Lady Midnight

“I tried to stop,” he said. “That’s why I went to England. I thought if I was away from you, maybe I’d stop feeling what I was feeling. But as soon as I got back, the first second that I saw you, I knew it hadn’t made any difference.” He looked around the room, his expression almost resigned. “Why all these paintings of you? Because I’m an artist, Emma. These pictures are my heart. And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you.”

Her gaze locked with his. “You mean it,” she said. “You really mean it.”

“I know I lied to you on the beach. But I swear on our parabatai oaths, I’m telling you the truth now.” He spoke clearly, deliberately, as if he couldn’t bear a single word he was telling her to be misunderstood or lost. “I love everything about you, Emma. I love the way I can recognize your footsteps in the hallway outside my room even when I didn’t know you were coming. No one else walks or breathes or moves like you do. I love the way you gasp when you’re asleep, like your dreams have surprised you. I love the way when we stand together on the beach our shadows blend into one person. I love the way you can write on my skin with your fingers and I can understand it better than I could understand someone else shouting in my ear. I didn’t want to love you like this. It’s the worst idea in the world that I love you like this. But I can’t stop. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

It was the pain in his voice that convinced her. It was the same pain that had beaten in her own heart for so long that she’d stopped knowing it for what it was. She let go of the counter. She took a step toward Julian, and then another one. “Are you— Are you in love with me?”

His smile was soft and sad. “So much.”

A moment later she was in his arms and kissing him. She couldn’t have said how it happened exactly, just that it seemed inevitable. And that for all that Julian’s voice had been quiet when he’d spoken, his mouth on hers was eager and his body was wanting and desperate. He clutched her to him, his lips tracing the outline of her mouth. Her hands were fierce in his hair—she’d always loved his hair, and now that she could touch it freely, she buried her hands in the thick waves, winding them around her fingers.

His hands slid to the backs of her thighs and he lifted her up as if she weighed nothing. She locked her hands around his neck, clinging on as he held her against him with one arm. She was aware of him grabbing at the papers covering the counter, knocking them to the floor along with tubes of paint, until he’d cleared a space where he could set her down.

She pulled him in, keeping her legs wrapped around his waist. There was nothing closed about him now, nothing diffident or remote or reticent as their kisses grew deeper, wilder, hotter.

“Tell me I didn’t screw this up forever,” Julian gasped between kisses. “I was such an ass on the beach—and when I saw you with Mark in your room—”

Emma slid her hands down to his shoulders, broad and strong under her grip. She felt drunk on kissing. This was what people fought wars over, she thought, and killed each other over, and destroyed their lives for: this nerve-shredding mixture of longing and pleasure. “Nothing was happening—”

His hands stroked her hair. “I know it’s ridiculous. But when you had a crush on Mark, when you were twelve, it was the first time I remember ever being jealous. It doesn’t make any sense, I know that, but the things we’re most frightened of, we can’t make ourselves dismiss them. If you and Mark ever . . . I don’t think I could come back from that.”

Something about the raw honesty in his voice touched her. “Everyone has things they’re afraid of,” she whispered, moving closer into his arms. She slid her fingers under the hem of his shirt. “It’s part of being human.”

His eyes slipped half-closed. His fingers raked down through her hair; his hands caressed her back lightly, then found her waist, pulling her harder into him. Her head fell back, almost banging into one of the cabinets; his lips burned on her collarbone. His skin was hot under her touch. She could understand suddenly why people talked about passion as fire: She felt as if they had caught aflame and were burning like the dry Malibu hills, about to become ashes that would mix together forever.

“Tell me you love me, Emma,” he said against her throat. “Even if you don’t mean it.”

She gasped; how could he think, how could he not realize—?

There was the sound of footsteps in the studio. “Julian?” Livvy’s voice echoed through the door. “Hey, Jules, where are you?”

Emma and Julian ripped themselves away from each other in a panic. They were both disheveled, their hair mussed, their lips kiss-swollen. Nor could Emma imagine how they’d explain why they’d locked themselves into Julian’s private room.

“Juuules!” Livvy was yelling now, good-naturedly. “We’re in the library and Ty sent me to get you. . . .” Livvy paused, most likely looking around the room. “Seriously, Julian, where are you?”

The knob of the door turned.

Julian stood frozen. The knob jiggled again, the door rattling against its lock.

Emma tensed.

There was the sound of a sigh. The knob stopped jiggling. Footsteps moved away from them, and then the studio door banged closed.

Emma looked at Julian. She felt as if her blood had frozen and then unthawed suddenly; it was pounding through her veins like a spring torrent. “It’s okay,” she breathed.