CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I felt Blue — Naya — tense.

I felt her sharp intake.

Felt her heartbreak in my chest.

I felt her pain even before I saw it in her eyes.

"Oh." And that single, heartbroken whisper nearly destroyed me.

The weight of her in my lap shifted. I could feel her trying to get off. Her attempts to escape me only fueled my frustrations.

I pulled her back to me. Harder than I meant. Her ass collided with my hard thighs and she cried out, but I was desperate and frantic even as anger clouded everything when I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me.

"Did you not hear anything I told you?" I growled with a serrated lacing of desperation around the edges. "Women I try to marry fucking die, Blue. They die. Horribly and painfully. I can't fucking lose you. Don't you understand that? I could marry and lose every woman on the planet, it would mean nothing, but if I lost you..." my fingers loosened. They slid off her chin to brush the solitary tear that slipped down her cheek. "Baby, if I fucking lost you, I would burn this fucking place to the ground with me in it."

"So, what are you going to do?" she asked softly.

She wasn't struggling, I noted. She wasn't trying to get away, but she wasn't leaning into me like she had been.

It was better that way, I told myself. She would definitely get up after I told her.

"Vance found someone," I murmured. "We're going to meet at the courthouse tomorrow."

Her choked exhale was the sound of someone getting speared through the heart with a rusty dagger.

"You're getting married tomorrow?" she whispered at last.

"Yes."

She slid unsteadily out of my lap, and I didn't stop her.

I couldn't trust myself to. If I touched her, if I went anywhere near her, I would fall to my knees and beg her to marry me instead and I couldn't. I fucking couldn't. I would carve my own heart out before being the reason the house took her.

"I have to," I told her.

"I understand," she said to the floor, edging back, gripping the desk to support her escape from me. "I ... I suppose that means I should be on my way."

I was out of my chair and in front of her before I could stop myself.

I was gripping her, arms locked around her waist, crushing her against me even as she struggled.

"No!" I snarled.

Eyes wet with tears and burning with rage shot up to mine. "You want me to stay and watch you marry another woman? Then what?"

"Then nothing, damn it! It wouldn't be real," I tried to explain. "It's just for the will."

She started to shake her head, but stopped herself and with a firm jerk, broke herself free of me. "I'm tired." She made it to the other side of the desk, putting an ocean between us. "I don't think I feel up to going to breakfast tomorrow so, you should head straight to where you're needed." Once cleared, she moved with wide strides to the door. "Good night, Mr. Lacroix," she called over her shoulder without stopping.

I lay awake that night, staring at the wall dividing me from the only woman I had ever truly loved with every shredded piece of my broken soul and blackened heart. I'd been staring for so long that the paisley gray was beginning to shift and congeal against the black. The clouds had covered and revealed the fingernail sliver of moon four times. The house had groaned and settled, and still, I watched the wall. Every fiber, every molecule in my body tense for even the slightest noise.

I wanted to blame Vance, but he was doing his job. He had saved Lacroix House. He had found a woman willing to marry the man with the demons. I hadn't even asked her name. Not her age. I knew nothing, except she would be at the courthouse at nine AM sharp.

Then I would bring her to her new home where she would ultimately die.

At least Ronin wouldn't get his hands on the house, I mused miserably. At least it wouldn't be Naya.

There was no guilt in the thought. This faceless, nameless girl meant nothing to me, nor would she ever. Her death wouldn't destroy me.

I pushed back the blanket and slid my legs over the edge of the mattress. The icy floor brushed my feet as I crossed to the windows and peered out at the night. The rain. The miles of wet, bottomless swamps full of bodies, haunted gardens and uncharted wilderness. And that was only the tip of the problem.

Floor boards groaned behind me and I spun, heart leaping at the thought of Naya coming to me. But the room sat in murky darkness. The air still. I began to take a breath when a shadow shifted past the door, blocking the light underneath in quick motion. Too quick to be Cyrus. Too quiet to be a guard on patrol.

She's running,was my thought as I darted to the door and threw it open just in time to see her unbound locks sweep around the corner.

"Blue!"

I sprinted after her, chasing her down the twisting corridor towards the stairs that took Elena.

"Blue! Stop!"

Her head snapped over her shoulder, eyes big and frightened in the dusty gloom. The pale light of the moon glistened off the pale sheet of satin draped over her as she pumped harder to get away from me.

My cry came too late when she didn't see the stones. The layers of solid granite plunged into darkness until she was sliding. Arms spinning as she tried to catch something and only snatching air as she slipped and plummeted into the nothing below.

"Naya!"

My scream tore me upright in my bed, cold sweat thick on my skin. Soaking the sheets. My breathing gutted every shred of my sanity as I stared at the windows overlooking the yard and the sliver of moonlight peeking through the clouds. I wheezed. Hands shaking. I wiped them across the back of my eyes.

"What's wrong?"

My already terrorized heart spiked at the soft voice from the spot beside me. I turned my head to find Naya's golden locks spilling across the pillow, a stark contrast to the dark navy silk. Her back was to me but I would have recognized her shape anywhere

I expelled the knot in my chest and reached for her. Needing to feel her warm and alive in my arms.

"Fuck, baby," I practically wept, gathering her back against my chest. I nuzzled the back of her warm neck. Breathed her soft scent. "You came back."

She shifted. Turning her body to mine and the clouds took that moment to sweep apart. Grimy, yellow light shattered the glass and pooled like curdled milk into the hollow sockets and widening jaw unhinging into a silent scream as she writhed. Her body twisting. Skin peeling off bleached bones and decaying to dust in my arms.

My scream was long as I bolted up a second time. It burned in my throat and bled together with the roar in my ears. I could barely feel my limbs when I threw myself from the bed and thundered to the door. It nearly came off the hinges when I tore it open and pounded to the room next door.

Naya jumped when I barged in without knocking. She shot out of the chair she'd been sitting in by the window, a tiny, pale figure with tears streaking her face and pain in her eyes even as they snapped up to me.

"Thoran?" Her hoarse croak shattered what little restraint I had as I marched to where she stood. "What—?"

I grabbed her and pulled her up over my shoulder, ignoring the soft shimmer of silk catching the light, matching my dream exactly.

Not waiting for my brain to point out why this was such a bad idea, I stalked with her back into my room. Back to my bed.

I didn't say a word when dropping her onto the mattress. Not a word when I dragged her into my arms, my chest. I didn't trust the madness still too fresh in my mind as I pressed my clammy face into her chest and listened to the patter of her heart.

"This is your bed now," I breathed into her skin. "I need you here."

Her arms started to lift as if to wrap around me but stopped. I tightened mine.

"I don't think your wife will like that." I didn't miss the thickness. The broken quiver.

I squeezed my eyes closed, already knowing I was about to fuck myself. My dreams had been a very clear warning. The house was telling me to stop. To push her away.

To free her.

Otherwise, I was condemning her to death and dust.

"Marry me."

She stilled beneath me even as her heart jumped against my cheek. "What?"

I forced my head up to see her face. The face my sanity needed every morning and night. The face that meant fucking too much given how short a time I'd known it.

I was so fucking in love with this woman it fucking hurt to breathe.

"Marry me, Naya."

Her lips parted in surprise. "But you said..."

I balled my fists into the mattress to keep from shaking her. "I know what I said. If I were a stronger man, you'd already be a million miles from here. I wouldn't be waking in the dead of night scared out of my fucking mind because I'm so fucking scared of losing you, I can't think straight." I stopped to catch my breath. To find my footing when everything kept crumbling around me. "But if you fucking die on me ... if you fucking leave me, baby, God help you because I will find you in the afterlife and I will put you over my knee and I will get us both thrown out of heaven." Naya cracked a tiny smile shaky with the tears streaming down her temples into her hairline. "Fucking promise me. Fucking promise. Swear you won't..."

I didn't know what I was asking.

Not to die?

Not to leave me?

Both?

"I can't leave," she whispered. Her cool fingers touched my face. My lips. "I was going to. It was all I thought about after leaving the office earlier. I didn't want to be here when you brought another woman home. I didn't want to watch you with her. But..." she bit the corner of her lip and lowered her lashes. "The thought of never seeing you again..." Her eyes shone bright as fresh tears spilled. "I don't have to promise, Thoran, because I can't leave you."

I kissed her.

I tasted her sweet mouth and her salty tears. I devoured her moan and the whisper of my name.

I bent her into me, into my chest and around my body as I moved to press her into the mattress. Her knees parted and I found my home between them.

"What do you say, love?" I panted into the skin of her face as I broke the kiss and moved across her jaw.

Naya gasped and arched her spine. Her head fell back against the pillow as I traveled my way south.

"About what?" she said, threading her fingers into my hair and holding me to her as I nipped on her pulse with my teeth.

"Marry me," I repeated, running the tip of my tongue along the line of her collarbone and dipping into the hollow in the middle.

Naya sighed. "I have to think about it."

I stilled.

My head jerked up to find her watching me with big, twinkling eyes.

Mine narrowed even as my lips threatened to twitch at her teasing. "Is that right?" I pressed my hard cock into her mound and rocked until her smile slipped and she gasped my name. "That's unfortunate because the only person getting my cock in their pussy is the one who says yes."

My little temptress bit her lip and peered at me through her thick lashes. "Maybe I need to be convinced."

Fuck! This woman.

I bared my teeth in a grin. "Oh, with pleasure, sweetheart." I twisted my hands into the satin neckline of her slip. With one, hard jerk, I tore it down the front, baring her perfect breasts. "By the time I'm finished with you, you'll do anything I ask."