Villagers stared as we passed. I didn't blame them. Lucien and me, covered in dried blood, clothes stiff with it. I was sure I looked exactly like what I was.
A monster.
Luckily, the same inn had our rooms available. The moment the door closed behind us, I turned to Selena. "You need to forget about?—"
She pressed her finger to my lips. "No, Rocco. You're not going to push me away again."
I took her wrist gently and lowered it. "You saw what I did to my mother." My voice came out rough. Scraped raw. "What I did to Lucien. Rose said I was vulnerable — marked, Selena. Any demon can walk right in."
"She also said she thought she knew a spell that might keep us all from being possessed."
I wanted to believe her. But something about me was different — broken, maybe, or just built wrong. Demons didn't have to fight their way in. They slipped inside like I was an open door, like my body welcomed them even when my mind was screaming.
My mother's face flashed behind my eyes. Her face. The terror in her eyes when she realized it wasn't me anymore. The blood. God, the blood. I'd spent years trying to bury that memory and it never stayed down.
If that happened to Selena...
If she ever looked at me with that kind of fear...
I couldn't breathe.
You need to get cleaned up," she said softly.
She took my hand—her palm warm against my ice-cold fingers— and led me into the bathroom's harsh fluorescent light. She didn't push. Didn't argue. Didn't try to convince me I was wrong. Steam billowed around us as she turned the ancient copper knobs, water sputtering then streaming. She started unbuttoning my mud-caked shirt, her fingertips leaving trails of warmth against my goosefleshed chest, and I stood there like a vase glued back together wrong, letting her take care of me because I didn't have the strength to stop her.
She peeled the shirt from my shoulders, the fabric stiff with dried blood, and let it drop to the cracked tile floor with a wet slap. Then she stripped out of her own clothes—quick, efficient movements— and stepped into the shower. I kicked off my jeans and followed her in, the hot water needling my skin, too tired to argue, too empty to pretend I didn't need this.
Not a word was spoken as she just stood close. I breathed deeply, taking in her scent, a clean scent that made me feel whole again. Her hands moved slow and steady across my skin, washing away blood that wasn't mine. I closed my eyes and let the heat sink into me, let her fingers trace the places where the demon had lived inside my muscles, my bones, my hands.
The water ran red for a long time.
I still didn’t feel clean. I wasn't sure I'd ever feel clean again.
Selena's lips pressed against mine, soft yet insistent, as her delicate fingers traced patterns across my exhausted shoulders and down my chest.
I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve her.
But my body didn’t care what I deserved. My arms pulled her closer, desperate for the heat radiating from her skin, desperate to feel something that wasn’t guilt or blood or sulfur. Herdelicate fingers traced patterns across my exhausted shoulders and down my chest, and everywhere she touched, the demon’s memory flinched and retreated.
She slid her hand downward, her cool palm encircling me with gentle pressure that quickly transformed into rhythmic strokes that made my breath catch. A sound escaped me—raw, broken, somewhere between relief and agony—and I buried my face in her neck.
Stay. Stay with me. Don’t let me disappear into this.
I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t have to. Her free hand came up to the back of my head, fingers threading through my wet hair, holding me against her like she could feel every thought I couldn’t speak.
"Selena," I breathed. Her name was the only word I had left.
Her thighs were slick and fever-hot against my hands. My fingers found her and she arched into me, spine curving, a sound escaping her lips that went through me like electricity. I kissed her and tasted wintergreen on her tongue, sharp and clean, and underneath it something darker, hungrier.
"Take me," she whispered, and her voice broke on it.
Something inside me broke too.
I lifted her, forearms hooked under her knees, pressing her back against the cool tile. She wrapped around me, rolled her hips, and when I pushed inside her, a sound tore out of me that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with being found — pulled back from the edge of something I'd been falling into all night.
She was heat and pulse and alive, and I was still here. Still me. Still hers.
I needed her. Needed to feel her. Needed this one last time before I walked away forever.
