I sit up, testing my shaky legs, then stagger towards the bar. “More blood?”
Gideon tries to follow me, but his legs won’t take his weight. He flops back down on the sofa.
“Mmm, yes, please. You’re not the only one whose legs don’t work,” he murmurs, his words slurring a little as I hand him a glass. He tucks me under his arm, pulling me against him, the same way he once curled his body around me when I was recovering in Sarah Bernhardt’s bed.
I turn so that I’m facing him, our legs tangled together. It’s there now – a white film at the corners of his eyes.
I don’t want this. I don’t want to think about those beautiful things he said to me, or the ache between my thighs or the way my clit is utterly punished, unable to have another orgasm even if I tried. I don’t want to know that I’m walking away from all this, fromhim.
But it’s too late.
I can’t fight the sunlight, or my own nature.
“Hey, don’t look so sad.” Gideon touches my cheek. When he pulls his fingers away, I see the tips are wet. I’m crying.Why am I crying?
He looks shocked by the tears, too. His arms circle me, and he pulls me against him, and all I want to do is freeze time.
“I’ve got you, Arabella,” he murmurs. “The sun will set again, and I’ll be right here beside you. I’m not ever going to let you go again. I love you.”
39
Gideon
Sinead:I know you’re busy shagging Arabella, but I’m just letting you know that Alyra is looking for her. She seems rather distressed.
ARABELLA STILLS IN MY ARMS.
I don’t dare to breathe, certain I’ve said too much, that she’s going to run again. My head feels as though it’s floating away from my body. Dreamless sleep hangs heavy in my limbs.
But I won’t take the words back. I won’t pretend I didn’t mean them. Because they’re real. This, right now, she and I –thisis real. I love her and I’ll put everything on the line for her, and if she rejects me now, then so be it.
I’ve grieved her once, and it nearly broke me. But I would rather grieve her again than pretend for anothermomentthat she isn’t my whole world.
“Arabella, did you hear what I said? I love you.” Every word struggles past my sleeping tongue, my body so close to collapse, but I refuse to succumb until she hears this. “I’ve loved you from the first moment I walked into La Petite Mort. All the years since, when I thought I lost you, I’ve been a shadow wandering the earth with a hole in my heartshaped like you. I know things with us aren’t simple, have never been simple, and maybe the destructive parts of our nature enjoy that. But one thingisa simple, immutable truth – I love you, and I always will. Please, can you say something?”
“Gideon.” My name, again. How I wish I could hear her say it over and over until the end of time.
“Please…” I try to say more, but my tongue is stuck and everything is moving slowly and too fast, all at once. My head spins. Stupid sun.
“I’m never myself,” she whispers, her face buried in my shoulder. “Except when I’m with you. I show you who I truly am, and you never run away. You never cower. Instead, you lean a little closer and beg for more. That’s addictive, but I don’t know where the edges are. I’m afraid that you’ll look so deep into me that you’ll see something that will make you run away, and I won’t survive it.”
She looks up at me, and her expression is something I never expected to see. Sorrow. Another tear rolls down her cheek. I’m transfixed by it. I never thought I’d see Arabella so vulnerable. Are those tears really for me?
“Are you okay? Why are you crying?”
She shakes her head.
I try to catch the tear on my finger, but my hand doesn’t obey the messages from my brain, and I jab her in the nose instead. How late into the morning is it?
“Please, say something. I just told you I love you. Surely you have an opinion on that. You might want to share it quickly, before we fall asleep.”
“I’ve already said everything I came to say.”
Her dance.
The way she twisted herself around that pole… the way her eyes locked on mine even though she was spinning crazily out of control, as if I were what kept her grounded and safe… that terrifying drop where I thought she’d crash to the ground but she caught herself just in time. Everything about her dance said,I am here, and I trust you, but I’m afraid.
That makes two of us.
