Page 20 of Fire Kissed
“A memento you’ve displayed in this museum of strange and bizarre collections.” Her attention comes back to me once more.
My smile is so wide it hurts when I beam at the one person who actually gets it. “Exactly! Yes! Thank you for seeing it as it truly is!” She’s so fucking incredible. No one gets me like she does.
“You’re collecting things from the places you’ve been—the people you’ve met—to make up for the places you can’t be and the people you’ll never see again.”
My heartbeat staggers at her explanation of my trophies. Sharp pain slices into my chest, but it’s quickly smoothed over.
“No.” I shake my head at her and pull her over to the first pedestal of fine art. “It’s a collection. I’m a collector. It’s no different than a museum.”
“Museums show things that once were, Aric.” Her tone is a tragic, pitying thing.
Another bubble of discomfort lodges into me, stealing some of the air in my lungs.
“No. No. No. It’s—just look at this one.” I pull her by the arm over to the mysterious mask on the small pedestal in the corner. “Do you know what this is?”
She reaches out to the burial mask I found in the heart of the Valley of the Kings, but I swipe her hand away like a quick cat.
“Haunted, darling. It’s probably haunted. Never touch stolen artifacts, Love.”
Her brows scrunch with even more heavy confusion, her lips parting without words to fill them.
I know the feeling:awestruck.
Pride swells in my chest, and I don’t think I’ve stopped looking at her since the moment she put down Princess Di. Her hair, though filled with chunks of dried dirt and a bit of blood, is as soft as I remember. My fingers tangle in the ends of her pale locks.
Cool fingertips skim up my stomach. Nerves ignite beneath her palms like fire to gasoline.
“I missed you so fucking much,” I whisper sharply against her temple.
The quiet laughter that shakes out of her is cutting against a jagged breath that escapes her lungs. And then I’m holding her against me. I can’t keep her at arm’s length. I want to feel every part of her and know everything is just as I left it.
Because I left her in the midst of Hell.
And stills she came back for me.
Even if I don’t fucking deserve it.
“Is this what you do?” She pulls back from me just slightly, just enough to peer up at me in my arms. “You put on jeans and fuzzy house slippers and stride around shirtless in your mansion listening to riot music like a retired rockstar?”
An entitled smile pulls at the corner of my lips at the image she’s painted of me.
“Rockstars never retire, Love. They just rock a bit quieter. In more comfortable slippers.”
Her fingers stroke back and forth along my shoulders, sending delicious temptation all through my nerves at what I know the two of us can feel like together. The memory of us is imprinted on my brain like a scar that I hope never heals.
“You’re alone, Aric,” she whispers, her smile fading from her pretty face. She looks up at me with pitying eyes that I hate to see.
“I’m never alone. My memories are all around me. I’ll never be alone.”
“Memories.” She shakes her head sadly at me, still with her tragic gaze held on mine.
“I’m imprisoned, but I haven’t been alone,” I tell her once more. “For the last several days, I’ve been in my head.” My chin tilts lower as I whisper against her lips. “With the memories of you.”
A gasp is her only reply, and it shakes out against my tongue before I claim her mouth with my own. Her tongue lashes against mine, our hands gripping tighter, bodies melding together so hard, it’s like we won’t allow time or space to ever get between us again.
I fucking won’t let it.
Time is a bastard. He slips in and dwells on for far too long. And sometimes... he leaves all too quickly.
