Page 14 of As Angels Sin

“That doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.”

It feels impossible that I am having this conversation when my body is telling me one thing, but my mind is saying something completely different. Crue’s the only person who makes me feel this good. Even when I’m totally uninterested, he manages to make me reach a heavenly climax without even trying.

But I have to side with my mind this time. Fend off his desires, in favor of my own. For all I know, this is still a matter of life and death.

“You know I had to do it.” Crue’s eyes don’t budge from mine. He can’t look away, even when he is directly facing the sorrow he has wrought.

“That doesn’t make it easier, either.” A lump in my throat threatens to join the oncoming tears, but I’ll fight them tooth and nail, until he’s gone. I can’t let him see me weak again.

“I...” He takes a long, unblinking pause. He maintains eye contact as if he is trying to search beyond my eyes and into my soul for an answer. When he finds none, he continues.

“I’m sorry, Little Flame.”

He leaves the way he came, without another word.

Fuck.

Chapter Seven

CRUE

Irony is the mother of all bitch-slaps and today I’m its victim. This thought weighs heavily on my mind as Mark and I drive through the countryside. After all of my vain attempts to spare Fiametta any suffering, I’m the one who has caused the most.

Six months ago, some chick throwing a tantrum because I got a little too rough wouldn’t have fazed me. I’d have smiled, told her to piss off and carried on with my life as if nothing had happened. This little change in my behavior that was imperceptible at first, but which is now growing inside me like a cancer, leaves me feeling very uncomfortable.

These foreign feelings have no place in my mind or my body. I’m not a man who cares what others think. I’m the monster whobends those others to my will. Everyone. These titans of New York, and their servants below them. Everyone...

Apart from her.

Get over it, you big baby.

My shadow’s savagery has found no end since I climbed the trellis up to Fiametta’s window. It has kept up a constant thrum of grumbles about how pathetic I was for indulging my sexual urges, rather than pressing my blade against her throat.

“Are you a hundred percent sure this is a good idea?” Mark pulls me out of my own head, when my car engine stops rumbling. We’re parked in front of Matteo Baronne’s villa. Mark has every right to be concerned.

“Nope,” I answer honestly.

Good or bad, I can’t say. But it won’t take long for Matteo to find out that I’m back in New York. As far as these things are concerned, it’s better for him to hear it from my mouth than from the grapevine. Especially when my first stop was Lorenzo Napoli’s home, rather than his. I wouldn’t want him getting the wrong idea. I really could do with fewer complications in my life, not more.

“Then why are we doing it?” Mark glares out the windshield at one of Matteo’s men, who’s guarding the front door. Or rather, waiting outside of it. I get the two confused, when I don’t know where I stand with someone.

“He needs to know I’m back.” And I need to know he isn’t a threat.

“Why do you think he’s even gonna care?” Mark reaches for his door handle and so do I. I shrug my shoulders once we’re outside, because admitting I don’t know, out loud, feels worse.

“You know, I’ll kill you if you get me killed,” Mark turns a glare to me.

“Then I’ll meet you at the gates of Hell,brother.”

“Very funny.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“You didn’t have to come. You know that, right?” An uncomfortable sense of déjà vu washes over me. Only the last time we had a conversation similar to this, I was still in control of myself.

“And let you die alone? Nah, if we’re going down, we’re doing it together.”

We walk up to the doorman, side by side. He’s holding an AR. The make and model are beyond my recognition. Never really been one for guns.

“We’re not going to die,” I reassure him. “Not tonight, anyway. He’ll enjoy torturing us first.”

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