by Lana Sky
But then he remained, taunting me with seconds of contact. So, I gave in and tried to swat his fingers away. “I’m not the one who attacked your character—”
“You are now,” he said.
“Oh really?” I laughed. “How?”
“By pretending like you don’t see it.” He stepped in closer, and I had to crane my neck to hold his gaze. “Forget the rest. You ask why I care? Don’t you dare act as though you don’t know—”
“What?” I demanded.
“Why I returned despite intending to spend at least a full damn decade abroad.” He lowered his mouth to my ear. “What Yulia knows. Saskia. Raphael. They all see it. Mocked me for it. I even told you once, my intentions toward you, didn’t I?”
That he had.
“I want you, Eleanor Gray...”
Lies. I swallowed hard, resisting the memory. “Told me what? That you have a fetish for innocence? That I’m the one who toys with you? Who kisses you out of nowhere and leaves on a whim—”
“No.” He withdrew, his eyes flashing. “That I have an irritating impulse to not watch you die. Even if you aggravate me every damn step of the way. Even if it’s a goddamn struggle just to keep my sanity around you. It’s like you want me to—” He broke off and let me go. “Fine. Run. Play the only role you seem willing to play.”
“Wonderful.” I turned on my heel, gritting my teeth. “But don’t pretend like this is my fault. I didn’t leave you. I didn’t accuse you of—”
“Damn you.” His grip clamped down like a vise on my forearm, dragging me back. The second I winced, he released me only to shift his weight to physically block my path. “You enjoy this, don’t you? Pushing me to the goddamn brink. The harder I try to keep my composure, the more you chip away at it. Is this what you want?” He fingered the neckline of my dress, seizing the fabric. “Fine. Perhaps I had every right to question your integrity? I’ll offer you another ultimatum—drop the naïve act or we will both discover just how innocent you really are. You named a whole list of others you’ve supposedly been with—but how many were lies?”
My hand lashed out, colliding with his cheek. Thwack! He didn’t even flinch—but I did as his thumb toyed with a delicate strip of lace.
“Let go,” I whispered. My hand stung as if to warn me away from slapping him again. “Get off!”
“No.” He wound the material more tightly around his finger, forcing me on tiptoe to keep it from ripping. “Admit it out loud, your true condition—”
“Or?” I rasped, hating how my voice broke.
He twisted the lace again. “Or I’ll lose my patience.”
“Stop!”
“Fair enough.” His expression blank, he tugged.
Fabric unraveled like wisps of smoke as my dress slipped from my shoulders. Before my eyes, Yulia’s creation fluttered in pieces to my feet. Even in shock, I knew he was the cause of the malfunction.
“What are you doing?” I rushed to cover my breasts with my hands, but Dublin didn’t even give the appearance of shame.
His gaze raked over me, lingering on the flesh my fingers struggled to shield. Disgust, I could stomach, even if it stung.
While a part of me may have cringed from it, my pride would remain intact.
But his lips parted instead, and my breathing hitched. Alarm bells sounded within my skull, warning me away as he angled his body toward me. Pinprick pupils made his eyes seem even brighter. Burning. Impossible to meet head-on.
It was a dangerous expression. One that triggered a million terrifying sensations I shied from acknowledging. Heat. Heaviness in my limbs that made it harder to stand.
And an ache in my chest that grew more painful by the second.
“Finally, you have the sense to be afraid. Or not.” His nostrils flared, and he scoffed. “I should have known. As always, this excites you more than anything else. You enjoy what you do to me.”
Enjoyment? Was that the name for how my heart lurched in time with his callous laugh?
He took another step. I jolted back until my spine went rigid against the unyielding wall of glass behind me.
“Get away from me,” I croaked.
He laughed again. Then he lunged, slamming his hands against the glass on either side of my head. In the same motion, his knee nudged my thighs, forcing them apart. Slowly. The fabric of his pants teased snatches of my skin, making me jump with every deliberate nudge.
“You put on a good enough act.” He brushed his thumb along the trembling corner of my mouth, tracing my frown. “But your heart betrays you always. It rarely hammers in fear. Instead, your pulse dances with excitement.”
My head spun as I desperately tried to regain clarity. Sanity. Anything. “Stop—”
“Then face what you really fear. Do you enjoy mocking me? Parading me through a crypt and spewing poetic notions of death? This truly is a game to you.”
He swiped his hand over my belly and I cringed, resisting his touch. But then his fingers drifted lower. Lower, plunging between my legs.
And I forgot how to move. How to breathe. Paralyzed, I was a slave to his reaction.
A hiss caught between his teeth. “Damn you.” Eyes glowing, he looked down at his fingers. “Of course you’re wet already. Of course you crave this.”
A deeper groan resonated in his chest as he flexed his wrist, caressing the part of me only he had ever claimed. I closed my eyes, my lips bitten and raw. Noises escaped my throat regardless.
He was ruthless, utilizing sinful, featherlight passes of his thumb. My head reared back against the frigid glass, a groan ripped from my lips.
“Look at me.” His forehead nudged mine until I met his gaze. Both eyes were wide. Unfocused. Less devil now, merely an angel fallen from his perch, hell-bent on dragging me down with him. “I’ll destroy you before you destroy me. I will. So stop daring me to. Death is a fucking game to you, but life? That makes you run scared. So say it.” His mouth found my earlobe, grazing the tip in a silent plea. “Put a name to your tumor or forfeit your body if you’re so determined to die anyway. Say it or you’re mine.”
“Why are you doing this?” My eyes were overflowing. All I could see were shadows—dark and light, swirling around us. “Stop.”
“Then say it.”
My lips parted. I croaked, “C-Cancer.”
“Fair enough.”
A zipper hummed, sounding miles away, and real panic descended.
“Let me go,” I said breathlessly.
He didn’t, placing his hands on my hips with a gentleness that contradicted the hate radiating off him in waves.
I should have been screaming. Clenching my legs together.
But when he flicked his thumb along my inner thigh, they spread for him with no resistance. It was as if my body rebelled against my brain, welcoming the pressure inching inside me with no restraint. His hips slammed against mine and my spine arched, driving him deeper.
He stiffened as if waiting for me to shove him off. Scream. Fight. My mouth found the crook of his shoulder instead, stealing his scent in ragged gulps. He raged inside me, so rigid, forcing my numbed flesh to conform. Burn.
And it was an agony some sick part of me relished. Raw friction. Communication he couldn’t fake or deceive through.
His body stripped him bare and only like this were we ever matched.
Two desperate, pathetic souls.
Groaning, he rocked his hips and my breathing faltered. He was too deep. Too consuming. My nails dug into his shoulders, my face hidden against his skin—but he wrenched on my skull, forcing me to face him.
“Two months,” he declared against my parted lips, his eyes heavy-lidded. “Weeks of torment. Being haunted by this.” He growled in time with another slow, searing thrust. “Your skin. The feel of you. The sound of you…”
Lies. I fought the wave of pleasure, my eyelids fluttering—but then he jerked, slamming into me. Mind-numbing fire ripped down my spine, feeding on my blood like gasoline, and I went limp.
“I should have killed you the first time,” he said. “It’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
The words he said didn’t matter. Each gritted note in his voice set off a chain reaction. Nerves crackled. Short-circuited. I whimpered, grasping him tighter. My hips shifted, urging him deeper. Harder. More.
He hissed, rearing back. Then he lurched into me. “Restraint. You take it from me. Always. And you think you can hide from me? From this.” Harder. Sharper thrusts made every fear and doubt dissolve into nothing. “But I own you, always. Body and soul.”
His thumb invaded between my legs, and I saw white with each stroke he delivered. Every muscle contracted, contorting me like a puppet on violent strings.
All the while, his thrusts quickened. Faster. Too fast.
My head fell back against my shoulders, my eyes on the ceiling as pleasure built.
“I’ve had centuries to prepare for you,” he growled as I convulsed, mindless. “Years beyond your understanding. Do you think this means anything? No.” He stiffened, grunting against the base of my throat. “You mean nothing.”
His arms caught me as my thoughts drifted. As if from far away, I could hear him talking still. To me? Or himself?
“I won’t let you be the end of me. I won’t…even if it means I have to ruin you first.”
Memento Mori
I came to in frozen arms. Dublin’s. For what felt like ages, he carried me, but I lacked the strength to even open my eyes. When his body finally withdrew from mine, a cloud of silken sheets provided a clue as to our destination. Forcing my eyes open confirmed it—a bedroom, darker than the main space. A sliver of moonlight served as the sole illumination, giving his limbs ethereal definition as he stood back.
My heart lurched in my chest. God, he resembled an angel more than ever as his eyes swept over me, his jaw tight. But his grated, hollow voice was pure hell.
“You should be fine,” he said, almost to himself. “I cleared it with the doctor. Your labs had improved, and she didn’t recommend against it.”
Sex, I realized in the depths of my addled brain. He had gone through the trouble of discussing sex with his mysterious doctor. An image of my dress came to mind, how easily he’d removed it…
I didn’t want to jump to the obvious conclusion. It was too insane. I wanted to sleep. Forget.
But some cruel sense of curiosity wouldn’t let me. Struggling for breath, I croaked, “Yulia—”
“I lied to her,” he admitted, easily catching onto my train of thought—the lace had been one of her mysterious alterations.
But the fact that he had requested such a detail presented a scenario I couldn’t fathom at the moment. I closed my eyes instead, desperate to reconnect with my limbs. They were jelly, disobeying any command I issued. I could only lie at his mercy, blind to his expression. Eventually, he left anyway, his steps resonating through the silence.
Only to return minutes later.
I jumped as warm liquid dripped against my inner thigh. My eyes flew open to watch him kneel over the mattress, a rag in hand. He ran it between my legs as reverently as a worshipper cleaning off a cherished altar, and the insanity of it…
I trembled, but he didn’t look up, intent on his task. But something in my silence made his jaw tighten and his fingers stall.
Finally, he grated out a single request. “Say something.”
“I’m dreaming,” I whispered, clinging to that thin possibility. Otherwise, my brain throbbed with too many thoughts to process. His touch. His words. His rage…
“I won’t let you destroy me.”
But then he stood, tossing the rag aside, and turned toward the door. Guilt didn’t belong in this specter—it made him feel far too real.
“Wait,” I croaked.
He froze near the threshold of the hall. Within a heartbeat, tension transformed him into a creature of muscle and bone. An unrivaled statue of perfection.
But his gaze revealed a crack. Something elusive that made my thoughts twist into knots when I tried to decipher it.
So I didn’t.
I closed my eyes and willed everything away. Everything but the childish ache worming through my chest where my heart might have been.
In the end, all I could muster up the strength to voice was, “Why? Why leave?” I added, choking every word out. “Then come back. Then kiss me. Then…” My body hummed, riding the wave of lust even as my mind raged in turmoil. “Why?”
I waited.
But footsteps broke the silence rather than words.
He left.
And, alone, I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and fell into the darkness eager to consume me.
I awoke in a decadently furnished room accented in shades of ebony and emerald. Solid oak furniture clashed with the modern-style windows and light fixtures—much like I did, in a sense. An old-fashioned creature in a world far ahead of its time.
A heavy emerald canopy loomed overhead, fanning around a bed adorned with silken sheets and lush pillows. A window to my right overlooked a view of the city no less stunning than the one visible in the main room. Overcast daylight streamed in, illuminating a wooden wardrobe in the corner and a door partially opened, which I assumed led to the hall.
That shadowy doorway presented a reality too terrifying to face. Not now. I contemplated staying here forever, unmoving, ignoring reality for as long as I could—though it wasn’t as if my body shielded my ignorance for very long. Only a strip of silk covered my naked limbs, and an ache throbbed between my legs. The images of last night loomed, inescapable.
Sitting upright was the only way to banish them. Groaning with the effort, I stood as well and found a robe draped over the end of the bed. I drew it around myself and crept from the room. It was a short distance to the center of the suite, but I didn’t find Dublin lurking there.
Instead, a glass table near the edge of the room had been set for one, containing a plate of sandwiches and a lidded cup. I devoured the food without stopping to savor it. Then I paced to keep any wayward thoughts at bay.
Eventually, I wound up wandering throughout the rest of the spacious suite in search of a distraction. He hadn’t spared any expense, though that said little given his wealth. There were plenty of rooms lurking behind closed doors. A kitchen. A wide parlor with a billiard table and a piano.
None of it felt like him though—unlike a makeshift apartment hidden within a church.
This place resembled…
Well, a neat, clinical cage.
A sudden thud pierced the silence, and I spun around to find an ivory shadow lurking beyond the doorway, dressed from head to toe in steel gray. His closed-off expression was far too dangerous. Cautious. The man might as well have been on tiptoe.
But sleepless hours spent tossing and turning on an unfamiliar bed could put a lot of things into perspective. Like the stark, cruel state of my current reality. And how much better it felt to ignore it.
All of it.
“I’m going to pretend that last night never happened,” I blurted. For some reason, my voice sounded raspier than it should have, but it got the point across. “Whatever you said. Whatever we did—it doesn’t matter. It never happened.”
There. Like magic, I’d willed all the tension away. Sighing, I tilted my head to observe a painting hanging on the wall. A naked angel standing as the sole survivor on a ruined battlefield. How lovely.
“Eleanor…” Dublin fixed me with a strange look. Suspicion? Well, he had no reason to be.
“My cat,” I croaked, switching to more important matters. “Where is he?”
I could have kicked myself for forgetting about him yet again in the tumult of events.
Dublin stood there for so long that I started to wonder if he’d turned into stone. Finally, he sighed. “He’s in the room beside yours.”
“Really?” I raced down the hallway in a direction I’d missed during my first exploration.
Sure enough, a peek into the room beside mine revealed anothe
r suite, and curled up on the floor was Tinkles. My beautiful darling looked healthy, whole, and as surly as ever. He blinked at me, flexing his claws. Approaching him directly was a reckless act, but after days away, I couldn’t resist.
“Darling!” I sank to my knees and threw my arms around him—but my skin wasn’t immediately skewered by his claws.
In fact, something wet and warm stroked my cheek, so unexpected that I flinched back. His tongue, still protruded from his mouth, the culprit of the odd sensation. I had no clue how long I sat there before a familiar shadow appeared in the doorway.
“What did you do to him?” I demanded.
“Come and eat,” Dublin said, ignoring the question. Without another word, he left.
After I made sure Tinkles had adequate lodgings—irritatingly, his room was even larger than the one he had in Gray Manor—I returned to the main room and found the table set with another cup and a plate of steaming vegetables and fish.
Dublin retreated to a far corner, his arms crossed while I sat and downed both offerings without complaint. He wanted to say something, I sensed, so I avoided his questioning stare. Presenting me with food at all was no doubt his attempt at getting a rise from me, allowing him to ruin our fragile truce. So I scraped my fork against my plate for emphasis. See? I wanted to gloat. Everything was nice and cordial. No need for any horrible reminders of events that didn’t matter.
Because they had never happened.
“There is something we need to discuss,” he began as I choked down the last morsel of food.
Damn. Fighting to keep my face neutral, I set my fork aside. “Like what?”
“You claimed you wanted answers… Well, do you?”
Answers. That wouldn’t break my rule, per se. It would be harmless information I could choose whether or not to believe.
“Y-Yes.”
“Good.” He rummaged through a nearby sideboard. After withdrawing something from a drawer, he faced me again, revealing the object settled on his palm—a leather-bound book, dark with age. “You can start with this.”
He dropped the book onto the table, and I eyed it as one might a bomb.
