“I want us to be done now,” he says.
Our bodies keep moving, almost as if they were working separately from the rest of us. His arm wraps around my waist, and his other grips the nape of my neck.
“What are we done doing?”
He kisses me, deep and heated, and then his blue eyes drag me so far under that I know they’re not letting me out again. “Pretending you haven’t been mine since the first time you said my name.”
I really have been. He just has no idea it was long before the bar.
My lips race back to his. I thread my fingers through his hair, grinding down on him harder. My thighs tighten around him, and I’m sure he can feel my heart hammering through my chest, crushed to his.
Chaz pumps into me, not losing the rhythm while he inches me over the edge. The fall hits me hard, and I cry out, so overwhelmed that I barely notice him hiking me up and dropping me back onto the mattress until my head hits the pillow.
A needy sound rumbles in his throat as my body continues to shudder around him, and he drives into me faster, rutting deeper. I hook my legs around his waist and take everything from him. The light, the dark, anything him. Finally, his muscles grow rigid, and he groans while he comes, burying himself in me one last time.
Breathing hard into my neck, he stays inside me while we come down. Then he starts to skim his lips over my sensitive skin. I close my eyes, back to a raw nerve ending. His mouth brushes me, and his tenderness hurts. But I fall into it as he carefully kisses my cheeks and nose and eyelids. Even the tears that escape get chased by him, and when we go to sleep, I’m in his arms.
And the tie is on the nightstand—where it stays.
Nyla is cremated. She always thought it was poetic for our kind to return to dust. It’s not only where we came from, but it’s also a part of our blood.
When I moved her to Colorado, I chose the farmhouse because of the view. The upstairs window faces the back of the property. It has a large yard that leads to a lake with a dock. At first, she’d sit in her wheelchair, staring at the water.
“Just stand still and look, Nyx.” She still talked the first month and would catch my hand before I left after visiting her.
I would face the window until she let me go, but I wasn’t looking. I was too busy trying to keep her alive. To keep her with me a little while longer.
A few days after her death, I’m in her room. I’m standing at the window. I’m looking.
And it fucking hurts.
The floor creaks as someone crosses the threshold into the room. He steps behind me, and I close my eyes, wanting to feel him—the life in his veins.
Chaz grips my waist through my plain black dress. “Cass and Hannah are by the shelterbelt to the east. Rosdan’s near the barn with the amulet.”
Demon watch. I search the tree line until I see them. Hannah’s leaning back into Cass, his arms wrapped around her like he’ll never let her go. Then I find Rosdan pushing off the barn. His attention is set toward the front of the house.
“And you?” I ask.
Chaz doesn’t step back when I turn around, his hands sliding over me until I face him. He’s in a long-sleeved white dress shirt, wearing the black tie that, as of the other night, appears to have been retired. He moves closer, his arms encircling me.
He rests his forehead on mine. “I’m right here.”
His cool thumb skims over my cheek, and I try to lock all of this into memories in case it’s the last time. Because right now, everything feels like it might be a last time.
Muffled slams from car doors out front force me back a step. His hand falls away, and I wipe my cheeks. “They’re here,” I say. “We should go.”
I look over my shoulder out the window one more time. The table sits on the dock, white linen cloth on top and the urn surrounded by loose stemmed roses.
I fucking hurt.
When we get downstairs, Chaz hands me the wool jacket Hannah grabbed from my apartment earlier. I put it on as we go out the sliding doors that open to the lake. I’m still hooking the buttons when Chaz comes to an abrupt stop on the back porch.
“Are those all…” He trails off, scanning the yard.
They come from both sides of the house. If Chaz knew what to look for, he’d see the division between the bloodlines. Clusters that keep distance from the others. Furtive glances.
“It’s the only time you’ll see the remaining Descended in one place,” I say.
“All of them?”
I nod, stepping down onto the grass. “Twenty-seven of us now.”
The others have created a scattered formation near the dock, and I stop in the middle. My lineage has stayed rather neutral within the remaining nine. We—or I have no one with ill will toward me or hard feelings over bullshit that happened centuries ago.
I nod to an older man by himself, scanning the faces. “Amadeus is the last from Gadreel’s lineage. He’s the eldest, outlasting three children.”
“Gad was a prick,” Chaz says, curling his arm around my waist.
He tucks me against his side, holding me there like it’s where I belong, and I smile into the collar of my coat.
Amadeus visually counts The Descended, hesitating on us for an instant before he moves on. But that’s the thing with a group this paranoid—everyone notices. The calculated glances begin, and Chaz brings me closer.
“Step right up to see the infamous Watcher, folks,” he deadpans.
Maybe I won’t leave here quite as neutral.
Amadeus steps in front of Nyla’s urn, kicking us off with a not-so-brief listing of every person in my lineage, ending with the original. I would have skipped this entire part and just scattered her ashes in the lake, but they would have shown up eventually even if I hadn’t invited them. Tradition. And such a waste of airfare.
After the excruciatingly boring list of monotone names, the end of the ritual lasts all of five minutes. Each lineage approaches the urn, and every member leaves something meaningful to them behind. A piece of their life for the one who lost theirs.
The stares transition to gawking when I tug Chaz with me to the dock. I find an old, crumpled receipt in my coat pocket and set it under the edge of the urn. Chaz lifts a brow, side-eyeing me, and I shrug.
“I gave her part of all my lives,” I say quietly. “Plus, I have, like, five things at your apartment and forgot to ask Hannah to bring something from mine. Why? You bring something better?”
He smirks and loosens the knot on his tie. “No, but I have an excuse.” He drags the loop over his head before dropping it over the urn. “I’ve only had a mortal life for twenty-three days, and it’s all revolved around you.”
His hand glides over mine, and he winks, walking away to give me a second. I wait until he’s far enough away that he won’t see what I pull out of my other pocket.
“You can have this for the sake of ceremony,” I tell Nyla, “but I’ll need it back.”
I tip the urn and put the picture all the way under to keep it from blowing away. During my stint in solitary—when I wasn’t talking to him—I found it tucked away in the box he keeps in his closet. Given the quality and style choices, I’d place them in the early nineties. Cass is midway through an eye roll while Rosdan mean-mugs and Chaz flips off the camera. The guy beside him has dirty-blond hair and a different shade of blue eyes, and he has an arm slung over Chaz’s shoulders.