Bound and Tide (Villains & Virtues)

by A.K. Caggiano

Xander returned to her chamber but came to a stop at the edge of the bed. The swell of Red’s hips was covered by the linens, a sliver of curved back exposed beneath the fall of her hair. She curled inward in the wake of him, arms sensing the emptiness in her sleep. “Fuck,” he whispered and backed away from the bed. Each step drove pain into his chest until he bumped into the wall and an ache spread through his entire body. There was a single cure for that ache: climbing back under the linens and tucking himself into her arms, a thing he knew as plainly as he knew he was a blood mage and what was happening should not have been possible. Yet there he stood, each breath feeling like his first and last at once. If this was what he thought it was—if this agony was that disgusting, awful, deplorable thing—he had no idea how he’d managed to escape Bloodthorne’s wrath for every threat he’d ever spit at Amma. Because Xander would kill for Evangeline, he knew it then. Sure, he liked killing, but only when it suited him, when it was the most convenient course of action, when it made sense. But if she asked—or really, even if she didn’t—he would have committed any number of atrocities in her name.