Chapter 45
TWILIGHT
Bronte
Twilight and birdsong lure me awake. Coffee and cotton candy caress my senses. A steady heartbeat thrums against mine.
Poppy’s heartbeat.
I peek down to see her snoring on my chest. The duvet pools low on her spine. I splay a palm over a winking dimple, simply because I can.
She stirs, mumbling, “Don’t eat me.”
I suppress a snort into her hair, carefully twisting to shield her against the final rays of sunset.
My gaze roams her body as I relive the night that will forever be imprinted in my skull.
Bruises bloom along her hips and thighs from where I gripped her too tight.
A red ring circles her throat from where my belt choked her.
Bite marks mar her beige skin with splotches of crimson and purple from where I sank my teeth.
A bandage on the rune I carved into her chest crinkles with her every breath.
For just a moment, I’m ashamed of what I’ve done to her perfect body.
Then I glance at myself.
Tattoos hide most of the evidence of her vicious retaliation.
Still, I can feel every ache and bruise.
My arms and chest and back are clawed like a cat’s scratching post. Bite marks in my shoulders and neck.
A split lip from when she rode my face a little too hard.
I didn’t mind, but she nearly cried about it until I bit her lip and gave her a matching split.
As the moon set and the sun rose, neither of us were satiated.
We spent hours upon hours in this room, christening every surface with sacrilege.
When we were both too tired to go on, I drew us a bath and washed her up while she did the same to me.
I held her for a time, sprinkling bubbles over her shoulders until she fell asleep in my arms. As soon as the bath grew cold, I carried her back to bed and bandaged her chest. The moment I tucked her in and slipped in beside her, she was crawling to my side and curled herself around me like roots over rock.
I smile and kiss her head, drifting into dreams of me living an entire future with the little devil in my arms.
When I awake, it’s almost dawn and Poppy isn’t here.
In an instant, I’m on my feet, tripping over myself in the dark. I throw on a set of sweats and beeline out, barely registering Jezebel’s bright eyes piercing the hallway’s thick shadows.
I check the manor’s library. Empty.
Dining room, kitchen, the thousand other rooms in this enormous Gothic mansion.
All empty.
An intrusive thought slithers through my mind. Did she…leave me?
No. I know her, inside and out. She wouldn’t have just disappeared after spending all that time being as close to me as humanly possible.
I dig through my pockets for my phone then hiss a curse when I realize I left it on the nightstand upstairs. I’m passing through the kitchen again when I see it: the pot of black.
Slowly, I peer out the windows overlooking the city. I spy her silhouette instantly, the reflective lettering of my work jacket glinting back at me in the fading moonlight. Filling a thermos, I tug on my boots and silently slip outside.
Poppy puffs on her vape, her windswept tresses tumbling in the wintry breeze. Seems like my jacket—drowning her like an oversized dress—is the only thing she’s wearing aside from her muddy slippers.
I can taste her turmoil in the air like poison.
“You should be asleep,” she rasps without looking back.
“Bonjour, Pot. Call me Kettle.”
Her quiet laugh is a touch too weak.
I sidle up behind her, curling a knuckle beneath her chin and tugging her focus up to me. I don’t know what emotion I see in those baby blues. I lean my brow onto hers and ask the question that’s been eating me alive since waking in an empty bed.
“Do you regret it?”
She scoffs. “Don’t insult me.”
Thank the fucking angels. “Are you in pain?”
Poppy sinks all her weight into me like she was a pillar too close to crumbling out here on her own. “No, I just…I want to make the right choice. For us.”
“The only right choice is what’s right for you.”
She dips her chin then reaches up to skim her cold fingertips over the scar on my cheek. “Will you stay out here with me for a little while?”
“Only since you asked so nicely.”
I kiss her chilled smile and pull her down to the ground, settling her into my lap. She takes my thermos and sips it with a grimace.
“This shit is liquid tar.”
“Here’s a thought: If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Brat.”
“Prick.”
I chuckle as she nestles deeper into me like a cat curling into its bed.
I settle my chin atop her head and stare out at the city as the sun slowly scorches the world awake.
How long, I wonder, was she out here seriously considering her future with me while I was merely dreaming of living my future with her?
“Bronte?”
“Hm?”
Poppy twists in my arms, her eyes fusing to mine. Within them is an inferno of both heavenly and infernal flame, the brightest and the darkest parts of her looking right at mine. Her chin trembles, but she doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t need to.
I know what she’s feeling. I feel it, too. Like we’ve found the secrets of the universe in each other, sharpening that guillotine still hanging over our heads. People are cannon fodder in her world. We’re now each other’s atomic bomb.
“Venez ici.” I marry my lips to hers, kissing the tiny tremble away. “Mon c?ur bat pour toi. Sans toi, je ne suis rien. Tu es mon autre moitié dans cette vie et dans l'autre.”
“Translation?”
“My heart beats for you. Without you, I am nothing. You are my other half in this life and the next.”
She blinks tears from her lashes. “Bronte…”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just want you to know how much you mean to me.” I settle my palm over the bandage on her heart and the rune that I carved there. “Je t'aime, mon amour.”
Poppy tugs me down by my hood and kisses me. She doesn’t stop until the sun is bathing us in the light of a new dawn.