Page 58 of Gilded Kisses

Fifteen

Aster

Later that night, I wake to find the storm fading into the distance. Someone peeled back the curtain so I watch the rolling clouds. They resemble my chaotic emotions recently and the new calm I feel in the aftermath.

Warmth cocoons me from all sides, and I’m no longer scared. But I am alone, I realize.

I kick off the covers piled around me and make my way to the sliding doors. I pull on Mirsha’s discarded shirt, buttoning it up. I find another box on the table and realize they ordered me more than one pair of underwear.

“Glory be!”

I pull those on and slide open the door that leads to the garden. Fresh rain and wet grass are favorite scents of mine. It reminds me of summer days by the pool withthem. They would watch as I swam and my brothers’ friends tried to pick me up.

The memory brings a smile to my face.

I look around to see shoes are gone and so are pants.

After what we shared, they were probably down at our spot under the willow.

A wicked smile pulls at my lips, and I step onto the wet grass. Maybe we can finish what we started three years ago. Voyeurism isn’t my styleper sebut I don’t see another soul out here tonight.

A quiet settles over the Society’s gardens.

Three steps and something black in the grass catches my eye. I crouch down and stand up with a hurt bird in my hand. Poor thing. The storm must have forced it into the side of the mansion.

I set it aside and push deeper into the Society’s garden. I come to the statue I’ve come to think of as Lover’s Embrace.

I look down to find another bird.

I step over it and come to the end of the walkway. In the distance, I spot a silhouette. There they are. I’m halfway across the expanse of grass before I can tell this shadow in the dark is not Mirsha. Nor Luther. And definitely not Viper.

My blood drains from my face to pool at the bottoms of my feet. Tingles of dread fall through me like stars cast from the sky.

Gas lamps flicker here and there but the shadows are deep and I can’t make out faces or anything else. Lightning dances over the sky as a warning the storms have not fully passed. What an epic fucking was for Mother Nature to mimic my life.

I take a few more steps.

“Privet, Aster.”

That voice. I’ve wanted to drive my knee into the balls of its owner for a long time.

I haul in a lung full of moist air. Fingers of fury skitter across the sky. The burst of light is bright enough to catch on the metal of a gun.

“Oh, shit.”

I slide to a stop in the wet grass. But the really creepy part is the glowing cherry of Joseph’s cigar casting a red glow over his ugly face.

He looks like a demon.

And moves like one too!

I pinwheel backward as the mobster rushes his massive weight in my direction. But I don’t get more than ten feet before I clobber into a beefy chest.

“Umph!” I face plant forward in the wet grass.

“Can’t you take rejection can you, Joseph?”

Even in the darkness, I see the evil intent glittering in his eyes. It also radiates around him and threatens to pull me into the cloud of bleakness around him.

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