Blood, Tears, and Gold

Sneak Peek

|Lips Like a Crescent Moon|

He was all sharp angles and eyes of starlight, pillowy lips and dusty golden freckles. He was copper and indigo, ice and earth, night and sun. Tangles of curled hair like umber velvet hung about his lovely face, his sweet dimpled smile like a crescent moon in a boundless dark night.

Dazed from the suffocating nightmare, Leigh reached a hand out at the angel above her to touch his face, remembering the question that always lingered in her mind, how his lips looked the type that you just wanted to run your fingertips over, to see if they felt like velvet.

He did not move as her fingertips fluttered, but he said her name.

"Leigh." It was not just a whisper, but a cry of relief, a name sounding like a promise on his lips. She loved the way his lips parted when he said it, ever slightly.

"Leigh," he said again, and this time his hand gently stole her fingers away, wrapping them with his own.

But something was wrong. He was sad. His sapphire eyes were bright with something akin to...remorse. Pain.

She could not bear the thought of him in pain.

Leigh was suddenly becoming aware she did not know where she was nor how she'd gotten there. It was dark and damp and the air was cold, and the only image she could last remember was the permanent tragedy of bloody water and the faces of the dead that she so loved imprinted in the back of her eyelids by the nightmares.

And she was also suddenly aware that the man sitting next to her was, in fact, sitting next to her and could not-should not-under any circumstances be.

It was forbidden.