Page 105 of Poison Aches

I look up at him so fast, I can barely breathe.

“Tell me, are you afraid, Angel?” he purrs in a dangerously low voice that melts me from within.

Stunned, I stare up at the gorgeous, dreamy, godlike face of my unrequited love. The face that inspires so many fantasies in my head…

“Why would I be?” I whisper. “Am I in danger?”

He closes the tiny gap that was between us and this time when he leans toward me, his fresh breath blows on my face.

His utterly kissable lips are right in front of mine, only a whisper away, but his heavy-set gaze is still piercing my very anatomy.

“Do you feel like you’re in danger?” he whispers.

My knees weaken.

Why do I feel like I’m being caged in when we’re clearly in an open space and I can flee at any time?

Why does it already feel like he has the upper hand here and he’s maneuvering me, pulling the strings, awakening every inch of fear within me?

Not to mention, I feel like I’m running out of breath.

“You’re trembling and backing away,” he says knowingly.

I freeze in my tracks, realizing that’s exactly what my body is doing.

Fuck!

“Do you have something to tell me, Angel?”

The look in his eyes now… the way he’s piercing into me, as if he’s scanning, searching, trying to shatter my armor.

Does he suspect something?

“You haven’t called me that in years,” I whisper hoarsely.

“Well, lately you’ve been reminding me of something,” he says. “Death.”

I stare up at him. “That’s hard to believe… that you’d spare pathetic me a thought.”

“Your tendency to disparage yourself is still in full effect, I see.”

“Or likely it’s just the truth.”

“The truth out of your mouth is as rare and unimaginable as the sky falling…well, that is until I will it to,” he says seriously.

My heart drops to the floor.

“Emmett, I…”

“That guilty expression on your face, the deceit in your eyes, the poison on your tongue…” he trails off, shaking his head. “You speak life to everyone else, but I know you. You’re a fraud, and nothing in you is alive apart from death.”

His voice is low, soft, soothing even, but as an electric shiver zaps down my spine, the alarms start blaring full-on in my head.

Danger.

“Are we dropping all pretenses then?” I straighten my back and stand as tall as I can. “If so, thank God. Your act of civility for the past few years has been making me sick.”

“I learned from an expert,” he counters simply. “After all, you lie with such a sincere face, how could I not learn a thing or two about deception?”

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