Now, more than ever, it was important to control myself, because if I didn’t — I feared the only future we had would be death.
I thought about her hands. Hands weren’t sexy. Hers were.
Her feet.
Sexy.
Her damn leggings.
Sexy.
And her laugh.
Familiar.
I was the reason her entire race was dead. I didn’t deserve her, I never did.
My eyes jolted open.
Sleep. A voice had commanded. Until the time to remember is upon you.
“Cassius.” I grit my teeth. “Is that you?”
No answer came.
Great, now I was talking to myself.
A vision of Hope in a morning gown of white and lace hit me square in the face followed by another. She had on a blue bonnet. I’d always thought it was hideous because it covered her face and muffled her laugh.
Carriages.
I clenched the sheets with my hands and bit back a curse.
“I love you,” I said with my mouth, my heart beating for her, as I walked away into another woman’s arms.
A woman who was diseased, who did nothing but sate my lust so that I didn’t share my darkness with the only one I’d ever felt anything for.
I was dirty.
I was a whore.
I wasn’t worthy.
Of her purity.
Of her goodness.
I was the same boy who had been stabbed by my own mother — the same boy whose disgust and disdain was enough for his father to want his death.
I was that boy.
All my life I had been that boy.
And then… Hope.
Hope was the cruelest of all words. It presented itself as attainable only to be snatched away at the last minute.
But my own shame, my own pain, had kept me from fully allowing myself to mate with her then.