The walk out of the woods was far faster than the journey in. The path seemed wider, the trees were no longer overbearingly thick. It was like the forest had opened, like the trees had released the breath they were holding and decided to let us pass by.
My backpack and weapons had been returned to me before we left. As we walked, Zane stayed close to me, his arm brushing mine, still looking around the forest like he expected to encounter another attack.
I’d never been the little girl who dreamed of being swept off her feet by fairytale royalty. I’d never dreamed of a family or a partner, after seeing what a mess my own family was. I’d considered myself better off alone, even before Victoria betrayed me and really drove the point home. I didn’t need anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t need romance. I didn’t need devotion.
I didn’t need love. It was a silly thing to think about anyway, especially now, when my future was damned. I was a murderer, planning to murder again. I’d sold my soul. My mind was broken in more ways than I could count, in ways I didn’t think could ever be fixed. Dreaming of a future, of a partnership, of…of peace, of calm — it was useless. There was no point.
Especially to find those things crossing my mind when I looked at a demon — I was a fool.
But God, when I’d seen him appear in the hallway, dragged along by that Archdemon freak, all I’d wanted was to be next to him again. I didn’t need a rescuer, I didn’t need a guardian; he wasn’t that.
He was my comfort. Comfort in the face of the world’s madness. He was the one being who’d seen me weak, who’d seen me break down, who’d seen me vulnerable, and had never tried to exploit that.
He was a demon. Exploitation was exactly what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it?
We were silent until we got back to the car. I was reaching for the door handle when Zane laid his hand against the door.
“Are you alright?” His voice was low, his gaze intense on my face. My mind was already in a million different places.
“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Just…fine. That didn’t go down how I thought it would, but…Everly told me some shit about Kent that may help us.”
He was nodding. “Good. That’s good.”
“Yeah, it’ll at least help us prepare for our next —”
“I don’t give a fuck what the witch said. I meant it’s good you’re alright. It’s good you’re not hurt. It’s —” He paused, and winced as if in pain. “It’s good they didn’t hurt you. Because I don’t know what the fuck I would’ve done.”
He was…glad I was…
Oh.
I wasn’t great with words, but that silenced me completely. My throat closed up, and my heart began to pound. My hands were sweaty. He’d positioned himself close to me, and that had a ridiculous way of making me flustered. I needed a drink. Several very large drinks, because my mind wasn’t right.
What he’d just said shouldn’t have made me feel that way.
“I…I mean…I guess it doesn’t really matter if I die though, right?” I was staring hard at the door handle, my one escape from these words that were rushing wildly out of me. “You’ve got my soul, so…no loss to you…if I…”
He grabbed my neck, long fingers curling into my hair to cradle my head — and kissed me.
My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see. His lips were soft but his grip was hard. His touch was hot and his other hand grabbed my waist, pulling me closer, and I closed my eyes as I wrapped my arms around him.
I didn’t know what the hell this was. It was too frightening to contemplate, too complicated to try to understand. Why did he get to break down my walls again and again, dismantling the cold, unattached safety I’d surrounded myself with? Those walls were all I had, they were my protection. They kept me safe from pain, from heartbreak, from betrayal.
I didn’t want to think about what these feelings meant.
But I could think about that kiss. I could lose myself in the sensation of his hard chest against mine, and the muscles in his back as my hands wrapped around his neck and my nails dragged along his skin. His forked tongue caressed around mine, and he kissed me like he was starving.
These were soft, tender feelings that remained in the rubble of my walls. They were bruised and beaten, trembling in the light that touched them, striving to crawl back into the dark. They’d been ignored and unnurtured for so long, they curled away from freedom.
Zane kept dragging them toward it.
It shouldn’t have felt like this with him. I shouldn’t have wanted him to tear me apart and hold me tenderly. I shouldn’t have wanted him to hold me at all. I was setting myself up for disaster. He was a monster, and I’d seen enough of them to know they could only cause pain.
When he broke the kiss, pulling back mere inches from my mouth, I was pressed back against the car. He kept holding me, caressing me, keeping me close. How was I supposed to put the wall back up? I was vulnerable as hell. I was shaking.
“Why are you scared?” he said softly. I shook my head, but he grasped my face again and made me look up at him. “What are you scared of, love?”
Love. He’d called me that before. I’d brushed it off. It felt different now, it felt heavy. I was breathing hard, and I wasn’t even sure why. It was like panic without the pain. He lifted my hand, watched my fingers trembling — and he kissed the back of it, kissed my palm, kissed my wrist and let his lips linger there.
“What are you scared of?”
“This,” I whispered, and he smiled against my skin. “I’m scared of this…whatever…whatever this is.”
He looked up at me, with his head still lowered as he held my hand. It was strange that a monster could look gentle, especially when he smiled at me with teeth sharp enough to rip me apart.
“And what do you think this is?”
This was usually the point at which I’d end the conversation. I’d met my fair share of people that had grown close to me over the years; men and women who’d somehow decided they wanted more from me — and those questions were always the ones that made me run.
But Zane and I were bound together. Eternally. There was no getting out of it. A damning bargain was all it was supposed to be.
“A bargain,” I said softly. “It’s…just a bargain.”
He took both my hands, and kissed the other one just the same as he had the first, before he laid my palms against his chest. “Juniper Kynes, a storm manifested in human form, is afraid of a bargain?” He leaned close and kissed my neck, pausing with his lips barely brushing beneath my ear. “No, you’re not. You’re afraid of something far bigger than that. And I’ll tell you something, Juniper — this is a hell of a lot more than a bargain. I’m not fucking around. I don’t fuck around when I find something I want.”
“But you already have me.” My voice sounded desperate. As if I was pleading with him to be callous, to tell me he was just joking.
“Body and soul. But I decided I want something else too.” He laid his hand around my neck, and pressed his thumb against my pulse. Every beat was emphasized as it throbbed against his finger, hard and fast. “That right there. I want that next.” He lowered his voice, a shiver-inducing whisper in my ear. “And I’ll have it. Just wait.”
He left it at that. He let me go, left me standing there shaking as he got into the driver’s seat. And when I got in after him, he started the engine and turned up the music, bobbing his head to the beat like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Except he did care. He cared far too much, and I did too.
