She fell in step with me. “You good?”
“Not yet, but I’m getting there.”
We got in the van, and Hood glanced back at me. “Abercorn?”
“Yeah.” A tired laugh sawed out of me. “Abercorn.”
Linus stood with his back facing the street when we arrived at the building. A large suitcase sat near his feet like an obedient pet while he worked the locks. Sensing he had company, he turned from the door.
I held Hood’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Make a couple of loops?”
“Sure.” He cut his eyes to his mate. “Hop up here and keep me company, gorgeous.”
Lethe draped herself over his seat. “How about you find somewhere to park then join me back here?”
“I would say don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I said, “but don’t do anything that requires stain remover works too.”
“Don’t be silly.” Lethe glanced over her shoulder at me. “That’s why Hood suggested leather.”
Wiping my hands down my pants, I scooted out the door while touching as little upholstery as possible.
Linus didn’t call out a greeting, and he didn’t close the distance. He stood there, watching my approach.
Mouth dry, I nodded to the luggage. “Going somewhere?”
His gaze swept over me, assessing, and he frowned. “Upstairs.”
“Not Atlanta.”
“Unless an entire city exists on the second floor of this building, no. Not Atlanta.”
“I worried you might leave, after we fought.”
“Friends fight,” he said softly. “Friends also make up, and life goes on.”
That was what I told him the first time I forgave him. He remembered it word for word.
“Sometimes they don’t,” I repeated his lines, proving I remembered too. “And it doesn’t.”
Head down, he said, “I won’t leave.”
His mother would be less than thrilled if he left before she granted her permission.
Chin lifting, he amended, “Not until you tell me to go.”
“I don’t know what to do.” All I knew for sure was I wanted to break his suitcase over my knee if it kept him from leaving. “This is the start of a cycle. You omitting things, me finding them out, me getting hurt, you apologizing.” I exhaled through my mouth. “I don’t want that kind of relationship. Not again.”
His nod of agreement came slow. “You deserve better.”
“That’s the problem.” I met his gaze, a rich navy, and held it. “I’m becoming convinced there isn’t anyone better.”
He visibly startled, black wisps clouding his irises, and he parted his lips on a question he didn’t ask.
“How do we do this?” A raw quality scraped through my voice. “How do we make this work?”
“You’re a strong woman, Grier. This only has to work if it’s what you want. You don’t need me.”
“If you believe that,” I said, “maybe we should call it quits and walk away before we’re in too deep.”
“Any deeper and I’ll drown.” He sucked in a breath like he was preparing for that exact fate, but he didn’t budge even an inch.
“Is love supposed to feel like your heart is outside your body?”
A preternatural stillness swept through his limbs, but he was listening.
“That’s how I feel when I’m with you, like my heart is standing beside me instead of inside me. Each hit, each cut, each bruise hurts me too, like it happened to me instead of to a wholly separate person. I drive myself crazy thinking in circles about Atlanta, and I must be plucking your last nerve, but part of me died with Maud that night, and the rest of me wasn’t sure about how to start living again after Atramentous.” I swallowed hard. “I’ve been on life support since you arrived. Now I’ve been told it’s getting cut, but not when, and I can’t help but fixate.”
Linus shifted his weight forward, leaning toward me, but he kept his feet planted on the sidewalk.
“I’m so tired of hurting.” I studied the position of the moon overhead to give my tears a chance to dry. “I worry sometimes if it slacked off that I wouldn’t feel at all, but that’s no reason to stay in a relationship that promises pain. I’ve done that. Loved a man who was bad for me in every single way. Forgave him all the bad times because the good times were so good.”
Linus shrank into himself until even the black vanished from his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know.”
“This is all I am.” He spread his arms. “This is all I will ever be.”
“I know that too.”
Nodding, he lowered his arms. “I can’t offer you more.”
“You’re right.” I took the first step. “You can’t offer me more.”
Lips mashed into a bloodless line, he nodded again.
“You give everything you have to everything you do.” I took another step. “That’s who you are, Linus.”
Neat furrows creased his brow, and the impulse to smooth them away itched in my fingertips.
“I don’t understand.” He glanced past me, to the van, to the gwyllgi watching the show, waiting to see if I went in or needed a ride home. “I thought…”
“You thought I was here to break up with you.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice a ragged whisper.
“Then you’re out of luck.” I spread my hands. “I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You said that already.” I took one more step, just close enough I could pat his chest. “Let me break it down for you.”
“Please do.”
He sounded lost and miserable and…yet. Hope glinted in his eyes, faint but there. I could work with that.
“I’m done with living for the good times when the bad ones stretch for so long I can’t see the end if I’m standing in the middle. That doesn’t work. It’s toxic.”
The spark in his eyes guttered, and he dipped his chin, accepting—and misunderstanding—my verdict.
“That’s not us.” I pressed my palm over his heart. “We’re a hundred good times, a thousand perfect moments, a million tiny gestures, before a blip. That doesn’t make the bad any easier to stomach, but I like our odds. I want to keep going.” I curled my fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “I want to keep you.”
Linus gazed down at me, his eyes soft before his resolve hardened. “Come upstairs with me.”
“Not the reaction I’d hoped for,” I said, releasing him, “but okay.”
“I warded the building.” He let us in, collected his bag, and led the way up to the bedroom. “We’ll be safe here.”
Since my last visit, he had set the mattress on its frame and put on sheets. He might not have slept, but he kept up his bedtime ritual. He placed his luggage at the foot of the bed then straightened, his jaw set.
“Sit down.” He tacked on, “Please.”
“Since you asked so nicely…” Thoroughly confused, I perched on the edge of his bed. “What now?”
Kneeling between my legs, he offered me his modified pen with his left hand while flattening his right on my thigh, palm up. This position put us at eye level, and he had never looked more resigned to his fate.
“There are sigils that force a person to tell the truth,” he said. “I would like you to use one of your own design on me.”
“No.” I shoved him back. “If you can’t tell me the truth without being compelled, I don’t want it.”
“I have told you the truth,” he said carefully. “I want you to believe what I said without a doubt.”
“I trust you.” I searched his face. “I don’t need this.”
“I do.” The pen groaned in his hand, its plastic casing threatening to crack. “Please.”
The sigil floated to the forefront of my mind without me calling it, like it had heard his plea and answered all on its own. I drew it on, fingers sure, but my stomach clenched and unclenched at the power he was giving me over him. When I fin
ished, I capped the pen, tempted to break it in half in case he got any more bright ideas.
“Ask me a question you know the answer to, and I’ll lie to see how it works.”
The sigils from my brain packed a stronger punch than standard ones. I wasn’t convinced testing this one on Linus was smart, for myriad reasons, but he would take matters into his own hands if I refused to cooperate. “What is your name?”
“Grier Woolworth.”
A red sheen rolled over his eyes, reminding me of the gwyllgi, except this was brighter, unnatural.
“Interesting,” he murmured, unable to help himself. “Ask me again.”
“What is your name?”
“Linus Lawson.”
This time his eyes turned a luminescent green from corner to corner.
Judging by his faraway expression, he could see the colors too, but I wondered, “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
Red.
Grin pulling at my lips, I said, “So, it does hurt.”
“Yes.”
Green.
“Go ahead,” he prompted me. “Ask me anything about the night Maud died.”
I got the ugliest question out of the way first. “Do you know who killed Maud?”
“No.”
Green.
“Other than me, did you see anyone else at the house that night?”
“No.”
Green.
“Cletus really is Maud?”
“Yes.”
Green.
“Can you separate yourself from her spirit?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
Red.
Annoyed, he sighed. “It would kill me, but it is possible.”
“You’re bound to…Cletus…until you die?”
“Yes.”
Green.
After my chat with his mother, I had some thinking to do, but I still wanted his unbiased opinion while it was there for the asking. “Do you think your mother had anything to do with her sister’s death?”
“No.”
Green.
“Did you use the sigil Maud taught you to incapacitate Woolly that night?”
“No.”
Green.
“That’s all I got.” I traced his skin around the sigil. “I would have made a list if I had expected this.”
“Ask me anything,” he invited, the temptation to dig into his past seductive.
“How many lovers have you had?” Horror washed through me in a stinging wave that sizzled in my nape and flushed my cheeks. I slapped both hands over my mouth, but it was too late. “You don’t have to answer.” Yanking down my hands, I covered his lips instead. “Please, don’t answer. I had no right to ask, and I really, really, really don’t want to—”
“None.”
Green.
“—know.” I dropped my hand. “None?”
“None.”
Green.
Well, minus the red climbing into his face.
“You told me in Atlanta, at the Faraday, that Hubert outing one of your lovers to your mother would be the highlight of his career.” I planted my hands on his chest and shoved him away. “And cupcakes. When I asked you why women heap on lace and frills like we’re cupcakes in need of decorating while men strip down like their perfection can’t be improved upon, you explained to me women do it to make their partners feel like their time together is special. You explained cupcakes.”
“As far as I was concerned, I was engaged.” He landed on his butt and sat there. “I remained faithful.”
Green.
“I was in prison for five years.”
“I was adapting to this.” Black mist whirled between his fingers. “Sex was not a priority at first.”
Green.
“And later?”
“My condition, the temperature of my skin, aroused as many women as it repelled. I didn’t care. I didn’t want them.” He made a fist and vanquished the darkness. “All I ever wanted was you.”
Green.
In for a penny, in for a pound. I might as well hear the rest of the sordid tale. “But?”
“After a few years, Mother felt I ought to move on. I wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to hear it. She arranged a date for me. I had my team research the woman’s background and discovered her father was in debt up to his neck. He liked to tell people he was a horseman, but the closest he got to the animals was the counter at the track.
“I offered to pay off his debts, all of them, if she would date me for six months. I didn’t want sex. I didn’t want friendship or companionship. I wanted a warm body I could cart around the city, parade in front of Mother’s informants, and then I wanted to go to my loft and be left alone.”
Green.
“I spent a great deal of time around women who pretended to be in a relationship with me. A few took me lingerie shopping to keep up appearances.” He sighed. “The cost of lace and elastic made me curious enough to ask the purpose of spending so much money on undergarments that wouldn’t last the night. That’s why I understand cupcakes. I experienced the phenomenon myself several times near the end of an affair when a lover wanted to extend our arrangement. I always declined. The sex would have felt bought, and the extension only invited hurt feelings.”
Green.
“You could have explained all that to me sooner,” I said at last.
“Practicing abstinence in your absence, without your knowledge, was one thing.” He bent one of his legs then looped an arm around it. “Admitting I have feelings for you after all these years…when you had never seen me in that light…” He sighed. “Pride wouldn’t allow it.”
Green.
I licked my thumb then smudged the sigil on his hand.
He waited until its power had broken to relax his posture. “What now?”
I pretended to consider him. “Tell me you love me and wait to see if I say it back.”
The color washed out of his cheeks. “That hardly seems fair.”
“That’s how it’s done.” A shrug rolled through my shoulders. “Boys have to go first.”
The ink flaked off his hand, its spell broken. “You’re sure you don’t want the sigil on for this?”
“You’re stalling.”
“You’re right.”
About to show mercy—I had put him on the spot—I stood to exit the bedroom at the exact moment he rocked onto his knees and gathered my hands in his. Heart lodged in my throat, I wished I hadn’t dared him to confess his feelings. At least without the sigil, I could tell myself—
“I love you.” He stared at my hands like a man attempting X-ray vision. “I suspect I always will.”
Amazed to find I could speak, I couldn’t help but tease him. “You suspect, huh?”
“I don’t want you to burn the marriage contract.” He rolled his thumb across my left ring finger. “I want you to honor it.” He didn’t manage to look higher than my collarbone. “You feel something for me. Over time, you might—”
“You don’t listen very well for a professor.” I palmed his cool cheek, and only then did he lift his head. “I wasn’t posing theoretical questions to you earlier. I meant every word. About you.”
Neely and Cruz. Lethe and Hood. Those couples had taught me lessons I was only beginning to grasp.
Their love wasn’t simple. Practice gave it an effortless appearance, but that was far from the truth. It was a kind word in the morning, a thoughtful meal prepared without request, a kiss before parting ways, a kiss when coming back together. A million tiny kindnesses sprinkled throughout the days, the months, the years.
“You’ve got baggage. I get that.” I sank over him, sat on his lap, and linked my arms behind his neck. “You might be surprised to learn I own a few pieces of luggage myself.”
The teeniest, tiniest smile curled his lips, so slight it might have been a shadow indention on his cheek.
“I don’t believe you would ever hurt me on purpose.” I threaded my fingers through his hair and tugged
on his scalp until he tilted back his head, forcing him to look at me. “Every day, for as long as we’re together, you’ll try to make us work. That’s all I can ask.”
Hands digging into my hips, he searched my face. “You love me.”
“I do.” And because he hungered to hear the words, I sighed them against his mouth. “I love you, Linus.”
Mist curled off his skin as he met my kiss with teeth, claiming me with sharp nips that gave me shivers.
The taste of my blood ignited a hunger that roared through my gut, and a growl rumbled in my chest.
His guttural chuckle tapered to a husky groan when I raked my teeth over his throat. “Hungry?”
“Starving.”
But his blood wasn’t the only thing on the menu tonight.
Nine
To ensure Linus got the memo about the change in the main course, I fisted the halves of his shirt and yanked until the buttons pinged off the walls. “Oops.”
An arched brow conveyed his doubt. “What do you have against my dress shirts?”
“Nothing.” I ruched his undershirt up and over his head too. “I prefer this view.”
Just like the first time I touched his abs, tracing the ink there, he sucked in a sharp breath. Chills dappled his skin, the delicate hairs rising as he shivered under my fingertips. I thumbed his navel and raked my nails in a hard line above the button on his slacks. His eyes closed, and his lips parted, and I didn’t think he had inhaled since the moment I put my hands on him.
“Breathe,” I whispered in his ear. “I don’t want you fainting on me.”
Air whistled past his lips as he filled his starving lungs with oxygen.
This was honest. This was real. This was…everything.
Before he regained fine motor control, I peeled my tee over my head and tossed it on the floor. Arching my spine, I reached behind me and unhooked my bra. I glided the silky straps down my arms, past my wrists, then flung it away.
I sat before him, halfway to naked, and let him look.
Black swallowed his eyes from edge to edge, and his Adam’s apple bobbed twice.
Darkness unspooled around us, inky tendrils spilling into the room, lapping at my thighs. “Um, Linus?”
A tic in his cheek betrayed his annoyance when the black whorls kept spinning off his skin. “I can’t seem to control myself.”
How to Live an Undead Lie (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 5) Page 14