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It's a crime scene photo of what I'm guessing is Aurora's bathroom. The door is splintered and broken into pieces, the frame shattered. A solitary wire hanger rests on a bathmat knocked askew in front of the skin.
"I don't think it's just a dream, sweetheart. You were abducted from your bathroom," Dillon says quietly.
"Millie Audley," I say, memorizing the name of the woman who betrayed Aurora. If I find her, I'll kill her.
I share a look with Dimitri, who nods in complete understanding of where my head is at. I don't have to say anything. He knows. Not so long ago, he was in the same place, prepared to make the same decision for the woman he loves. Snow's own stepmother tried to murder her.
I've never killed a woman or even raised my hand to one, not even one who deserved it. Neither has he. But things aren't so black and white when the women you love are the ones nearly destroyed by vicious bitches playing deadly games with other people's lives. It took everything Dimitri had not to kill Snow's mom. I'm fully prepared to make the same sacrifice to protect Aurora. Even if it means tipping the scales past the point of return.
Dimitri knows it. I think Dillon does too.
He takes one look at my face and fires a curse up at the ceiling. "I need her alive, Constantine. If she's working with someone else, I can't find them if she isn't around to talk."
"Then find her," I snap, pulling Aurora into my arms. "Because God help her if I do."
Chapter Eight
Aurora
"Talk to me, starlight," Constantine whispers, brushing hair back from my face. "What are you thinking?"
"That my nanny, Merry, was right," I mumble. "She used to be convinced that I had a curse on me. She was big into tarot and divination. Every time she read my cards, they warned of a great evil hanging over me. Pain and sorrow and loss were in my future every single time."
"Bullshit," he growls, flipping me onto my back on the bed.
I blink up at him, startled at how quickly he moves. At how emphatic he sounds.
"You aren't cursed. You were betrayed. If the cards warned of a great evil hanging over you, it's because that bitch was in your life, hanging over you like a gathering storm. She won't be for much longer," he vows, venom in his voice. "One way or another, she's exiting your life immediately."
I shiver, certain he means it. If Dillon doesn't find her, he'll kill her to protect me. I don't know how I feel about that. He's too good to have her death weighing on his conscience and on his soul. I can't let him kill her. If I allow it, I become the thing that destroys him.
That's not what I want. I want to be the thing that protects him as fiercely as he protects me. The one who loves him as ferociously as I think he loves me. That is what's happening here, isn't it?
I'm not a job to him, but something else. Something more.
"I think I love you," I blurt.
"You think?" He quirks a brow.
"I've never…I don't…" I stop and then start again. "I feel you consuming me from the inside out, as if that's exactly how it's supposed to be. It's like you kissed me and brought me to life. But I'm so afraid it's just an illusion or that it doesn't mean what I think it means."
"What do you think it means, starlight?"
"That you're mine," I whisper. "That I'm yours. That we're inevitable."
"We are inevitable, Aurora." He dips his head, brushing his lips across mine. "In this life and every other, we're inevitable. You feel me consuming you because you belong to me, the same way I belong to you."
"It's too fast."
"You know all of my sins, starlight. I've confessed them all." He brushes his nose against mine. "Do you still think you love me?"
"I…yes."
"Then it's not too fast."
"We set our own speed. We decide our own course." His lips touch the shell of my ear. "I fell for you in an instant and it was enough to last a lifetime. We have the rest of our lives to learn the little things."
"Constantine," I groan, reaching for him. "Please."
"Please what?"
"Show me."
He groans, settling over me on the bed and loses himself in me as if my request set him free. His mouth is everywhere, kissing all those hidden places I didn't know existed.
I gasp his name, dizzy from the sensations swirling through me. He undresses me slowly, his hands reverent as he slips my clothing from me. The rough pads of his fingers glide against my skin, sending me reeling into a world I've never known.
I push my hands into his shirt, trying to pull it from his body. He yanks it off over his head and flings it away, allowing me to touch him too. I trace my fingers over his bronze skin and the hard muscles just beneath, marveling at his strength. He's so powerful, so damn beautiful.
