The Mephisto Mark: The Redemption of Phoenix (21 page)

“Do you usually?”

“Yes. Nightmares. I hope when I go to sleep later that I do
n’t dream. After today . . .”

She shivered and I tightened my arms.
“He’s dead, Mariah. He can’t hurt you ever again.”

“You don’t understand,” she
mumbled.

“I want to. Tell me.”

“I dream every second of it, always just as it was. Then I wake up and it’s so real, it’s like he’s there. It takes me some time to realize he’s not, to remember he’s dead, and in those moments, it happens all over again.”

She hadn’t told Key outright that Emilian had raped her. She’d never said so to me.
As far as she knew, all we were aware of was that Emilian abused her. Sexual assault was the elephant in the room, but she’d just pointed to it, maybe because she was still upset, or maybe because, at the moment, she felt as close to me in spirit as she was in body. And she was very close.

I debated what to say, whether I should go forward, or wait for her to say something more.
It was a huge risk. I might spook her. But she’d handed me an opening, and I had to take it. When she didn’t speak again, I asked, “Was it always at night, when you were asleep?”

“Always,” she whispered. “It was part of what he liked, scaring me awake. At first, I reacted just as he wanted me to, but after Olga came, I knew
when he was there, and I’d have time to wake up and escape.”

“To the rug by the fire?”

She nodded. “He tried to kill Olga, but it’s almost like she knew to stay away from him. He could never find her, and a few times he chased her after she woke me, but she always escaped.”

She probably disappeared, taken into another realm until Emilian forgot about her. “
So when you dream, it’s always the same?”

“
Yes.” Her head turned so that her chin rested on my shoulder. “Except that sometimes he has his knife. Sometimes, he doesn’t.”

It took all I had to stay calm and keep my body relaxed.
Someday I’d be in Hell, and when that day came, I’d find Emilian and cut
him
. Until then, I hoped he suffered endlessly at Lucifer’s hands. “Do you have scars, Mariah?”

She didn’t answer for a while and I feared I’d gone too far, but then she said, “They’re where no one can see. No one will ever see.”

I convulsively held her tighter and swallowed the lump in my throat. “Show me.” If I couldn’t heal her mind, I could at least heal her body.

“You’re not serious.
”

“We’
re friends. We can talk about anything, do anything, and it’s only between us.”

“Friends don’t look at one another
naked, Phoenix. Just leave it. I’m only telling you this so you’ll understand why I don’t want to go to sleep, especially tonight. I know I’ll dream, and it’ll wake me up, and I’ll be more afraid than usual because of seeing that awful man who looked
just
like him.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“All night? You mean you’ll sleep with me and be here when I wake up afraid?” She lifted her head to look at my face. “That can’t possibly end well.”

“
I’ve lived without sex for almost a hundred and twenty five years.”

“This doesn’t make me feel less anxious about sleeping with you.
”

“I will never mark you, Mariah. Never, I swear, even if you wanted me to. You are completely safe with me.”

“What if we climb in this bed and I decide I don’t like you in it with me?”

“Then I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“You’d do that?”

“I’ll do anything if it helps you get past what he did to you.”

She shifted and things aligned provocatively. Her eyes widened. “I can never forget that you’re a guy.”

“I hope not. I’
m rather fond of being a guy, with all the accompanying equipment. It makes yours so much more interesting.”

“Again, this isn’t making me feel better about sleeping with you.”

I shrugged. “Everything still works, and it occasionally does what it was designed to do, even when I don’t want it to, especially when I’m asleep, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s a bodily function like any other. It’ll go away.” I moved my lips across her soft cheek and made myself think about deadly viruses under a microscope. “Let’s give it a go and see if it helps you.”

Her lips curved into a small smile. “Trying to fix me, Phoenix?”

“I want to more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

“I told you, fixing me won’t change what happened with the other . . . with Jane.
”

“No, but it will make you whole again.
I’m responsible for you.”

“So
, I’m a duty.”

“You’re my friend
.” I’d been slowly coasting my lips across her soft cheek and realized I was now kissing her soft cheek. And the lobe of her ear. And her throat. I should have stopped, but didn’t. “I want you to be at peace, and not afraid of what’s in your own head.” Her scent grew stronger, and I considered it a small victory.

It occurred to me that she was letting me kiss her. In fact, she tilted her head back to expose more of her throat and I ran little kisses all the way to her chin. I was
this
close to her lips, and wanted to keep going.
So
badly, I wanted to kiss her full on the mouth.

She blinked at me. “Maybe the lap thing wasn’t such a good idea.”

I thought she was talking about this overwhelming need to kiss her, but realized when she shifted again that she was talking about what was happening just below her perfect ass. I cleared my throat. “The lap thing was an excellent idea. I just shouldn’t kiss you. Anywhere.”

“It’s not fair, Phoenix. I’ve never wanted to kiss a guy,
ever
, and when I finally find one I do want to kiss, I can’t.”

I pulled her back to me and stroked her
beautiful hair. “There’ll be someone else. Someday.”

“And you’ll be okay with that?”
she mumbled against my shoulder.

“Yes,” I lied.

She sighed and we fell quiet again. I have no idea how many minutes passed before she whispered, “Don’t hurt me.”

“I would never—”

“I know you wouldn’t, but you’ll break my heart. I should get up and make you leave and not talk to you ever again.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Her arms tightened around me. “Because I’ve never had this, never felt this way, and I can’t help myself.”

“
Things will change after you’ve been here for a while. You’ll get to know everyone and feel at ease and comfortable and your fear will diminish. I’m just the first person to get this close to you, so you naturally feel more connected to—”

Startling me, s
he sat up suddenly and held my head in her hands. “Stop talking.”

“Why? I was just saying that—”

“You’re spouting a lot of nonsense because you want to convince yourself it won’t matter if I’m with someone besides you. Stop lying, Phoenix. I may not be all you’d hoped I’d be, but I’m what you’ve got, and it’ll drive you insane to see me with someone else. You can pretend it’s about me, and talk big about me finding my perfect soul mate among the Luminas, but in the end, you’re entirely too selfish to let me go.”

“That’s low, Mariah.
Yes, I’m selfish, but I’m trying so damned hard to do the right thing for you.”

“This isn’t a field t
rial where you get a cookie for good performance. This is my
life
, and you’re jacking it up because of your need to absolve yourself of guilt over a woman who’s been dead for more than a century.”

“How am I jacking up your life? I’m here, aren’t I? I want to kiss you so much, it hurts, but I
won’t because you don’t want to be Mephisto.”

“Oh, right.”
She focused on my mouth. “Remind me again why I don’t want to be Mephisto.”

“You have to kill people.”

She was coming closer, her hands still holding my head, and when she was half an inch from my lips, she whispered, “We’re doomed to this. You realize it, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say doomed, exactly.
For one thing, that’s highly negative, but also, we can overcome the . . .” Her lashes were long and dark above those deep blue eyes. I could feel her soft breath on my mouth. “Overwhelming, uncontrollable, all-consuming . . .”

“If it’s like this for the next hundred years, we’re toast. If it’s like this until the end of next week, we’re goners for sure. If it’s like this ten minutes from now, it just
is
going to happen.”

Her lips brushed across mine and I came closer to the breaking point.
“Letting hormones drive a decision like this is immature and foolish. You’re upset right now, understandably so, and because we’re friends and I know your past, and you want to feel something besides pain and fear, you think kissing me will—”

“
This isn’t a new development, Phoenix. I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first night I was here, when you came to my room and apologized. As for hormones, we’ll both still have them tomorrow, and the day after, and next year. Do you think they’ll go away? Will there be a time when we don’t want to kiss each other? Say yes and I’ll get up right now and we won’t talk about it anymore.”

A mental picture of Jax
and Sasha popped into my head. I was forever catching them kissing when they thought they were alone – in the TV room, behind the stairs, in the gym, on one of the hiking trails. They’d been together daily for over a year, slept together, did everything together, and they still couldn’t keep their hands off of each other.

Looking into Mariah’s
beautiful eyes, I pulled on my well of self-control and found the bucket dry as a bone. I would
not
kiss her. I reminded myself of all the reasons I couldn’t. “We’re only doomed if we choose to be.”

“I see. So I’m supposed to join you in your martyrdom.”

That made me mad, which paradoxically made me glad because it allowed me to set her off of my lap. “Why do you keep picking at it?” I got up and moved away, but it didn’t help. I wanted her so much, I could almost taste her. The fire had died to embers, so I laid a couple more logs in the grate and poked at it until the coals caught fire. “You
will
find someone else. You’re Anabo, capable of loving anyone.”

She
went into the bathroom, and I could see her standing in front of the mirror. “I look horrible.” Reaching into a drawer, she pulled out a hairbrush and began running it through her hair. “Wonder what’s keeping Mathilda?”

I stalked to the door of the bathroom and glared at her. “Why are you ignoring what I said?”

Turning, she continued brushing her hair while she frowned at me. “Because I’m tired of you assuming so much about me because I’m Anabo. How would you like it if I said I don’t believe you can be a nice guy because you’re a son of Hell? What if I assumed everything you do is for an ulterior motive, that you’re evil at heart?”

“I re
ally hate rhetorical questions. Of course I would hate that. But the fact remains that you
are
Anabo, and you have a choice. Once you become immortal, kissing means you’re permanently Mephisto. I’m a strong guy, but I do have my breaking point. I’d eventually be compelled to seduce you, and once we do that, you’re marked as
my
Mephisto and stuck with me forever. And I mean literally
forever
.” I hoped what I said would jolt her back to reality. I didn’t want to frighten her, but she had to understand that there was no going back.

The hairbrush stopped.
“Wait. You just said that if I’m immortal, Mephisto is permanent. What if I’m not immortal?”

“You can ask
Lucifer to return you to who you are now.”

“
And after that, I could become immortal and a Lumina?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s complicated, and you might like being Mephisto, so you wouldn’t want to go back, and I think you should—”

“Does it really matter what you think I should do? It’s not that I don’t value your opinion, Phoenix, but you’re way too involved to be objective at all.” She was staring at my mouth. “I think we should go for it, and next week, before I become immortal, I can do whatever it is I need to do to go back to original me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s like Pandora’s box. I can’t kiss you for a week, then say peace out and there’s an end to it.”

“At least I could finally kiss somebody.” She paused, then said, “And by somebody, I mean you. I don’t want to kiss just anybody. Only you. And you could break your fast, at least for a little while. I’m not seeing a downside.”

“You have no idea what you’re asking me to do.” I kind of hated myself for saying it, for
the drama of it, but she really didn’t understand yet exactly what was inside of me. Along with muscle and bone was something dark and twisted that I couldn’t control. My best hope of keeping it contained was not doing anything to wake it up. Like kissing Mariah.