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Death was a curious thing. Planned or unplanned, mitigated or unmitigated, cruel or comfortable, it was the only universal truth that everyone lied about. Most adults she’d encountered spent their lives not thinking about it, trying to outrun it yet heading straight to it. She didn’t know if they realized what she had at such a young age—death was inevitable. It chased everyone from the moment of the first drawn breath and caught them at their last.
The sound, strong and husky, merged with the waves like the sea itself rumbled and spoke. Sea and smoke. Her brain noted the words elicited as a reaction
His voice was more unexplored sea than bloodied sand, like the fables of creatures in the oceanic dark, luring unsuspecting sailors, dragging them to the depths.
“Loosen up, little asp,”
His body seemed to enlarge before her eyes, his back straightening, his posture becoming rigid, his muscles contracting under his t-shirt. It was a mesmerizing change exactly like it had been in the dark of the night, as if the shift in molecules around him reached the molecules around her in a ripple effect, vibrating against her skin. The pencil that he had been spinning, the one she had thought could be an effective weapon, was suddenly against the blond’s eye, an inch away as both men went quiet. “I will happily use your blood as paint if you ever threaten me again,” he warned, his tone
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The Painter. That’s what she was calling him in her head now.
“Do you accost girls like this often?”
“Only the ones that poorly stalk me after mildly threatening me the night before.”
Curiosity was her catnip, mystery her narcotic.
The face she hadn’t yet seen fully became visible from the side as he made his way down. The sharp jawline she had glimpsed as a silhouette cut a raw profile, like serrated gemstone unleashed by a rock split open.
Caz. The Psycho Painter.
What the boy had done had been wrong, but it had triggered something dark inside her, because after that, she had begun to fantasize about it, about being cornered, about being pinned, about being surprised by a passionate kiss.
“That’s Cazimir van der Waal,”
A dangerous man with a dangerous air and even more dangerous mouth, one she’d wanted to taste deeper, better after seeing the way he had licked her lip balm off his lips.
But she looked now. Liquid. Metal. Gray. Like an element in a lab she wasn’t meant to touch without protective gear. It was not the gray of the skies over Mortimer most days, but a shimmery gray of mercury poured over steel, darker on the edges and lighter, almost gleaming, closer to the pupils. There was depth there, secrets filled to the brim but never overflowing, a deadness, like mercury eating away at whatever it fell on. Those eyes were scandals waiting to happen.
Mortimer meant death.
Caz van der Waal was an enigma, an unknown variable in her equation, an unsolved mystery, and she had always loved and hated those in equal measure.
But what if you don’t have to allow it? a voice inside her whispered. What if someone just took? Memory, of being held immobile between a warm body and a solid wall, came to her. He hadn’t waited for her to allow him physically close, he had just stepped in and bent her as he’d wanted, and she’d let him, vulnerable in the aftermath of her panic attack. She hadn’t ever before felt as … alive, as aware of herself as she had then. Or since.
He was possessing her. Stroking her tongue with his, filling her with his venom, venom that penetrated her skin and went into her vessels, carrying it right to her heart, infecting it too until it pumped it out to spread all over her body, priming her for his possession. But venom had never tasted better, like the mint and coffee she smelled on his breath, like the desire and deviance she saw in his eyes, like the sin and seduction she heard in his voice.
“I own your mind. I’m going to own your body. And then, I’ll take your soul. Because you’re coming for mine, aren’t you? Mind, body, and soul.
“Beg me again, little asp,” he murmured over her lips. “Infect me with your poison.”
It was crazy how she’d thought of his kiss as venomous when he called her the same. Maybe they were both the poison. Maybe they were both the antidote. Maybe what they thought would infect them was going to cure them after all.
He continued drinking from her, a starved beast falling upon a feast, a lord of barren lands sipping from the lady of nectar, a man in the shadows dancing with a woman who knew darkness, claiming her mouth right out in the open for the world to see.
“I want to be the only villain you see. I want to be the only devil who drags you to hell.”
“Because life with you feels greater than death. Because you make the artist in me burn with the need to create, make the man in me burn with the need to possess, make the killer in me burn with the need to protect. You make me want to live, Salem. You give me a modicum of peace in a world of chaos. Is that reason enough?”
Love, deep, true love, was immortal.
