Page 80 of Bite Marks & Broken Hearts

“We’ll go in the evening, obviously,” he added quickly. “When the sun’s setting. And if we go in Braymore, the weather’s always shit there anyway.”

He settled back down against me, his chest warm against my back. Reality pressed heavily on my shoulders. Killigrew Street consumed every moment of my existence. The organisation couldn’t run itself—between managing supernatural threats, keeping the peace between the wolf packs, maintaining our network of contacts… There was barely time to think, let alone plan holidays to Ireland.

And wasn’t that the crux of it? I was supposed to be protecting him, not indulging in romantic fantasies about sunset sailing. Each of Flynn’s exhalations tickling my neck should have been a reminder of my failing, rather than this dangerous, delicious respite I couldn’t seem to resist.

“Sounds wonderful,” I said to placate him. “I’m sure I’ll be in safe hands with you at the helm.”

I shouldn’t have encouraged it. He was twenty-five, a child really, with all the bright-eyed optimism that came with youth—still believing in possibilities where I saw only obstacles. Still viewing the world as an adventure rather than the dangerous game of chess it was.

But logic crumbled to dust with his chest pressed up against my back, his arm wrapped around me, heavy as an anchor.

He’ll be gone soon, to become another fading memory. Enjoy his fleeting warmth while you can.

Flynn fell quiet then, his breathing evening out against my neck. For a moment, I thought he might have drifted off to sleep. But then his voice came again, soft and hesitant.

“Do you remember your mother? Your family?”

“No.” The word came out oddly sharp. “I know some from my diaries, which I kept sporadically during my human years. I had an older brother who died of disease, and… a younger sister. Magdalena.”

When was the last time I’d spoken her name aloud? The sound of it felt foreign on my tongue.

In my office, locked in an ornate chest that had survived hundreds of moves and a dozen wars, lay those early diaries—leather-bound volumes documenting my journey to Inquisitor, then to the monster I became. The time was approaching to read them again. Soon, I would have tounfold those brittle pages and relive it all. Because I didn’t deserve the mercy of forgetting.

Flynn’s hand stilled in my hair. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

I caught his wrist before he could pull away entirely. “It’s fine.”

He paused before he asked, tentatively, “Onemore question?”

I tried not to sigh. “I can guess what it is.” He wanted to know about my turning. Everyone did, eventually. The morbid curiosity of how one becomes a vampire. But the memory of my sire’s face flickered through my mind like a shadow, and I couldn’t bear to speak of it. Not now, not when Flynn’s radiance had finally quieted the darkness inside me. “But it’ll be dawn soon. It can wait for another night.” I caught myself too late, realising the implication. “I mean, another time.”

“The question was just…” Flynn’s arm tightened around me. “Are you going to ghost me?”

“What?”

“I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone?”

“Well, I’m already dead, aren’t I? Though I suppose vampires are an upgrade compared to ghosts—all the haunting, none of the walking through walls.”

Flynn’s answering laugh was barely more than a breath against my neck. His grip remained firm, as if he could physically prevent me from disappearing. Within minutes, his breathing deepened and evened out as sleep claimed him.

As I lay there, surrounded by his warmth, I couldn’t keep thoughts of my sire at bay. Of the way he’d corrupted me, isolated me from my family, twisted my faith until I couldn’t recognise myself. The way he’d used my position in the Inquisition, my desperate need to prove myself worthy, to manipulate me into killing my own sister.

Some evils should stay buried in the past where they belonged. Flynn didn’t need to know about the priest who’d destroyed everything I was, whose obsession with me led him to turn me into this creature of darkness without my consent. Flynn had enough darkness in his life already—he didn’t need mine as well.

I twisted carefully, not wanting to wake him as I repositioned us. Now he lay on his back, and I rested my head against his chest, letting the steady thrum of his heartbeat fill my senses. Each beat called to me—but for once, that call wasn’t tied to hunger. Instead, it spoke of comfort, of connection.

The little puffs of Flynn’s exhales ghosted across my skin like butterfly wings, delicate and precious. I pressed my palm to his chest, to find the skin there slightly cooler than the rest of him. The demon’s mark. My jaw clenched.

I should have attempted to sleep—dawn approached, and with it my body’s natural inclination to rest—but I couldn’t bear to waste these precious hours unconscious. Instead, I committed every detail to memory: the rise and fall of his chest, the softness of his skin, the way his fingers had curled loosely in sleep.

Running the back of my knuckles over his face, I traced the curve of his cheekbone, the slope of his nose, the slight part of his lips. He looked so young in sleep, so defenseless. Sohuman.

“My sweet angel,” I whispered, the endearment slipping out of me from a hidden corner. “Mi amor.”

Morning would come, and too soon. But for now, I would enjoy this stolen pleasure. I would imagine what it would be like to have him in my arms every night, to measure eternity in the rhythm of his breathing.

15

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