“No,” he agrees. “But it makes me sure of my love for you.”
A languid ache blazes through my gut.
His breath hits my cheeks, and he squeezes the nape of my neck. I know what comes next and lean into the kiss, closing my eyes and abandoning my principles.
He owns me with his kiss. The warmth of his lips disarms me as he angles me to him with his large hand, destroying my senses and grounding me in place.
My nails sink into his shoulders, pulling death closer, and for one reckless moment, I want to disappear in his arms and meld our souls together. Everything about him feels right, down to how wrong we are for each other.
He kisses me as though he's terrified I’m about to decide he's not worth the trouble. He doesn’t say it aloud, but his hungry tongue invades my mouth, over and over again, desperate.
It feels as though he’s fishing for reassurance, terrified to find evidence I've stopped loving him.
And the awful truth is that I'm doing the same thing, searching our connection for a certainty hidden in the cracks between kisses and broken breaths.
Looking for proof that I'm worth choosing.
“Ezra?” a voice shouts.
It shocks me out of my thoughts, and my stomach clenches.
I tear my mouth away as light, hurried footsteps resonate through the gardens. E growls, his hands digging into the flesh of my waist.
“Ezra!”
This time, the greeting somehow manages to sound both sultry and vulnerable.
My ghost reluctantly lets me go as a woman approaches, and my eyes widen, my legs turning to lead beneath me.
Fuck me.
The newcomer belongs to a fairytale I was never meant to step into.
Dark hair spills around her face, falling past her hips in thick, glossy waves. It clearly has never known a bad day or a pair of dull scissors.
A single white strand cuts through the darkness and traces the line of her cheek, like death itself tried to touch her and failed, leaving only that mark behind.
Her warm brown skin is flawless in a way that shouldn’t be possible. It makes me aware of every wrinkle, every scar, everyhourI’ve lived.
The sharp angles of her face should feel severe but don’t. Her irises are a clear, unsettling gray, and her shimmering cat-eye makeup and golden eye shadow are artistic and striking without looking heavy.
This terrace was made for women like her, for Fae royals to lounge and leisure without a single worry. She moves with the kind of feminine grace I’ve never managed to master. Adiaphanous gown drapes her curves, the fabric so light it looks as though someone stitched a piece of cloud into a dress and convinced it to stay in place.
A single thread of gold zigzagging across her shoulder and waist holds the masterpiece together.
She’s incredibly beautiful. The very princess I was afraid to find.
And then there’s her bite of power. Cold. Not the sharp bite of a strong winter gust, but the deep, creeping chill of something old embalmed in eternal ice.
When she deigns to look my way, that cold deepens, slipping under my skin. My pulse stutters. The same icy, hollow edge I’ve felt near deathbeds, in hospital corridors at three in the morning—when life holds still, and death decides who stays and who goes—encircles my heart.
The scent of endings clings to her, and a knot coils at the pit of my stomach.
With my half-done braid, the dirt and blood freckling my neck, and the clothes I’ve been traveling in, I’m nothing more than a sore spot in this idyllic scenery, barely a blip of a woman stitched together by half-assed genes. Compared to them, I am unfinished.
I throw my worst nightmare made flesh an awkward wave. “Hi, I’m Max.”
She clicks her tongue as though she’s already decided exactly where I fit in this disaster story—buried in the footnotes.
