Page 41 of Wolfsbane Hall #1

Celestine’s Bedroom

After taking a much-needed bath, Celestine rested her wet locks on her pillow and placed her hand against the wall, like she used to do when she fell asleep listening to the Specter playing the piano. It was a goodbye.

Despite everything, she would miss him.

Love was such a fickle and terrible thing.

Tears gathered like beads on her eyelashes.

Celestine sucked her lower lip into her mouth and let out a long breath. The Specter was here. She knew it. If she had one magical power, it would be that she could always sense his presence. He was here, like he always was at the end of the night. The version of him she got in secret.

Her Specter.

“Celine…” Her name played like music on his tongue, like a symphony of sorrow and longing. It floated like the Phantom’s, but unlike the Phantom, it felt like he was coming from the other side of the wall, as if he were standing there. Waiting and listening for her.

And fuck, she missed him. This him.

Emotions trilled in her stomach, like the music of his voice.

Too many to count or name. Everything she’d ever felt for him colored the inside of her body.

Bloodred like fiery passion, dust-gray like heartbreak, honeyed-yellow like comfort, vomit-green like revulsion, and on and on it went—the colors of her soul.

She touched the wall and pinched her eyes shut, her nostrils flaring and her cheeks stinging from the weight of her heartbreak.

“Who are you, Specter?”

She didn’t bother with pleasantries, because she already knew the answer.

She knew he was Dean; she knew it in her bones.

Everett and James didn’t have the capacity to be everything that the Specter was.

Everett wasn’t serious enough, and James was too blunt, too cold.

And Dean was a dark mystery, like her Specter.

Every bit of her knew it to be true. There was no other answer. But she wanted Dean to do the right thing. Drop all the games and just be honest with her—be with her—one last time.

When he didn’t respond, she asked again, “Who are you, Specter?”

“Don’t call—” it was all breath.

“Who are you, Winter?” she asked, but she knew the answer. It was in the riddles, in all the games from the night. The Marquess of Winterly, the eldest son of the Duke of Breython. He had been telling her all along.

“I can’t tell you that,” Dean said as the Specter on the other side of the wall.

She stroked the wall with her fingertips before laying her hand flat on it.

She imagined him doing the same thing on the other side.

“Why?” A tear dripped down her face. “Why?” Another tear dropped.

“Why?” She sucked in a shaking breath. “Why?” Her eyes stung as tears littered down her cheeks. “ Why ? ”

He sucked in an audible breath. “Because I am terrible. I am your villain.”

“Yes, you are.”

A long silence licked the room, and Celestine curled her knees into her chest, feeling the fine cotton against her legs.

“Celine…” He said her name like a prayer.

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t…” Her voice caught. “Specter, I ha—”

“Don’t call me Specter,” he said gently once more.

“Just not tonight. Tonight, all I want to be is yours. Only yours.” He stopped, as if in thought, and she waited for him to continue.

“Every night, I spin fictions, I tell you tales, and you read me mysteries, but for one moment, on one night, all I want is to be real with you.”

Her heart doubled in her chest, and a spike of pain shot through her left arm. She clutched the heel of her palm to her chest and tried to massage the pain away. Both physically and emotionally

“Why? Why me?”

“Because you are my match and my conscience.”

Celestine stared at the canopy of her bed, taking in the details of her carved rosewood. She wanted so much for what he said to be true. But words from pretty gentlemen were hollow things. They were as fleeting as time.

“Dean…” she said, breathless.

“Yes?” But it wasn’t the Specter who answered; it was a voice from the doorway—a shadow of a tall, dark, and wicked man. The villain of storybooks.

Celestine sucked and inhaled sharply. How long had he been standing there? Watching?

She must have asked the question out loud, because he responded, “Only a moment. You stormed out, and I was worried…”

Confusion raked through her. Dean didn’t look like he’d just been speaking with her on the other side of the doorway. He looked like a dark, brooding, and avenging prince.

“You didn’t have to come,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say. What was there to say other than, “You are the Specter!”

It was an accusation.

“You know I cannot confirm that.” He tilted his head and examined her. His gaze landed on her every bruise, her swollen limbs, and her loose silk gown that barely left anything to the imagination.

A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he didn’t look away. Rather, he took three large strides into the room and hovered above her like the Angel of Death coming to consume his next victim.

Heat and desperation pooled between her legs, and she longed to reach her hand down and relieve the ache, but she absolutely could not do that while he was watching her.

Tension painted the space between them. It surged and sucked all other energy out of the room except the unbearable need tingling in her core. Celestine licked her lips and tossed her legs over the side of her bed, sitting up, bringing them even closer together.

If he was the Specter, was this the actual moment he wanted? To talk to her as Dean, in private, unmasked but also masked…somewhere in between because they both knew the truth now?

She gulped but lifted her chin to catch his gaze in hers. Refusing to look away. “What is my favorite color, Dean?”

“Bloodred, like the color you stain your lips every night.” His hand hovered near her chin as if he wanted to caress her, but maddeningly, he still wouldn’t erase the space between them and touch her.

Truth burned in her blood. It was him—her Specter. James and Everett didn’t know her favorite color; she’d never once told them, and they never once cared enough to ask.

But Celestine was no fool; she would test her theory and prove it right. Just because she could.

Her eyes fell on her chessboard. It was her move. “Pawn to H5.” She tilted her chin back up to him in a challenge.

His gaze glanced down at the board, and thoughts poured across his face like ink in water. He was deciding if he’d take her bait.

“Queen to G6.” He took her pawn, but he was out of moves, and the pinching at the corner of his lips showed that he knew it, too. He was going to lose the game.

“Queen to G6.” Neither of them physically moved the pieces. They didn’t have to. The board was memorized in their heads. Instead, they kept their gazes locked on one another, having a conversation without needing to say the words.

“Bishop G1.” Blackness cloaked the edges of his eyes, but it was not dangerous or dark; it was just him.

“Queen G1.”

A smirk lifted on Dean’s face. “A sacrificial queen.”

She cocked her head like a hawk. “Isn’t that what I am to you?”

“Never.” He stepped closer and finally— finally —touched her, his hand cupping her face. “Never.”

“It’s your move.” Celestine’s words came out as a sensual plea.

He leaned down, his lips hovering over hers. ”Bishop to G1.”

“You are trapped,” she breathed.

“Yes.” His thumb caressed her lips .

Her chest rose with frantic desire, her breasts rising with it. “You’ve lost. Concede.”

“I concede it all to you and hold nothing back.” With that, his lips crashed down on hers.

For a beat, she stiffened from the shock, frozen like a lake in the dead of winter.

Dean Ashbrook was touching her—not only touching her, he was kissing her.

And damn, she wasn’t going to waste this moment.

So when her brain caught up, she swung her legs under her so that she could kneel on her bed and get closer to him.

Her fingers curled around his suit jacket, and she whimpered from not being able to be closer to him. If she were going to have this moment, she wanted all of it. She wanted to claw at the rough flesh of his back. She wanted to climb him like she would a mountain.

Because he had always been her Everest.

Running her tongue along his lower lip, she forced him to open further to her, and he was happy to oblige. More than happy, because he cupped her ass and pulled her closer to him, the motion allowing her legs to wrap around him.

Kissing him was like both waging a war and suing for peace. It was all tongues, teeth, and hands roaming all over each other’s bodies, but it was also gentleness and reverence.

And it was also confusion.

She had spent nine years wanting to taste him because, if she were being honest, from the moment she first saw him scowl at her, she was hit hard with longing.

She spent nine years trying to convince herself that she hated him and wanted nothing to do with him.

She spent nine years pretending he didn’t matter, pretending she didn’t notice his presence every time he entered a room, pretending he wasn’t gravity drawing her in .

Nine years convincing herself she would never be worthy of a man like him, convincing herself to love anyone but him.

But Dean was her unquenched desire, a sea of broken promises and dark phoenix fire. Kissing him was like both the sickness and the cure.

Their foreheads met, and Dean said, “Tell me a secret, Celine. Something so real that no one else knows.”

“And what if the Specter already knows all my secrets?” Her voice trembled, thick with her want. “What would I tell you then?”

He nibbled at her lip playfully. “I know you have at least one secret. It’s a massive one. I can sense it.”

She did, but she didn’t want to tell anyone. Just because she finally knew who he was and was finally able to touch her Specter, it didn’t mean she should give away the one final thing, which was hers . “I do, but why would you deserve it?”

“I wouldn’t.”