“You’re doing a great job,” I praised him, my words almost a sigh as I indulged in the mind-numbing luxury of his touch.
“Then what are you thinking about now?” he asked and placed my palm on his cheek, tracing my arm all the way back to my shoulder, along my back, between my shoulder blades where he splayed his fingers and pulled me toward him so our faces were so close we shared breath.
More, was what I wanted to say. More. I want to feel you.
But no word came out. Instead, my hand left his cheek for the benefit of his mouth where I brushed my index finger over his parted lips, tracing the soft curve of the top lip first, then the bottom—
My breath caught at the wet touch of his tongue as his mouth fell open, and he caught my finger between his lips. A chuckle rumbled through his chest as he beheld the look on my face and he released my finger, but not without repeating the wet stroke of his tongue over my fingertip, causing my core to tighten at the sensation.
Before the sound I’d been holding back could escape, Leon wrapped his mouth over mine and kissed me, his lips moving gently at first, waiting for the response of mine. But when my hand found his chest, fingers tracing the muscles down to his abdomen, his kisses deepened, a moan hatching from his lips as I opened for him and met his tongue with mine.
His hand slid down along my spine with light pressure, enough to trap my hand between our chests.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he murmured between kisses and released my mouth, exploring my neck instead and driving shivers through my body.
I freed my hand in response and searched my way under his shirt, grazing along his waist, his hipbone, needing to feel his skin.
Leon chuckled and halted, lips halfway up to my ear. “You have no idea how many times I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispered against my skin, goosebumps rising in response where his breath spread like a desert wind.
“How many?” I asked, arching my neck against his lips.
He didn’t stop kissing me as he rolled us both over so that he was on top of me, his weight braced on his arms, the tousled mass of his hair brushing over my face as he moved. “Just every damn night for the past year.”
“Are you even allowed to curse? You’re a Lightbringer,” I reminded him, trying to lighten the profoundness of what he had shared—a year.
At that, he stopped and lifted his face over mine, his eyes glinting in what little moonlight flitted in through the curtains. “I’ll be damned if longing for you for a whole year puts me in hell,” he whispered and brought his lips back to mine.
I didn’t get to ponder his statement, for in my chest, right in the empty spot that didn’t seem to disappear, a painful tug reminded me that I had a job to do.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Leon groaned as he felt it too, a second later.
“Really? Now?” he asked, eyes lifted to the ceiling and a grimacing exasperation on his features.
“It’s not urgent,” I whispered and knitted my fingers into his shirt, pulling him back toward me.
But Leon only pecked a kiss on my nose and rolled off of me. “It will be in a matter of minutes,” he said with a voice that sounded way too professional, too mature.
There was some shuffling, and a second later, the light went on, flooding the intimate darkness of our moment with the light of reality.
“I don’t know about you,” he said with a smile as he took in the way his shirt was pulled and twisted around me so that it exposed my stomach up to my ribs and had slid over one shoulder, “but I want to be properly dressed when I go to work.”
I frowned in response, finding that he looked perfect in his white shirt and plaid pajama pants as he got to his feet and strode to the desk by the window where a pair of jeans was draped over a chair. He didn’t go to the bathroom to change this time, and I struggled not to comment as he pulled down his pants, exposing his long, muscled legs and the gray undershorts they stuck out from.
When he noticed I was staring, mouth probably hanging open—I couldn’t tell, I was too busy ogling—Leon laughed and pulled up his jeans, buttoning them up before he returned to bed and straddled me with legs and arms. “Another time,” he murmured a promise. Whatever that promise included, I didn’t dare ask.
“I should probably get dressed, too, then,” I responded unintelligibly and waited for Leon to climb off of me.
He straightened up above me without any apparent intention to let me get up. Instead, he dragged his gaze over my exposed skin. “You are beautiful,” he said, breathless, and let his fingers graze down the line from my ribs to my navel, a smile on his features. “Incredibly beautiful.”
It took me a while to sort my thoughts when he got up and held out a hand to help me out of bed, but when I finally managed, I headed to the bathroom to change out of his shirt and pants and into my clothes.
The tug in my chest and the ache were intensifying as whoever we were going to collect came closer to their final breath. By the time I’d rinsed my mouth and pulled my mussed hair into a ponytail, I knew it was time to go.
I wasn’t scared this time as I zoomed through the night air, pulled by the call of the soul that was almost ready. I knew I could do it. I had done it before. I knew what to expect—even if I would probably never get used to the heartbreak after releasing the soul at the gates of heaven.
Leon landed the same moment as I did, our feet touching the ground soundlessly—but ours weren’t the only feet. On the other side of the small room where an old woman was taking her final breaths, Lucas Ferham landed in his cocoon of shadows.
“You—” Leon took a step toward him, his body so tense I thought he would break apart.
“Nice to see you again, Lightbringer”—Cas nodded at Leon then gave me a long look—“Laney.”
Ice crept through my skin as he flashed me a grin before assessing our target. There was nothing of the Cas who had helped me with Jo or the one who had eyed me from a distance in the school corridors. There was nothing of the Cas musing about the stars or the Cas who had kissed me, either … even if that kiss had almost torn my soul from me. Just the cool, bored, bemused Cas who would risk the truce between our sides to take revenge.
“Let’s see if you are a real Lightbringer yet,” he mocked, the lazy grin from before spreading wider. “Let’s see if you’re ready to bargain.”
“No,” Leon hissed from beside me as I stepped to his side.
“Why not?” I asked, authentically wondering why I wouldn’t. I’d observed him do it plenty of times. I had taken my first soul to heaven. Wasn’t it time I did the whole deal?
“Yes, Leon,” Cas drawled. “Why not?”
The old lady took a rattling breath, her eyes flying open as she was fighting for air. Her hand flung to her throat as if clawing at it would help her get more oxygen in. She couldn’t see us, of course, but it didn’t make it any less horrifying that we were witnessing her death—and maybe everyone deserved their death to be witnessed, no matter who they were, what they had achieved in their life. Maybe that was a gift in itself, that their last and final struggle was acknowledged … seen.
“Stop, guys,” I cut them off before they could get into a fight over my pride. “It’s time.”
And as if I had spoken a magic word, they stopped, both of their faces smoothing over, concentration taking over the masks they’d chosen for themselves.
The woman sighed her last breath, and her soul peeled from her body—a sight that still held me in awe, every time—until it turned into the silver star that one of us would inhale after we settled on a bargain.
I felt her then, the woman and her toll of good and bad. She had been selfless, good, and yet—my eyes snapped up to study Cas’s face as I realized that he might have more claim to this soul than Leon and I.
A wicked delight had spread across his features while he was still reading the soul, determining the parameters of his offer.
I didn’t wait to let him figure it out. “She comes with us
, and you go to hell,” I said matter-of-factly, wondering if either of the boys had noticed the silver frame on her nightstand with the picture of her holding a baby, next to a folder that had the simple words Finding Mae on it in an elegant script.
Mae. I picked up the photograph, turned it over, and opened the frame.
Mae, September 72, it said in the same handwriting. Her daughter.
I didn’t know how I knew. Maybe it was the stack of pictures that seemed to have been taken by a private investigator that I found in the folder as I opened it, all showing the same woman from childhood to what she had to look like now.
“What makes you believe she deserves to go with you?” Cas bit at me, obviously surprised by my claim and not fast enough to pull up a bored face as he confronted me. “The woman is dribbling with guilt.”
Even Leon nodded his agreement.
“Open your eyes.” I gestured at the nightstand where baby-Mae and Mae of all ages was now distributed over the oval surface.
It took them longer than me to understand the woman was one and the same. A baby, given up by a mother who couldn’t provide what she thought the child needed at that time—a mother who, for the rest of her life, had regretted her choice.
It was Cas who’s eyes flickered with realization first, and I could tell by the twist of his lips that he didn’t like one bit that I had bested him.
He darted around the bed, all of us leaving the soul hanging mid-air, suddenly busy with the images, when Cas pulled out a piece of paper with the same handwriting, just a bit more shaky than before. It was dated last night.
“Mae,” he read, “you were the most beautiful baby this world has ever seen. It killed me to place you into a stranger’s arms. I was young, and your father was sent to Vietnam before you were born and disappeared there … I had no one.” Cas paused, glancing at me with eyes that seemed to be swallowing the world. “I meant to reach out to you when you were older. But I never had the courage to face you and tell you that I failed you. Whenever I sent someone to find you, I got reports that you had a happy life. That you were loved. And that was all you needed … and all I needed.
I wish I’d had the strength to tell you once that I love you. I have loved you all my life, and I will even in death.
I hope this letter finds its way to you one day even if I’ll never have the courage to send it.
With all my heart and all my love, my daughter.
Your mother, Carly Mae Jennings”
No one spoke as he lowered the letter and laid it back on the nightstand. For a moment, it seemed heaven and hell were in unison about the verdict, Cas’s gesture softened as he stared at the picture of mother and baby. For one moment.
Then his face twitched back into the bored mask, and he gestured at the silver star that hung above the lifeless body of Carly Mae Jennings.
The woman had a thick dark streak of guilt darkening every facet of her shining soul. She had done something in her life that had haunted her even when she’d been alive. She herself had made her life a living hell. There was no way I was going to let her go there in her afterlife.
“She is coming with me,” I repeated before he could even think of making a claim. “She has had purgatory all her life. She is done suffering for a choice she made decades ago when she herself had been abandoned.” My voice was fierce, absolute, and much to my surprise, neither of the boys questioned me.
So I stepped forward and lowered my mouth to where Carly was waiting to be taken to her final home, and I was going to take her—but not without a last glance at the tiny, one-room apartment of the woman who had given up her heart. And as I readied myself to inhale her soul, the eyes of both Lightbringer and Shadowbringer followed the direction of my gaze, missing how my hand grabbed the letter from the bedside table and slipped it into my pocket.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Returning from the gates of heaven tore me apart as thoroughly as the last time, only this time, I didn’t have a night with Leon to piece me back together. It was Monday morning, and we were heading to school after a pit stop at my house where I had explained in three sentences to my mother that she had been right about Leon and that I might be spending more nights at his place in the future.
Her answering grin had been as much a relief as it had been disturbing. As if everyone but myself had known about Leon and me.
“What about Cas?” I asked, my tears finally ebbing as we pulled into the parking lot like we did on any normal day.
“What about him?” Leon asked and turned to face me after he parked the car.
A cold sense of fear crept back into my body at the thought of the Shadowbringer. “He didn’t threaten me at Carly’s,” I pointed out.
“He didn’t,” Leon confirmed. “But you know he is bound to his mission when he’s called by a soul, the same as we are.” He gave me a stern look. “It doesn’t mean a thing if he is tame during our missions. He can still wait around the next corner, once the soul is taken care of, ready to break your neck.”
I shuddered at the thought of Cas’s long fingers around my throat, the cold of his silver ring that would be cutting into my skin—
“I’ll be there to prevent it,” he promised and brushed his fingers across my cheek.
“Speaking of the devil.” I jerked my chin at the stairs to the walkway leading up to the entrance.
Cas was there, his arm draped over Avery’s shoulders, and grinning in our direction.
I braced myself for his stares and Avery’s glares. But more than that, I braced myself for the question I needed to ask Leon before we got out of the car.
“This thing between us—” I started, unable to bring myself to speak the words that I was thinking … if we were an item.
“What about it?” Leon asked, his eyes darkening just a bit as he cupped my face in his hands.
“Is this something you want people to know about—” I pursed my lips, wondering if there was a good way to ask if we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Leon just chuckled at my expression, running his thumb over my lip before he leaned in to nip at it. “I love you, Laney,” he told me, his voice amused. “Why would I not want the world to know about us?”
I nodded into his kiss before I detached myself from his mouth. “Time to face the world?”
After a final kiss, we got out of the car and headed for the school, hand in hand, the meaning of it entirely different compared to all of the times I’d shown up with his arm around me, tucked to his side. This was no longer him just protecting me from the dangers of the world. It was him showing with pride that we were together.
As we passed Cas and Avery, Leon lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my palm. It was only when I looked up that I noticed that his eyes weren’t on me. Instead, he was giving Cas a poisonous glare, which unsurprisingly, the Shadowbringer returned with bored nonchalance.
His eyes didn’t remain on Leon for long but found mine, the storm-gray of his irises promising that this was only the silence before a storm.
It cost me all my strength not to bolt from him but muster a grin that equaled his lazy one and pin both him and Avery with a stare that, I hoped, felt like ice.
“What’s wrong with her?” Avery asked as we were already at the door, and Leon had long dropped our hands between us.
I didn’t hear Cas’s answer, for Leon held the door for me and I slipped in—and out of the Shadowbringer’s reach. For now.
The day went by without any coincidences. Cas didn’t try to lure me into dark corners, Avery didn’t mock me. No one commented when Leon kissed me goodbye before we headed to PE.
Jo sat with us for lunch, grinning more broadly than I had ever seen her do. I wondered if it had something to do with Leon and me … until I spotted the boy from the party in the parking lot after school.
“I guess he changed his mind after the party,” I whispered to her as I hugged her briefly, watching the color rise in her cheeks.
“Seems like it.” She b
ounced out the doors, energetic in a way that I wondered was normal for a girl with her condition. My chest clenched at the thought of what she was carrying around with her … the burden of the secret, living with that fear that one day, medication and dialysis wouldn’t be enough anymore.
Leon squeezed my hand. “Everything all right?”
I watched Jo passionately kiss the boy, who seemed as surprised as I at the public display, but he recovered soon, pulling her into his arms. “Everything’s good,” I told Leon. It was. As long as Jo had happiness in her life, everything else would be bearable.
“It doesn’t matter what it is”—Leon wrapped his arms around me as we started walking—“you can talk to me.”
I leaned into his embrace and breathed in his scent. “I know.”
The week sped by, the last leaves dancing to the ground and more than not, I feared seeing Cas, who kept hovering like a shadow at school. He never spoke to me. Never as much as indicated we had ever met. Even Avery seemed to forget I existed, or her minions, or anyone else but the Shadowbringer; so that I started fearing for her, too. What if Cas couldn’t just take a manifesting Lightbringer’s soul with a kiss? What if he had already taken Avery’s? What did a living person without a soul look like?
I took a look in the mirror, wondering what I would look like today had Cas succeeded … if I would even recognize myself.
However, he never once attacked me, never once threatened me since that day in the car.
“Will Leon be coming over later?” Mom asked from the hallway, already in her boots from the sound of her footsteps.
“Maybe,” I responded, wondering when I would finally allow the two of them in the same room again since our relationship status had changed. Not that I was worried what Leon would say, but Mom…
“I thought I’d head over to his place later,” I said sheepishly, grateful she couldn’t see my face. We hadn’t spent a night together since the one where we’d been interrupted, and my face turned pink as I thought of his promise. Another time.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 21