Iridescent (Ember 2) (24 page)

Candra grimaced, narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips, still no wiser and getting frustrated with the conversation. Sebastian’s words were taking her around in circles.

“I feel like you’re playing with me,” Candra mumbled bleakly.

Sebastian leapt up suddenly, frightening her. Her heart jumped, and her fingers gripped the stones beside her, grit catching under her nails.

“This is not a game, Candra, and I’m not some damned hero who can make everything better for you,” he shouted, stomping back to the water’s edge with his back to her. “Well, at least the hero part is wrong.” He laughed blackly, shaking his head.

The whole conversation was one-sided, with only Sebastian knowing what he was talking about. It left her muddled and vulnerable, her head clouded with things she couldn’t say. Her entire body wanted to shut down, to curl up on the rough stones and pretend the last few days hadn’t happened.

“You are not damned. Why would you even say that?” Candra argued, absently picking up pebbles and tossing them aside. She rubbed her dirty hand on her skirt.

“Because it’s true. People are dead because of me. Do you think there won’t be a price? If I act or don’t act, someone always ends up hurt. I’m not brave…I’m weak.”

“If you’re damned, then I want to be damned too. I would rather be damned than see you sacrifice yourself to save me from anything.” Candra spoke defiantly. “Why do I always have to be the damsel in distress? Why can’t you be the damsel for a change?” She forced the words as an effort to lighten the mood. The atmosphere festering with hostility between them made it hard to move.

Sebastian chuckled and looked back over his shoulder skeptically, as if he couldn’t believe she would actually make a joke. Candra wasn’t sure herself where it had come from, but his brown eyes creased up at the edges when he smiled.

He came back to where he had been sitting and dropped to the ground with a hollow thump, and then he lay back, crossing his legs at his ankles. He laced his fingers behind his head, revealing a sliver of pale golden skin and a sprinkling of hair across a taut stomach above the waistband of his boxer shorts. Candra watched the tiny goose bumps rise up over his flawless skin, a very human reaction to the cold.

Sebastian’s eyes closed, and he didn’t see Candra scoot back a little on the stony ground, away from the thick vein snaking over the top of his hip bone. Her insides twisted, and her fingers trembled, longing for some form of physical contact to reassure her. She wanted to tell him the truth first. Regardless, Sebastian offered no contact. His chest rose up high and lowered lazily as he reveled in each breath of air. His relaxed mood amazed her, given his mood just seconds ago. This was Sebastian, caught in some kind of a perpetual fight with himself.

“So, why have you brought me here?” Candra asked lightly, in part to distract herself from scrutinizing the way his stomach sucked in, almost going concave when he scratched it, leaving a small red mark where his blood raised to the surface beneath his flesh and made her unconsciously lean into him.

He pressed his lips into a straight line and scratched the rough stubble on his jaw. “C’mon, Candra, you haven’t guessed yet?”

“You’re not going to tell me?” she asked dubiously, raising an eyebrow. “You’re going to sit there and pretend everything is okay?” Sebastian was many things…but a liar wasn’t one of them. Her patience was ebbing away the way each circular pulse caused by stones in the water vanished, leaving nothing in the end.

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her. “I’m not sitting,” he said playfully and then flashed his amazing smile. It was as though the sun came out from behind the clouds and was shining down on only her. His intense eyes gazed into hers, like he could find the answers to all the mysteries of the universe there.

Candra gulped. “Fine, then, I’ll start.”

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Candra recognized his influence over her, the impression of his will eclipsing hers, but she didn’t care. The need and yearning that welled up inside her felt infinitely better than her own tumbling emotions.

“Kiss me,” he implored in a husky, desire-filled voice, with a smoldering heat in his eyes.

Candra didn’t question it. She leaned in. As soon as she was within reaching distance, Sebastian slid his long fingers under the hair at the back of her neck. He pulled her to his mouth with a furious passion, stifling the moan from her lips. Her hands pressed into his strong shoulders while his burrowed under her jacket and tugged at the shirt tucked into her skirt, frantically searching for bare skin. His ice-cold fingers clawed up her spine and back down, biting into the base of her ribcage. One hand continued to skim down Candra’s thigh, wrapping around the back of her knee. He squeezed once and, with a quick jerk, pulled her on top of his body. Stones cut into her knees where she sat across his hips. She didn’t care, not while her heart raced and every breath she took was filled with Sebastian’s taste and scent. Her skin prickled everywhere he touched. His relentless mouth moved with almost excruciatingly blissful tenderness and passion. The combination of pleasure and discomfort made every nerve in her body crave more.

Sebastian’s heart thrummed where her chest pressed to his, and his fingers kneaded the bare flesh of her legs. Her palms moved deliberately toward his hair, wanting to feel the silken texture again. Her movement paused at the heavy pulse coursing through his neck. Somewhere between his tongue meeting hers greedily, the frenzied movements of their bodies, and the taste of salt on her lips, she realized she was no longer being influenced. It was just them, as they were: passionately in love and caught up in the rampant lust that always accompanied it. She also realized Sebastian was once again weeping, and there was an underlying despondency in his kiss, and undeniable despair. Candra knew with unquestionable certainty that she would never kiss him again.

Why?
Her mind screamed a warning, but it was as useless as shouting into a void.
Not like this. Not like this.

A moment barely passed between the thought and Sebastian effortlessly rolling her onto her back. In a whoosh of sound and golden light, his wings encased them both. Sebastian pulled away from her mouth, panting, his chest heaving against hers and his face buried in her hair.

“I can’t do this,” he murmured over and over as Candra stroked his hair.

She bit down on her lip, chewing the soft skin to keep from speaking her mind too soon.

At last, he began to calm, and his breathing leveled out. Once that happened, his wings quickly disappeared.

“I think there is every possibility that you may hate me after today,” Sebastian said in a low voice a few moments later, his fingers tightening against her hips.

“Impossible,” Candra assured him. She turned her head a little, kissing his hair and feeling his sighing breath against her neck.

“Even if I tell you I’m walking away?”

“What?”

“I’m not good, Candra. I warned you in the beginning. I can’t change. Even now, I’m selfish. What I want and what I need comes before everything else. You deserve better than I can give you.”

He groaned painfully, rolling away from her onto his back, and threw his forearms over his eyes. Candra inhaled deeply, tasting him on her lips, and stared up at the darkening sky. The clouds floated past, heavier than they had been before. There was a storm coming. Yet another reminder that while they stayed here, time moved on. She sat up, adjusting her skirt and jacket as she did.

“You have to tell me, Sebastian. I’m not a mind reader, and you are making no sense,” she pleaded with him.

He didn’t answer, and she tried again, swallowing down the nausea in her stomach. She guessed what he wanted to say and why he was angry. She didn’t do well with mixed signals, but she had worked out that he wasn’t angry with her—he was angry with himself for something he had done. She couldn’t dismiss the gut instinct telling her what he’d meant when he said he couldn’t change. He wasn’t ending his relationship with her. He expected her to end it. After everything they had struggled through together to get to this point, he had to know she wouldn’t walk away easily. She could think of only one reason that would make her.

She recalled the last time she had thought of him with Ananchel in that way, playing their twisted game of cat and mouse. Draven had warned her, and she hadn’t listened. He’d cautioned her that Sebastian was forever telling Ananchel they were done, yet he always went back for more.

“I have to hear it from you,” she choked out quietly.

Sebastian pulled his arms away and stared up at the sky, his eyelashes damp and dark. He swallowed tightly, but his expression remained guarded. She tried, but couldn’t wipe away the imagines forming in her mind. She lingered in the hope that she was wrong and Sebastian would laugh and make fun of her for thinking such an absurd thing. He’d get angry, but she wouldn’t care as long as she was wrong.

Her eyes burned, but she refused to blink, knowing blinking would make the tears scratching at the back of her eyelids fall. Instead, she remained utterly motionless, frozen because she didn’t want time to move on. She didn’t want Sebastian to confirm her suspicions, but at the same time, she needed his honesty. She had been stupid to think that this was all because of Lilith. The Sebastian she knew would expect her to refuse to sit back quietly. He would expect her to color the truth about her meeting with Lilith.

It became hard to breathe, as if the air she tried to inhale was thick as molasses, choking her, drowning her.

All it would take was one short sentence from Sebastian to deny everything. She knew the fear and humiliation must be written on her expression. He watched her with careful eyes, narrowed and astute. He had to have grasped her suspicion, yet didn’t deny it. That, in itself, was confirmation.

Sebastian frowned gravely before his features went still and very somber. He closed his eyes again, but this time, he pressed them shut tightly and ground the heels of his hands against them. She wished he didn’t. Not seeing his eyes broke a connection between them and made it too hard to figure out his thoughts. He had to want her to know. Why else would he bring her here?
He is saying goodbye.

He flinched away from some thought going through his head and pushed himself to sitting. His hands clenched as he looked down on them, the tendons straining against his skin.

A lie
, she thought.
Whatever he’s thinking is a lie.
The flinch was his “tell.”

“Do you really want me to say it?” he asked in a disconcertingly attractive, low, deadpan voice, his eyes flickering up to her briefly. He stood and walked slowly back to the water’s edge.

She’d always found that part of him fascinating, the sadness and his tortured soul. How could he do this now, when she needed him more than ever? She needed to believe there was truth, honesty, and love in the world and that it was worth saving.

Panic coursed through her at an alarming rate, followed quickly by disgust that she could still want him, even now. Worse, that she still loved him. She’d easily walked away from Philip as soon as she’d discovered his indiscretions.

Candra pulled in an unsteady, excruciating lungful of air and found herself wishing she could take it all back. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost was talking complete crap. This wasn’t better than anything at all.

“Yes.” She scrubbed her moist palms against her skirt, concentrating on the barely visible fibers in the fabric to keep her mind focused and away from the image of Flame-hair and Sebastian together.

“We were never going to work out like this. We are two different species.” He barked out a cutting laugh, his shoulders rising and sinking.

One lonely tear overflowed and ran down Candra’s flushed cheek. She brushed it away quickly and flicked hair blowing across her face out of the way.

“So you are running away and going back to what you know—” A heartbreaking sob escaped, and Candra’s hand darted to her mouth too late to stifle the sound.

Sebastian turned his face toward his shoulder, bringing him in profile. “I’m doing the only thing I can do.” He took a cigarette packet out of his pocket and tapped it hard against his hand, freeing one white stick and placing it in the side of his mouth. “You probably loathe me for taking the easy option. I won’t blame you. I probably deserve it, but…” He paused, flicking his lighter so the orange glow illuminated his face when he lit up and took a long drag on the cigarette.

Twilight was descending fast, and without the city lights, it was going to get very dark, very quickly.

“How was this going to end any other way?”

Anger boiled inside Candra. The sweetness that had been their love was a sugar now hissing and burning, turning opaque and hard, becoming something else before her eyes, and Sebastian still hadn’t laid claim to his part in its destruction.

She guessed he didn’t apologize again because he recognized his actions were unforgivable. A wave of self-pity engulfed her as she contemplated the reason why he’d done as she’d suspected. Perhaps he’d wanted to finally prove himself right or be his very own self-fulfilling prophecy, or so she wouldn’t fight him when he walked away. She didn’t intend to.