His smile was wicked. “You give me plenty, sugar. And it’s all good.”
Rolling her eyes, she leaned in and kissed him on that pretty mouth. “Thank you.” For figuring out she’d needed a smile and giving it to her.
“No thanks necessary,” he said and took her hand again. “Just always be mine.”
I want to grow old with you, she thought on a heartbreaking surge of love, to see the world with you, to fight with you, to kiss your sinful, laughing mouth a million times.
Giorgio had become bored with eternity, when Ashwini would give her soul to experience a single mortal lifetime with the vampire by her side without the specter of a psychological breakdown that would eventually fragment her into myriad tiny pieces.
Bitterness threatened, but she’d made her decision a long time ago, and she wasn’t about to permit a monster to shake the foundations of her world. No, she’d think of her sister, of Felicity, of Lilli. None had had a chance to experience love in this way, to walk hand in hand with a man who would lay down his life for her. A day, a week, a month, a year—no matter how long she lived as a whole person, she would do it with an open heart and an unfettered spirit.
“I love you,” she said as they walked to his Tower apartment, pressing her lips to his jaw.
“Cher.” He turned to cup her cheek, his eyes startlingly vulnerable.
Heart raw, she stroked her fingers through his hair. “You know I do. You have to.”
“Yes.” A gorgeous, wild smile. “But it is nice to hear you admit it.”
Kissing her laughing mouth, he murmured his own words of love, told her she owned his heart and always would. “Let’s stay here,” he said, sliding his hand under her jacket and sweater. “We can go to your place in the morning.”
“Deal,” she said just as her phone buzzed.
Holding the moss and sunlight of his gaze, one hand on his nape, she reached into her pocket with the other. “I have to check the caller ID.” It could be Banli House.
“I know,” said the man who understood her, accepted her.
Eyes burning, she leaned into him as she looked at the name on the screen. It wasn’t Banli House, but it was a call she had to answer.
“Tanu is Tanu tonight,” Arvi said, his voice holding a smile. “She’d like to see you.”
42
Elena walked out to a Tower balcony with Raphael. Dmitri had just left to handle an emergency situation with Sorrow, the young woman who’d been taken by a mad archangel and changed in inexplicable ways. Honor had been training Sorrow in how to handle herself in the dark, Naasir hanging out with them, when Sorrow had had one of her unpredictable violent episodes.
Everyone was physically fine, but Sorrow was near a mental breakdown. Since Dmitri seemed to be the one person who could get through to her, Honor had called him in. Elena would never forget finding Sorrow, covered in blood and naked, in the old shed meters from the chamber of horrors that had held the remains of her friends. It infuriated her that the young woman continued to pay the price for another’s evil; she hoped Sorrow would find a way to fight the poison inside her, to make it.
The survivors of Giorgio’s and Cornelius’s crimes would have a road as difficult to travel. Of those found in the crates, it appeared Brooke alone might be able to live a normal life and she was badly traumatized. The others had the bodies of infirm elderly people, their minds nearly broken. “Will you really let the victims choose the punishment?” she asked her archangel.
“It’s the only satisfaction I can give them.”