Page 96 of Visions of Darkness

He stopped right outside the door.

We both froze.

Locked.

Ensnared.

“You can’t look at me like that, Aria.” The gnarled warning cut into the severity that writhed between us.

My attention snapped from the barren wasteland tattooed on his abdomen and chest to meet the white fire in his gaze.

“I don’t think I could stop looking at you.” The admission flooded from me on a needy breath. “How could I when you’re like looking at my truth? For the last ten years of my life, I’ve been told you were a figment of my mind. A piece of my warped imagination. That I was delusional. And here you are with blood pounding through your veins.”

“Aria.” His molars ground so hard I felt the force of it crack in the room.

“You are so beautiful.” It scraped out without permission. “Your body that has kept your scars, those eyes that hold your secrets. And I know your heart is, too.”

The air in the small room grew dense, every molecule enclosed. Trembles rocked through it. An awareness that thrashed and begged in the space between us.

“I’m the last person you should see that way.”

“You’re the only person I could see that way.” I figured I didn’t have time to be shy or modest. Not when this might be my only chance at confessing this.

My only chance at confessing what burned inside me.

I didn’t know how many tomorrows I had left.

The words were a whisper of desperation from my lips: “How do you see me?”

A groan curled up his thick throat, and he tossed the towel he was using to dry his hair to the floor before he took two steps to bring himself to the end of my bed.

His movements were slow. Filled with caution. With a reservation that rattled him to the bone.

“I see the one person who has ever meant anything to me. I see the one I’ve been sent to protect. I’m looking at my purpose, Aria. But it has to end at that.”

“Why?”

He choked over a pained, disbelieving sound. “You know why.”

“And maybe I don’t care. Maybe I want to take one thing for myself. Just once. I’m eighteen and I’ve never been kissed, and I might die tomorrow.”

I couldn’t believe I was telling him any of this. That I’d laid all my insecurities and inexperience at his feet. But it all left me in a bid of gravity.

“Don’t fucking say that,” he spat as he surged forward. He dropped to his knees at the side of my bed.

I moved, drawn, sitting up and draping my legs over the side, because the only thing I wanted to do was erase that space.

Heat blasted from him.

The man was a furnace.

“Don’t fucking say that.” It was a whispered plea this time. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“And what if it would kill me if something happened toyoutrying to protect me?”

He took my hand between both of his. “You’re worth any cost. I’ve known it my entire life.”

Tears blurred my eyes, and he reached up and wiped away the one that slid down my cheek.

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