Chapter 42 #3
She doesn’t bother covering herself. If anything, there’s something deliberate and provocative in the openness of her posture, in the elegant curve of her spine.
and the slow glide of her foot against my bed.
It feels as though she’s offering me a familiar temptation and waiting for my instincts to take over.
“Iris,” I say carefully, unable to stop staring at the darkness twisting within her, “you shouldn’t be here. It’s wrong.”
She shifts slowly onto one elbow, her free hand drifting down her navel and between her legs in a lazy caress that feels more provocative because of how deliberate it is.
“That never stopped you before. Believe me, you love to play with this body,” she says.
Some traitorous, fractured part of my brain can almost picture it, and that horrifies me more than the ambush itself. The bedroom suddenly feels too small. Too crowded with furniture and memories that don't belong to me.
The shame of it burns.
For one terrible second, I can taste how easy it would be to fall backward into whatever Ezra used to be. I’m standing in the middle of someone else’s life wearing his skin, surrounded by ruins I don’t feel connected to but somehow still recognize.
It makes me feel unclean.
Disloyal.
Like I’m betraying Max just by standing here.
“I love Max.”
Iris slumps to her back with an eye roll. “Love?” she scoffs.
“Yes,” I croak. “I love her. I don’t know what happened with us before, but I’m loyal to Max, now.”
A grimace twists her mouth. “You’re not the Ezra I remember.”
The shift is so abrupt, it takes me a second to process it. One moment she's hurt, and the next she's furious.
She leaps off the bed and stalks toward me, two black daggers flaring to life in her palms.
I raise my hands in front of me. “Iris, please.”
Shadows pulse around her small frame. “No. You don't get to say my name like that, like you remember who I am, and who I was to you. I loved you, Ezra. I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else. And much, much more than you loved me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” she huffs, pointing one of her shadow blades right at my Adam’s apple, which is impressive considering she can’t see me. “Well, if you don’t want to fuck, we’re going to have to play another game. I call this one: Remember When You Killed Me?”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“You killed me.” A flash of genuine grief cracks her anger. “And you don't even remember doing it.”
It feels horrifyingly intimate to be hunted by a woman who looks at me with equal parts fury and heartbreak.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I say quickly, but Iris lunges, and despite my invisibility, she tracks me frighteningly well.
She strikes, and the dagger passes inches from my throat.
I barely evade it, and her head tilts, probably listening for the scrape of my bare feet against the marble and the sounds of my rattled breaths.
Another attack follows, faster than the first.
This time, her blade draws a sharp sting through my pectoral muscle. Just a scratch, judging by the pain, but enough to tell me she’s not going to hold back.
“Enough,” I snap.
A smile stretches her lips. “You used to be better at this.”
She comes at me again, vicious now, and slices my shoulder and neck, deep enough for blood to stream down my chest.
“Fucking hells.”
My nostrils flare, the world narrowing into angles of attack, momentum, and instinct. Light illuminates the bedroom, piercing hot, and her shadow daggers flicker out of view. She misses her next attack, her blade disintegrating inches from my cheek.
Moving twice as far as before, I catch her right arm, pivot hard, and slam her against the wall. She cries out as I shackle both wrists above her head and pin her front to the tapestry, while her back faces me. I brace my knee between her legs to prevent her from kicking or escaping.
My muscles strain to hold her captive. “Enough! I don’t want to hurt you—but I will.”
She cranes her neck to look at me through her thick black lashes, and delight spreads across her face. “Then hurt me good.”
A bad bruise splits her bottom lip, and she licks the blood clean.
My light melts the blue freckles on her brown skin as she arches off the wall, flattening her chest to the tapestry to reach further back with her ass.
I let out a surprised groan when her naked backside makes contact with the tent in my pants, that part of my anatomy clearly not as appalled as I am by the turn the night has taken.
“There you are,” she purrs. “I take it back. You haven’t changed at all.”
A wave of nausea slithers through my belly.
I release her immediately, stumbling backward, and stare down at my hands while blood continues to slide down my bare chest. For one awful second, I can almost feel another version of myself standing beneath my skin, larger than me, colder than me, someone capable of hurting his lover on purpose.
Someone Iris expects to find again.
“I’m not him,” I say, though I’m no longer sure whether I’m trying to convince her or myself.
Then I flee.
I run because every second I stay in that room brings me closer to my past self. The bastard is catching up to me, and I can’t shake the intuition that, sooner or later, there won’t be enough of me left to stop him.