Pretty Perfect Toy - Angel Payne Page 0,25

life.

Which turned life into a very different word for me, for so long—

until I journeyed halfway around the world, and walked into a reception hall in a tiny island’s palace—

and remembered what life was supposed to feel like.

Which means I now have a choice.

To dwell in the death that has turned living into simply existing, or to turn forward, into life…

Into letting Mishella all the way in?

I have to make the decision.

Now.

And I do.

FIVE

*

Mishella

Cassian Court is not a man known for his indecisive ways. I have known it since the night he scaled a trellis outside my bedroom balcony in to tilt my world’s axis with our first kiss. I likely knew it before then. I certainly have been reminded of it, in about a thousand different ways, since arriving in New York—

But never as vividly as in this moment. This instance, such a perfect crash of my body and spirit, that it will be imprinted on my mind forever.

Body. My legs still tingling, after he swept from our embrace to his feet, hauling me up too. My fingers still stinging from his conquering grip. My blood still pumping from our rush down from the turret.

Spirit. Whirling from trying to figure out his purpose. Rejoicing from realizing that it does not matter—that I would trust him if he dragged me down to the first floor, through the basement, and into the fires of hell. And now sobbing—when he slams his bedroom door shut, locks his gaze into mine, and gives me the full force of his trust.

And his tears.

Shining and heavy—as he frames my face with both his hands.

Hot and salty—as he angles my mouth higher then smashes his over it.

Then takes me harder.

And deeper.

And does not stop.

We sob and moan and tangle into each other, taking and giving grief and sorrow and loss…and hope and need and possibility. And life. Its pulse through us. Its power inside us.

Its magnificence because of us.

And suddenly, I understand more. I see the gift of this, of him. That I saw from the moment he first burst his light into my world. His beauty was only the beginning—how every woman in that Palais room was not a puddle from his princely-perfect features and godlike body is beyond my logic—there was the sheer power of his very presence. The fierce force of his will over the air molecules themselves…

So what has he ever seen in me that is worth forty million dollars?

What on Earth did Cassian crave from our “arrangement” that could add up to half of what he has brought to me?

Until now, the Creator has been cryptic about the answer.

Until now…in this moment when I see so much of this man. See into this man. See exactly why it was not just his choice but his need to keep the details about Lily from me. He was terrified of having to relive them all for himself—by himself—because he was sure of never finding someone willing to walk those memories with him. Someone to give the darkest part of himself to, who would still be there when he was done. Probably not knowing if he even could.

But loving me enough to try.

Trusting enough to let me in.

Once more, the magnitude of his gift slams me like a wave. No…a tsunami. It soars my adoration for him into galaxies I never dreamed…starscapes that give me the will to pull back from his lips, if only far enough to gaze again into the dark forests of his eyes. I sweep back the thick blonde strands from them, locking my gaze into his, and suck in his breath as my own before uttering words I have told him before—but never meant so deeply.

“Cassian. You are not alone.”

The shadows in the forests ignite. Blaze with fire so beautiful, it makes me gasp again. The flames grow swiftly, spreading across his face, igniting me with the intensity of a thousand feelings.

And I see more of the answer. So much more.

This was what he could not write into the contract. What he had to disguise behind a forty-million-dollar deal with my parents, that put them on the hook for new economic advantages on Arcadia and six months of access to my body. What I received from the whole thing was the one thing I longed for more than any other: freedom from being sold off into an arranged marriage.

Which makes the irony of this moment even more insane.

The last thing on my mind is freedom.

I can think of no