Page 112 of Viper

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not scared of you.”

Relief pounded through him. His entity relaxed slightly, though it was still on edge. They weren’t out of the woods yet.

Viper closed the space between them. “There’s more I could show you.”

“Like, what?”

“Glimpses of times we met in your past life. Some of those memories were soaked into your soul. When we met again, those memories would have begun to surface.” His lips thinning, he added, “But Raphael had wiped them away.”

“Will it hurt to show me?”

“I would never do anything that would cause you pain.”

“Will it hurtyou? You’d be invading the mind of a demon—it takes a toll on celestials.”

“There’d be some discomfort, but it wouldn’t drain me because it would take only seconds. It will be like uploading a file to a computer.”

She planted her feet and rolled her shoulders. “Okay. Show me. I want to see what happened. I want back what they took from me.”

He placed the heels of his hands against her temples. “Close your eyes.”

Ella pulled in a preparatory breath, bracing herself for the psychic impact, not entirely sure what to expect.

And then it happened.

Images flickered through her mind, fast and vibrant. Memories played out there in fast-forward but dug in deep, planting themselves in her own mind.

She saw all of their personal journey. The talks they’d had, the kisses they’d shared, the attention he’d lavished on her body, the way he’d kept coming back to her, the love that had crept up on him little by little until finally it had filled every space inside him.

And then she sawthem. The rest of the Seven. They’d stared at her so dispassionately as they pinned her to a wall and took what they’d had no right to take. Not only her life, but her memories of Viper. The motherfuckers.

As she watched it all play out, she frowned. The replays plucked at elusive recollections, bringing images and sensations and emotions to the forefront of her mind.

Buried as she was in the past, it was hard to snap back to the present. It was his scent that led the way; that gave her something to focus on.

Leather, allspice, and bay rum with an earthy undertone.

Soft pulses of his breath fanned her face, and she could almostfeelhim watching her with that hawk-eyed gaze. She lifted her eyelids … and met startling-blue eyes that, steely as a bird’s, honed right in on hers. Longing clutched at her throat, her emotions toward him so much more intense now that she’d seen flashes of their history.

A history that had beenstolenfrom her.

“Those rat bastards. They had me pinned to a wall.” The latter words rang with the anger she was struggling to suppress.

His nostrils flared. “I know. They paid for it.”

Cold fingertips raced up her spine at the menacing note lacing his voice. “Good.”

Given he’d fallen for her at a time when her soul had hosted a different body, she might have worried that he looked at her and saw only Everleigh—a person he’d lost. But as he’d shown her their past, she realized it wasn’t like that. She would have otherwise sensed it in his memories, in the emotions attached to them.

He looked at her and saw only the woman he’d claimed as his.

And strange as it might sound, that time didn’t feel like a ‘past life’. It felt more like her years as Ella were a continuation of her years as Everleigh … but with some differences. Just the same,his time as Viper would be a continuation of his life as Samael … but with a few variations.

Their names, prior circumstances, and new realities didn’t matter. Not to her, not to him. Their connection went beyond that shit; ran too deep for any of it to make a single difference.

“You know, I don’t think they did a thorough job of making me forget you. I’d look at you and think, ‘Hmm, he reminds me of someone.’ Your eyes seemed familiar somehow. I dismissed it, not for a second thinking we’d met before. And those memories you showed me … theypulledat little scenes that I have vague recollections of. I think I might have been dreaming about you.”

Which would explain why Mia’s talisman hadn’t worked. They hadn’treallybeen dreams, she’d been seeing flashbacks of her time with Viper.

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