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“Just a dream,” I murmur, resting my forehead against the heel of my palm to catch my breath.
As my heart rate settles, I touch my fingers to my lips, recalling his kiss from earlier. When I returned to Laura’s room, and Nell finally arrived, I swore Lucian’s scent was embedded in my clothes, that forbidden kiss written all over my face for her to call me out. Even now, I can still feel his skin on mine, the warmth of his breath. The flavor. A small chiding voice inside my head says it was wrong to let him kiss me like that. An older man. My boss, no less.
As if I had a choice!
That same voice tells me to forget the kiss, it was nothing but a drunken mistake. Forget him and go back to sleep. Except, that voice isn’t mine. It belongs to my aunt and everyone else who thinks they know what’s best for me.
I can’t forget the kiss that's now permanently seared within me. And even if I never get the opportunity to kiss Lucian again, I’ll never forget how wonderful it felt.
At a cracking sound, like the shifting of walls, I startle out of those musings and scramble for the lamp beside me, switching it on to find nothing there.
But I know there’s something there. I can feel it.
Something about this place slips beneath my skin when I’m not looking. It’s subtle, but ever present, easily mistaken for a fine stray hair, or a thin web. A tickle of imagination that toys with me every time I close my eyes. The same peculiar feeling I get when I’m around Lucian.
Lucian.
Visuals of those pale amber eyes drilling into mine as he stared down at me earlier, an infernal promise of wicked pleasures, cast a shiver down my spine. I don’t know why I find the man so darkly intriguing in a way that draws my curiosity like nothing else. The same curiosity that lures me into dreams that are as delusional as the shadows crawling about the room each time I wake, shaken and unsettled. Questioning my sanity.
Maybe that’s the reason they call him the Devil.
Because the madness that breathes within these walls is as real as the man who feeds it.