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“I could just keep you,” Anteros said to her back. “I don’t fucking need your permission. I don’t have to let you leave.” She spun around, fury on her face.
“You think you own everything,” she spat. “My body. My mind. My life. The power to do whatever the fuck you want with the all of the above.” She folded her arms, pulled her lip between her teeth.
“I don’t think,” Anteros growled, pulling Frankie to him with such severity she had no choice but to grasp his shirt to keep from falling. “I know.” She was so close to his lips and her breath was so sweet against his mouth, all he wanted to do was devour her.
“If you keep me here, I will kill myself,” she said against his lips. “I won’t be captive ever again.”
“What happened to taking them down?” Anteros shoved her back and she stumbled, nearly fallin
g. “To ruling together?”
“You happened,” she retorted and spun away, bare honey shoulders backlit in the pale moonlight. Fuck. He wanted to reach out and smooth his finger down the notches in her spine, feel the flesh rise at his touch.
“You’re right,” Frankie said lowly. “If you want to keep me against my will, you can. I will be your slave, but you’ll be no different than the men who keep women in cages.”
No.
The scream in his chest raged.
He didn’t want her against her will, didn’t want it to be like before. He wanted her—Frankie, the woman he’d been getting to know. He was trapped, destroyed by a lie.
Fuck.
He had no idea what to do. This was what he’d been trying to avoid.
Fuck.
“Go,” he gritted. Before I change my mind. Frankie quickly walked the short distance left to the garage, opened the door, and went down the steps. Each time her foot hit the cement, it made an indent on his heart. As she got closer to the car, more pieces of him tore away. He could practically see the small bits of his soul floating like tissue paper.
When Frankie had her hand on the car door, it was like he could see his world crumbling, collapsing—the earthquake shaking everything, leaving nothing but raze and ruination.
“We’re irrevocable, Frankie.” The words fell from his mouth and she paused, hand still on the car. “You’ve felt the hollowness inside you,” he continued, words a rockslide, dangerous and fast. “You’ve walked around with it, not realizing what it was. You thought it was you, thought it was how you were and that’s how life was—dull, colorless, muted. You resigned yourself to it, to a life of almost and just enough because you didn’t realize you should reach for more—didn’t realize you could reach for more. But that’s not life. That’s the emptiness talking.”
She still hadn’t moved so Anteros went to her, pulling her ass flat against his groin. The stars outside were their only light, illuminating the place into different degrees of shadow. She kept her hand on the door handle.
“I felt it too,” he said, lips brushing the base of her neck. “But when we’re together, it’s not empty. We’re filled. We’re fire. The world isn’t just color, we set the colors on fire—and you know it.” For a brief second she rocked into him, her sigh the loudest sound in the garage—but just as quickly she tore from him, opened the door, and slammed it in his face.
This time Anteros couldn’t watch. He felt dead as he ascended the steps back to the cabin. Faintly, he wondered if he had died. He had no doubt in his mind that he would go to hell—he’d done plenty of terrible things. When the engine faded behind him, he was certain.
He hadn’t reigned in hell.
He’d fallen and been destroyed.
The scream that had been bubbling in his chest finally tore free. A few minutes later he turned and sat on the cement steps, staring out through the open garage, thinking she would drive back. One minute turned into minutes, one hour into hours, and Frankie was gone.
Anteros breathed in the smell of gasoline and night. He should have been angry at Frankie. Anteros should have been at the top already, but she’d thrown a wrench in his plans. Instead, he was angry at himself.
Furious.
He’d lost the one thing he’d never known he’d wanted but now knew was irreplaceable. When Frankie showed up, she boiled his blood and reminded him who he was. The real Beast, not the one he’d been pretending to be when they met. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been the Beast—the real Beast—from the beginning if he ever would have lost her.
Anteros rolled over, head throbbing, and reached for Frankie, but only grasped fur. He opened his eyes to see empty bottles of alcohol instead of her bare skin. The memory of the previous night washed over him.
The lie.
How she’d left—how he’d made her leave—came back in a rush. Fury at himself, at fucking up the best thing that had ever happened to him, coursed through his veins, overwhelming his hangover. Standing up, he kicked aside bottles. They knocked together, making a hollow echo.
Anteros had never been broken before. Men had tried, his parents had fucking tried—the scars on his body the testimony. Now he wasn’t sure how he was still standing. Bottles surrounded him, and he barely remembered what had happened after she left, but her leaving, that was there. A stain on his soul.
