AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I would be a liar if I say that I wouldn’t have tried. I knew you were mine… I would have done my fucking best to make sure you knew that too. But, no, I wouldn’t have broken you up unless that was what you wanted. I’ve hurt you enough…”
“You broke me. You hold a power over me that I cannot understand. And I fucking hate it. I hate how deep you can reach inside my soul, how many layers you can peel away and leave me but a shadow. I hate how long it took me to feel that I’m alive. I hate that I could never truly love again after you.”
She whips around, pins me with her gaze, and suddenly I feel as though I’m smaller, weaker somehow.
“I still hate you… because you’re the only one that saw exactly who I was, and pushed me further into that darkness. And then you left… and there was no one else like you.”
“I never left.” I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to stay leveled.
Tears fill her eyes, the green in her irises so fucking vivid it’s like I’m lost in the forest outside of my window on a rainy afternoon.
“I had no choice, Morrigan… But I never actually left. I kept tabs, knew how your life was going, how smart you were becoming and how strong. Through gritted teeth and a broken heart, I was forced to watch you meet others, and eventually Holt… but I wanted to kill them all.”
I fucking wanted to rip them apart, into small pieces, then drop them on her doorstep to show her what happens to the men that touch her. I wanted to fuck her in a sea of their broken limbs, desecrate their goddamn remains with our ecstasy.
I still do. Only Holt can fucking die whilst watching her take me on his future motherfucking grave.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
MORRIGAN
Ideliberately hold my breath and force myself not to blink through the tears that I cannot seem to stop from flowing, just in case… just in case I miss any clue, any sign that he’s lying.
Goddamnit… there’s none. But he’s The Serpent, cunning in more ways than most would know, that most would recognize. What the hell makes me think that I would recognize betrayal on his features?
I let go and blink once, pushing a steady stream of tears down my cheeks, my chest shaking, my hands painful from the tenseness in my fists, a deep pressure in my head. And the voice speaks inside of it…
You know you would have no trouble recognizing his deceit… You saw it the night he left you. You knew he was lying.
I fucking did. I did. I don’t know if he allowed me to see it, but I knew he was lying to me. I just didn’t know about what. My insecurities about deserving him steered me from believing that he was lying about not loving me… I had no trouble believing that he didn’t.
My fucking Serpent…
All this time, I’ve hated him. I killed because of how broken I was. I did so many stupid things. I almost did his friend too… Maddox. I always had a soft spot for that brutal man, that gentle beast that kept an eye on me, the reason Vincent and I never were.
I can’t blame him. Any of them. I would have done exactly the same thing, not just for Lulu, but for Maddox too.
“So much time lost…” I whisper, unable to drop my gaze from those dark pits of his eyes.
“Yet no love was lost…” he whispers back on a long breath, with a warmth in his voice that spreads instant goosebumps on my skin, all from a shiver that starts in the center of my chest.
I shake my head gently as my bottom lip quivers. He cocks his head slightly, reaching over and brushing his thumb over my tears, before he swipes his tongue over it.
Then he dips in and I’m expecting a kiss to my lips, only he presses them to my cheeks instead, kissing away the tears that fell there. Microscopic currents he leaves behind, tiny electric shocks in the shape of his kisses, and he follows the trail down my face. When he reaches my jaw, a ticklish sensation explodes through me, my body shuddering, my hands grabbing onto his naked waist instinctively.
I could have sworn I heard a low moan somewhere deep in his chest at the same time I felt his muscles tense. He doesn’t stop, though. He slides one hand into my hair, bending my head back, continuing to follow those stray tears, under my jaw, and down my neck, until there’s nothing left.
Only my nails digging into his tight flesh. Fuck, he didn’t look like this all those years ago, with defined muscles, wide shoulders, the kind of man you expect to do at least fifty laps a day in the Olympic pool. My fingers itch to explore, but I’m more intrigued by his own exploration.
As his grip on my hair tightens and my eyes close, he pulls back harder, and grabs my ass with his free hand, pressing my hips into his on a dragged groan. Mine or his, I’m not even sure. But his tongue swipes over my clavicle, up my neck, then down again, sinking his teeth where it meets the shoulder, the sharp pain pushing me even harder into him.
“Vincent…” A soft moan escapes through my lips and every single muscle in his body tenses. My mind does too. I haven’t called him that in years…
“Again!” he groans.
“… What…?” I open my eyes lazily, and the look that meets me is feral. Feral in a way that instantly makes my nipples hard, painful against even the loose fabric that covers them.
“Say. It. Again.”
