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He throws back his head, his neck corded and red, dripping with jewels of sweat. With a gasping breath he pleads, “Don’t break your promise.”

A grimace of agonizing pleasure takes over his face—eyes pinched shut and mouth open with a silent roar. He bends, his muscled body crumpling as he comes, emptying himself deep inside me with one exquisite spasm after another, an utter loss of control. And in this moment, he’s as far from invisible as he can be. I see him—even as the darkness devours us.

Chapter

Fifty

We’re on our backs, streaked with black, admiring the leafy canopy in our sweaty paradise. I don’t know how long it’s been since we untangled ourselves. Unanswered questions hang in the muggy jasmine air and mingle with the dripping, swollen afterbuzz of carnal satiation. Only some are approachable.

I promised away love I know nothing about, and he pleasured me into submission and drank up my innermost secrets. I tore open his back, and he tore down my walls. He bared the curse that haunts him, and I bared my ass.

We’re even.

I roll to my side and trace my finger over the fresh knife cut on his chest and the dry black blood. Another wound marks hisabdomen, the one I glimpsed in the woods while running my lips down his front.

“What’s this from?” I tap the fresh scar.

“Jace stabbed me at the lake.” He doesn’t offer any emotion with the information.

“That’s why she thought she left you for dead?”

He confirms with a deep sigh.

“But you were fighting the next day.”And kissing me.

“Perks of being a mistake,” he says, but even his bitter tone doesn’t detract from the aura of lightness that hangs in the air around him, its wind riding over my exposed skin.

I drag my hand back up to his chest and rest it on his heart, formulating my question. A being all his own. And a curse. The unluckiest man of all time. “Milo and Sypher and everyone, they know about your many lives?”

“No. Only you.”

Oh.“And they really can’t see your dark side?”

He stares up at the trees, and I watch the subtle movements of his jaw as he speaks, the stretch of his scar. “They all see my light side. I could break Sypher’s neck, and they’d still follow me anywhere, do anything I ask. That’s why they gave up their loyalty to the Centress. It wasn’t actually their choice.”

“But Sola threatened you.”

A look of affection crosses his face, softening the hard lines left by my previous questions. “I let her believe she’s in charge. It keeps her happy. And Milo, he likes to think he can rein me in.”

“Do they know about your other side?”

“Just Milo.”

“So they think you’re completely wonderful?”

“Aren’t I?” He grins and tugs on his ear, and I wonder if that little habit is truly his, or one from a previous life.

“I wouldn’t really know, would I?” I ask, realizing how much of myself I’ve given to a stranger. Iseehim, but am I seeing clearly?

“Everything I say and do is real, but you see it the way the curse wants you to see it. It takes my words and actions and tells you how to think and feel.”

“Then how do I know what’s behind the light and dark sides of the curse? Who you are. Is it real—what I think of when I look at you?” Recollection ripples through me. “How I feel when you touch me?”

Eli turns to me, resting his head in his palm. His hair is a mess, curls sticking up all over from all the pulling I did. He strolls two fingers over my eyelids, shuttering me in darkness. “Don’t you ever believe in things you can’t see?” His hand frosts down my middle, and lower. At least, Ibelieveit’s his.

“Why would I?”

“Would you be okay with a world that stops breathing beyond your sight? That turns to nothingness behind your back?”