Chapter Thirty-Three #2
He caught me looking. “Told you your juices were all over me.”
I smiled, embracing the flood of possession. You’re mine. My body says so.
He nodded and placed a fist over his heart. Forever.
“Come along, little nightmare.” Snatching my wrist, he dragged me off the bed and carted me toward the door. “Time to party.”
A flood of moisture oozed hotly down my thigh.
I cringed.
He wrenched open the door and laughed at my screwed-up face. “Bit of a mess down there? Maybe if you’re a good girl tonight, I’ll lick you clean.”
I stumbled.
He caught me.
He whispered into my ear, “You still with me, mon c?ur?” (My heart.)
I caught his gorgeous grey eyes.
I fell into even deeper feelings. “Always.”
He shivered.
I smiled.
Together, we descended into a night where ghosts and demons came out to play.
And hoped we’d still be alive come morning.
* * * * *
“Something doesn’t feel right, jaanu.”
I spun and caught Peter behind me.
He shifted on the spot, pressing his lips to my ear. “Victor has a smug look in his eyes. It’s giving me the fucking creeps.”
I shot a glance at Victor laughing with Roland across the room.
Slim and tall, with his own dark cape, Victor looked like a distinguished art gallery curator or slightly eccentric benefactor. The mask cutting his face in half hid a lot of his sins, but Peter was right.
His navy eyes seemed particularly pleased, kind of pompous actually.
“Come.” With a quick look at Henri who stood talking to Ben and Stewart not far away, Peter snatched my cuffed wrist and dragged me into the alcove draped with white netting that’d been hung on all the walls of the Great Hall.
For two hours, we’d mingled, all while I did my best to forget about the stickiness between my legs. Henri kept giving me knowing glances as Masters ate, drank, and grew merry.
Victor had spared no expense.
The Great Hall travelled almost the entire length of the east wing.
Its polished parquet floors, sweeping high brimstone and devil painted ceilings, and hundreds of stained-glass windows made it seem as if we truly were in hell.
Each stained-glass window depicted some sort of erotic carnage.
From women skewered on spears, to girls burning at the stake.
Each one died a slow, painful death all while being fingered, fucked, or whipped.
The scenes were so barbaric, so brutal, I hadn’t been able to eat a thing.
Interspersed amongst the sickening windows, Victor had ordered his decorating team to drape white and black swathes of material on every wall. The black absorbed the candlelight flickering from the many candelabras while the white glittered like stardust.
I still couldn’t figure out his theme, but every Master wore the same black cloak as Henri. The same black tourmaline mask. The same aura of grim reaper gliding around the room sipping blood-red wine and laughing as they tormented their jewels.
The jewels...
If Victor had intended to make them seem like angels, he’d succeeded.
Every one of us wore the same white gossamer fabric. The girls in wispy petal dresses with trains long enough for Masters to stomp on, and the boys in trousers and shirts so fine and sheer, the shadows of their bodies were visible, teasing bastards to touch.
I looked up at Peter’s face.
His matching mask of crystals glittered with rainbows, casting pinks and greens over his lips.
I hated that we hadn’t had much time to talk.
I missed him even though he was standing right there.
I wanted to tell him I loved him but...I had a feeling that would hurt him too much. Not because I had such deep feelings for him but because those feelings were purely platonic.
He was my friend and soulmate. Just like my brother.
If I hadn’t found the missing part of my soul, then perhaps we would’ve ended up as a couple.
But...in this life, this incarnation, I was Henri’s.
Do badan, ek jaan: two bodies, one soul.
My gaze drifted from Peter’s handsome face to the swollen welts on his chest, glowing red beneath his angelic white shirt. “Oh, Paavak...I’m so sorry.”
He flinched and rubbed the lashes as if he could erase them. “I’m fine.”
“Who hurt you?”
“Branson’s back. But don’t fret—”
“Bastard.”
I wished tonight was Christmas not Halloween.
I wanted to leap forward two months and stop him from ever being abused again.
“I can give you the rest of the arnica tablets I took after Emerald Bruises. They really helped heal all my paintball marks.”
He smiled distractedly and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t drag you here to talk about my injuries—”
“Do you want to talk about what happened the night of Topaz Tor—”
“Nope.” He rubbed his mouth. “Definitely not.”
I winced, remembering how we’d stood side by side on that dance floor.
How we’d climaxed at the same time to different Masters.
How he’d been dragged off by a Master named Wilson and Henri had carted me the other way.
Despite my wariness of telling him I loved him tonight, I’d told him during that game.
I’d given him what he asked for and...we hadn’t mentioned it since.
Rubbing the goosebumps on my arms, I shrugged. “We need to talk about it. It’s been awkward between us for weeks.”
He dropped his hand with a heavy huff. “Ily...please don’t.
” Flinching, he watched a black-caped Master drift past our transparent wall of stardust. “I know what I asked you to do, and I know why you went along with me. I know it didn’t mean anything and...
” He gave me the saddest smile all while his eyes glossed with grief.
“We’re all good, jaanu. Seriously. I’m fine. ”
The cavernous echo in his voice.
The aching despair.
Henri shot a look in our direction. He swayed toward me, his entire body bristling with protectiveness.
But I subtly shook my head.
We were safe.
We weren’t far.
And Peter needed me.
I owed my wonderful friend some company. Especially when his entire energy felt...empty.
Worse than empty...desolate.
Peter’s white outfit suddenly no longer looked like an earthbound angel but a shroud—grave clothes even while he still breathed.
Grabbing his hand, I squeezed. “Paavak, what is it? You’re scaring me.”
Running his thumb over my knuckles, he exhaled.
He didn’t reply for the longest time but finally, he sniffed and gave a tattered laugh.
“I told myself I wasn’t gonna do this. I’ve choked on the words since the day I fucking met you but...
” Fisting my hand so hard it hurt, he groaned, “You know I’m in love with you, right? ”
Everything dropped away.
The classical haunting music of Victor’s soiree.
The sensation of Henri watching us like a hawk.
“I don’t just love you, Ily,” he murmured. “I’m in love with you and fuck, I wish I wasn’t.”
Ego ordered me to deny it. To act surprised. To give him a semblance of dignity.
But...I couldn’t.
I’d never lied to him, and he’d never lied to me.
Even on that first day when he asked me to reveal myself, so he had a mental picture to cling to while he was being hurt, I’d sensed he felt something I didn’t.
I wished things could’ve been different and I had the power to make him happy.
But...I belonged to another, and it wouldn’t be fair.
To any of us.
Struggling for words, I opened and closed my mouth a few times, praying I said the right thing, but Peter beat me to it.
“You don’t have to say anything back.” He shot Henri a look.
“I know how you feel about him. You only have to be in the same room as you two to feel it. To see it.” He chuckled painfully.
“He’d literally kill himself for you and you...
well, you’d bring him back to life because you can’t live without him.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you shared the same fucking heart and...
I won’t deny that hurts. It hurts worse than all the whips, the rapes, the beatings.
It hurts because I’ll never get to know what that feels like, and I’ll die before I’m ever loved in return. ”
Stepping into him, I wrapped him in the biggest hug.
“I love you, Paavak. I think I have for lifetimes. I’m yours as well as his.
I’m just not the missing piece of your soul.
But you will find her. I know you will. Of course you won’t die.
She’s waiting for you outside this place.
By next year, you’ll be free and healed and you’ll meet each other on the train or in the supermarket and she’ll take one look at you and just know. ”
He gathered me to him, his heart thundering between us. “I love you, Ilyana Sharma.”
I dug my fingers into his back. “I know but you’ll love someone far deeper than me. When you find her, you’ll understand.”
Sniffing back grief, he murmured, “Do you know he said he’d step aside if you ever chose me?
” He pressed a kiss to my temple. “Fucking bastard showed me in one sentence he wasn’t faking how he felt.
He didn’t threaten me. Didn’t even tell me to back off.
” He stepped away and rearranged some of the layers of my dress with tender fingers.
“The fact that he put your own happiness above his own told me everything. He loves you, jaanu. So much. And...fuck, if I can see it, then everyone can.” He flicked a look at Victor who toasted Roland as a waiter topped up their wine goblets. “He can see it. He knows.”
Henri brushed aside the fabric, his eyes narrowing at how close we stood to each other. “Everything okay?” His hand twitched toward me, but he snatched it back.
Giving me space.
Giving me to Peter for a few seconds.
If I didn’t love him already, I would’ve for that alone.
“We’re fine. Just...two minutes.”
It cost him.
I saw it in his eyes, but he nodded and turned his back, guarding us from cameras and Victor.
“You think Victor knows more than what he’s showing?” I whispered, a cold draft howling down my spine.