Page 26 of A Trap So Flawless

Should have fucking known she’d bring the sun with her.

I’m half-blinded. Starved for light and slayed by it at the exact same time.

“It’s beautiful here,” she admits in a low voice as we pass under the Fusilier’s Arch, a great stone entrance to St. Stephen’s green. Trees spring up all around us, like a forest that’s somehow been forgotten in the middle of the city.

You’re beautiful here.

I would have sworn that I hadn’t – could never have – forgotten how terribly beautiful she is. But having her here in my reality is an acrid reminder that half-dreams and tortured sessions of longing don’t do her any sort of justice. Even with her newly blonde hair in a loosely-tied mess, no makeup on her heart-shaped face, she’s the most painfully perfect thing I’ve ever been witness to in my entire putrid fucking life.

“Almost makes me want to forgive you for bringing me here against my will,” she goes on, tipping her head back to admire the tree branches and leaves above while I admire the dappled caress of light on her face.

“Never asked for your forgiveness.”

“Your kind never does.”

“My kind?” I stop walking and grab her hand, pulling her into the shadowy place behind the thick trunk of an ancient sycamore tree. The trunk is easily twice the span of Valentina’s shoulders as she leans back against it and crosses her arms over her chest. Tourists and photographers mill along the paths, but I ignore them, solely focused on Valentina.

“Your kind. The kind of man you are,” she explains, annoyed, like I’m an errant child who should understand this by now. “You’re all the same. You and my cousins and…”

“And your daddy?”

I watch her throat work at the mention of her father. She breaks eye contact and looks down at roots that have broken through the grassy ground. Her eyes are shiny.

Fuck no. She can cry about the fact she’s here with me if she wants to. But I will not watch her shed tears for her piece of shit progenitor. Not after everything he’s done.

“But I’m not like them, am I, pet?” I ask, softening the harshest edges of my voice until my words slide like silken malice. My right hand goes to her throat, palming the exquisite flutter of her heartbeat. My thumb presses – and none too gently – to the throbbing place below her jaw. “Doubt your cousins or your daddy have ever done what I’ve done with you. I doubt they’ve ever seen you with your legs spread and-”

“Shut up!” Her hand smashes against mine, smacking it away from her neck with surprising force. “Just… Just shut up, Darragh!”

I catch her hand out of the air, sliding my grip down until I hold her wrist. She’s shaking. It makes me want to hurt somebody. Makes me want another Jim Shaw strapped to a chair in a warehouse.

“You had to know that I would come for you.”

She violently yanks her hand from my hold. I release her, otherwise I think she’ll keep on pulling and pulling until she breaks her own wrist.

“But you didn’t come,” she hisses, her brows drawing together. “Did you?”

“Didn’t exactly receive an invitation to your special day with Sal, now did I?” I spit in reply. My head throbs. So does my chest. And my dick. “You lot waited until I was out of the fucking country to put on that lovely little ceremony.”

“I still thought…” She bites off her words and looks away.

“Thought what?”

“Thought you’d come. Thought you’d stop it.”

Everything slants. Like someone’s punched my centre of gravity and left me dazed and reeling.

What? She thought I’d show up and fucking save her? If I’d gotten there in time to stop the wedding, she wouldn’t have been watching bikers kill her husband and her father.

She would have been watching me.

I wouldn’t have stopped just to spare her feelings. I would have torn the place apart. And then I would have carried her wailing away through the carnage, stepping over corpses as I went.

“I told you once,” I remind her grimly, “that heroes don’t exist in our world. I’ve always been the villain in your story.”

“A hero takes the high road for the good of everyone,” she replies. A breeze makes the leaves above her ripple, sending golden light dancing across her skin, her lips and eyelashes. For the first time in my life, I want to taste sunlight. “A villain would do whatever it takes to protect what’s theirs.”

“Are you admitting that you’re mine?”

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