Page 12 of Cursed Lifeline (Eternal Love)

Eleven

Felix

song: can’t help falling in love | Tommee Profit & Brooke

When I return to France, I find Esme sitting on a bench, reading a book, under a flowering magnolia tree. Drawn to her as if pulled on a twisted, fated wire, I stand nearby in the low-lying fog on a dreary October morning and wistfully study her. The blossoms from the tree coat the garden’s floor in their breathtaking rose, pink hue. A crisp breeze blows past, and petals scatter and fall to the ground like bewitched snow. They dance magically in the air, twisting and twirling like pixies as they make their enchanted fall to the ground around us. Despite the warring emotions I’ve battled while traveling back to her, my heart warms at the sight.

That is, until I see her raise her hand to her mouth, a sorrowful shiver rushes down her spine, and a tiny sob escapes her lips.

Misting to her side, I stand behind her, heart constricted, hands shaking. My body calms only when I take a deep inhale of her heavenly scent.

Sweet. Enticing. Bewitching.

She smells of enchanting, forbidden wishes mixed distressingly with eternal torment and regret.

Rubbing my fingers together behind my back, I conjure a red rose from my mother’s garden back home and gently, quietly reach around Esme and place it between the pages of her book.

She startles. A gasp falls from her lips as she turns and slightly jolts back across the bench in fear.

“Felix,” she breathes in relief when she realizes it’s me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you for another fortnight.”

The tear that fell while she was reading still coats her cheek. Raising my hand, I smile as I gently wipe her sadness away. She shivers from my touch as my eyes fall to her lips.

“Don’t tell me you missed me?” I tease.

She blushes. The rush of the blood in her veins causes my senses to heighten. A groan escapes my lips as her scent turns lethal.Makes me feral.

“Would it be a crime if I say I did?”

Taking a step around the side of the bench, I kneel in front of her, take both her hands in mine, and whisper, “Not if you permit me to admit that I missed you, too. Only, miss isn’t a strong enough word to convey the way I’ve felt since I was last in your presence.”

Her breaths come faster as I raise her gloved palms to my lips. My eyes hold hers as I place a tender kiss on the top of her lace-covered knuckles. She wets her lips. Hesitance hangs in her eyes.

As my hopeful gaze locks on hers, I say, “Deliriously yearned for, desperately craved, painfully ached to be back by your side. That’s how it felt not breathing the same air as you these last few weeks, Esme.”

Rising quickly before she can respond, I sit at her side and pull her close. Her heated breaths rush against my lips and warm my mouth, begging me to close the distance and kiss her. Grasping the last ounce of my restraint, my face falls to her neck. I inhale her addictive essence and murmur against her skin, “Drowning in my hunger for you is an obsessive habit I fear I’ll never be strong enough to break.”

Placing a kiss against her delicate flesh, her grip tightens around my biceps as her head gently falls back. Arching into me, she gives me complete access to what she should be guarding most.

Her life.

Though I know I should put some distance between us, like a fiend, I take as much as I can without breaking control and brush my lips against her skin, tasting, sucking, savoring her until a light moan escapes her lips. Kissing a trail to her mouth, my eyes find hers, and the same fervor, greed, and thirst I feel for her stares back at me in her mesmerizing blue eyes.

Before one of us gets too carried away, I force myself to release her from my hold and put some distance between us.

Clearing my throat, I manage to ask, “What are you reading?”

Her eyelashes flutter, her mouth falls open, and she stutters, “Oh, I, uh...”

She expected me to kiss her. She’s wanted that for some time. Being able to read her thoughts has its advantages. The problem is, if I ever taste her lips, I’m worried I won’t be able to stop myself from taking more, from claiming her, changing her, and fulfilling the curse that’s been placed on our lives.

She picks up the rose I placed between the pages of her book and smells its breathtaking, sweet, floral fragrance before raising the book in question and showing me the title.

“Ah, a masterpiece of fiction,” I smile. “It’s a work of art I knew well. Do you like it?”

She shrugs. “It saddens me.”

Taking it from her hands, I flip through the pages while she brings the rose back to her nose and inhales another deep whiff.

I could recite this work from William by heart.

As my fingers flip quickly through the pages, I say, “ I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with their quantity of love make up my sum .”

“But he pushed her away,” Esme questions with such conflicting emotion it forces my gaze up to meet hers. “If he loved her, why did he push her away?”

My mouth grows dry as I try to think of the right answer.

To save her.

To protect her.

To shield her from his madness.

“Sometimes love makes you do stupid things,” I whisper.

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

“Men,” she huffs, causing me to grin. “Causes men to do stupid things. I guarantee if the roles were reversed and Ophelia found herself in the same position as Hamlet, she would have found a way to make things work that didn’t include both of them ending up in an early grave.”

I swallow hard as I try to disguise how her words make me feel. Sir William Shakespeare had a knack for tragedy, that’s for certain. His natural ability to write epic stories about star-crossed lovers that were doomed to fail will never be challenged. But as I stare into Esme’s inviting eyes, and feel our own curse crawling across my skin, I realize we’re just as damned as his unfortunate characters.

Closing the book, I look down and place it back in her lap. Before I can think better of it, I whisper, “The right woman holds the power to drive a man crazy.”

“Ophelia didn’t drive Hamlet crazy,” she chuckles with annoyance. “He drove himself mad.”

My gaze snaps up to meet hers. “When faced with making a decision between wrong and right, anybody can drive themselves mad if they’re not quick enough to choose. After all, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. ”

“How about you, Felix?” she taunts with a raised brow. “Have you chosen wisely?”

Leaning in, my gaze violently sharpens. “Like you, Esme, my path was chosen for me. I wasn’t granted the luxury of making my own choices.”

“And if you could choose differently?” she demands.

I cock my head to the side and study her closely. Leaning back, I take a moment before answering, close my eyes, and inhale deeply. My anger from a few moments ago softens as her smell perfumes my senses, drugs me, and oddly clears my thoughts.

When my eyes open, all I see, all I feel, all I sense - is the unorthodox thread tying me to her.

She consumes me.

Curse or not, something tells me she was destined to always have this power over me.

Giving in, I close the distance between us, wrap my arms around her waist, pull her close, and whisper, “You. I’d choose you. In a million ways. For infinite lifetimes. In life and death, nothing and no one could ever stop me. I’d. Always. Choose. You.”

She smiles sadly and places a kiss against my cheek before pulling away and rising from the bench. Surprised, my brow furrows as she tucks her book under her arm, raises my rose again to her nose, and stares off into the distance. After a moment, I look over my shoulder and trail her line of sight to a shadow that emerges through the misty fog.

Alfred.

Esme backs away, walks around the bench, and starts walking in his direction. It doesn’t take me reading his thoughts to tell he’s not happy with my presence, with how I sought Esme out, or with how I’ve interrupted their training.

My hands grip the bench in anger as she strides slowly through the pink flower petals towards him.

My mind rages. My emotions roar.

But it’s my heart that breaks when Esme’s tiny thoughts whisper to my mind from across the clearing and begin to seal an ill-fate we’re quickly moving closer towards.

I’d choose you, too, Felix.

In life. In death.

I’d. Always. Choose. You.