pain shoot out from every emotional scar she’d ever received. Her lashes came down in a prolonged blink. When they swept up again, it was to reveal a stark pain created from a lifetime of rejection.
“Go,” he forced out. He nudged her out of the way and reached for the door handle so he could pull it closed. “Sorin will make sure you get home.”
She nodded, looking disoriented as she dropped her head and turned away.
Lucian, what are you doing? Let her in. Accept what she is offering you. Please.
Like a blow to the head, Markus’s tortured voice came to him as surely as if his baby brother was standing next to him. Moisture filled his eyes as loss devoured him.
If this is what I fear it is, I do not want another installment of what people consider happiness, my brother. I will not survive it when it ends either by my hand or someone else’s. So I am saving myself from something far worse than what I feel when I sit alone at night and miss you.
He closed the door and left his pet alone in the darkness on the front stoop of his castle. He crossed the foyer, aiming for his office, fearing he may have just committed his most grievous sin yet.
♦ ♦ ♦
As Yasmeen walked around small groups of laughing and smiling friends and relatives happily greeting their loved ones, she spotted a tall, willowy blonde pushing through the crowd toward her. Kristin Sheppard. The expression on her former roommate’s face said she’d already gotten a clear view of Yasmeen’s.
“Come here, baby girl.”
Yasmeen was pulled into a tight, loving embrace.
“Oh, no, no. You cannot let him do this to you. Don’t you dare let him do this to you,” Kris whispered. “He is not worth it, ma belle fille.”
It was then Yasmeen accepted it was over. Before it even began. For a few short teasing moments, she’d known what it felt like to find the one place she truly belonged. In the darkness with her madman.
But, now, returning to her reality, where life once more sat back after cruelly proving she was one of those people who would never be lucky enough to find the acceptance she so craved, she was in agony. Even as a pet, she wasn’t worth keeping.
She remembered his smile the night she’d told him she’d seen a mouse, and thought about how the sun had come out when his eyes had crinkled at the sides, its golden glow warming her shadowed world for a few short moments. The damaging effects of those rays would linger, she knew. They would last forever because he’d burned her. He’d invited her in. Forced her to accept him. Then he’d burned her at the stake.
And she’d let him because she was that desperate to be loved. Not wanted, as she’d initially thought. But loved.
“Come on. We’ll take care of introductions later. Let’s get her out of here. Do you have a bag, Yas?”
Her head throbbed when she shook it. Kristen said something in French that was too fast for her to track, and then Yasmeen was being led through Charles de Gaulle behind two guys with hipster beards and trendy clothes. She couldn’t get out one word as they got into a cab and zoomed through the streets of Paris.
♦ ♦ ♦
At the sound of a throat clearing, Lucian looked down and to the side but not all the way back. He’d expected Sorin to interrupt his quiet time sooner.
“Yes?”
“She wanted you to have something. I followed her instructions and left it in your room.”
“Spencer is with her?”
“Yes. He and his team will remain in the shadows until you give him direct orders to stand down.”
Lucian nodded. Invasion of privacy or not; there was no way he would ever leave one of his on their own again.
“You, er, should go see what she left for you.”
He fully turned at Sorin’s uncharacteristic stammer to find the doorway already empty. Returning to what he’d been doing, he walked around the cross and ran his hand down the cold wood. He braced himself before allowing in the memory of how she’d sounded when she’d called out to him. He’d been doing this for an hour now, and every time he relived the sound of her need, more pressure released through the cracks in his shell.
He stepped back, pictured the look in her eyes when she’d seen him in the doorway, and opened his mind to the sound of