AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I laugh. “Hardly. I can’t keep anything from you. I wear my heart on my sleeve too much for that. If I had any deep dark secrets I was hiding, you’d know them by now.” I consider a moment longer, then shake my head. “My family is kind. Happy. I grew up well enough. I never had many friends, but a couple. They drifted away over time, or we fell out. You know about that. I was just the school weirdo, the outcast sitting in the corner.”
The set of Elias’ mouth is beginning to harden. He is not as prone to violence as Caelan, but I can tell he is jumping to conclusions.
“No, I wasn’t bullied. Not really, not seriously. Stop making that face.”
Elias huffs quietly at being called out. He shifts his expression back to neutral and tilts his head in a gesture for me to continue.
A moment of silence hangs in the air. I’m not sure if I should add more, but what I said earlier was no exaggeration. I wear my heart on my sleeve with them. I can’t hide. I blurt out things I would never tell anyone else.
“I isolated myself more than anything. I struggled a lot with depression back then, so...”
The concern is clearly written in the furrow of Elias’ eyebrows. “You never—”
“No,” I say firmly. “It wasn’t that serious. It just… slowed me down a lot. I missed out on a lot of teenage things… parties, hobbies, making stupid mistakes.” I laugh. The sound of it is hollower than I intended. “Probably did myself a favor.” Elias is clearly not convinced. “It’s not a big deal, I promise.”
“You are too dismissive of your own suffering.”
“Elias. You and Caelan are demons who have gone through hell—quite possibly literally. I don’t know what your original plane of existence was like.”
He grunts. “Hell is accurate enough.”
“Exactly. Meanwhile, I have, what? Some trouble with my self-esteem, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I want from life.” I sigh. Lying next to him, it all seems so small and inconsequential. “Everything always felt so suffocating. I couldn’t imagine just finishing my degree, getting a job, and working for the rest of my life. I was desperate to believe there was more to this existence, something bigger… then I met two demons.”
Elias chuckles. “Rare and flattering to have that considered a good thing.”
Though his tone is light, I remain adamantly serious. “You’ve changed my life. You know that? When I’m with you, I finally don’t feel trapped.”
“Are you not just swapping one binding for another?” Elias asks. He raises his hand and lets his fingers trail along the black collar around my neck.
“Utterly incomparable,” I answer, with an abruptness and intensity that’s enough to take me aback. “I would willingly follow you to the ends of the earth, and that’s a whole different matter.”
Elias doesn’t reply. I glance at him and find him staring back with darkness and a hunger in his eyes that makes my heart skip. The stars spin in the corners of my vision, and the world tilts as Elias flips me beneath him, looming over me and pinning me down. I make a small noise of surprise. A noise of very pleased surprise that’s swallowed up as Elias kisses me, and continues to kiss me until I’m breathless.
Apparently, that was very much the right thing to say.
“Mine,” Elias says, his lips still grazing against my mouth.
“Yours,” I agree, chest fluttering at the abrupt intensity. I reach up and place my hand against his cheek. “I feel safe with you, free with you. So much more confident. Like I can be myself.”
The night sky is deep, dark, and rich. Sighing softly, I look back up, basking in the soft, distant light of the constellations.
“I’ve always loved nights like this. They were the only times I could get even a taste of that freedom and hope.” I shyly grin up at him and lean in to initiate the next kiss.I’m being sappy, but fuck it. “You’re all that and so much more. My Darkest Night,” I murmur.
Elias blinks for a moment, somewhat perplexed, but there’s a part of his expression that also looks rather flattered. “Is that a pet name?”
“I’m sorry if it’s disrespectful—”
“No.” Elias shakes his head slowly. He kisses me a few more times before answering, slow, exploratory kisses, almost tender. “Caelan’s the only one to ever refer to me by anything other than my name, and his idea of suitable pet names is… questionable. Yours is a little melodramatic, but I like it.”
I grin. “Yeah, it’s melodramatic. That’s why it suits you.”
He takes my bottom lip between his teeth, tugging on it and biting lightly in admonishment, and I giggle.
“Maybe we’re both melodramatic idiots sometimes,” I concede.
“Hmm… I think it would be best if we do not inform Caelan of this exchange,” Elias says in response, neither a confirmation nor denial. “He would tease both of us incessantly, I imagine.”
“He’d agree I’m right, though.”
