Chapter Thirty-Nine Please Stay
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Please Stay
Steam caresses my face in the ruins of an ancient bathhouse. It curls my hair as I sit beside Michal at the edge of the water—a hot spring around which they built the entire village. And by they, I mean Michal.
Michal and his family.
Beyond Mathilde’s cottage, beyond the surrounding forest and its fields of heather, lies the beach he once showed me at a distance. The ruins I glimpsed earlier while traveling through the veil. The site where Michal, Mila, Odessa, and Dimitri first stepped foot on Requiem, and—apparently—where they built their homes together. I sought an escape , Michal told me, lost in memories of that time so long ago. A fresh start. I recognized those flowers as a sign of hope for my sister and cousins.
Now he has brought me here too.
“This place... it’s incredible,” I tell him, swallowing hard and staring at the sculpted murals of the walls around us, the hand-carved whorls of the steps leading into the spring. My own hands clench and unclench in the bunched fabric of my skirt as I slip my feet into the water. This place is beautiful. Quiet. Peaceful. “I didn’t realize you could—do things like this.”
A shadow of a smile touches his lips. “My father taught me.” Then, nudging my knee with his own, “Not everyone grows up in the aristocracy, pet. Some of us needed to use our hands.”
I fix him with a beady stare. “Not everyone grows up with a father to teach them things.”
Instantly, I regret the barb, but Michal only laughs softly and says, “Touché.”
And for some reason, his laughter eases the tension in my shoulders more than his pity ever would. It isn’t funny, of course, but I fear I might suffocate beneath the weight of this night, and Michal seems to understand. “Why did you leave this place?” I ask him. “How did it come to be so”—I wave my hands at the crumbling stone, the creeping moss, the crusted salt upon the door—“abandoned?”
“The storms are worse on this side of the island.” He takes my hand in an almost subconscious gesture, running his thumb along my fingers. Tracing the lines of my palm. “Courtesy of one Ysabeau le Blanc—another relation of your friend, and a spurned ex-lover of Dimitri’s. We were forced to relocate when waves decimated half the village.”
“He hasn’t always loved Margot, then?”
“Margot is human, Célie. He has loved many a person before her, and he will love many after her too. Such is the curse of immortality.” A heavy sigh. “To watch our loved ones leave us.” Though my throat threatens to constrict again, Michal shakes his head ruefully and presses a kiss to my palm. “Not that Dimitri has ever been a paragon of faithfulness. He falls a little in love with everyone he meets.”
“He didn’t fall in love with me.”
“Only because I would’ve parted his head from his shoulders. I still might,” he adds with a disgruntled look, “if he keeps propositioning you.”
I help him ease the bloody shirt over his head, tossing it aside to burn later. We don’t want to attract anyone else to this place. “He only does it to get under your skin—a necessary evil, I think, as he seems to be the only one who can.”
“Mila could too,” he says wistfully, and to my surprise, he smiles again. “You should’ve heard them when they got together. They were absolutely ruthless. Odessa and I never stood a chance.” And I wish I could’ve seen it; truly, I wish I could’ve walked the sandy streets of this village with Mila, could’ve sunbathed by the shore with Odessa and Dimitri. I wish I could’ve watched—no, helped—Michal create such a safe haven, far from the sickness of his childhood. More than anything, I wish I could’ve known them before, well—everything else.
Unclasping my cloak, I tear a strip away from the inner lining, bending to dip it in the water.
“What do you think happened to her? Mila?”
Michal closes his eyes as I lift my damp cloak, gently washing the soot from his cheeks. “I don’t know,” he says after a long moment. “I don’t think we can know.”
“Wherever she is, I hope she found peace.” He gives a terse nod, and my gaze slips to his torso, to the angry wound still splintered with bits of wood, before sliding to his injured hand. I uncurl his fist tentatively, and he grimaces as I begin the painful process of cleaning it. “I’m so sorry this happened, Michal,” I whisper into the silence.
His eyes snap open. “So am I.”
My fingers still on his palm, and he meets my gaze with a hard, bitter glint in his own. “Not for the reason you’re thinking. Though it may sound cruel, I am not sorry my sister has finally moved on. That was what she always wanted. I forced her to become eternal when I fed her my blood all those years ago, and that is why I am sorry. Because I took the choice away from her, just like I took it away from you.”
“Michal.” I press his palm to my cheek, breathing a sigh of relief as—free of the wood—his skin finally closes. As it heals. “I am the one who hesitated. I never told you, but in the grotto, I—I had the chance to move on. That golden light appeared—I know now it was Death—but I ignored him because I couldn’t leave my friends. I couldn’t leave you.”
He shakes his head. “You deserved more than this life.”
“Says who?” I ask wryly. “You?”
“Yes. Me.” He slides his hand to my nape, pulling me closer to look directly into my eyes. No. Just to hold me. “I am the one who condemned you to an eternity of suffering. I am the one who must now watch, helpless, as you claim my mistakes as your own, as you slowly start to hate yourself instead of hating me. And I am still a coward”—he spits the word like a curse, unable to see the truth—“a selfish coward because you are not built for vampirism, Célie, and I knew it. I knew it would hurt you more than it hurts the rest of us—to hunt, to feed, to harm another living creature. Hell”—he releases me abruptly, dragging a hand through his ragged hair—“it hurts you to harm the dead ones too. But I didn’t care. When I watched you die on All Hallows’ Eve, I didn’t stop to think; I couldn’t let you go.”
“That doesn’t make you a coward, Michal,” I say softly.
He exhales a harsh breath. “And I still wouldn’t, if I had to do it all over again. I’d still turn you into a vampire to keep you forever. If that doesn’t tell you the type of man I am, I don’t know what will.”
“Perhaps forever no longer seems so frightening.”
“Petite menteuse.” Though he scoffs and moves to stand—to escape, to hide—I catch his arm and rise with him, refusing to allow any distance between us. His entire body shudders at the touch, and he pivots hard—eyes blazing—before crushing his mouth against mine. “You are so beautiful,” he says fiercely, pulling back at my gasp and clutching my face in his hands, “but you don’t need to lie anymore. There is nothing you could ever say that would turn me away from you.”
Breathless, I seize his wrists and glare up at him, willing him to kiss me again. “I am not lying, you insufferable cretin.” My hands slide from his wrists to his waist, and I wrap my arms around him. I force myself to admit the truth—the whole truth this time, instead of just the convenient pieces. “When I woke up in Cesarine, you weren’t there, and I thought you didn’t—that you might not want—”
He swallows as if pained, and his touch softens, cradling my face like I am something precious. Something he still might lose. “Lou said you wanted to go. After what I did, I couldn’t bear the thought of forcing you to stay.”
“I thought you wanted to keep me forever.”
“The benefit of forever is that perhaps someday you wouldn’t hate me.”
“I never hated you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I feared you, Michal. Your control, your intensity, your single-minded focus. I’d never before met anyone like you.” I inhale an unsteady breath, focusing on the heady scent of him, of the water and stone and sea. I want to remember this moment. In a thousand years, I still want to see it in my dreams. “Most of all, however, I feared myself—feared the way I felt around you, feared the things I wanted.” A pause. “I suppose you aren’t the only one who has been a coward.”
Though his lips curl in a small smile, it is the bleakest sight I’ve ever seen. The loneliest. Staring at his hands, he says, “I’d already taken your future. I didn’t want to take everything else too. I couldn’t stay away, though,” he adds bitterly. “I told myself it was to warn you about the revenants, but really—I just wanted to see you. Needed to see you. Even if you didn’t need to see me.”
“I would’ve come back.” I didn’t know what I wanted. “I—missed you,” I breathe. I missed you so much.
“Célie.” He bows his head. “You’d still be alive if not for me—probably married, too, and dragging Chasseur Tower into its era of enlightenment. None of this darkness would’ve touched you.”
“The darkness touched me long before you did.” I lay my cheek against his chest, right where his heart should beat. “Why did you do it?”
His body tenses instantly against mine, and I know without asking that he understands my question. Why did you make me a vampire? Why couldn’t you live without me? “Careful, pet,” he says slowly. “Some answers cannot be unheard.”
Perhaps he doesn’t understand at all.
“There is nothing you could ever say that would turn me against you.” Then, rising on tiptoe to whisper against his lips— “Why didn’t you let me die?”
He doesn’t kiss me, however. Not yet. Instead he stands very still, as if—as if somehow I frighten him too. I do not fear pain , he once told me.
No? What is your fear, then?
Staring at each other now, I think I know. I still do not say it, however, waiting for him to speak first, to trust me as I’ve always trusted him.
“You—” He falls silent then, shaking his head in self-disgust, and I rise even higher, pressing a kiss against first one cheek, then the other. His forehead. His nose. His chin. I kiss him, and I kiss him until his brows furrow in bemusement, until he forgets to look so angry and confused.
“Tell me.”
And like a dam breaking, the words burst from him in a rush of heat. “You’re the sun, Célie. I couldn’t let you die because you are my sun; you are every good thing I’ve ever wanted and never deserved, and once I saw you, felt you, I could no longer live without you. When you aren’t with me, I crave your presence, and when you are with me, I forget the darkness ever existed—you fill up every corner of my vision until I cannot see, cannot think beyond when you might next glance at me, what you might next say. You have blinded me to all others. I couldn’t let you die because you are radiant, and everyone you look upon is brighter for it—better for it—and you don’t even realize. You cannot see the effect you have upon us all.” As if unable to resist, he kisses me this time, and I feel that kiss like a brand upon my skin, burning hotter than words ever could. He pours every ounce of his yearning into it, every ounce of his fear and his rage and his adoration, and the sheer intensity of it nearly knocks me back a step. Still I want more, however.
Still I want more.
Tearing his mouth away from mine, he says, “Does that answer your questions? Does that help you understand?”
He still hasn’t said it, and—with a bolt of clarity—I realize he never will. He refuses to trap me with those final words, refuses to pressure me into saying the same, into feeling the same, when someday I might want to leave.
He really is the most insufferable man.
Flinging my arms around his neck, ignoring his slight wince, I tackle him back to the floor. “I love you too, Michal.” A sharp intake of breath at that—of surprise, of disbelief—but I ignore it too, brushing my hair aside. “Now drink.”
He eyes my throat warily. “But the bond—”
“I don’t care about the bond. I love you, and I want to be with you.” Hesitating at a sudden and terrible thought, I add, “That is... if you want to be with me.”
Now Michal is the one scoffing, the one laughing, and it might be the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. He caresses my hair one last time—softly, reverently—before surging into a sitting position and taking me with him. He does not hesitate when he strikes.
And as his teeth pierce my skin—as that same intoxicating heat washes over me—something different happens.
Something changes.
It is not a slow and subtle thing; it does not build, and it does not come quietly. Instead bright, incandescent light bursts behind my eyelids as we click into place, and my entire being seizes at the sudden feel of him—not his physical body wrapped around mine, but a deeper and stronger presence. A darker one. And all those emotions he tries to hide—I can see them now, coiling like smoke through the lights. Becoming one with my own.
Flashes of memories come next, and I glimpse myself through his eyes as I burst from the graveyard, hysterical and dripping wet. His intrigue at the fanatical young woman twines through the darkness, pulling me into the next—to my wrists tied up on the ship, my scowl in his study, the way my hair spilled like ink down his chair. I see my own wide and terrified gaze glowing in the theater, feel his grudging concern, his fury when Yannick presses his mouth to my throat. I see my scarlet dress.
The bottle of absinthe.
The unexpected lash of jealousy as I drape my body across Bellamy, the bolt of lust as I fall against him instead, the panic at how he likes the feel of his arms around me.
More than likes it.
The smoke curls tighter in anticipation—the white lights spark and flare—and an emotion deeper than the rest unfurls as he stares up at me in the casket, paralyzing and impossible to ignore. Love. He fell in love with me in that moment. And he shudders as I realize it, as he shoulders the weight of my own emotions, my own memories. I see glimpses of them now too, flickering wildly like shooting stars in the night sky, until they too settle into darkness—into a single voice. His voice.
Please stay.
When we fall back into our bodies a moment later—shaken and breathless—I gasp in wonder at the newfound pressure in my chest, recognizing it as Michal’s essence. His shadow. No longer frightening at all, but fierce and unyielding and cherished—so very cherished—as it twines together with mine, joining us irrevocably in Le Lien éternel.
It somehow isn’t enough.
Though the bond between us is staggering in its intensity, vital—though already I cannot live without it—I want to know this breathtaking man in every possible way; I want to touch him, taste him, give him every last part of myself.
He senses my decision the instant I make it. When my mouth crashes upon his, he groans, and I capture the sound hungrily, my hands sliding up his fully healed body. Over every glorious dip of his torso, across the hard swell of his chest and shoulders.
He lets me touch him this time. His breathing turns deep and ragged as I drag my mouth along his jaw, caressing every inch of his skin with my tongue. And perhaps it’s the steam of the bathhouse or the heat of the spring—perhaps it’s simply my blood—but a flush of color stains his cheeks as he seizes my shoulders and pulls me away from him, lifting us both to our feet.
Though I instantly protest, he shakes his head with a slow and seductive smile—a smile I feel, somehow, like a tug between my legs. Everything tightens in response. “You don’t know how often I’ve thought of this moment, pet,” he says darkly. “Now that it’s finally here, you cannot expect me to let you have all the fun.”
“Was that not”—my voice hitches as he kneels unexpectedly, his eyes fixed on mine, and slowly peels the damp gown up my body—“fun for you?”
“I can think of other fun things.”
“Another game?” Clamping my knees together, I struggle to remain upright as he bares inch after torturous inch of my skin. And I shouldn’t feel this feverish beneath his gaze. I shouldn’t feel this sensitive, yet the slightest brush of his fingers has me burning, writhing, and he knows it. “I thought you’d grown tired of playing with me.”
“I seem to remember,” he says, and his own eyes heat as he slowly reveals my calves, my thighs, my hips, “that you still owe me several questions.”
“Ask anything you want.” The words come out harsh, breathless.
“Oh no, pet. That would be too easy. Let’s exchange those truths for dares, shall we?”
When he presses an open-mouthed kiss to my belly, I tear at the bodice of my gown to loosen the strings. I wrench it aside—wrench all of it aside—as his laughter rumbles through the bathhouse, and he straightens to stare at my naked body.
His grin fades then. His expression empties completely, but I can still feel him through the bond—the sharp clench of lust, yes, but also the deep and unending ache that blooms in his chest as he looks at me.
Taking his hand, I pull him flush against me, and his satisfaction envelops us through the bond. His joy and his relief. Mine. The word reverberates between us, and I cannot tell whether it came from him or me.
Still I kiss him in answer, however. Yours.
Without warning, he sweeps an arm behind my knees and tosses me into the pool.
Spluttering, I shoot to the surface indignantly—pushing sopping-wet hair from my eyes—to find Michal has already joined me. A wicked gleam shines in his eyes as he glides through the water, parting it with smooth and powerful strokes of his arms. His shoulders. Stalking me as a predator with prey.
Never run from a vampire.
I cannot help it. With a ludicrous grin, I dive beneath the surface and shoot toward the opposite end of the pool, but he catches my foot in an instant, dragging me back with laughable ease and pulling me against his body.
His naked body.
My legs wrap around his waist reflexively, and water sluices between us as he lifts me higher, pressing another kiss to my throat and walking us to the edge of the pool. Gooseflesh erupts when he presses me against it—because seeing Michal naked is so different from feeling his skin against mine, to realizing the full and immovable scope of him.
“First dare.” He catches my earlobe between his teeth, tugging gently. “Try not to make a sound.”
Before I can answer, he lifts me to sit at the edge of the pool, the water lapping at my calves as I brace my hands behind me. Then he spreads my legs. He bends his head. And he kisses me at the apex of my thighs.
At the first slide of his tongue, my hips jerk, and my back arches. At the second, my head tips backward of its own volition, and my eyes clamp shut lest I split apart at the very seams—something he seems intent on causing because with the third, he throws my legs over his shoulders. His arms snake around my backside, holding me to him, as he drags his tongue upward to that bundle of nerves before sucking deeply. And in that instant, I forget about his dare—I forget my own name—moaning loudly and seizing his hair to find more of that delicious friction. To press harder. To work my hips in time with his tongue until I—I—
My legs stiffen, clamping around his head, but his fingers bite into my own skin too; he refuses to stop licking, to stop feasting, until the bathhouse shatters around me completely. Even then—though I bow backward, unable to withstand the near violent pleasure—he follows until the last shudder leaves my body. Until I collapse upon the stone floor with loose and shaking limbs.
“That was—” I cannot find the right words, however, gulping great lungfuls of air as if they might somehow help me. “You—”
But Michal is heaving himself out of the pool now, kissing up my body as he comes. And another wave of impossible heat washes through me as he settles between my legs, as the length of him presses long and hard against my thigh. My vision swims at the intoxicating feel of it, and instantly, I reach down to take him in my hands. He shakes his head, however, his jaw clenched and his face strained as he kisses my jaw, my chin. “If you touch me now,” he says in a strained voice, “the game will end too soon.”
“But I want you to feel like this too,” I say breathlessly. “I want you to—”
“I do.” With a harsh exhale—perhaps a strangled laugh—he drops his forehead to my own, every muscle in his body tightly leashed. “You make it good without even trying.” Then— “Next dare. If you don’t want to do this, tell me now, and nothing will change between us. I can kiss you until you’re ready, or forever if you’d like—”
My hands snake around his back, daring him to finish that sentence. “I want to do this, Michal, and I want to do it with you.”
“It’ll hurt, Célie.”
“And then it won’t,” I say fiercely. “I’ve read the books. I know how this works.”
“There are books about sleeping with soul-bonded immortal vampires?”
“More than you’d think. Mathilde owned three.”
“Dare.” His sardonic grin fades as he pushes back my hair to study my face. “Tell me if we do anything you don’t like.”
“I promise I will.”
“Dare.” He eases a hand between us, and if my heart could still beat, it would pound straight out of my chest—no, combust—as his fingers part my flesh, as he positions himself at my entrance. “And this one is important—when I tell you to bite, you bite.”
I frown at him. “What—?”
The question disintegrates, however, as he inches inside me, and the sensation quite takes my breath away. It doesn’t hurt, precisely, it just feels—full, almost too full. When I shift to ease the pressure, he slides in another inch. Another. His hips rock gently at first, but his fingers—they ease the sting, still working against me until I might lose my mind all over again. Until my heels press into the floor, and my back arches, and my body feels empty somehow. Bereft. I strain toward him, and my voice breaks around his name, part moan and part sob. “Michal—”
“Bite.”
He thrusts harder with the word, and my body recoils like a band snapping, every muscle stiffening against the stab of pain. It still reacts instinctively to Michal’s command, however, and I sink my teeth into his shoulder in the next second. I wrap my arms around his back, and I cling to him as he groans, as he stills, as he waits for his blood to sweep through me.
The instant it touches my tongue, the pain recedes—not wholly, but enough that my muscles begin to relax around him. Enough that his scent drives me mad. Enough that I—that I need him to—
I shift instinctively, tearing my mouth from his skin with a gasp.
“Do it again.”
Exhaling a harsh and satisfied breath—arms trembling with restraint—he pulls out completely before burying himself inside me once more. To the hilt this time. Pressure builds behind my eyes at the intrusion, and I claw at his back, jerking wildly and twining my legs around him. “Do it again,” I repeat, hardly able to hear through the roaring in my ears. Through the heat.
So he does.
And that stinging pain gives way to a deeper sort of ache with each slow thrust of his body until my own begins to move in response. Until my breath quickens, and my nails bite into his back. “So fucking good,” he grinds out, pumping harder now. Faster. And his words—they do something to me. Digging my heels into his back, I angle my hips to take him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust as he increases the pace. And it’s brutal now, hard and raw and primal, but I love it—I love it because his tightly leashed control is finally slipping, and it’s slipping because of me. The sight nearly undoes me.
Instead I drag my tongue up the column of his throat, just like I did all those lifetimes ago in Les Abysses.
No one would be disappointed, Célie.
And Michal snaps.
He pulls out abruptly, flipping me onto my stomach before wrenching up my hips and plunging into me once more. Overwhelming me. Consuming me. I’ll never tire of it, of him. As he wraps a hand around my front—providing the friction I so desperately need—I feel more alive than I ever thought possible; more beautiful, more powerful.
Because of him.
He is the mirror I always needed, and at last—at last—I can see my own reflection. I can see it clearly. And when my release shatters through me—when he follows with a roar of pleasure—I hold him tightly afterward, waiting for the tremors to leave his body.
Refusing to ever let him go.