Page 29 of Cursed Lifeline

I swallow hard and try to deny the truth.

"What service can someone like you ever be to the likes of me?" I snarl.

"We both want to prevent the inevitable," she shrugs. "I can offer you the chance to stop what you want. For a price."

A price?

My heart warns it's not worth it. My head warns it's the quickest way to die. But my soul…

My soul has been lost for eternity. Conscious damned as well, I take a deep breath and ask, "What fucking price?"

Eleven

Felix

song: can’t help falling in love | Tommee Profit & Brooke

When I return to France,I find Esme sitting on a bench, reading a book, under a flowering magnolia tree. Drawn to her as if pulled on a twisted, fated wire, I stand nearby in the low-lying fog on a dreary October morning and wistfully study her. The blossoms from the tree coat the garden’s floor in their breathtaking rose, pink hue. A crisp breeze blows past, and petals scatter and fall to the ground like bewitched snow. They dance magically in the air, twisting and twirling like pixies as they make their enchanted fall to the ground around us. Despite the warring emotions I’ve battled while traveling back to her, my heart warms at the sight.

That is, until I see her raise her hand to her mouth, a sorrowful shiver rushes down her spine, and a tiny sob escapes her lips.

Misting to her side, I stand behind her, heart constricted, hands shaking. My body calms only when I take a deep inhale of her heavenly scent.

Sweet. Enticing. Bewitching.

She smells of enchanting, forbidden wishes mixed distressingly with eternal torment and regret.

Rubbing my fingers together behind my back, I conjure a red rose from my mother’s garden back home and gently, quietly reach around Esme and place it between the pages of her book.

She startles. A gasp falls from her lips as she turns and slightly jolts back across the bench in fear.

“Felix,” she breathes in relief when she realizes it’s me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you for another fortnight.”

The tear that fell while she was reading still coats her cheek. Raising my hand, I smile as I gently wipe her sadness away. She shivers from my touch as my eyes fall to her lips.

“Don’t tell me you missed me?” I tease.

She blushes. The rush of the blood in her veins causes my senses to heighten. A groan escapes my lips as her scent turns lethal.Makes me feral.

“Would it be a crime if I say I did?”

Taking a step around the side of the bench, I kneel in front of her, take both her hands in mine, and whisper, “Not if you permit me to admit that I missed you, too. Only,missisn’t a strong enough word to convey the way I’ve felt since I was last in your presence.”

Her breaths come faster as I raise her gloved palms to my lips. My eyes hold hers as I place a tender kiss on the top of her lace-covered knuckles. She wets her lips. Hesitance hangs in her eyes.

As my hopeful gaze locks on hers, I say, “Deliriously yearned for, desperately craved, painfully ached to be back by your side. That’s how it felt not breathing the same air as you these last few weeks, Esme.”

Rising quickly before she can respond, I sit at her side and pull her close. Her heated breaths rush against my lips and warm my mouth, begging me to close the distance and kiss her. Grasping the last ounce of my restraint, my face falls to her neck. I inhale her addictive essence and murmur against her skin, “Drowning in my hunger for you is an obsessive habit I fear I’ll never be strong enough to break.”

Placing a kiss against her delicate flesh, her grip tightens around my biceps as her head gently falls back. Arching into me, she gives me complete access to what she should be guarding most.

Her life.

Though I know I should put some distance between us, like a fiend, I take as much as I can without breaking control and brush my lips against her skin, tasting, sucking, savoring her until a light moan escapes her lips. Kissing a trail to her mouth, my eyes find hers, and the same fervor, greed, and thirst I feel for her stares back at me in her mesmerizing blue eyes.

Before one of us gets too carried away, I force myself to release her from my hold and put some distance between us.

Clearing my throat, I manage to ask, “What are you reading?”

---