She shook her head violently. “I no care.”
“I do terrible things every night,” he corrected himself.
She gave him a sympathetic look.
“I ate a human heart, still beating, as I stared the man I killed in the face. All to impress my father.”
The initiation.
Her stomach dropped.
“I…I feel like…” he began to say, then retched all over her. Threw up his dinner on both their clothes. He stared at her in horror. She stared back, calm and collected. She stroked his head. He whimpered in disbelief. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Shh. You okay, Achilles.”
If he needed to vomit on her to cleanse himself, she’d gladly let it happen.
Hell, if he needed to kill her to quiet the demons dancing inside him, she’d be a willing victim.
She’d do anything for him.
Even let him go if it meant he’d have a better life without her.
“Chelovek.” Tierney kissed the split skin under his eye, gently brushing his hairline with her thumb. A fissure of pleasure rocked him from head to toe, pressure settling at the base of his spine. She was physically coated with his vomit, and she’d never looked so beautiful because she didn’t even care.
“What does it mean?” he croaked. It had only been a few months since they’d met, but her grasp on English got better each day.
Tierney stepped from between his legs and brought the dictionary to him, leafing through the pages before stubbing a finger on the translation.
Human.
She called him human.
No one ever did.
Everyone thought he was a monster. His family. His schoolmates. The Camorra. He’d become one out of necessity, but he lived for those stolen interludes, the pockets of normalcy with Tierney, when he was just a teenage boy.
“Y—you think I’m human?”
She put a hand on his cheek. Kissed his forehead. He blushed.
“My dad… He says my ruthlessness is good. That I’ll be the next don because of that. I’ll be the most important man in the underworld.” He was desperate to impress her.
Dunking the pink cloth into the bucket of warm water, she squeezed it and brought it to his wound again. He grabbed her wrist. She froze, her huge green eyes taking over her whole face.
“Promise you’ll always be mine,” he demanded, his voice void of the softness that came so easily to him whenever they were together. “I can’t survive this life without you.”
She nodded. She didn’t understand exactly what he asked. But she wanted to give it to him.
Because he seemed like the only person in the world who understood what she was going through.
“Mine.” He plastered his forehead to hers, heaving, breathing her in. “Only ever mine.”
____________
Several months later, Achilles brought over a book:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“It’s a funny book, so you’ll want to keep reading,” he explained as he took his usual place next to her in her bed. She’d been having trouble with reading and writing, and he wanted to help her without making it obvious that he was doing so.
