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“A conversation for later,” Azrael repeats, his patience wearing thin.
“Back to your family,” Emmanuel suggests, redirecting the topic.
I reach for my wine glass, drinking the last of it in one unladylike gulp as I try to manifest an end to this dinner.
“I think you’ve monopolized enough of my wife’s attention this evening.” Azrael narrows his eyes at his brother. “Don’t you?”
Emmanuel smiles, eats a few bites, and silence settles over the table. But it’s not even a minute later that he’s observing me again. “So what about your sisters?”
My brows pinch together in concern. “What do you mean, my sisters?”
“Tell us about them.”
“For God’s sake, Emmanuel,” Salomé snaps. “I can’t take one more minute of this. We don’t care to hear it.”
Emmanuel chuckles to himself before adjusting his features to appear properly chastised, but the damage is done.
Salomé tosses her napkin onto her plate and rises from her seat. “Rébecca, let’s go upstairs.”
I glance at Bec, noting the way her shoulders slump in defeat. Despite the fact that she ate very little tonight, she seemed to be enjoying herself.
When I look at Azrael, he can see the challenge in my eyes. The question.
Are you going to do something about this?
There’s a moment’s hesitation on his part, and I’m convinced he won’t. This seems to be the status quo of their fucked up family dynamics, and I have a hunch they’ve been coasting on autopilot this way for many, many years.
“Bec can stay,” he says, his eyes falling on his sister. “If she wishes.”
Salomé’s face mottles with red, and it looks like she’s about to blow a gasket. The petty part of me hopes she might. I barely know the woman, but everything about her feels malevolent.
“Azrael—” His grandmother starts to argue, but he cuts her off.
“It’s her choice.”
Bec glances between them, terror streaking through her eyes. It pains me to see, and I wish Azrael could understand the position he’s just unknowingly put her in. Perhaps he thinks he’s helping, but by putting the choice back onto Rébecca, he’s also making it her who’s willfully defying Salomé’s wishes.
I don’t know what consequences her defiance would garner, but whatever they may be, they are clearly motivation enough for Bec.
She shakes her head reluctantly, dipping her gaze to avoid eye contact as she rises from her seat. “It’s okay. I’ll just go.”
I want to protest, but I know it will only add fuel to the fire. Salomé won’t back down if it comes from me. It needs to come from Azrael, and right now, in front of everyone, isn’t the time to address it. I’ll have to do it later.
“Goodnight, Bec,” I tell her softly.
She offers me a shy smile. “Goodnight, Willow.”
16
AZRAEL
I eat my meal like a man famished. I want to say it’s because of having spent a full day in the dark wing without having eaten, but as I watch my wife devour her meal with gusto, I think it may have to do with the events in the library. Or maybe it’s seeing her across the table, hair tangled, makeup smeared, lips swollen, and dress torn that has me feeling so fucking starved.
I can still taste her mouth on mine, feel her teeth scrape across my lip. Her breath lives inside me now.
And my come is inside her.
Fuck.
I swallow a large mouthful of wine to drown the rumble inside my chest.
My come is inside her, running down her thighs. My seed is a part of her.
My gaze dips to the soft curves of her breasts, the crescent moon birthmark she does not hide, the very tip of the tattoo that runs down the center of her chest. I imagine those breasts swollen, her belly blossoming with my offspring. I reach rudely across my brother for the bottle of wine to refill my glass and drink it like it’s water.
Willow watches me. I glare at her because, not for the first time, I feel the strange current running between us. It’s like a live wire connecting us even now, even as my family is gathered, my brother peppering my wife with questions, staff coming and going, refilling glasses and removing dessert plates. Throughout it all, it’s as if it’s just her and me and this thing between us.
This thing.
This curse.
That’s what it is: the curse. Has every other Delacroix felt the way I do about their Sacrifice? Have they lusted the way this woman makes me lust? Hell, I could have bent her over and taken her a second time in that library. A third. And it wouldn’t be enough.
I shift in my seat, my cock readying itself. This strange new hunger will not be sated. How long will I be able to stand it?
My gaze shifts to her neck, to the bruise forming in the shape of my fingers. Her struggle only intensified the building tension between us, but when I’d loosened my grip on her neck and she gasped for air, fuck. What happened then shook me as thoroughly as it did her. She came with a violence that almost had me spilling my seed, but when she called out my name as I reached for her again, when she turned her head and looked at me with those eyes like molten ice, that charge simmered, lava tempering, and I wanted more. I wanted her closer still, and fuck, when she kissed me, I lost my mind.
