Like so much else in life—and death—it had just… happened.
Now it was time to accept that, even if he did care about me, I was still just a mistake he needed to rectify.
Not an easy task since reaching that level of acceptance required me to skip all the other stages of grief.
How many of them were there again?
Right at this moment, they seemed to all be coming for me at once.
Every night until tonight, I’d done an okay job of avoiding my deeper feelings, right along with the full weight of what my death really meant. What it would mean for others…
I’d done all the things, of course. All those things that 90 percent of people never got to do. I’d FaceTimed with my parents, for instance, and met up with Brooke at a local orchard for wine tasting and tipsy apple picking. The two of us had laughed so hard over old times, and for a few hours, I forgot about my predicament. Yesterday, I’d called my other friends to catch up, pretending the whole time that nothing was the matter when, in reality,everythingwas the matter.
Tonight, though, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. No one but him.
Since I wasn’t going to get to do that, I could try my usual trick of marathoning musicals or glutting myself on romance novels, but the problem was those things didn’t make me feel alive. In the days since I’d left the Hallowed Halls, all my pastimes had come to feel like diversions I couldn’t afford. Not that I had the bandwidth to concentrate on them anyway.
Instead, I was caught in this weird state of in-between, simultaneously wishing for a miracle and that the other shoe would go ahead and finally drop—if for no other reason than for a release from the pain of being locked in limbo like this.
I pressed a hand to the door and leaned my forehead against the cool surface, pining for my soul’s undertaker more than I had foranyone or anything after learning I was staring down the barrel of a proverbial and inescapable gun.
On the one hand, my longing for him made no sense. On the other hand, considering the way he made me feel, that finding lovewaspossible, my desires made all the sense in the world.
But then, Grim hadn’t returned my advances or flirted back—no matter how bold the knowledge of my impending demise made me. He was still a pipe dream.Wewere a pipe dream. And I didn’t have time for those anymore.
“I wish it wasn’t so,” I whispered, pushing away from the door, ready to end the night with a good and long ugly cry now that reality had finally seen fit to slam into me, totaling my already teetering world.
When I turned around again, though, I jumped to find him standing in front of me, all six foot whatever of his sexy, doom-and-gloom self stationed between me and the rest of my empty apartment, a never-before-seen ferality in that icy gaze.
My breath caught while my heart launched into hyperdrive.
Glowering hard at me, tension knitting his entire frame, he closed the distance between us in two long strides.
He caught me with those tattooed hands.
Then his lips—warm and demanding—found mine an instant before he backed me into the door, pinning me there.
33GRIM
To hell with hope—at least any I had for myself.
Maybe a taste of heaven was all someone like me needed.
Whatever inferno waited for me after all I’d done—and was about to do—could have me. Already, I could say with authority that the inevitable torment I would face for shirking my duties, ignoring my oath, crossing this boundary… with her… was worth it.
She tasted of cherries and vanilla, her subtle citrus-and-honeysuckle scent teasing up my memory of Halloween night when she’d flung her arms around me, her supple curves colliding with my unyielding bones.
As Helena kissed me back, her warm and soft hands framed my face, her lips answering the demands of mine. Her desire was unmasked now as she held me to her, her fervor dispelling all the doubts I’d entertained that she hadn’t wanted me. Hadn’t meant the things she’d said to me.
She had.
And that knowledge unleashed something ferocious inside me, a greedy craving that I’d been trying to hold at bay—one that now surged up out of my gutted and war-torn soul to infuse my blood and enflame my flesh.
Neglected and abandoned for so long, this suit of muscle and skin had become alien to me. In this moment, though, with Helena pressed against me, her heart banging out an SOS that Iitchedto answer—and assuage—I became irrevocably fused with my body again. With hers, too.
Her hands half fell, half slid to grip the collar of my jacket, and the act of those slim and delicate fingers curling around the stiff black leather had my tongue diving to taste hers.
A soft murmur escaped her as she met my invasion with an answering brush of her own tongue, and that eager caress combined with that small hum of pleasure sent ripples through me. The simple idea that I’d done anything she liked threatened to set me on fire.
