Page 10 of My Dark Ever After

Something I wanted to lean into even though everything was so fucked up.

“So more violence and death as an answer to violence and death,” I concluded, pulling away slightly to look into his face.

God, it was a good face.

The nicest one I’d ever laid eyes on.

If it was possible, he’d grown more handsome in the last two months. The dark stubble that usually only appeared at the end of a long day was thicker now, almost long enough to be called a beard. It emphasized the steep cut of his cheekbones and the hollows beneath and highlighted the unique pale maple of his irises. His mouth looked soft amid the bristles, a smooth and pale pink I wanted to deepen into red with lascivious kisses.

I dreamed of kissing him every single night. Literally. My sleeping hours were filled with erotic dreams I couldn’t escape from. I woke up every morning hot and bothered and angry with myself for being so turned on by the memory of a man who had deceived me.

Now that mouth and the man attached to it were so close we were breathing the same breath. I could count the striations in those coolmetallic eyes and the lashes fanning out thick and dark around them. I could press a kiss to the scar on the edge of his chin and ignore the fact that it was probably from some Mafia misdeed.

In this moment, so close to me, he was just a man, and I was just a woman. Nothing else existed if I focused on the beat of his heart beneath my palm and the murmur of mine rushing in my ears.

I realized then that love didn’t die. You could shoot it in the face the way Raffa had shot the man in the closet, but it didn’t drop dead. No, love bled out like a nonfatal wound, sluggish and painful, over time, even when you wanted it to stop stone cold.

Two months wasn’t enough to bleed out the love I had for this man.

Two years, two decades—I wondered if any length of time would drain his existence from mine.

He was staring at me as intently as I was him, and he seemed to find something in my gaze that had that full mouth curling.

“You are not as opposed to violence as you wish to be, I think,” he noted. “When I broke that man’s finger for insulting you, I saw the flush in your cheeks. The way your pupils blew to black. You looked ... hungry, Guinevere. Not disgusted.”

My heart knocked against my breastbone as if desperate to allow Raffa inside.

“No,” I said, but it lacked conviction.

I had lain awake too many nights struggling with that truth to discount his words now.

“Si,” he argued, tipping his head so that he could ghost his mouth along my cheekbone. “I think there is some bloodlust in you. I think I would not feel this way about you if there was not.”

“Which way?” I dared to ask, holding still so I wouldn’t give in to the urge to bare my throat to him.

“You fought back against those men. Oh, you think I did not notice the scratches and teeth marks? You may be a little fawn, but perhaps under the right conditions you can be feral.”

“I was fighting for my life,” I countered.

“Si, and you would fight for others this way too. I know you, Vera.”

His words popped the bubble around us like a knifepoint. I wrenched myself out of his arms with a wince and took my own seat next to him, turning my face to the window.

“Well, I don’t know you,” I rebutted softly.

He had nothing to say to that.

Or maybe he did, but I was shaking slightly as the shock wore off, and my head was aching as if the bullet that had grazed me was lodged deep inside my brain, and I knew he wouldn’t press if I was unwell.

I touched my hot forehead to the cold glass. “Did you know these men?”

“I did not recognize them, no. I took their phones, though, and if they are not burners, we should be able to get something from them.”

“But they’re probably burners.”

A small hesitation. “Yes.”

I sighed, my breath fogging the glass. “I’m not safe, even an ocean away from you.”