“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said, kissing a trail down my stomach and to my pussy. “You’re in my every thought.” He flicked his tongue once against my clit. “My every breath,a chuislemo chróí—my pulse.”
Hunter continued kissing and sucking and doing whatever he could to make me ready for him. But I felt nothing but remorse.
I reached down and pulled him up so our eyes locked. “I need you inside,” I whispered, hoping that feeling him fill me would wash out the echo of the curse in his voice.
But it didn’t.
The moment he slipped inside, the curse screamed deep in my mind, until I zoned out and my mind conjured Graham. It was always Graham. Even right after he left. Even when I was pissed. It was the only place I could crawl to, just so I could stomach the thought of my fabrication—the lie.
Every thrust into me was proof of how false this was—an echo of a devotion I’d manufactured with magic, a hunger carved from the curse keeping him in my bed.
Not choice.
Not love.
Manipulation.
When Hunter finally came, relief washed over me. He’d sleep, and I’d be free to slip into Graham’s chair by the closet, staring out the window, clutching the tiny wooden owl he had carved for me, pretending the night had answers. Thinking about him, Chester, Uncle Silas. About everything I’d lost the moments I uttered those fateful words.
But every time, I wondered what Hunter was like before the curse.Heapproachedmethat night, before I’d even cast the spell. But I was still haunted by the idea that I stole his choice to stay.
My eyelids grew heavy. The rhythmic beat of the curse pulsed under my skin, weighing me down, drowning me. It was worse when the house was quiet—that’s when I could hear its thrum in my veins, the invasion of the lie, of the selfishness. It was the hollow of my heart—empty where love should have been, dark as the night pressing against the window.
Derek
“Did you know she moans his name at night, mate?” Hunter sank into one of the leather wingback chairs by the fireplace. “It’s like he haunts her dreams.” He took a long sip of his drink. The more alcohol he got in him, the more his accent thickened. “Kills me every second of every day… knowing she secretly still loves him.”
There was a moment of silence.
“He must’ve been important to her.”
“He was,” I said, my shoulders rigid. “They loved each other very much.”
“Then why aren’t they together? Why did I find her broken in a bar?”
I rubbed a hand over my jaw, weighing how much was mine to tell. I hated it when people wanted me to spill the demons of others.
“He cheat on her?” he asked abruptly.
I shook my head. “God, no.”
“Well, then what in the bloody hell is it? What’s this guy got that I don’t?” He rose and leaned over the fireplace, arms resting on the mantel as he watched the flames dance. “She was fine until he came back. I saw it when I saw them together on the porch, then when we fucked… “She looks at him differently, mate. I’m going to lose her—and that scares the piss out of me. She is the blood that keeps my heart beating.”
Hunter turned to me, and the hollow pain lingering in his eyes burned me—like he’d already given up.
“She lied to me when he showed up.” He took the last sip of his drink. “Said they were ‘just old friends.’”
“Technically, that wasn’t a lie.” I shook my head. “They were friends… maybe even best friends. Look, I prefer to let people air their own skeletons.”
“Smart,” he said, swirling the ice in his now empty glass. “I have a few skeletons too, it seems.” He faced the mantel again, the firelight highlighting what could have been a tear forming in the corner of his eye, but maybe it was just frustration.
“Don’t we all?” I said.
He stared at his glass, analyzing for a moment. Then turned back to me, eyes now red-rimmed and heavy—like if he stayed for a second longer, he’d break. “Do you mind if I go for a ride? Clear my mind?”
“No, go ‘head. I’ve got her.”
Hunter left his glass on the mantel, and I watched the ice melt as the time ticked by.
