“Yes, mio cuore.” He smoothed the hair from my face, looking intensely into my eyes. “You are done.” He lifted me up from the bed, pulling me into his chest, and then lay down again, holding me.
I did not exist without him.
He was my universe.
I was Galileo staring at the sun, realizing I was nothing, and then the bastard blinded me. He was the sun, and I couldn’t even close my eyes.
One heavy arm bracketed my body. I didn’t have to wonder what it meant, the Beast sleeping with me. In nature, when an animal falls asleep next to another animal, it means they feel safe. Beast’s steady breathing against my back, the deep pulls, the warmth he exuded, all of it—it was the single worst thing he’d ever done to me.
Beyond the mental torture.
Beyond any of it.
Because in that moment, as he curled me against him like a wounded sparrow, he stole my will to leave. I tried to think back to the last time I’d slept. My eyes felt sticky with fatigue, staring unblinkingly at the white wall made gray and fuzzy with darkness.
I couldn’t sleep.
Everything was alight with fiery pain. My soul was burning. It was supposed to be black and white. Beast was the bad guy. Beast was threatening to kill my father, he took me, he was no good, but every minute I lay with him I got sucked deeper into the gray. Tick. I wondered what it would be like to love him. Tock. I wondered what it would be like to be loved by him. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I needed to move.
I couldn’t move.
His arm flexed, pulling me deeper into his embrace. He smelled so good, like winter pine and musk and cigar smoke, and something else, too, something spicy. Something that tingled my nostrils.
; Or maybe that was the smell of my soul burning to ash.
The fuzzy gray wall started to blur. My eyelids drooped.
Shit.
I needed to get up. I needed to get out of the embrace. If I didn’t, I was going to sink into the delicious warm feeling of being held. Of being comforted. Of being warm and…
Not loved.
I gripped the sheets, slowly pulling myself toward the edge and out from under his arm. Beast groaned, and I paused. My heartbeat roared in my ears. As the roar subsided and Beast’s breathing returned to normal, I continued my escape, slowly tugging and pulling toward the edge, trying to slide out from under him like I was the golden idol in Indiana Jones and he was the potential boulder.
I made it to the edge, his fingertips still grazing my back. Less than gracefully I slid off, knees and hands meeting the floor with a thud. I paused on all fours, waiting for him to wake and bring me back to bed. One heartbeat, I stared at the floor, the way my palms splayed against the plush white rug. Two heartbeats, the way my hair made a curtain against everything I didn’t want to acknowledge. Three heartbeats…
I stood up.
Asleep still, the chiseled musculature of his chest was all too visible now that I wasn’t there to block it. Even asleep, his features were beautiful. Intense. Unfair.
Going with the Indiana Jones theme, I put a pillow where my body used to be. Beast did not take to it, instead turning away and facing the other direction.
Whatever.
As long as he didn’t wake up.
I tiptoed to the bathroom and leaned forward, my fingers gripping the cold porcelain. I stared hard at my reflection, forced myself to take in the person staring back.
She wasn’t who I remembered.
She was hardly someone I recognized.
She’d been changed by the man in that bed, changed irrevocably. There was no coming back from this. Like it or not, the man in that bed owned a part of me now.