Page 70 of Snag
I’m not certain Reck has any soul remaining after that night. And Rought knows something, or suspects something, about Reck’s involvement in what happened the night we lost Zaya.
I don’t want to believe it of my elder brother. Reck put himself between our sperm donor and the rest of us, over and over again. He might still be doing it, trying to protect us, to this day.
Would Reck have sacrificed Zaya, however unintentionally, in some grand move to protect Rought and me?
And now this shit in Rought’s report about the dire awry? With Bellamy claiming blood ties to us all, threatening to drag Precious back to our sperm donor? Nevermind how any of that connects back to Reck, since he was the one trying to fuck her while she was wearing Zaya’s face.
I ignore the irony that I tried to convince myself Zaya was an impostor when I first heard her over the phone, first saw her in the motel.
I don’t write any of those thoughts or questions down in my notebook. I don’t want those answers. Not yet.
Instead, I close my eyes, recalling the soft, needy noises Zaya makes when she’s coming but trying to stay quiet. The way her energy contracts right before she crests, then pours out of her as she rides that pleasure. All of which I was privileged to witness only a few hours ago, brighter and more vibrant than any of the memories I hold of my soul-bound mate.
That recollection relaxes me enough that I can shift my attention to the next book on the pile precariously perched on the far corner of the desk — a series of essays on the awry. I’ve already flipped through it for mentions of soul-bound mates but found none. So I lean back with the intent of simply reading it, front to back. The chair creaks under my weight.
Focusing on Precious’s extremely unusual manifestation as an awry, rather than on Zaya, is a much-needed reprieve from my ongoing obsession over my soul-bound mate.
The morning has fully dawned,though no one else yet stirs in the house, when the lightest brush of energy precedes her up the stairs.
I might have thought I’d imagined her into being, except she’s always on my mind and has only now come to me. Approached me with no other reason but to see me.
She pauses at the base of the stairs. I close my eyes, angling my head toward her as if that will help me hear every nuance of her passage.
I’m utterly and completely obsessed with my lost mate. But it feels … right. It feels as it should. Even when I’m saying stupid shit to Zaya, I feel anchored here. Finally understanding how adrift I’ve been. Simply being here, on the estate, near Zaya, fills all the jagged wounds in my soul that I’ve tried in vain to patch with duties and devotion to the club and my family.
I hear something slide quietly and then a light click of metal on metal.
Zaya’s looking at the pictures.
My own gaze falls on the photograph she’s set in the window. Of the three of us and Zaya on the beach — the last moment we four gathered together with love and joy in our hearts. Only to have that joy ripped asunder— irrevocably, I had thought— not even a week later.
I’m not going to be able to ignore for much longer that Rought knows something— multiple somethings, and focused on Reck specifically— about the night we lost Zaya.
She climbs the steps, trailing her fingers along the thick railing.
I don’t imagine those same fingers trailing over me, on me.
I compose my fucking face. And I wait for the sight of Zaya to fill my senses. Each time I see her, it makes me feel as if all the time previously I’ve been looking at nothing at all.
She appears at the top of the stairs like some sort of gothic goddess fantasy. She’s tucked one of the framed photographs under her arm, but I have no idea where she got the gown she wears.
Maybe she fucking fashioned it out of pure fucking essence.
My Tempest incarnate.
The gown is made out of some sort of lightweight, sheer silk. Dark blue and barely hanging onto her shoulders, with a wide scoop neckline highlighting her fucking delectable collarbone, the dress gathers under her breasts, then hangs straight down to the floor to pool around her bare feet, trailing behind her down the stairs.
A bruise is slowly darkening where her neck meets her left shoulder. The indentations of teeth marks are clear, but the skin hasn’t been punctured. Rought bit her.
I don’t imagine licking across that bite mark, or placing my own on the other side of her neck while Zaya moans needily and comes so prettily for me.
The pink-diamond necklace, radiating all its potent energy, hangs over the neckline of the dress, though Zaya usually tucks it away.
She’s naked underneath.
She fixes starlit violet eyes on me, offering me a playful quirk of her lips as she scans the barrier of books arrayed across the desk between us.
A literal fucking goddess.
