Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) (10 page)

Everything about her goes still. “That Lily’s vitamins were not really vitamins.”

“Yeah.” I grimace. Hard. It’s the first time in at least three years that I’ve heard it put into words, and it feels like running full-speed onto a splintered lance. “But we still couldn’t be sure. Those suspicions felt like more than suspicions—but accusing my pregnant wife of disguising her designer drugs as prenatal vitamins…” I drag a hand through my hair. “I’m a driven man, especially when it comes to finding the truth, but…”

But what
?

The words hang in the air, unspoken but damning. Just like their answer.

But even I draw the line between being a bastard and an asshole.

No. That’s not it. I’ve had no trouble embracing my inner asshole since I was a kid—on the day Damon decided to embrace his.

“This time, I wasn’t ready for the truth.”

Yeah.
There
it is.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“And was it?” And dammit, why does her voice have to be the silk in this filth, towing despite the quicksand calling as a perfect escape? “The truth?” she persists. “Was that what was happening? What Lily was really doing?”

I should nod. Get it over with—slog through this sludge, face the crap on the other side—but my neck is too busy helping my spine stay straight. “Prim and I compared notes, confirmed our instincts matched—but neither of us had the stomach for the dirty work, so I found someone. Hired him to keep tabs on Lily for a week.”

“‘Tabs’.” Her eyes bug a little. “You mean to follow her? Everywhere?”

I nod. “Interesting fellow…by the name of Conchobar Hodgkins.”

Her gaze jumps wider. “Hodge?” Resettles at once, as the logic takes hold. Though he’s now one of the steadiest fixtures in my life, I know virtually nothing about his before he arrived that day. Probably a good thing.

Looks like the same thought hits Ella before she presses, “So what did he find out?”

My hand tightens into hers. “That our intuitions were all correct.”

“By the powers.” Her free hand, threading into my hair, shakes almost as hard as her whisper. “But…why?
How
could she have—”

“Endangered her life, as well as that of our unborn child?” I shirk from her touch. It feels too good, and I have no fucking right to feel good right now. “Because that wasn’t how she saw it.” I rise. Turn around. Order myself to peer at every jagged edge jutting from the window frame—to let it gouge me open, along with everything I’ve confessed—to finally let in the pain too. Doesn’t work. My psyche clings to the safety of distance. “Her depression sucked the control from her,” I grate. “And the only times she ever
was
in control were when she drank.”

“And when you took the liquor away—”

“She turned to something else.”

“Oh,
Cassian
.” It’s rough with emotion as she gains her feet too—though feels my need for distance, and keeps hers. “What…did you do next?”

“At first? Nothing.” My shoulders drop. “Not the best choice, I know…but I was tired, Ella. So fucking tired of it all. The rehab she ran from. The chemicals she ran
to
. The secrets she kept. The lies she told.” Another step closer to the window…as another confession burns at my lips. The most hideous one of all. “I spent a few days just wallowing. Wondering if her ‘love’ for me was just another one of those lies. If she’d ever meant, even remembered, any feeling she’d professed for me. If our child and I were even worth fighting for.”

Rasped words in Arcadian from the woman behind me—sounding like a prayer—before she murmurs, “And you confronted her with all that?”

“Damn straight.” I don’t rein any of my growl back. Replaying the story has brought all the ugliness back, but crossing the mire is my only hope of ever reaching the other side. I let it all in. The fury. The hurt. The digging, despairing, is-this-what-crazy-feels-like confusion.

“And…she was not amenable to listening.”

“When she got home, she was already wasted.” I jam my hands into the pockets of my track pants. Burn every inch of the window with my glare. “And wasn’t really ‘amenable’ to anything, except keeping her high. Her roll. Whatever the fuck it was.”

“So she ran up here…and you followed.”

The dread eats me from the floorboards themselves. Mows up my body, ravenous and ruthless, before tearing into my brain. “She never allowed anyone up here, even me. This room was her sanctuary. But that afternoon, I only assumed it was where she was hiding more drugs.”

“Was she?”

“I don’t know.” I throw a glance around, feeling the corners of my eyes tighten. “But it wasn’t for lack of trying.” Burning memories. Heavy breaths. “I…went ballistic. Started tearing the room apart. It was either that or rip the walls out. She fought me. Screamed that the baby—our child—was sucking the life from her, and that I—” My throat clenches on the words. Tries to shove them down to my gut, where they’re fried in bile before surging back as a sparse croak. “She said that I was Lucifer. A demon for planting my spawn inside her.”

Another rasped Arcadian prayer. Determined steps, once more stopping far enough back to give me space…a blast zone for my memories. I hate it, that she knows such a thing is even necessary. I hate that she must stay away from me by even one fucking inch.

And yet—right now—I need it.

“And then she ran toward the window.”

The pokers flare me wide open now. Scorch away the layers of time, bringing images to life in my head—razing me all over again with their horror.

“Yeah,” I hear myself croak. “She ran toward the window.”

A threadbare sigh. A hurting gasp. “And she did not stop.”

Thundering blood. Hammering chest.

Fuck.
Fuck.

“No. She did not stop.”

*

Mishella

“C
assian.”

As soon as I lift my shaking hand to his rigid back, he plummets to his knees again.

This time, I fall with him.

Let him twist, crushing hard against me, grabbing me closer by fistfuls of my shirt, smashing his face into my neck. I wrap my other arm beneath, wrapping him tightly, gulping hard when the tidal wave of his anguish knocks into me like a storm wave, robbing my breath. Still, he does not make a sound. I wonder if he even allows himself to breathe. I wonder if he is afraid to.

But then he does. In tight rushes that feel like seizures, gripping at me just as violently. In spurts of just two seconds each, he breathes in pain and exhales grief, mourning the woman he could not save…the child he would never know…the fury he has stuffed down for so long.

So long.

“No longer.” The words are as much for him as me—for the thoughts I hear in him as well as me, for they are not a process of his mind. They are a cry from his soul—the light in him that fights to keep burning through the tears he refuses to shed. I clutch his nape with one hand and his waist with the other, lashing him to me before sending my spirit in to crouch over that flame…treasuring its strength and beauty. “Do not hide it any longer, Cassian. Any of it. You do not have to.”

Creator of ours, author of all the energy that binds us, please carry my words to his spirit. His flame…

But once again, his frame stiffens to utter stillness. Even his chest and shoulders seize, betraying his refusal to even let air in. I swallow hard, knowing he will eventually have to. Dreading the moment he does.

*

Cassian

I can’t breathe.
I won’t
. I refuse.

Why can’t I just subsist on her now?

Isn’t this all I need?

Her softness, making me forget all the shattered edges. Her scent, fresh jasmine, banishing the stigma of this old room, these forgotten books, these tired memories. Her voice, strong but silken, banishing the dirge of death that’s played for so long in my psyche.

No longer.

Her promise.

Isn’t it all I need? Why can’t it be all I need? The key to moving on…

But it isn’t.

Because I have to breathe again. Have to be reminded I’m still alive, dammit. That I lived on, and Lily didn’t.

My baby…didn’t.

Was murdered by the woman with my ring on her finger. Who couldn’t have looked at it, just once, and believed in what it represented. Chosen me. Chosen our child. Chosen our life.

Which turned
life
into a very different word for me, for so long—

until I journeyed halfway around the world, and walked into a reception hall in a tiny island’s palace—

and remembered what life was supposed to feel like.

Which means
I
now have a choice.

To dwell in the death that has turned living into simply existing, or to turn forward, into life…

Into letting Mishella all the way in?

I have to make the decision.

Now.

And I do.

*

Mishella

C
assian Court is
not a man known for his indecisive ways. I have known it since the night he scaled a trellis outside my bedroom balcony in to tilt my world’s axis with our first kiss. I likely knew it before then. I certainly have been reminded of it, in about a thousand different ways, since arriving in New York—

But never as vividly as in this moment. This instance, such a perfect crash of my body and spirit, that it will be imprinted on my mind forever.

Body.
My legs still tingling, after he swept from our embrace to his feet, hauling me up too. My fingers still stinging from his conquering grip. My blood still pumping from our rush down from the turret.

Spirit.
Whirling from trying to figure out his purpose. Rejoicing from realizing that it does not matter—that I would trust him if he dragged me down to the first floor, through the basement, and into the fires of hell. And now sobbing—when he slams his bedroom door shut, locks his gaze into mine, and gives me the full force of
his
trust.

And his tears.

Shining and heavy—as he frames my face with both his hands.

Hot and salty—as he angles my mouth higher then smashes his over it.

Then takes me harder.

And deeper.

And does not stop.

We sob and moan and tangle into each other, taking and giving grief and sorrow and loss…and hope and need and possibility. And life. Its pulse through us. Its power inside us.

Its magnificence because of us.

And suddenly, I understand more. I see the gift of this, of
him
. That I saw from the moment he first burst his light into my world. His beauty was only the beginning—how every woman in that Palais room was
not
a puddle from his princely-perfect features and godlike body is beyond my logic—there was the sheer power of his very presence. The fierce force of his will over the air molecules themselves…

So what has he
ever
seen in me that is worth forty million dollars?

What on Earth did Cassian crave from our “arrangement” that could add up to half of what he has brought to me?

Until now, the Creator has been cryptic about the answer.

Until now…in this moment when I see so much of this man. See
into
this man. See exactly why it was not just his choice but his
need
to keep the details about Lily from me. He was terrified of having to relive them all for himself—
by
himself—because he was sure of never finding someone willing to walk those memories with him. Someone to give the darkest part of himself to, who would still be there when he was done. Probably not knowing if he even could.