Page 93 of Nocturne

I only pull an inch away, and our breaths still mingle, warm and unsteady, as I try to gulp in much-needed air.

So that’s what it means to kiss each other breathlessly.

Zagan’s eyes are even darker than before, edging into black as he looks at me. It bothers me to see his face the same mask of blankness while I am sure mine depicts all the waywardness and arousal I feel all over my body. I was right.

Kissing Zagan will never let me go back to normal again. It was earth-shattering, mind-boggling and the most intense experience I ever had. If I am being true to the darkest and most immoral self of my mind, I want to do it again. And again and again and never stop.

“And the second?” I hope my voice isn’t as breathy as it sounds to my ears.

“Be mine.” His husky voice would have been my undoing.

Coupled with that intense look and the grit of his jaw, as if he was resisting the urge to kiss me senseless again, it would have made me agree to do anything at that minute. But my eyes shift towards the image behind Zagan’s back, and I still. The crazily beating heart starts to beat at a maddening pace for a whole different reason.

My grip on his lapels loosens while my eyes are stuck on the carnage I am witnessing. The men who chased us lay dead in their pools of blood. Nico stands in the centre, holding a knife in his hand, the sharp metal shining with crimson. He looks nothing like the man who I invited into my home. He isn’t the man whose eyes glistened with something warm when I complimented him, isn’t the man who helped me with the dishes after the party, isn’t the man who played with Cas and let him climb into his lap and look at all his tattoos.

Right now, he stands in his element. In his true shadows, he spits down at one of the guys who still have a slight life left inhim. With one powerful stomp on his neck, Nico kills it. His eyes shine in bitterness and bloodlust as he crouches down to wipe his blade on the now-dead guy’s jacket. He doesn’t meet my eye or Ivy’s. He just looks right at his boss, gives him a nod and steps back.

He slinks back into the shadows as quietly as he came, and along with his disappearance, a slow fissure of anger starts to form in me. This time, when I look back at Zagan, his previous intense emotion is swapped with a stale indifference, which is edging me to vexation.

“He was here all this time?” I ask as I struggle to wiggle out of his grip.

He holds me mid-air as if I weigh nothing. His hands on my body are no longer appreciated. But his grip only tightens, and his eyes flare in a warning.

“Yes.”

“But you agreed not to kill them!” I say dumbly as I try to slap his bands of steel away from my waist.

These darn sparks are travelling south again, not allowing my voice to come out as sharp as I intend it to.

“I lied.”

“Well, technically,hedidn’t kill them,”

The rude git quips as if I require his interference in this matter. Now, out of the other times. The corner of Zagan’s lips—the one which is marred by the scar—tips upwards slightly into a devilish smirk. It is annoying, frustrating and downright illegal to look as handsome as he does when it isn’t even a full smirk.

This darn heart of mine refuses to slow down and instead flutters under the rare smirk he graces me with.

“Put me down!”

When he grips me harder instead, I pinch the inside of his wrist. Hard. There isn’t even an infinitesimal amount of change on his hardened face, but he lets me go. He places me back on the ground with a gentleness I am surprised he could possess. But in retrospect, every time he touched me, he did it with gentleness. Every single time. I hate myself for thinking about it right now.

When his hands leave me, I am not prepared for the legs, which had turned to jelly. Thankfully, I can stand without falling face first and shake away the sudden chill that surrounds me. I'd rather die of chill than bask in his stupidly warm hands.

“Ivy, let’s go,” I call for my best friend, who looks as pale as a ghost.

She quickly rushes towards me, peeking a wary glance towards the stranger. I am beyond caring now. The fury encapsulates every fibre of my being, trying to shut down the guilt and the darkness inside me, which would surely pop out to look at the carnage surrounding me.

More than the guilt, I am afraid of the fluttering inside my heart that awoke with a single kiss. One kiss was all it took to evoke those forgotten flutters. It terrifies me to acknowledge them because they are being evoked by a man who kills as a profession. He lied about not murdering people as easily as I did about not finishing a pack of chips.

With my back facing the dead men and Zagan, I begin to walk towards the other end of the container, where two doors areopen now. Was I so lost in that kiss that I failed to even notice the opening of these large, squeaky things?

Damn him!

“What about the deal, love?” The cold git calls, a hint of amusement clear in his deep baritone.

I throw a glare over my shoulder, purposefully avoiding looking at the corpses and shooting a pointed scowl towards the scarred devil. Those darned scars still manage to make my heart skid to a halt and beat at an unnatural pace with their sheer beauty.

“I. Lied.” I throw the words back at him before I turn around and walk away.

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