“He was there—said he tried to help her, but it was too late. Too much blood. Oona died in his arms, and there wasn’t a damn thing to be done. It all happened so fast, and I… The guards were after us. We had to run, and…” I squeezed my eye shut, just barely keeping the worst of the memories at bay. “An hour later, we were in New Orleans, Midnight firmly in the rearview.”
“Jax, I’m so… Fuck. I don’t even know what to say.”
“It was a million years ago, Haley. It’s done.”
“But you—”
“Look, we don’t need to do this,” I said, already kicking myself for opening up a damn vein. “Really.”
“Jax, look at me. Please.”
Biting back a curse, I opened my eye. Looked down at her soft, creamy skin. The rivulets of water running over her dark nipples.
Fuck, this was not how I saw this night going. I was standing in the shower with the hot, naked, insatiable witch who’d given me the most intense fucking orgasms of my life, and we were wasting time talking about dead soldiers and blood oaths and murdered exes?
“Jax—”
“I told you, it was a long time ago. I shouldn’t have mentioned her.”
“Did you love her?” she whispered, her face so earnest, so sweet, it threatened to carve me right open all over again.
“Idon’tlove, Haley. Period.”
“Because you were hurt?”
“Because I know where loving someone leads.”
“To… being in love?” She tried to laugh, but it fizzled out quickly.
Inside, I felt the old devils clawing at my heart. Burning it. Slicing me open only to heal me and do it all over again.
“Do you know the first thing you learn when they turn you into a fear demon?” I leaned in close. Gripped her jaw and forced her to meet my gaze. Then, in a dark whisper that left her trembling, “Behind every fear, every horror, every blood-soaked nightmare that leaves its victims screaming into the darkness lies but a single root, and no, it’s not cancer or spiders or the monsters lurking under the bed. It’s somethingmuchmore dangerous.”
33
JAX
You asked me once if I was born like this,” I whispered, my mouth so close to hers I could taste her every ragged breath. “No, I wasn’t born a demon, my sweet angel. I was human once—centuries ago—dragged to hell for my irredeemable sins and forged into the monster standing before you now.”
“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“From my first day in those fiery pits, they beat me. Tortured me. Stripped me bare of everything I ever knew and loved as a man. Then, certain I was sufficiently weak and malleable, they rebuilt me to their exact specifications, force-feeding me every single fear imaginable—dying alone, suffering, getting devoured by snakes, waking up during surgery, drowning, burning alive, losing loved ones, facing war, falling from a great height, getting diagnosed with incurable diseases, and yes, even facing those monsters under the bed. I lived through every single nightmare as though it was real—as though it was mine. And then, I did it again. Again and again, every day for a hundred years in a place where an hour feels like a lifetime. And do you know why they subjected me to such tortures?”
“No,” she whispered, eyes wide, her body still trembling in my hands, warm and wet.
“Because a fear demon needs to learn how to look into someone’s soul and recognize his worst terrors without succumbing to them, all so we can turn them into weapons against him.” I released her jaw and slid my hand down to her breast, the other gripping her hip. Drawing slow circles around her nipple, I said, “So when I tell you I don’t love? No, it’s not because I was hurt. It’s because I’ve lived through every man’s worst nightmares, and I can tell you with utter certainty the onlytruefear—the seed that blooms into all the others—is love.”
She searched my face. Gripped my hand to stop my incessant circling. “You’re wrong.”
“I wish I was, angel. But I’m not.”
“But… love? That’s ridiculous. What about fear of abandonment?”
“You mean fear of being abandoned by the people you love?”
“Fear of death?”
“Fear of losing your loved ones, losing time with them, or leaving them behind to face life without you, because they love you and you know it will devastate them?”
