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“For me, too.” I swallow. Breathe out. His head shifts slightly until we’re leaning together. Maybe my method of staying away was the right one. Seems like he misses me. “For me, it was you. I want to be the kind of person who can be with you. I’ve missed you, Lazarus. Just in case you wanted to know.”

He says nothing, but his arms pull me in tighter. He pushes the cookie plate beside him farther away, and when he turns to look at me again, his eyes travel up, past my face.

My eyes follow.

Mistletoe. Over the display of holiday romances lining the wide sill of the bay window.

“Should I move?” I whisper.

“Not this time.” Lazarus’ lips find mine, and his mouth attaches, soft and sweet.

Which is terrible, because I feel like someone poured gasoline on the little smoldering embers of want that I’ve been carrying for him. I have to be a lady. I have to not blow this.

But I’m blowing this. I grab the collar of his shirt and notice the thin, studded band of silver and black he’s wearing on his neck. My finger works under it, a gentle hook to keep him in place. Keep him with me unless he really wants to get away. He doesn’t. He moans into my lips, and as one, we stop.

No other moans from up here.

“I missed you, too, Vic,” he hisses, and his hands clamp down on my back, then loosen. Words are fighting inside him, and I can feel it as his head dips to my neck. “Is this... okay?”

In answer, I slide his hands down, pointedly placing them on my ass, letting my dress ride up until it kisses my waist.

“I’m not going to think differently about you than I do now, if you, y’know,” I can hear his swallow against my shoulder, “let me.”

“What do you think about me now?” I’ll get to the rest of the sentence in a second.

“I like you. I want you. Wish I didn’t. Wish we weren’t monsters—but if we weren’t, maybe we wouldn’t be together. And maybe monsters lie and kill sometimes, and fight to do better things.” His face tips back, and he sprawls back against the display, gray skin silvery in the snowy moonlight coming in through the big window. His face is reflective, relaxed, almost drowsy, and when he smiles that crocodile grin, all teeth and lazy eyes, everything in me flutters.

I know real wickedness. It’s supposed to look like that.

It’s handsome like that, tempting, the devil’s way of seducing you.

Lazarus is no angel, but he’s no devil either. He’s a monster made out of men, but with more humanity than most of the men I met in the CrossRealms.

As I’m resting in his lap, leaning over him, daring to stroke my fingers through his curious moonbeam-colored hair, he keeps speaking, voice so soft I have to bend to catch the words. “Rhea says maybe I don’t need to have a ‘bride’ made for me, like Manny did. But you were sent to me, Victoria. Sent to end me, or end the way I’ve been living. I don’t know. I guess we wait to see.”

“I guess I show you,” I whisper, pecking his lips, rocking my hips into his lap, watching him shift. Hearing that low, muffled groan. “But let’s clear up a couple of things, okay?”

He nods, closed eyes opening, back to watchful.

“First. Let you? I let the others. I did it for a paycheck. You? I want. I crave. I don’t get paid for this in any way—except by being with you, and right now, that’s all the riches I could want. Your forgiveness. Your second chances. I love...” I swallow, and he sits up, an eager, hopeful look in his eyes that I hate to dash. “I love that you realize what I am. A monster with a pretty face, but one who can change. You said you didn’t have a bride ‘made’ for you. Oh, baby... Baby, don’t you know there are all kinds of ways to make a monster?” I murmur, gyrating on his lap.

“How can you just accept what I am? What you are?”

“If I had a rewind button, Emily would be alive, and so would a lot of other killers. Bad men. Maybe lots of grown-up Emilys would be missing,” I muse, and the night is suddenly heavy.

“You shouldn’t have to think about that all the time. I’m sorry, baby.”

I love when he calls me that. Shows me that affection. I know with him, it’s real. He wouldn’t give it to me unless he forced it out of him. There’s nothing cheap and easy about his love—even if I’ve been called that plenty. “I think you could have so much better. I just want you to know that.”

“Better? For me?” He shakes his head and studies me in silence for a second. “Nope. For me... Damn it, Vic. I think Rhea was right. You’re just what the doctor ordered. Well, the new one.”

Our gallows humor would probably put everyone else in the world off.

I smirk.

He snickers.

And the fire is suddenly back.