That big, toothy grin of hers stirs an ache within me that I haven’t allowed myself to feel in years, and a fresh dose of shame injects itself into my veins, because I can’t stop thinking of how disappointed she’d be in the way my life turned out.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Elena’s voice yanks me from my introspection, and I jolt up, straightening my spine as she enters the office. She makes her way over to me, taking a seat on my lap before I’ve even managed to ask her to.
Like she knows it’s where she belongs.
She looks at the photo, then back at me, as if waiting to see if I’ll continue.
“My mother,” I offer, smiling softly. “She passed when I was thirteen.”
One arm slides up around my neck, slipping around my shoulders, and Elena presses her head into mine. “Cancer?”
“Invasive lobular carcinoma,” I say with a slight nod. Pain lances through my heart at the term, sawing the organ in half. “When she was first diagnosed, they just called it an abnormal growth in her left breast. I don’t think they wanted to acknowledge it was that particular form of cancer, because she was so young.”
Like being struck by lightning, a sudden, sharp pang splits my chest, shocking me to the core.
Thirty-two. My mother was thirty-two when she died.
The realization that soon I’ll have been on this planet longer than her cuts deep, prodding at a scabbed wound I once believed was healed. Yet, the way it throbs and chips away, drawing new, fresh blood, suggests otherwise.
“She’s beautiful,” Elena says quietly, pulling me gently from the downward spiral of my thoughts, without even necessarily meaning to. She stares at the picture with a soft look on her face, unaware of the existential crisis brewing in the back of my mind, content that I’m once again sharing one of the secret facets of my life.
If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t dare. Would never have even brought them back to my house to live, much less started spilling my guts.
I’m not usually a gambler. Don’t like leaving my life in the hands of fate. But something about this woman makes me want to risk everything.
“She’s the reason I got into poetry as a kid. She was always reading Shakespeare and would quote Chaucer like scripture. She would’ve loved you.”
I push some hair from her pale shoulder, leaving my next thought unspoken, hidden in the depths of my soul where it belongs. Would she have loved me?
“That’s true. I’m very lovable,” Elena giggles, and the sound pierces my chest, a dull knife being shoved through flesh and bone and arriving out the other side.
Shifting forward, I reach into my pants pocket for my wallet, retrieving the photo I keep there. It’s a small copy I stole from her high school graduation series that I kept over the years as a reminder that someone out there could have a relationship with me, even if her father wasn’t interested.
Turns out, she doesn’t want one, either.
Elena’s spine stiffens, and she leans in, peering at the picture. “Who’s that?”
Her tone is curt, significantly less playful than it was three seconds ago, and I smirk, squeezing her thigh, practically soaking up her jealousy. “My sister.”
“Your sister?” Blinking, she frowns. “That’s... the girl I met outside the Flaming Chariot.”
“You met Violet?”
“She was standing outside on the curb, and said she’d tried going in several times, but couldn’t get herself to do it.” Tilting her head to the side, she studies the picture some more, seemingly lost in thought. “I guess now I get why she acted so offended that I had no idea who she was. What kind of wife doesn’t recognize her own sister-in-law?”
“The kind who doesn’t know what she looks like?”
Pursing her lips, she slumps back against me, removing her arm from my shoulders to drop it into her lap. “Do you have other secret family members I don’t know about?”
I hesitate, the word grandfather materializing on the tip of my tongue before I swallow it down, not ready to open that can of worms. She notices my pause, narrowing her eyes, and I smirk again, trying to play off the silence as being distracted by her.
Palming her ribs, I glide my hand up, my thumb grazing the underside of her right breast through the pale blue silk pajamas she has on. “Violet has two brothers, but I don’t know them.”
Her throat works as I touch her, eyes falling to where my fingers continue their ascent, engulfing her entire breast in my hand and squeezing until she gasps.
“I know what you’re doing.”
“Enjoying my wife?” I say, dropping the photo to the desk and dipping my head to the crook of her neck, baring my teeth against her skin.
She leans into my bite but doesn’t close her eyes. “Violet said you don’t ever talk about her.”
“I don’t.” Elena tenses in my lap, her spine going rigid, and I sigh, pulling away and letting my hand fall. “The man who helped create me, if you want to call him that, had just brought home his firstborn son when he had an affair with my mom. He was married and had nothing to do with me. I thought when Violet was older, maybe it’d be easier to connect with the rest of the family, if I connected with her first. But she doesn’t want me around.”
Not that it’s stopped me from trying.
“Oh, Kal—”
Something in her tone prickles my already red-hot nerves, and I exhale sharply, reaching up to collar her throat in my hands. Her breath catches, getting stuck beneath my palm, and my cock stirs behind my jeans at the heady sensation of having someone’s pulse at my mercy.
“No pity, little one. Don’t give me that.” She shifts, rubbing over my throbbing cock, and even through the layers of clothing, I can feel how hot she is. “You want to give me something, you want to make me feel better, you give me that sweet little pussy.”
Elena’s gaze turns glassy, but I can’t tell if it’s sadness or desire pooling there. She blinks the sheen away, tilting her chin down to stare at me through hooded lashes.
“Okay,” she says, turning around so she’s straddling me, grinding into my growing erection. “Whatever you need, Kallum. Take it from me.”
Later, after I’ve pumped her full, she lies on her back atop my desk, fiddling with the torn strap of her pajama top and staring up at the ceiling.
“What are you thinking?” I ask, drawing my fingers through her sensitive flesh, smearing my cum over her skin. I’m grateful she’s on birth control now, so I can mark her like this every chance I get.
I’m standing above her, my dick hanging, drained, between my thighs, neither of us particularly eager to move from the quiet of the room.
She looks at me, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I was just thinking about Ariana and Stella. How lucky I am that I grew up close to my siblings.”
Even though I’m sure she doesn’t mean it that way, her comment slices right through the stitches barely holding me together, severing the sutures and cracking my pain wide open all over again.
“You miss them,” I note, letting my hand fall to my side.
She nods. “Always. Ari has a recital coming up soon, and it kills me that I’ll have to miss it.” She gives me a sidelong glance as if gauging my reaction. I aim for mild, at best. “Not that I don’t enjoy Aplana. Honestly, it’s been so refreshing, in the weirdest way, even though I live as a captive now.”
“You’re not—”
Giggling, she curls her legs up, shaking her head. The gesture seems fake. Forced. And it makes me uneasy. “It’s okay, I’ve already grown quite accustomed to my Stockholm Syndrome. I just miss my old life a little, too.”
Gritting my teeth, I stare at the place on an end table where the picture of her parents and I used to be, wondering if I’m really about to say what my brain wants me to. The words formulate on my tongue, ignoring all the red flags, and shoot out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop them.
“Then let’s go to Boston.”
C
hapter 28
When I bring up my sisters, I’m certainly not expecting Kal to offer to take me to them.
I feel like that kind of goes against the rules of kidnapping, bringing the captive around the people who want her home.
Then again, I’ve never been on the business end of a situation like this, so what do I know?
Marcelline helps me pack, quietly taking clothes from my dresser and placing them into my open suitcase. I glance at her as she moves, toying with the journal in my hands, wondering if I should take it with me.
Before coming to the island, writing was as second nature to me as breathing. It was where I funneled the inspiration gathered from the poems and books I read, jotting down random musings or fictionalized anecdotes about my life.
I haven’t touched the journal since my arrival, inspiration few and far between, despite the serenity around the house. Technically speaking, the Asphodel is the perfect place for a writer’s retreat, though it feels odd creating anything in a place so plagued by death and darkness.
Perhaps that’s why I haven’t tried.
“What do you think, Marcelline?” Holding up the journal, I turn it so she can see the pink leather cover. “Should I try to pick up an old hobby?”
She purses her lips, twirling the end of a strand of her strawberry blonde hair. Most of our relationship up to this point has been me firing words at random, and her dodging every bullet, ignoring my comments and questions unless Kal is around.
“What’s the hobby?” she asks, her voice raspy, as if rough from lack of use.
“Um, writing.” I perch on the edge of the bed, flipping through the pages, my neat handwriting floating by with each turn.
“Like, stories? Poems?”
Heat scorches across my face, flames of embarrassment licking my cheeks. “Both, kind of. I used to do it all the time, but to be honest, I kind of forgot about it since coming to Aplana.”
She nods, widening her blue eyes. “Yeah, the island has that effect on people. Like you come here, and your previous identity kind of just... evaporates. Some locals call it the New England Bermuda Effect. I had an aunt who said Aplana was filled with an ancient, ancestral magic that replaces a person’s nature with that of the island’s.”
“Do you think that?”
“No, I just think it’s easy to forget everything the second your feet touch sand.” Marcelline shrugs, pointing at my journal. “Doubly so when you’re busy falling in love.”
The heat spreads from my face, scoring a path down my sternum, and finally settling in my gut. I lean forward, shoving the journal into the front pocket of my suitcase, and try to steel myself against her comment, even as my pulse beats so loud and fast, I think it might launch out of my throat.
“Definitely the sand,” I say quickly, over the bile teasing my esophagus.
Marcelline presses her mouth into a thin line, then nods, dropping one last T-shirt into the suitcase. “Yeah,” she agrees, clamming up like every other time I’ve tried to start a conversation. “You’re probably right.”
I don’t see her again before we leave the house, and I dart outside to the back yard before we load into the town car, speaking in low, soothing tones to the garden that still has not bloomed.
Staring out at the expanse of soil, I sigh, unsure of what exactly to say. “All the gardening blogs suggest talking to your plants. That, even though there’s no actual science to back that data up, they swear it makes a difference. So, here I am. Temporarily. We’re about to go to Boston for a bit, but when I come back, I expect a fully flourishing garden, okay?”
If Mamá could see me now. She’d probably accuse me of witchcraft and burn me at the stake.
“I get it,” I tell them, hoping the bulbs can hear beneath the dirt. “You’re afraid of what waits for you on the other side of the soil. You’re warm and comfortable where you are now. Safe, even. It’s terrifying, trying to find courage to take a leap of faith, but you can’t spend eternity hiding. Eventually, you have to take the opportunities that are thrust upon you, and trust that the universe knows what it’s doing.”
Hope bursts like a backed-up pipe in my chest, but I stuff it back down where it belongs, not wanting to entertain that thought.
“April is the cruelest month,” I add, quoting The Waste Land, like the flowers might appreciate the sentiment. “Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. It’s time.”
When I turn around, I see Kal hovering by the back gate, watching me with an unreadable expression. I approach him slowly, shame heavy in my chest.
“Is your garden a big T. S. Eliot fan?” he asks, his face shifting into one of quiet amusement.
“Don’t laugh,” I say, glancing up at the sky, noting the thick clouds rolling in over the ocean. “Love is the greatest act of revitalization, and I happen to think poetry is the best way to relay that.”
He doesn’t say anything as I move around him, leading the way to the front of the house where our car sits, Marcelline already in the front passenger seat.
It’s raining when we take off, which doesn’t really do much to quash my nerves as soon as we board Kal’s jet. Once we’re able to get up and move around, I unbuckle myself from my seat and go to the bedroom, climbing under the luxurious covers, trying not to let Marcelline’s words from earlier take root in my soul.
“She doesn’t know me,” I whisper to myself and the pillow. “She doesn’t get to decide if I’m falling in love.” I pause, considering. At what point does an obsession become more?
Probably when you start to feel it’s being returned.
‘If you’re jealous, I’m a goddamn psychopath.’
Scoffing, I push the memory of him saying that to me to the dark recesses of my brain, where I push everything else I don’t want to deal with. “Besides, that would be crazy, right?”
A throat clears in the doorway, and my entire body locks up, fear streaming down my spine. I push up on my elbow, looking at Kal as he leans against the doorway, a martini glass filled with a red liquid in hand.
Just the sight of his devilishly handsome face causes my stomach to flutter, and I swallow over the lump that forms, blocking all coherent thought.
“Talking to yourself again?” he asks, entering the room, setting the glass down on the shelf above the bed. For several seconds, he doesn’t make a move to get in the bed with me, and apprehension floods my psyche, making me wonder how much he heard.
“I’m great company,” I say, lifting one shoulder so it’s outside the blankets.
“Can’t argue with that.” Reaching up, he grabs the drink again, holding it out to me. “I had Marcelline make this. Thought it might help with your apparent fear of planes. Don’t ask what’s in it, because I have no idea, except I told her to use pomegranate syrup.”
Eyeing the drink, I arch an eyebrow. “You keep pomegranate syrup stocked on your jet?”
“I do now.” His gaze doesn’t waver from mine; it’s strong, bold, daring. Everything I’ve always wanted to believe myself to be, he manifests without even seeming to try.
“You know I’m not twenty-one yet, right?” I joke, tension thick in the air between us.
“Age, I do defy thee,” he says, Shakespeare rolling off his tongue as he gestures for me to take the glass. I’m not even sure he realizes he’s done it, or if he even notices the way it changes the atmosphere and rewrites the coding of my DNA.
Maybe he’s just so used to quoting poems to me that it doesn’t taste any different falling from his lips now. Maybe he doesn’t mean anything by it.
Heart in my throat, pulsing until I can feel nothing else, I take the drink from his hand and sip. As the cool, sweet liquid glides down, cooling me where his gaze makes me warm, I know.
In the pit of my stomach, in the fabric of my soul, I know.
I’m in love with my husband.
When we land in Boston, I’m not expecting every news camera in the city to be waiting
at the airport gates, desperate to get an exclusive first look at the girl kidnapped by Doctor Death.
I don’t know why—maybe because the people in Aplana didn’t seem to care, or believe the story—but it certainly never crossed my mind that people would be salivating to hear my side of it.
Kal follows me down the plane stairs, sticking close to my side as we’re greeted immediately by a security team. The one in front, with a neck as thick as a tree trunk and olive skin, nods at Kal when we approach.
Cameras flash from behind the glass windows, making me a little dizzy even as I keep my gaze trained on my shoes. For the first time since leaving Boston, I’m wearing pink Louboutins, paired with a black Givenchy lace and velvet minidress I’d never have dared wear while under my parents’ roof.
Or with Mateo, considering the top is sheer and the skirt barely grazes mid-thigh. He’d have considered that an invitation.
Half of me had been expecting Kal to balk at the attire, or at least try to get beneath it, but when I came out of the jet’s bathroom, he’d barely noticed the change at all.
“Best course of action is to just take her straight on through,” the security guard is saying. “There’s an SUV waiting for you in the parking lot, and it’s scheduled to take you right to the Riccis’ home front.”
I blink up at Kal. “We’re going to my parents’ first?”
He looks at me quizzically. “Of course. That’s the entire reason we flew in.”
Butterflies erupt in my stomach, a swarm taking flight all at once. I wrap my arms around it, trying to ignore the sensation.
Kal’s features harden, and he asks for a second alone. “Elena. What is it?”
Dread pulses in a harsh stream up and down my spine, my skin burning up with the weight of my parents’ judgment. Now that we’re back in town, I can already feel my soul clamoring for their approval, even though neither of them fully deserve it.
“It’s nothing,” I say, giving a little shake of my head.
Promises and Pomegranates: A Dark Contemporary Romance (Monsters & Muses Book 1) Page 20