I bolt upright,heart hammering like a wave crashing under the full moon. Naked and unnervingly well-rested, I press my palms to the mattress, dread coiling in my belly.
The babies!
What time is it?
Aren’t they hungry?
Have they been crying?
I scramble out of bed and dash into the adjoining nursery, where two cots nestle in a dim corner. Their sleeping forms ease the tension from my limbs.
Safe. Sound.
His perfect little heirs.
My sweet little boys.
Inhaling, steadying my breath, I place one hand on Luca’s cot and the other on Ash’s. I rock them both, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes as my love for them overflows.
This love… it is consuming.
The present slowly rolls in as I stare at them, watching them sleep peacefully. Luca wears a sleeping frown, even at sixmonths—he is sharp, suspicious, and wise beyond his months. Ash, by contrast, sleeps with his mouth open in a blissful grin, as if he can’t believe he’s alive.
My mum used to say she could see colours around living things—auras. I can only guess my sons’ colours. A deep-red aura seems to cling to Luca, while Ash glows in bubbly blue.
Perhaps Luca will take after Clay, and Ash after me, but it’s far too soon to chart their personalities. The world will shape them, twist and turn them, and I will try my hardest to keep anything bad from happening…God, they are cute.I used to think that bad things come in threes—it was my mother’s talisman against chaos. I think it was a way of gaining a kind of control over the terrible things. Counting them. Expecting them. Accepting them.
Like maths… or… or something. But bad events aren’t neat. Neither are the good ones. Life doesn’t parcel out tragedy and joy in sets; it spills them into being without order. They are unpredictable.
Good things.
In-between things.
Bad things.
I should know; I’ve had myunfairshare of terrible things: my mother shot herself, my foster mother despised me, I was raped—and no one believed me until… Sir.
I sigh.
Clay Butcher.
The devil’s prototype.
“You slept well, sweet girl.” A deep rumbling voice rolls into the nursery from the room behind me.
I turn around. In the doorway, is the most impressive man ever to exist, even with the perfectly placed slashes of silver around his ears. It’s as if the devil painted them by hand—meticulous, evenly spaced— nothing but aging perfection for Clay Butcher.
Actually, the grey hairs are hot-as-fuck.
More, please.
On the chest.
Along his jaw.
Kudos, Satan.
He leans against the doorframe, faded denim riding low on his hips, no shirt to hide the intricate tattoos that wind across muscles carved with sin.
