Heartless

❆ Twenty-Seven ❆

    "Please," he begged quietly. "I need to say this." His brow furrowed in thought. "I used to think that I would die empty and angry and heartless because of what I did and what I have done, and for a long time I was okay with that. Then you came and showed me what it felt like to me so much more, and I don't want to be that way anymore. For the longest time, I was scared of becoming a monster and never being human again. Now the only thing that terrifies me is losing you." A sob tore from my lips. He muffled it with a quick kiss. "I know that I've done terrible things, and I know you will never forgive me for most of them. I'm not empty anymore now that you are here, and I only feel anger when you're hurting. The book was right when it said I didn't have a heart. But the only reason I don't have one now is because you have mine." He pressed his forehead to mine, our lips brushing and my stomach clenching with need. His tongue licked along his lips. "Adaira, you always will." A tear slipped from his eye.

    I didn't breathe after that; I wove my fingers into his hair and brought his mouth down on mine. Hesitantly, as if afraid I would break, his arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me closer against him. Our bodies burned straight through our clothes to become one, and after hearing his words, that was all I wanted. I pushed myself to stand on my knees and brought him with me. I tugged at his hair and drew out a breathy grunt from his lips as he lowered his mouth to my throat. His hand slid under the hem of my shirt and pressed into the skin of my back, a moan leaving me when he gripped my hip and tugged me against his solid frame. I kissed his forehead and gripped his face in my hands, lifting his gaze to meet mine.

    "Do you love me?" I breathed.

    Something flickered inside of him, a painful realization that dawned on him like a tide of ice water. Lowering himself to sit down, and bringing me with him, he slid his hand to my cheek and kissed each corner of my mouth, parting before I could deepen it. Dropping his hands, he slid away from me and pressed his lips into a hard line. "No."

    The air left my lungs as if I'd just been punched by a fist of solid iron. The room spun in different shades of black and green. "I can't," he whispered hoarsely.

    I grappled at air to breathe in and forced my swollen lips to move. "But I thought—"

    "I cannot take your heart from you, no matter if it costs me my own." Our lips met together in a deep, brief kiss, but this one was sad and different and nothing like the others we had shared. Worry crept into my veins as he pulled back. "I won't let you become the next ghost. I have to let you go."

    It felt like he had dropped me into a sea of ice. The bed beneath me fell away and darkness swallowed me, a void in which I couldn't hear or see or feel him. I was numb, completely frozen from my core to my barely beating heart.

    "What?"

    A mask of stone came down over his face, but underneath I could see the war in his silver eyes. "There is one rose left inside the greenhouse, and it has already started to die. I won't be like this for much longer. I won't be that thing you saw the first time you met me."

    My mind reeled back to the night of Hendric's offering, to that yellow wolf that had stood over me and nearly killed me. That had been Beast, but he had changed since then. The night I discovered him in the cellar changing in the cage, he had been something completely different, something monstrous and hideous. If the story was true as he said, then it would only get worse with time.

    "My next change will be my last, Adaira. There is no happy ending for me, but there is one for you and your brothers and it doesn't include me in it."

    I shook my head. "But I want to help," I stammered breathlessly. Little by little, word by word, my heart chipped into pieces.

     A sad smile flickered over his face. "I know." He seared a kiss to my cold forehead. "But we are out of time, and I can't have you near me when it happens." He pushed a curl from my neck, his gaze following his fingers on my throat. His voice was cold when he spoke again. "I had Coggington draw up the deed to the manor in the city this afternoon, it will be ready by tomorrow." I pulled out of his grasp. "You will sign it in the morning and everything I own will become yours."