“Precisely.” He laughed.

“Why would you want that?”

“You don't know?”

I shook my head.

“You really have no idea what you are to me, Ara, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I…it would take a lifetime for me to show you how I feel. There are no words I could find to say it in one breath, and I love you just doesn’t hold enough weight for the feeling I have in my soul that you are everything. You are my life, my breath, my reason to get up, to smile, to live each day. I will never let you go.” He wiped his soft, long fingers down my cheek. “Don't you see? One day my brother will come back here, and I won't get to be with you anymore, and, eventually, that will kill me anyway.”

“But, Jase,” I said, trying not to cry. “How can I live in a world without you?”

He shook his head, taking in my half naked body as he peeled the shirt completely away. “Better than you can live in a world without David.”

My whole heart tightened with sadness, because I knew it was true, and I knew I could love Jason for one night without hating myself as much as if it was Arthur.

“Wait.” I pressed my hand to his abs as he lifted his shirt over his head. “Will David really hate me if I have a baby to stop him from dying?”

“He’ll get over it.” He ditched the shirt and fell on his hands, his body over mine. “Think of the agony he's been going through these past few months, probably worrying whose hands he’d be leaving you in once he’s dead.” He looked down at my hips and cupped them both firmly, sliding me down the bed. “He knows this will happen, he just believes it’ll be when he's gone—cold in the ground. But it doesn't have to be that way.”

I was surprised at that, really. I kind of thought he’d jump at the chance to have me for eternity.

“No,” he said, having read my mind. “Not sad—not eternally grieving him, Ara. If you really do love him more than me, then you will not ever be happy again if he dies.” He reached down and unzipped his jeans. “We’re doing this. I'm giving you my child, and I will die happy, knowing that I at least left a part of myself behind—in you.”

I closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths while he fussed about between my legs, taking off his clothes. And when his bare skin fell smoothly and warmly against mine as he came back down on top of me, I felt myself only more drawn to him. Ready for him. Wanting him.

“I'm sorry, but…while I have you completely naked, I'm gonna do something I've wanted to do for a long time,” he said behind that mischievous grin.

“What’s that?” I asked shyly, my cheek to my shoulder.

“Kiss you somewhere naughty.”

As if my body belonged to his every touch, my spine curved, making my ribs press against his, my chin tilting upward by command of his lips; his mouth opened, warm breath over soft skin, and traced lovely wet little kisses from my collarbones to my ribs, then over the line of promise.

“This,” he said through the kisses, running a finger over my Mark, “looks incredibly sexy on you.”

“I'm not sure I fit in a sentence with the word sexy,” I scoffed.

“Tell that to my body.” He smiled against my flesh, taking his lips down my belly in a curve, finding the join of my hip and sneaking off to that patch of forbidden hair. I gasped, a rush of heat moistening between my thighs as his tongue entered me where no man had ever kissed before.

I grabbed the edge of my pillow, opening my legs wider, trying not to moan loudly, but the glorious ability of this mind reader meant that he knew exactly where to put his fingers and exactly how soft his touch needed to be. He slid one finger slowly out and back in again, kissing me each time it entered.

The electricity in my hands snapped, making me hotter all through my core; I drove them under my pillow and bit my lip, giggling inside.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“That kind of tickles.”

He laughed, running his wet hands up my hips and to my breast, his lips following, his hair touching my chin, the faint smell of myself all over his mouth as he kissed my nipple, moving up my neck to my jaw.

I wanted to reach down and grab him, slide him inside me, but he kept his hips away, reaching up to grab my hand as soon as the idea entered my mind.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Argh! You’re killing me!”

His breath left his chest, tinted with a low tone of his beautiful deep voice, and I felt so close to him, hearing him that way, hearing his voice against my skin. I opened my mouth as he came to it, and let my tongue touch his—felt his lips perfectly shape to mine, his hands reaching around to cradle my spine, as if he couldn't possibly hold me close enough to drive the desire away. And as I wrapped my legs around his hips, felt the driving force of his love so solidly, so clearly in that first thrust, that I let out a little cry, scrunching my fingers into the flesh between his shoulder blades.

“You okay?” he asked, laughing into the curve of my neck.

“I just…” David was never that passionate. “I'm okay.”

His hips moved away from mine, coming closer again, the muscles in his butt tightening each time. I never imagined it could feel this way—all of it; skin on skin, chest to chest, his thin body, so toned and so firm, pressing my breasts flat between us, while the sharp bone of his jaw rested against my head, his throat just above my nose and lips—just close enough to bite. There was a kind of energy between us, surrounding us, that felt solid, like we were grounded by a force outside our awareness.

I leaned down and kissed the Mark on his arm softly, closing my eyes as I remembered the first time I saw it—how much I loved him even then.

“Jase?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

He stopped for a second, and his soft hair tickled my nose as he drew back, then looked down at me. “I love you, too, Ara. For forever.” He leaned in and kissed my lips once. “And I will die loving you.”

I rolled my head back and tilted my hips up to meet his, inviting him to move in me once more; he obliged, keeping his chest and belly off mine, looking down between my legs, watching himself go inside me. And it was about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

Hot liquid flooded my insides, making Jason grin as he reached down to press his thumb against a really sensitive spot.

“Holy shi…!” I said, as if I’d just plunged down the dip of a roller-coaster. “What the hell is that?”

“Clitoral stimulation.”

“Oh.”

He laughed, and I looked up—saw the amusement in his eyes, the tongue of concentration sitting in the corner of his smile. His thumb made my body do things it’d never done before—make noises my throat didn't know it could make, and I felt myself tighten around him, from the inside out, pulsing in little twitches as he acted on my every thought.

At the point my body could no longer take it, he shoved himself hard inside of me again, hitting a spot way up that sent everything flooding back down. Moisture swam between us, his thighs wet against mine—the night air sweeping between us, cooling what was so hot I could hardly breathe.

Jason moaned loudly then, his chest above my lips, his arms so tight the veins bulged around his elbow as he gripped the bed, holding himself at the deepest point within me. And I felt it—felt him release, felt his life force rush through me. We were One. There was no going back. A threshold had been crossed and the door closed. And I was nothing but content, even though I knew he would pull away at any second, because right now, he was mine and I was his—just the way I wanted it to be.

As my gasps died down to soft breaths, he pressed his body to mine again, moving slowly, teasing that overexcited spot. I let out a long sigh, feeling so tight in all my limbs, but most deliciously, where he and I connected.

“Ara.” He slid his hand behind my back, cradling my spine as he rolled me up, gently tucking my face against his chest. “I wish I could hold onto you like this forever.”

And I felt so loved, so safe in his arms that I wished it, too.

I angled my chin to his chest and kissed him where his heart should be beating, breathing deep his spicy cologne and the delicious orange-chocolate of warm blood through his veins, then wrapped both my arms and legs around him, squeezing his body tightly. I never wanted to let go. He was a part of me now, and always would be. I wasn't sure it meant I had come to terms with how I felt, but I was certainly face to face with it, unable to deny it any longer.

“Jase?”

“Yeah?” He shuffled back, slipping out of me.

“This won't make it okay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I love him. I really do, and I…I can see his face. I can see the way he’ll look at me when I tell him the baby’s yours.” I shut my eyes around that thought.

“Shh.” He kissed the bone just above my eye. “It’s okay. We’ll tell him together.”

“No.” My eyes shot open. “We can't. He needs to be free to have an emotional reaction—he can't do that with you there—with anyone else there.”

“It’s his emotional reaction I'm worried about, Ara.”

“He won't hurt me, Jase.”

“Then you don't know him very well.”

“Or maybe you don't.” I shoved him off me and stood up. “Stop always thinking the worst of him.”

“Ara, I’ve seen it. I've goddamn well seen him hit a girl before.” He stood up, too, following me. “Why won't you listen to me?”

“Because it’s irrelevant, Jason.”

“Why?”

“Look what we did.” I pointed back to my bed. “We betrayed him. We…we loved each other in his bed. He’d be right to hurt me for that, Jason.”

He ran forward and gently grabbed my arm. “No, Ara. He wouldn't.”

“Just—get off me.” I shrugged away. “I don't want this anymore. I don't want the confusion.”

“It’s not confusing, Ara. You love me. You said it yourself.”

I shoved him away again. “No. I don't want this! I don't want to love you!” I screamed.

He stood taller, the centre of his being turning to ice, breath by painful breath. His arms fell to his sides, his eyes glazed. “Ara, I can't read you right now,” his voice shook. “I need you to tell me you don't really mean that.”

I sunk down, my head in my hands, tears falling over my knees and onto the carpet. “I don't know what I feel. I just need you to go. I just need to be alone.”

“Sure. Okay, I’ll uh—” His words stopped.

I peeked through my fingertips and saw his long toes twitch then shift back, step by step, as he walked away, slipping into his jeans, closing my bedroom door a second later.

A sharp ache struck the core of my wretched heart then; I folded into a ball, crying aloud until, as the sun showed a lighter horizon in the distance, the silent sobs of my soul dying rang out into the emptiness around me.

Agony finally turned clarity to fog, and everything from my heart deep went numb.

The morning felt new, quiet, dark. I thought of Mike, down the other end of the manor, probably unable to sleep because of our fight, and wondered what he’d think to know what I just did.

Right now, before the sun rose, no one had a clue, and I could still live in the dream-like state where nothing bad ever truly happened—where everything I ever did wrong was just a nightmare.

But it wasn't a nightmare—not this time. I slept with Jason to keep David, and the regret I felt wasn’t just for the betrayal of my wedding vows; it was because I’d sent Jason to his death, and I wasn’t sure I could live with that—not after having loved him that way—felt him love me back like no other man ever had…or would.

I might have saved David, but I’d revealed an inner truth that was worse than betrayal.

I shut my eyes, clasping my hands under my chin, and whispered to that One Entity out there, somewhere past the stars, beyond Dark Matter and planet Jupiter. I needed to be heard; I needed to take back what I did. “Please don't let me be pregnant to Jason. Please, please,” I repeated over and over again. But my words became weak by the time the sun crawled along my naked body, and I sat at the head of my bed, my knees tucked up, thumb against my lips, staring into the truth of the life I just destroyed.

There was no wind outside, no sound; the ocean was still and the birds…all gone. I deserved no hint of life this morning; deep inside, I was a disgusting soul—gifted with beauty, love, opportunity, and I wasted it.

“Forgive me,” I whispered.

A white nightdress was the only thing covering my lustful, sinning body as I stumbled through the halls toward the gates of release. Freedom. I needed to feel the wind on my face and the sun on my skin to know I was still alive—that I wasn't dragged away by the reapers in the middle of the night.

I walked through the forest at dawn, praying it would trap me, praying something evil would come to get me. But it let me pass, led me to the field—to the place this all began.

Clouds rolled over the sun as I cried my eyes to blindness, fumbling through the long, itching grasses; a storm was on the way, and I wanted it to come, wanted it to electrify the skies with its power and strike me down where I stood.

But it wouldn’t, because I was immortal—no longer so blessed to be gifted with death. It was something I’d have to force upon myself—take myself apart so that I never opened my eyes again. I couldn't go back to that life. Everything was ruined. What once was innocent now was tainted so black it could never be loved again. David saw a pure soul in me, but in truth, that was the lie. There was no escape from the pain—no escape from the truth that I wanted Jason as badly as I wanted David—in equal measures. The only release I could expect would be a release from life—into an eternity of Hell.