A smile threatens to bubble through my lips as Cosmo flips the lock of the door behind him, sealing us inside. I glance at his fingers and imagine breaking each one, but I flip the book in my gloved hands over in my lap, the one I pulled from my mother’s library—Frankenstein, a novel I do not think I shall finish—and clench the soft cover instead.
“Why?” I whisper to Karia as she glares down at me across the room, to my place on the velvet sofa. “Are you worried she’s been tending to me while you’ve been tending to him?” The granite in my tone is a thing I cannot hide.
She narrows those precious blue eyes further. Cosmo comes up behind her, looming over her. Close enough he can reach out and place his hands on either side of her hips, clad in black sweats, her gorgeous hair up in a sexy bun, a white T-shirt on that reveals the peak of her nipples.
Which means outside, in the cold, he saw it too.
I’m standing before I realize it, the book thudding to the floor. My chest heaves. My heart aches. I wish I did not feel so much, but I cannot do a thing about it now. She is mine, and he needs to be reminded.
“Remember it wasmypiss she’d lick off the floor,” I whisper, staring at Cosmo as he stares back. “Not yours.”
I’m anticipating his amused smirk, but when it doesn’t appear, I feel worse, somehow. As if they are both here before me to tell me something that will ruin me. Change me. Scar me in ways my father wished he could. But even the grotesque pieces of me wouldn’t compare to what Karia could do to my heart, and Cosmo, too, in turn.
Pathetic.
The word carved over my chest.
My pulse beats there, beneath the hidden reminder.
“Sullen.” She speaks my name in a hoarse whisper. For a moment, she looks unsteady, and I wonder what he did to her out there.
But then she crosses the room toward me and I feel marginally better. “We need to talk.”
I glance at Cosmo. I feel exposed, and I could not say why. “What did he do to you?” It is far easier to blame him foranything horrible that comes from her mouth than Karia Ven herself. My sun. My angel.
She shakes her head, and I see her eyes are red. And when I inhale, I catch the scent of marijuana.
I tighten my gloved fingers into fists. It takes everything in me not to push her aside and crack his fucking jaw.
“Karia. What did you do?” Now I am angry. Now I am scared.
But before she can speak, another voice slices through the sitting room, from the opposite doorway Cosmo is standing in.
“Do you remember when I had to explain to you what l-o-l meant?” Maude’s voice, full of forced amusement.
I watch Karia’s blue eyes narrow into cerulean slits. A muscle in her jaw ticks.
A smile curves my lips. When I turn my head, I see Maude standing there, her black hair piled in an intricate bun on her head. We have exchanged few words, but as she stands with her arms crossed in her vampire-esque dress, chin lifted, pale skin carved from marble, I imagine the three of us will exchange many more now.
“You were so innocent then,” Maude says softly, and she is wrong, but I do not speak.
I can feel the rage rolling off Karia.
It feels as if right now, we are even, with Cosmo behind her, and the scent of his weed and whiskey all over her.
I smile at Maude, if only to feel that jealousy which is the closest thing I have ever known to love rolling off of the Princess of Writhe.
“She is the reason we are all here, isn’t she?” Maude inclines her head to Karia, in front of me. “Cosmo said she was in trouble.” Her voice is sultry. “But I’m starting to thinksheis the trouble, Sullen.” Her gaze narrows, her red lips pressed into a sneer.
Karia says nothing. She is not looking at Maude. I can tell, from the corner of my eye, she is still staring atme.
Maude turns her head. Her gaze flickers to Karia. She stares her down, as my blonde fairytale refuses to look at the vampire at all. Then Maude comes closer, her heels clacking against the hardwoods.
My heart races.
Karia is practically vibrating with rage.
Say something. Tell her to fuck off.
