Lucas’s rough breaths halted with the first melodic words that fell from my lips, and his tense shaking slowed and steadied by the time I started on the first chorus. But he didn’t move from his position. His head stayed pressed close to my chest, one hand gripping me tightly while the other cupped my neck like I was fragile.
Our position made me feel safe and cared for, and I felt his love for me pouring from him in waves. But as I sat cocooned in his arms, letting a song flow from me soft as a whisper, I realized I’d never felt more free.
When the last words of the song trailed off into nothing, silence engulfed the room and time passed without measure.
His thumb eventually moved to make lazy circles along my throat, and a few moments later, he straightened his body to look at me. His dark eyes were full of wonder, his voice low and rough when he said, “You’re not shaking, Blackbird.”
I lifted a shoulder and held his curious stare as his unspoken question lingered in the air.
I’d only ever sang in front of him if I was shaking—if I was afraid . . .
“I wasn’t singing for me.”
His mouth met mine in a gentle, but searing kiss. And without breaking contact, he stood and walked us into my bedroom and laid me on the bed. His lips moved down my neck and stopped at the base of my throat. His teeth grazed against the soft skin there, followed by a whisper of one last kiss before he curled his body around mine.
A corner of his mouth twitched in amusement when I turned in his arms and reached for him, but he stopped me.
Grabbing my hand in his, he lifted them so he could pass his mouth over my wrist then said, “After everything you’ve been through the last few days, you need to sleep. Your body is crashing.” His eyes darkened with need, and his voice dropped to a rough whisper. “When you wake up I’m going to devour every inch of you and bury myself deep inside you, because I need to taste and feel you to know you’re here—you’re safe. But for now, sleep.”
But I was afraid to. I was afraid of what I would see when I did. I’d been trying to escape the horror of it all, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to once I gave in to exhaustion.
The fear of losing the man holding me, the smell of blood and sight of dead people around me, arms that ripped me away and knocking on doors that meant horrible, horrible things. All of it would be too much, and I wouldn’t be able to get away from it.
“How did that man know where I was today?” I asked, trying to prolong the inevitable.
His grip on my hand tightened, a rumble sounded low in his chest. “William. He knows my house, and where I’d hide you. When you didn’t answer the door . . .” He lifted a shoulder in a jerk of a shrug, that fury from earlier clouding his eyes again.
I tried to wrap my mind around all that had happened and quickly shook my head. “You knew . . . that man started knocking and you immediately knew it was a warning and a trap. How?”
“It was a trap, because if I hadn’t been home, you would’ve gone to the door and answered it,” he explained, his tone laced with barely concealed rage. “In the world I grew up in, there was never any warning; we would just go in with guns raised. In this world? It’s all about games and threats and sending messages and instilling fear. The men in this world are so confident they want to terrify whoever they’re going to torture or kill before they even come into the house. Knocking in the rhythm of a heartbeat is as good as announcing death.”
My lips slowly parted, but it wasn’t from the shock of what he’d told me. I’d either experienced enough in the last few days or was too tired to be shocked by the audacity of the men in this life. All I felt was wonder and awe as I studied him. “And you ran toward death . . .”
“The Reaper doesn’t run toward death, Blackbird. He brings it.”
“Reaper? Don’t call yourself—”
“I didn’t give myself that name,” he said in a hollow tone, and I knew in the haunted look he was talking about something from a lifetime ago.
And I hated it. I hated everything that haunted my devil, this man who had continued to destroy his soul to keep himself alive and to help others—to keep me safe.
Threading my fingers through his hair, I kept my eyes locked with his and let my lips twist into a coy smile. “So . . . you’re dangerous?”
Chapter 40
Promise
Briar
I woke up sometime that night to an empty bed, covered in sweat with tears staining my cheeks. I nearly screamed Lucas’s name, but was thankful when my scream came out as nothing more than a hushed song when I heard deep voices talking outside my room.
After using the bathroom to freshen up and changing into a clean set of pajamas, I walked back through my room and slowed as I reached the hall that led to the living area of the top floor. I didn’t know if I was supposed to hear the conversation, but I couldn’t stop from going toward the voices.
I could hear him, but I needed to see him.
Lucas couldn’t lose me—he’d made that clear. However he didn’t seem to grasp that the thought of losing him crippled me too. And after enduring nightmare after nightmare of him being the one I’d watched die this afternoon, I needed to feel him.
Both he and the driver looked up when I walked into the large room, and their conversation immediately stopped.
I tried to stifle the relieved sigh that rushed from me, seeing my devil alive instead of lifeless on his bedroom floor, and cleared my throat. “Um, I can—”
“Leave,” Lucas demanded, and my heart clenched at the cold tone. But before I could move or let the ache in my chest spread, I realized the order had been for the driver when he turned and headed for the stairs, and Lucas strode toward me.
He hauled me to him, pressed his mouth to mine in a firm, possessive kiss, then leaned back to study my face. “Are you okay?”
Not wanting to go into the nightmares I was trying so hard to push away, I just said, “You weren’t there.”
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, his eyes tightening as he took in the redness of mine. “Tell me what’s going through that mind of yours.”
“You weren’t there,” I repeated, my words now forced as my throat tightened. My eyes burned and tears threatened as I tried to push back the image of his lifeless eyes.
“Blackbird . . .”
“You weren’t there. I can’t lose you.”
Shock and confusion swirled in those dark, dark eyes, and I tried to focus on the mass of emotion in them, tried to focus on the fact that he was holding me, and he was warm. “Lose me?”
“I thought it was you,” I choked out. My next words were rushed and frantic as I explained everything to him while trying to force my tears back. “I know I didn’t imagine your voice, I thought you were on the other side of that door. Then everything happened so fast that all I could comprehend was I had heard your voice, and then I heard a gunshot, and there was someone bleeding out on your carpet. And it took too long for me to absorb that you were standing in front of me and not on the floor. All I could see when I slept was you where he had been, and I can’t lose you.”
One of Lucas’s hands moved to cradle my cheek as he tried to quiet and soothe me, and by the time I had finished talking, he was fighting a smile.