Page 133 of Visions of Darkness

Unless I’d been burned and awakened writhing in pain and fighting the screams of anguish that I held bottled in my chest.

There were things I’d learned to survive in this twisted reality. Things that helped me fade into the background. Things that allowed me to skate along the fringes of society without drawing too much attention to myself.

Rule number one had always been to never be so stupid as to fall asleep beside anyone.

Ever.

If I slept with some girl? I always made sure I was long gone before night fell.

Not that there was really a chance of that, since those interludes were always detached. Someone I met in passing. Someone I found inthe seedy places I slipped into as I hunted the sickest, most warped of humanity. Someone who’d been morbidly compelled by the darkness they could feel vibrating around me rather than repulsed by it. Someone who was also looking for a physical connection without anything else.

I’d allowed myself that simple pleasure.

The physical.

And it was never anything more than that.

A release from the violence that streaked through my veins. A distraction from the constant torment that battered my heart and mind.

I never made attachments and had always known that I would travel this life alone. The freak loner, the way I’d always been.

Now my eyes blinked open to the dimness that covered the motel room and landed on the face of the one person in this world who had ever left a mark on me. On the one who was scored so deeply inside me that I didn’t know if it was possible to exist without her.

Written on my soul and inscribed in my being.

Aria was still asleep, and her eyes twitched frenetically beneath her lids as she continued through Faydor, the only place I was ever supposed to know her.

Except she was wrapped in my arms, and her body was pressed to mine, our legs and spirits tangled the exact same way we’d been when we’d drifted to sleep last night.

That kiss still burned on my lips and played on a loop through my mind. I would never get over the way it’d felt to experience her like that, the way my heart had sped and my spirit had leaped. The way every inch of my body had come alive. And for those fleeting moments, my soul had howled that she and I were meant for more.

Touching her that way couldn’t be wrong.

Then she’d begged me to take it further, and I’d come slamming into a brick wall of reality. I couldn’t have her that way.

Yet still, I couldn’t let her go, hadn’t been able to all night, and I drew her closer right then.

Heat flamed where we were connected, and my stomach was balled in a fist of need.

My insides quaked as I thought of the hunt last night. How we’d failed at picking up a trace of the deviant. Funny how that tragedy had lent a speck of peace for us right then since no one had come for her during that time.

What left me really fucking unsettled, though, was whatever had gone down in Aria’s mind right before I’d awakened. The way she’d seemed to get locked into some kind of trap. Unable to move or process. No doubt, all this bullshit pressure was getting to her. The strain was too great for any one person to suffer.

I felt the shift in her. When the rigidness of her muscles eased and she became light in my arms. As if she floated through the nothingness, through time and space and eternity, one moment before the palest gray eyes fluttered open to me.

They were already aware, no shock at finding me lying beside her, like she’d already known I was waiting for her as she fell. Ready to catch her even though she’d been in my arms all along.

Her tender gaze traveled my face.

Gently tracing.

Softly memorizing.

Shivers raced like tendrils of fire when she reached up and ran her fingertips through the stubble on my jaw, and my heart thundered harder.

The air was thin.

Shaky and turbid.

---