Page 123 of When Night Falls

"Cyn?" I hear a small sob rumble lightly from her bathroom. I rush to the sound, finding her curled up on the bathroom floor.

"Fuck, baby. I thought I told you to clean off." I hate seeing her like this. I hate seeing my muse so utterly destroyed with conflicting thoughts and feelings.

"I couldn't. I didn't want to-" I lean down to pick her up off the floor, her body is hot and shaking. Her transformation is finally close and hopefully, her amplified feelings will start to settle down.

"What happened? Does anyone know?" she asks as she clings to me, desperate to be comforted in her act of treason, sin, and murder.

"No one knows. No one will find out." I brush my fingers against her blood-soaked hair as she buries her head against my chest.

I've comforted Lucynda before. We've been intertwined in more ways than one but this . . . this feels different and raw, and I can feel our tether working in earnest, against my better judgment, to fill a void both of us know can't be remedied otherwise.

"You promise?"

"I promise." My whisper satisfies her, I can see it in the way her eyes accept my words for truth.

I pick her up, swinging her legs over my arms, carrying her out of the bathroom and onto her bed.

I can feel her heart beating in overtime, working to keep the blood flowing while her mental torment tries to simmer.

"It felt good, Rivian. So fucking good.” Her confession nearly shocks me. Not what I was expecting her to say. “When I watched them laugh and eat together, it made me so angry for the shit they put me through. I wanted to just walk away but I think I made a noise, and they heard me. Fiona was the first one to notice me and she flipped out, calling me some kind of name and I panicked."

"It triggered you,” I tell her.

"Everything felt like it was on fire, and I just snapped. Didn't even feel my feet move when I ran to her. I forced her down on the table over their stupid spread of steak and mashed potatoes and I just-" I allow the moment of pause as I set her down on the bed.

I help her to remove her soiled clothes starting with her shoes and socks, peeling layers off of her body as she goes into detail about what transpired after shemanifestedinto her old home.

"When I ripped into her neck the first time, I did it out of anger and because she scared me. The second time was because shewouldn't stop screaming. The third time was because she tasted good. The fourth . . . well I couldn't stop. I didn'twantto stop."

I know I shouldn't let it, but my own bloodlust starts to rise as she talks about how good it felt for her to let her hunger take over. I know that feeling all too well. And while Cyn's family is not innocent to the bullying they had put her through, they technically posed no threat and as far as we knew, had no victims of their own. So they were innocent, and my wife really did break the treaty.

But I took care of it.

I'll always take care of it.

I pull off her leggings, she lifts herself to help me do so, and then she reaches her arms up and allows me to strip her of her sweater.

"You should go wash up now." I am trying to keep composure, but she's sitting in front of me in a vulnerable state, stripped down to her undergarments, dripping with the one thing I can't deny myself the pleasure of and it's taking everything in me to not tempt that line.

"I was jealous. Of you and that girl. What she said . . . it did get under my skin. And I had no right to be jealous, even if it was true. I know you don't love me. I've accepted that. But I still can't stand the thought of any other person having you the way that I have you." I listen to the way her heart shatters as she speaks.

I have the means to make or break her and I am still stuck between the untimely conceptualization of right and wrong, need and want; morality blurred when I think about the future with Lucynda. Will there even be a future?

"No one elsehasme," I assure Lucynda, even though it might not mean much to her in this moment. That concept will always remain the truth. My loyalty to my wife as a husband will not be questioned. "Birdania was chosen for me by my father. He did not know about you. No one did. I needed to wait to make surethat you'd find your way here. As soon as I was sure you would accept, I called off the engagement with Birdie. You're the only one who has me." She doesn't need to know anything else. That she was always going to be here given who she is. She'll never understand why I used her. But I'd have to let her go at some point because my doubt in her forgiveness is the one thing that causes me to consider myself to lose all focus on what my initial plan was.

I'm not only the one with conflicting issues or thoughts.

"Show me," she whispers.

Lucynda wasn't fragile like a flower, like a decaying rose gasping for air. No. She was fragile like a bomb, ready to shatter into a million broken pieces at any moment. She needed me and I misplaced her desire for another, not knowing exactly how to proceed because I was focused on my own path of vengeance. I still am. But I'm drawn to the fire in Lucynda. She is my flame. My muse.

I can no longer deny her even after all that I have done to push the notion of love aside. She riddles me with desire, and I crave the way she feels when she's all in.

Though I have too been deprived of the family that I desired, so I know how she feels. And that's where our bond strengthens. And for a second, I allow myself to believe that maybe she will understand.

"Lucynda, there is something I have to tell you." I settle in next to her on the bed, reaching for her ankles as I pull both of her legs up and rest them over my lap.

Her breath hitches as I run my fingers up her bare legs, allowing the feather of my fingertips to cause chills on her blood-stained skin. I drag my touch up to the curvature where her hips meet her thighs, tracing over the fabric over her thong then up to the lace bra covering her breasts.

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