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I’m too drunk to process what that even means, my focus wholly shifting to staying upright on my feet without tipping over. With harsher hands than before, he flips the water off and lifts me out of the shower, wrapping me in a towel. A soft plush surface presses into my back when he lays me down on the bed, and covers me with a blanket.

“I’m sorry I made you mad,” I whisper before the blackness tugs at me.

“I’m not mad at you, chère.” The tickle of his fingers down my temple sends a calm through me. “I’m mad at myself.”

25

Thierry

Every cell in my body is on fire right now. From the moment I walked through the door, I could feel that the atmosphere had shifted, the pressure dropped, the way it does before a hurricane. The way she looked, bent over the stove, in my shirt, would’ve been enough for me to wrangle her to the floor, if not for the unearthly level of restraint I’ve developed over the years.

Giving her more alcohol was a means of distracting her from the need to pop a pill tonight, and to serve as a barrier between us, as well. After all, nothing tamps down the libido quite like listening to drunken babble. But now, seeing her passed out in my bed, her dark, wet hair fanned out over the sheets, breathing in the scent of clean skin, knowing that nothing but a poorly wrapped towel separates me from what I’ve obsessed over all day, I feel as if I’m about to ignite. The plan to turn me off this woman has backfired tenfold, and something much more sinister has awakened inside of me.

Her little fortune telling session earlier was fairly spot on for me, except for one thing: aside from my mother and sister, I’ve never loved a woman in my life. That’s because men like me, as she so boldly categorized, only live for ourselves. Always on the fringes of a world that isn’t meant for us, we take selfishly and savagely, because she’s right, there are no guarantees. No happy endings. My timeline will end as a lonely old man, or with a bullet in my skull. There are no in-betweens. And indulgences, like Céleste, don’t happen that often.

I peel back the blanket and find the towel only half-wrapped over her body. The supple curve of a breast peeks out from beneath, and my fingers itch to touch her.

What if I did?

What if I slid the towel away and made my own personal feast of her body, licking and sucking and fucking her for hours, while she lay unconscious?

Every muscle in my body hardens with the thought. How easily I could take advantage of her, ease the tension churning inside of me, and get her out of my head during the day. Because honestly, how many times have I hooked up with a woman, only to find the buildup, the fantasy, was ten times better than the real thing?

Too many to count.

The talking and pouting afterward, the yearning to cuddle, when all I want is to wash their smell off me and leave. It annihilates the beauty and simplicity of a quick fuck.

But the absence of that sweet moaning sound she made in the shower, or never hearing my name on her lips when she comes? It’d be an absolute travesty of what makes the mirage of her so thrilling.

My gaze snags on the scar on her leg. Unless she was playing me, which would’ve been far more difficult to pull off in her drunken state, she didn’t seem to recognize the word Antitheus. It’s only my guess that the inverted ‘A’ symbolizes it, and it’s possible she has no clue who, or what, they are. I’m betting it’s one of the answers she drove all the way from Michigan to find, but for now, I’m keeping it under wraps. I don’t intend to feed her anything I’ve scrounged. The girl will tell me what I need to know, and if I happen to be feeling charitable, at some point, perhaps I’ll enlighten her. Until then, she can read her book to pass the time and piece the clues herself.

Pulling the sheet back over her body, I leave her to sleep. On my way to the armoire across the room, I slide my tie from around my neck and unbutton my damp shirt, before peeling it from my body. Donning a tank and sweats, I head to the workout room to burn off the tension blazing inside of me like an untamed wildfire.

An hour-long work out, pushing my muscles to the brink of fatigue, and I still can’t shake the need to fuck something.

A cold shower only brings to mind earlier, when I had my hands on her. Futile as it is to battle the urges still pulsing through me like a bad ecstasy trip, I rest my forehead against the tiles and, cock in hand, imagine Céleste trussed by her wrists, helpless to every one of my depraved impulses. That alone offers quick relief, and with my balls settling back to normal size, I rinse the cum off the tiles and my hand, before exiting the shower.

Back in the kitchen, I stand amid the thick of a disaster, and I exhale an exasperated breath as I swipe up my plate of food and empty it into the trash. In all honesty, the shrimp tasted like she battered it in lava and dipped it in hellfire, perhaps the worst attempt at Valir cooking I’ve ever had, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Because as bad as it may have been, no one, aside from my mother, has ever gone out of their way to cook for me, either.

For the next half hour, I clean up the mess she left behind, silently cursing her at the same time as she mentally fucks me. With everything as clean as before, I throw on a fresh T-shirt and jeans, slip on my boots, grab my gun and a flashlight, along with her bag of pills from the nightstand, and head out to the woods.

Where the trees are thickest, I toss the bag of pills into the darkness, hearing them land with a plink in a stretch of boggy vegetation about a hundred yards off. Could be a mistake, getting rid of them, but I saw her pound four of those damn things at once. It only gets worse from there. I know firsthand, as I watched my own mother succumb to them.

Depression.

Anxiety.

Paranoia.

She might as well have gone through the withdrawals that terrified her, for all the symptoms she suffered staying on them so long.

A fifteen-minute walk brings me to a clearing, where a rundown shack marks the home of the Boudreauxs. Its exterior clings to its tired frame like wrinkled skin. Abandoned cars and tools, rusted and weathered, lie scattered over the yard. The penned animals in a small barn stir and flap about, as if they suddenly sense a predator. With a caustic irritation running through my blood, I stride up to the door and knock.

A few seconds later, the door swings open to a tall, but gaunt man, aiming a shotgun at my forehead, which he quickly lowers. “Oh, hey dere, Mr. Bergeron. Sorry, all I seen was da flashlight in da dark.”

“Evening, Hal. Sorry to disturb you so late.”

A sound that reminds me of a squealing pig interrupts me, and Hal snaps his attention to the left, his gray, bushy brows furrowing. “Hush, boy! Can’ you see we got company?”