41. Leni

He’s hiding again.

I can feel him. Goosebumps prickle my skin, the sensation of black starburst eyes raking over me has me wetting my mouth against the heat dripping down my spine.

He’s close.

Whenever he vanishes, a stab of annoyance pierces me. Abandonment, loneliness, fear. And yet, nothing compared to the thrill that courses through my veins when I find him. Delight, exhilaration. Heat.

Undiminishing heat.

I sweep through the dancefloor once, searching for any sign of his presence. Every obscured face and writhing shadow burning electric across my skin. I can almost feel his breath on the nape of my neck, his fingers stroking my palms.

We’re at the beach club, of all places. The latest stop of his extensive list of required experiences.

The finest restaurants, extravagant hotels, shops that sell gowns not dresses, and jewelers that never tell me the price-tag.

Technically, we’re wanted criminals, being hunted by the Queensguard. In actuality, thanks to Cross’s prowess, we’re on a perpetual vacation.

We’ve dangled our feet in rooftop pools, played hide and seek in an art museum. Strolled every park, fed every pigeon.

And each night, both of us lingering in the hall of our safehouse, hands on our respective bedroom doors, Cross asks me the never-ending question. “Did you like it?”

I like all of it with him. Boring, stab my eyes out museums, parks with gravel and mulch, and yachts that make my stomach turn.

I like when we stay inside too. I like popping out of the drizzle to grab a Tres Leches latte and a Pekoe tea. Extra hot. I like paying for the paper with rattling coins and playing Which God is Meddling Today? with the headlines.

I like that Cross keeps cards in his left coat pocket and stores my Roxy Purple lipstick in his right. I like how he holds my hair in his fist when he clasps my necklace, how he spins me slowly around to adjust the pendant on my sternum, how his eyes linger there, on the empty skin.

It’s one tattoo I haven’t redone.

Memories flood back now, easier than before, sharper and more vivid. The sear of breaking three fingers and Cross entering a fiery rage, hearing him spew threats. Getting thrown against a cold blustery dock, gunshots echoing. Jumping out of a building, him rumbling for me to relax.

These flashes of pure, jarring pain echo within me, steal my sense of time. They hurt and pinch and pry, but they’re manageable.

The flashes where pain is a shadow, a phantom of other sensations—those are mind numbing.

The stroke of big hands on my skin, the pressure of teeth on my hip, a breathtaking tightness that squeezes me low in my stomach.

These memories aren’t long enough for me to close my eyes to, but I know. I know that they’re all this male here, the one hiding from me.

The male I’ll find.

I let myself float a little, catching my reflection in the mirror above the sleek, modern bar. The ends of my hair puff angrily in the heat and humidity, creating little riots of neon blue. When I first emerged from the bathroom after dying all of Cross’s white towels blue, his expression had been indecipherable.

I’d thought he was mad about the shower walls, the tile, and countertop being stained. “Before you say anything,” I’d blurted, my fingertips and nails dyed navy, new and improved hair dripping blue splats on my shoulder. “I love it.”

Even if the box had promised aqua and delivered hypno mermaid.

He’d smiled, a warmth spreading across his face. “Of course you do.”

“I needed a change.”

“It’s perfect, Leni. It’s perfect for you.”

Atlas seemed to think it was, too.

Deciding to never in a million years tell Atlas he was right, I fade backward from the bar and into the pulsing light of the club.

Then I focus.

Concentrate on the areas mortals seem to avoid, places where the air is warm and soft, like a gentle caress against my skin, urging me along.

There.

Painting on a triumphant grin, I head straight for the center of the room. His arms are crossed, chin notched down to follow my approach. As soon as I’m close enough for his heat to glaze me, he smirks. “I told you to find a dance partner.”

This is my least favorite part of our dates.

Cross telling me to try out other people, asking me if I’m interested in other males, leaving me alone in a room with Sin or Atlas, thinking I’m going to be charmed.

“And I told you I don’t want to dance with anybody else.” I lock my fingers over his chest, soaking in the warm strength and the steady thrum of his pulse. “But if you’re offering …”

His big hands cradle my hips instantly, swaying us together. “I’d be so lucky.”

I like this. Being at his mercy. Occupying his possession.

“Do you ever think you’re just in love with a memory?” I ask.

He’s unphased by my question. “No.”

No?

I do. Constantly.

I’m so in love with him in my memory. Every fleeting touch, every heated stare. And more than that, I’m in love with this male, here and now, who’s clearly in love with me, and only wants what I want, who’s bending over backward to give me a lifetime of experiences as quick as he can.

Having two different loves for the same male, having two entire lives of love, it chafes. Makes my heart too big for my chest, presses down on my lungs, and kicks at my ribs. I can never fully breathe.

I killed myself to save him.

Atlas told me, sat me down, explained it because Cross couldn’t get the words out.

And I would die again for this male. I’d do more, I’d kill for him.

I tamp down the runaway brain, and smile easy breezy at him. “I just want you. I’m always just looking for you.”

“How do you do it, Leni?” he asks, dark voice slipping into hollow pockets of the blaring music. The air is saturated with the scent of sunscreen and anticipation. “No one else can, but you do.”

“It’s easy. I can feel you.” I shut my eyes to let his trademark warmth envelop me, like the tender morning rays of the sun seeping into me, toasting my insides. “You feel like a private beach, warm and serene.”

“The beach,” he remarks softly, strong hand sliding around to the small of my back and splaying.

“And you smell.”

A low chuckle. “I smell?”

“Mhm,” I put my cheek on his chest, right over his slow, solid heartbeat. “You smell like those oranges you’re always eating. Oranges without the tang, no sour, just sweet.”

“Clementines.”

“Yes, those,” I confirm. “Honestly, you stick out like a sore thumb to me. I don’t know how you’ve survived this long. Mortal’s luck?”

“Luck,” he repeats wryly, nose brushing over the shell of my ear. I say his name, whisper it and he shudders with a deep, soul crushing groan, shuts his eyes for a beat, clenches me to him.

Stops. Draws away from me. Lets go. The dancing stops, the closeness.

It’s the same every time. We flirt, we get close, I love it.

He tears it all away. Goes to stone.

Cross clears his throat. “You remember anything?”

His daily check in, his hourly check in, assuages my frustration. Somewhat. He needs to ask it to keep the curse shackled. For as long as the Blackguard is chasing a Phoenix, for as long as there are fragments of information stuck in my brain, I’ll be a lead to Kadmos’s killer.

The balm to his curse.

“Hmm …” I bend close, close enough the space behind me fills with bodies, close enough that he stops me, hand scraping my bare thigh, scattering hot embers up my arms. “I do remember something.”

His eyes darken. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you.” Did the old me lie through her teeth?

Inky black shadows curl around his shoulders, lazily draping over him like a snake on its charmer. “I want to hear it. Whatever it is.”

“I remember you calling me a good girl,” I whisper.

Genuine fear flicks over his features. He falters for a moment, then blinks himself together. “Yes. Right. When I pulled you from the water—”

“I remember wanting you, Cross.”

His breathing stops abruptly. “That’s not a detail you’d remember,” he says it with a teasing lilt, but it’s sad, like I never actually wanted him.

He’s lying.

He doesn’t touch me. It’s like he’s afraid to stir up those intense memories, yank something forward that I might like. Those half touches, teeth on my stomach, fingertips pushing into my throat.

That’s all I yearn for. To feel him again. To experience a fraction of that intensity.

“Come back over here,” I whisper, reeling him into me, or rather me into him.

He bites his lip, shakes his head. Concedes. Steps into me. “You’ve done this before,” he murmurs.

I pause, the weight of the past hanging in the air. Before is a curse on its own. I ask about before and he offers me waffles, and it’s not until I’m reaching for fresh whipped cream that I remember what I’d asked, and then he’s sweeping me off to the pool where I’m getting swimming lessons and then we’re in a cooking class and before is eons away.

“I tried seducing you in a club? Let me guess, you were in a glass cage gyrating, a vision in emerald satin when I stormed in, demanding the hottest thing on the menu.”

Gods Above, he’s handsome when he smirks. “Can you show me an example of gyrating?”

“It requires full body contact.”

“We were in Estonia,” he says, effectively stopping my heart. Sharing. He’s sharing. “It was pouring rain. You had spent most of the night following me around a Christmas market.”

“As one does.”

“As you do.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “We were in an alley because you’d just set fire to the underground fighting ring you entered me into.”

“That’s not true,” I protest lamely.

“I was so captivated by you. Consumed with the woman following me, I blacked out in the ring. Every time you said my name, I blacked out. Gods, sometimes if I just looked at you.” He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbling as he reaches for the precise words. “And when you told me—when you asked me to ruin you, Leni,” he whispers, voice brimming with longing and reverence. “I was sure you were going to kill me.”

His thumb grazes over the sensitive skin on my collarbone where Eleni drips across the bone. “I’d wanted to rip the clothes off you right there,” he confesses, hoarse with desire. “Right then. With blood on my teeth, pain ripping through my body. You were taking care of me, you were so smart and brave and irresistible and I—” He goes quiet, eyes dark, hands falling from my waist.

A bittersweet smile tugs at the side of my mouth. “You said no because you’re the most frustrating gentleman to ever exist?”

His fingers yank at me, pull me tight to him, his breath scours my ear. “I kissed you, Leni. You are too sweet a temptation. I had to know if you tasted half as good as you smelled, had to know what tricks you’d have up your sleeve.”

Our first kiss. “I wish I could remember.”

Darkness shudders in his gaze, and warmth folds around me, indecent and lazy, an old friend welcoming me home.

“I’d do it again, you know.” I make certain to show my unwavering conviction. “I’d give myself up for you, for the guard.” He’s already expressed his opinion on the matter—refusal, denial, forbidding, begging.

I chase a swallow down his throat.

His eyes fixate on my tattoos, each one harboring a story, a memory.

“Tattoos,” he’d said that first morning, smoothing out the rumpled notebook page covered with sketches. Waves and names, scales, a house. I’d blacked out from the pain of the memories. Atlas was there when I woke, grasping my hand tightly, a comforting anchor while Cross watched, vibrating, at the far end of the room, hair wild, eyes terrified, Lev’s hand on his shoulder. The walls had been coated in thick, black shadow.

Cross insists upon them. Tattoos of anything I remember, and anything I never want to forget. The rest, the soft memories, the parts of me that aren’t life and death, he keeps in a journal. Written in a code of his own design, its only key tattooed around my wrist. At night, when I don’t want to go to bed alone, he sits beside me in a chair, knee brushing the comforter, and writes for me.

“You were wearing a bright pink coat,” he says. “and I’m a bastard because even when I close my eyes, I still see what you wore under it.”

“Maybe it’s similar to what I’m wearing underneath this?” I trail my fingers across his chest, wiggle my hips in my short shiny skirt. “I kept picturing the glazed look on your face when I got dressed today.”

He didn’t disappoint.

His head drops into the curve of my neck, nose skimming the pulse throbbing there. He inhales, groans like I’ve stabbed him. “You are my sweetest torture. Please, Leni. For every time I wasn’t, please allow me to be a gentleman.”

Doesn’t he understand that he’s been too much of a gentleman? “Come on. I heard about a place. Let me take you somewhere for once.”

His lip curls at the corner. “You heard about a place?”

“Yes. I hear about a lot of things.”

He chuckles. “Why, my love, does this feel like a trap?”

Because it most certainly is.