Did I like...him?
Perhaps the tequila had gone to my brain.
After all, I’d never tasted it before tonight.
“We’ll get her back, Endor.I know we will,” I said, my voice soft as well.
Endor’s fingers grazed my back in slow, rhythmic lines, the touch soothing.
“And then we willdeliverher to her body and she will be free,” he said, his dark voice full of mixed emotion.
I let my hands travel up his arms, wrapping them around his neck as my breathing evened, as my muscles came back to stability.My fingertips teased the edges of his hair at the nape of his neck, the texture soft and silky.
“Is anyone ever really free?”I asked, staring into his dark eyes, unsure if I was asking him or myself.
Endor leaned closer, his forehead gently touching mine.He implored me with his gaze.
“Freedom doesn’t exist.Not for us,” he whispered.“We are slaves to our masters, but Mercy...Mercy is free because she has achoicein the matter.To live, or die.”
His words resonated with me, but I wasn’t sure we were talking about Mercy.
His words settled on me as I thought about the wallet in my pocket, my deliberate attempts to use my femininity to my advantage.And the reality that in that moment, I wanted to kiss the beautiful demon who made me feel things I never knew.
Yeah, it has to be the tequila.
“We all have a choice, Endor,” I said, thinking about the elixir Matthew had presented me.
The one that could destroy Endor and landlock him forever.
I could choose to go against a direct order.I could choose to save him.
But in doing so, what repercussions would I face?
Was his freedom to live to...to serve ourenemyworth my own sacrifice?
Was Mercy’s will worth more than my own?
How could something so bad...feel soright?
When I’d been given my wings I thought I knew what the right, just thing was.
But as I stared at the beautiful demon, who was looking at me like I was Paris’s golden apple, I wasn’t sure what the truth was anymore.
Good, evil.
It was all just a matter of perspective, wasn’t it?
Surely the praying mantis thought himself rightfully just in trapping and killing its prey.
But to that prey, he was the devil.
“Valory,” he breathed my name, closing his eyes, and I could see he was at a crossroads of his own, and something about that set off all the alarm bells in me.
Choose me.
The words echoed in my brain as I closed my own eyes, letting his smokey, sweet scent fill my airways, the heat of his hands running along my hips ignite fire in my belly and below.
When I opened my eyes, his lips were only a hairsbreadth away, and I trembled in his grasp.
