use Elena had refused to sit still after the attack and Adrian had refused to let her go anywhere without him. The city noise be

om the beginning," Elena sa

u have be

r arms around herself against the night air. "You've been decid

trying to p

ng me in

t she heard the centuries behind it. "You don't understand what it's like to watch you sta

e. All of it

soul that matched hers, and every time it was wrong, or too late, or gone before I reached it. When I saw you at that funeral I thought I was imagining it. I have wanted to say a hun

't have

nothing. "I know exactly how little claim I have on you. You don't remember me. You don't owe me anyth

ould it

e said quietly. "You've bur

r chest crack open. She took a step back off the balcony, back into the safe f

aid. "Don't co

ied, like he had all the time in the

st, meant to hold him off. It didn't. She could feel his heartbeat under

ropped, low enough that it moved

's four funerals." Her hand curled into the fabric of his shirt inste

d lifted it away from her chest, pinning it gently to the wall beside her head. His

hat this will wor

n't c

of her throat instead, unhurried, deliberate, and she felt the

ria

," he murmured against h

nd everything else in her losing badly, and found him already watching her, that maddening half

" she breathed. "

tch her free one and press it to the wall beside the first, both of them pinned now, he

o you look

still not tell

four names at her, and her body wasn't listening to a single one of them, arching

e said, barely a whi

that she could feel him smiling against her skin, close enough that the last inch betwee

mouth finally, finally closed over hers, slow at first and then not slow at all, and Elena stopped fighting entirely, kissing him back with somet

, his hands still loosely circling her wrists like he w

sane," she

oked like a man who'd just won something

e was barely a whi

ulation was happening behind his eyes, he'd clearly alr

he said, "and watch me