Her voice gentled even further. “Are you sure? Can you tell me that what they did was all that different from what you did?”
He ran her words over again in his mind, trying to find some fault with her logic, but he couldn’t find any.
“Graydon,” she said tenderly.
He looked up at her. There was so much love in her expression, so much compassion, a lump rose in his throat.
“I know how insidious survivor’s guilt can feel,” she told him. “Why did they die, and not me? There must have been something—anything—I could have done to stop it. Those kinds of thoughts will consume your soul, if you don’t stop them.”
While he listened, he forced himself to breathe evenly. In and out, the raw, simple effort of living. If anybody knew about survivor’s guilt, it must be Bel. What demons had she been forced to confront and exorcise over the last six months?
She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth in a soft caress. “I’m not trying to take away your feelings. Gods, how could I? You need to feel what you feel, and grieve in your own time, and in your own way. The only thing I’m trying to say is, please, don’t carry the weight of this on your shoulders. Not this, not when it doesn’t belong there.”
Unable to speak, he nodded, and he had to cover his eyes.
As soon as darkness pressed against his eyelids, he saw it again—the spike bursting out of Constantine’s chest. Pain burned through his muscles like acid.
He also remembered something else. Con had been shouting something at him. Grabbing him, yanking him around.
Hauling him out of the path of danger.
“I didn’t change the vision,” he rasped. “Con did.”
His words shook her visibly. Even though the battle was over, terror flashed across her face, and her slender dark brows drew together. She breathed, “What did he do?”
“He pulled me out of the way, and pushed between me and Malphas.” Grief, like stones grinding together, roughened his voice. Malphas had driven that spike so hard, it had not only torn through Con’s body, it had also impaled him—just not deeply enough to puncture his heart. “He took the strike meant for me.”
“He saved your life?”
His lips formed a soundless word. “Yes.”
Her fingers tightened on his flesh, digging into his arms. She whispered, “Then I’ll always be grateful to him.”
He thought of how much strength and hatred had gone into Malphas’s massive blow, how close he had come to losing his life. He thought of that wry look in Con’s eyes at the very end. Con had known, and he had done it anyway. A wordless sound came out of him, as if he had just been struck again.
As the wave of pain passed, he grew aware of other things. Bel had gone nose-to-nose with him. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t flinch away. Her gaze was so naked, so full of emotion. He did not make this journey alone. Where he went, she went with him, right down into the darkest place. Everything he felt, she felt too.
How could she have lost everything that she had lost, and still have the strength to remain so open and compassionate?
“If I didn’t have you to hold onto right now, I think I would be going more than a little crazy,” he whispered.
“If I didn’t have you, I know I would be more than a little crazy.” Reaching up, she kissed his forehead. “What can I do for you, my love?”
A wave of tenderness washed over him. “You’re doing everything.” As he took a deep breath, he remembered something else. “Did I . . . dream that you and Dragos argued?”
With a snort, she buried her face in the pillow by his head. “No, you didn’t dream it. He was here, and we—we sort of did.”
He slipped his fingers underneath her chin, urging her face up. His voice deepening, he whispered, “You said I’m yours.”
Color darkened her cheeks. “Yes, and I-I might have told him that I’m moving in with you. Pretty much. Essentially.” She bit her lip. “Unless you have a problem with that?”
“Gods, no.” He locked his arms around her. “I’m never going to let you out of my sight again.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, but she didn’t contradict him. Instead, she clung to him, arms around his neck, drawing one slender leg over his hips. The reality of her presence pounded into him.
She was here, really here with him. For the first time in two hundred years, they were free from all constraint.
Free.
His hot burn of grief turned into raw need. His cock stiffened so hard, it felt agonizing.
Struggling with so many powerful emotions, he rasped, “I need you so much, and yet after what happened, it feels almost wrong.”
“Reaffirming love and life can never be wrong,” she told him softly. “That’s survivor guilt. This is a gift, Graydon. An incredible, precious gift. Everything you do—everything we do—from here on out is a gift. It would be so terrible to waste it.”
When everything inside him threatened to shut down, somehow she opened doors, and she made it okay for him to walk through them.
Yes, this was a gift. And if events had happened the other way around, he knew for damn sure Constantine wouldn’t waste it. In fact, Con would be the first to shove him forward, back into life.
She’s your chance, man, Con had said. You’ve got to take it.
His animal surged to the forefront. With a posssessive growl, he rolled her over so that she lay on her back on the hospital bed. So recently healed, his muscles shook with need and strain.
He gritted between his teeth, “Tell me not to do this, and I won’t.”
If she told him no, somehow, he would find a way to stop, if it killed him.
“I would never tell you such a thing,” she breathed. “I could never tell you no.”
Meeting her gaze, he tore off her clothing with the sharp talons that had grown to tip his fingers. Her gaze filled with fierce light. She looked like the Elven warrior who had once walked out of the shadows toward him.
She took his soul out of his body. He couldn’t bear not to give it to her.
Then her clothes were gone, thrown in a ruined pile of fabric to the floor. The sight of her beauty slammed him. Dark, luxuriant hair spread everywhere, and the slender, tensile strength in her body was unutterably lovely.
In an agonized clench, the monster whispered, “I may not be able to be gentle.”
“I don’t need your gentleness,” she said, as she reached up to touch his face. “I need your truth.”
Her words rocked him. Truth.
This is truth:
You tear away everything but my essence.
I need the light you carry more than I need air, food or water. I need you more than life.
I treasure the breaths we take together, and I am stricken with envy for them, for they mingle closer and more completely than our bodies can join.
Your beauty makes me fall out of the sky and want to stay tethered to earth. Let me follow you everywhere, my love, through the lightest moments, and the darkest. I can only be happy if we share all our pain.
Don’t leave me, I beg of you, for my spirit will go with you, and then I will truly become clay.
He whispered things against her body, the monster. He did not even know what. They were raw and naked, words that came from wounds of the heart, blooming like roses.
She sobbed and twisted underneath the caress of his lips, his deadly hands. He could not make his talons retract, and so he found gentleness after all, for he would die before he could ever mar her delicate beauty.
She tasted exquisite, like every dream he’d ever had of bliss. He tongued her plump lips, plundered the private recesses of her mouth, licked at the slender stalk of her neck where her life beat, strong and sure, underneath the velvet-scented veil of her skin.
While he lost himself in doing to her everything he had ever imagined, squandering the yearning daydreams of centuries, the flow of her body coursed underneath his hands, twisting and turning to match the needs of his body.