Page 85 of Raziel
Miyori reached across the table, covering my hand with hers. “Baby girl… you sound like you hero-worship him. Like you’re obsessed.”
“It’s addiction!” I said, the admission bursting out of me. “I’m addicted. Heismy obsession. He’s my savior. He’s the reason I’m breathing.”
I shook my head, seeing the fear in her eyes. “I know that word scares you. It scares me, too. But this… him… it’s a different kind of high.” A faint, wry smile touched my lips. “He’s better than drugs. What’s the difference between what I feel and love? For me, there isn’t one. My love for him is all of those things. It’s messy and it’s desperate and it’s probably not healthy, but it’s the truest thing I’ve ever felt.”
I looked toward the window, toward the hospital that held my entire world. “I need him. He’s the monster who kills monsters for me. And I’ll never apologize for that.”
She was quiet for a long time, just holding my hand, absorbing what she probably saw as the raw, unsettling truth of my devotion.
“Okay,” she finally whispered, squeezing my fingers. “Okay.”
It wasn’t approval. It wasn’t understanding. It was acceptance. And in the quiet aftermath of so much violence, that was enough.
Thirty Nine- Raziel
I woke up to the scent of her.
Then felt the pain. A deep, grinding throb in my side that made every breath a conscious effort.
I forced my eyes open. The world was a bleary mess of sterile white and dim light. It took a second to place the weight on the edge of the mattress, the head of dark curls pillowed on arms beside my hip.
She was asleep, but it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. Even unconscious, she looked exhausted, frayed at the edges.
God, Maya. She was safe.
I barely breathed, and she stirred. Her eyes opened, and the moment they met mine, something electric passed between us. A jolt to my tired, damaged system.
“Raziel,” she whispered.
I tried to sit up. Pain cut through my side, and I gritted my teeth.
“Hey, hey,” she was on me in a second, palms bracing my chest. “Don’t move too fast.”
She climbed up on the bed—gentle at first, like I was glass, her skirt riding up her thighs.
“Let me look at you,” she said. Then pressed kisses all over my face. Then her mouth crashed into mine, soft and hard at the same time. Wild. Desperate.
I groaned into the kiss, half from pain, half from her.
“Maya—fuck this hurts—but don’t stop,” I muttered, eyes fluttering closed as her lips moved over mine, down to my neck, then back again like she needed to memorize the shape of me.
She pulled back, breathless, her pupils blown wide. She searched my face, her expression shifting from desperate relief to something more serious, more grave. “There’s something I have to tell you,” she whispered. “Before the doctor comes in. Before anybody else.”
I nodded, my own breath coming in short, painful rasps. My hand found her hip, holding her there.
“You remember when you came down from New York… after Priest’s wife offed herself? When you met me at Miyori’s?”
I nodded again, slower this time. A cold trickle of dread started to seep through the haze of painkillers and pain. I remembered. Of course I remembered. I wanted her from the first moment I saw her.
“That wasn’t the first time we met.”
I blinked. The words didn’t compute. “What?”
She shifted, sitting up straighter, her gaze dropping to my chest for a moment before lifting to meet mine, filled with a terrifying gravity.
“You don’t remember, but I do. I’ll never forget it. I was about to be sold… trafficked. They had me and three other girls in a backroom in some warehouse in Little Haiti. We were high. Out of our minds. They’d gotten us hooked to make us compliant.”
My blood turned to ice. The room seemed to tilt. “What—”
