THIRTY-EIGHT

Angel Heart

Shemeltedintohisarms,butitwasKingsleywhokissedher first; and when their lips met, Mimi closed her eyes, every sense in her body tingling. It was as if she had never been kissed, as if they were kissing each other for the first time. His lips were soft against hers, and when she opened her mouth to him, they fell on each other hungrily, and pressed against each other with a passion that eclipsed every prior emotion, along with every kiss that had come before. If Mimi ever doubted his love, she was sure of it now. She folded her legs around him as his strong arms carried her into her room, and he kicked the door closed behind them.

He slammed her against the wall, putting his entire weight on her body, crushing her. She was breathless with desire, but she was still Mimi Force, and so when he moved to kiss her neck, she pulled at the roots of his hair so that she could bring her mouth to his ear. “Took you long enough,” she snarled.

“I didn’t want…” He tried to finish his sentence but inhaled sharply instead.

It was all right. She held him close, gently petting the fine hair at the back of his neck. Kingsley was afraid. He was so very afraid that his entire body was trembling.

Mimi soothed him and held him tightly. “I was only teasing.”

Kingsley closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against hers. “I never thought to dream that you would come for me. I never expected to see you again. When I saw you at the club, I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t believe you’re really here.” He gritted his teeth. “I didn’t think you were here for me. I thought you had to be here for something else. I didn’t realize…”

Mimi almost laughed. All this time they had been playing a game of their own making. Kingsley was just like her—he’d harbored the same doubts she had—because when he’d done the rough mathematics of their relationship, he too had noticed that they had never once told each other what they felt. If he had never said the words, had never revealed the true pas-sionate nature of his heart, then neither had she.

She cupped his face with her hands and looked deep into his eyes. Gone was the arrogant heartthrob, the smooth crime boss, the ageless Venator, the immovable Duke of Hell. There was only Kingsley martin: just a boy in love with a girl. In love with her.

“I love you,” he said, over and over, as he kissed her face, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her neck, her shoulders. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Mimi said the same: their voices blending together in a chorus. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” as if making up for all those times it had gone unsaid, when they had kept it from the other.

They were still kissing when his hands slipped under her shirt, and she smiled to think that even as vulnerable as he was now, he was still Kingsley. “Can I help you with that?” she asked. She moved to let him pull it over her head, and then she was the one frantically helping him undress, removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt, because now she wanted to feel him—his skin on her skin—so much that it was almost a panic. She needed him and wanted him now.

Kingsley carried her to the bed, laid her on the covers, and they helped each other remove the rest of their clothing, smiling shyly at each other, and then he was lying on top of her and kissing her again.

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

“Even among all the virago and sirens you have here?

Don’t tell me you’ve been faithful. Not Kingsley martin,” she teased, nipping at his neck.

“It was easy. None of them were you.”

She placed her hands on his flat stomach, tracing his fine abdominal muscles and shivering at the scars on his skin. He looked as if he had been flayed: there were great ridges of seared, scarred flesh crisscrossing his torso and back.

“What happened?” she asked, feeling tears come to her eyes at the damage and pain he had sustained.

“It’s what happens when you get too close to a subvertio.”

“They’re like glass shards,” she said, tracing them gently.

“Are they painful?”

“Yes.”

Now she was the one who couldn’t stop crying for him and for everything he had weathered. She kissed every scar, wanting to heal each one with her love.

“Don’t,” he said. “I can’t stand to see you sad.”

She closed her eyes tightly and nodded. “I just… I love you so much.”

He cried out as he entered her, and Mimi gasped and held him even tighter. They rocked against each other, and his tears fell on her face. When they kissed, it tasted like salt and sacrifice, and she lost herself to the exquisite pleasure of his body and his love—carried aloft to an ecstasy that was beyond anything she had felt before.

Lying together in bed, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder, Mimi felt at peace. Kingsley was soundly asleep next to her. Boys. She nuzzled his neck and he gave her a sleepy kiss. Lucky rabbit’s foot, Mimi thought.

Mimi could not remember ever feeling so happy. The happiness was deep and sustaining, and she realized now that after innumerable years on earth, she had never felt this way.

That no one had ever loved her this way, so completely and so thoroughly. She had never shared a moment like this with anyone, and the love she felt for Kingsley was a precious gift—a delicate, wonderful bubble that covered the two of them but grew to expand to the whole world and the entire universe, past the Kingdom of the Dead and the Garden of Eden, encompassing everything and everybody around it.

She loved and she was loved, and that was all that mattered. How simple, really. But wasn’t that the reason she had traveled to the underworld in the first place? Her soul was at peace. She was happy and satisfied with life. Everything would work out. She had gotten what she wanted. Ask and ye shall receive. She had received it in spades.

There was something else, something unexpected: that darkness in her soul, that corrosive hate and anger, bitterness and humiliation that she had been living with for the better part of a year—it was gone. It had disappeared.

Mimi had another thought: one so new and surprising that she could not believe she was thinking it. But it was there all the same.

She would let Jack live.

She loved Kingsley so much that she had enough love in her heart for her wayward twin as well. There was no need to spend her energy looking for Jack and plotting to kill him. She would release him from his bond. There would be no blood trial. There was no need.

“What are you thinking about, Force?” Kingsley asked.

“You look so serious.”

She turned to him and gave him another kiss—one of many they would share in an immortal lifetime. “I was thinking we should do that again.”

So they did.