Scent of the Lost Love

I felt Sable’s hand on my elbow – light, steadying, the touch of someone reading the room and not liking what they saw. “Marlowe,” she murmured. “Let’s think about this.” But I was past thinking. Something had broken free inside me – the same thing that had fueled the slap on the balcony, the same…

My stomach dropped. Behind us, the lobby guards were closing in. In front of us, the elevator guards were staring us down. We were caught in the narrowing space between two walls, and neither wall was interested in moving. “Seize them!” someone shouted. Two of the elevator guards stepped forward. I swung my bag –…

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t be.” I turned toward the parking lot. “Let’s go home.” We walked. Side by side, in silence, our heels clicking against the pavement in a rhythm that sounded like a retreat march. I felt hollowed out – emptied of the adrenaline that had fueled the invasion, left with nothing but…

I said his name the way you say a prayer – not to anyone, not to any god, just to the air, just to the room, as if saying it could keep him alive across whatever distance separated us. I was already moving. Phone in hand, feet finding the floor, body acting on the ancient,…

The sound that came out of me was not a word. It was something older than language, something pulled from the same place that makes animals howl when they find their young in danger. I dropped to my knees beside him. My hands found his chest – fingers spread, pressing, searching for the thing I…

He pulled me into a hug. His arms wrapped around me – familiar, unwanted, an invasion disguised as affection – and for one paralyzed second, I was back in the study at his mansion, seventeen and trusting and too young to know the difference between a man who loves you and a man who wants…

“Find a way.” My voice had dropped into a register I barely recognized – cold, flat, the voice of a woman who was running on fumes and fury and wasn’t going to be stopped by bureaucracy. “Find a way, or I will make it my personal mission to ensure that every person who has ever…

“Hey!” Sterling. Striding toward us from wherever he’d been licking his wounds, his face twisted into something between outrage and disbelief. Three slaps had left red marks on both cheeks, and the visual effect – combined with his flushed skin and wild eyes – made him look less like the polished, privileged boy I’d dated…

Then Dorian bent down, picked up Sterling’s gun with the casual disdain of someone removing litter from a sidewalk, and examined it. Something crossed his face – a flicker that might have been amusement, might have been contempt – before he straightened and addressed the bodyguard. “Take him to the police. Make sure they know…

The second: the same man, same cap, same obscured face. Marlowe’s hand in his. Their fingers interlocked. Caelum stared at the images. His thumb hovered over the screen, and the screen glowed up at him with the patient malevolence of a thing that knows it’s doing damage and doesn’t care. The silence in the room…