Page 37 of Temptation
“Moons—”
“Stop calling me that!” She looked back at me and threw the half-smoked cigarette to the ground. “You lost the right to call me that when you decided that you could use me.”
“I didn’t mean to use you,” I murmured.
“No? Could’ve fooled me then. But don’t worry, Ash. I’m not going to be fooled again. Never again because you’ll never get a chance to get near enough to hurt me.”
I could hear Kane and Rowan scattering away from the two of us, while I tried approaching her like a wild cat, afraid that sudden movements were going to scare her.
Her makeup was smeared around her eyes. Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun, and her skin looked paler than last night. She swayed on her feet, and I had a feeling that she hadn’t eaten today.
I hadn’t either.
“Skylar,” I started again, slowly closing the distance between the two of us. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your sorries.” She scoffed. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to disappear, Ash. I want you to fucking disappear, because seeing you is just a cruel reminder that the love I felt was nothing but a lie, created so that you could get your fucking revenge.”
My eyes widened. My hands trembled next to my body. I needed to hug her, to show her it wasn’t for nothing. But even more so—she loved me? She fucking loved me.
“I would’ve ripped open my chest to give you my heart, Ash.” Tears fell freely down her face, and I didn’t think she even felt them. “I wanted to give you everything, but none of it was real, huh?”
“It was,” I argued. “Everything was real. Everything I said, everything I did, it was all for you.”
“Don’t lie to me.” She trembled. “Don’t fucking lie to me. Not anymore. You had a chance to tell me about the Order. You had a chance to come clean about your family, yet I had to find out about it from my brother. My brother who is somehow not my brother, to whom I’m married now.”
“Sky,” I groaned. She was killing me. She was fucking destroying everything inside of me. All I wanted to do was to hug her, to press her to me, to show her how much I loved her. “Please,” I pleaded. I wouldn’t mind going down on my knees because this was a girl who deserved it.
She wiped her tears, smearing her makeup even more, but she didn’t give a fuck. With angry movements, she pulled out the pack of cigarettes again and lit one up. Her eyes were frozen on the spot in front of me, on the ground, and I could see her mind working a thousand miles per hour.
No matter how much I wanted to get her back to me, I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight. I would have to work for it. I needed to show her that I wasn’t the villain of her story.
But aren’t you? Aren’t you the worst of them all because you made her love you, only to betray her in the end?
“They’re all monsters,” she murmured with the cigarette dangling from her lips. “They’re all fucking monsters and you have no idea what they’re capable of.”
“Sky.” Rowan stepped next to me, also keeping his distance. “Where is Dylan? Where did you leave him?”
“What do you care?” She looked at him and smiled. “It’s none of your fucking business, Ro. None.”
“I care because I don’t want him coming here looking for you!” he thundered. “If he sees Ash with us, he’s going to—”
“Most probably fuck him.” She laughed. “Because it seems that I’m not the only one liking a little darkness. Or wait, no.” She tapped her temple. “He would let Ash fuck him, because Dylan likes variety.” She kept laughing, but that wasn’t what shocked me to my bones.
What made me freeze in my spot, and what made me think about something else—somebody else—were her words.
But no matter how much my dick liked the idea of fucking Dylan and her together, my mind told me that something else happened between the time that she left the catacombs with him and now.
“Moonshine.” I took two steps toward her and crossed my arms across my chest. “What happened?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She grinned. “He gave me the house of nightmares, Ash. He brought me to the house of nightmares. What am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to survive?”
I zeroed in on her blown pupils, on her shaky hands, and I knew it wasn’t just her nerves that were making her this erratic. She took something.
Fuck. Me.
“Skylar, did you take anything?”
“I just want to forget. I just want to forget you all, but I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t forget you, because you live in here.” She pressed a hand over her heart. “Both of you have permanent residency here, and unless I rip out my heart, I won’t be able to survive you.”
