WARPED VANITY ( BL)

CHAPTER 36

We held each other’s gaze as we always did, and those dark eyes captivated me as they’d done from the very start. So often cruel and merciless but passionate and reverent when they rested on me, tender and caring when they regarded our twins.

  When we’d both found our release, we stayed wrapped up in each other like that, our breathing ragged, bodies slick with sweat. I ran my fingertips over vegas back, tracing the spot where the wings of his fallen angel spread out. He trailed his own fingertips upwards, along my spine until he reached my new tattoo. I winced slightly and Vegas touch turned even softer. My heart was ready to burst out of my ribcage from the look in his eyes.

  vegas scanned my expression, his brows drawing together.

  I sighed. “Sorry. Since my pregnancy I’m more emotional. I hope it’ll go away soon.” I cleared my throat then rested my palm over his shoulder blade. “What’s the meaning of your tattoo? You know why I got mine, but I wonder why you got yours.”

  A hint of wariness flashed in vegas eyes, the walls he was used to keeping up wanting to lock back in place. “kinn did it. About seven years ago.”

  I nodded to show him I was listening.

  “It’s a fallen angel, like you said. It represents the fall kinn and I took on the day our mother tried to kill us.”

  My brows snapped together. “Fall? You saved your brothers. How’s that falling?”

  vegas expression was dark and twisted, his eyes far away, haunted, angry. “Until that day kinn and I were innocent. After that we weren’t. We’d already experienced our fair share of violence from our father, but it never affected us like that day did. The flames of that day they singed our wings and our fall into darkness began. We became who we are today. That’s why the fallen angel is kneeling in pools of blood.”

  I’d noticed that the fallen angel knelt in pools of some kind of liquid, that a few of its singed feathered dipped into it, but I hadn’t realized it was blood. For a moment I wasn’t sure what to say, how to console vegas. Could words ever be enough to make the horrors of his past better?

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  vegas gaze focused on me, tore away from the images of the past. “You aren’t the one who should be sorry. And I won’t forgive her no matter how often she’d apologize. Not that she ever did.”

  I froze. “Your mother didn’t die that day?”

  “No. Even though I wanted her dead, I’m glad she survived that day or macau wouldn’t be here. She was heavily pregnant with him.”

  I shook my head, completely at a loss over what vegas mother had done. “Where is she?”

  “In a mental facility.” vegas voice dipped and turned vicious. “We are paying for it so she can live and breathe and exist, when she shouldn’t be doing either.”

  “Why haven’t you killed her?” With anyone else I would have never asked something like that, but this was vegas. Killing was in his nature, and his words made it clear that he hated his mother.

  vegas pressed his mouth to the crook of my neck. “Because,” he growled. “For some fucking messed up reason kinn and I are too weak to kill her. We haven’t seen her in over five years ...”

  “Do takhun and macau know what happened?”

  “takhun has known for a while. And we talked to macau a few months after he got initiated.”

stroked vegas neck. “Have you thought about visiting her again to try and find closure?”

  vegas looked up, his expression harsh. “There won’t be any closure until she’s dead. I don’t want to waste another second of my life on her. She’s already fucking dead to me. You and paris and Venice are what matters now. My brothers are what matters. That’s it.”