Chapter 33
Liar
Ablack shadow streamed against the whining wind.
On the rooftop across the road, someone was watching.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the wind might carry my voice to delicate vampire hearing, so I closed it again.
Michael had already left. The only person to tell was Karson.
It took every cell in my body to force myself to do what I had to do next.
I shifted closer to him. “Hold me,” I whispered.
He blinked slowly. In his eyes was relief and hope and longing.
I hated how that look stuck to my heart, how an invisible thread yanked, urging my body back to his.
And I hated the bolt of lightning that shot through me when he swooped forward and placed one hand on the back of my head, the other around my shoulders, and he cradled me to his warm, strong chest. My nose inhaled in his cinnamon and honey scent without my command.
I wanted to rush into his embrace. Like two flames burning together.
But I was stiff as I let the wall in my mind fall and showed him the image.
“Clever girl,” he murmured, his lips sweeping over my ear, sending buttery warmth over my skin.
“Stay here.” Then he was gone, leaving me shivering and pacing the pavement, fighting not to look up, to give him away.
I was safer here; the street was still filled with patrons lingering, even though the bar was closed.
They were huddled in groups, talking about the girl.
“She just slit her throat,” one said with a weird excitement. “Blood was everywhere.”
My chest twisted and I began to feel sick. Whoever did that had Georgie.
I couldn’t just stand here while she suffered unimaginable fear and pain. I clutched Georgie’s handbag tight and ran across the road, moving down a dark alley toward the back of a triple-story building.
Karson dropped down from the rooftop in front of me. It had to be over a fourteen-foot drop and he barely even made a sound.
“Where are you going?” he growled.
“To help look for whoever was up there.”
“Whoever it was is gone. Monique is coming to see if she can pick up a scent. I told you to stay where you were.”
“I’m not yours,” I spat as I stepped past him down the alley. “I don’t have to do what you tell me.”
He made a sound of frustration and grabbed my wrists, swinging me back. He had me pinned by the arms against the wall before I knew it was happening. I struggled against him, but he was far too strong. “Let me go. Let me go!”
“Stop, just stop.” He didn’t sound angry, he sounded exhausted.
“Let me go,” I seethed.
“No.”
Anger slipped through my veins as quiet and fast as a serpent. I stilled. “I’m warning you, let me go.”
His lips curled into a snarl. “Or you will what, Amelia? Toss me against the wall, break a few bones? I’ll heal, and then what?”
My fingers tensed. I had my blades. I wanted to stab him, I wanted to drive my blade into his heart and hurt his like he’d hurt mine. But even if I willed the blade to my hand, I couldn’t stab him. His grip held my arms pinned.
“Do it,” he snarled. “Try, Amelia. Stab me if that makes you feel better.” His voice dropped. “Take the blade and drive it into my heart.”
“Stop reading my mind!” I shouted, kicking him in the shin. It was like kicking a rock, and pain shot up my injured ankle.
He laughed, he fucking laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was bitter and twisted and ravaged.
“You played me, you pretended to care.” I was dismayed by the pain I heard in my voice. “And you were using me this whole time.”
“I was not using you.” He leaned in and shouted in my face, “I have never used you!”
“I heard what you said!” I shouted back.
He flicked his attention to the ends of the alleyway and back again.
“Rodney is dangerous,” he said, quietly this time.
“I have to pretend. Don’t you get it, I’m the reason you are in danger in the first place.
” His voice cracked, and he closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath.
When he opened them, they glistened with what looked like tears.
“The fewer vampires who know I’m in love you, the safer you are. ”
Our eyes locked. A current charged between us, shattering the fury. An explosion of tingles, drawing the two of us together. The same feeling I had when our eyes first connected. The silent whisper of two stars who were meant to be. Binary stars.
It was so shocking my throat tightened, robbing me of words, before my brain kicked into gear again. The guards he had around the house must know. They must have seen or heard something. He couldn’t keep us a secret. “You’re lying, again.”
“God, Amelia.” His voice was filled with raw emotion. “Why do you have to be so stubborn? I’ve never met anyone so fucking frustrating in all my six centuries of life.”
“I’m frustrating,” I repeated coldly. The audacity of him.
“You took me to your house without asking me, you locked me up to keep me safe from your kind, but not once did you offer to help train me, not once did you help me learn the skills I need to keep myself safe. You pretended to care. Then you tell your friends I’m nothing to you but a fucking toy, so don’t you dare stand there and say I’m frustrating, because you’re an asshole, and I’d rather be frustrating than a liar and a soulless prick like you. ”
He stared at me as if he couldn’t comprehend what he’d just heard. “I know I made a mistake. I never intended for you to hear—”
I laughed bitterly. “That doesn’t make it any better.”
“I know, I know. I told you, I can’t risk—”
“Let me go,” I ground out. “I can’t stand the sight of you.”
His jaw twitched and his voice dropped to something low, something determined, something—dangerous. “I will never, ever let you go. Do you understand, Amelia?”
Once, I would have loved to hear him say that. Once, I would have believed it to be true. My voice lowered to an enraged grate, “You can’t hold onto something that refuses to be held.”
Karson flinched. “Amelia—”
“What do you want from me?” I rasped, fresh tears blurring my vision.
“Nothing, I don’t want anything. Don’t you see, I just want you.” His voice shook and now he … he looked shattered. “Please, my love, believe me.”
The desperation in his eyes fluttered in my heart, a small sparkle of light against the dark. Was he telling the truth? Confusion whirled through the fear and grief. I drew in a ragged breath and closed my eyes, trying to block it all out.
She is a witch, as if I would fall for something like her. She is someone I will need sooner or later. Plenty of beautiful women still fill my bed.
He was still fucking lying.
My eyes tore open. “You’re sleeping with other women. Get away from me!” I shouted and kicked him again. Not that it did any fucking good. He didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t let me go.
“I’m not, I only told Rodney that to convince him I didn’t care. I haven’t touched another woman since the first day we kissed. I haven’t even looked in their direction. No one matters to me except you.”
Tears rushed down my face, the urge to scream coiling through me. I didn’t know how much more my heart could take. “Stop,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “Just stop.”
He made a sound of pure frustration and then his forehead rested gently on mine. His grip moved from my arms to my hands and he pressed them to the side of his head.
“Look,” he whispered. “Just look.”
Letting me into his mind was one of the most vulnerable things he could do, especially a vampire like him with a twisted and tortured history.
The images bolted through my mind like sparks of electricity, one after the other, so fast I could barely keep up.
All images of me. Smiling up at him the first time we danced, of my laughter as he threw water over me, me falling down the stairs and him catching me.
Of him carrying me through the fire, placing me on the road and kissing my forehead. Of my hooded eyes as I came.
Pockets of time falling together like petals, each moment of happiness blooming into a beautiful bed of roses.
And I could feel it. It was strong and warm. It was like a summer ocean, deep to its core, endless, powerful, unstoppable.
It was love.
Love he had for me.
All the fight left my body, and I sagged against the wall.
“Do you see it, do you see how much I love you,” he rasped, his breath, like his smell, sweet like honey and cinnamon and fresh mountain air, sliding up my nose. “I will always love you. And I would destroy the world if it meant keeping you safe.”
He pulled his head from mine, running a finger across the tears falling down my cheeks. “Please, Amelia, I’m sorry for hurting you. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.” He bowed his head in submission. “Forgive me.”
I blinked up at him through my watery vision, emotions storming through my heart like a tsunami.
My throat was so choked I couldn’t form a sound.
So, I clutched his face in my hands and kissed him.
A deep, hungry kiss, a claiming kiss, every cell of me claiming every cell of him.
Every cell of him claiming every cell of me.
His lips were so sweet, so soft, his tongue danced, exploring the tip of mine. The world faded away as our bodies tangled. There was nothing but the sound of our fast breathing, and his primal groan rumbling into my mouth.
“I love you,” I whispered between kisses, “and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for not believing you.”
“You believed what you heard. I need you to always believe what you see when I look at you, what you feel when I touch you,” he breathed against my cheek, “what you know deep in your heart when I whisper I love you.”