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“To your smile. Your wrath. Your clever hands." With each statement I kiss along her skin, "Your terrible plans. Your grief. Your laughter when it finally decides to come home.” I swallow. “To you.”
The world goes very quiet. Then Olive pulls me down by my lapels and kisses me. There are moments in a man’s life when he understands, with perfect clarity, that he has been walking toward his own destruction for years and simply had the bad manners to call it living. This is mine. Her mouth is heat crushed beneath hunger. I kiss her back like a sinner granted one final sacrament. She tastes of wine, sugared fruit, and danger. My hands go to her waist, then stop.
Her mouth curves against mine. “Are you afraid, Laz?”
“Of you? Constantly, darling,” my lips whisper upon hers.
“Good,” she retorts.
“Thrilled by it? Also constantly.”
This time, she laughs softly, against my mouth. I would burn cities to hear that sound again. Her fingers slide into my hair. The ballroom is gone. The guests are gone. The lies, titles, forged seals, and my manor vanish beneath the weight of her body pressed to mine. When we part, she is breathing harder, as am I. I rest my forehead against hers.
“Tell me to stop,” I whisper, “and I will.”
She looks at me for a long moment. Then she says, “Do not stop.”
A terrible, beautiful thing opens in my chest. I take her hand, not to drag, nor lead. Not to claim, but to invite her. She follows me up the shadowed staircase to the private rooms above the ballroom, where the music becomes a distant pulse beneath the floorboards and the candlelight turns everything gold.
At the door, I pause. “One more chance to reconsider.”
Olive steps past me into the room, her voice calling like a siren song, “Lazarus.”
“Yes?” My answer is strained.
She turns, garnet silk glowing in the candlelight, eyes bright with every color I have ever wanted to give her.
“Show me.”
So I do. Not with haste or greed, but with reverence. With every kiss I have imagined and every gentleness I did not know I possessed, dancing along her soft body. That desire can kneel without taking. That worship does not require an altar when the goddess stands before you in blood-red silk and finally allows herself to be touched without performance. And when she whispers my name like something broken learning to become whole, I understand the terrible truth. I do not merely want Olive, I want to belong to the life she creates after all the monsters are dead.
I want Edward there, stubborn and haunted and loved despite himself. I want Alcott there, bright-eyed and dangerous, laughing over some impossible plan. I want the four of us together.
Growing old together, killing when necessary and thriving when life permits. Living for her, living with her, and giving her every color she was ever denied. If the world refuses such a strange little constellation of damaged people their joy, then the world may choke on its refusal, because I have tasted her now. I have held her and God strike down every man who thinks he can take her light again.
My movements become entwined with hers as we reach for one another. Limbs caressing each other. I pull back to admire her heady breaths, her flushed skin and glimmering eyes.
“May I kiss you?”
She chuckles at me, “if I am not mistaken, you have been.”
“No, darling. I would like to kiss you somewhere much more intimate.” The tip of my nose travels down her neck, peppering small admirations as my tongue slowly licks her exposed skin.
She shutters beneath me as she replies with a breathy, “yes.”
I sink to my knees, gathering her skirt within my grasp, pulling it up and over so I may worship the goddess that has finally granted me her blessings. Her breathy sounds of pleasure are my version of angels singing from above.
PART II – The Devil’s Masquerade
24. Choosing the Chase – Olive
Take Me First
I wake alone. For a moment, I do not know where I am.
The ceiling above me is not mine. It is higher, older, carved into dark wood with gilded vines that twist into one another like beautiful things attempting to strangle. Morning light spills through tall windows, catching upon velvet curtains, polished floors, and the remains of candlelight.
Beautiful colors surround me, that of gold, and crimson. Mahogany carvings and adorned ivory. Nearly too much of it is overwhelming. As though the world has been starved of my attention and now demands to be seen all at once. I turn my head and the other side of the bed is empty. The sheets are cool and Lazarus is gone. I stare at the place where he should be and refuse to acknowledge the small, foolish drop inside my chest.
