“I earned my pilot’s license three years ago. I was thrown off a horse when I was sixteen. I watched Titanic and shed a tear. Just one.”

  I clasp my hands together and offer up a prayer to the heavens above. “God, please let it be the Titanic one.” I glance at him out of the side of my eye. “But even I’m not actually that hopeful. What kind of horse was it?”

  “None,” he says, straight-faced. “I hate horses. I hate planes, too, actually.”

  My jaw drops. “You’re not—You can’t be—No fucking way. There is no fucking way you cried at a movie.”

  Ilarion chuckles. “Mila forced me. I got surprisingly emotionally invested.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Would you judge me if I said that I was a full-grown adult?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then no, I wasn’t.”

  I giggle, and instinctively, I reach out and take his hand. His eyes betray the unfamiliarity of the gesture, but he doesn’t let go.

  “Again,” I say with renewed excitement. “So we can find out what other movies have made you bawl like a little girl. Here are my three. I almost became a child actor. I dropped out of college. I’m a self-taught guitarist.”

  “If your father hated making your sister a beauty queen, I can’t imagine he would’ve liked you ending up on a casting couch.”

  “Yeah,” I say, suddenly crestfallen. “Not his favorite plan. There was an agent who thought I had some spark, but…yeah. Dad said no.”

  Ilarion frowns. “I get the feeling that he wasn’t really into exposing you two.”

  I nod in agreement. “He was always an intensely private person. It got worse with age,” I explain. “You can give it one more shot, if you want.”

  “Has to be the guitar one, then.”

  I smile. “Correct. Dad signed me up for lessons, but I hated the teacher so much that I used to snip the guitar strings when he wasn’t looking so the lesson had to end early.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell him no?” he asks. “Why are you so afraid to ask for what you want?”

  I stiffen and rub my arms against the suddenly invasive chill. “They’re my parents,” I offer up weakly. “I felt like I owed it to them.”

  “Because they fucked once upon a time and produced you?”

  “Thanks for that image; it’ll haunt me to my grave.” I shiver again. “I guess what it comes down to is…I love them so much, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make them happy.”

  “At the expense of your own happiness?”

  When he says it like that, I feel like a fool. But then, everything always seems simple when you let him tell it. The world in Ilarion’s eyes is black and white. You love what you love. You kill what you kill. You take what you want. You leave behind what you don’t.

  “It seemed worth it at the time,” I mutter. I sigh deeply and add, “It feels good though…to admit what you want. You taught me that.”

  “Now, maybe you should start doing what you want,” he suggests with a gentle nudge to my side. “It could make a world of difference.”

  “Either that, or I’ll crash and burn.”

  He pulls me roughly toward him. “No,” he growls. “I’ll be there to catch you.”

  I look up at him, his face half-lit by the moon, the other half shrouded in darkness. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” I whisper. “Believing that.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Taylor. You’ve made too many decisions for other people your whole life. Time to take what you want.”

  “I did,” I say softly. “I took you. Even though you weren’t mine to take.”

  “This is what I’m trying to tell you, tigrionok.” His scowl sharpens. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see? I was yours from the very beginning.”

  69

  TAYLOR

  Has someone ever whispered the key to your heart? Have they ever told you the words you were dying to hear? Murmured them right into your ear while the wind howled through the treetops and the rest of the world felt like it was thousands of miles away?

  I was yours from the very beginning.

  It’s what I’ve wanted. It’s what I’ve been waiting for. It’s what I always hoped life could be.

  I press my lips to Ilarion’s and kiss him passionately, letting my tongue tangle with his. He pulls back and starts walking.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask in heartbroken confusion.

  “Fucking hell, woman,” he grumbles, glaring down at me. “I want to fuck you on a bed for once.”

  Then, before I can protest, he scoops me up. He practically jogs back into the cabin and throws me on the bed. I hit the mattress with a surprised yelp. He’s on me almost immediately, pawing and tearing at his clothes and mine until we’re both naked.

  Then he pulls back once again. His eyes are gleaming and ravenous. The candlelight in the chandelier overhead dances over every nook and cranny, every crag and crevice of his sculpted frame.

  “Fuck,” he rasps at last. “You are a work of art.”

  I blush deeply. If I weren’t already lying down, my legs might have buckled. What am I supposed to say to that? The answer is nothing. It’s just more of his words unlocking every part of me I’ve ever tried to hide away so it can’t be hurt.

  But he’s coaxing it all out of me. I’m exposing every last inch of myself to him—of my body, of my heart, of my soul.

  And he’s saying it’s beautiful and asking for more.

  I reach for his hips and pull him to me. My hands encircle his girth and stroke gently. His moan, a deep, rumbling baritone, sends a shiver straight to my core.

  This kind of power is intoxicating.

  I lean up and wrap my lips around the tip. When I suck, his hands instantly tangle in my hair. I run my tongue over his cock as I suck harder on him. I take it slow at first, and then deeper the more comfortable I get. He’s huge, so it takes considerable effort to relax my jaw and swallow him down more.

  But by the way he tugs on my hair and groans, but holds back from rocking into me, I can tell he’s willing to wait while I adjust.

  And I do, with every pull of my mouth and every downward breath. I figure out very quickly that when I moan, I don’t gag, so I moan some more.

  I moan a lot more, actually, both from my own pleasure and for the way it’s driving him wild. Before long, he’s all but fucking my throat while he groans and trembles.

  But then, suddenly, he grabs me by the roots of my hair and yanks me back. Ilarion gazes into my eyes with this wild hunger that should terrify me.

  Instead, it only makes me want more of him. More of his wildness.

  “I’m going to come in your mouth if you keep doing that,” he warns. “And I can’t let that happen. I won’t be satisfied until I ruin that beautiful pussy of yours.”

  He takes my hand and drags me up to my feet. Then he lifts me into his arms again and walks me over to the glass window that overlooks the mountain range. He pushes my back against the cold surface and sheathes himself inside of me.

  “F-fuck!” I splutter. I’m soaking wet but I still feel like he’s stretching me as far as I could ever possibly go. In the distance, I’m vaguely aware of his phone vibrating on the nightstand, but we both ignore it. Too lost in this to care.

  His hand squeezes my ass as he brings me to an impossibly fast orgasm in his arms. My tremors and spasms must be too much for him to withstand, because he buries his face in my neck and floods my inside with his seed.

  I can feel the amount of strength it’s taking him to hold me up with one bad arm, but he never so much as flinches. Once he’s caught his breath, he carries me back to the bed and lays me down on top of it.

  “That was… Wow,” I breathe, closing my eyes and gazing up at the ceiling.

  The peaceful silence is broken again when Ilarion’s phone goes off for a second time. His eyes swim with a wary look as he circles the bed and grabs it.

  He checks the screen, and just when I think he’s about to cut the line, he answers.

  “Mila.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just listens. Apparently, there’s a lot to tell. I keep a close eye on his expression, but I have no idea if it’s good news or bad.

  “What?”

  His voice snaps like a whip. The tension in my body crowds out the pleasure it just experienced. I sit up and grab Ilarion’s shirt.

  “Are you sure? Did he check—? Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay.”

  He hangs up, but he doesn’t immediately look at me.

  “Ilarion?”

  Only then does he force his eyes to mine.

  “Two things,” he says quietly. “We’ve got your father back.”

  I have no idea why he looks so somber if that’s the news he was just given. “Oh my god,” I gasp, springing up to my feet with joy. “What’s the second thing?”

  He looks away from me, out into the dark mountains, just before he answers. “Celine is awake.”

  70

  TAYLOR

  Celine is awake.

  She’s awake.

  My sister is awake.

  I’m ashamed that my second thought is that my first thought wasn’t bad. Does that make sense? Like, I wasn’t crushed when those three crazy little words finally processed. It’s proof that I’m not a sociopathic monster. I wasn’t disappointed she woke up. I wasn’t heartbroken. I’m just happy that she’s alive.

  That lasts for about ten long, blissful seconds.

  Then guilt rushes in to ruin the party.

  Celine is awake. And instead of being at her bedside like I should have been, I’m shacked up in a mountain oasis with her fiancé.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Taylor. Taylor, listen to me.”

  Ilarion is whispering my name, but he sounds like he’s far away. I’m not even aware I’m retreating from him until the backs of my legs hit the writing table in the corner.

  He reaches out to steady me, but I flinch away. All the comfort, all the familiarity, all the stupid fucking hope I deluded myself into nurturing since we first stepped foot on this godforsaken mountaintop…it’s all disintegrated into ash.

  “No.” I shake my head. I can’t look at him. “Don’t touch me.”

  He drops his hands, but he doesn’t step away from me. “Nothing has to change, Taylor.” It almost sounds like a plea.

  I finally look at him. “What are you talking about? Everything has to change! We’re only here because Celine wasn’t waking up. And now that she has—”

  “You can’t just pretend like nothing happened.” He’s just this side of shouting, but I don’t blame him.

  Because I feel like screaming.

  “Watch me,” I say instead, shoving past him toward my suitcase. “We have to leave. Now.”

  “Fucking hell, are you really going to keep making the same mistakes over and over again?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Look at you, with that fucking mask back on—”

  “What mask?” I whirl around to face him.

  “The pretend-it’s-all-good face you wear whenever you’re doing something you don’t want to be doing. At some point, Taylor, you’re going to start hating your family for the choices you felt you had to make for their benefit. Choices no one ever actually asked you to make. Let me be the first to tell you: the fault isn’t theirs. It’s yours, and yours alone.”

  His words flay me open, but I shake my head like that’ll keep the truth of what he’s saying at bay. I turn my focus to throwing clothes haphazardly into my open suitcase. “I’ll meet you by the car,” is all I say.

  I sense his brooding. I sense him radiating that furious thrumming energy of his. Then I sense the breeze of his motion, which has a weird, scary kind of violence of its own.

  A few seconds later, the door slams. My hands freeze on my remaining clothes. That ended so fast. So cruelly fast.

  Fate ripped away my hope like a flower from the ground.

  I drop the blouse in my grasp and turn into the room. My eye catches the snow globe on the shelf again. I find myself drifting toward it. When I pick it up, snow blooms inside the glass like white roses.

  I don’t make the conscious choice to take it with me; I just float back to my suitcase, wrap it up in the blouse for safekeeping, and stash it away between layers of clothes like it’s something I have to hide.

  A memory of the last time I’ll ever let myself believe.

  71

  TAYLOR

  When I get downstairs, Ilarion is already loading up the vehicle. He’s changed, too, in the last few minutes. The air of unyielding confidence is gone from him. He just looks pensive and angry. More like an ocean in a storm than a mountain in the distance.

  I walk my bag to the trunk. He takes it from me without a word. The silence is a good thing, though.

  If there’s silence, there can’t be fighting.

  I take one last look back at the cabin. Then I climb into the passenger seat and buckle in. I don’t look again. There’s no point now. It and everything that happened beneath its roof is all behind us.

  We drive for hours without a word. The silence is suffocating me, but every time I glance at the map, we still have hours yet to go.

  What is Celine thinking? Is she wondering where I am? Is she wondering where Ilarion is? What has she been told? Is she even capable of asking questions?

  My only point of happiness is the knowledge that Dad is back, too. He’s been found, and he’s safe. Which means there’s a chance to salvage something.

  By the time Ilarion finally breaks the silence, I have a plan in mind.

  “We have to tell her,” he grumbles.

  I don’t even glance at him. “No, we don’t. There’s nothing to tell.”

  “This weekend—”

  “Was a mistake,” I finish. “It never should have happened. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have agreed to come here with you.”

  “But you did.”

  “Because I gave up on my own sister, which is a betrayal in itself. For you as well, but especially for me. As long as she was breathing, I should have kept my distance from you. Fuck, I should have kept my distance from you regardless.”

  “That’s your guilt talking.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I should have listened to it.”

  He curses furiously under his breath, and I can practically feel the waves of anger rolling off him. “I thought you were going to listen to yourself for once in your life?”

  I shake my head. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I whip my glare to his. “You heard me—it’s not fucking worth it. I can’t and won’t hurt my sister! My father’s back, and Cee’s awake. Neither one of them knows about Mom. Which means I have to tell them, and they have to grieve. And afterwards, well…we’re all we’ve got left, and we need to be there for one another. Of course, you won’t understand anything about that.”

  “About what?” he snaps back. “Family loyalty?”

  He slams on the brakes so hard that I almost go through the windshield. I put my hands out and grab the console, but luckily, my seatbelt holds me in place as we come to a dead stop in the middle of the highway. “What the hell?”

  “You don’t think I know about family loyalty?” he continues. “Why? Because I’m a selfish asshole who only cares about power and victory and money?”

  “Ilarion—”

  “I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of a whole hell of a lot of sins in the past. Ignorance chief among them. But when I finally decided to be honest with myself, I knew what I had to do.” He’s glaring at me, but there’s something softer flickering in his eyes. “For my family, and for us.”

  I frown. I want to ask him if he’s talking about Mila. I want to ask him if he means what he said back in the cabin: how he was planning on leaving Celine for me.

  But I don’t ask—because I’m a coward afraid of the answers.

  His jaw sets and the vein near his neck pulses as he grinds his teeth. “You sit there and assume that you have the moral high ground because you’re willing to sacrifice your happiness for your family? Fuck that. I had to sacrifice my own father for my family. And you know what? As difficult as it was…it was fucking worth it.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, and I’m even more scared to ask. “What do you mean?”

  His glare hardens. “You don’t deserve to know.”

  I flinch back as though he hit me. Deep down inside, he has.

  And he knows it, too.

  My eyes turn slowly towards the road stretched out ahead of us. We have so much more distance to cover.

  “We should keep going. Celine will be waiting.”

  “She can wait a little longer,” he growls. “You can backtrack all you want, tigrionok. You can take back everything you said this weekend; you can pretend none of it happened. But I won’t.”

  “You have to!” I yell, suddenly panicked. “Cee can’t find out about any of it!”

  “So your plan is to lie to her.”

  “Yes, if that’s what it takes!” I nod desperately. “How do you think she’ll take it if we go back and tell her we were away at a cabin together, fucking each other’s brains out?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s a betrayal!”

  “It’s not if you fucking love me!”

  He may as well have shouted, because those words scythe right into my soul and tear me open from the inside out.

  I look up, down, anywhere that’s away from him. “Please don’t.” My voice is a broken husk.

  “Admit it.”

  “I can’t.” I try so hard to swallow back the lump of tears growing in my throat. “Not now.”

  “Fucking hell, you are a coward.”

  “And you don’t understand how much I’ve lost already!” I cry. “How can I risk losing more?”

  “So you’re choosing your sister over me?” He doesn’t blink when he asks. His face is stiff with that same stoic calm, but I can still hear the hint of emotion thick in his words.