I feel found.
Circling my tender spot with his thumb, he slides two fingers inside me, and the stars in his eyes dance as I moan.
This is bliss. Pure bliss.
I want to lie back, but I don’t want to lose this closeness, the glint in his eyes as he watches me come undone. This is the first time I’ve been able to see his face when he’s made me come, and I can’t ignore how intimate it feels to be locked in his gaze, this private moment shared by only us.
“Hold on, angel.”
I interlock my fingers, my lips parting as my orgasm mounts, the overwhelming feeling of it about to wash through my body and shake me to my core. He knows I’m near, has done this enough times now to know my body, my little telltale noises, my facial expressions. No one has ever made me feel like this. No one has ever paid me this much attention. No one has ever touched me the way he does.
With a knowing smile, he slips one more finger in, and I’m undone, the stars exploding above me as I press my forehead to his, my body shuddering beneath his touch.
“Valdemar.”
He pushes my hair from my face and stares at me intensely as pleasure courses through my body like a dam has burst.
“I didn’t think you could be any more beautiful, but the sight of you coming for me is sublime.”
Waves crash around me. My body trembles against his. Tears swell at the corners of my eyes.
Cupping my head in his hands, he tips it upwards.
“Angel?” Concern morphs his face as he wipes a tear away with his thumb. “What is it?”
“This isn’t real. None of this is real.”
It’s as if I’ve been submerged underwater for the last hour as I heave the night air into my lungs. The sheets have been thrown off the bed, and Valdemar’s T-shirt has ridden up to my waist, but there’s no evidence of him here.
I’m alone. Like always.
It’s just a dream.
Always a dream.
And what breaks me more than anything is that it will always remain a dream. How could I let a man like him get close to me in real life? And why would I want to? Because he listens to me? Because he’s the only living human with whom I can be myself, who knows what I am and what I can do? Or is it because he makes me feel alive even though I’m surrounded by the dead?
But I shouldn’t be feeling these things for him. He’s a monster. A murderer. At what point did I forget what he is?
Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I realise that my tears are the only thing thatisreal.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I thinkI’m losing my mind,” I tell Una and Pierre.
Una stares at me over the top of her mint-laden mojito as Pierre rolls an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
“More so than the rest of us?” she asks.
“Definitely,” I reply.
“Is it the dreams still?” Pierre slides the cigarette behind his ear and picks up his pale ale.
“It’s not just the dreams.” I exhale loudly.
They eye me over the small round table of the new bar in town called Octavia.
Pierre had been the one to choose tonight’s venue, an aptly named underground bar on Octavia Alley. Una and I eyed each other as he led us down the stone steps into what felt like a dungeon, and I expected to see half-naked staff with dog collars on. But we arrived in a swanky-looking room with warmly lit tables, plush velvet seating, and a guy perched on a stool softly playing the saxophone.
