We make our way through the crowd, Saylor accepting final compliments on her performance with tired but genuine warmth. Hands reach out to squeeze hers, voices murmur praise and promises to see her again soon. She nods and smiles through it all, but I can see the exhaustion pulling at the corners of her eyes.
The house feels different as we climb the grand staircase, the party sounds fading to a distant murmur below us. Our footsteps echo softly against the stone, creating an intimate bubble of silence that makes me hyperaware of her presence beside me. The way her hand rests lightly on my arm, the whisper of fabric as she moves, the lingering scent of her perfume mixed with wine and warmth.
When we reach her door, she turns to face me, leaning back against the dark wood. The hallway is lit only by a few scattered candelabras, casting everything in warm golden light that makes her skin glow.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For today. For showing me Grimlock, for the party...” Her gaze drifts toward the staircase where the sounds of celebration continue below. “For the gift. And for what you promised me.”
The way she saysgiftmakes my blood heat. She’s not talking about hospitality or party planning. She’s talking about Sly’s corpse, about the message Hans and I wrote in blood and flowers.
“Saylor—”
But before I can finish whatever I was going to say, she steps closer and rises on her toes, her hands sliding up my chest to rest against my shoulders. Her lips brush against mine, soft at first, testing. Then her mouth opens under mine and the kiss deepens into something that makes my vision blur.
She tastes like spice and sin, like everything I’ve been craving without realizing it. Her tongue slides against mine with deliberate intent, and when she bites gently at my lower lip, I have to grip the doorframe to keep from pushing her back against the wood and taking this exactly where my body wants it to go.
Her fingers find the hair at the nape of my neck, tugging just hard enough to make me groan against her mouth. The sound seems to please her because she smiles against my lips, the curve of her mouth wicked and knowing.
When she finally pulls back, we’re both breathing hard. Her lips are swollen from kissing, her eyes dark with something that makes my head spin.
“Come inside,” she whispers, her fingers trailing down my chest, finding the buttons of my shirt. “I don’t want this night to end yet.”
The invitation hangs between us like a loaded gun, and every cell in my body screams yes. I want nothing more than to follow her into that room, but the rational part of my mind—the part that remembers what Peter meant to me—knows this is exactly what I can’t do.
“Saylor.” I catch her hand, stilling her fingers against my chest. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for.” Her eyes flash with something between challenge and frustration. “I’m not some innocent little girl who needs protecting from the big bad wolf. I can handle whatever you think you might do to me.”
But that’s exactly what she is, whether she realizes it or not. Peter’s little girl, twenty years younger than me, standing in a hallway asking me to take something I have no right to take. She thinks she understands the darkness in me, but she’s spent her whole life around good people. Normal people. She has no idea that I don’t know how to be gentle, that everything in me would want to own her completely if I let myself have her.
“You deserve someone who can give you flowers and poetry,” I say quietly, my thumb tracing across her knuckles. “Someone who’ll hold you like you’re precious instead of...” I trail off, unable to finish the thought.
“Instead of what?” she asks, stepping closer, eliminating the space I’d tried to put between us. Her eyes darken with something that looks like interest—or maybe recognition of exactly what I meant.
Instead of taking you like the killer I am. Instead of leaving marks on your skin and shadows in your eyes. Instead of turning you into something as twisted as me.
“Instead of doing what every instinct tells me to do,” I say finally. “You deserve better than what I am.”
“What if I don’t want better?” Her voice carries an edge that makes my blood heat even as it terrifies me. “What if I want exactly what you’re afraid to give me?”
“Then you don’t understand what you’re asking for.” I force myself to step back, breaking the spell of her proximity. “You’re twenty-three years old. You should be falling in love with some nice boy your own age who’ll take you dancing and treat you like a princess. Not standing in a hallway asking a man old enough to be your father to—”
“To what?” she challenges. “To want me? To stop pretending you don’t?”
I close my eyes for a moment, trying to find the strength to do what’s right. “You deserve someone who can love you the way you should be loved. Soft and sweet and safe. I don’t know how to be any of those things.”
“Then I don’t need them.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it cuts through me like a blade. “I’d rather have what you can actually give me than some fantasy about what I should want. I want your cock, Blue. Not flowers and sweet compliments.”
“Tomorrow,” I say, forcing myself to step back, to break contact before I lose the ability to think clearly. “Tomorrow is going to be a very long day, and you’re going to need all your strength for what’s coming.”
“You’re afraid of me.”
“I’m afraid of what I’ll turn you into,” I admit. “In one night, I could destroy everything beautiful about you and twist it into something dark and hungry and broken.”
Something shifts in her expression—not hurt anymore, but understanding. She steps forward and places her palm flat against my chest, over my heart.
“What if I’m already broken?” she asks quietly. “What if watching my father die already took away everything soft and sweet and safe about me? What if the person you’re trying to protect is already gone?”
The words land hard, and I know she’s right on some level—I can see it in the way she smiled at Sly’s corpse, in how easily she accepted the promise of more bodies to come.
