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He is the danger.
Him.
I’ve always known. I’ve just not cared and even now, a current goes through me at his furious words.
I fist his t-shirt, his muscles rippling under my knuckles. “But I’ve been doing it for two years now. It’s perfectly safe, Reed, and —”
“I know,” he says with clenched teeth, cutting me off. “I fucking know. Why do you think I showed up at that shitty bar the next night? My sister didn’t just tell me about your fucking cupcake shop and she doesn’t just tell you things either. She tells me things too, and for the past two years, she hasn’t shut up about you. Every time she talks to you, every time she sees you, she can’t stop talking about you. And I pretend that she’s bugging the fuck out of me. I stomp and I kick things and I tell her to shut the fuck up. All the while hoping that she won’t.”
My breaths are all jumbled now.
I’m breathing so fast that they’re stumbling, falling all over each other. “I-I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d… I didn’t know.”
I did haunt him then. I did.
He lowers himself even more then, pushes his chest into mine. “Yeah, you didn’t. You didn’t know that even now, my Mustang smells like you. Even now when I get inside it, the first breath I take is you.”
Before I can say anything to that, he does something so… primitive and primal that all I can do is let him.
He smells me.
With his hands still planted on the tree by my head, he dips his face and takes a whiff off my forehead. But that’s not all. He grazes the side of my face with his nose as he smells me there too.
And he growls.
Like he really is an animal, a predator, and I bite my lip really, really hard.
So hard that I think I taste blood.
But it’s okay.
It’s fine because everything else inside me is bleeding too. Everything else inside me is bleeding lust.
Thick and tangy and coppery and so, so syrupy and delicious.
“Geranium,” he rasps against my skin. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He nuzzles his nose on my jaw. “And sugar.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Rare body oil.”
I tilt my head back even more, giving him access to my neck, to my scent as I hold on to him like he’ll save my life, when in reality, he’s the one drowning me.
He’s drowning me in desire, and wordlessly I nod as he rubs his nose on the column of my throat.
“Because you like them. Still.”
“Still.”
He looks up at me then, bowed over me with his strong, big body. “You wanna know how you haunt me, Fae? This is how.” He shows it to me again by taking a whiff of my skin and I arch into him. “This is what you do to me. This is what you did to me two years ago. You made me an addict, a junkie who’s looking for his next fix. Who’s been looking for it all this time. Because two years ago, I had a taste of a drug. I had a taste of my Fae and she’s been in my system ever since. She’s been running in my veins, my bloodstream and I’ve got no way to purge her. I’ve got no way to get rid of her. And I’ve got no way to get more of her either. So I’m stuck. I’m stuck with this need. This ache. I’m stuck with you. I’m nothing but haunted, Fae. I’m nothing but this ache. I’m nothing but pain.”
I look into his bright eyes, bright with haunting, bright with pain as he said and I whisper, “Me too.”
He licks his lips. “What?”
“I’m pain too.”
Like him I’m nothing but pain. I’m nothing but haunted. I’m nothing but his.
Still.
After all this time, I’m still his. And I don’t want to be.
I don’t want to be his.
Somehow I already know what he’s going to say next.
“You remember what I told you?” he asks. “That night.”
I dig my nails into his hips. “Hold on to my dress.”
“Yeah.” He licks his lips again as if he’s already tasting me on them. “Can you do that for me again? Can you hold on to your dress for me? Don’t let me see her.”
Can I?
Can I hide from him again? Can I hide what’s between my legs from him again?
I did that once.
I listened to him. I obeyed him. And look where we are now.
I let him protect me, my body, but he didn’t protect my heart.
He broke it instead and I’ve been in pain ever since. He’s been in pain too.
We’ve both been haunted and caged in so many ways because of what happened, what we did to each other. It’s time we end this.
It’s time we break away from each other for good and move on. And somehow I already know what we have to do in order to do that.
