Twisted - Esme Devlin Page 0,113
“Hindsight is such a pointless thing. You were exactly how I needed you to be.”
“Unconscious?”
“Yes,” he replies flatly. “I feel your presence like a magnet, Sapphire. I had no time for distractions or explanations. You weren’t scared. You weren’t in pain. You were lost in a peaceful sleep. I’d do it all again.”
There’s a long silence while I think of something to say to him. I could tell him I’m glad he came for me. I could tell him I missed him. I could tell him how I feel about him.
But I think somehow he knows all of that better than I do myself.
So instead, I ask him, “What happens next?”
“We go home,” he replies. “And I don’t intend to leave again.”
“Home.” My hand curves around my still-flat stomach, layers of blankets separating it from the tiny piece of us that grows inside. “Will things be different?”
I hope he knows what I mean by that. Things have changed between us. Now I know the monster under the mask. I know that there isn’t a monster there at all.
I’m still not sure exactly what he is. But I know he’s nothing like I imagined the first time I was wrapped in blankets, sitting in this very spot.
“That depends entirely on what you mean by different,” he says. “Will I allow you to return to my bed? Yes. But will I stop tormenting you? Will I cease my games? My fascination with making you scared of me? Will I show my face and pretend I am just a man who isn’t wicked, and you are just a girl who loves me? No. No, I don’t think I will.”
I let out a laugh and shake my head. “I never expected you to.”
He reaches over and takes my hand in his before bringing it up to the smooth metal that covers the place where his lips should be. “Clever girl.”
41
Sapphire
I get the feeling that I’ve lived this before as we pull up in front of the house and the guards standing at the entrance dutifully turn their backs.
Baron circles around the car before unclipping my seatbelt and lifting me into his arms. I lean my head into his chest, feeling a damp patch from where his wounds are seeping into his clothing.
“You’re hurt.” I lift my cheek so as not to irritate the wounds anymore as we walk inside.
“And your face is uncovered. Keep your head down, sweet girl, else I’ll smear it with my own bloody shirt.”
I have nothing to say to that so I simply do as he tells me. No small part of me is pleased that I can return to being the little doll again. Safe in his arms.
Well, safe from everyone but him, at least.
We make our way through the large building, up the stairs and along the narrow corridor where the sounds are carnal, and up again until we get to his room.
This place is different. Same bed, same strange artwork, but before where it used to taper off into darkness there is now a wall with a door there.
Do I even want to know what’s behind it?
He puts me down in the middle of the carpet and shrugs off his jacket. When his fingers slip under the hem of his shirt, he hesitates, watching me with eyes that I can’t see but can feel.
I swallow, wondering if I should say it or not. I decide I should. “I’ve seen it before,” I tell him. “All of it.”
He tilts his head to the side and surveys me for a moment. “Indeed, you have.”
“You don’t want me to see it again?”
He sniffs audibly. “In truth, I haven’t yet decided.”
“Why?” I ask him. Then I remember to always say what I mean. I don’t care why he doesn’t want to show me. I want to know why he can’t show the world. “Why do you always cover your face?”
“That is a—”
“Complicated question with an even more complicated answer,” I finish for him.
He chuckles and then shrugs. “Laborious was the word I had in mind. It’s beyond your bedtime.”
I shake my head. “I’m not tired.”
He takes a step toward me, and I already know what he’s going to say before the words leave his lips. “Would you like for me to tire you out?”
“With conversation? Absolutely.”
He chuckles, taking another step closer. “Celeste told you everything, yes?”
“She did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
He stands next to me, taller by a mile, bigger by a field, and so utterly still he could be carved in stone. “And