Page 195 of Scarlet Wars
My brows shot up so high they probably disappeared into my hairline. “You saw us…having sex?”
She nodded, cheeks flushing. “Yeah.”
A slow grin tugged at my mouth, wickedly. “So, you saw the goods before tonight and decided you just had to have it?”
She rolled her eyes, but there was a faint smile tugging at her lips.
I chuckled low. “That must’ve been…uncomfortable.”
“Not really.” She shrugged, then added with a half-smirk, “Though I did feel oddly jealous of my future self.”
That almost pulled a laugh out of me, but something inside me twisted instead.
I’d been fighting the prophetic bullshit that wasEmma and Jamesfor months now. Had mocked the idea James was Alek’s father, had tried to pretend it didn’t hang over us like a godsdamn storm cloud.
Only to become it myself.
But I’d be damned if I let Emma choose me because of some warped, manipulated version of the future. A vision someone else handed her like it was fate carved in stone.
The choice had to be hers, not some prophecy’s.
Hers.
Or it didn’t mean a damn thing.
I lifted her chin until her stare met mine. “Emma,” I said quietly, rough around the edges. “Tell me you didn’t choose this—didn’t chooseme—because of some fucked-up sense of duty.”
Her eyes widened, shock flashing there. “No, Caden. Of course not!”
She grabbed my face between her hands, fierce and steady. “All it did was make me certain of something I already knew: James will never be the father of any child I may bear.”
Her voice cracked, but she held my gaze. “But that has nothing to do with this, Caden. You…”
She drew in a deep breath. “Nothing has made sense since I left Crown. Nothing has made me feel alive, or happy, or even whole. Except for this. Except foryou.”
Then she kissed me, soft, sealing the words between us.
“Whatever the future may or may not have shown me,” she murmured against my mouth, “it wasn’t what decided this.”
Another kiss. Deeper. Final.
“You are what I want. You are who I want,” she whispered. “The world be damned.”
She kissed me again, like she meant to etch it into memory. Her lips were soft but certain, tasting of salt and air and something that felt like surrender. My hands slid down her back, tracing the curve of her spine, the rise of her breath.
The kiss deepened, the rhythm of it shifting, gentle turning urgent, measured turning hungry. I felt her fingers pulling me closer, anchoring herself to me like she was afraid the world might tear us apart again, and I could feel myself grow hard again.
By the time she broke away, we were both breathing hard. Her forehead rested against mine, our breaths mingling in the narrow space between us.
“Ready for round two?” I murmured against her lips.
“Fuck yeah,” she breathed, and then I did exactly that.
For the next three days straight.
FORTY-FOUR
EMMA
