18
EVIE
W hen I was finally alone again, I felt Kylo’s absence in the lack of warmth in my stomach, the hollowness in my chest.
I immediately went to my altar and confirmed Idris was safe. Even though I knew that he was already—based on my intuition and Kylo’s confirmation that the only person who’d died was a female first year. I hated the way my mind ruminated, got caught on a worry and couldn’t let it go until I’d disproved it seven different ways. I’d been careful not to let this neurosis slip in front of Kylo. I knew how irritating I could be when I got caught in an irrational loop of fear. It used to drive Jacob insane.
After I woke up in Kylo’s arms in the park, I wanted to run. I knew what I’d done, the violence that had leaked from my palms.
I had killed someone today.
And the only thing I could do was frantically bury that secret in a hole with all the others. Because if I dwelled on it, I’d be back to square one. I would hide from the world, from my plans to open my own shop. I would slide back into my comfortable solitude.
If you hide from the world, the world will hide from you.
How did Kylo know me? How did he make me stay, when with anyone else, I would’ve run and never looked back?
And how could I reconcile the sense of safety he evoked with the harsh, loud warning bells that went off every time he was near? It was maddening, the intensity of my attraction to him, knowing without a sliver of a doubt that he couldn’t be trusted.
He was a poison I couldn’t stop drinking, the same as the magick I’d locked away long ago. He was a contradiction, an anomaly.
Just like me.
The story didn’t make sense. Where had he gone after the lights went out? Where was he when the masked man scooped me into his arms? I thought for sure it had been Kylo speaking to me. How did he get to safety? Why did the exact same masked man save me both in the alley and in the library? I recognized his mannerisms and build, the frightening shadow skull mask. His flirtation.
I knew that he made me feel the same way that Kylo did.
Alive. So fucking alive.
My tarot cards burned my hands when I touched them, alerting me to the fact that the spirits were tired of my shit. I was asking too many questions. They wanted me to live, to learn the lessons I needed to learn by experience.
Fuck that . I needed certainty. I needed to protect myself.
I pulled The Devil card. Addiction, sensual pleasures, control and domination.
Then The Lovers. Two souls intertwined. Romance. Difficult choices.
Wheel of Fortune. Fate . You cannot be certain of the future. You must live!
Seven of Swords. Betrayal. Deception. Secrecy.
Everything I feared.
Just one more… this time, the cards shocked me so hard I dropped the deck.
“Urgh,” I grunted. “ Fine. ”
I thanked the spirits for their aid, albeit grumpily. I immediately sunk into a fantasy romance novel before another round of ruminations could take hold.
And as I read in my living room, curled into the blue fabric sofa, I felt that unmistakable warmth trail down my spine. The knowledge I was being watched.
By the man who was going to steal my heart and betray me.
The monster who hid behind a mask of shadows.
The Devil.
I rose from the couch. My nightgown skimmed my upper thighs, my nipples hardened peaks beneath the thin white fabric. I stood in front of the windows, staring into the dark night.
Something wild and unrestrained beat against the cage of my ribs. Foreign, beautifully wicked thoughts plagued me.
I didn’t want to live in my old reality, where the only exciting fantasies existed between the pages of a novel. I didn’t want to face the pain, the guilt, the horror always haunting me from the periphery.
I wanted to keep feeling alive .
I didn’t stop to worry or dissect what I did next. I merely acted, following the thrill of danger and pleasure in my core.
My fingers skimmed up my gown to the right strap, and with a sharp movement, I pushed it off my shoulder.
I wanted him to see. I wanted him to know that I knew he was out there, watching me.
And I couldn’t explain why. These acts were the exact opposite of everything I thought I was. Everything I thought I was before him.
Despite the fear and the danger, for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what came next.
And I wanted to find out.
I pushed the second strip of fabric off my left shoulder, but before the gown could fall and exposed my breasts, I snapped my fingers. The curtains drew shut.
My heart was thunderous in my chest. My mind floated. I was flooded with heat and adrenaline, keenly aware of my own mortality.
I pulled my straps back up with a smug smile.
But when I headed to my bedroom and found that the window was wide-open, that smile evaporated with a sudden swiftness.
Cool air teased my skin as the adrenaline transformed instantaneously to fear.
I’d barely lifted my foot to step toward the window before strong hands grabbed me and pulled me back into a broad, hard chest.
I screamed. A hand covered my mouth, muffling the noise.
“What did I say about screaming, baby?” a deep, distorted voice asked in my ear.
I shuddered at the tickle of his breath. Flailing and kicking wildly, more limbs wrapped around me. Too many to count.
With my heart in my throat, I stared down at the thick shadows coiling around me like snakes.
“I thought we were playing games?”
His mouth brushed the shell of my ear, and full-body tingles swept down my skin.
“You made your first move. You thought I wouldn’t respond?” He paused, his chest vibrating against my back with a chuckle. “It’s like you don’t even know me at all.”
Motherfucker.
I couldn’t move, bound to him with magick that whispered to my own.
His mouth moved lower, and I made a muffled sound of protest into his hand when his lips skimmed my shoulder. He kissed the strap I’d teased him with, pulling it between his teeth before letting it fall back in place.
My mind and body were at war. I wanted his lips on my skin. The place between my thighs pulsated with need unlike any I’d felt before.
I shifted my thighs together, and the masked vampire fucking inhaled. Audibly.
“Isn’t that something?” he whispered cruelly. “You’re more aroused than frightened. I can smell it in your blood.”
My blood.
A wave of terror and heady desire ran through my body in waves. Something big and hard twitched against my back, just above my ass.
My blood .
This wasn’t a romance novel. I was being tormented by a vampire who I knew—without a sliver of a doubt—had been watching me for weeks now.
And I knew who he was. Of course, I did. I wasn’t stupid.
I shut my eyes tight. What if I was wrong? I wanted to be wrong.
Angel. Special. Safe.
Safe, safe, safe.
“How does it feel, little witch? To gain pleasure from your fear?” he asked.
Liberating.
Horrifying.
He removed his hand from my mouth.
“I hate you,” I said, but it unfortunately came out as more of a needy whimper.
The masked vampire made a dissatisfied sigh. “Is that so?”
He dragged me backward, and before I knew it my back was pressed up against the wall. The only light came from a lamp out in the hallway. In the dim glow, I faced him.
The Devil.
His mask of shadow covered almost all of his face but his lips, moving diagonally to expose part of his left jaw and cheek. And when he opened his mouth, I homed in on those razor-sharp elongated canines.
Shadows bound my wrists above my head, but my legs were free where I stood. I kicked at him. To my surprise, he allowed it.
He watched my legs swing, my feet delivering blows to his shins and knees.
Then, he laughed.
He laughed at me .
The shadow mask moved over his mouth to distort his voice. Which was nonsensical when I already knew who the fuck he was. And I knew he knew it too.
“Baby, please,” he said, still laughing at my expense. “As if you weren’t already infuriatingly adorable enough. If you keep kicking those little feet, I’m going to have to leave bites all over your thighs.”
I stopped kicking. I tested the restraints around my wrists. The shadows were strangely smooth, almost like skin, when they solidified. They didn’t give an inch. If anything, they tightened the more I wiggled.
My breathing was shallow, my head spinning. I was angry. Blisteringly angry. Because why was the first man I felt this attracted to, this safe with—this intrigued, seen, and understood by—a fucking psychopath?
A frustrated tear slid down my cheek. My masked stalker easily shoved my legs to the side and placed his thigh between mine, pressing against the sensitive, needy core of me.
“Why are you crying, angel?”
“They’re tears of hatred,” I said, a humiliating tremor in my voice.
The mask shifted, revealing his mouth again. To my horror, he leaned in close, and in a quick burst of movement his tongue was on my cheek.
He caught the tear on the tip of his tongue and slowly followed its trail upward before pulling back to stare hard into my eyes.
Or at least, I assumed he was staring behind his mask.
I was speechless. My lips parted as I stared into the abyss of slowly churning shadow. The void I’d been running from since I was a child, forsaken by parents who refused to protect their own children.
Did this man even have a soul? Was he feeding from mine ?
His thigh pressed harder against my center, and I gasped. Tears burned my eyes, anger a bitter lump in my throat. Yet I slowly began to shift my hips, lightly grinding against his leg.
“Good girl,” he cooed.
One of his hands was pressed against the wall. The other slowly skimmed across my chest. When it circled an erect nipple, I bucked against him.
“Uh-huh. That’s it, angel,” he praised. “Such a good girl. Show me how much you hate me.”
He was making fun of me. Toying with me like a cat with a mouse between his paws. Yet I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t escape the pleasure coursing under my skin in waves, the delirious quiet that was starting to overtake my over-worked and exhausted mind.
“Mmhmm. You’re being so good for me. Good girls get rewarded.”
I felt his voice as a vibration moving up my body.
“What do you want, Evie?”
I wanted to tell him to go. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone forever. To take his darkness and violence and never come near me or Idris or Mena ever again.
Another tear fell, and I couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop chasing the pleasure a touch out of reach. I clenched around his thigh, and his accompanying groan filled me with equal measures of satisfaction and shame.
“I can’t—I’ve never…” I trailed off.
The masked vampire stiffened. “You’ve never what, angel?”
My cheeks grew hot. I shook my head.
He grabbed my cheeks between his thumb and forefinger. “Use your words, baby.”
He removed his grip, lightly tucking a strand of hair behind my ears. The acts of tenderness juxtaposed with his violations only drove my desire deeper, needier.
I wasn’t even looking at his face, only an inhuman black mask, and that was still too much. I had to close my eyes.
“I haven’t done… most things,” I said. “I’ve never, um, come… with someone else. Only myself.”
When the vampire removed his thigh from between my legs, I had to suppress a frustrated gasp.
“I wish I could say this was a surprise, but I know the caliber of men who came before me. And nope, doesn’t shock me at all, really.”
My eyes flew back open.
“You—what?” I stammered, dissecting his words. I knew he’d been watching me, but his blatant admission of it was a shockwave of horrifying reality to my system.
Kylo had come to my rescue the minute Jacob abandoned me at the markets. He’d positioned himself as everything Jacob wasn’t.
Suspicion, distrust, and paranoia ripened in my veins.
This was wrong. All of it. What was I doing?
I opened my mouth to tell him to leave and never come back, but he spoke first.
“What else?”
I glared at him, and his hand was around my throat in an instant.
“What. Else. Have. You. Never. Done.”
“Why does it matter?” I asked. That locked away, forbidden anger hissed in my ear. “Of course, a vampire freak like you would be perversely attracted to my purity .”
He stood perfectly still. Watching. Waiting. Withholding his touch as my nerves screamed for him.
“I bet you think that you will be the one to take all of my firsts, is that right?” I spat.
The deep, distorted laugh that filled the room was devoid of all humor. The lamp in the hall switched off. Deathly potent power engulfed the space.
“I see we’re done being my perfect good girl, hmm?” he asked, his voice eerily cold as wrath trembled beneath the surface. “Because that …”
The shadows around my wrists suddenly released me. I didn’t think.
I ran.
A gust of wind shut the bedroom door in an instant. Strong arms yanked me back.
“… was the wrong. Fucking. Answer .”