Page 48 of Black Hearts
“What made this one different?”
I shut my eyes, only for a moment, and then I turned them to her when I whispered, “You.” Juliet blinked up at me, a look of confusion on her face. “My father had you in the basement at the estate. He made me kill you.” No use in beating around the bush. Might as well get it out there. Maybe it would sate her curiosity and make her go back to bed and leave me to my anxiety and self-loathing.
She took in a sharp breath, and the hand that had touched my arm fell to her side. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
“I couldn’t stop it from happening.” I shook my head once. “Just like at the estate, when he handed you over to your father, I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t even try. I am not a man who often wishes he could change things in the past, but if I had a do-over, I would change the course of that day.”
Juliet’s voice came out quiet, light as a feather, “What’s done is done. You can’t change it. If you keep thinking about it, you’ll never move past it.” She brought a hand to her stomach, where her father had stabbed her. Maybe this advice was for her as well. “I don’t hate you for being so shocked at seeing your father you didn’t stop him. Do I wish you did? Yeah, obviously, but if I hadn’t just found out my own father was a serial killer… if the situations were reversed, I can’t say I would’ve done anything differently.”
She was not the meek, quiet girl she’d been when Jaxon had first brought her to me. Though she spoke softly, there was a strength behind her words. Juliet had come into herself, blossomed right before my eyes, in spite of everything I’d put her through, in spite of finding out the truth about her father. I think I underestimated her in the beginning.
“You should hate me,” I said. “You should hate me for everything I’ve done to you.”
“I don’t.”
“But you should.”
“But I don’t.” Juliet’s voice was firmer this time, and she inched toward me, practically hugging my side. I towered over her frame. She moved in between my side and my arm, bringing both hands up to my bare torso and holding onto me. And then she said something else, something that made the black heart in my chest skip a beat: “I forgive you, Markus.”
I couldn’t say anything to that. Not for a few moments. Her forgiveness… there was a time when it wouldn’t have meant shit to me, a time when I would’ve laughed at her and asked her why she thought I cared about having her forgiveness. A time when I had tried to keep her at arm’s length, wanting to possess her and keep her in a cage of my own making.
And then I fell in love. Or, rather, realized I was neck-deep in it, unable to get away from it. Then everything had changed. The beast had fallen for his beauty, as opposite as they were.
Such as it was with stories like that. The beast was in the muck, on the bottom, content with his lot in life until his beauty came and offered him a hand, free of expectations or favors in return. And, surely, his beauty could have any man she wanted, for it was true: she deserved someone so much better than him. He knew nothing about love, about selfless acts of devotion, but for her, he would learn to try.
I would learn to try.
I dropped the arm from the glass, cupping her cheek and angling up her head to me. The other hand tossed the water bottle aside so it could curl around her lower back and hold her body against mine. My thumb lightly ran over her cheek, and as I gazed down at her, I couldn’t help but be amazed at how everything had changed. Everything. I wanted to frighten this girl into submission, and now look at us. Me, working on a plan to rid ourselves of my father for good. Me, never wanting to hurt her again.
If that made me soft, well… I’d dare anyone to say that to my face. They’d face the consequences of their actions after that, and as a hint: I wouldn’t let them walk away without a limp.
So I said the one thing I’d known this whole time, the thing that had taken me far too long to realize: “I love you, Juliet.” I did. And if this wasn’t what love was, well, then the rest of the world could take their definition of love and shove it.
Her lips curled into a smile, and she responded by moving around my side, to my chest, which she then leaned against, breathing in my bare skin. She let out a soft sigh. The hand that had been on her cheek had moved back into her hair, and we simply stood like that for a while, wrapped up in each other, in this strange new part of our lives.
I didn’t want anyone else. I just wanted this girl. This girl that was my opposite, the one who dared to stand up to me when she had nothing but her willpower to back her up. The girl who I’d hurt time and time again, and yet she chose to remain, to stay, to choose me.
I’d done nothing in my life to deserve this, truly. To deserve her.
“I didn’t know what love was, years ago,” she whispered against my chest, “but now I think I loved you ever since I saw you at the masquerade party.” Her hands were flat on my stomach, the touch of them so light they gave me a chill.
Or maybe that was because the more she touched me, the more I wanted to push her against this window and have her right here, right now. It grew harder and harder to stand there and hold her and not let my lower half call the shots. What could I say? She brought it out of me.
That masquerade party was vivid in my brain, if only because of seeing her. Oh, I’d seen pictures. I’d watched her grow up from afar, but that night had been the moment when everything had turned real, that night had been the final straw to me, so to speak. I’d known then I had to have her, and that was why I’d waited another three years. It was so much easier to force myself to be patient when she wasn’t living under the same roof as me.
Patience, believe it or not, was an aspect of self-control, and until Juliet moved into the estate, I’d had loads of it.
Not so much anymore.
The hand in her hair tightened a bit, pulling her head off my chest. Juliet let out a gasp at the sudden forceful movement, but she didn’t resist. She never did. In the beginning, she might’ve tried in a desperate attempt to keep her innocence, be the girl Fred had taught her to be, but the chemistry between us was undeniable. The fire, the heat, the passion; it was not something you could fake.
“I think,” I spoke, my voice low and deadly, “there’s been enough talking tonight, don’t you?” Certain parts of me had begun to harden the moment she’d started touching me, and holding her body against mine had only further fueled the fire and fanned the flames.
I said nothing else, the hand in her hair tugging down, pulling her entire frame low. Juliet sunk with my direction, knowing what I had in mind. It’d been a long, long time since I’d felt those soft lips wrapped around my cock and that wet tongue licking every bit of precum off my tip. I wanted to fuck that beautiful mouth and pretend, just for tonight, that we were back at the estate and everything was as it should be, that I’d never let her go and she hadn’t nearly died.
I couldn’t think about losing her. I couldn’t let myself linger on the fact that if the others hadn’t acted in my place, Juliet would’ve been gone from this world.
Juliet lowered to her knees, but I didn’t loosen my grip on her hair. My cock twitched beneath my pants, and its hardness only grew when she went for the waistband. No belt, no button, no zipper. Just elastic that she had to work to tug down, and as the fabric moved down, my hard cock bent with it—but the moment those pants were passed, it sprung back up, ready to be serviced.
