Page 93 of Born for Silk
I have to be okay with that.
“And I bring you peace.” I turn my head into his bicep, nuzzle his warm skin, and inhale his scent to store that along with his words. “You’re at odds with peace, but I see it.”
“I am not at odds with peace.” His gaze rolls over me, soft but pained. “I am suspicious of it. If I let it live inside me, even when with you, my humanity will not survive losing it.”
“Nothing lasts forever,” I whisper, drifting.
I think I might be in love with you, and that is quite fine. I can love you now and wish you farewell when the time comes.
Senseless for him in this moment, high on him and us and everything we are right now, that when he moves away from me, I almost lunge for his arm. But I do not.
He stands, then slides the gold sheet over my body, looking down at me, defiance moving in his blue eyes.
What did I do?
I sit, the sheet sliding down again, exposing my nipples to the bite of air. “My king…?”
My hope gutters as he stares at me, eyes empty and cold, his looming figure a brawny, detached silhouette.
“Nothing lasts forever?” He chuckles coldly. “Very well. Tomorrow night, little creature. No need for the veil. I want you gazing into my eyes when I fuck you, when it hurts, so you remember me when I send you away.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rome
The Missing Moon must be at its highest peak in the sky, though I can’t see but a muddied glow of its presence.
I avoid sleep, her, and “nothing lasts forever.”
How willing she is to accept this. How brutal her words were after I shared my need for her. Dammit—that ‘I breathe better with her.’ Fuck.
And she will retire to a Sired Mother, leave this dark, murderous chasm I carry around, and take all my air away, leave me suffocating on her memory…
‘Nothing lasts forever’ imbeds deeper than a bullet.
Well, that is quite fine, little Silk Girl. The perfect product of The Trade. Not an individual.
Not mine… But theirs.
I snarl. I told her I would kill the man who interrupted us, in turn, it was me. Always me. Self-hate found a home within me the day Tuscany was mutilated, and it’s been breeding ever since. I no longer recognise it as hatred, but as a part of me.
She must already see it.
Must already want to be rid of it.
Soft, rhythmic music sails through the piazza, coiling around my entertainers, moving them to its seductive rhythm. They share intimate encounters. Dancers, House Girls, clad in barely-there slips of fabric, touch each other and moan.
I lean forward on the throne, rubbing my jawline, watching them, finding them boring, unattractive, even. Pointless. This entire hedonistic last-moment gathering was my attempt to sabotage whatever feelings I have before it is too late and I am unwilling to let her go.
A memory slams into my mind, further foregrounding everything I expect from her once she sees me for who I am, once she sees the bleak, black chasm of my heart.
My bloodied hands shake with rage and my teeth bare on a growl as I enter Tuscany’s quarters with the dripping head of our father.
I scan the room, and, as always, the bed is made and empty. The kitten she was gifted months ago is now taxidermized on her nightstand.
I stomp into the bathroom.
With her back to me, she lays in the glossy ceramic bathtub, her slender arms draped over the lips; the water is as still as her body.