Page 145 of House of Crimson Kisses
The ocean burns in her gaze, as if she sets the waves alight, the clouds on fire and my heart ablaze.
I watch her shatter, the space between my legs soaking all over again. I want to spend the rest of my life watching this. Consuming her as her nipples tighten, the hardening bud of her apex against my tongue.
I want to taste the pleasure that trickles from between her legs.
I want to keep her.
But I can’t.
I grip hold of her for a moment longer until I know this is it. She tears her gaze away, lying flat next to me on our makeshift bed. She runs her fingers along my stomach, drawing gentle circles.
“Our families,” she says finally.
“I know.”
“I don’t think we have long. I’m not sure we can keep running...” her voice breaks, the words fracturing the same way my heart is.
Little pieces and fragments of it drifting into the space between us.
“We can continue to run, but I think it’s going to break us. Look at how tired we are. We should not be hiding in the shadows. We should not be living in the breaths between days,” she says.
Her hand comes to my cheek and wipes away the tears I didn’t know had fallen.
“Then what if we truly leave? Change our names, our identities, leave this city and the next. Run far enough they can never find us?”
Eleanor’s hand falls away. “I want that. Truly I do. But I also wonder whether we will ever be free. Won’t we constantly look over our shoulders? Spend our days with one eye on the horizon?”
“Always wondering if this is the day they catch up?” I whisper.
She nods. “I would live that life if it meant I could keep you.”
“Oh, Cordelia, you are my oxygen. You are my light and love, but I want to live my life free with you.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Nothing. Today, I’m saying nothing. But I can’t keep doing this. I’m exhausted. And if we keep running, nothing is going to change.”
“So we have a decision to make?”
Eleanor nods, brushes a loose strand of hair behind my ears and kisses my forehead.
“I will always honour your wishes. If you want to keep running, we’ll run. But we need a new plan. One that isn’t exhausting.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then if you don’t, we turn back. We return to our families and try to fight from within our prison walls.”
I pull my hands over my face. I know what my heart wants and what my head thinks we should do.
But as is the case with many of the important decisions, if you wait too long, the decision is taken from you.
A deafening roar booms around the living room, the front door in the kitchen explodes off the hinges and clatters over the table we were sitting at a moment ago.
I scream.
The back door does the same a second later, flying off and slamming against a bookcase on the wall.
Men flood the kitchen and the living room. Men that seem familiar, some that don’t.
