I reached out and touched her feverish-looking skin. She was burning. Her skin was sinfully smooth. She was like a perfect marble angel, not meant to be touched or sullied with bloodstained hands. She twisted from side to side, dragging the neckline of her nightgown down, exposing the slight swell of her breast.
Blood snapped through my veins, surging hot.Jesus.Maybe I really was a devil. I wanted to touch this woman. I hadn’t wanted to touch a woman in a long, long time. It had all grown wearying. Hookups and awkward conversations afterward. Clinging hands and missed phone calls. Pretending to be normal... I didn’t want anything to do with that. I was done with it.
But Katarina saw me exactly as I was. Somehow, she knew.Her smooth, pale skin called to me, and in that moment, I wanted to mark it with my fingerprints. Make it red with my lips. I wanted to hear her scream my name.
“Sleeping around with married men? I’ve never so much as kissed a man.”
I’d never met such an untouched person. Her soul was squeaky-clean, her body inexperienced, her heart—lonely, just like mine. She couldn’t stay in this place. It would destroy her. She was special. She needed to be protected. Sheltered. Isolated from the real, harsh world.
I can take her with me when I go,a small, devilish voice whispered in my mind.She could be ours. We’ve never had someone to call our own.The devil inside me salivated at the thought.
Ha. And Katarina thoughtshewas crazy.
She had no idea.
No one would miss her. No one would come for her. She’d be all yours.
Putting aside those thoughts, I tugged up her nightgown and covered her chest. Christ, she was rail thin. The girl needed food and sunlight, fresh air. She needed the real world. She was dying without it. She needed someone to take care of her... someone to belong to.
“Katarina, wake up,micetta. It’s only a dream.”
I touched her cheek when she failed to rise from the clutches of her nightmare. Her skin was downy and plush, like the most expensive of fabrics. She still failed to rise. Was she drugged? I lowered my hand to her neck and circled it, pressing in just enough to inhibit her breath. Her pulse surged beneath my fingertips. Life and warmth, right there within reach for once.What is it like to be so vividly alive?I wondered idly, enjoying the feeling of her slender neck between my fingers.
I sank down on the bed beside her. A moth to her luminous flame.
Then the long dark fans of her eyelashes suddenly lifted, and she was staring right at me.
“Toï idva.He’s coming. He’s coming...” she whispered feverishly, her eyes wide.
“Who’s coming?” I asked. Was she talking about me? Her Lucifer?
“He’s coming, Mira—he’s here. He’s already here, hide. Hide.” She turned to look at the corner of the room, and her face crumpled.
Ah, so she was still lost in her nightmares. But then, weren’t we all?
Then the tears came, spilling down her cheeks like someone had turned a tap on.
I froze. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. Anger was easy to cope with. Rage, mockery, fear, all of it was simple... but this grief?
I was lost.
I began to pull back just as her fingers sank into my cassock and she held me close to her.
“Don’t. Don’t leave me alone.” Her heartbroken whisper was enough to move even the dead lump of stone that lived in my chest, where a heart used to beat.
Her plea stilled me. People routinely begged me for mercy when their fate was already bought and paid for. I was used to those desperate pleas. But comfort? No one asked me for comfort. No one felt safer in my presence. The idea was laughable, and yet, there was a tenacity in Katarina’s fingers in my cassock, holding me near her in a moment I knew I’d never forget.
She sank into my side, sliding down until her head was cushioned on my lap, and then her tears were sinking through me. Ifroze; my breath stuck in my chest as she shook with her grief. Slowly, like she was made of spun sugar, and one wrong touch would dissolve her completely, I rested a hand on top of her head. Her hair was like satin.
She cried, and I bore witness.
She wasn’t alone... and for once, neither was I.
7
KATARINA
Coming to with my own personal Lucifer leaning over me was unsettling, but the dream had left me too rattled to do anything other than dissolve in his arms. When he’d tried to leave, terror had struck me at the thought of being alone with the memories in my head.