She smiled back and tapped his forehead. “You’re just saying that because I’m so good in bed, I shut those fuckers up.”
He laughed. And the sound of it made her so happy you’d think she’d just won the lotto. “You aren’t good in bed. You’re fantastic.” He kissed her again and arched a brow. “Speaking of which…”
Looping her arms around his neck, she rubbed noses with him. “Want to go see just how quiet those voices can get?”
“Hell yes.” Rising with her in his arms, he carried her to the bedroom.
Chapter Nineteen
Cliff braced his elbows on his knees, dropped his head into his hands, and closed his eyes. Tension thrummed through him as the voices in his head called for him to commit grisly acts of violence, their cries relentless. It took every ounce of strength he had to refrain from acting upon them.
Roughly a year had passed since he’d attacked Whetsman. And the growls and snarls in his head did their damnedest to deafen him now, the impulses they sparked overpowering.
The only time he ever slept was when he was sedated or when he held Emma in his arms. The sun had not even reached its zenith today, yet Cliff had to fight like hell to remain in control. He wouldn’t be able to hunt with Bastien again until sunset. How could he possibly hold out that long?
Loosing a growl, he slid his fingers into his dreadlocks and strained to hear Emma’s voice up on sublevel 1. There had been times in the past when just listening to her shoot the breeze with Cynthia, banter with Sadie, or hum under her breath while she worked had helped. The thunderous demands screeching through his head, however, had reached such levels that he could barely even hear the goings-on in sublevel four.
He curled his fingers into fists, the tugs on his hair punishing. Gratifying.
He had waited too long. He was terrifyingly close to losing himself entirely. There were still fractured pieces of him in there, remnants of the Cliff he saw in the photos Emma had snapped, but the twisted monster rising within him seemed to devour more of them every day.
He never wanted Emma to see that monster.
He would die first.
The past few months, he had poured himself into helping her remodel the rest of her home. He had retiled her bathroom, painted the cabinets, and installed new faucets. He’d replaced most of the light fixtures throughout the house and—much to her relief upon learning he had no actual experience with such—hadn’t discovered what electrocution would do to a vampire. He’d sanded and painted her kitchen cabinets. Restained her wood floor.
Emma thought he did it because working with his hands distracted him from the war perpetually raging in his head. And the distractions did help. But he really did it because…
Well. He did it for the same reason a man whose doctor had told him he only had a few months to live might. He was getting his affairs in order, taking care of things now that he knew he wouldn’t be around to do later. Emma loved that house. Cliff did, too. It felt like home to him now. She made it feel like home to him. A home he had fantasized about filling with decades of love and laughter. Boisterous children and barking dogs.
She’d told him how she intended to fix it up, all the changes she’d like to make when both time and her budget allowed. She’d even asked for his input and suggestions, still clinging to the hope that they would have their happily-ever-after together.
And the more she’d included him in her plans, the more Cliff had wanted to make those changes for her himself. He wanted to be the one to transform her house into her dream home. He needed to be the one to transform her house into her dream home, to leave her that tangible evidence that he was more than what the madness was making of him, to give her something good to take away from their last months together. When she opened a cabinet in her sleek kitchen a year from now, he wanted her to remember him smiling over her singing off-key while they bobbed their heads to music and installed the new hardware. Not him destroying romantic dinners by bellowing at people who didn’t really exist but wouldn’t stop yammering in his fucking head. And an infusion of funds