Chapter 21 #2
‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot. With Grace.
No one will even remember I existed. I have no legacy.
’ She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself.
I wanted to brush them away, wrap my own arms around her.
‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that nothing is truly forever, Damien.
Not even you. Everything outlives its usefulness at some point. ’
‘Even to you?’
Her head snapped toward me. ‘To me?’
I pressed my lips together, weighing out the words I was about to offer her. What they truly meant. What she’d take them for. ‘Will I outlive my usefulness to you at some point?’
‘I think the reality is that I’ll leave my bones behind far before that ever happens.’ Stella’s eyes drifted past me, locking onto something that wasn’t me.
She was tired, and I was keeping her awake just by being here, talking with her. I should’ve taken her up to bed, not listened to her complaints. Not like she could’ve overpowered me.
Somehow, I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Don’t say that.’
She smirked, a wicked grin I couldn’t look away from. ‘Would you rather I lie? This is the future you decided on, Damien. Not me.’
A weight settled in my heart, thick and viscous. ‘You don’t want to live forever, Stella.’
‘I don’t.’
I almost choked. I’d been expecting a fight. An argument. Not agreement. ‘Then what’s the fucking attitude for?’
Stella’s smile dropped completely, and when she finally met my gaze once more, there was something soft in her eyes. Vulnerable. Breakable, like your mother’s best china you kept on the shelf. ‘I don’t want to live forever. I want you.’
My breath caught in my throat, choking me with words I wanted to say. Had wanted to say, for what felt like an eternity. She didn’t know what she was saying. ‘That’s dangerous, Bambi.’
Could she mean it? Could she really want me, scars and all? I wasn’t sure if she could look past the monster, so carefully tucked away behind a few scraps of fabric. She couldn’t. Not after today.
‘I know,’ she whispered. Her eyes were filled with a world of emotions I wanted to separate one by one, taking my time with each as I figured out just how her brain worked.
‘You shouldn’t say things like that.’ Because they mean too much, those words, coming from your mouth.
‘I know.’ Softer this time.
‘You shouldn’t even think things like that.’ Because I’m barely holding on, and I’m scared of what will happen if I let myself fall too far.
I wanted her. I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything.
‘I know. But I do. And I am.’ She shuffled up so she was sitting, reaching her hand out to rest on my face. ‘Don’t push me away. Please. I know you feel it, too.’
The intensity of the moment made me want to close my eyes. I never wanted to forget her face at that exact moment. I wanted to tattoo it across the backs of my eyelids. ‘Don’t… don’t look at me like that, Bambi.’
My restraint was slim, stressed from her missing, and finding her, and now laying next to her, with her delicate hand resting on my skin. I pushed my face deeper into her hand, watching the way her pupils grew larger in the dim light of the evening.
‘Like what?’ she murmured.
‘Like I’m someone who deserves you.’ My dying regret, if I ever died, would be not deserving Stella.
‘Why not?’
My heart was going to break, and if it did, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to put it back together.
‘Because I don’t. And if you make me believe that I do, I can’t be held accountable for my actions.
’ I rested my hand on top of hers, the delicate bones shifting beneath me.
Would she let me put my hands on her, the way I had that night in the hallway?
I wondered what she tasted like.
Her eyes hardened, a challenge. ‘Maybe I want to see what you’ve been hiding. Did you ever consider that? Maybe you should’ve just shown me all along, instead of this cloak and dagger routine.’
‘You don’t.’ I shook my head, trying to pull away, as much as it pained me to do. She didn’t know what she was asking for. She couldn’t know.
Stella stopped me, her hand moving from my face to my shoulder. ‘Why do you think you know what I need better than I do?’
‘Bambi… you’re freezing from your time in the forest. You’re not exactly the greatest at looking out for your best interest.’
‘Don’t. Don’t compare the two. I want you, Damien. I know what I’m asking. Why won’t you give me this?’ Stella’s voice was soft, hurt, and I hated myself for putting the hurt there in the first place.
‘I’d give you the world if you asked. I’d give you anything you wanted, Stella. Isn’t that enough?’ Her face was close, so close, I could count each freckle dotted across her nose, a piece of art. I wanted nothing more than to hold her in my arms.
There was no going back from something like that.
‘Prove it.’ Stella moved closer, her lips a whisper away from my own.
I grabbed her chin between my finger and thumb, holding her close, yet not close enough. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’
‘Yes.’ She smirked. ‘I’m kissing you.’
Electricity shot through me, every cell in my body alive with the knowledge that this perfect specimen wanted me. ‘You’re damning us both.’
Stella cocked her head to the side, not moving any further away. ‘Do you care?’
Fuck, she looked kissable. I wanted to press my lips to hers, consume her air as if it were my own, and leave her under no question who she belonged to.
‘No, and that’s the problem. Haven’t you figured that out yet?
I’m a selfish man, Bambi. I’ll choose damnation every fucking time if it means I get you. ’
I let go of her chin, rolling on top of her, keeping my weight off her with my forearms. Some primal instinct deep inside me, something I’d long forgotten about, relished the way her eyes widened, and she sucked in the smallest of breaths.
I lowered my lips to hers, resting them against her. I had to make sure she was certain. There would be no going back from a decision like this.
She’d be mine.
I’d always been hers.
‘Tell me to stop, Stella. Please. Tell me to stop. Tell me you hate me. Anything.’ A threat. A warning. A blessing. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
When I looked in her eyes, I only saw acceptance. ‘I can’t.’
I broke, kissing her deeply with an unholy groan.
Kissing Stella was everything I dreamed of, and everything I never expected. Her lips were soft, gentle against my own, meeting me with her own desire. She was sweet, like the strawberries of the deepest red.
She was absolutely intoxicating.
She was mine.
‘Stella,’ I whispered, pulling back to kiss her again and again. ‘Stella. Stella. Stella. You are perfection.’
I darted my tongue out, licking along the seams of her lips, and with a breath, she opened up to me. I could’ve spent a lifetime exploring her.
Maybe I could’ve.
We were damned, the fox and the hare, the lion and the antelope. I couldn’t find it in me to feel sorry for the feeling of her lips on mine, and the quiet gasps she offered up to me, her hands feeling along the planes of my body with a desperate curiosity.
Maybe falling itself was damnation all along. And maybe consecration was accepting you never really had a choice.