I felt him approach me after maybe five minutes.
I sensed it was him somehow but remained as I was with my eyes shut.
“So it’s you and me then?” he asked, stopping pretty damn close in front of me.
“It will never be me and you, Zane,” I said his name for the first time.
He laughed like I’d made a joke, and the sound sent a shiver racing down my spine.
“Is that why you haven’t looked at me since I took my mask off? You afraid you might like what’s underneath?” his tone went from jovial to taunting just like that.
“Don’t think so highly of yourself.”
“I want to know we have a deal. You take care of me; I’ll take care of you.”
“You mean you scratch my back, I scratch yours?” I dryly replied.
Feeling a bit petulant with my eyes still closed, I opened them, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
He was closer than I expected, his height giving me no choice but to look up at him, and where the fog was less, and the moon was bright, I could see him clearly.
I could see the exact way his lashes curled, and the perfect lineup of his undercut quiff, leaving coal black hair smoothly slicked back on top of his head. The tattoo on his neck, a V with a black snake wrapped around it, had a slight variation from the usual Venom brand, telling me exactly who he was.
Glancing up at his face I found myself staring into a pair of napalm eyes darker than the bottom of the ocean.
A barrage of foreign emotions shot through my chest.
It took more effort than I’d like to admit not to shrink away from him. His eyes drilled into mine, holding no ounce of light, containing something sinister and wild. I had never felt so repulsed—yet at the same time enthralled.
Shaded tattoos traveling up both of his perfectly toned arms now clean of blood, and all over his chest.
“I know that look,” he said, a smirk hitching up the right side of his mouth.
Ugh. “There is no look,” I immediately objected.
“Do we have a temporary truce?” he switched the subject and randomly asked, holding a hand up between us.
It was then I felt the eyes of an audience watching us, seeing if we could truly work together without killing one another.
I wasn’t sure about that, but for my sister, I would do anything.
So with more than a little reluctance; I placed my hand in his.
Suddenly, his lips were at my ear, whispering something illicit. Something wrong and so out of the blue that when I blinked and found myself staring back up at him, I was almost certain I’d imagined it.
I was even more convinced when I saw the new look on his face. It went against everything he’d just said. I’d never been on the receiving end of such cold, cruel hatred by a man I’d barely uttered more than a few words to.
I knew then, truce or no truce that he and I would fight like lions. Just as I knew hating him would forever be innate.
What I didn’t know, never expected, was how well our demons would get along.
I didn’t understand the budding desire of something forbidden, something that could never be but begged to flourish.
I wish I would have reconsidered. I wished even more that I never crossed his path that night. In any case, it was too late.
There was no way to turn back the hands of time. Fate had a plan for the two of us, and she was just the kind of bitch that would make sure we saw it through until the bitter end.
I naively thought I’d be able to handle this—handle him—but nothing could have prepared me for the beautiful tragedy that was Zane Belial.