Page 97 of Devoured

He nips my shoulder, teeth scraping flesh, and his name leaves me on an aching sigh. I shiver.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “This doesn’t mean anything to me.”

I don’t know which of us is the bigger liar.

His dishonesty fans the flames between us, blistering my skin where his hands skim over my ribs, my cheeks, my chest. He either doesn’t realize he’s lying, or he doesn’t care that I can tell. He shreds the sweatshirt off me, exposing the white camisole underneath, and I claw at his shirt, craving more, starving for him. He presses a heated palm against my stomach, the camisole incinerating under his touch, while I force the ruins of his shirt over his head. Throw them onto the floor. But it’s still not enough.

He looms over me—all around me—but I need him closer. I need more.

His tanned skin appears darker in the night, beneath the roof of this dismal shack, his abdomen a canvas of sharp lines and hard planes. He is a fallen angel.

He is my damnation.

I writhe against him, my body fighting for pleasure, and his claw splinters the wall behind me as he drags it down, down. He snarls.

The red of his thoughts breezes through my mind, and I cling to him, remembering the boy beneath the rage, the boy who loves fiercely, the boy who thinks of me with soft reverence and heated longing. He kisses me. Harder. Faster. Rougher. And my body bows into his, completely ceding control. I exhale his name, over and over, until my thoughts can’t exist without him. Until I dread—crave—the mark he’s going to leave on me when this is over.

“You are my nightmare, Vanessa,” he whispers against my lips. “You haunt me.”

He’s said those words before, but they feel different now. Like a vase broken in the dusk only for dawn to paint a softer picture, golden rays exposing delicate, iridescent cracks. Not quite a lie, but not quite the truth either. And that’s what we are—the beautiful, terrible in-between.

Calix stops kissing me first.

I almost don’t understand, until he draws back and catches a single teardrop on my cheek. I’ve been crying.

“It’s okay. Hey, hey, it’s okay.” His muscles tense under my touch as I slide my hands out of his hair and lean into his chest. “It was just… tension. It needed to be released. The kiss doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Lies. All lies.

I wipe my cheeks free of tears. “I’m sorry—”

“No,” he says. “No apologies, remember?”

I peer up at him, and the red of his gaze flares. With longing. With furious need. But he doesn’t move to kiss me again, and the moment shatters.

Reality returns with another crack of lightning as rain begins to pummel the roof. I shouldn’t have done this. I should have known better. Beneath that need and longing is just a boy afraid of heartbreak and loss and ruin. What am I if not a harbinger of all three?

“Hey, look at me.” Calix lifts my chin. “It’s okay, Vanessa. This doesn’t change anything.”

“No?” I ask softly. “So you still hate me?”

“Yes,” he says, wiping away my few remaining tears. “I hate you.”

Lie.

I stare at him, tracing the sight of his beautiful face until it’s burned into my memory forever and I’m certain I’ll never forget this night. I was wrong about Calix. So wrong about him.

“Good.” I move a trembling hand to his cheek, something inside me breaking when his eyes shut and he leans into the touch. “I hate you too, Calix.”

I hate the way he makes me feel. I hate the way he knows exactly how to touch me and exactly where to put his hands. I hate how good he is, how sweet he is, how much he loathes himself. I hate him because I have to. Because—with a war on the horizon and my own mating ceremony a month away—there is nothing else for us.

We cannot exist without hatred.

“Don’t tell Sin,” he murmurs into my palm. “Don’t let him find out. He’ll despise me for this, Vanessa. I know what he’s done is horrible, but I don’t want to break his heart.”

My insides twist. My hand falls away. The truth—the painful, brutal truth—is that I hate myself more than I could ever hate anyone else. Even Calix. Even Sin.

Even Cora.