Page 109 of Two Sides of Sin

“You’re not losing your mind,. It’s okay,” he reassuringly whispered into my hair. “You are safe now. I promise.”

He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes dropped to my lips, and the air between us suddenly grew impossibly thick, incinerating the lingering chill of the stalker.

Julian didn’t ask. He slid his hand to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair, and brought his mouth down on mine.

It wasn’t a gentle reunion kiss. It was desperate, bruising, and heavy with weeks of pent-up starvation. I opened my mouth for him instantly, a soft moan vibrating in my throat as his tongue swept inside, claiming me with a dark, possessive heat that sent a jolt of pure, liquid fire straight down to my stomach. The sexual tension between us was palpable, a live wire sizzling and sparking in the middle of the crowded quad. I clung to his neck, rising up on my toes, kissing him back with every bit of energy I had left in my body.

When he finally broke the kiss, we were both breathing heavily. He rested his forehead against mine, his chest rising and falling rapidly against my own.

He reached down, lacing his large fingers seamlessly through mine in an iron grip.

“I still can’t believe you’re actually standing here,” I breathed, looking up at him, my lips flushed and swollen.

“I’m here,” he stated, as he glanced briefly over the top of my head, his eyes scanning the crowd with a military precision, before locking back onto me. He was hiding something, a dark, sinister undercurrent vibrating beneath his calm facade, but he smoothed it over with a small, forced smile. “I’m going to take you to lunch. You’re going to eat something, and we can talk about everything that’s been happening. But after that, the plan changes.”

I blinked, still trying to process his sudden appearance. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t care if you think you’re just being paranoid Sage,” he said softly, but with unyielding finality. He squeezed my hand. “You are coming to stay with me. After we eat, we’re going straight to your apartment. You’ll pack whatever you need for the rest of the semester, and I am driving us to my house.”

“Julian, your estate is hours away, my classes⁠—”

“I will drive you back to the city every single day if I have to,” he interrupted, his thumb stroking the back of my hand. “But you are not sleeping in that apartment, and you are not staying in another hotel. You are staying with me.”

Looking at the protective determination etched into his rugged features, all my protests instantly died on my tongue. The thought of his heavily secured, gated fortress suddenly sounded like heaven.

“Okay,” I whispered, the remaining tension finally draining out of my shoulders.

Chapter 61

Julian

The heavy doors of my Land Rover slammed shut, sealing us inside a quiet, leather scented cocoon.

Sage had her knees pulled up slightly, her head resting against the cool tinted glass of the window, watching the city skyline fade into the rearview mirror.

She thought the nightmare was over. She thought she was just an overworked, paranoid student who had finally found a safe place to land.

The guilt of lying to her was a physical, sickening weight in my chest, tearing at my insides with every kilometre we drove. I was a soldier. I was a man who had spent the last century drowning in bloodlust and destruction, throwing myself into every miserable, cruel fight I could find just to put an ocean of distance between myself and the suffocating pain of my past.

For years, my brother hadn’t even been a conscious thought in my head. I had convinced myself that if I stayed away, if I just let the memory of what we had done fade into ash, the universe would finally leave us alone.

But time doesn’t heal immortal wounds. It only lets them fester…

Cain hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t healed. He had spent the last century totally consumed by his own sickness, his uncompromising need for total control and power mutating into something borderline apocalyptic. And now, the very thing we had destroyed the world for all those years ago had been handed right back to us.

June. My jaw clenched so hard the bone ached. Cain had killed her once. He had ripped her right out of my hands because he couldn’t have her. And now that her soul had miraculously found its way back into this fragile, mortal body, my brother was already wrapping his suffocating, psychotic fingers around her throat. He could have ended her in a heartbeat. Instead, he chose to play with his food. Murder would be too merciful. For him, she was something much better: a toy.

The silence in the car was growing too heavy. My mind was spiralling into a feral panic, imagining him taking the Polaroid photo she had sobbed about, realising how effortlessly Cain had bypassed her locks whilst I was on the other side of the world.

The melancholic, cinematic melody of Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence began to play, the heavy, dark bass thrumming softly through the car.

I exhaled a slow, shaky breath, letting the music wash over the tension in the cab.

Next to me, Sage shifted. She turned her head away from the glass, her eyes staring blankly at the dashboard for a moment before she closed them.

And then, she started to sing.

Her voice was soft, barely a whisper over the track, but it was incredibly sweet.