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His fingers around my wrist tighten as if to say that he won’t make the same mistake again. He won’t let me out of his evil clutches a second time.
“I know.” His jaw tics as if remembering it. “Hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life. Noblest fucking thing too.”
“And also so atypical of you.”
“Fuck yeah, I’m not a good guy.”
“No, you’re not. But that night you were.” I breathe heavily. “For me.”
Another tic of his jaw. “Yeah.”
I bite my lip before saying, “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That I become a bad girl for you and you become a good guy for me.”
His lips twist with a humorless smile again. “Yeah. Although it wasn’t really worth it.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Becoming a good guy.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“Because it sucked. Being the good guy.” His grip on my wrist shifts as he continues, “Especially when you have a monster boner in your pants refusing to let up. For days.”
“For d-days?”
“Yeah, what the fuck did you think would happen, Fae? When you give me a lap dance and beg me to bang your brains out.”
“I didn’t beg,” I protest and also lie.
Because I did.
He chuckles again because he knows I’m lying and continues, “And when my Mustang smelled like you.”
“It did?”
“Yeah, for weeks after that. Even though you drowned it in the lake for your revenge. Even though I had to change the seats, I’d still smell you. I’d get a whiff of your candy smell and just like that I’d get a motherfucking boner the size of your pretty little arm in the middle of the day.”
I press my lips then, to stop my laughter from spilling out.
This is not a laughing matter. None of this is, but I can’t help it and he obviously notices, obviously, and growls, “You think this is funny, Fae?”
Dutifully, I shake my head. “No.”
“If your brother knew I was taking a hit of his sister’s scent every time I drove my car, he would’ve drowned it in the lake himself. He would’ve hunted me down and this time instead of using my body as a punching bag, he would’ve killed me.”
“But you could’ve handled him, right?”
He gives me a lopsided smile. “Fuck yes.”
“Now I’m happy,” I blurt out.
“What?”
I swallow, debating whether I should tell him but already knowing that I will.
Already knowing that I’ve drunk the potion now and it’s making me crazy. So much so that I arch my spine and move against him. His hard body shudders and I revel in it.
I revel that I made him do that.
“That you suffered,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. When I was crying in my pillow at night and in classes and during lunch and practically all the time, I’m glad you were suffering too. I’m glad that when you were haunting me, I was haunting you too.”
Maybe that’s what I want.
I want to haunt him, his dreams, his thoughts, his empty chest like he’s haunted me.
Maybe I want to be his demon like he is mine.
A demon that needs to be exorcized.
Maybe I want to be his Fae in all the ways he is my Roman, even though I don’t want him to be.
“You want to hear all the ways you’ve haunted me, Fae? All the little ways you’ve crept up on me over the past two years?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Let me tell you about that then,” he says, finally letting my hands go, and so I touch him back.
While he puts his hands on the tree, making a cage of bones and muscles, I put mine on his waist. I touch him, his strength, his heat even though he’s always cold on the inside, after two long years and my eyelids flutter.
My fingers jerk with life.
“Let me tell you about that night, when I saw you sneaking out to your studio. I’d just driven down from New York after a long fucking day in that shithole office to go to another shithole office and I was tired as fuck. But I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to drive around, and there were a million places I could’ve gone to but I chose that highway for a reason. I chose to cross over from Bardstown to St. Mary’s for a fucking reason. I chose it for you.”
He licks his lips, shifting his body against mine, and I’m so hypnotized by his words, by him, that I shift too. “Because I knew that’s where you lived. I knew that beyond that brick fence, you might be sleeping in one of those cinderblock buildings. But you weren’t, were you? You were sneaking out. After everything that I did — not that I did a lot — but after how I wanted to keep you safe, you were running around town at midnight. It pissed me the fuck off, Fae, I’m not gonna lie. It made me furious. It made me want to pick you up off the road, put you in my Mustang and drive you to an isolated, unknown place just to put the fear of God in you. Just to teach you all the dangers lurking in the night.”
