“A technicality I’m holding on to like a lifeline until you come to your senses.” His palm found my knee, voice softening from its previous fire. “Are you ever going to tell me why you rejected my proposal and then months later ran away?”
His aqua irises reeled me in, threatening to drown me in my lies.
My voice broke. “Are you ever going to give up and let me go?”
The lies were all I had to protect him with. To give my son the father he deserved to grow up knowing.
“Never.” He squeezed my knee, and electricity shot up my leg at the touch. Taking my hand in his, he thumbed over the naked flesh of my ring finger until a delicate band with a single glinting gem appeared, along with a shimmering black rune scrawled across my wrist.
I stared at the mirage, unable to take my eyes off the vow marks. The ones I always thought I’d wear.
His.
Sweat beaded at my brow, and my heart beat wildly. When my hands shook, he released them. The illusion fell, Atlas’s brows drawn together in concern. “I can’t walk away from us.”
“Maybe you can’t,” I pushed to my knees, body still quivering, “but I already did.”
Just as I prepared to stand up and run away from him once again, he dragged me onto him until I straddled his waist, knees digging into the ground. “If I remember correctly, your eyes were locked withmineback at Luna’s.”
Both of his arms banded around my waist, holding me still so I was forced to either meet his gaze or wriggle against the bulge of his trousers to get free.
I did it anyway, wanting to escape the truth that dangled between us, desperate to be seen. But saying the words would be like etching his fate into stone, so I moved against him, making no headway other than building the swell beneath into steel.
“Pretend you don’t want this. Fuck them all you want, butI’llnever be out of your system.” My breath caught in my throat, and he lifted his hips beneath me, length rubbing against my seam through the thin fabric of my leggings. And as much as I wanted to scream at him how wrong he was, I knew he was right.
His lips caressed the shell of my ear, Desire thrumming through my veins to everywhere our bodies were touching. “I’m in your blood. Your bones. Your fucking marrow. Just as you are in mine.”
The words felt like a hex. There was no enchantment behind them, but they were no less powerful.
Atlas’s hands slid up my spine, and he drew me in for a deep, unrelenting kiss. At first, I tried to hold still, to not give in to his pull. But somehow denying myself only made my Desire more persistent, betraying me and bursting from my lips.
He groaned against me.
I’d been under his spell since we met, and while the feelings I had for Lynx and Saros were intense and real, Atlas was tethered to my heart whether I tried to rip him free of it or not.
They all were.
Pulling away despite being desperate for more, I turned my cheek and pushed off of him.
“I can’t,” I rasped, running a hand over my swollen lips.
He didn’t fight me, and when I glanced back at him, he seemed so small. Sad. Confused. No trace of the self-assured political leader I was used to.
But Lynx and Saros’s lives didn’t hang in the balance. And I refused to lose any of them.
“I’m doing this because I love you too much, not because I don’t.”
It was all I could admit before I scurried into the house, locking the door tightly behind me.
Chapter15
Atlas
“So after months of requests, you all finally agreed to meet. Why now?” I asked, scanning over the supernatural leaders sitting around the circular table.
“Why don’t you tell us more about why we’re here, and then we’ll decide what it’s worth to us,” said Dante Vivaldi with a smirk, two sharp fangs mostly hidden behind it. Vampires were easy enough to spot even with their teeth retracted. If they went too long without a meal, their eyes began to fleck with red, the bloody shade blotting out the original until they fed.
“As you know, we’ve been looking into the disappearances on Starry Night Lane.” I pointed at the map of Celestial Haven illusioned onto the wall beside me. “While there have been a few on the other covens’ streets, we’re curious if any of your people have mysteriously disappeared.”
