Had it been Cole choosing to kill someone or the Vitality shooting between us both that had finally pushed us over the edge—or maybe it was the way we’d touched without acknowledging it, while pretending we hadn’t touched at all, since the thread had formed.
Maybe it was the thread fighting back since Cole had tried to pull it from his chest.
I just knew if he came back, if he pressed his mouth against mine again, the hounds would find us here, and I wasn’t surethat either of us would realize what was happening until it was too late.
“No, come back… I need…” He pressed closer, and the shuddery sound of his breath playing against my neck made me groan. I dropped my head to his and started walking us backward.
“Outside.”
I didn’t know if we’d make it back to my apartment, though that was where we needed to be. The only comfort I had was the knowledge that the overwhelming sensation of the soul scattered into a thousand shards around us was so overpowering it would probably fool them.
Cole opened his mouth, and I didn’t know if he was going to protest. I didn’t know if he was going to damn us both.
My arms twined around him, and I picked him up. This time, his legs wrapped around my waist and his fingers tangled in my hair, and it took every bit of strength I had to walk us forward, out of the house.
We definitely weren’t going to make it to my apartment. The distant howls were coming from that direction.
The best I could do was the lake—the best I could hope was that we could hide in the water while the shredded soul behind us distracted them from their quarry.
And if nothing else, I knew that I’d die feeling something I was fairly certain I’d been waiting since the dawn of eternity to feel.
Chapter 21
Cole
I didn’t knowwhat I was doing—I hadn’t known what I was doing since the second I picked up the gun and fired it, though. I just knew I couldn’t let Sephtis leave that house. I couldn’t let him sacrifice himself for me.
And I couldn’t let him keep killing for me. Not alone.
I needed to be on equal ground with him—I needed to feel responsible. Maybe I just wanted one more reason to hate myself. I didn’t know.
I just knew I needed to get my mouth back on his before everything around me crashed and burned. The demand sparked in my chest the second I’d fired that bullet, and it raged into an inferno with the first brush of Vitality entering my body. Sephtis wasn’t feeding it to me; it was pouring through us both, and it broke through every barrier I’d ever put up.
Every excuse I’d ever made.
It stole the wordhatefrom my tongue and left me with the naked, honest truth that the man in front of me—the monster who had been ready to give up his life to keep me safe, had compromised everything he was to keep me—was the only thing that could make me feel whole.
I let out a low, desperate sound when Sephtis cut through the trees behind the house where we’d left the evidence of my crime and started walking toward the sound of water. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered his apartments were by a lake, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered but my lips on his throat, the foreign sensation of kissing along his neck and not feeling a pulse beneath the touch. Nothing mattered but the fact that Sephtis smelled soft and sweet, like flowers in the clean night air. Petals in the moonlight.
Everything I’d ever dreamed about holding me so close I could barely draw a breath.
Maybe I didn’t need to breathe—or maybe the only thing I needed to fill my lungs with was him.
He didn’t hesitate as we broke through the trees. Sephtis kept walking along the stony shoreline at the edge of the lake… and then kept moving until we were chest deep in the water and I wondered if it was going to wash the blood from my clothes.
There was blood on my clothes. I’d killed a man. I’d killed a man, and I was kissing a monster… and everything in my life felt right for the first time since Caiden had gotten sick.
Another low whimper caught in the back of my throat when Sephtis threaded his fingers through my hair, pulling me back long enough to look at me… To really look at me—to see the way my eyes were wide and desperate, the way tears were still streaking down my cheeks.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” The question came out softly, almost like it hurt him to ask. Permission.
He was getting consent, trying to make sure I was in my right mind, even though I knew he’d probably wanted this longer than I’d even known he was real.
“I have no idea what I’m doing.” I gasped the truth and rocked my body forward where I pressed against him, lettingout a low groan when my cock brushed his stomach through our clothes. “I have no idea what any of this is. But I know I want it, Sephtis.” Saying his name drew a shiver from him, made his fingers in my shirt clench. “I know that if you don’t make me forgeteverythingbut the way you feel, I’m never going to forgive you.”
The burn in my chest was all-encompassing—the need to feelconnectedto him was the only thing I could think of.
