Page 32 of Cast Stones
“That’s not true,” I rasp.
“Lie to yourself all you want, but I won’t. We’re more than soulmates, Madi. We’re life and death mates. What we survived…What we did to survive… It made us fucking unbreakable. You’re mine, as much as I am yours.”His gaze dips to my mouth again. “And as much as you tell yourself you don’t want me to take you right here against this wall, you don’t mean it.”
He’s right. The man standing in front of me is the boy I once loved, all grown up.
My first kiss. My first stomach-clenching orgasm. My first fuck…
“I won’t let those sick bastards steal it from me, Luca. It’s mine to give, and I choose you over them.”
I slump against the wall, desperate to sink into it. Because the alternative is to sink into him, and I can’t. Not again. I won’t survive it. Neither of us will.
Closing my eyes, I let out a shuddering breath. “You used me to beat a murder charge of which you were falsely accused, Luca. I broke all the rules for you. You won. It’s over.”
“Over?” His dark chuckle skates up my spine and breaks into jagged shards of warning. Leaning down, he gently kisses the corner of my mouth just before pressing a foul-smelling cloth over it. “Not this time,cara mia… This time, it’s only just begun.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ten Years Ago
“Didn’tyou ever attend high school?”
“Nope.”
“Learn to drive?”
“Nope.”
“But that’s crazy!” I roll over onto my front to soak up the dying rays of the afternoon. He moves with me, sprawling out on his stomach: my constant shadow, my confidant. My jailer.
I’ve spent over a year and a half in captivity now. My eighteenth birthday is next week. Mom promised me a party and everything. Does she remember the conversation, or are her memories fading like spent emotions? Mine are. When I close my eyes, I can’t see the strong contours of my father’s face anymore. When I listen, I don’t hear the sweet indulgent notes of mom’s laughter.
Luca rakes at the long grass with his fingertips. He wants to get back to the cabin by sunset, but I’m reluctant to let this moment go. These are the best ones; when I don’t allow my past to shut out the slivers of relief in my present. Like now, when it’s just him and me, lying on the grass and shooting the breeze like a couple of regular teenagers. We’re burrowing deep down inside it like a dog would a warm blanket, ignoring a future that is bleak and cold.
Playfully, I throw a couple of dead twigs at him. “What about a movie theater? You must have visited one of those.”
“My father says they’re tools of the devil to corrupt and defile.”
I watch him snap my twigs into tiny pieces. It’s like my words have made him angry. His head drops between his shoulders, his messy hair flopping over his face so I can’t see his eyes anymore.
“Luca?”
“We should be getting back.”
“Not just yet. It’s so beautiful out today.”
Sometimes it amazes me that I can find beauty in anything anymore.
“Five more minutes,” he says sternly.
“Only five?” I tease, allowing my gaze to travel the length of his body. There’s a fresh rash of cigarette burns on the pale skin just below the hemline of his pushed-up T-shirt.
Reaching out, I gently trace a circle around the bumpy scar tissue. He shudders, but he doesn’t stop me. Not like the first time.
This is what we do now: we talk, we learn, we touch, we soothe each other’s pain. Call it loneliness by another name, but I find myself craving more from him. Stuff that he refuses to give me. To touch me sexually is the gravest of all sins in the eyes of the Disciples, but he refuses to tell me why.
I wish things were different.
I wish we were a boy and a girl in another world.
