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“Shhh,” Alek whispered, bringing both of his hands to my face, forcing me to look at him. The water rained down on him, too, darkening his hair and fluttering through his eyelashes. His black tee was plastered against his skin with the water, making him look even more Alek. “We’re going to get through this, Lyra. You’re not in it alone. You’re never going to have to do this alone.”
A shaking breath escaped me. The numbness in my chest was slowly thawing, tentatively disappearing with every drop of that hot water from the ceiling above. The water ran red, washing away my nightmares, washing away the evidence of what I had endured. What we had endured.
I gripped Alek’s tee shirt and tugged it, pulling it halfway up his chest before he got the hint and pulled it off.
He didn’t take his eyes off me as he unbuttoned his black jeans, dropping them to the shower floor and kicking them aside.
We stood there staring at each other.
Something had changed in the last few hours, something had happened since that ball.
Not just to me either, though certainly the recent events had changed me.
But Alek was different, too. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, couldn’t quite name the small flashes of emotion that leaked through that perfectly placed mask.
“When did everything get so fucked up?” I asked him.
He stood only an inch away with the water pouring around us and between us like our own private shield, protecting us from the rest of the world.
He smiled. It was soft and sad and terrible. “Maybe it’s just us. Maybe we’re the ones who are fucked up.”
And then I was kissing him, throwing my arms around his shoulders and letting him hold me up, the hot water nearly scalding my back and shoulders as he held me there, kissing me with an equal fierceness, one that melted my heart and crushed my soul all at once.
I didn’t want to admit that. I had been through terrible things; I knew that. But was I so damaged that I attracted this chaos, this evil to our lives?
And was Alek the same way?
He had been through plenty of awful things, too. His father was only the beginning. The things he did to be a Night Raven…. The things he had to do tonight…
The fear I saw in his eyes when we got into that car.
Maybe Alek was right. Maybe we were the ones who were damaged.
Alek’s hands slid up my back, holding me flush against his chest with his demon strength.
I ran my hands through his hair, slipping my fingers into his wet locks and holding onto him like he would wash away with the water, wash away with the blood.
Alek had a dark side. I knew that very, very well.
But maybe so did I. I was Theia’s daughter, after all.
I let Alek kiss away the pain, kiss away the numbness that threatened to overtake me, to control me.
I let him touch my body back to life, let him unclip my bra and toss it aside, let him peel my panties away until there was nothing but burning water touching our skin, caressing our bodies.
This.
This was what I could hold on to. Even if it were only for a moment, even if it were only so we could forget—just for the night—how fucked up we really were.
I would allow myself this.
I would allow myself him.
The next morning, I slid out of Alek’s bed and tip-toed down to the kitchen where a pot of coffee was already brewing.
“Morning.”
I jumped, spinning around and barely holding in my scream until I saw who stood on the other side of the massive room.
