Chapter 120: Let It Go
- DEX -
Nothing compares to just kissing her.
Raya’s on top of me, vulnerable and beautiful and bare—still with the warm, soft center of her surrounding me, cloaking me, sheathing the violence that had been building all afternoon and was ready for an excuse to explode—and it’s like the entirety of the breathtaking universe has landed in my lap.
I’m not worthy of her. I don’t know why I’ve been gifted with her sweet, perfect spirit as the partner to mine. I don’t know why she was chosen for me. Because what I do know for certain is that she is too good, too pure compared to the darkness that can fill me if I let it.
So much anger pools in hollowed out cavities of my heart that seem reserved specifically to protect her—so much that I tremble inside with all the rage that wants to come out and rip anyone apart who might even look at her the wrong way. Jay is lucky he saw me coming this afternoon when I returned to the office from Lawson’s apartment and walked away before I had a chance to actually scare him off.
I love that he’s her friend. Jay is a good one—he’s a good egg. But that doesn’t mean he needs to be hanging around her desk. It makes the caged animal in me pace, and I don’t want to become that territorial, possessive boyfriend.
God, I hate that word. I don’t want to be any kind of boyfriend. This is so much more—so much deeper than a label like that. Raya is not my girlfriend—not even close. She is my other half, my complimentary piece, and by life or by death I am here to protect her—without question, that is my purpose.
The dreams in her journals are beautiful. They are so passionately, breathlessly written. I can feel her hand flowing across the page—the movements of her pen strokes and the desperation they convey. She was trying to capture these moments that were lived so vividly in her mind, and she does—I feel them. They come to life in my mind as if I were there with her. Who knows? Maybe I was. Maybe I have only forgotten. It took me coming home and finding her to finally be woken up again from so many dreamless nights.
And my fucking brother read every beautiful, sacred word that Raya wrote.
Raya whimpers above me when my teeth graze her lips, the thought of Lawson’s violation making the feral animal inside resurface, and I pull back from the heat of her mouth, resting my forehead against hers to try clearing my mind. I hate that his name even enters my thoughts when she is here with me.
I want to kill Lawson and bury him so deep in the ground that no one will ever be able to find him. No one will ever even remember his name. I want to erase his memory so that his memories are erased with him.
"Dex."
The angel in my arms says my name, and the fog of that hatred for my brother clears—leaving only her beautiful rays of warmth shining through. I see Raya again—just Raya. Her strikingly vivid blue eyes and the pale skin that her soul wears.
"Yes?" I whisper in such a harsh, gravelly voice compared to hers, and then I’m instinctively searching her for any injury—for any pain. Have I hurt her? I was too rough... I got carried away.
Her hands come up and caress my face, running over my beard and causing my eyes to close and the anger and frustration that I’m still harboring deep in my heart to relax and slowly bleed out of me.
"You’re still angry," she says, her fingers trailing over my skin. "Why are you still so angry? I won’t leave you. I told you I won’t leave you."
Another emotion crests, flowing over me like she has called it to wash away that anger, and I feel tears start to pool now in my eyes.
"You can let it go," she whispers, kissing my eyelids that remain closed. "Let it go. It’s going to eat you alive. Please don’t let it. It will only hurt you more."
I sigh, surrendering to her touch. She has already taken much of what was already bottled up—offering herself as a vessel to accept it, to transform it and turn it into something beautiful between us.
"Can you try to let go of your anger? For me?"
"I’m holding onto it for you," I say honestly, a sob catching in my throat. "I want to hurt him for stealing this from us."
"He didn’t steal anything from us," she says softly, still caressing me, and something calms in my heart—like she is taming the beast within it. I’m certain that only she can. "He can’t steal it. He doesn’t have that power. No one does."
I sigh again, running my hands up her back and making her shiver. We don’t speak again for several minutes—instead, our hands do the talking. They caress and calm and stroke while we remain in each other’s arms with our eyes closed. It feels like our souls are embracing in a shared peace that needs no words.
And then somehow I find her mouth again. Gentle, tender kisses that take their time to savor gradually turn into deeper, more insistent ones. "This is what I mean," I say between them. "This is why I don’t want you to leave."
"Why?" She giggles softly.
"I want to be able to kiss you whenever I want. I want to memorize every part of you and spend forever with you in my arms."
She smiles against my lips, and I lift her, carrying her upstairs with her feet locked behind my back.
"Where are we going?"
"Where do you think we’re going?" I ask, pulling her dress up over her head and discarding it on the floor of the hallway.
"To the bedroom?" Her voice is somehow innocent and sultry at the very same time.
"To the bedroom... to the shower.... We are going to act out as many of these sacred dreams as we can, principessa. When they’re real, no one else can have them."
