Chapter 21 The Present #2
Cassian’s hand leaves my waist. “I’ll be back.”
I make a face before I can stop myself. He’s probably more eager to torture Mark than to dance with me. This bastard.
Still, I say nothing. Something tells me whatever needs doing with Mark—and needs two people, one of them being Cassian—might be worth my little disappointment.
“Don’t finish yet, okay?” I call after him.
His mouth twitches. “We won’t.”
Talon rolls his sleeves higher. Blood is everywhere.
“Someone left the faucet on downstairs,” he says, voice smoky. “Noise is flooding the ducts.”
“Consider it white noise,” I chirp, popping a heel. “It’s therapeutic.”
“Yeah? It doesn’t gross you out?” He touches his jaw, smearing the blood there. “I don’t usually come to ladies’ parties covered in blood.”
I glance at the smear. At the freckles beneath it. At the pale old scars that ladder his forearms like someone carved tally marks into him. I wait for disgust. It doesn’t arrive. Something stranger does instead. Tenderness.
He just looks so mine like this. Especially since I know whose blood it is on his skin.
“It suits you,” I say, and mean it. “You look… true.”
“Alright then,” he purrs, cocking a brow. “As long as you like me…”
“I’ll always like you,” I breathe.
“Good. Because I intend to steal you.”
I giggle. “From whom?”
“From the whole world, miss. You’re all mine now.”
He walks over to the dial and turns the music louder.
“Cassian’s gonna be angry,” I murmur.
“Cassian’s not here, baby,” he replies.
He starts to dance with that loose, dangerous confidence he carries into everything. Every movement feels just right.
And holy hell, he knows how to move.
His hands find my hips, then leave. He takes a step back, watching me. Then he beckons. I shake my head, pretending I won’t come. Two seconds later, he pulls me in anyway.
The music hums through the air. My pulse answers it.
“Said the blood doesn’t disgust you,” he purrs. “Walk your talk, Skye.”
He spins me. The towel flares out, teasing disaster. It flirts with catastrophe, clings, then starts to slip.
His gaze drops, following the movement. Then his eyes snap back to mine. For a moment, he just stands there, breathing hard, jaw tense, eyes dark.
The towel gives another threatening shift.
He catches it before it falls. His fingers brush my thigh.
“Hold on,” he says quietly.
Then he unbuckles his leather belt.
I cock a brow. “What do you want to do with that?”
I know a thing or two we’ve already done with a belt.
“Arms up,” he instructs.
I obey.
Talon loops the belt around my waist, securing the towel with a slow pull that presses the fabric tight against my ribs. He tugs once more, testing the hold, then smooths a hand down my side.
“Not what I thought you would do, but okay,” I laugh.
He gives me a look that’s pure sin. “Sorry, babe, but I’m not getting inside you while I’m still covered in your ex-husband’s blood. Might not bother me, but it’s too filthy for your pretty pussy.”
“Fair enough.”
His mouth tilts, that familiar spark cutting through the wreckage between us. Then, as if to break the tension, he offers a mock bow. I curtsy back.
He steals me properly this time. One hand finds the small of my back, the other catches my fingers.
A slow step. A sudden whip. A slide, a snap. He’s grinning, eyes half-lidded, and for a heartbeat I forget there’s a world beyond us at all.
“Follow,” he murmurs.
“I don’t do follow,” I say, but my body already does. He turns me once, twice. The towel flares again and again. My laugh spills out, bright and ungoverned, and his answering hum is hungry enough to burn.
“You were so damn sexy down there,” he says, voice rough with it. “You know that?”
He proves it with movement. A hand at my waist—he pulls; I pivot.
He pushes; I lean, body bending in ways a towel and a belt shouldn’t allow, but his grip keeps me steady.
I catch my breath only to lose it again as he snaps me back upright, spine against his chest, heat skittering under my skin like sparks under paper.
“Made this the best day of my life,” he says.
“Really? The day we tortured my ex-husband?”
His grin flashes. It’s sharp, and boyish, and outright dangerous. “Yeah.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Please do.”
The music chooses that exact moment to kick in. I roll my shoulders, let the damp ends of my hair fling droplets into the air. My hips find the rhythm. Slow, left, right.
“Come on,” I tease. “There must’ve been something better than this.”
He stops dead. I collide with him, and he just absorbs the impact.
“Nope, Little Grim,” he says. “Everything before you was shit.”
My body answers before my mouth can.
I rise onto my toes, arms sliding around his neck. He tips me into a slow dip, skimming me close to the floor before bringing me back, inch by inch.
“I don’t know anything about your past,” I whisper.
He exhales a laugh that doesn’t quite make it. Then he takes my hand from his neck and presses it to his chest. His heart hammers against my palm.
“You wouldn’t like it,” he says quietly.
“Well,” I murmur, “you could at least let me decide that.”
He huffs, glancing toward the corridor where the house still groans with Mark’s debts being collected, then back at me.
“Fine,” he says. “But not here.” He tilts his chin upward. “Rooftop.”
“What, like under the stars? With crows and everything?”
“Yeah.” His voice drops to a murmur as he steps away. “And a bottle of tequila. Nathaniel’s got citric acid somewhere. We’ll dilute it and pretend it’s lemon juice.”
That actually sounds... romantic.
In our own way.
He doesn’t wait for my answer. Just grabs the little portable music box, tucks it under one arm, snags a sweatshirt from the back of a chair, and holds out his other hand like I’m already following.
And I am.
We raid Nathaniel’s stash on the way, grabbing a bottle of top-shelf tequila already a third gone, two dented metal tumblers, a shaker that still smells faintly of coffee, a tub of citric acid, and two thick blankets.
In the hospital’s archaic cafeteria, we find a few paper salt packets, and we’re good to go.
Or so I think. But Talon surprises me.
In a supply closet, he stops, grabs a towel from a hook, and scrubs at his jaw until the last trace of Mark is gone. Then he rinses his hands in the sink, shakes them dry like a dog, and turns back to me.
“Figured I shouldn’t tell the story being all bloodied and shit.”
“I really don’t mind,” I say again. It’s not me he’s cleaning up for, though.
“If I’m gonna do this, I might as well tell you about my Gran,” he says. “And she sure as hell wouldn’t want me talking about her with blood on my face.”
“Oh,” I murmur. Not to be dramatic, but it feels like I’m about to get more than just a story. He’s actually about to open up.
I nod, letting him lead me onward. By the time we push open the heavy roof-access door, the night has folded itself into velvet.
Wind licks my damp collarbone, tugging at the edges of my towel.
The city sprawls in the distance. It's a sprawl of bruised gold in the far far distance, separating us by a land of dark, trees and shadows.
And around us?
Crows.
Crows on the AC units. Crows on the railing. Crows below, dotting the rooftop like we’ve shrunk down and wandered into an anthill that turned into birds.
They don’t scatter when we step out.
They just look at me.
Talon sets the music box on the low parapet wall, hits play, and lets something low and smoky hum through the air. Then he tosses me a blanket. It lands half on my head, half on my shoulder. The other one, he spreads on the ground.
“Come on.”
Wind tugs at the corners of the blanket.
Talon wedges one edge under the base of the AC unit, then unscrews the tequila and pours two fingers into each tumbler.
He tears a salt packet open with his teeth, taps a small white hill on the turntable lid, and drops a pinch of citric acid into the shaker with water, swirling until it clears.
“Gourmet,” I say.
“Say that again slowly,” he says, mock-serious. “Maybe I’ll start believing you mean it.”
He hands me a cup. “Ready?”
“I didn’t come all the way up here to choke,” I tell him. “Salt me.”
“Mm, you’re really going crazy tonight, huh?” he mutters, already holding his wrist out.
I move closer until my thigh presses against his. I take his hand, lean in, and lick the salt off his skin, slowly enough to watch his lips part and stretch into that mischievous grin of his.
Then I knock back the tequila and chase it with the faux-lemon. It burns, in the best way.
“Good?” Talon asks.
“Oh yeah.”
“Good.”
He takes his own shot, sets the tumbler down, and leans back on his hands, shoulders against the parapet. The wind rakes through his hair.
“So,” Talon says, eyes on the skyline. “Full honesty, then? No filters?”
“You make it sound like a big deal,” I say.
“It kind of is.” His gaze shifts to mine. “If you want the polished version, I can give you that. I can make anything sound pretty. Hell, I could put a bow on a bullet if you wanted. I’m gifted like that. But you said to try you.”
“I did.”
“So don’t flinch.”
“I won’t.” I purse my lips. “But just so you know, you don’t have to tell me anything. If you’ve got ghosts, you can keep them.”
I say that, but the truth is, I’ve been wanting to know more about him.
About all of them. They already know everything about me: my life, my marriage, my death.
And part of me knows that no one becomes what they are without something breaking first. Cassian and Nathaniel proved that much. I doubt Talon’s any different.
Still, I want him to tell me because he wants to, not because I asked.
He meets my eyes, his smile softening into something fragile.
“I don’t want to keep them, babe,” he murmurs. “I want to finally let them go. Otherwise I’ll never move on.”
Move on…?