Page 135 of Root

Tears trickle down her make-up free face and I want to lick them away.

“Don’t say that, Rush. It makes leaving harder.”

“Good. I want it to be hard.”

“Rush, you eat hearts for a living. You’ll be sick of me after a while.”

“Not even in four hundred years.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she says.

“Not as easy as it is for you to reject me to avoid the possibility of getting hurt.”

We’re so close, and her hands on me are short circuiting so many parts of me. Except my heart. And the one thing I know’s true.

“I’d never be sick of you in four hundred years. I’ll haunt your ghost, baby bunny.”

“Don’t.”

So I lay down the truth. Naked to the bone.

“I love you, Jessie, and you love me.”

My words hang and there’s just the sound of our breath.

“And if I’m wrong about your feelings…” I say.

She searches my face. “You’ll let me go?”

“Fuck no, Jessie. I’ll badger you until you change your mind.”

She tries not to smile. “There are laws about that.”

“Just call me Wild Bill Hickock of Hearts.” I kiss the side of her jaw. “I’m a criminal, Jessie, I don’t care about laws.”

She groans. Her fingers move back to my hair, and she digs them in against my scalp and I welcome that pull. “See? That’s utter flirt boy bullshit. What if I get sick of you?”

“Flirt boy? I’m moving up in your world. And that’d never happened. I’m a flirt boy, I know how to entertain.” I stop. “I fucking love you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I know how I feel, Jessie.”

She lets out a shuddery breath. “You’re too good for me.”

“I told you, I’m exactly the right good for you and you’re the right good for me. You’re my caliber, Jessie. The whole fucking package. C’mon stay. Be an aunt. Love me. Take a chance.”

“Again, if I don’t?”

“You gave it all away earlier when you came to my room and—”

“Blew you.”

“Yes, no. Not that.” I kiss her cheek. “Christ. I mean when you came to me and gave me yourself. You seduced and melded your powers and mine, strengthened our hold over each other. I like to fucking play, you know that. I like kink, and more specifically our brand of kink, but you brought that element in on your own when you went down on me and gave me something I’ve craved, and you held me prisoner all while submitting. That’s fucking beyond special.”

“Rush—”

“That’s us in a damn bottle of the most expensive and rarest drop. We work. And it was the most mind-blowing experience of my life.”

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