Page 41 of Say You'll Stay

In a heartbeat, every nerve ending blazes with the crisp metallic tingle of adrenaline taking emergency precedence. Exhilaration and terror collide in a breathless standoff as I whirl toward the disturbance, body tensing in anticipation of fight-or-flight even before my lagging conscious mind has begun processing potential scenarios.

Then, like the detonation spark in a cataclysmic chain-reaction, his form melts from the pooling shadows of the hallway - an apparition rendered in equal shades of twilight and sin. Broad, powerful shoulders cleave through the darkness as an apex predator might emerge from its den, the city’s reflected neon gilding the sharp, patrician lines of his jawline.

He coalesces from the gloom with an inexorable, irresistible gravity, like some profane Renaissance idol taking shape in candlelight. My mouth goes dry as my gaze rakes over the familiar topography of his features - from the high, severe slashes of those cheekbones to the piercing intensity that burns in depthless eyes.

June.

Just the wordless shape of his name on my lips sends a tremor of pure, visceral need lancing through me. A forbidden incantation to awaken the vortex of turbulent emotion and desire that perpetually roils between us, Charybdis to my hapless ship of state.

He moves with the coiled, leonine grace of a big cat, each footfall seeming to reverberate through the marrow of my bones until I can feel the bassy throb of it pulsing between my legs. His eyes, those viridian pools of merciless intensity, track over me with rapacious focus.

As if I were his prey, the object of some primal, insatiable need.

It’s intoxicating and utterly terrifying, this sense of being something wild and hunted relegated under his simmering stare. A dizzying, exhilarating freefall into the promise of madness and reckless rapture, with only June’s scorching ferocity to ensure my end is a glorious, all-consuming blaze.

He prowls the final span separating us without a single word, no veiled endearments or teasing quips. Just the rumbling current of predatory intent charged between us like a livewire, sizzling in the scant inches of space that now seem to have shrunk to a mere hairsbreadth.

Were it not for the subtle thrum of his respirations, I might have convinced myself this towering, feral creature was something indisputably supernatural bewitching me with its fae presence.

Up close, his austere beauty is nothing short of blinding. It steals the breath from my lungs, arrests every fleeting half-formed thought, until all that remains is the molten core of rapturous despair that binds me to this fatally dangerous man in ways I’m terrified to even try naming.

My hands reach for him in wordless, automatic instinct, fingers trembling as they encounter the twin delta grooves of his collar bones beneath the supple cotton of his shirt. Hard, uncompromising planes of muscle and sinew beneath that disquietingly affect a feral, undomesticated prowess I shouldn’t find nearly as captivating as I do.

His lips quirk, the barest ghost of a smile slashing sharp and self-assured over aristocratic features. It’s a look of infinite, indisputable possession and control - a gleaming obsidian dagger pressed against the dry, thundering pulse of my hammering heartbeat.

“Hello, Cara Mia.” June’s voice is liquid smoke and unholy psalms, equal parts benediction and damnation. “You’re looking deliciously lost.”

The words leave his lip, the way he looks at me—everything becomes crystal clear; And my knees buckle.

Juniper Deveaux has lost his fucking mind, and I deserve the padded cell right beside him…

Chapter sixteen

I step out of the shadows, a wraith given form, my entire being attuned to the siren’s call of Cara’s presence. The sight of her, a vision in the dim light of the Airbnb, sets my blood aflame with a hunger that borders on the profane.

“Hello, Cara Mia.” The words slip from my tongue like a prayer and a curse, a dark invocation of the twisted devotion that consumes me. “You’re looking deliciously lost.”

Her eyes are a heady cocktail of fear and desire swirling in those fathomless depths. I prowl closer, each step deliberate, predatory, a wolf stalking its mate under the sway of a feral moon.

The sight of Cara, beautiful and vulnerable in the dim light, ignites a hunger in me that borders on madness. I close the distance between us with predatory intent, backing her against the wall until we are pressed together, heat to heat.

“You can’t run from this forever, Cara,” I growl, my voice rough with barely leashed need. “From what’s between us. What’s always been between us.”

Her eyes are wide, luminous with mingled fear and longing. I can practically taste her inner war, the desperate battle between desire and self-preservation. It only makes me want her more.

Slowly, deliberately, I cage her in with my arms, my face hovering a mere whisper from hers. “I’ve missed you, Cara Mia. Craved you. You have no idea the depths of my obsession, how consuming it is.”

“June…” She breathes my name like a plea and a warning, and the sound of it on her lips sends a bolt of pure, electric need straight to my core.

I close the distance between us, my body a hard, unyielding press against her softer curves. The scent of her, vanilla and spice and something uniquely Cara, fills my lungs, drowns my senses in a dizzying wave of want.

“You can’t keep hiding from my love, Cara,” I murmur, my lips grazing the delicate shell of her ear. “Sooner or later, you’ll have to face the truth of what we are to each other.”

She shudders in my hold, a full-body tremor that speaks of the war raging within her - the desperate yearning to surrender warring with the stubborn, prideful need to resist. I feel it in the tension of her muscles, the hitch in her breathing, the thundering of her pulse beneath my fingertips.

“And what truth is that, June?” She asks, defiance and need bleeding into her tone in equal measure. “That you’re an obsessive, controlling bastard…who can’t take I'm busy for an answer?”

I chuckle darkly, the sound rumbling through my chest and into hers. “Oh, Cara. We both know it’s so much more than that.” My hand comes up to cradle her jaw, tipping her face up to meet my burning gaze. “You’re mine, just as I’m yours. Two halves of the same twisted, fucked-up whole.”

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