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I clung to him as we moved together, sweat-slicked and desperate, every thrust dragging me closer to the edge.

The moment shattered around us. My orgasm ripped through me like a live wire, my body clenching tight as I came between us. Sean wasn’t far behind, thrusting deep one last time before he groaned against my skin, his release spilling into me, his body shuddering as he followed me over the edge.

We collapsed together, tangled in heat and breath and sweat, our bodies still pressed close, still connected. Sean didn’t move right away, just kept one hand over my heart, over my mark, like he was anchoring me there.

“You’re shaking,” he murmured after a while, voice rough, spent.

“You fucked me stupid.”

Sean huffed a laugh, but his fingers traced over my mark with something like reverence. “Show me.”

I hesitated, but he’d already seen me bare, already touched every inch of me. There was nothing left to hide. So I took his hand and guided it lower, pressing his palm flat against the center of my chest.

The reaction was instant. The mark flared beneath his touch, bright and searing, and Sean inhaled sharply, his fingers twitching against my skin.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “It’s warm.”

“Yeah. It does that sometimes.”

He lifted his head, eyes dark and searching. “Does it hurt?”

I swallowed hard, my own hand coming up to cover his. “Not anymore.”

His thumb brushed the edge of it, tracing the jagged, ancient lines, and something in his expression softened. “This thing’s been part of you for a long time.”

“Yeah.”

“Not just yours anymore, though, is it?”

I looked at him, and it wasn’t just the afterglow making my chest ache. Because he was right. The mark had defined me for years, had dictated my choices, my fears, my future. But now, with Sean’s hand over it, with his body still flush against mine, it felt different.

It felt like something else.

Something shared.

Something chosen.

20

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

The dream started like vertigo. One moment I was asleep in my bed, Sean's warmth solid against my back, and the next I was elsewhere. Watching myself sleep, which should have been the first sign this wasn't a normal dream.

My apartment looked different from this perspective, shadows deeper and more alive, edges of reality blurring like watercolors left in rain.

“What the hell,” I muttered, my voice echoing strangely in this not-quite-space.

Something pulled at me, an invisible current drawing me toward the balcony. The city beyond my windows looked wrong, buildings too tall, spaces between them too dark, lights flickering in hues that defied the visible spectrum. Purples that darkened to black at their centers, reds that pulsed with an inner luminescence, blues that seemed to absorb rather than emit light. The cityscape wavered and distorted like reality was being viewed through cracked glass.

That's when I saw him.

He stood at the balcony's edge with his back to me, facing the cityscape. Tall and elegant in a way that screamedpredator trying to look prey. His suit was perfectly tailored, but something about the way it sat on his frame suggested it was more costume than clothing. Power rolled off him in waves that made my ethereal form want to kneel.

“I've been waiting to meet you properly,” he said without turning, his voice carrying harmonics that hurt something deeper than ears. “Face to face, so to speak.”

“Who,” I started, but the question died as he turned.

His face was handsome in that ageless way that spoke of something inhuman wearing human features like a mask. But it was his eyes that stopped me cold, bright blue, like lightning trapped in ice. The same eyes I'd seen in the asylum, in every nightmare since.