Page 108 of Black Bird

“From what I can tell … everybody here is terrified of you. I’d be lying if I said you didn’t scare me to death, mi’lady.” He paused and their eyes met. “But if I’d known that it was alright to reach out for you anytime that I’d felt like it since you first—” He swallowed. “I think you’d grow pretty sick of me needing you every second of every day.”

“What are you saying?” Dahlia breathed.

“I’m saying I wish you’d come over here and take this shirt back off of me. I wish you’d let me strip you down and do unspeakable things to you.” His chest rose and fell with an eagerness she’d never seen in any other man she’d sired. She felt her own chest involuntarily doing the same. He stalked toward her, taking the side of her face in his hand and claiming her mouth. She surprised herself when she let him. Surprised herself more when she kissed him back. Some part of her suddenly felt different. Like something just clicked—no … snapped. Patrick backed her upagainst her desk and leaned her back across it, that kiss deepening. “I wanna be the only thing you want,” he rasped.

It made her blood sing. That persistent pull in her middle grew stronger and he lifted her long black skirts, exposing her silken white thighs. For the first time in her long existence, she felt foreign in her own body. Dahlia stopped him and he froze, pulling back to look at her. They stared into each other for a heartbeat, and she gently pushed him off her, leaning herself up to sit. Patrick stood a breath away, both of them still breathing frantically. “I—I need you to go,” she stuttered.

“Go where?” he asked, his eyes pleading.

“Just—go do … whatever you want. I need to be alone for a bit,” she replied, dropping her gaze to the floor. When he didn’t move, she realized that she’d given him a command—and that he hadn’t obeyed. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

“I—can’t …”

“I told you to leave.”

“You said to go do whatever I want,” he corrected. Her stomach fluttered.

“I’d like you to go enjoy yourself … at the bar. In the club. Just leave me by myself.”

He dropped his chin and slowly nodded. A moment later, she was indeed alone, still sitting with her gown half-hiked on her desk. It had hit her then. She commanded that he go do what he wanted … and he remained there withher. What had she done? What just happened? Why did she suddenly feel so powerless?

Dahlia pulled her skirts back down over her legs and ran a hand through her long silvery hair.

CHAPTER 17

LENORE

Sarah had spent two days trying to figure out what to do with the information Brent had given her after he came by her apartment that night. Her blood remained in a bag in her fridge and her sanity was becoming dangerously close to slipping. Was there a single person in her life that hadn’t had some part in shoving a knife into her back? She’d worked so hard. So damned hard to get that job. She promised herself a bright future and the answers to all the questions that had haunted her like a chained ghost of her precious mother, who she desperately wished she could talk to about everything that had happened. Wished she could get some kind of advice about love … about pretty much anything. She missed her.

“What do I do, Mom?” she whispered into the dark of her bedroom as she clutched the old blanket to her chest. She turned onto her side and curled her knees up, a single tear falling onto her pillow. “Everything is so fucked up.” Her eyes found the photo on her nightstand. The faces were barely visible with the small amount of streetlight coming in from her curtained window. Whispers feathered through her mind as if in answer.

Just a bunch of nonsense … utter nonsense.

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and tried to concentrate on them as they grew louder. All the voices seemed so jumbled … unorganized.Floor? Shore?She imagined a hand in the darkness—her hand … reaching out toward some kind of answer. Some of the voices began to quiet as if they were moving farther away. Still, she reached out. One voice seemed to remain …

“Lenore.”

Sarah’s eyes tore open and focused on her mother’s sweet face in the photo. The whispering became a longing call … a name she’d buried but realized how it suddenly all made sense.

“Lenore …”the voice repeated, the voice a song within her.

Sarah’s eyes filled with tears as she turned her wrist and peered at the tattoo. “Nameless here forevermore,” she whispered back. There was a reason. A reason that fate had brought the two of them together. A reason that her mother gave her a name she’d never use but had so much purpose. Every purpose. She sat up in her bed, leaning over to switch her lamp on and looking across her apartment to the discarded poster in the corner with the busted frame. She wondered if he knew. She glanced at the clock that rested on the nightstand. Nearly two in the morning and she’d never even dozed off, although every part of her felt heavy and exhausted. Sarah’s mind fluttered with so many things, but his face was the most demanding of all of them.

It was real for her. Still was, and God help her, she missed him. She couldn’t sleep. Had eaten very little in the last couple of days, save for her coffee and cigarettes. Although it seemed like the wisest decision to let him go, she wondered if she’d ever get over it. Wondered if he was awake … if he was thinking about her. If there was even the slightest chance that he hurt as deeply as she did right now. Sarah’s head hung and she sighed deeply, sniffling and reaching over to switch the lamp back off and grab her phone from the nightstand. She opened his name on her contact list and stared at the picture she’d snapped of him sleeping the morning everything had gone to shit. Stared at the number beneath it.

Don’t do it. You’re stronger than that.

Sarah wasn’t sure which part of herself won that war when she moved her thumb away from the call button and dropped down onto her pillow, tossing her phone back onto the table. She didn’t know how long she lay there, still as death. Didn’t glance at the clock again. Her eyes fixed on a shadow casted on her ceiling from the dim window light and she daydreamed about any moment they’d shared those looks. As pathetic as it was to admit, he was still the only thing that seemed to settle her restless soul. And who would know how often he crossed her mind if she never said a word about it? The shadows became abstract shapes the longer she focused on them. Shapes that—like everything else in her life—made no sense. She laid on her back and tucked her arms beneath her worn-out blanket.

It was so windy out tonight. The chill of the late fall air soothed him as Athan stood out on his balcony and drew on the filter of his second cigarette since stepping out. The sky was clear, and the stars were bright as it neared the witching hour. He would almost find it beautiful if he hadn’t grown to resent the night and all it now represented these long years after he’d become what he was. He found himself longing more for the daylight now, than when it used to be a death sentence. He couldn’t get his mind off the woman who’d fixed that problem as he dragged another chestful of smoke and blew it softly through his nose. She was shutting everyone out again. Wasn’t speaking much to Wren, and none at all to Rhaena. Athan couldn’t help but wonder if she’d medicated that gaping loneliness with Stratford, or some other nameless prick. He wouldn’t blame her if she did, but he prayed to God he was wrong.

Athan’s eyes cut to the side of town where he knew she likely slept. Slept, or was up reading, or maybe neither. Maybe she was thinking about him, too. He’d be happy just knowing he was on her mind, even if when she thought of him it made her very blood boil. He told himself he’d hold out. If there was any truth to what Rhaena and Wren said about how women think … maybe she’d eventually seek him out again. He just wanted one chance—one chance to tell her she was wrong. So wrong.

“You made me believe that what we felt for each other, however forbidden it was, was something real, and—then I find out that it wasn’t real for you at all.”

But it was. It still was and would always be. She had changed every part of his lonely existence. She fought off the darkness that had consumed him for so long. She didn’t just gift him sunlight … shewashis sunlight. The only thing that had thawed the ice around his heart after centuries of the darkest winter. He was nothing without her. If he could just hear her voice …

“Fuck this.” His cigarette flew from his fingertips and was caught on the biting wind that howled past him. Athan stepped back inside and grabbed his phone, resting his elbow above his head against the open sliding glass door and not giving himself any time to reconsider how stupid this was.

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