Want and need were two different beasts, tearing me apart and making me into something completely different… and in the end,needwas the monster that devoured my heart.
IneededSephtis to tell me I wasn’t so broken that I couldn’t be held together in his hands. And like he knew, his arms squeezed around me, pulling me in until my heartbeat seemed to echo between us and drag us both under the waves of the inevitability of this moment.
It had always been this moment.
“I’m with you. I’ve always been with you.”
That red light flared so bright it was blinding, and when my vision returned, my mouth was pressed against his and I wasdrinking down the sound of a cry tearing from his throat as his cock pulsed between us.
As much as I wanted to hold back and savor the moment, to lick his desire straight from his mouth until I was so drunk I didn’t have to remember anything but the taste of him, I couldn’t.
He tasted too good, and his hands were so desperate where he clung to me….
“Cole…” The sound of my name spilling in a trembling breath from his lips was too much. Whatever control I had left vanished, and my arm slid around his neck so I could press my lips to his again and feed him back an echo of his desire.
Of our connection.
Because as my body jerked against his and orgasm overwhelmed me, making me feel like I was floating among the stars instead of in a lake… I couldn’t deny the crimson thread that wrapped around me like stitches, weaving through every broken part of me, and finally…
Finally holding me together.
For the first time in so long I felt like I could breathe, because my lungs were filled with the promise ofhim.
Fuck… I was in trouble.
Chapter 22
Sephtis
It wasthe first time I was still in the room when Cole woke up. I could almost see the expressions as they crossed his face—happiness while he was still too exhausted to really realize what was going on, and then a flash of anger when his mind made the connection. That anger actually forced him to push up into a sitting position, which made the blanket slide down his bare chest.
My eyes caught on the rise and fall of his skin, the shiny scars where the Enmity had torn him apart… on the red thread and the bits of black swirling at the edges. I had to force my gaze back up to his.
“You’re still here.” He finally spoke in a whisper, though I noticed he wasn’t recoiling, wasn’t drawing the sheet back up to cover himself. Cole just brought his hand up and scrubbed it through his hair, the soft blond sticking up at odd angles from the lake water.
“I couldn’t leave.” It wasn’t exactly a confession so much as a fact. After we’d pulled ourselves from the lake and listened for the sound of the hounds fading as they took their prize to Death, Cole had linked his fingers with my own and led me back to my apartment. He didn’t let me go when he silently stripped out ofhis wet pants and came to my room… and he didn’t let me go when he pulled the blanket over his shoulders and wordlessly closed his eyes.
I wasn’t sure if he wanted to act like nothing had happened now in the light of day, but I knew I couldn’t keep on pretending after the way he’d touched me, after he’d kissed me like I was the only way he could inhale.
I wasn’t sure if I could ever leave him again, when all I could see when I closed my eyes was the soft bliss written across his features like poetry. I’d told him Heaven wasn’t real, and he’d made me a liar. It was right there, touching him. Feeling him. Seeing him open up.
“You mean you can’t pretend anymore?” He said it like a question, but I knew he didn’t need me to answer. I moved closer to him instead, careful when I lifted my hand, cautious when I let my fingers drift up to thread through his hair.
His warmth penetrated the coolness of my palm, and I watched him war with himself before he finally let his eyes drift shut and leaned into the touch.
It was everything—it was proof that a few days could be a lifetime. He’d jerked away from my touch on the bridge and it had broken me.
But now he let out a groan and brought his hand up to brush his fingers along the length of my wrist before he stood. He was quiet as he shuffled around the room, didn’t ask permission when he pulled one of my shirts from my closet and slipped it over his head. He waited until he was dressed before he turned back to me, and his arms crossing over his chest were the only indicator of the insecurity he felt.
“What are we going to do, Sephtis?”
I wasn’t sure what he was asking. Did he mean about the hounds, who I knew would find us sooner rather than later if wedidn’t move… or did he mean about the man we’d left dead in his home?
Or maybe he meant what we were going to do about the fact that he stillneededVitality, that I had to feed the hole in his chest that commanded death to keep him alive.
Would he want to go with me again?
What were we going to do…
