Page 92 of His Darkest Desire

This was right.

This was a memory worth lingering in.

When he took another breath, it was tinged with a sweet, alluring smell—orange blossoms, so exotic; sweet honey; a fresh spring rain.

Brow furrowing, he forced his eyes open. His vision blurred and wavered in the bright light, and his heart quickened, thumping against his ribs. Sunlight, overwhelming, scalding—

No. Not sunlight. He recognized the soft, multihued glows cast upon the ceiling. This was his place. His lab, his home.

Vex sighed, willing himself to ease. Everything he’d seen, everything he’d relived, had existed only in his memory. In the distant past.

Barely holding in a groan as his stiff muscles protested the movement, he turned his head.

It was Kinsley who lay with him, her cheek on his arm. Kinsley whose honey brown hair was draped over his skin, whose soft body was against him, whose warmth radiated into him.

Heat flared in his chest and spiraled outward through his veins, tingling to the tips of his fingers and toes. Kinsley was lying with him, sleeping with him, and he’d not known until now. How hadn’t he been aware?

The barghest.

His eyes fell shut and his throat constricted as the memories rushed to the forefront.

Limiting himself to teasing Kinsley had proven exceedingly difficult, but somehow, he’d restrained himself and allowed her to go outside. He’d allowed her to find joy in something from which he could never take any—the sunlight.

And he’d felt so…light. Aroused, but so light, so free. So hopeful and hungry. Because when she returned, he would’ve pressed that passion, that desire. Would’ve done more than merely tease.

But then Echo had come. Echo, frantic, speaking almost too quickly for Vex to understand.

Barghest. Hunting Kinsley.

Dread had nearly frozen Vex in that moment. It mattered not that she carried some of his immortal lifeforce. Kinsley could not stand against a barghest. Naught in his possession—not his magic, his knowledge, his herbs and potions, his willpower, his rage—could have saved her had she been bitten.

He recalled the trees passing in a rush. Recalled the sting of sunlight upon his skin, and the scrape of branches as he crashed through the canopy.

Clearest of all, he recalled the moment his eyes fell upon Kinsley, his mate, with the barghest grinning its sharp-toothed, hungry-eyed grin only a few paces away from her. A predator just as cold, ravenous, and calculating as the queen.

His heart had ceased beating.

Vex remembered the fog, the struggle, the pain. His abdomen pulsed with the memory of claws shredding his flesh, and he shifted his free arm to run his hand over his stomach. His fingertips brushed across unmarred skin.

But after the brief, brutal battle, after the barghest lay unmoving in a pool of its own black, wretched blood and Kinsley had helped him back home, he remembered…

Darkness. A universe of darkness.

No, that wasn’t right. There’d been memories in the darkness. Nightmares. Yet through it all, there’d been one constant, one shred of hope, one thing to latch onto as he rode the waves of oblivion.

There’d been Kinsley.

Her presence, her touch, her voice. Her compassion, attention, and will. There’d been her. His moonlight.

Vex opened his eyes.

Her features were relaxed in sleep, but even slumber’s serenity couldn’t mask the dark circles under her eyes or the weary paleness of her skin.

You’re here with us. With…with me.

Swallowing thickly, Vex shifted, lifting his head and propping himself on his elbow. She wore a simple white nightgown, and her hair was damp and loose.

“Magus,” Echo whispered, their ghostfire shining at the edge of his vision.