Page 36 of Fire Kissed
And then... I’m taken into the unknown.
A Bit of Pizzazz
Rhys
“You’resmart to bring her to me.” An amused but confident-sounding man says.
“As if I had a choice,” someone very familiar tells him.
“Latham,” a grumbling voice warns, but the three of them are all a muddle of sound within my pounding skull.
“If you want me to do something more for her, dear son, just...ask.” His words sound twisting and hidden somehow.
“I’d rather die.”
“Or go to Hell? Again?” the man propositions.
“Loki,” the grumpy man grunts in warning.
A scuffle of sound and anger clash around me. The grumpy, rational voice carries on trying to balance the tumbling chaos. But he fails miserably each time as more ruckus continues.
Gentle fingers brush against my temple as if easing away the pain there.
“Rhys,” a tragic voice haunts into my cloudy mind. He sounds like poetry come alive. A lifetime of haunting words that were never said. A single second of a moment slipped away.
Aric sounds like a man about to break.
I’d know his voice anywhere. I’ve just never heard it like this before.
“Just wake up, Love. Please.” A crack of emotion cuts his words. “Please fucking wake up, baby. How—how am I supposed to go back to being alone when you just taught me I can love someone? Or, shit, that someone can even love me? I don’t want that. I—I don’t want a world without you.” A weight of something solid settles on my chest, and I feel his jagged breaths along my collar bone.
It’s painful to hear his broken pieces. It’s like I’m walking over them one by one.
Just to get back to him.
Among a cynical symphony of sound, I quietly wake. The setting of a sun burns golden hues across the above. I lie flat on my back in a garden, flowers springing up all around me. A rainbow of petals and deep green leaves sway above my head, my shoulders, my arms. My lashes flutter to look down on the beautiful man holding me... or maybe he’s holding himself together against me...
His shadowed appearance of darkness and sin is entirely out of place in the sea of wildflowers and peaceful evening sky overhead. Aric looks entirely like a creature of Hell who doesn’t belong in a place so beautiful and pure.
And yet somehow, he’s perfect here with me.
My fingers lift and stroke through soft, dark hair.
“Did you just say you loved me?” I ask on rasping words that skim over dry lips.
His head flings up fast. Damp eyes look into mine with so much rawness. Our gazes are locked with heated energy burning between the small amount of space between us. I want to fall into that warmth and burn in the fires if it means having him nearer. He leans closer to me, wide, wild eyes searching across my features at a rapid pace before calming just slightly despite the trembling hand that still pushes my hair back along my temple.
“Fuck, I love you,” he confesses. And then he slams his lips to mine.
He tastes like he sounds. There’s a hint of salty sadness against his tongue. But his passion is more pronounced. Aric kisses me like he’ll never risk letting me go. He’ll never take this kiss, or the next, or even the next for granted.
I slow us down, taking unsteady breaths between the press of gentle lips.
“I love you too,” I murmur against his mouth.
And that alone sends him back into a frenzy of adoring kisses.
“She’s awake,” Latham says from somewhere far off.
