Page 48 of Dead By Dusk

I freeze with fear of what might happen here without me. The consequences I may have to bear if I live and someone doesn’t. I look over my shoulder at the men in the room, sleeping soundly. Nathaniel and Adonis in their respective corners, Ronan taking a small sliver of the couch, unmoving except for the gentle rise and fall of his chest. My fists clench as I lightly step away from the stairs and check the room Carmen chose to sleep in all alone. Her long limbs are spread out over curtains and a blanket to give her some cushion on the hard floor, and her hair partially covers the delicate features of her face. My heart squeezes at the betrayal she’ll wake to find.

Though I don’t trust the men with my life, I do trust them with hers. In the way, I’ve already seen them worry for her here and there.

I’ll see you soon, my little dreamer. I just have to do this one last thing for us,I think to myself as I quickly approach her sleeping form and lay the letter next to her before I return to the staircase and begin my ascent. Thankfully, the short trip up is silent. The wood doesn’t groan under my weight as I keep to the sides of each step rather than the center, and when I get to the top, I take a deep breath before walking the distance to the room at the end of the hall and stepping through the hole in the door.

One minute later, and I’m taking quick, careful steps through the tunnel to my right, the one I’m hoping will lead to the estate based on the building shape on the map we found.

Successful in no one waking and finding me gone. That’s what I thought, at least. Now, as large hands grip my wrists and pin them above my head, and a muscular body presses into mine against the stone wall, I know I was sorely mistaken.

“And just where do you think you’re going? Huh, Killer?”

His voice is dark, carrying a menacing undertone, yet there’s no bite to it.

Taking a deep breath, I try to assess the situation, looking anywhere but him. My lack of answer and avoidance of his gaze, despite the full body contact, does nothing but frustrate him. At least I can assume as much based on the way that he grips my chin between his fingers and forces my gaze to lock onto his.

“You know there is nowhere you can go that I wouldn’t find you,” he says in such a way that I almost believe him. I almost have no choice to believe him, given the fact that he’shere. And for what? He has no reason to be here, not when he all but handed me a death sentence. Not when he’s the reason we’re all in this situation right now.

“And why is that? Huh?” My voice carries so much hostility, and I refuse to feel sorry for it when this is what his love has done for me. “Why won’t you leave me alone? Haven’t you done enough? Was this not enough? Let me guess, you’re the traitor,right? Putting me here wasn’t enough for you, but you needed to watch it happen?”

“What do you even mean? You really think, for even a moment, that I could do anything to hurt you when you’re—”

“I’m what? I’m crazy?” I say, cutting him off. I’m trying to keep my voice low, considering the echo in the tunnel, but I’m struggling. And anger and confusion are living things coursing through my veins with every beat of my heart. If he could see it in me, I don’t know, but one second my arms were pinned above my head, and the next his lips were on mine…

His lips were on mine, and it is the most terrifying and beautiful thing I have ever felt. It is pure desperation in the way his mouth molds with mine as he softly bites and tugs on my lower lip to pull a reaction from me. It takes everything in me to stay standing. However, even if my legs had given out the way that they so desperately wanted to, I wouldn’t have fallen. Not with the way his left arm wraps around my waist, hand gripping my hip and pulling me so close to his body that it feels like we could become a single physical being.

He just has to keep holding on.

He kisses me as if he’s trying to use his lips to write poetry onto my skin, a story of everything we had once been—of everything we were supposed to be. The thing about poetry though is it usually ends in tragedy, and for that reason alone, I remove my hands from where they have taken their place—tangled in his hair, and slowly place them onto his chest to stop this from going any further.

Words fail to escape me as I try to regain my thoughts, but every single one of them is just his name tattooed into my soul.

I know this moment is delicate, but I also know that there is so much that needs to be said even if it was everything I didn’t want to have to voice. Words that would hurt more than anything has ever hurt me before. Words that no one wouldunderstand except a version of myself that I’m not even sure he even remembers.

A version of me that loved him more than I had loved anything in my life and had let myself surrender to him.

I loved and I loved and I—

“Lie to me again,” I whisper against his lips before gently resting my forehead against his. Our breaths mingle with each other, and I begin to feel as if he’s breathing his own life into me.

“Silene, I—” I know his eyes are open…that he’s looking at me, waiting with bated breaths for our eyes to meet again, but I can’t bring myself to make eye contact with him in fear that I’ll fall into my desire to believe anything he says. I refuse to give in that easily, but I grab two fistfuls of his shirt, and pull his body impossibly closer, shaking my head no.

I can’t let myself give in. I can’t allow myself to accept this fall again, not when I know what he did, and not when I still have so many questions for him that he can’t answer right now.

That herefusesto answer right now when we no longer trust one another.

“I wish I never loved you,” he says, and then he’s removing my hands from his shirt and taking a step back. My closed eyes are now wide open and watching him intently as he turns away from where I stand and crouches down before roughly running his hands through his hair, tugging on the ends in frustration.

“I said, lie to me,” I say quietly. It was barely a whisper but I guess he heard it because he abruptly cuts me off when he stands back up, dropping his hands and looking at me, his eyes holding an unspoken plea, but my gaze holds nothing more than a challenge. Once he realizes that I’m not moving from where I stand, his head tilts up to the ceiling as he shakes his head and storms back to where he left me.

“Fuck it.” His hands slide through my hair and pull, forcing me to tilt my head back and allow him better access as his lipsclaim mine again. And there was no mistaking the fact that this kiss was just that—a claim. A promise. A prayer.

I’m frozen, rooted in place, for no more than a second before my own hands are gripping his hips and pulling them against my own. Consequences be damned. Trust and truth be damned. The familiarity feels too good to let go of, but he’s pulling away too soon, leaving a trail of small kisses from the corner of my lips up my cheekbone, and then he’s whispering in my ear.

“Come back. Whatever you were planning on doing, we’ll do it together. But never alone.” He pulls back to look at me, still forcing my head to look at him, but my eyes drift downwards. One of his hands trails down the length of my neck and along my arm before landing on my waist, squeezing on the area of bare skin left exposed after my shirt rode up during the kiss. “Please, Silene. I’ll get on my knees if I have to.”

“You’re asking me to trust you, and I don’t know if I can,” I reply, still not looking at him, but when he squeezes my waist, my green clashes with his blue, and I can’t ignore the rightness of it all. The invisible string that has done nothing but pull us together time and time again.

“Okay,” I whisper, gazing up at him through lowered lashes. I may be unsure if I’m making the right decision, but I follow him anyway. Back through the tunnel, up the stairs and to the doorway where Carmen stands with disappointment and betrayal reflected in her hazel eyes while she clutches the note I had written to her between her delicate fingers.

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