Page 48 of Feed Your Fiends

“I need you,” I breathe finally. “Just let me look at you. If I can look at you…at your green eyes that are alive and...”

Understanding slips into her eyes as she holds my gaze steady. Her lashes rustle in the wind drifting through the cracked door, her pupils widening as she focuses on me in the dark. Those green eyes are filled with liquid. Filled with a soul.

Alive.

She’s alive and here with me.

I lick my lips and stare at her full ones that part ever so slightly. I just need to kiss her and feel her breath again.

I snake my fingers into her hair and tip her head back, and she lets me. She lets me melt into her, massaging her tongue against mine, and when I tug her hair, she leans back, granting me more access. More of her.

When we pull away, I savour her wetness still on my lips. My dove. She’s here. I just have to get her home. Haven’t I been waiting for this moment for days? Weeks. Months.Years.

I tear myself away from her and walk around to the driver’s side with numb legs. When I slip behind the wheel, time freezes again.

Suddenly, the night’s back, and I can hear more than the club's music and drunk patrons on the sidewalk.

I can hearher. Her laboured breathing doesn’t last for more than a few seconds.

Hrssh. Hrssh…the death rattle.

No, Gant. Don’t go,my inner voice chants.The past is the past. Stay in the present.

But the blood and glass…

So much shimmery blood.

A click brings me back to reality, and when I glance over to see what caused it, Elle’s gone, darting through the darkness and into the surrounding wood on a hobble.

Elle

I can’t do this.

“Make him feel your wrath. Make it feel real. Then, when the moment’s just right, break and run into his arms. He’ll believe it because he’ll think he’s suffered enough. Make him comfortable. Slowly. Get close. Worm your way into his inner circle. Meet his family. Get the proof, then get out,”Rin’s coaching pounds in my ears as sheer agony pools in my feet as I dart through the freezing forest.

My feet. They’re the only things I should care about, and yet I pound them harder against the pavement until the adrenaline rush from seconds before has me crumpling to my knees.

Seeing him. Smelling him. Tasting him. Feeling his warm tongue against mine. I’d melted because I’d wanted him, ferally. Everything he’d done in that moment evaporated over a stupid kiss. Imagine if I’d gone with him? If I slid into his penthouse. Into his arms. Into his bed.

I can’t be this cold-hearted femme fatale the plan requires. Not yet. No matter how desperately I want to be like Rin in this singular instance. I don’t trust myself.

My lungs and nose burn alongside my watering eyes as anger courses through my brain because my logic is evaporating, and sheer patheticness is taking over. Hadn’t I said I was all cried out? It’s not fair. I laid in that fucking hospital bed and gave myself three days of self-pity, of longing for a love that never was. I gave myself that time. It’s over. I won’t let those thoughts come rushing back just because someone pressed their lips against mine.

Someone,Gant’s voice rings in my ear.Am I someone to you now?

He ensured that the wound wouldn’t heal even if it closed. Gant Auclair will always be a dull ache in my heart and that makes me angrier, more determined to get the fuck away from him until I sever the emotional hold he has over me.

He’s talented. Rich. The world is at his fingertips, and what’s at mine? Tears roll down my nose as I look at my own fingertips, smeared with the earthy forest floor.

Nothing. Fucking nothing.

Unless I change things.

The money,Rin hisses. Without it, you can’t level the playing field. You can’t win. Go back and get that money. Our money.

But I can’t. Not tonight. Not until I can trust myself enough to be around him without crumbling. I’m not leaving Beaulieu, so avoiding him is inevitable. But just for tonight… I can’t.

I gaze around and try to get my bearings.Where the fuck am I?

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