Page 102 of Ruin
"This doesn't mean I forgive you," I murmur into his chest.
"I know."
"I don't know if I'll ever forgive you."
"I know that, too."
His arm tightens around me.
His chin rests on top of my head, and I can feel his breath in my hair, slow and even, and the weight of him around me is the most dangerous kind of comfort.
The kind that feels like home when you know the house is built on a graveyard.
I close my eyes.
The guest room is twenty feet away, clean and safe and empty, with a lock that works from the inside and a door I could close against him.
I stay where I am.
The most dangerous place in the world is the only place I've ever felt safe.
I don't forgive him. I don't know if I ever will, but I stay.
15
CASSIUS
She sleeps like someone who's forgotten what safe means.
Curled on her side with her knees drawn up and one hand tucked under the pillow where a knife used to be.
Even in my bed, even with my arm around her waist and the warmth of her back pressed against my chest, she sleeps with her body braced.
Ready to run or fight or both. I did that.
I taught her to sleep light and wake fast and never fully surrender to unconsciousness, and the fact that she's doing it in my bed while wearing my collar and smelling like my soap and sex is a contradiction I don't have the vocabulary to resolve.
Dawn turns the bedroom gold.
I watch the light move across her shoulder, across the bite mark I left last night that's already darkening into a bruise the shape of my mouth.
My mark on her skin, just above the collarbone, where anyone who looked closely enough would see it and understand that someone claimed this woman with his teeth.
I should feel something about that.
Guilt, maybe. Shame.
I feel possession instead, and the honesty of that is the only kind I have left to offer.
She shifts in her sleep.
Murmurs something that sounds like my name but could be a curse.
With Selene, the two have become interchangeable.
I slide out of bed without waking her.
Dress in the walk-in closet with the door closed, selecting a charcoal suit by touch in the half-dark because I've organized my wardrobe the same way for twenty years and my hands know where everything lives.
