He stayed above me, his eyes searching mine for meaning.
I kicked the sheets back off and pulled him toward me again. “Make love to me before you go…”
Twenty-Two
Betrayal of Blood
Fender
It was a promise I didn’t want to make.
But it was the price I had to pay to get what I wanted.
And it was worth the cost.
Because Melanie was priceless.
Whether Raven was dead or alive, it didn’t matter. She’d humiliated me again, but that didn’t matter either. The only thing in my life that really mattered was the woman in bed beside me every night.
The woman who slept beside me all night.
The woman who completely lowered my guard to let her in.
It was hard to believe that it happened, but once it did, the weight left my shoulders. The pressure was off my entire body. The invisible weight of the past had somehow evaporated altogether.
I lay in bed with my chérie on me, her leg tucked between mine, her arm around my waist, her makeup a mess all over the pillow. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep. She rested after the hours spent wrapped up together, sometimes her on top, but mostly me on top of her.
My chérie was another painting to add to my collection, costing a price in a currency that I never used to pay for things. Euros, diamonds, and gold weren’t enough to afford her. I had to pay with a sacrifice.
But now I got to live in this painting, got to admire it when no one else was allowed to see it at all. My fingertips gently glided down the back of her arm, feeling her rose-petal-soft skin, feeling how warm she was because of me.
That moment was shattered by Gilbert.
“Sir.” He knocked on the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but Magnus is here to see you.”
My fingers stopped their caress.
Her eyes opened.
I left the bed and pulled on my sweatpants before I opened the door. “What does he want?” He shouldn’t bother me at this time without good reason, and he shouldn’t still be Paris either. I closed the door and walked with Gilbert down the hallway.
“He didn’t say, sir. But he has a woman with him…”
I halted in my tracks and looked into Gilbert’s face.
He held my gaze. “That’s all I know, sir.”
My heart worked harder than it ever had, experiencing a spike in anxiety that I hadn’t felt since adolescence. Betrayal seared into my skin like a branding iron. Fury unlike any I’d ever known struck me like lightning.
I continued down the hallway and made it to the top of the stairs.
Magnus was there, near the bottom of the staircase as he waited for me.
And there she was several feet behind him.
Raven.
I gripped the rail as I looked down to the foyer, seeing the woman I despised in my very own house…like a fucking guest.
She must have felt my stare because she lifted her chin to meet my eyes. Instead of her typical venomous fury, she actually dropped her gaze as quickly as possible, like she was truly afraid of me.
When I took the first step, Magnus glanced up at me.
I looked at him in a way I never had before.
Like I didn’t know him.
Like he was a stranger.
A liar.
I took my time walking down the stairs, using the moment to condense my anger, to cool my hatred before I released fury from my nostrils like a goddamn fire-breathing dragon. It was a long walk to the bottom, and our eyes remained locked on each other, a silent conversation happening between us.
I reached the bottom and reserved my stare for Magnus only.
She was insignificant to me.
He was everything to me.
Magnus stepped back, sensing my rage in the silence, and he had the humility to drop his gaze and break eye contact first.
I spoke in French, so that dog wouldn’t understand. “You lied to me.”
Magnus wouldn’t look at me.
I stepped closer to him, barely able to restrain my rage. “You looked me in the eye and fucking lied.” The betrayal was almost too hard for me to accept. It was too disturbing. Too painful. “For a woman. An ugly woman.”
Magnus lifted his chin again, dressed in jeans and a shirt, his appearance different when he wasn’t in the garb of the guards. He didn’t look confident either, basking in his guilt for what he’d done.
“Now, you bring her into my house—like a wet dog that’s going to track mud everywhere.”
“There was no other way.” He finally spoke up, his chest rising and falling with his deep breathing. “You can’t see past your hate. You can’t see past your stubbornness. I had to save her, and asking you wasn’t an option.”
“So, you lied to me instead?” I stepped closer, my eyes so hot they were burning my own face. “You love this woman?” That was the only thing I would understand, because I knew the irrevocable feeling all too well.