Page 153 of Creatures that Breathe

It’s the same every time. We flirt, we get close, I love it.

He tears it all away. Goes to stone.

Cross clears his throat. “You remember anything?”

His daily check in, his hourly check in, assuages my frustration. Somewhat. He needs to ask it to keep the curse shackled. For as long as the Blackguard is chasing a Phoenix, for as long as there are fragments of information stuck in my brain, I’ll be a lead to Kadmos’s killer.

The balm to his curse.

“Hmm …” I bend close, close enough the space behind me fills with bodies, close enough that he stops me, hand scraping my bare thigh, scattering hot embers up my arms. “I do remember something.”

His eyes darken. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you.” Did the old me lie through her teeth?

Inky black shadows curl around his shoulders, lazily draping over him like a snake on its charmer. “I want to hear it. Whatever it is.”

“I remember you calling me a good girl,” I whisper.

Genuine fear flicks over his features. He falters for a moment, then blinks himself together. “Yes. Right. When I pulled you from the water—”

“I remember wanting you, Cross.”

His breathing stops abruptly. “That’s not a detail you’d remember,” he says it with a teasing lilt, but it’s sad, like I never actually wanted him.

He’s lying.

He doesn’t touch me. It’s like he’s afraid to stir up those intense memories, yank something forward that I might like. Those half touches, teeth on my stomach, fingertips pushing into my throat.

That’s all I yearn for. To feel him again. To experience a fraction of that intensity.

“Come back over here,” I whisper, reeling him into me, or rather me into him.

He bites his lip, shakes his head. Concedes. Steps into me. “You’ve done this before,” he murmurs.

I pause, the weight of the past hanging in the air. Before is a curse on its own. I ask about before and he offers me waffles, and it’s not until I’m reaching for fresh whipped cream that I remember what I’d asked, and then he’s sweeping me off to the pool where I’m getting swimming lessons and then we’re in a cooking class and before is eons away.

“I tried seducing you in a club? Let me guess, you were in a glass cage gyrating, a vision in emerald satin when I stormed in, demanding the hottest thing on the menu.”

Gods Above, he’s handsome when he smirks. “Can you show me an example of gyrating?”

“It requires full body contact.”

“We were in Estonia,” he says, effectively stopping my heart. Sharing. He’s sharing. “It was pouring rain. You had spent most of the night following me around a Christmas market.”

“As one does.”

“As you do.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “We were in an alley because you’d just set fire to the underground fighting ring you entered me into.”

“That’s not true,” I protest lamely.

“I was so captivated by you. Consumed with the woman following me, I blacked out in the ring. Every time you said my name, I blacked out. Gods, sometimes if I just looked at you.” He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbling as he reaches for the precise words. “And when you told me—when you asked me to ruin you, Leni,” he whispers, voice brimming with longing and reverence. “I was sure you were going to kill me.”

His thumb grazes over the sensitive skin on my collarbone where Eleni drips across the bone. “I’d wanted to rip the clothes off you right there,” he confesses, hoarse with desire. “Right then. With blood on my teeth, pain ripping through my body. You were taking care of me, you were so smart and brave and irresistible and I—” He goes quiet, eyes dark, hands falling from my waist.

A bittersweet smile tugs at the side of my mouth. “You said no because you’re the most frustrating gentleman to ever exist?”

His fingers yank at me, pull me tight to him, his breath scours my ear. “I kissed you, Leni. You are too sweet a temptation. I had to know if you tasted half as good as you smelled, had to know what tricks you’d have up your sleeve.”

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