Annabella’s eyes widened in the mirror so that Custo could see the whites all around.
“His name was Heinrich Graf. I seduced his daughter into telling me his traveling itinerary, and then I made my move. But the first shot didn’t get him. No, my first shot got an innocent bystander. A doctor, murdered in the street. The second shot got Graf. Adam doesn’t know about any of this. I’ve been too much of a…coward to tell him.”
“Why are you telling me?” Annabella croaked.
The last clasp came undone and the back of her costume gaped open. “The difference between you and me is that I killed those people myself, with my own hands, by my own actions. You haven’t hurt anyone.”
Her eyes filled again. “I could have stopped him tonight.” My fault.
“We’ll find another way. You know yourself better now.” Custo turned Annabella to face him.
She put a hand to her breast. “It hurts to breathe.”
“Try to remember that you were magnificent tonight. No, don’t shake your head. Don’t diminish what you have accomplished.”
“It was Shadow…it was the magic.”
“Annabella, that was you. That was all you.” Custo grabbed her hand. If he could give her nothing else before he was dragged away in the morning, he wanted her to be aware of her power. “The wolf didn’t learn choreography. The wolf took his cues from your imagination.”
“He was supposed to go back,” Annabella said. But now he wants me, too.
“I don’t blame him for trying to take you with him.” Custo fisted his hands to remember the burn of the wolf in his grasp. “Your talent, your gift, is amazing.”
“You were so right to tell me not to trust myself, because I don’t.” She lifted her chin to meet his gaze, her eyes blazing, her thoughts begging, Please don’t hate me. “I want the magic he offers so badly that in another weak moment I might take him up on it. Even now I want to feel the magic of Shadow again.” To go there with him. “You have to promise me you won’t let that happen.”
“Annabella—”
The look in her eyes hardened to resolution. The fear clouding her expression cleared at last. No one had ever looked at him like that. Needed him like that. “Please. I don’t want to lose myself. I won’t if you’re with me.”
He’d been telling her to trust him from the moment he met her. Been telling her that he would be with her every step of the way. That together they’d push the wolf back into Shadow.
Now, Custo didn’t have the heart to correct her.
Chapter Eleven
CUSTO tightened his arm around a sleeping Annabella and cursed the rising sun. Not that he could see it from Adam’s underground apartment, but since the digital clock read 6:40 A.M., he figured the damn thing was lifting itself off the horizon. Truth was, he didn’t want to move. His gut was still aching, wouldn’t fully heal, and he didn’t have time to have a doctor check it out—what could one do anyway?—before they left for the tower.
Instead, he’d spent his time the best way he knew how—keeping Annabella close while he could.
Her body was soft, fitted against his like a perfectly matched puzzle piece, her ass connecting with heat to his groin. She was supple and curved where she should be, though every bit of her was firmed with muscle. Almost every bit; his thumb had been stroking her rib cage under her breasts for the last twenty minutes. He didn’t dare reach higher, or he wouldn’t be able to trust himself. Only her hair, tickling his nose half the night and smelling of Talia’s fruity shampoo, had been irritating enough to keep his mind from picturing the creamy, raspberry-tipped mounds.
Oh, hell. The tower. Think of the tower. No, that just made him want to have her more. The tower was a reminder that he was going away, probably forever.
Okay, then, cars. He pictured his first car, a stolen 1981 BMW 635CSI. Nice ride. Needed it for a date. Screwed the blonde from his university survey class in the passenger seat.
Annabella stirred. His dick tightened. The wound in his gut burned.
Who would have thought that mortality was Heaven and Hell combined?
He should be sainted for not having sex with Annabella last night. A monument should be erected in his memory for not accepting her invitation, exhausted though she was. Any other woman and he would have sated himself, and her as well, over and over again. He’d have screwed them both blind. Why not Annabella?
The trust in her eyes. Her belief that they would be seeing this nightmare through to the end together. How could he accept her confidence when he knew the very next morning he would betray it?