Page 112 of Two Sides of Sin

I slid my hands under the hem of her heavy sweater, my large palms finally making contact with the bare, searingly hot skin of her waist. I dragged my hands upwards, tracing the delicate curves of her, my lips moving from her mouth to the sensitive skin just below her jaw. She arched her back into my touch, totally surrendering, entirely mine.

I was going to take her right there on the marble counter.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The shrill, ear-piercing shriek of the smoke detector instantly shattered the intimate, heavy fog in the room.

Sage practically jumped out of her skin, tearing her mouth away from my neck with a startled shriek.

I whipped my head around. Thick, black smoke was rapidly billowing out of the skillet on the stove, engulfing the kitchen. The steaks were practically charcoal.

“Shit!”

I stepped back from her, grabbing a kitchen towel and frantically waving it at the screaming alarm on the ceiling. Sage slid off the counter, her hair a wild, beautiful mess, her lips thoroughly kissed red.

For a second, she just stared at the smoke pouring out of the pan. And then, a sound bubbled out of her chest that stopped my heart all over again.

She started to laugh.

It wasn’t a nervous chuckle, it was a bright, bell-like, full bodied laugh of pure human joy.

The sound of it broke the tension. A wide, helpless grin spread across my face.

“Open the doors!” I shouted over the blaring alarm, grabbing the skillet by the handle and yanking it off the burner.

Sage was giggling uncontrollably as she ran across the living room, throwing the latches on the massive glass doors and shoving them wide open. The crisp, freezing air of the forest immediately rushed in, sucking the smoke out into the night.

I killed the alarm with a jab of the towel, plunging the house back into the smooth, crackling sound of Billie Holiday, who was still singing faithfully from the living room.

I leaned my hands against the counter, coughing slightly, looking over at the girl standing in the open doorway. The wind was whipping her hair around her face, her eyes dancing with bright, unshakable amusement.

For the first time in a hundred years, the crushing weight of my existence felt light. We had burned dinner, the house smelled like charred meat, but Cain was still out there, somewhere.

We ended up eating sitting cross legged on the plush, oversized sofa in the living room, picking at the salvaged, slightly charred centres of the steaks and a hastily thrown together salad.

By all human standards, the dinner was a complete disaster. The house still faintly smelled of smoke, the forest wind was still whipping through the open glass doors, and my meticulously planned evening had literally gone up in flames.

But as I sat there watching Sage smile, her cheeks flushed with the sheer relief of finally feeling safe, I couldn’t have been happier if I tried.

She took another sip of her wine, pulling her knees to her chest as she turned her body fully towards me. The ambient light of the room caught the beautiful, relaxed softening of her features.

“You know,” she murmured, resting her chin on her knee, a playful, tipsy glint in her dark eyes. “I was just thinking… for someone who just flew across the globe to rescue me from my own paranoia, I don’t actually know that much about you.”

I took a slow sip from my glass, masking the sudden spike of caution in my chest. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she said simply. “I know you’re extremely good looking. I know you’re insanely protective. And just insane in general I’m pretty sure, But… where did you grow up? Do you have any family? What did you do before the military?”

I leaned back against the cushions, smoothly slipping into the carefully constructed, bulletproof web of white lies I had spent decades perfecting.

“I grew up moving around a lot,” I rumbled, keeping my voice steady and light. “Quiet family. Small towns. I joined the military because I needed structure. I needed to keep moving, see the world, keep my hands busy.”

Keep my hands from ripping the world apart, I added silently.

She listened intently, enthralled by the fabricated, painfully normal human history I fed her. It was a brutal necessity. If I told her the truth—that I was born over a hundred years ago, that my wealth came from a blood-soaked aristocracy, and that I had spent the last century hunting and killing to outrun the ghost of her and my twin brother—her fragile, beautiful mind would shatter.

“And what about now?” she asked, tilting her head. “What are your plans? With the military… with life in general?”

A dark, quiet laugh rumbled deep in my chest.