Chapter Thirty Aria

Chapter Thirty

Aria

Night had fallen an hour ago. I’d slept for most of the afternoon, finding sanctuary in Tearsith, resting in the thick grasses, held in the cool breeze that whispered over my skin, my mind lulled by the babbling brook that sang to the meadow.

Pax sat on the very end of the bed now, keeping several feet between us, watching me carefully where I was propped on a pillow against the headboard. I knew he’d done it the entire time that I’d slept. Even within the boundaries of Tearsith, I’d sworn I could feel his eyes on me as he kept guard.

“Are you sure you can’t eat any more?” His voice was a rumble as he gestured to the fast-food container that sat on the nightstand.

“No, if I ate another bite I would burst.”

He’d called in tacos for delivery, and they were the best thing I’d eaten in days, even though I’d only managed to get down two of the three.

“You need to keep up your strength.”

“I am, I promise.” Except I had little of it then.

Strength.

My limbs felt as if they were steel poles, immoveable and heavy, and the fatigue made me sluggish and slow, even though I felt a million times better than I had when I’d fallen asleep shortly after Pax had tended to my wound, then covered me in a fresh T-shirt.

His care had been stark.

His tenderness at odds with the ferocity that vibrated beneath his skin.

And his understanding ... It was there, though I knew it was underscored with his own fear of the choices I had made, as if he wished he could protect me from who I was but knew it would be absolutely wrong to try to stop me.

It made it really difficult when I didn’t understand any of this, either. The burn on my chest plagued me.

How I could have sustained it.

What it meant.

Pax pushed from the bed and came over to gather the container and my napkin. Gray, tumultuous eyes flicked toward me every few seconds, like he was worried I might disappear.

“You don’t have to take care of me like this,” I told him.

I shivered when his fingertips were suddenly on my face and running down my jaw. “Yes, I do.”

Our connection shimmered. Brighter than ever, though it glowed with a current of dark.

Of a need that whispered of our desolation.

We were up against the impossible.

Hunted.

Forbidden.

My spirit stirred against it.

In a revolt that shouted that was what was really impossible.

Not loving this man.

How could I not? Not when he’d been everything to me for my entire life.

“Thank you.”

His head barely shook, his voice shards as he tossed everything into a plastic sack. “I would do anything for you, Aria. And I need you to know that you don’t need to lie to me the way you did. I’ll support you no matter what. I understand your need to protect those around you, so please do it with me at your side.”

My nod was shaky. “Okay.”

He turned, his hewn, sinewy body moving through the small space. He tossed the used paper bag inside the small trash bin; then he edged over to the window and checked outside again.

I couldn’t look away as he moved through the confined walls within the room.

He wore a tight black tee that stretched across his shoulders and back, the muscles defined and rippling. The tattoos seemed to come alive over his scarred flesh, visions of darkness that crawled and slithered with each movement he made.

My throat went dry.

He seemed to waver before he finally turned back to me. Hesitation brimmed in the savage lines of his face. Uncertainty of where we were supposed to go from there.

“Will you lie with me?” I whispered into the tension that strained between us.

“Aria . . .”

It was a warning.

Pain.

Need.

This confusion of who we were meant to be.

“Please.”

Reluctance radiated from him before he blew out a sigh of submission. My stare was locked on him as he slowly edged around the opposite side of the bed. He was still in his jeans, though his feet were bare when he climbed onto the mattress.

It dipped beneath his weight, and his spirit thrashed in the night.

I could feel it—like it was mine.

Flailing.

Pleading.

Desperate.

And I wondered if perhaps we shared a piece of each other the way that mother and son had earlier today. Their spirits bonded for eternity.

Or maybe what Pax and I shared was entirely different.

Because my stomach tightened in an anticipation I’d never felt.

Chills skated across my skin as he carefully scooted closer. It felt as if there wasn’t enough oxygen yet I could finally breathe.

I shifted on my pillow so that I was lying on my side, and those eyes were on me as he rolled to his, too. Facing me, he wound his arms around my waist and pulled me against him.

A wave of energy slammed into us.

A riptide that kicked our feet out from under us.

No foundation but for the one we found in the other.

Shakily, I exhaled, and Pax pulled me even closer.

Close enough that my head rested on his biceps, and I could hear the thunderous pounding of his heart even though there were still at least six inches of space separating us. His breaths were shallow, as if he were terrified of inhaling too deeply, though it was my name on his lips when he whispered, “Aria.”

A muted glow from the bathroom filtered into the room and played like temptation over his face.

The man was half-shadow.

Half-light.

A darkness existed in him, so much deeper than I’d expected when I’d imagined him for all those years, but somehow, it still felt expected.

As if I’d known this piece of him all along.

With trembling fingers, I reached out and ran them along a scar hidden beneath a serpent on the left side of his neck. “Tell me about your family. I want to know you.”

Pax flinched. “I don’t think I need to bore you with those details, Aria.”

No question, boring me wasn’t his concern.

I saw the demons lap in his eyes, the icy gray swirling with hurt and hate.

“If you knew the amount of time I spent wondering what you were doing in the day, Pax, where you were, who you were with, if you were happy—then you’d know there is zero chance of me getting bored.”

The pad of his thumb ran the length of my jaw.

Tentatively.

Tenderly.

Affection softened his gaze. “I spent every second thinking of you, too. Worried about you. Wondering if your family took care of you. If they loved you. If you were safe.”

“Were you?” I hedged it on a whisper. “Were you safe and loved?”

With the few things he’d admitted, I knew well enough that he was not. Never before had I wanted to be the one who was there to provide everything he’d lacked more than right then.

His laugh was hollow. “No, Aria, I wasn’t safe and loved.”

Sorrow billowed. His and mine.

He wavered for a moment before his tongue stroked out to wet his dried lips. “From the beginning, my father thought I was a freak. Of course, I can’t remember, when I was really young, what he might have thought the first time he looked at me, but I can only imagine it was disgust.”

Grief fisted my heart, and I set my hand on his cheek. My thumb brushed along the defined angle as I stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

His voice hitched in pain. “I had four brothers, two older and two younger, and my father never let me forget that I was different from them. He did his best to beat it out of me, to whip his freak son into shape. My mother was too busy with the others to give a shit.”

Horror lanced through my being, and tears stung my eyes. “That breaks my heart.”

His shoulder shrugged beneath my cheek, like it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t make me sick. Like the same protectiveness Pax watched me with didn’t well inside me for him. “For a lot of years, the blows were enough to make me think there was something wrong with me. The older I grew, the more I thought I had to be fucking deranged. Crazy. Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt the same disgust my father felt when he looked at me.”

His voice lowered to a wisp. “But in the end, even if I was crazy? Insane? None of that mattered if it meant I got to see you night after night.”

“I hate them for you.” It was true. I’d never felt that emotion as strongly as I did right then.

Pax cracked a smirk. “Probably about as much as I hate your parents for you.”

My head shook.

But mine weren’t cruel.

My father might have made mistakes, but I knew he made them out of fear. Out of his love and hope for me.

Not because he was repulsed.

Pax’s fingers fluttered through my hair. “I finally skipped out when I was fifteen. Left home and hitchhiked across the country. No destination in mind other than getting away, because I couldn’t take living under their roof for a second longer.”

Hesitation darkened his features, and his voice grew thin, threaded with a warning. “I might have escaped them, but it’d already changed me. It carved out something ugly inside me, and it left a hole that opened me up to the depraved.”

His words were gravel, and I knew he was leading me back to the confession he’d made at the store earlier today.

A frown furrowed my brow, and my attention jumped all over his face like I might be uncovering every one of his secrets. “What exactly did you mean earlier? When you told me about the money? You ... look for people doing wrong during the day?”

Pax exhaled a rush of heated air, and he fiddled with a lock of my hair. “I just figured if I was chosen for this life? To fight in Faydor? Why wouldn’t I be fighting the same evils during the day?”

Uncertainty barreled through me, and I was sure he read it in my expression. “So you look for evil?”

“Believe me, Aria, I don’t have to look that hard. It’s all around us.”

“How do you know?”

His fierce brow pinched, and those eyes watched me through the shadows that danced in the room. “I don’t think it’s quite like what you experience ... the voices you hear. The desperation. The hopelessness. And I sure as hell can’t see a Kruen when I touch someone. But I can feel it ... the pure wickedness. I can sense it when someone has fully given themselves over. I know when there’s no good left.”

A tremor rocked through my body, and I could feel the grim foreboding that radiated from his being.

“And when there’s no good left in them ... you ... kill them?” I tripped over the question, and my mind pitched back to the man who’d attacked us in our last motel.

A man who was dead because Pax had been protecting us.

But I knew, by the dimming in his eyes, that what he typically did was different.

“Yes.” The single word was a jagged stone. There was regret in his voice, though it lacked any true remorse. Silence curled around us like the serpent that slithered up his neck as I tried to orient myself to his confession. To the reality of who he was when he walked through the day.

“Are you scared of me?” His question whipped through the tension.

Was I?

I reached up and smoothed out the harsh, defiant dent that furrowed his brow. “Am I afraid, Pax? Yes. I’m afraid of what you do. Of the position you put yourself in. Of the risks you take. But am I afraid of you? No. We both defend this world in the way we’ve been called to do.”

“You think the blood on my hands is a calling?” The spite that ripped from his mouth wasn’t directed at me but rather at himself.

“When you do it, is it to stop them from hurting someone else?”

His jaw clenched. “Always, Aria, always. Because the only thing these monsters have in mind is destroying. Ruining. I just see to it that I ruin them first.”

I gathered the hand of the fingers that had been playing through my hair, and I brought his palm to the ravaging on my chest. Right over the spot where I’d been struck. “Then yes, I think it’s a calling.”

Pax drew me closer. The heat of his hand blazed into my flesh, his voice gruff when he murmured, “Because you’re so good you can’t see anything else.”

“You’re wrong, Pax. I see you. You’re the only person I’ve ever really known. I might not have known all the details, but I know your heart. And I know your soul.”

“Aria.” My name murmured from between his lips, and his hand wound in my hair. A shiver streaked down my spine as he plastered me against the powerful lines of his lean, packed body, his arms ruthless and steady.

Heat flamed where we were connected, and my stomach tightened into a fist, a throb that pleaded between us like our own, desperate song.

He groaned as he pulled me even closer. Every inch of his body was sealed against mine, hard and raging, keening as our spirits begged.

He stared at me. Stared at me in torment and need, and I whispered, “Please.”

A pained sound left him before he snapped, and his mouth was on mine.

I gasped at the connection. At the flash of light that burst behind my eyes.

Pleasure rushed, so close to overwhelming I couldn’t see, and I was washed in a swell of lightheadedness.

The kiss was slow and powerful. His soft, red lips moving over mine. He tasted of dreams and possibility. Of need and desperation.

I whimpered and fisted my hand in the fabric of his shirt and begged again, “Please. I need you.”

A groan reverberated deep in his chest, and he rolled me onto my back as he shifted to lie on top of me. He kept his weight on his elbows, though he pressed himself against me where he was wedged between my thighs.

His body was a flame that incinerated.

With the way my body burned, I knew there’d be nothing left of me but ash.

“Aria,” he whispered at my lips before he deepened the kiss and stroked his tongue into the well of my mouth. I kissed him back, just as desperately, our tongues twining and twisting.

Tiny bolts of bliss streaked through my veins.

I clawed at his back, my nails eager and raking as he barely began to move, rubbing himself against my center.

I swore lightning struck in the middle of me.

A crackle of energy that pulsed.

“Oh God,” I begged, wanting more. Wanting it all. “Pax, please. Take me.”

Need vibrated through him, and he pulled me so close against him I was sure that we could become one, though he groaned and broke the kiss.

He dropped his forehead to mine, and heavy pants ripped from his chest.

“Fuck,” he cursed. “Fuck.”

He started to scramble away, but I grabbed for him, my arms looped around his neck as I murmured, “Stay. Just stay.”

Every muscle in his body was coiled in restraint. In shame. A sigh toppled from him as he shifted to bring us both to our sides, face-to-face and breath-to-breath.

My entire being was still shimmering, a fluttery need burning in my belly.

“I’m so sorry,” he rumbled.

My head barely shook as I reached out and touched his cheek. “I’m not. You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to kiss me. I’ve imagined it so many times, but this? This is something I will carry with me for my entire life.”

He exhaled and wrapped me up again, pulling me close. So close that I could feel every jagged beat of his heart.

He pressed his lips to my forehead and urged, “Go to sleep, Aria, and tomorrow we’ll forget I was the bastard who touched you like this.”

The night pressed in around us, and the exhaustion sucked me under, the safety of his hold lulling me toward the respite I could no longer resist.

With Pax’s aura holding me fast, I drifted and floated.

Then lights flashed before I flew.