I showered and got ready for bed, but instead of getting in the sheets, I sat on the couch by the fire. The servants brought me a late dinner, steak and potatoes and greens. I’d never shared a meal with Callum since he didn’t eat, and I thought it would be nice to have that someday.
Just the two of us at the dining table. Or maybe the four of us, because we’d have our own family. My mind drifted to these fantasies constantly since our last conversation, and I was painfully aware of the fact that the first time I’d fallen in love was with the one man I couldn’t have.
God of the underworld.
It was cathartic to confess the depth of my emotion. It was equally cathartic to hear him share the same feelings, that hewanted to be my husband, to father my children, to live a long life with me.
It was a dream I wanted more than anything—and I wouldn’t stop until I got it.
I just had to win this battle and save my father. I knew he would do everything in his power to release Callum from the eternal bonds of the underworld. To deliver the one man I wanted for the rest of my life. Regardless of the way he personally felt about it, he would give me what I wanted.
I watched the fire die as I waited for Callum to come to me. I wanted his warm body in my bed, wanted his hot flesh on mine, wanted his kiss and his strong muscles to suffocate me. But I also just wanted his company, because he was my person.
An hour came and went, and he didn’t come to me. I waited so long that I actually fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up in the middle of the night, the fireplace was cold because it’d been out for so long.
My eyes cracked to look at the windows and see the sun a dark shade of blue, like it was an hour before sunrise. He still hadn’t come. If he had and found me asleep, he would have put me in bed.
I got to my feet and walked into the bedroom, hoping he would be there waiting for me, shirtless with the covers to his waist.
But the bed was still made after the servants had tidied my room that day.
I pulled the covers back and tucked myself in before I looked at the dim light coming through the windows again. I’d been dead asleep on the couch, but now there was a worry in my heart.It’d only been a day since I’d seen him, but he was always with me throughout the day, coming and going, and even if he were particularly busy, he would make a brief visit in the evenings.
We hadn’t had a stretch of absence this long since I lived in my villa and we hardly knew each other. We were just two strangers hooking up at that point, no strings attached. But that period in our lives was brief before it deepened into something intimate and intense. It blossomed into a loving and loyal relationship almost immediately, and the flames of our lives only continued to burn higher and higher.
But now, they felt cold…dead.
Was that my intuition warning me, or had I just become clingy and obsessive?
After the intensity of our night together, I expected to have more of him, not less. I didn’t expect this stretch of silence after we confessed our love to each other. Expected him to be there with me even more, if he had the time.
But as I watched the light grow in the sky and a new day begin in the Southern Isles, I knew the night had come and gone and he hadn’t appeared. I should dismiss it as nothing concerning, but the warning in my heart continued to grow. “Callum?” I said his name into the silence like he could somehow hear it. Like he would know I called for him, that I needed him, even if it was just for a minute for reassurance.
But the only response I got in return was silence.
The heaviest silence I’d ever heard.
