of my face he could reach.
“Your eyes,” I gasped. “They’re green again!”
He looked up at me as though that didn’t come as much of a surprise.
“I don’t know what turns them red,” he breathed. “Darkness? The Shade? My own warped mind? Hell knows... But now, I do know what turns them green.”
Epilogue
Celice
Oh, my.
Who would have thought?
I suspected something odd as soon as Mona dropped her glass at the dinner table the first night she arrived. Then Kiev left a few moments after she rushed out.
Since I was in the habit of stalking Kiev anyway, I followed. And after I heard their little conversation down by the beach… Well, I was intrigued, to say the least.
I made it my business to stalk both of them from then on, whenever I got the chance. An invisibility charm helped a lot with that. Although on the balcony of Rhys’ room I admit that I got a little careless. Kiev heard the gravel crunch beneath my feet as I lowered myself.
I didn’t need to use the charm now in this forest. Even crouching behind the bushes, I had clear view of the lake. And trust them to leave the balcony doors open again. The fools.
The thing was, if I couldn’t have Kiev, there was no way in hell that I could sit back and watch Mona having him.
Besides, Kiev broke his promise to me.
Now wait until my brother finds out just how Mona is breaking her promise to him.
Never insult a witch, Kiev…