Page 44 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Joan was barely aware of how they made it through the crowds.

Moments of clarity came to her like snapshots out of a blur: horses and guards parading down a road-blocked street. Rose petals

in the air in a blood-like spray. The Oliver house, dour against the clouded sky; it wasn’t sunny anymore.

Joan’s brain wasn’t working properly. Because otherwise, all she could see was Nick. Falling and falling and dying. Over and

over.

A strange, animal sound wrenched from deep inside her. She’d always believed that she and Nick would end up together. They’d

belonged together in the true timeline, and they’d found each other in every timeline since.

She’d thought that the next timeline would be a new chance for them; a new beginning. They’d overcome so much to find their

way back to each other, and in the next timeline, they’d have had the time and space to finally be together.

But there were no more timelines left. This was the last one, and Nick was dead.

In her mind’s eye, he fell and fell, and she was falling too,as if they’d tumbled into the void itself. Maybe she’d fall

with Nick forever.

“Joan.” The shake in Aaron’s voice was so real—so uncharacteristic—that it drew Joan out of her daze.

They were somehow in the opulent foyer of the Oliver house, marble busts of Olivers staring down.

Above, the painted mermaids on the ceiling reached out clawingly, mouths twisted like they were drowning.

Joan felt like she’d been crying for hours; her eyes were swollen, her throat tight. But when she touched her face, it was

dry. There’d been no tears; the whirl of emotion was all inside her.

Aaron released an uneven breath and waved someone away—one of the servants, Joan guessed. His other hand was clasped tightly

around Joan’s, and she felt him shiver. He was trying to keep it together in front of the staff.

Are you okay? she wanted to ask him, absurdly. Because of course he wasn’t okay. And neither was she. They were in this sick, corrupted

world, and now there was no way out of it.

Aaron led Joan through the beautiful rooms of the Oliver mansion, the carpet lush as grass under her feet. Joan ran her hand

over the silky wood of the banister as she climbed the stairs. This is real , she told herself. She must have said it aloud because Aaron’s hand tightened around hers, pace increasing.

And then they were in his bedroom suite. Aaron leaned against the heavy wooden door and pulled Joan toward him. And finally— finally —it felt safe enough to cry. She pressed her face against the clean cotton of his shirt and sobbed. His arms tightened around

her. He was saying something—Joan could distantly hear it—but she couldn’t make out the words.

After a time, she felt Aaron shift them so that her back was against the door. He started to pull away, and Joan reached for him. “ Don’t! ” She was suddenly desperate to keep touching him. There was a whirlwind of misery inside her, chaotic and unbearable, and

Aaron was the only thing anchoring her to reality. “ Please ,” she whispered. “I keep getting lost in my head! Please take me out of my head!” She didn’t even know what she was asking

for. Only, this felt worse than any fade-out—she was so lost—and Aaron had always been able to bring her back.

Aaron seemed to understand what she was trying to say. He tugged her close again, into the curl of his arms.

She lifted her chin. “Aaron,” she whispered. His gray eyes darkened to slate as he focused on her.

A fine tremor ran through him, and then Joan leaned up, and they were suddenly kissing.

Warmth flooded through her as he deepened the kiss. For one perfect second, she was consumed by the furnace of his mouth,

by how good he felt. And then he was pulling back, clearly shocked by what they’d just done.

“Joan—” His voice cracked. “You don’t want this. You’re not in your right mind!”

“I—” Joan heard her own voice crack. “ Please. ” There was too much space between them, and it was unbearable. If he left her right now, she really would be lost. She surged

to find his mouth again, but he stopped her, his hands firm on her waist.

“You don’t want this,” Aaron said again. He sounded raw. “I would give you anything you wished for. Anything in my power. But you don’t want me . You want him .”

Joan’s mouth crumpled, and then she was crying again, everything rushing back. Nick was dead, speared through with iron stakes. Eleanor was going to cut off his head and display him on the turrets.

Aaron thumbed tears from Joan’s face. She hadn’t known his expression could be so achingly gentle.

He was right about Nick, but wrong about himself. Joan took a shaky breath. She always had a bad habit of suppressing difficult

emotions. It’s not the right time to feel this yet , she’d told herself. But the horrors of today seemed to have torn her wide open. Every emotion she’d ever tried to push down

had been forced to the forefront. Everything she’d ever suppressed.

She had feelings for Aaron. If she was truthful with herself, she’d had feelings for him for what seemed like forever.

“I do want this,” she whispered to him. “I want you . I—Ihave for a long time.”

Aaron was still cupping her face, still stroking her cheek with his thumb. He searched her eyes. “You’re hurting so much right

now. I couldn’t bear to be the cause of more hurt.”

“You’re the only thing that doesn’t hurt,” she said honestly. It was like Nick’s death had made her understand what both of them had meant to her all this time. Then she found herself hesitating, uncertain suddenly. Maybe he didn’t feel the same

way. “I don’t know if you want me ... .”

Something dark flickered in his gaze then—a glimpse of his own feelings. Joan’s breath caught at the depth of emotion in that

glimpse. The intensity of it. He was still searching her face, though, his own feelings set aside, as if he needed to be sure

of her clarity of mind.

After a long moment, he seemed to see what he was looking for. He tugged her toward him, away from the door, and into another kiss.

Joan could feel herself shaking with how much she needed this. She couldn’t have even said why there was such an urgency inside

her. Aaron’s kisses, though, were deliberate and unhurried and deep, and Joan started to calm, her breaths finding a rhythm

again. He made a soft, encouraging sound as she relaxed into him.

Outside, the afternoon was reaching its end. The trees cast shadows in long black lines. The only sounds came from their kisses,

and the crackle and hiss of the hearth. The lamps inside hadn’t been lit, and the room was getting darker.

Aaron lifted his mouth, and Joan blinked up at him a little hazily. They’d been moving deeper into the room, and they stood

now by his huge bed, the fireplace oven-warm against Joan’s back. Aaron pushed her hair from her face. “Have you done this

before?”

Joan swallowed. “Only kissing.” And only with Nick.

His gaze was very soft as he bent to kiss her again. “We could just do this,” he murmured.

Joan, though, wanted more than that. She tugged at his gray jacket. He deepened the kiss in response, sending a warm shiver

through her.

He shucked off the jacket and threw it onto the armchair, and then he helped her onto the bed. Underneath her, the blue silk

cover, embroidered with mermaids, was buttery soft.

She reached for him, but for a long moment, he just stared down at her, gaze roaming over her with detailed attention, as if committing her to heart.

As if he thought this might be his only chance to look at her like this.

Shadows from the hearth flickered warmly over his face.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and Joan felt heat rise to her cheeks.

“Sometimes, I look at you, and I forget to breathe.”

He was one to talk. He was so heartbreakingly, arrestingly handsome that he made the world around him seem unreal in comparison.

When they went out, people were always staring at him.

Her thoughts must have been on her face, because Aaron’s mouth curled wryly. “I don’t like the way strangers look at me,”

he said. “But I like the way you look at me.”

This time, he let her pull him down beside her. Joan shifted back, a little nervously, to undo the top button of her dress.

Aaron bit his lip, his eyes dark, and touched the next button, watching her face. When she nodded, he slipped it open, and

then the next one and the next, with a kind of careful awe—as if he were opening a gift wrapped in paper that he didn’t want

to tear. When he was done, he spread her bodice open, baring her.

He swallowed visibly. “Beautiful,” he murmured. He ran a finger along the top of her bra, and Joan’s breath stuttered as his

finger dipped between her breasts.

And then he just stopped.

Joan blinked up at him. His gaze had fallen on the pendant with its numbers, heavy against her throat. It occurred to her that he’d been covering it up every chance he’d had—with scarves and high collars. Joan felt a shudder of anger run through him.

“The numbers don’t mean anything,” she reminded him. They’d never calibrated it.

He bent to lean his forehead against hers. “I can’t stand the thought of you living in this world,” he whispered hoarsely.

And they would have to live here. Eleanor had won. This was the only timeline left now.

Joan touched his hair, tinted gold in the firelight. The strands ran between her fingers, softer than the silk of the bed.

“Why don’t we pretend—just for now—that there’s nothing outside this room?” she suggested.

Aaron’s eyes were sad as he cupped her face and kissed her again, his mouth moving to the edge of her jaw, her neck, her collarbone.

He unclasped the pendant’s chain, careful not to chafe her skin as he slid it from her neck. And then all his gentleness was

abruptly gone. He threw it hardagainst the wall, and Joan heard a snap .

“I think you broke it,” she said.

He bent to kiss the hollow of her throat, where the pendant had been. “Good.”