Page 23 of Red Masquerade (Red Masquerade #1)

I lay in bed, my duvet pulled up to my chin.

My tears had long run out, my throat aching with the passion of my hatred for Lucas. For my family. For my situation.

It was decided, then. My mother, my brother—they had made the decision. And I was to comply.

I could not sleep, could not rest, knowing what was in store for me. Knowing what I would soon have to do. Let a man have me. Rule me. Let a man that I knew nothing about claim ownership over me, force me to have his children, stifle me, if Lucas’s treatment of Lucille was any indication.

I loathed him. I loathed this world I was in.

I wanted to burn it. I wanted the Rapture to come down upon us and take us all away so that I did not have to endure this any longer. But perhaps oblivion was too sweet a gift for my brother. No, he deserved hellfire .

I felt an inkling of shame at thinking those words. At wishing such destruction upon my blood. But I knew that he would not care so much for me, or feel shame at wishing for my own demise. Rather, he was actively doing it and relishing in it.

What had I done in childhood to push him away from me? What could I have done to keep our friendship? To prevent him from turning into a monster ?

A sharp, singular tap came from the glass panes of my window. I lay still, thinking my movement against the sheets of my bed would be too loud and muffle the sound should it come again.

And it did.

My eyes darted to the glass.

Another tap, though this time I thought that I had seen something moving in the darkness, something hitting my window and falling toward the ground.

I threw the sheets off of me. My room was on the second floor; I could think only of a mistaken bird perhaps trying to get in. A bat, maybe.

But as I looked down into the garden below, a familiar face grinned up at me, skin shining pallid in the moonlight. I gasped and threw open the window.

“Adam?”

He took no time at all climbing the wall to reach me. I had no idea how he managed it, as the stone was relatively flat, save for some decorative flourishes that jutted out barely a few inches.

“You cannot be here,” I whispered. But my heart fluttered at seeing him. At the memories of him and me in this very garden, six years ago.

“I cannot? ”

“You will be skinned alive.” By Lucas, surely, if not whatever mob he called to march to the manor and kill the beast.

His fingers dug into the windowsill, his body hanging, though he looked so casual, so at ease. “I would not allow it,” he said matter-of-factly. He looked at me pointedly. “Can I come in?”

I stepped backward, allowing him entry. He suddenly perched on my windowsill, his large frame blocking out all moonlight, and I felt a thrill in my stomach at the thought of him sneaking into my room. How my mother would have a cow if she knew. How Lucas would turn red and spit fire if he knew.

My own face blushed at the memory of my time with Adam only a few days prior. Staggeringly intimate, our reunion happening all at once, before I could even think about his return. About what I wanted.

His lithe figure stepped down from the windowsill. He stood before me, towering over me, but it was not the domineering looming of my brother, rather a protective encasing of my own figure. Before I could think better of it, I threw my arms around him, burying my face in the cloth of his shirt.

He did not return my embrace immediately, surprised. Then I felt a tantalizing set of fingers twirling through my hair, twisting curls around his fingers. I did not want to move, did not want to leave his arms. I knew that this was where I was supposed to be. I tightened my grip, shutting my eyes against the barrage of feelings that threatened to overwhelm me.

His hands suddenly froze. He was still as stone. “What happened?”

It was less a question and more a demand.

I shook my head against his chest. “Nothing. ”

He gently pulled me from him and searched my face in the moonlight. His gaze swept over me, from head to toe, his pupils dilating once they landed on the little red marks on my face. My neck.

He darkened.

“Helena—”

I wrenched myself from him, turning as if to hide what had happened to me.

“It’s nothing.”

Of course, it was something. My own blood had laid a hand on me. And it had not been the first time. Perhaps that was the part that hurt the most: that I let Lucas have such control over me, still .

But what choice did I have?

He had drilled it into my head earlier, calling me stupid to believe otherwise—that this world was his, and that my will would eventually bend to his. Mother had insisted I marry, and were she my only foe, I may be able to convince her to see my side, or at least dodge the problem altogether. But Lucas being here, influencing her, charming her as her only son, her successful, perfect son who happened to know just the right bachelor…

I was foolish. I should not have let Adam in. Visiting here even once was one time too many.

Would I even see him again after this evening? My fate was decided. Wright waited for me somewhere in this city, fully expecting my hand any day now. Lucas had promised it to him. My compliance with the plan concocted between them—

Suddenly I was gasping for breath, a surge of regret and anguish and frustration overtaking me. My body wracked with sobs, but I tried to silence them the best I could, muffling the sound with a hand over my mouth.

A strong pair of hands came around me from behind. He pulled me to him, caging me in. His face fell to the crook of my neck, his lips tenderly meeting the sensitive skin there. He placed the most chaste, most gentle of kisses upon my flesh.

“Darling,” he breathed into me.

Darling .

I could not do this.

“You expect too much from me,” I said through my tears. I wiped my face, not caring how it reddened my skin, how unsightly I must be. My tears felt hot, full of my anger.

“I expect nothing from you,” he countered, placing another kiss to the angle of my jaw.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to hold it in, but it all came out at once.

And he only held me to him.

A moment later, he turned me in his arms, gently pulling my hands away from my face. Through my blurry vision, through the tears, I saw his eyes once more land on the bruises, his brow furrowing, but whatever anger he felt at that, he put away.

“Helena.” His voice was soft, enchanting. His thumb stroked my cheek, wiping away a stray tear. “What happened?”

I shook my head, my lip quivering. “It does not matter.”

He looked furious; not at me, but at the words. “And yet it does.”

“No—” I gasped. “I am to marry—”

“Marry who?” he said, ire flashing in those eyes. “Deny them, whoever they are. Refuse. ”

“How can you say that so confidently?” I hugged myself.

“Because I know who you are.” He looked at me so intensely, his copper eyes boring into mine, as if he could see the thoughts fluttering around in my head. “If you think that I have not learned anything about you in the time we had together, you are mistaken. I may have been gone for all these years, but I see you, I know you.”

“The time we’ve had together—” I almost laughed, but it stalled in my throat as a sound of pain. “You do not understand.”

He grabbed me once more, but his touch was forever gentler, forever more caring than that of Lucas. Adam only touched me to bring me to him, to make me feel what he felt. Never to control me, to hurt me, to leave bruises.

“But I do understand.” He looked so pained at having this conversation, like my insistence that we could not be, that whatever this was was star-crossed, caused him even greater anguish than what I felt. He’d already gone six years without me. Falling to his knees before me, his hands wrapped around my waist, fingers digging into my hips, only to keep me anchored. His forehead met my stomach through my shift.

“I understand that you feel powerless. I understand that you are hurting.” His voice broke, so much emotion swelling within him. “And I only want to take it away from you.”

I bit my lip, wiping the last of my tears away.

How I wanted this. How I had dreamed of this for years. Knowing it would never come. And yet.

My fingers instinctively wound through his dark hair.

Would I ever get to touch him again after this night ?

I knew it was foolish to think so. But a foolish part of me hoped.

Hoped that Adam’s affection for me was not temporary. We’d reconnected, but it never meant we were forever, even if we had promised so in bated breaths under the moon. I hoped he would find me again, and perhaps be my beacon of light in an otherwise dark life. And I knew it would be a dark life, being Wright’s wife, because it was one I did not want.

“You are driving my thoughts wild,” Adam confessed, his fingers gripping the silk of my shift. He pulled me tightly to him, as if we could meld into one. And I let him.

“It will pass,” I said sadly. When I left, an ocean separating us, he would forget me in no time. He had plenty of people to entertain him, even if he did say he’d waited all this time, searching for me .

He looked up at me like I had just cursed him. “That is where you are wrong,” he said with so much conviction, I believed him. “I could never forget you. Not even for a moment. I cannot forget you when I attempt sleep. I shut my eyes, and I see you. You are always there, Helena. Always .”

Maybe in another life we could have been. In another life, we had been.

“Let us go away together,” he said.

I felt more tears gather in my eyes. How I wanted to. Now more than ever did I want to go with him. But no matter where I went, I was Helena Quintrell, the sister of Lucas, soon-to-be-betrothed to Wright Highsmith. Running away would not change it, would it?

They’d find me. This city was not as big as it seemed.

Adam stood once more and cupped my face. His eyes searched me, looking for the answer. But I had none.

He kissed me, his soft lips meeting mine in the moonlight that trailed through the windowpanes. He tasted of that whiskey and iron and something sweet, and just like the first time we kissed, I became wholly wrapped up in him. My arms twined around his neck as his lips moved against mine.

I savored every moment. I did not know if it would be the last.

The sharp point of one of his teeth scraped across my bottom lip, but I relished in the feeling. The pinpoint of pain that overrode my senses. He tangled his hand at the back of my head and anchored me to him, angling my face even further backward. He pulled away for a brief moment to catch his breath.

“I could do this forever,” he breathed.

Against my better judgment, I sighed with ecstasy. “As could I.”

His mouth found mine once more, his free hand roaming across my back, pulling me closer to him, his arm wrapping around the back of my waist, crushing our bodies together. I could feel the defined muscles of his chest through his shirt, through my thin shift. My breasts pressed against his chest, the fabric of my nightdress too thin to conceal how much I craved him.

He wandered with his mouth, pressing feverish kisses along my face, down my neck. He licked the sensitive part under my jaw, under my ear, and I gasped. Emitting a growl that sent bolts of pleasure through me, his tongue ravished the flesh of my neck. He nipped at me, sucked at my skin, and I only tilted my head further to give him more space to continue his ministrations .

I wanted him to mark me. I wanted that bite. I wanted him to leave behind evidence for everyone to see. To let Wright know that no matter if he was successful in gaining me as a wife, he would not gain me as a lover. That my mind would forever be elsewhere. That someone else had already gotten to me first.

Adam pulled away, his hands still gripping me tightly, panting as though it took the utmost restraint. His dark eyes begged for more, a hunger deep within them, his arousal evident in the press of his body against mine.

“What will it be?” His voice was hardly above a gravelly whisper, our breath mingling in the small space between us.

“What do you mean?”

I knew what he meant. But there were two sides within me warring, and I did not know which would win.

“Will you return home with me, leave this madness behind, damn your family—or will you stay here and force me to think of you always, but never be able to have you fully? To let another man claim you when you could be free?”

“Free?” I could hardly mutter the word.

He nodded. “I would never implore you to do my bidding, Helena.” He pressed his forehead against mine. “The only thing I ask of you is that you let me cherish you. All I want is you, every day, every night.”

I gazed into his eyes, those shining, icy hazel eyes, and saw my home there.

I pressed a chaste kiss to his lips.

The words did not even have to come out of my mouth. He had his answer. Triumph darkened his eyes, a near-sinister gleam in his irises as he swept me into his arms. His mouth was suddenly upon me again, my body burning for his, as he swept me away into the night.