She melted me.
She was the fucking sun. And I was about to splash out her heat.
Once her wrists were shackled, I ducked to attend to her ankles. Her legs jostled as her shaking grew worse. Her teeth chittered and chattered, her hair sticking to the cold sweat dotting her brow.
I hesitated a moment too long. Reaching out, I wrapped my fingers around her leg, preparing to fasten the cuff.
She gasped, dragging my eyes to her.
Fuck.
It was a terrible mistake to look at her.
She looked so small. So easily broken. Her eyes were too wide for her face; her skin stretched over bones that might shatter if she became any colder.
I tried to look away.
I tried.
But I couldn’t.
Our gazes locked; I groaned under my breath as the connection between us only strengthened. The diamond collar around her neck sparkled even as the clouds above us blotted out the sunshine and gathered dark grey.
Nila stopped shivering, almost as if she found sanctuary in my gaze.
I stopped fighting, almost as if she tamed the insanity inside me.
What was this...this tether? How had she captured me so completely, and how the fuck did I sever it?
The deeper I fell into her, the worse it got.
Her panic siphoned into my soul, twisting my gut until I wanted to vomit. Her flesh turned white as the moon and just as ethereal.
In the starkness of what was about to happen, she’d never been so beautiful, so bewitching, so intense.
My knees wobbled, itching to kneel before her and place my head in her lap. To just rest...and pretend none of this existed. To have her comfort me.
Cut growled under his breath, smashing through our moment, rendering it dead.
Nila sniffed, tears glossing her eyes.
The link between us had been so bright, but now it was back to darkness.
You’re running out of time.
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to work faster. My fingers moved swiftly, securing the buckle around her left ankle.
I looked up one last time. Needing her to know that I’d come to her full of nothing, but now she’d filled me with everything.
She looked into my eyes, then glanced away.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted her to see in my gaze what I could never say aloud.
Forgive me.
With a soft moan, she closed her eyes, cutting me off completely.
Her dismissal butchered my heart, dug it out with a dirty blade, and sent it splashing into the pond. The hole left behind filled with algae, water, and bracken. I was a fucking bastard. I should stop this.
