“Circe, stay,” he said, softly this time. “I don’t understand what is so imperative that you must risk your life to leave, but I want you to stay despite it. I know you want to as well.” It seemed he couldn’t stand looking at the back of my head, so he grabbed my arm and spun me until we were facing each other. His pupils flared when they met mine. “I know what it’s like to feel as if you’re stuck in a glass bottle. I’ve experienced this feeling for what seems like over a century. I also know the only reason you saved me from the ocean is because I’m the most exciting thing that has ever happened to you, as you are to me. So stay, Circe. At least until the storm passes. Lest the next time I hold you is when I’m wrenching your body from the bottom of the sea.”
I yanked myself out of his grasp.
But I was also speechless, with a stunned look stealing my expression.
“Stay,” he repeated, taking another faulty step closer, looming over me and nudging his chin toward Weeping Hollow’s cliff across the ocean. “You’ll return anyway because the only reason you are here with me is because you cannot stand to be there.”
“You don’t know,” I said through clenched teeth, my heart pounding fiercely. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
His eyes bounced between mine. “I know you’re taking advantage of me.”
“I’m nottaking advantageof you,” I said, hating how the truth sounded coming from him.
“You mistake me for a fool, as though I were born the second you laid eyes on me. Begotten from fallen snow and morning tide.” He leaned in until my back was against the door, his gaze coasting across my mouth. “I wonder what would happen if you one day returned to this island, and I’m no longer here? What escape would you have then?”
A dark cloud smothered me.
Stone must’ve noticed because a pang of guilt moved across his face.
It drifted so subtly, not breaking his sculpted expression.
My eyes narrowed. “You won’t leave. You have no one else. Not anymore.” I pushed him away. “Your own mother tried to kill you. Not one soul has come looking for you.” What he’d said affected me. It made me so angry that the ugly spilled out of me as if he’d cracked some secret code to the other side. Stone did see me for what I was, and it was terrifying. “Look around, Stone. You have no place left to go. You’ve been abandoned, just like this island.” And I punctuated my words with a shove to his chest, a silent plea for him to never leave me.
Stone didn’t stumble. He stood solid like a statue.
There was a shift in his eyes, too. A mask sliding back on.
It was subtle. I didn’t even think he realized he’d done it.
And then, “You know how to cut me open.” He lifted his chin, eyes settling upon me. “It may not be with a knife, but you carve your initials inside me one way or the other, I see. It’s a miracle anything survives you.”
An hour later,my feet were balancing on the trellis outside the window of the Cantini manor.
I tapped the window lightly with my knuckle and peered inside.
Alice jumped to her feet and stared at me from the other side of the window with a ghastly expression. All the color had drained from her face.
She hurried to unlock the window and crank it open.
“Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick, thinking the absolute worst … and what was I supposed to tell Mrs. Cantini if she realized you weren’t here?” she continued to ramble as I hauled myself inside. “Adora! Is that … my gods, miss, you’re bleeding.”
“It’s not my blood.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
Once back on solid ground, I sucked in a gulp of stale air and looked at her. “No questions. Please, Alice, not tonight.”
She noticed my hair and ripped dress, and her face fell into horror.
I grabbed the torn fabric in one hand and pinned the scraps to my chest to keep it in place.
“I’m okay,” I assured her. “I’m going to draw myself a bath. I just … I just need to be alone for a while.”
Minutes later, I was submerged in a clawfoot tub with one leg hanging over the rolled lip. Stone’s blood stained the water a pink hue—a virgin tongue licking my skin. I dunked my head below the water, pushed my hair back as I rose to the surface again, and inhaled a wet breath.
Black Persian lilies detached from my flesh and floated on the surface, reminding me of all I’d been through over the last few hours.
I had so many thoughts, starting with how he controlled the earth, the memory I could see, and ending with the look on his face before I left. But after a few moments wandering in my imagination, I was consumed by a sculpted face, heavily hooded lids embroidered with two drops of black ink, and the thick maimed cock that I missed thrusting inside me. My heart didn’t have rationality on its side, either. But it had a vicious throat and screamed to be close to him again.
