The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(23)

“Hey Lyla, you got some concealer? This guy bruised me bad.”
It was one of the other girls on the landing. Lyla stayed still, deciding to ignore her. It wasn’t like she could get up anyway if she tried. It felt nice, just lying there as her body collapsed on itself.
The pounding faded away, the only noise in her ears of a whoosh, maybe her own blood. Her eyelids began to feel heavy, so she closed them, feeling like the earth was shaking underneath her.
No, it was shaking.
She was shaking.
Something was shaking her.
“Look at me!”
The loud, sharp command made her eyelids peel open to a slit, immediately locking with the devil’s gaze.
Death had come to take her, after all.
She smiled.
“Take me gently, death. I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered, her mind dizzy, her eyes closing again.
“Open your eyes, flamma.”
A low, guttural demand followed by a touch on her cheek had her eyes opening again. He checked her eyes, put his hand on her neck, then growled, “Fuck!”
She felt something pinch at the side of her neck but wrote it off. She had been thinking of him, and in her last moments, her brain was being kind to her. That was a saving grace. Her delusions were taking pity on her. She couldn’t really complain.
“You.” Her voice was barely audible, her body slumping as he picked her up in his arms. “Tell me... tell me where he is...”
“Live for me and I’ll tell you,” he bargained as always, tucking her body close to his torso. He was cold and warm at the same time, and so, so solid. She wished she’d had him to hold on so many nights.
Tears fell down her face, and she tucked her nose in his neck, breathing in his distinctive scent.
“Please. It’s my last wish,” she cried softly, and felt his arms tighten around her. The delusion-him was nice too, he almost made her believe he was concerned for her.
“You have many wishes left in you, flamma, and I will lay every single one of them at your feet. Just keep fucking breathing, got that?”
The dark, guttural notes of his voice hit her simultaneously with another wave of heat. She whimpered and buried herself closer to him, grateful to her mind for conjuring him up so she wouldn’t feel alone in her last moments.
They were moving at a rapid pace. Noises and sights blurred, and she felt her limbs get heavier and heavier, her heart suddenly slowing, making her head spin.
“Were you... with someone else?” she asked on a hiccup, voicing her worst fear, her fingers tightening over his jacket as he lay her down somewhere, strapping her with belts. What was her mind doing? Why was it making him strap her somewhere?
He finished pulling the belts tight so she couldn’t move and gripped her face, making her focus for one second on his devilish mismatched eyes.
“You have been, you are, and you will always be my only obsession, Luna Caine.”
She cried out at the fact that he took another girl’s name, a sharp pain piercing her heart, before everything went black.

Chapter tenHim


Too fucking close.
He had almost lost her, and for the first time in his memory, something livid lay breathing in his chest. Emotions weren’t something he felt, but he was feeling. Mainly, at himself for not finding her sooner, for taking so long to wrap up loose ends. Also at her, for thinking he would let her go, for even contemplating that she could and he wouldn’t bring her back from the jaws of death itself. It couldn’t have her, nothing could have her, until he released his claim.
If their past had taught them anything, it was that time meant nothing in their relationship. He would wait years for the right time with her, but the fact that she hadn’t had the patience told him two very important things—she was broken more than he had estimated, and he needed to do whatever it took to make her alive again. If she didn’t feel again, the world would cease to be.
Her life wasn’t hers to take.
He looked at where he’d strapped her in the chopper, flying over the city and the fields to the east, taking her where she should have always been.
She moaned in pain, the sound clear in his earpiece through hers, and the vibrations of the sound rippled down his forearms, the sweet aftertaste filling his mouth.
He had missed that. He’d missed her. And he'd almost lost her. That wasn't okay. That wasn't in the vicinity of okay.
As he flew over the dark fields below, he realized what a close call tonight had been—in more ways than one. Tristan Caine had been there, too close, with the rest of his people, and he wasn’t ready for her to go yet. He knew what would happen if she was gone too early. She would find her family, find people who loved her endlessly, find a man who would heal her with love, probably that dog of Dante’s who’d been on her scent for months, or maybe someone else. And maybe they would quieten her demons for a while. But the demons would return. None of them would understand that, understand her, her hell, because none of them had even seen it, much less lived through it. She needed to feel safe to heal, and no one would make her feel safer than he would. Because they had conscience, morals, ethics, and he? He had her.
She could never be anyone else’s. She’d been claimed by a devil in the shadows long before anyone could bring her to light.
And even surrounded by all the love, she would find herself feeling isolated, alone, and wondering if she was too broken to be okay. And he wasn’t okay with that. He had known for a while she had a disposition for self harm, mostly in her thoughts. She hadn’t acted on it as far as he knew before tonight. That had been one of the reasons he’d always dangled the one thing he knew she wanted more than anything—her answers—in front of her as incentives for living, and it had worked for a while. He had to give her something to live for again.