Page 29 of Temptation
Without a word he exited, not even casting a glance back to Aigira.
“Your name is Aigira?” was the first thing that came to my mind.
She pulled herself up and turned around to look at me. “At your service, my lady.”
This whole situation was getting weirder and weirder, but even though my mind still fought against the things she just told me, I had a feeling she was telling the truth.
And that truth only made me angrier.
Judah fucking Blackwood destroyed all our lives.
6
ASH
Pain.
If you looked in the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary it was defined asa physical suffering that accompanies a bodily disorder (as a disease or an injury). But how could I follow that definition when the pain I felt for most of my life had nothing to do with a disease or an injury? This pain—my pain—it ran deep. Maybe it was connected to a disease, I wouldn’t know. But it was the worst kind of a disease. The kind that spread through your body, its vines slowly trickling from nerve to nerve, from one vein to another, festering, rotting you from the inside.
It was one constant in my life. Always there, always following me from city to city, from town to town, every day and every night, it was my only companion when the lights came down and the ugliness came out to play. It appeared as a soft whisper on the late evening wind, when it sounded like the voice of my mother. Like a lullaby, lulling me to sleep, even though I knew that I would never get to see her face.
I would never even get to see her grave.
But one thing with people carrying pain was that more often than not, we tended to turn it into something else. Something vile. Something vicious. Mine turned into anger that consumed my entire soul. The anger directed at Judah Blackwood, at the Order, at the entire town of Winworth.
But I never should’ve underestimated the devil himself.
Some people were born with heaven in their souls, others with hell raging in their blood, but I always knew that they both lived inside of me, fighting for dominance. To some I was a savior, a saint living an ordinary life, but I knew when I looked at Skylar last night that I was the devil.
Her devil.
My eyes zeroed in on the two of them as they walked through the common room hand in hand. Dylan was looking down at her, satisfied, happy, while everything in me died at the sight of them. I’d spent my whole life carrying this anger, this fucking disease in my chest, letting it eat me alive because I didn’t know better. I didn’t know that there was an angel waiting for me at the end of the road.
I pushed the desire and needs of my body deep down, locking it in the golden cage I created years ago, because guys like me couldn’t desire forbidden fruit. We couldn’t yearn for poisonous apples when we were the ones trying to rid this world of their evil.
I pulled my eyes off of Dylan, denying myself what my body, what my soul wanted, and looked at Skylar. I spent the rest of the night replaying the events that happened; the uncontrollable desire that still rocked my entire body, and now, looking at the two of them, I just wanted to forget.
I wanted to erase the memories of the two of them together. Not because it hurt me seeing Skylar with him, but because I wanted to be with them.
Years and years of lying to myself, only for everything to collapse like a house of cards. In one night, everything I ever wanted, everything I dreamed of, fell apart, leaving me simply empty. And now my hell, my sins, my poisonous dreams, wanted to break free.
There was no place for heaven nor for saints when all I wanted to do was get up from this fucking couch and take them both far away from here. It didn’t matter that Dylan was the villain all along. It didn’t matter that Skylar probably hated me.
All that mattered was what my body wanted, and it was wrong.
I ground my teeth when a small smile started playing on her face; when her eyes lit up at whatever it was that he said, and I pushed my feet into the dirty ground of the common room chamber, stopping myself from getting up.
Dylan slung his hand over her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. I closed my eyes, my hands fisting and nails digging into my skin, because I needed something to distract me from them. I needed something to distract me from the poison.
I couldn’t trust myself anymore. I couldn’t trust anything anymore, because all my plans fell into the water last night, mixed with that wine I drank. Everything was simpler before I stepped foot into Winworth. Everything was easier before my veins filled with sins this town was known for, and before I started desiring the one I couldn’t have.
Everything was fucking peachy before I saw her for the first time—before I saw them. The summer before school started, the air was crackling with heat and even the wind that occasionally came from the mountains couldn’t extinguish the hellish warmth that descended on Winworth.
I saw them then, coming out of the bakery near our school, smiling at each other as if nothing else mattered. I wanted to hate them at that moment, and maybe I did for a little while.
I wanted to detest the girl I saw only in a picture so long ago. I wanted to hate the guy that seemingly had it all, but the worst part was… I didn’t hate them at all.
A hum in my veins and the rush of blood in my ears, and I almost crossed the street back then and introduced myself to them. But I didn’t. I clenched the desire racing through me and focused only on Skylar. I drowned the ache in my heart and focused on the weaker one of the two, but now I knew that neither one of them were weak.
