She laughed and took another swig. Then she rose to her feet. Her shimmering skirts billowed in the gentle breeze. “You don’t have to love someone to kiss them.”
“Are you insinuating something?” Dominic asked with a smug expression. He leaned back on his hands, legs dangling over the ledge.
Adara shrugged as she took a step toward the drop-off. “Am I?” She smiled.
“If you were, it wouldn’t matter. I won’t touch you until you’re begging me to.”
Her skin heated. Memories of him kissing her neck, hands slipping beneath her skirts in the alley when they were avoiding that guard, surfaced in her mind. Then she imagined him tugging her pants off like he’d done after they’d killed theWhisperer, the injury to her arm leaving her unable to do the task herself. She recalled this morning when she woke up to his arm wrapped around her, his face nuzzled in her hair, and his body pressed firmly behind her.
“You’ve touched me before,” she said, angling her face away so he wouldn’t see the heat rising to her cheeks.
“Not in that way,” he replied. Something dark settled in his gaze—lust, desire, whatever it was, she had to look away to resist.
“Noted,” she said simply, walking precariously along the ledge, teetering every so often as she held her arms out wide for balance.
Dominic sat up straight, moving to kneel with one knee on the ground, perhaps making it easier to rush to his feet if he needed to catch her. Elbow resting on his knee, he propped his chin on a fist. “I could easily kill you right here, you know?” he said to her as she continued to walk the edge, sadistic amusement dancing in those gorgeous emerald eyes.
“But you wouldn’t,” she mused.
“Want to bet?” In a flash, Dominic leaped from his kneeling position, grabbed her shoulders, and shoved.
Adara’s stomach lurched, a scream ripping from her throat.
But he held on to her tightly, pulling her back before she could lose her footing and plummet into the icy water below. Heart pounding, she fell into Dominic’s arms, gladly letting him pull her away from the ledge. Stepping back, his heel skidded against the ground. Adara’s weight being thrown on him knocked him off balance. They both crashed onto the roof.
Adara couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled out of her as she landed on top of him, one hand braced on his chest, heaving, with their legs tangled together. Their eyes met, his breath caressing her lips. She stilled, gaze flickering back and forth between Dominic’s eyes and lips. Eyes that shone with thingsshe could not decipher—not when everything he did was an act, when every emotion he showed was a mask. A mask that she wanted nothing more than to peel away and see who really lay beneath this blood-stained armor.
She felt the urge to trace his soft lips with her finger, her lips, her tongue. Dominic’s chest rose and fell beneath her palm with every inhale and exhale. But there was no steady thrum of a heartbeat against his chest, begging for her to hold it. Adara refrained, shaking off those idiotic thoughts, but she did not move to get off him.
It felt like an eternity, staying there, chests rising and falling against one another. A sky full of stars, so open and bright they could practically see the swirling galaxies filled with other worlds, yet they only had eyes on each other.
They burst into laughter.
“Asshole,” Adara said and playfully slapped his chest as she rolled off him to lay on her back.
Gazing up at the sky, Adara wondered what kinds of worlds were out there, created by the scattered pieces of the gods’ souls when they left this world. Constellations dotted the night sky, glimmering brightly, calling to her. Her eyes traced each one of them until they landed on the stars that formed the shape of a fire-breathing dragon—the constellation for the goddess she was named after. Adara hoped that when she died, she’d become a star and join the gods in the heavens one day.
She rolled onto her side, propping her head up with a fist to meet his gaze. “Have you ever been in love?”
He frowned, sighed deeply. “Yes.”
Adara reached for the bottle and took a drink. “Me too,” she explained softly.
The key around her neck suddenly bit into her, the metal cold and bitter. She traced the edges over the fabric of her dress.
Dominic’s lips turned downward, brows pulling together in what could only be sympathy. “What happened?”
“Death,” she responded, her words flat and icy. She sighed, wishing to expel the weight that settled in her chest. “But even if that wasn’t what happened, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.” Adara pulled the necklace that held Cal’s key out from beneath her neckline. It swayed on the chain, the polished gold glinting in the moonlight. “We were never meant to be anyway.”
Usually, one would be happy to find out that it wasn’t their soulmate who had died, that their soulmate could still be out there, waiting for them. But not Adara. She’d been waiting for the key to disappear, to form a ring around her finger, forever entwining their souls. She didn’t want anyone else. She had wanted Cal. Callan, who had always been too good for her. Part of her was glad he didn’t live long enough to see the callous person she turned into after she escaped the Shadow Empire.
“What about you?” Adara asked, tucking the key back into her dress as easily as she had learned to tuck her former lover into the shadows of her heart and mind.
Dominic sighed, deep and longing, as he gazed up at the stars. Even with him avoiding her eyes, she could sense his pain.
“I’ve been in love twice—before I tore out my heart,” he said quietly. “If you could even call it that,” he added in a murmur. A hand ran through his hair in distress before he laced his fingers together, with his hands resting on his stomach. “I killed the first one.”
Adara blinked, muscles going taut. Dominic said the words with such indifference, such apathy. He had lived gods know how long, so maybe he was over it by now. Or maybe he simply slipped on that emotionless mask without Adara even realizing it.
