Page 128 of Black Bird

“Are you comfortable?” she asked, situating herself and peering over at him.

“Yeah,” he replied, turning his face to look at her. “Will that blanket be enough?”

“Mmhmm.” She nodded with her cheek pressed against the pillow. They stared at each other in silence for several minutes.

Goodnight, Sarah.

She curled her hand beneath her chin and smirked at him.

Goodnight.

Athan turned his back to her and tried to get comfortable as he gazed into the flames. For whatever reason, he felt like this would be a long-ass night.

CHAPTER 21

FORFEIT

There must have been a crack in the window behind the couch where Sarah tossed and turned, unable to sleep at all. The wind whistled through it, and the occasional nip of cold air found her again as she curled in on herself tighter beneath the blanket that smelled of cinnamon and pine. Athan hadn’t moved. In fact, he seemed utterly peaceful as she watched his bare back move with his slow, even breathing. Sarah turned onto her own back and stared up at the ceiling. She couldn’t figure out what bothered her more. This issue with what to do about the blood in the refrigerator, or what to do about the man that had finally confessed everything she’d been hoping she’d hear, only to have her keep him at a distance that not only seemed unbearable for him—but for her.

She knew Wren was right about what she’d said outside earlier that day. He lost control. But all the decisions he’d made since he’d hurt her were his own … and they’d killed more of her than that initial attack. She would never be able to forget it, no … but Wren’s words sank deeper and deeper.Forgive him.

Sarah considered all that he’d told her on the porch. He had lost the only person in his life that he’d ever loved and responded to it by making himself more miserable—only to be enslaved to an immortal woman that Sarah was certain forced him to do horrible things against his will. What must it have been like to have first lost your virginity as part of your job, and then made a living selling your body and accepting that kind of loneliness as your life’s worth? How badly must he have been screaming inside when she touched him when he didn’t want her to? Sarah imagined Dahlia as the monster of her worst nightmares. Athan had given her truth. Given it to her, finally, and in exchange for nothing.

Sarah peered up at the wooden ceiling and narrowed her eyes. What truth could she offer him in return? That she was just as pained as he was without him close to her? It seemed like that was easy enough for him to figure out on his own. Truthfully, it would have been just as easy for him to figure out even if he’d been human. She could tell him that he wasn’t the only one who had never been in love before. She realized that truth as the feelings she developed for Athan grew and grew with each passing minute, ever since he’d shown up in her hospital room. Hell, she couldn’t even get him off her mind long enough to enjoy herself the night he’d attacked her, and she didn’t even know his name until the bartender had told her. She had realized some time ago that whatever she felt for Brent was never love. She cared for him, yes … but she had wanted to be accepted and needed affection so badly after she’d got to Boston that maybe she had only thought she loved him once. She’d never felt, even slightly, what she felt for Athan Kane. The kind of love that seized the flesh of her heart so deeply that she thought it would burst. The kind that caused just as much physical pain as it did emotional. And last night she never said it back to him.

She could tell him the darker truth … that several times, even before she’d found out what he’d done … she’d had dreams about him biting her neck—and wished that he would, although at the time, she thought she had truly lost her mind. Sarah thought back to the other night. The night that he’d called her after she shamelessly recalled every line of his face and fucked herself in her bed. The night that he’d snuck into her window, and had she known, even before everything he’d told her on the porch—she would have begged him to stay and replace her hand withhimself. Then there was that other thing. Her mother’s voice. The one that continued to whisper to her even though until the other night, she hadn’t realized it had been her.

Lenore.

That was it. Maybe her mother was trying to tell her to reveal it to him. The piece of the puzzle that made everything so much clearer. Almost two hundred and fifty years apart, and they had been designed for each other. He didn’t even realize he had been waiting for her for so long. It dawned on her, then. He probably had never been with anyone because hewantedto. Even sleeping with someone he cared about—like Rhaena. It was likely because, like every other being on earth, they both had needs that had to be seen to. What would he do if she gave him this for the first time in his extremely long life?

There was only one way to find out.

Sarah slid her bare legs off the couch and silently padded over to where he slept, kneeling down beside him, and sitting on her knees. Her fingertips brushed across the many works of art that covered his back and curled around his side, his shoulder… his arm. Athan stirred quietly and turned over onto his back. The dying firelight danced in those blue eyes that were heavy with sleep and she nearly lost her breath. He opened his mouth to speak, and she held a finger to her mouth, shushing him.

Are you alright?

His voice, even in her mind, sounded smooth and tired. She didn’t respond, only nodded and her eyes flickered to the tattoo on his chest. The one above his nipple that he shared with her. Sarah reached out to touch it and he stopped breathing. His muscles tensed when she lightly placed her fingers on it, and she caught his eyes again. She traced the outline of the raven inked there and ran her forefinger across the word underneath. The literature that somehow bound them, without even Poe himself knowing it. His tension eased and she started making a straight vertical line down the middle of his chest, stopping just under his breasts. She added a horizontal line along the top—and then at the bottom.

“I …”

He watched her in earnest as she started the curve of a heart shape where she’d been drawing, and his chest moved slowly up and down. His hand fell to his side against her knee, and he flattened his palm against it while she finished drawing a heart over him. Sarah held his stare andtrailed her finger down, curving across and then back up … then straight back down.

“U …”

She gave him a slight smile as she curved her fingertip around and down, and then straight across—finally resting her palm against his tattoo.

“2.”

Athan’s throat bobbed and his eyes glistened, his breathing a little heavier when he raised his other hand to her face. She leaned into it, lowering her mouth to the tattoo and kissing over it when the hand he’d placed on her leg gripped tighter. His fingers weaved through her hair behind her head, and he swallowed again, an aching calm seizing them both.

“Lenore,” Sarah whispered softly. He stilled and she raised her face from his chest to look at him. His brows drew together. “My middle name … it’s Lenore.” It wasn’t until then that she realized he, indeed, never knew it. Even after poring over stacks of information about her, and unknowingly reciting an almost two-hundred-year-old poem that held that name.

A rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore …

His eyes were on fire and his silent spoken words echoed through her mind. Sarah smiled and nodded softly. He pushed the blanket down and pulled her up on top of him until her legs were situated on either side of his hips. The realization had hit him like a truck, and he sat up to meet her, holding her lower back with one arm and brushing her hair from her face with his other hand. It was going to be tonight. She knew it before she had even come down here. But something within her gave her pause when Sarah realized that there would be no going back after it, and that everything was about to change for both of them. Her heart pounded and she could feel his doing the same. She looked straight into his eyes as their breath mingled and their lips barely touched.

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before …

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