AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The monkey digs his sharp claws anxiously into my shoulder, so I set him gently on the table before turning back to Remy.
“Right,” my voice is softer than I intend it to be, and far more bitter. “Because who would be content with a quiet life away from politics and bloodshed with someone who actually wanted to be with them when they can have all this?”
My arms spread in a mocking, all-encompassing gesture, beginning with the opulent room I couldn’t give a single damn about and ending with the two of us. We’re standing inches from each other now, close enough that we could lean forward and eliminate the distance if we wanted to, if we weren’t busy constantly finding new ways to hate each other.
Tohurteach other.
My gaze snags on his parted lips, and a memory hits me with a surprising force.
The morning light filters in, and I can’t help but trace the outline of his full mouth with my fingers, remembering what they felt like against my skin only hours ago.
It’s time to go, though. Mother will be looking for me.
I move to roll out of bed, but a strong arm tugs me back against a solid chest.
“Stay,” he growls in my ear, his voice still rough with sleep.
“I can’t,” I say, even as I lean backward into his touch. “You know I have to work.”
“Ah yes, well, I’m sure the needy, wealthy family whose identity you refuse to reveal can live without your services for another fifteen minutes.”
“Well, if fifteen minutes is all you have to offer,” I tease, moving toward the edge of the mattress again.
He doesn’t loosen his grip, and I can’t very well use my skillset to get away from him…even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, particularly, though I should. So I let him pull my body flush against his while I pretend to protest.
“Well, if you don’t like the sound of fifteen minutes,” he says in my ear, running his free hand along my side. “What would you say to a longer proposal?”
“I can’t take the day off.” It’s an effort not to recoil in horror at what Madame might do to me if I try.
“I didn’t mean the day,” he says quietly.
A beat of silence passes while I process what he does mean, the wordproposalresounding in my head. For the smallest fraction of a second, I let myself imagine it.
A life with him. A normal life, like the one I’m pretending to have, where I go off to work during the day and come home to Remy’s teasing and his wit and his gorgeous, taut body.
Then I remember that this is not my life. This is not even my name. I’m not the person he wants to make this proposal to.
And if I was, Madame would probably kill us both.
So I laugh it off and pretend to misunderstand him, kiss him to distraction, then go on with my day, all the while knowing there is now a ticking clock on Remy and me.
I have let this go far enough. Too far.
I can’t pretend it doesn’t bother me now to realize that for all I agonized over that decision, even if he was telling the truth, the life he was offering was nothing close to the one he actually had to share.
“And if I had?” Remy’s soft voice pulls me back into the present. “If I had offered you a ‘quiet life away from politics and bloodshed with someone who actually wanted to be with you?’ Then you would have, what? Renounced your position as The Flame? Abandoned Madame? Run off into the sunset with me?”
The derision in his tone tells me he doesn’t expect me to answer, not when we both know the truth.
Shaking my head sadly, I back away from him, away from the moment that still hums with more intensity than it has a right to.
“It doesn’t matter, because you neverdidactually want to be with me. You wanted Gemma, and she wanted Remy, the guard and the gambler. In the end, we both wanted people who never even existed.”
And now we’re left alone with the ghosts of everything we could have been.
Remy’s features pinch, but he doesn’t argue. It isn’t until that thought crosses my mind that I realize how badly some small, irrational part of me wishes he would.
It might be one more in a long line of lies, but at least it would be kinder than the truth this time.
