Poison Kissed (24 page)

28

Joey swallowed. “Did Ivy tell you that?”

I gripped my elbows tight. “Tell me? She showed me! I was standing there. I saw everything!”

“Then you know how it happened.” He was breathing hard, unknowable emotion glittering in his eyes like drugshine. But he didn’t touch me, or try to get away.

“I want to hear it from you. Tell me what you d—”

“She was dying in agony with her mind torn out!” Blood blossomed on his lips, and he didn’t lick it off. “She begged me to end it. What the fuck else was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t care about your reasons! Why did you lie to me about it?”

“I never lied to you. I didn’t realize that woman w—”

“Aveline, Joey. Her name was Aveline.”

“Fine. Aveline. I didn’t know Aveline was your mother. I didn’t even know anyone else was there. I’m a fucking idiot, okay? Doesn’t make me a liar.”

I laughed, bitter. “You’re one stubborn prick, you know that?”

He just stared at me. Steadfast. Ineluctable. So honest, it ripped my heart raw.

I squirmed. He’d always acted honorably. “Whatever. Don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe. It’s true.”

“Yeah? Then why the hell did you help me? Huh? Why’d you drag a dirty sparkleblind slut out of the mud and spend the next five years not fucking her? Because you bloody well felt guilty, that’s why.”

His gaze slipped. “That’s not what happened.”

My fingers itched, infuriated. “Really. Then go on, astonish me. You’ve got about ten seconds before I end this conversation and get as far from you as possible, so you’d better make it good.”

“You needed help!” He licked his lips, his voice strained. “I felt for you. Is that so hard to believe?”

My lungs constricted, and I gritted aching teeth. “You’re the worst goddamn liar. You never gave a fuck about me!”

“Right. That’ll be why I followed you into a psychotic witch’s trap, then. Because I don’t give a sh—”

“Save it, okay? You always pretend you’re protecting me, but you’re not. You’re just protecting yourself, you and your precious family.”

His eyes burned eerie scarlet. “Fuck you, Jasmina. You wanna talk about pretending? Fine. I trusted you, and you lied to me. You told that pinkglass prick everything, and it damn near got us both killed. Did you get what you wanted out of it? Huh? Did you get off? Did he pay you, or fuck you?”

My blood flamed hot, tearing burning shreds from my skin. I wanted to claw my eyes out, rip the skin off my face and hide forever. I’d never felt more like a whore, and rash hatred salted my heart.

His mouth twisted, his disgust jagged like a blade in my guts. “Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.”

God, I hated this hold he had over me. I felt like screaming, and my hands shook. I wrapped my arms tighter around my chest. “Don’t you dare put the guilts on me. What the hell do you care, anyway? You treat me like a slut. Why shouldn’t I act like one?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I’ve never abused you, or taken advantage of you. I’m always professional. What else do you want from me?”

Laughter rippled me sick. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Whatever. I trusted you and you spat on it. If you were anyone else, I’d kill you right now.” His eyes glinted, a savage promise. His muscles flexed, threatening to shift, and danger vibrated like a scream down my spinal cord, as fierce and immediate as if he’d wrestled me to the wall. “Go on. Leave. Why the hell should I care?”

I clenched my teeth on a burst of fresh tears. “Don’t you judge me. I thought you killed her. I thought you took my safety, my childhood, my reason for living. What else was I supposed to do?”

“How about stop and fucking think? I’ve always done everything I could to keep you safe, Mina. Give you a place in this world and look out for you. You should have known that.”

My heart wrenched painfully tight, deep inside where I hid my blackest secrets and desires. I longed to croon bloody submission and silence, to shut him up before he said something I couldn’t take. But my voice growled like grit on glass, groping desperately for my missing spells and finding only empty air.

Frustration and fury bubbled in my gullet, and everything I held back spilled out on a boiling tide. “Don’t make me laugh. You despise me! Ever since we met, I’ve ripped my insides out to please you and you just shove me away.”

“What? I never meant—”

“Shut up. You treat me like I’m nothing. All I ever wanted was your respect. Just one little sign you didn’t think I was trash, but no matter what I do, I’m never good enough for you.”

Unbelievably, he laughed. “
You’re
not good enough for
me
? Are you insane? You think I want it like this? You think I get off on forever holding you away from me?”

My cheeks burned. “I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I don’t care. Christ, you broke my fucking heart and I still can’t keep away from y—”

“Shut up!” My voice ripped ragged. “Just stop it! You stole my life, Joey. I can’t forgive you!”

“I don’t need your forgiveness. You do. When you gonna forgive yourself?”

Too sharp. Too deadly accurate. My heart stung, poisoned like he’d slashed me open inside. “That’s not your fucking concern.”

“Fine. Screw talking. If you’re gonna do it, do it.” And he snaked a swift hand into my jacket and grabbed my knife.

I jerked back, my pulse thudding tight. My back hit the glass. Hair splashed in my eyes, and my heart swelled to choke me. This was it. He’d slit my throat.

But he just caught my fingers and wrapped them around the knife handle, squeezing tight so I couldn’t let go, and tugged the blade to his throat.

I struggled. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He yanked tighter, baring his throat to the knife. The sharp edge sliced his skin, blood and water trickling down his collarbone. “Go on. Kill me. See how it feels.”

“Joey—”

“Face the truth, Mina. Yeah, I shot your mother. She begged me to finish her, and I shot her point-blank in the skull, and it made me sick. I puked my guts up in the gutter outside. That make you feel better?”

My voice erupted in a scream. “Stop it!”

“The hell I will.” He grabbed me and shoved me harder against the glass. My blade sliced his shoulder crimson, but he didn’t care. My skull clanged, and clarity rang cruel in my head like hellstung bells.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cut him from my heart. Any more than I could kill him with this knife.

Joey meant too much to me. He’d crawled deep into my flesh like a cancer, and if I hacked him out, I’d bleed to death.

He released my wrist, and the knife clattered on the tiles. He wrenched my arm behind my back, forcing me against the steamy glass wall, and now his hot body covered mine, tense and tight and dangerous, tumbling my emotions and my desire wild like a storm-tossed ocean.

Acid tears skinned my eyes raw, and sickness twisted tight and sore in my guts.

I’d failed.

Seven years wasted.

All those nights I’d dreamed of what I’d do and say when I faced my mother’s killer, and here I was. Scared. Sobbing.

Now I was exposed, helpless in the grip of the one man whose insight always stripped me bare.

His words came out stained with pain and blood. “You want the sordid truth? I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”

I sucked in a wet breath, tears aching my throat full. “Don’t. Please, just let me go.”

“No, Mina. Just listen.” He twisted my arm tighter, sweet tension straining my wrist, and I couldn’t help but listen as he tore me apart word by horrid word, his bottomless gaze drilling into mine and sucking out the last of my resistance. “It’s true. Nothing honorable about it. I took you from that filthy spriggan’s den because you were beautiful and I couldn’t bear to watch you bleed. Do you remember?”

“No.” I knew I shouldn’t listen. Shouldn’t succumb. He’d only push me away again. I struggled in his grip, but it was useless.

I remembered everything.

Swift, elegant, his gentle hand on mine, the way he stroked my hair and cleaned my bruises and touched that soothing finger to my lips, my first intoxicating taste of mint. I was smitten, a slave girl rescued by a dark and dangerous prince. I’d wanted him to kiss me, but he’d just thrown me that unnerving smile and looked away.

“I wanted to take you home and bathe you and dress you in silk like a doll. I took you outside and cleaned you up as best I could, and the whole time I chastised myself for getting a hard-on for this poor bleeding little girl. Back then I wasn’t very . . . I didn’t like to be touched, get me? But everything about you enthralled me. You gazed up at me with those pretty red eyes full of pain, and I nearly lost my mind and had you up against the wall.”

My breath caught, a treacherous thrill. He made the crudest things sound passionate. “So why didn’t you?”

“You think I liked that about myself? A scared little girl covered in bruises and spriggan bites, and all I could think about was spreading your legs and licking you until you moaned. Like I wasn’t enough of a monster already.”

His words spiked sharp desire into my belly, and I nearly whimpered. I could already feel his tongue on me, doing exactly what he described. His hair brushing my thigh, his skin’s glossy slide on mine.

His grip slid to my waist, and I didn’t pull away.

He inhaled, scenting me. “I tried to scare you off, show you what I really was. But you turned out to be smart and talented and perfect, and I only got more obsessed.”

“But you were so cold to me.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I begged and you gave me nothing. I thought I was broken.”

Surprise brightened his eyes. “No. Never. Never believe that.”

Dizzy emotion swamped me. I wanted to sob. He’d finally admitted he wanted me, and I’d just blown the biggest job of my life. If he saw my weakness, he’d abandon me.

My trembling mouth parched. “I’m so afraid all the time. I couldn’t even kill you when I had the chance. How can you even look at me?”

He brushed warm kisses on my forehead, breathless. “I love looking at you. You’re strong and brave and beautiful and so far above me, it stings my eyes. Looking at you is like . . . it’s like praying. You let me believe there’s more.”

I closed my eyes, stunned. He made no sense. He made the most perfect sense in the world.

His lips lingered warm on my cheekbone. “And you broke what’s left of my heart when you betrayed me, and I should tear your pretty throat out, and if anything ever hurts you because of me, I’ll never forgive myself.”

His conflicted words dazzled me. Warm menthol mixed with blood’s coppery tang on my tongue, and it made me damp and needy. He didn’t have to say those things. He’d already disarmed me.

He glided his cheek against mine, and his whisper slid seductive and warm in my ear. “See? I should cut you loose. I can’t need you. I can’t possibly want you.”

His rich minty scent lit my skin, spilling warmth through my tired muscles. “Not possible,” I murmured, mesmerized. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly. I can’t kiss you or hold you or make love to you, because you’re a soulless, lying witch who betrayed me and nearly killed me. And you know what?”

I swallowed, warm. “What?”

“If anyone ever finds out how helplessly I adore you, they’ll take you and bruise you and cut your beautiful skin just to hurt me. And when that happens, I won’t care about protocol or demon court rules or saving my own ass. I’ll just lose my mind and fucking kill them all.”

Dark velvet desire shivered all the way to my toes.

He sniffed his way up my neck and sank sharp teeth possessively into my earlobe. His whisper burned my ear, dark and exciting. “Is that besotted enough for you, princess?”

Exhaustion screamed brutal agony in my soul. He was the last thing I wanted. He was everything I’d ever longed for. And I was weary to my core of figuring out which.

Rich inevitability wrapped me like warm chocolate. I didn’t struggle. I just let it flow.

Truth was, he was both. And no matter what I did, I was lost.

His lips brushed my cheekbone, and he tasted my blood, a seductive flicker of serpent tongue that dragged my breath away. Sweet surrender thrilled in my veins like magical melody, and with a tortured sigh, I tilted my mouth upward for his kiss.

Slow, deep, dangerous. As hot and delicious as I remembered, a dark temptation that scarred my soul. My tongue brushed his lips, and he groaned and slid his hands possessively into my hair, and any control I’d imagined slipped away like a fleeting moonlit shadow.

Helpless, I parted my lips and let him taste me, explore my mouth and my tongue. God, he kissed like I felt, desperate and ripped raw with tension and hurt, everything that last time I’d been too shocked to recognize, and the force of the feeling between us ripped an insatiable croon from my throat.

His lips slid hot on mine, demanding my desire, and tingles crept from deep in my spine to coat me in sparking need. The poison sacs under my tongue stung weakly, but I couldn’t even make a drop to give him pause. Surely, he was a demon in disguise, bent on corrupting my soul and dragging me bleeding to hell, because I couldn’t resist him, not now, not ever.

My knees buckled, and he caught my waist and held me against him, never breaking the kiss or letting me have a moment’s respite or thought. Dimly I remembered I’d shut off the water, that the scorching heat rippling over me was all my own, that the only things caressing me were his hands and his mouth and his naked, tight-muscled body. “Mina,” he whispered into my mouth, his strange tongue flickering so sweetly against mine. “You’re so perfect. I swear you’ll kill me, one way or another.”

Longing sparked my skin alive, and I ached so hard inside, I wanted to cry. I couldn’t forgive the way I felt. I couldn’t deny it, either. I just sank my hands into his dripping hair and kissed him harder.

He trapped me against the wall with his hands busy on the front of my bodice. His smile curved breathlessly against my lips. “Wanna know a secret?”

“Uh-huh.” Somehow my hands got distracted on his body, his shoulder’s smooth curve, the perfect shape of his chest. I loved the feel of him, so hot and tense, quivering under my palm.