Page 25 of The Librarian of Souls
“Yes.”
Augustine rushes me. Sands wrap around my wrists, locking them to my body, as he towers over me. His hazel eyes flicker gold behind his glasses and I swallow. I am not scared. The vivid memory of my most recent dream, of Augustine’s true appearance, has broken me in some way. I want him like that. I have tasted the sweetest sins I could imagine, and I want more of it. I want to feel him surround me and break me with purpose and control and put me back together.
But I have a job. I have to go to it. I have to. Because as much as Augustine made me feel alive in my dream, my real world is crashing down around me. That is the world I am stuck in, the world that I know more than the new one being laid out before me, so I have to fix it, prop it up on stilts, and hope all these new revelations don’t drown me.
“I am not letting you anywhere near that building,” he seethes, fangs flashing and lips splitting wide. “You are coming home, and we are discussing this bond. I meant what I said to you.You are mine, Joanna.”
“You want to talk about this bond?” A swell of anger rises in me like I’ve never felt before, twisting inside me until a sneer that matches his intensity stretches across my lips. “My life-or-death situation?”
“There will be no death.” The sands around my wrists writhe around more of my arms, creeping up to my neck. “You will not deny me.”
“If you want me, you must deal with all of me, Augustine. And all of me has fucking bills to pay.”
“Watch your mouth,mon abeille.” He leans into my face, his lips nearly on mine. I swear I can smell sea salt and books on him. My eyes flutter closed as the sands complete a loop around my neck. The fine grains tickle the sensitive skin and I bite my tongue to keep my whimper to myself. “I know all of your desires, everything you fear. There is not an emotion you experience that I cannot taste. Do not try to convince me for one moment that you are not moments from collapsing with exhaustion or panic.”
Augustine backs me into the cold tiled wall and presses his whole body to mine. His fully clothed body to my damp, nude one. My thoughts of work stutter for a moment, heat pulling in my belly at the power he is holding over me. I swallow hard.Focus, Joanna, you are angry with him, not aroused.
Can I be both?
“You are going to call in sick to work, you are coming home with me where I can bathe and worship you, and then you may discuss your concerns about the bond with me in private.”
“What if I don’t want to?” I ask, feeling the urge to deny him, to make him force me to do what he wants.
“This is not a game,” Augustine asserts. “I want you all to myself,mon abeille. We have spent long enough suffering in the dark, in dreams, from the bond.”
It all crashes into place in my head in a moment of clarity. Like a rubber band has snapped across my wrist. Privacy. At home. Hidden away. He wants me and isn’t afraid to show how he desires me in private, in my dreams. However he doesn’t want to be seen with me. What’s the point of making the bond, of living, if Augustine doesn’t want to live with me?
They were right, theyareright.
Prove it.A tiny voice in the back of my head whispers those words I told him in my dream.
“No,” I say, even as I feel my lower lip tremble. “You want me, date me then.”
“Do not be ridiculous. We are past courting.”
“I am not- I deserve- I-” My breath sputters and chokes on a sob as a wave of hopelessness threatens to drown me as I remember the harsh words whispered to me in a dark office. “I belong.”
“Who said you did not? Joanna, you are not thinking straight-”
“I belong,” I whimper. “I don’t want to die.”
Suddenly, I am lifted off my feet. I am crumbling, drowning, awash in the anguish of defeat I felt last night. Augustine’s long arms wrap around me and hold me close. In the back of my mind, I feel a sense of confusion and I don’t think it’s mine. It only makes me cry harder. Fully, completely overwhelmed by everything.I don’t want to die.The words repeat over and over again in my head. I want to be alive. I want to live a life worth remembering, and I want to belong.
Fingers dig into my scalp, and a hand soothes my shuddering back as sobs rack through me. I can’t stop the tears as they pour from my eyes once again.
“You are not going to die,” he says. “I will not let that happen. You are my queen,mon abeille. Even if you grow to hate me, I will do everything in my power to make your dreams real. I will not let anything happen to you. I cannot experience that terror again, of not being able to feel you.”
Augustine presses kisses into my hair and forehead. There is a rattling, the spines at his back moving as he shifts to set me on the counter. I hadn’t even felt the change in his size. My broken mind accepts the monster as much as the man. They are both him. They will both be mine if I complete the bond.
“Please, come home with me.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
11
Augustine
0 days
